Set Apart

[This was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio, this morning.]

1 Thessalonians 5:16-24

Advent is a season of anticipation. 

It recalls the centuries when God’s people anticipated the birth of the Messiah, the Christ, God’s Anointed One. 

In Advent, we also anticipate the coming of Christmas day. (Especially if you're about six or seven years old.)

But more than anything, Advent is a season in which we remind ourselves that we need to live each day in eager anticipation of Jesus’ return. 

One of the most ancient liturgical confessions of the Church is simply: “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.”

Over the past two Sundays, the first two Sundays in Advent, we’ve talked about how to anticipate, how to wait, for the return of Jesus, how to get ready to meet Jesus, either at the ends of our own earthly lives or at the end of this world, when He will, as we confess each Sunday, “judge the living and the dead.” We’ve talked about preparing through daily repentance and daily renewal through the forgiveness God gives to those who trust in Christ as their only God and King.

But in today’s second lesson, the apostle Paul gives us a different way of looking at how to anticipate the coming of Jesus. It’s one I like a lot and it can all be summarized by a single word: sanctification. 

The word sanctification is rooted in a Latin word, sanctus, which means holy. The part of the traditional liturgy in which we sing, “Holy, holy, holy Lord, God power and might, heaven and earth are full of Your glory…” is called the sanctus. 

The word holy means set apart, special, different. It could even be translated as weird, odd, not like other things.

This book is called the Holy Bible or Holy Book, because out of all the books in the world, this one is set apart. It is the Word of God. No other book can make that claim. 

Holy Baptism is set apart and different from any other baptism, including John the Baptist’s baptism, because Holy Baptism is set apart, the only baptism in which God’s Holy Spirit comes to live in the baptized. 

Holy Communion is unlike any other meal in which people have community with each other because in Holy Communion, we have communion with God, we receive the very body and blood of Jesus, and through it, God's forgiveness and life pulsing within us. 

Now, we’ve mentioned before what the Bible scholars call inclusios or inclusions. An important theme of a particular section of Scripture is underscored when a particular word or idea appears at its beginning and at its conclusion. That signals the reader that everything in between those two markers is about a single idea. These bookends form what they call “inclusions.” 

Pull out a sanctuary Bible, please, and turn to page 825 and then look at 1 Thessalonians 4:3. We’re not going to look at the whole verse right now, just the pertinent start of it. It says, “It is God’s will that you should be sanctified…” 

Now, turn the page and look at a line that comes almost at the end of our second lesson for this morning, to chapter 5, verses 23. It says, in part, “May the God Himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through…”” 

So, the theme of this section of Paul’s first century letter to the Christians in the city of Thessalonica, including today’s second lesson is let God set you apart. 

Give God access to your heart, mind, and will so that He can make you over in Christ’s image. 

That’s God’s will for our lives, to make us more like the One Who died and rose to set us free from sin and death, set us free to be the people God had in mind when He formed us in our mothers’ wombs. 

We’re not supposed to look, act, sound like, or be like the rest of the world. We’re supposed to be set apart, different. 

In 1 Peter 2:11, we’re told, “...as foreigners and exiles...abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul.” 

And in Romans 12:1-2, we’re told: “...in view of God’s mercy...offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

It turns out that being open to the process by which God sets us apart from the world and makes us over into Christ’s image is precisely the way we prepare to meet Jesus. 

But what does that process look like? 

Please take a look at our lesson, 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24 (page 826 in the sanctuary Bibles). Paul writes: “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” 

Can you imagine anything harder than fulfilling the three imperatives that Paul gives in this one verse? 

"Rejoice always"? 

Even when the gift I’ve been unable to find at the first five stores also isn’t at the sixth? 

Even when my child is in the intensive care unit, his life hanging in the balance? 

Even when I’ve lost my wife or my husband? 

I think that we react in this way often because we don’t understand the difference between joy and happiness. (I know this is hard for me to remember!) 

Happiness is about the things that happen to us: We laugh at a joke, win the lottery, meet a friend. 

Joy is that deep in the bone sense of contentment that comes from knowing that because Jesus Christ died and rose and still lives and because I believe in Him, I have the forgiveness of my sins and life with God forever. 

Happiness happens to us because of our circumstances; joy is ours in spite of our circumstances. 

Joy can’t be taken from us even when we’re unhappy. (I have often found that an important truth to hold onto.)

In 1 Thessalonians 4:13, for example, Paul talks about the difference between the grief of those who follow Christ and those who don’t: Those without Christ grieve with no hope; those who trust in Christ still grieve. It would be unnatural not to. But they have an eternity of hope. They have joy.

Back in our lesson, Paul says, to “pray continually.” (Some translations put it, "pray without ceasing.") 

I’d guess that in my years as a pastor, this is the passage about which I've gotten the second greatest number of questions. “‘Pray continually’ or ‘Pray without ceasing,’” someone will ask. “How on earth am I supposed to do that? Don’t I have other things to do in life?” 

Yes, you do. 

And so did Jesus. 

And it’s from Him that we can learn what this means. 

Jesus had intense times when He went off by Himself to pray, of course. 

He also prayed publicly with other people. 

But Jesus was also in continual fellowship with God the Father. In John 5:19, Jesus says of Himself, “...Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.”

Jesus remained prayerfully connected to God the Father all through His day. And if Jesus needed to pray constantly like this, how much more do we need to do the same thing? 

Trying to live the Christian life without the power God gives to us through prayer in Jesus’ Name is like trying to drive our cars without gas in the tank. It doesn’t work. 

The prayerless person simply isn’t prepared for the inevitable tough times of this life...or for the coming of Jesus. 

I once saw evangelist Billy Graham on a late night talk show. He amazed the host by saying that the whole time he was being interviewed, he was praying, asking God to help him say the right thing, to glorify God even in this interchange. That’s praying continually, even while hard at work.

“Give thanks in all circumstances.” This passage has been the subject of maybe the greatest number of questions I've gotten as a pastor. 

It’s important to note that Paul says to pray in all circumstances, not for all circumstances. Not all circumstances that come into our lives are blessings, you know. Evil things come from the devil, the world, and our sinful selves. Jesus makes clear that all disease is ultimately attributable to the devil. But even in the midst of life's difficulties, even horrors, we have reason to be thankful to a God Who understands us and has conquered for all eternity our enemies, sin and death.

An elderly man, deeply shaken by the death of his wife, told me that every night, amid tears of grief, he fell to his knees and thanked God for the years they’d had together and for the hope of eternity through Jesus Christ that they’d shared. Even in sadness, he was thankful and had God’s peace, what Paul calls elsewhere in the New Testament, a “peace which surpasses all understanding.”

Starting at verse 19 of our lesson, Paul continues: “Do not quench the Spirit. Do not treat prophecies with contempt but test them all;hold on to what is good, reject every kind of evil.” 

We live in a cynical time, a time too, in which people doubt the notion that there are any hard and fast truths. So, when people--even Christian people--hear others speaking in the Name of Jesus, claiming that what they say has the backing of God’s Word in Scripture, we tend to be cynical. We tend toward skepticism in the face of witnesses for Christ who display what one Bible scholar identifies as the key characteristics of John the Baptist: “public, certain, and humble.”

Part of our skepticism may be that we don’t know God’s Word well enough to know what “prophecies” spoken in Christ’s Name are true or false. 

A knowledge of God’s Word is just as important as prayer in helping us get through our days, living in hope, or anticipating the coming of Jesus. 

In fact, if prayer is conversation with God, reading and digesting God’s Word is essential to prayer. 

Our words of prayer to God are mere responses to the Word from God. 

We respond to its call to repent, to believe, to trust, to live in the assurance of His love, grace, and provision, to call on God and be saved, and to call on God in every time of need. 

When we know God’s Word, we grow up, no longer, in the words of Ephesians 4:14, “...infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming.” This is one reason why I hope that you’ll join the journey through the Bible in 2015.

Paul’s words for this morning end in a prayer. Verse 23: “May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.” 

May God grant these things to us as well. 

As we submit to God, allowing Him to set us apart and sanctify us, worship with His people, soak in His Word, thank Him in all circumstances, pray continually, and receive His body and blood, may you and I be ready to truly celebrate Christmas, be ready to meet our Lord face to face, be ready to face life and death and eternity. Amen

Relax and Let God's Hand Guide You

[This sermon was prepared for delivery during worship this morning with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio. While I ended up preaching on the same text and making many of the same points made here, I delivered a different sermon in the pulpit. There's no written version of it, though.]

1 Thessalonians 5:16-24
If you made a list of Bible words that Lutherans like, “justified” would be one of them. It’s a great word!

Paul uses it in Romans when he writes that “we hold that a person is justified by faith [he means faith in Christ] apart from works prescribed by the law.”

Someone has said that when I come to Christ in repentance and faith, God now looks at me “just if I’d” never sinned.

The person who is justified is declared by God to be just or right with God. This is the most precious gift God can give because it cost Him the life of Jesus on a cross.

No wonder that Martin Luther called justification the central teaching “by which the church stands or falls.”

All other religious systems teach that people can, in some way, save themselves or propel themselves to higher places in the cosmos by adhering to certain rules, regulations, or practices.

But the God of the Bible, while using rules to show us our need of Him and the hopelessness of proving ourselves worthy through our own works and to give us a guideline for responding to His love, this God, justifies us as a gift of grace to all with faith in Christ!

But there’s a problem with our justification obsession, too.

Have you ever noticed that most love stories end at the beginning? I mean, they tell the stories of how two people meet, fall in love, get married, and start their families. But, really, after the storytellers narrate all those things, they’ve only told us the beginnings of their stories. We’re left wondering: How did they live happily ever after? What did they do in life? An elderly man once told a friend of mine, “These newlyweds talk about how much they love each other. But don’t even talk to me about loving your husband or wife until you’ve been married a few decades. You don’t know what love is before then.”

Justification is like falling in love. God is a desperate suitor Who, in Christ, incites us to fall in love with Him. By His self-sacrificing love, He makes us worthy to be live eternally—and happily—ever after with God.

Then what?

Some people cynically say that, after the wedding day, marriage is a hard slog to retirement and death, filled with tragedies, mortgage payments, pinching pennies, squabbles, hard times. But thirty-seven years into my marriage to Ann, I can tell you that while we have had our tough times, I love her more today than I did when we were first married, more than I did yesterday. I find that I am just beginning to learn how to respond to the gift of her love and her presence in my life. And all this learning and growing is the product of one simple fact: The certainty that when I wake up tomorrow, no matter what stupid or selfish things I may have said or done the day before, Ann will still love me.

And it’s this process of being loved and growing in love that makes our marriage stronger and better today than I could ever have imagined when, with my heart pounding out of my chest, my face beaming, I walked down the aisle with Ann as my new bride.

There is a similar deepening in love, relationship, reliability, and mutual affection that develops in the Christian life after we’ve been justified. It’s called sanctification or being sanctified.

And it really is the theme of the whole section of the New Testament book of 1 Thessalonians from which today’s second Bible lesson comes.

Scholars teach us that in the Bible, a theme or idea is highlighted when it appears at the start of a section of Scripture and then again at the end of the section. These bookends form what they call “inclusions.”

Pull out a pew Bible, please, and turn to page 684 and then look at 1 Thessalonians 4:3. We’re not going to look at the whole verse right now, just the pertinent start of it. It says, “For this is the will of God, your sanctification…” Now, go over to the next column, almost to the end of the book and of our second lesson for this morning, to chapter 5, verses 23. It says, “Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely…”

The root of the word sanctification is sanctus, which means holy or set apart.

After Ann and I were married, I was set apart for her alone and she was set apart for me alone. Similarly, after we have been justified, God is set apart to be our only God, the highest allegiance in our lives.

The Church is set apart to be God’s people, justified and empowered to bring His love to others.

But sanctification, this business of having one’s whole life set aside for God alone, is a process and it’s sometimes difficult. And just as the only way to learn to be married is to be married, the only way to learn what it means to be God’s holy people is to live as God’s holy people every day.

So, what does that mean?

Well, pull out the Celebrate inserts and go to the second lesson. Scan it. Paul tells us to always rejoice, pray without ceasing, give thanks to God in all circumstances, don’t try to hide yourself from what God’s Word and the Holy Spirit may be prompting you to do, but don’t be a chump who falls for every supposed holy man or woman who comes down the pike, hold tightly to what is good, refuse to do what is bad.

Most of us would agree that Paul’s list well describes the to do list of holy people. But who has time for such a list? How could we possibly be good enough to make that a to do list for my life? If God expects all these things of us, we may think, we’re going to have to wait to get serious about this Christian business until after we’re retired and just take our chances with God until then.

If that list raises your anxiety level, I have a word from God for you this morning: Chill!

Do you think that the God Who did everything necessary for you to be justified, including sending God the Son to die and rise for you, would leave you standing at the altar trying to figure out how to live as a Christian after that?

To be sure, God will discipline His children when we go in the wrong direction in our lives. The New Testament book of Hebrews says, “The Lord disciplines those whom he loves, and chastises every child whom he accepts.”

But the Bible also tells us that when we do go wrong, our Father is quick to help us. As the apostle John puts it, “My little children, I am writing these things so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous…He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins…”

Maybe you can think of sanctification like this. When I was a boy, I became fascinated by the fact that people wrote things. I wanted to be able to write. But I wasn’t left to figure out how to write on my own. I remember my parents sitting with me at the dining room table. First, they would take one of those fat black pencils and write a letter, maybe an A. Then, they would put the pencil in my hand, put a hand on top of mine, and move my hand in the right ways until, gradually, they could let go and watch me as I imperfectly formed the letter A on my own. We moved onto B and C and the rest of the alphabet in the same way.

This is what sanctification is like. Not another grim to-do list, but God working in us, through us, and on us to help us become all that we were meant to be.

Place yourself each day in the hands of God. If you let Him, His hand will move over your hand to write the story of your life—in good and bad times, in happiness and sorrow, even in the wake of sin for which you have repented and sin He forces you to see because He loves you and doesn’t want to lose you.

If you will be open to God, God’s hand will keep moving in your life until that day when you see Him face to face and all the mysteries will be solved, all the tears will be dried, and all believers in Christ become truly, eternally holy.

Even after he gives what seems like a to-do list to the Christians at first century Thessalonica, Paul also says to be at peace in the arms of the Savior Jesus. Pull out the Celebrate insert and look again at the final two verses of our lesson. Read verses 23 and 24 silently with me now. Paul says: “May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely [you see, it’s God and not you by your works who will make you holy or set apart as God’s beloved]; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this.”

Each day, the faithful God made known in Jesus is willing to take those who entrust themselves to Him and by the power of His presence working in our lives, transform us from harried, frightened people who look at lists like the one we see in our lesson today, into people so infused by Christ’s love, forgiveness, power, and indestructible hope that, from grateful hearts, barely aware of it, that we “rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks at all times, pay heed to God’s Word, hold fast to what is good, and abstain from evil.”

We will never be entirely holy this side of our own resurrections. Nor will we ever begin to understand mysteries like why bad things happen to faithful people while the faithless seem to skate through life without a care.

But from Jesus, we have an eternal “I do,” a promise to never leave us nor forsake us, a promise to make us new for all eternity.

Count on that promise.

Give yourself to Jesus today and every day.

Then, relax, breathe, live, certain that His grace that justified you will, as you submit to Him, sanctify you—make you holy, fit you for heaven—too.

God has an eternity of patience and love for each of us. Give Him your days and He will make you, over time and eternity, into everything He meant for you to be when He formed you in your mother’s womb. Amen.