The Narrow Way

[Below, you'll find the sermon from yesterday's worship services with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, as well as the live stream video of both services. Have a good and blessed week!]

Luke 13:22-30

Today’s Gospel lesson, Luke 13:22-30, begins with a question from a member of a crowd surrounding Jesus: “Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?”

Jesus’ answer is shocking!

He doesn’t give the man a number.

He doesn’t tell the man that good people who do good things will be saved.

Instead, He tells the man in Luke 13:24: “Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to.”

What is Jesus saying?

What’s the effort He’s talking about?

And what is the narrow door?

When Jesus says “make every effort” or, as other translations put it, “strive,” He is not joining the chorus of the first-century Jewish teachers or all the other religions of the world besides the faith commended by the Bible in saying, “You’ll get saved if you try really hard.” Jesus is not saying that we’re saved by our good works.

If Jesus were saying that it would represent a whiplash-inducing flip flop from what, just a few verses before, He taught.

In Luke 13, starting at verse 18, He tells a parable about the Kingdom of God, saying that it’s like a mustard seed which a man planted in his field, which later became a tree in which birds perched.

Starting at verse 20, Jesus says the Kingdom of God is like a bit of yeast a woman put into sixty pounds of flour until it permeated and expanded the size of the bread dough she made.

In these two parables, the mustard seed and the yeast represent God’s Word coming from outside ourselves–the Latin phrase that Luther used here was extra nos–to bring God’s grace, faith, salvation, and His Kingdom to human beings who could not do anything for themselves. The soil couldn’t grow a mustard tree apart from the seed and the agency of God and the farmer. The flour couldn’t become bread apart from the yeast and the agency of God and the woman.

The Kingdom of God comes to us from outside ourselves God the Father sends His Son Jesus to save us from sin and death. The Holy Spirit sends the Word of God, seemingly small and inconsequential, into our lives and it produces saving faith in Jesus that, alone, makes us fit for entry into God’s Kingdom!

In our Gospel lesson, Jesus doesn’t contradict Himself.

The root word translated from the Greek in which Luke wrote his gospel as “make every effort” or, in some translations, “strive,” is ἀγωνίζομαι (agonizomai) from which we get the English words, agonize and agony.

It was a word the Greeks used of the struggle and discipline employed by athletes to train and compete. The disciplined athlete strives for a prize, a trophy, or a reward, sometimes money, which she or he had nothing to do with creating.

The athlete’s job is to lay aside things like not getting enough sleep, eating too much, eating the wrong things, or using harmful drugs, habits that may keep them from attaining the prize created for them by others.

Jesus is saying that the free gifts of salvation–including God’s forgiveness of our sin, new and everlasting life with God, and being with Jesus at the heavenly banquet that never ends, gifts achieved for us by God through the cross of Jesus–is available to all who turn from sin and trust in Jesus to be their God and King!

This is what the preacher of Hebrews said in last Sunday’s second Bible lesson: “...throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles…run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith…” (Hebrews 12:1-2)

Jesus once said that it would be harder for a rich man to enter heaven than it would be for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. The worship of and reliance on wealth to which the wealthy are especially tempted needs to be jettisoned if the wealthy are to be part of God’s kingdom. They must trust in Jesus above all else! Listen: We all have gods and sins we need to let go of in order to follow Jesus alone into the Kingdom of God! The discipline of that may cause us agony. We are in love with our favorite sins. But nothing this dying world has to offer compares with being set free by God to grasp the outstretched hand of Jesus for all the blessings He offers us freely!

We live in an age when people, if they ever think of God, see Him as a nice guy, a pushover. They figure God won’t let anyone to hell.

Let’s be clear: Jesus, God in the flesh, did die on the cross for everyone. But He doesn’t force salvation on anyone.

The doorway to a life with Jesus is wide open to everyone even though our inborn sinful nature, our inborn desire to be like God, along with the world and the devil, work to push us away from Jesus. 

Jesus says that there’s only one way to life with God. It’s the narrow way. And that narrow way is Jesus. “I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved,” Jesus says in John 10:9. 

Jesus expands on this theme in the next verses: “Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, ‘Sir, open the door for us.’ But he will answer, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from.’ Then you will say, ‘We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.’ But he will reply, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers!’” 

There will come a time when the door allowing people to have eternal life with God, the narrow way, will be closed. The door may close at death, when it will be too late to enter eternity with God through repentance and faith in Jesus. Or, if people are alive when Jesus returns to the world, to bring judgment, it will be too late for people to take shelter in His grace and forgiveness. In those moments, no matter how much people may pound at heaven’s door, those who haven’t turned to Christ in repentant faith in this life will pound in vain. 

And it won’t do these people any good to say, “We made big offerings to the Church. We sang hymns and praise songs. We volunteered for outreaches.”

To people like this, the owner of the house--Jesus--will say at the Judgment, “I don’t know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers!”

Jesus goes on to say of those around Him who think they’ll be saved by genetics or good works, left outside of God’s kingdom: “There will be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrown out.”

Those who turn from Jesus or who take Him for granted or who keep him removed by an arm’s length in this life, will have an eternity of pain and regret. 

But Jesus doesn’t end His answer at that. There is good news!

He says in verses 29-30: “People will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God. Indeed, there are those who are last who will be first, and first who will be last.”

You can take great comfort from these words from Jesus, friends!

People from the world over are already part of God’s kingdom through the crucified and risen Jesus.

The Gospel Word has come to them: preached, taught, imposed by water in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and given to them as bread and wine that is also Christ’s body and blood.

And through that Word, they have saving faith in Jesus. All believers can cherish the Gospel promise in Romans 8:1 (along with countless other places in Scripture): “...there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus…”

“But, Lord,” we might say, “I sinned this morning.” “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

“But, Lord, I’ve taken Your name in vain, stolen, lied, committed adultery, coveted what my neighbor owns. Just this week.” To those to whom the Word of God has given repentant faith, the answer is, “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

“But, Lord, I’ve never been good at sharing my faith with others.” “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

Jesus opens the door to the kingdom of God to everyone!

As a sinner who deserves nothing from God, a rebel against God’s law of love from the moment I was born, I’m grateful that Jesus gives His righteousness to all who repent and believe in Him.

I belong to God not because I’m good; I’m not.

I belong to God not because I have the right genes; I don’t. (You can tell I lack perfect genes with one look at my oversized nose planted on an undersized head!)

I belong to God–you and I belong to God to God----because God is good and by His grace through the faith in Jesus that His Holy Spirit gives to us at our Baptism and offers to us whenever His Word is shared, He covers us with Jesus’ goodness and the power of His victory over sin and death.

Shortly before He set His eyes for Jerusalem and His cross, Jesus said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23)

Jesus leads those who take up their crosses–that is, who daily turn from their sin that God rightly condemns–and follow Jesus–meaning, those who trust in Jesus as their Lord, King, God, and Savior–into eternity with God.

Like Joshua, who God used to lead the ancient Israelites into the promised land, Jesus leads those who believe in Him through the open door of God’s grace.

One day, when Jesus returns, that door will be shut.

But today, while the door is open wide, let us turn from sin and death, from pride and arrogance, from the temptation of thinking that the the things of this world can set us free from sin and death, and turn instead to forgiveness, peace, hope, wholeness, and life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen

Wait. What?

[This was shared yesterday during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]

John 16:12-22

The two things that every human being has in common are birth and death. 

And what birth and death almost always have in common for us is pain. 

We may sometimes hear of women who give birth to children almost unaware of being in labor until right before delivery or of people who pass away peacefully in their beds after long, healthy lives. But we note stories of people like these as the exceptions. 

When we are born into this world and when we die out of this world, there is almost always pain.

In the end, the only thing that can make the pain of birth and death bearable for us is the belief in new life beyond the pain. 

That’s why, long before most of the world had ever heard of Jesus Christ, people created myths of heroes that conquered death by exploits, virtues, or deal-making. The problem with these comforting stories human beings told (and still tell) themselves is that they’re all untrue, happy talk for the fearful. 

None of us is virtuous enough, or adept enough at making deals, or courageous enough in the face of what we go through in our lives to earn, gain, or steal life beyond pain.

In our gospel lesson for this morning, John 16:12-22, Jesus acknowledges that birth and death bring pain. But He also points to the hope of new life beyond pain, a new life in eternity without pain, for those who follow Him. 

Let’s be clear though. Jesus’ words would be nothing more than another version of the happy lies we tell ourselves as human beings if it weren’t for one simple fact: Jesus, has immersed Himself into our humanity, including its pain and death, so that He can absorb all of our pain, all of our death, all of our sin into Himself.

Jesus does this so that, after dying condemned for our sins, God the Father could raise Him from the dead. 

It’s Jesus’ dying and rising that makes it possible for all who, by faith, absorb the death of Jesus into our own bodies and lives to be raised to new life beyond the pain of birth and death. That’s what Good Friday and Easter Sunday are about.

At the beginning of our lesson, we find Jesus preparing His disciples for the pain--the grief--they’re about to endure as He is taken from them and murdered. In fact, Jesus has been deluging the disciples with teaching that fills several chapters of John’s gospel. The disciples must have sensed from Jesus’ words, even if they didn’t fully understand them, that a crisis was about to hit. Jesus has been giving them instructions for how to face the crisis. Yet, they must have also wondered, “How can we possibly remember all of this?”

Jesus promises the disciples that He will send the Holy Spirit to His Church. When, Jesus says, “the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come” (John 16:13). It was the Holy Spirit Who would enable the disciples to remember what Jesus taught about the meaning of His death and resurrection for a human race dying in its sin. It was the Holy Spirit that empowered the disciples to remember and so teach us that the pain of life is not the last word over those who trust in Jesus. 

Their remembrances come to us in the Bible. The Bible then is the Holy Spirit-inspired Word from God, pointing us to new life through Jesus. And this Word has power! Hebrews 4:12 reminds us, “...the word of God is alive and active…” 

When we read or hear the Bible, we encounter the same powerful Word God spoke to bring the universe into being. And this same Word, when we stand under its authority, brings us new life.

Jesus next tells the disciples, “In a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me.” (John 16:16) 

This incites a confused and almost comical conversation among the disciples that might best be summarized as, “Wait. What?” 

They don’t understand what Jesus is telling them. At that moment, they really can’t. 

We’ve all been there, haven’t we? We lose someone we love or a way of life we’ve valued and we wonder how we can go on. 

Jesus tells the disciples that soon they won’t see Him anymore. They’re confused. Then Jesus adds to their fog by telling them, that “after a little while,” they’re going to see Him again. 

When the pain of death comes to us, it’s as hard imagine being able to once again see our dead loved ones as it must have been for my mom to believe that anything good was going to result from thirty-six hours of labor only to give birth to a scrawny blue breech baby who had to be put in an incubator and couldn’t hold up his head for months after his birth. New life out of pain is often beyond our imagining.

It’s because of our failure to imagine that God can bring new life out of pain that Jesus says what He does next in our gospel lesson. “A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world.” (John 16:21) Jesus isn’t saying that moms develop amnesia about their labor pains. He is saying that that their suffering seems worth it for the joy of the new life they now hold in their arms.

As Jesus speaks here, He Himself is about about to deliver a new creation. He will labor on the cross so that when He rises, new resurrected life will come to Him. 

And like a mother delivering a child, Jesus doesn’t labor on the cross for Himself. Since Jesus was sinless and eternal, He didn’t need to endure the pain of death and birth to have life. He already had life to the full, perfect, sinless, eternal life.

Jesus labored for us. “For the joy set before him [Jesus] endured the cross, scorning its shame...” (Hebrews 12:2) 

And what was the joy set before Jesus? 

Jesus’ joy, the thing that made Him willing to suffer pain, cross and death, was you! 

The reward He sought was you, with Him, eternally safe and secure from the sin and death and separation from God into which we are born in this life. 

Jesus’ joy is to give new birth to you, beyond the pain of this fallen world. 

Jesus says that “no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again” (John 3:3). Jesus, in the words of the Christmas hymn, was “born to give us second birth.” He died for that end as well. That’s how important you are to Jesus. He simply refuses to imagine spending eternity without you!

The new birth that Jesus brings is a free gift. We can’t earn, acquire, or steal it for ourselves. 

But to take hold of it will cost us our lives. The new life that Jesus secures for us can’t be ours if we insist on holding onto our pretenses of being in control in this life. We must let go of the myths of our self-sufficiency, goodness, or power. That’s painful; but it’s the way of following Jesus. “Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy,” Jesus tells us in John 16:22.

So, how does Jesus’ life, death, and resurrected life become embodied in us so that we are part of His new creation? 

Not by anything we do! Jesus says in John 3:5: “...no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.” 

Our new life begins when God acts to save us in Holy Baptism. 

In Baptism, He drowns our old selves and the Holy Spirit infuses us with the resurrection life that Jesus, like a mother who endures labor, has suffered to give to us. 

The apostle Peter says that the water of the flood in which God saved Noah and his family “symbolizes baptism that now saves you also..It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ…” (1 Peter 3:21) Baptism is how God brings us into His new creation.

“Wait. What?” you might be saying right now. “Isn’t there something we need to do do? Don’t we at least have to believe?” 

Yes and no. We do have to believe. Jesus says, “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.” (Mark 16:16) And, “whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16) Yes, we must believe. We must have faith.

But faith isn’t something we do. Faith is something we don’t do. Faith is something God, acting through Jesus Christ, does to us. 

I’m not saying that we won’t do things because we have faith. But we mustn’t confuse faith, childlike trust in God, with what we do because we already have received the gift of faith. 

We can’t manufacture faith in Jesus. 

Faith isn’t “positive thinking.” 

It’s not trying to psych ourselves into buying something as true, repeating in the style of the cowardly lion in The Wizard of Oz, “I do believe in Jesus. I do believe in Jesus.”

Faith is the creation of the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit Who comes to us in our baptisms. 

The same Spirit Jesus promises will help us to remember the promise of new life amid the pains of this life. 

Faith happens when the Word of God--preached, taught, and embodied in Holy Baptism and Holy Communion--demolishes our desire to be gods unto ourselves and opens us to trust in Christ alone for life, when we can say of ourselves and Jesus what John the Baptist said, “He must increase, but I must increase.” (John 3:30) 

Faith is foreign to our inborn sinful natures. That's why the Bible tells us, “No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.” (1 Corinthians 12:3) Faith is God's work in us!

Only faith created in us by God the Holy Spirit comprehends that Jesus bore the pain of death and agony to win new life for us. 

When we live in Spirit-powered faith in Jesus, we endure the pain of being separated from all our favorite sins--from gossip to covetousness, from adultery to worshiping ourselves and other false gods, from materialism to prejudice. 

But, born anew in Christ’s new kingdom, the Holy Spirit works to make us over in Jesus’ image, setting us free to live in the freedom of being God’s emancipated children, not yet all God that is going to make of us, but no longer slaves to sin, death, and fear, disciples of Christ with nothing to prove, everything to celebrate, and a Lord we want to spend today and all eternity glorifying! Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

A Place of Refuge

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

Luke 13:31-35
At the end of last Sunday’s gospel lesson, which recounted Jesus being tempted by the devil in the wilderness, we were told, “When the devil had finished all this tempting, he left him until an opportune time (Luke 4:13).” 

Today’s gospel lesson, Luke 13:31-35, tells about one of the times the devil deemed “opportune” for tempting Jesus away from His mission of saving us. Here, the devil uses at least one human being, a corrupt and murderous king focused on neither God or faith in God, focused instead on fear and evil, to tempt Jesus.

Jesus has been teaching, casting out demons, and healing the sick in Galilee, when Luke tells us, “At that time some Pharisees came to Jesus and said to him, ‘Leave this place and go somewhere else. Herod wants to kill you.’” (Luke 13:31)

Students of the New Testament aren’t sure about the motives of this particular group of Pharisees. The Pharisees, as you know, were a sect of Judaism, who believed in a more literal interpretation of the Old Testament, a strict adherence to Old Testament law, and the resurrection of the dead. Although Jesus had run-ins with many of the Pharisees, their views were closer to those Jesus taught than were those of the Sadducees. The Pharisees weren't altogether bad, as they're sometimes stereotyped to be. The apostle Paul, for example, described himself as a Pharisee all his life, though he followed Christ and offended many Pharisees by insisting that human beings cannot make themselves acceptable to God by fulfilling God’s law, but only by entrusting our lives by faith in Jesus (Acts 23:6; Romans 3:21-26). The Pharisees here then, could have wanted to frighten Jesus, maybe even have been working with Herod. Or they may have had genuine concern for Jesus. We don’t know.

But we do know what they tell Jesus: “Herod wants to kill you.” 

Now, this is not the same Herod who was king when Jesus was born. That Herod, Herod the Great, was a thug put on the throne by the Romans who already had conquered the Jews and found it convenient to have local puppets, with some power, to make their rule a bit more acceptable to the conquered people. When Herod the Great died, his “kingdom” was split into smaller areas overseen by Herod’s sons, who were also thugs. (It was a family thing. Can you imagine what Thanksgivings were like with that brood?) 

The Herod in our gospel lesson today ruled over Galilee, the region in which Jesus grew up. Herod kept a palace in Jerusalem, where one of this brothers was the local puppet king, presumably so that he could suck up to the Roman governor, at this time Pilate, and make sure his brothers didn’t get an advantage over him. This is the Herod who beheaded John the Baptist. 

Although he expressed an interest in watching Jesus perform a miracle, he also wouldn’t have hesitated to have Jesus killed if he thought Jesus posed a threat to him. 

The Herods were all murderous goons like Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, Bashar al-Assad, and Mohammed bin Salman today.

What would we do if we lived in Russia, North Korea, Syria, or Saudi Arabia and learned that the thugs ruling those countries wanted to kill us? Speaking for myself, I would be tempted to save my life by running the other way. 

But, Jesus didn’t come into this world to save Himself; He came into this world to save you and me from sin, death, darkness, and futility by dying on the cross at a day and time of God’s choosing. The preacher in Hebrews says of Jesus, “For the joy set before him [that is, the joy of having us live in God’s eternal kingdom] he endured the cross, scorning its shame...” (Hebrews 12:2) 

The devil was using the Pharisees to tempt Jesus from going to the cross for you and me. “Stay away from Jerusalem,” the devil was telling Jesus through the Pharisees. “Don’t make waves and you won’t get hurt.” But Jesus came to “seek and save” those lost in sin and death (Luke 19:10) and was resolutely headed for Jerusalem and death on a cross for us (Luke 9:51), whether the devil, the Pharisees, or anyone else wanted it to happen or not! Jesus would not be deterred from giving His fulfilling His for you and me! We must not be deterred from following Him!

And so we’re told in verses 32 and 33: “He [Jesus] replied, ‘Go tell that fox, “I will keep on driving out demons and healing people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal. In any case, I must press on today and tomorrow and the next day—for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem!”’”

God’s book, the Bible, of course, teaches that God is the one who establishes governments and that Christians are to be respectful of governments and prayerful for leaders. God instituted government because most people will not voluntarily accede to Christ's Lordship over their lives. Without governments, Martin Luther said, Christians would live in this world as lambs among ravenous wolves. 

But the Bible also teaches that we are to stand against anyone, including leaders, when they try to thwart the will of God. 

• The Hebrew midwives refused to obey the Egyptian Pharaoh’s orders that they kill the Hebrew baby boys the moment they were born By refusing to do so, Moses was allowed to be born and God would later use Moses to lead His people to the promised land. (Exodus 1:15-19)
• Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refused to obey the Persian king’s orders that they worship idols and worshiped God alone (Daniel 6:10-28; Daniel 3). 

If governments or leaders ask us to be part of something we know is against God’s will, it’s our obligation as disciples of Jesus to follow Christ and not the government. 

Paul writes in Romans, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” (Romans 12:2)

Jesus refers to Herod as “that fox.” In Jesus’ time, foxes were seen as dangerous and evil, but not very bright. This is how Jesus sees Herod. 

“You tell that fox that I will keep doing my mission no matter if He thinks He can kill me off,” Jesus is saying. 

The phrase “today and tomorrow and on a third day” which Jesus uses here was a common Aramaic expression. It meant that Jesus was going to do what He came to the world to accomplish. But it’s also not hard to see in the words “the third day,” Jesus’ promise that when He was raised from the dead on Easter Sunday, it would be confirmation of the victory for us that He won on Good Friday!

Now, Jesus shifts gears. He thinks of Jerusalem. Verse 34: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.”

Jesus’ repetition of, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem” was a common way to express sorrow. 

When my great-grandmother lay dying, she looked above her and called the name of a then-deceased brother who had loved Jesus. She then turned her head downward and said the name of a relative who had refused to follow Jesus. “John, John,” she said with sorrow in her voice as she shook her head. 

In our lesson, Jesus is lamenting the fact that because of Jerusalem’s hardness of heart, it had repeatedly refused the protection of God from sin, death, and the devil. Jesus would have gladly protected Jerusalem from the foxes--the devil and his earthly co-conspirators, the Herods--and acted as a mother hen protecting her brood. But Jerusalem and God's people generally, had repeatedly chosen to go their own way (Isaiah 53:6; Acts 1:25).

Listen: Jesus wants to shelter you, your family, our congregation, our nation, and our world from the evil one.

I am convinced that if more Christians would run to take shelter in Jesus, if we would intentionally pray that our families, churches, and nations would come under Jesus’ lordship, and if we were bold and unapologetic in our witness for Christ, we would experience what the Bible calls “the peace of God, which transcends all understandings…” (Philippians 4:7).

That doesn’t mean that all our troubles will disappear. That will have to wait until we, like our Savior Jesus, have been raised from death to live in eternity with Him. But, in the power of Jesus, we can handle all that this world, its Herods, and the devil himself might throw at us. Under Jesus’ protective wings, we are “more than conquerors” and we belong to Him now and forever!

Verse 35: “[Jesus says] ‘Look, your house is left to you desolate. I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’” 

Here Jesus looks ahead to future events which, as God in the flesh, He sees with clarity. 

• First, He points to 70 AD, some four decades later, when His people will be decisively put down, the Temple destroyed, many people massacred. This would happen because Jesus’ fellow Jews refused to take shelter under His arms and instead took hope in armed rebellion against the Romans, in their own thinking. When we put our hope in anyone or anything other than the God revealed in Jesus Christ, we sow our own eternal destruction. 
• Second, Jesus points to Palm Sunday when He will be welcomed into Jerusalem with the words of Psalm 118:26. Jesus is telling the Pharisees that, unless they want to hang out with Him, He’s going to keep at His mission on earth and they won’t see Him until Palm Sunday when He comes to complete it.

For those of us who are baptized and who confess Jesus as God and Savior, it can be tempting to cave into the temptations to go along and get along: 

• to not speak the name of Jesus to others who don’t know Him and need Him as much as we do, 
• to not give of ourselves without thought of reward or recognition, 
• to not love God to love neighbor as we love ourselves, 
• to not love fellow believers sacrificially, 
• to give into the fear incited in us by the devil and this world’s foxes. 

But we follow a risen Savior Who has conquered everything that causes us fear. 

He was not bowed by Herod or the devil or death. 

And He’s still in business, still alive, still loving us. 

So, we need not fear:

• to speak His name to those who need Him
• to give of ourselves without thought of reward
• to love God and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves
• to love fellow believers sacrificially
• to take courage in Christ's name by the power of the Holy Spirit in all circumstances.

“As for God,” Psalm 18:30 tells us, “his way is perfect: The LORD's word is flawless; he shields all who take refuge in him.” 

You can trust in that!

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]