Seeing the One We Need

Below you'll find online worship from Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, for this past Sunday, April 26. We hope that it will help you grow strong in faith in Jesus, whether you already know Him or not. Below that then is the written text of the message included in the worship. God bless you with a safe and healthy week.



Luke 24:13-35

Today, I want to focus on two verses from our gospel lesson: “When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him…” (Luke 24:30-31) 

Here is the moment when, on the first Easter Sunday, two of Jesus’ disciples, after walking on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus with a mysterious stranger, realize that this stranger, Whose unfolding of God’s Word had made their hearts burn while they walked together, was Jesus: crucified, dead, buried, now risen from the dead. 

They’d been blind. 

But now they could see.

During His ministry, Jesus had spoken about what He intended to accomplish in Jerusalem. 

“The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.” (Luke 9:22) 

“For the Son of Man in his day,” Jesus says in Luke 17:24-25, “will be like the lightning, which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other. But first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation.”

To eyes blinded by sin though, a gracious God going to the lengths that God goes to in Jesus in order to seek and save those lost in sin, death, and darkness, is beyond imagining. 

The blindness of the human race goes back to Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. After they rebelled against God and ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, “...the eyes of both of them were opened” (Genesis 3:7). 

Before, they had seen only God and what was good. 

Now they saw evil. 

From that point forward, whenever the human race gave God a thought, it imagined that God was as lacking in grace and charity they themselves. 

They saw God as a Being to be placated by religious acts, a Deity who demands perfection. 

Or, they were, like me at one time in my life: fools, of whom God’s Word observes, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’...” (Psalm 14:1)

In the risen Jesus, our eyes are opened to Who God really is. 

We see that He is the God Who, out of His grace and love, called ancient Israel to be His own people who would carry the light of His love to all the nations, despite the smallness of Israel’s numbers and power, despite its sin, idolatry, and lies. 

In Jesus too, we see the God Who sent His Son “to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10). 

This is the God Who, desperate to restore us to the life only He can give, is indifferent to the humiliation others might see in His becoming... 

• like a widow scouring her home for a single lost coin (Luke 15:8-10, or 
• like a shepherd who has 99 sheep securely penned for the night, but still seeks the one that’s lost (Luke 15:3-7), or 
• like a father who doesn’t care what the neighbors say because, though his son has squandered everything he gave him--every blessing--and shown him complete disrespect, will still anxiously look down the road hoping for his return and throw a party when that lost child returns. (Luke 15:11-32)

For three years, disciples like Cleopas and the other disciple who walked to Emmaus on that first Easter had followed Jesus. They hadn’t understood it when Jesus foretold His death and resurrection. 

In Jesus, they had heard the voice of God and had seen, in Martin Luther’s wonderful phrase, “God’s loving face.” 

But they were blind to all of Jesus’ promises, assuming that as Messiah, Jesus would go to Jerusalem and claim His kingdom.

They were right, except that the kingdom of the Messiah, the Christ, could not be claimed before Jesus dealt with our blindness. Until it was overcome forever. 

All who follow Jesus must learn to see the world aright. 

First, we have to see that we are sinners. Jesus didn’t just die for all those “other people” over whom we tsk and shake our heads. We too are sinners whose blindness causes us to brag, tear others down, to be unkind, to hoard paper towels, toilet paper, and disinfectant, to think we’re always right and the other guy is always wrong, to covet, steal, take God’s name in vain, gossip, and lie. The cross should open our eyes to our sin. The condition of sin into which each of us is born and which we blindly indulge, is so bad that it required the sinless God of all creation to take on human flesh, becoming the only human being who could offer a pure sacrifice acceptable to God to overcome the power of our sin. 

And it’s for blind people like us, prone to look no further than our own interests, desires, and preferences, that Jesus came to die...and rise.

Which brings us back to the road to Emmaus. 

Two disciples walk on that road, so blinded by sin and habitual ways of thinking and religion, that they can’t accept the report of the women who had returned from the tomb with news that Jesus was raised from the dead. “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken!” Jesus tells them while they still don’t recognize Him. (Luke 24:25) 

It’s at this point that Jesus begins to open their eyes, showing them God’s Law is not meant to be the last word over their lives or their eternities. He shows them from Moses and the Prophets that the Messiah was always meant to do what Jesus did...to die and then to rise. 

Jesus points them to the gospel, the good news: God has conquered our sin and our death by dying and rising and all whose eyes are opened to their need of what Jesus accomplished in His death and resurrection and trust in Jesus are no longer lost. God finds us and saves us by His grace in Jesus!

The night is closing in when Jesus and the two disciples come to Emmaus. It will soon be too dark to see and therefore, to travel. They beg Jesus to stay with them. 

It’s at a table in Emmaus that it happens. 

Jesus breaks the bread and blesses it and starts to give it to them, as He has so many times before, and THEY SEE. 

After Jesus reveals Himself to them, their eyes are opened to what Jesus had done--died for the sin of all people and risen so that all who trust in Him can live with God now and always, the darkness outside doesn’t matter to the disciples. Despite the dangers posed by wild animals and highway bandits, they race back to Jerusalem to tell the other disciples that they have seen Jesus, risen. Their eyes are open. 

They can testify in the words of John Newton’s hymn, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see.”

The same is true for you and me. When God’s Law shows us our need of a Savior and His Gospel presents Jesus as that Savior Who saves us by God’s charity--His grace--through faith in Jesus; whenever His Word causes our hearts to burn within us; when we are claimed by God--Father, Son, and Holy Spirit--in the waters of Holy Baptism; and when we see Him again (and we will see Him again!) in the breaking of the bread at Holy Communion, our blindness gives way to seeing God in all His glory, grace, and love. 

We move out of the darkness of our cramped, self-serving lives into the bright spaciousness of His kingdom. 

We can marvel, revel, and celebrate the reality that the apostle Peter says belongs to all believers in Jesus: “...you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” (1 Peter 2:9) 

This week, listen to Jesus’ Word, heed His call to repentance and renewal. He will come to You not only as God the Son Who died for Your sins but also as God the Son Who rose to open Your eyes to see how much He loves you and the new life He gives to you. 

Look to Jesus and you will see. And you will believe. 

Amen

Repentance (Part 11, The Augsburg Confession)

John 12:1-8

This morning, as we continue to consider what it means to be a Lutheran Christian, I want to talk with you about a teaching of the Bible which, in these days, is either hated or ignored. It’s the teaching about repentance.

We’re closing in on Holy Week. As we do, it’s a good time to introduce two men as “case studies” who had important roles in the events leading up to Jesus’ death and resurrection.

One teaches us what repentance isn’t.

The other shows us what repentance is.

Our first study is of Judas Iscariot. Judas, of course, was one of the twelve apostles, that group among Jesus’ disciples whose job it was to be His “sent ones,” those who would carry the good news of new and everlasting life for all who repent and believe in the crucified and risen Jesus as God and Lord into the world.

Beyond that, Judas is an enigma. Even the meaning of the second name by which he’s usually designated, Iscariot, is a mystery. One theory is that “Iscariot” was derived from scortea, leather bag, making Judas, “the man with the leather bag.”

That designation would, in fact, underscore one of the few things we do know about Judas. Turn to John 12:6, please.

You know this incident well. In Bethany, Jesus is at the home of the sisters Mary and Martha and their brother, Lazarus, after Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead. Martha, as always, is busily serving the meal--old habits die hard, you know--when Mary comes into the room and takes a pound of costly ointment and uses her hair to soothe the ointment into Jesus’ feet.

Today, we can’t imagine how socially inappropriate this action would have seemed. Men and women weren’t to touch one another unless they were husband and wife, mother and child. Only servants were to touch the feet of guests; for a woman to touch a man’s feet was considered, at the least, sexually suggestive. And a woman’s hair was considered sacrosanct.

Probably all of the disciples were taken aback by Mary’s gesture of gratitude and reverence for Jesus. (And Mary's reverence was understandable! Jesus had make clear that He was the resurrection and the life and that all who believe in Him will have life with God forever, then proved His deity and His power over death and life by raising her brother from death.) But John makes clear that Judas’ response was less about religious or social scruples than it was about what was important to him.

Judas asks indignantly why, instead of this wastefulness, the ointment hadn’t been sold, the proceeds used to care for the poor? Then we’re told: “This he said, not that he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief, and had the money box; and he used to take what was put into it.”

Historians and scholars have often speculated as to why Judas later betrayed Jesus for a measly thirty pieces of silver. Was he politically motivated? Was he a zealot who thought that he could spur Jesus into leading a revolution if the Romans tried to arrest him? John seems to say Judas betrayed Jesus for the cash.

You know what happened. In the hours after Jesus instituted Holy Communion, He went to the garden of Gethsemane to pray. That was a spot to which Jesus and the disciples apparently went often and that’s where Judas knew he could lead the temple police to arrest Jesus, under cover of darkness, far from the crowds who, just the Sunday before, had hailed Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ, God’s Anointed One.

And what happened to Judas after Jesus' arrest? Turn please, to Matthew 27:3. This comes after the Jewish temple leaders took Jesus to the Roman governor Pilate. It says: “Then Judas, [Jesus’] betrayer, seeing that [Jesus] had been condemned, was remorseful and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, ‘I have betrayed innocent blood.’...[verse 5] Then he threw down the pieces of silver in the temple and departed, and went and hanged himself.”

What accounts for Judas’ tragic end?

Doesn’t Matthew tell us that Judas was remorseful?

Doesn’t that mean that Judas was repentant?

Shouldn’t that have cleaned his slate with God and given Judas a clear conscience?

Why, even after he had given back the money he had taken to betray Jesus, did Judas take his own life?

The key to answering those questions is in the word remorseful.

You see, to be repentant for a sin, a wrong we have perpetrated against God or others, doesn’t just mean to be remorseful.

Judas realized that what he did was wrong. “I have betrayed innocent blood,” he said. So, he felt bitter regret. He understood that by his action, he was bringing about the death of an innocent person. He understood that his betrayal of Jesus was an offense against God.

And he no doubt was afraid of what God would do to him. But as the Bible points out repeatedly, “the fear of the Lord is” only “the beginning of” wisdom or knowledge. (See here.) When we are sorry for our sins, that's just the beginning of repentance. There are no good works we must perform. No acts of penance are required. But sorrow for sin is not all there is to repentance.

We see that in our second case study, the one that shows us what repentance is.

Our subject is Peter. Peter, of course, was another one of the apostles. We know a lot more about Peter than we do about Judas.

But when you think about it, Peter was as guilty of betraying Jesus on the night of Jesus‘ arrest as Judas had been.

You remember what happened. During the last supper, Peter proclaimed his undying loyalty to Jesus. Then Jesus told Peter that on that very night, Peter would deny even knowing Jesus three times before the rooster crowed in the wee hours. Peter didn’t believe it. But of course, everything happened just as Jesus had foretold. Matthew 26:75 tells us what happened after Peter had denied Jesus a third time and heard the rooster crow. “And Peter remembered the words of Jesus Who had said, ‘Before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times.‘ So he went out and wept bitterly.”

In the Greek language in which Matthew and all the New Testament writers originally wrote, the adverb translated as bitterly, carries the meaning of an emotion that is harsh, painful. It’s used by one ancient writer to describe the oppressive rule of a dictatorial leader.

If you have ever sobbed with regret over some wrong you realize that you have done (I have), then you have some feeling for what Peter felt at that moment. He bitterly regretted what he had done. He felt remorse that he had let Jesus down.

But, unlike Judas, Peter lived and went on to become a leader of Christ’s Church, the one chosen by Christ and the Holy Spirit in the first Christian Pentecost, to deliver the good news that all who repent and believe in Jesus have God in their lives now and in eternity.

Both Judas and Peter were sinners. Both had betrayed their Lord. So, what was different about them to account for the very different ways in which their lives played out after the night of Jesus' arrest?

Here’s the difference: Peter had faith in the God he knew in Jesus Christ.

Peter understood that Jesus Christ was more than a nice man or a good teacher or a rousing leader of the masses and more than an itinerant advocate for justice or a miracle worker, who got killed on a cross.

Peter understood that Jesus was the Lord of all creation, the conqueror of sin and death, Who had always shown forgiveness to sinners who turned from sin and trusted in Him.

Peter remembered that Jesus had told stories (parables) to demonstrate how God responds to repentant sinners who trust in Him, stories like the ones Jesus told about:

• a shepherd who searched for his lost sheep, 
• a widow who scoured her home for a lost coin, and 
• a loving father who welcomed an impudent son who had scorned his love with a bear hug of love.

Each of the primary actors in those stories--the shepherd, the widow, the father, were fictional stand-ins for the very real God of the world Peter had come to know in Jesus. And each of them threw parties when the lost--the lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost son--was found.

Peter had heard Jesus say that heaven throws a party every time a sinner turns from sin and trusts in the grace of God that Christ came to give.

Sinners who are sorry for their sin and trust in Christ as their God, Savior, and King, are forgiven. No ifs, ands, or buts!

Peter trusted that the God he had seen and known in Jesus would meet his remorse for his sin with a forgiveness he did not deserve. That God made known only in Jesus Christ is willing to meet our remorse for sin with a forgiveness none of us deserves!

This is a Biblical truth underscored in Article 12 of The Augsburg Confession, which appears on pages 14-15 of the buff and brown edition in the pew racks. Please pull one out and look at it. It says:

 “Our churches teach that there is forgiveness of sins for those who have fallen after [their] Baptism whenever they are converted. [That is, whenever, their minds are changed and they see the wrong in their sin.] The Church ought to impart Absolution [the assurance of forgiveness from God] to those who return in repentance...Now, strictly speaking, repentance consists of two parts. One part is contrition...terrors striking the conscience through the knowledge of sin. The other part is faith, which is born of the Gospel [the Good News about Jesus] or the Absolution and believes that for Christ’s sake, sins are forgiven. [Repentance] comforts the conscience and delivers it from terror. Then, good works are bound to follow, which are the fruits of repentance...” 

Peter’s faith in Christ was warranted. He received confirmation of God's forgiveness in one of the moving scenes in all of Scripture.

After Jesus rose from the dead, you’ll remember, Jesus asked Peter three times if he believed in Jesus, had faith in Jesus. Each time, Peter said yes. In this interview, Jesus reversed the three denials Peter made on the night of His arrest and assured Peter not only that he was forgiven, but that Jesus also had plans for him. "Feed my lambs" Jesus told Peter. "Tend my sheep."

Peter had acknowledged his sin to God and he had trusted that the crucified and risen Christ is big enough, gracious enough, powerful enough, loving enough to forgive the repentant.

When you and I repent for our sin, we too can be absolutely certain that, as was true for Peter, God forgives us and has plans for us, eternal plans!

They’re plans that begin to unfold here in this world, as we follow the Lord Who promises to be with us always.

And they’re plans that will come to the final, full flower when, in eternity, all our sins, suffering, and dying will be in the past and we will walk with God and all the saints who have trusted in Christ forever. Amen

[This was shared during both worship services with the people and guests of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio.]