Who is Your King?

[Below you'll find video of today's worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, as well as the text of the message shared. Happy new year!]

Matthew 2:13-23

The moral law of God is, you know, summarized in the Ten Commandments. In the first commandment, God tells us, “You shall have no other gods before Me.” The Small Catechism’s explanation of the commandment tells us, “We should fear, love, and trust in God above all things.” Clarifying things more, The Large Catechism says, “…to have a god is nothing other than trusting and believing Him with the heart…whatever you set your heart on and put your trust in is truly your god.” 

We have a lot of gods in our world, don't we? That's because we tend to set our hearts on things other than God.

As we begin a new year, we need to ask ourselves: Who is our God? Or, who is our King? This is important because the thing we want most in life is to be our own gods.

I bring all of this up for two reasons. First, because whenever we violate any of God’s commandments–and we inevitably do violate His commandments, whether by thought, word, or deed all the time, we also violate the first commandment. When we lie or steal, covet, murder, gossip, take God’s name in vain, or dishonor our parents, we violate the first commandment. That’s true because with every sin, we either worship the sin itself, or worship ourselves by holding our judgments about right and wrong to be superior to God’s judgments, or we do both.

The second reason I bring it up is that the question of who your god is, who is the ultimate authority over your life, is the central question of today’s gospel lesson.

You know the story well. About two years after Jesus’ birth, Magi from the East visit Him. After they leave the house where the infant Jesus is living with Joseph and Mary, Joseph is warned in a dream to take Jesus to Egypt until God says otherwise. King Herod wants to kill Jesus. Herod is so intent on being god and king of Judea--being the boss of everyone--that, unlike the Magi, he not only refuses to worship the newborn King, he wants Him dead.

Herod deserves to be compared to other murderous despots in history, like Adolf Hitler or Vladimir Putin. But let’s not sidestep the truth. We’re in no more of a hurry to worship God than Herod was. We are sinners and we would prefer to reign over our own lives or give our worship to the gifts of God–things like health, wealth, authority, sex, luxury–rather than worshiping God. We are born that way. But being born with an orientation to sin doesn’t make our sinning right. As Paul says in Romans, the human race falls prey to worshiping the creatures rather than the Creator.

We had a video call the other night with our son and our nearly two-year-old granddaughter. She is, in my unbiased view, completely sweet and adorable. But our son tells us that she has a new favorite word: No. We all want to be our own bosses, our own ultimate authorities. So, one thing we all have in common with Herod is that we are sinners bent on self-worship.

Because Herod has learned of the location where prophecy said the Messiah was to be born but didn’t know the child’s identity, he orders that every male child under the age of two be murdered. This is a disturbing tale. Years ago, after reading a sermon I had preached on these verses from Matthew and posted on my blog, a man in Northumberland in England wrote to me angrily, “The Christmas story tells us that if your son is threatened, then you save him and let the others take their chances.”

The man’s anger was maybe understandable but, I think, misdirected for two reasons. First, He seemed to think that God had willed the deaths of these babies. If there’s anything I’m sure of about our God, it’s that He Who formed us and loves us, never would will the murder of any other parents’ children. This is the God Who told Isaac and the people of Israel not to sacrifice their children. 

Even our lesson for today shows that God didn't will the murder of the innocents. There are three places in the lesson that note the fulfillment of prophecy. Two of them indicated by the prepositions used in the original Greek that the fulfillment of prophecies cited was what God desired. But in verse 17, where we're told of Herod's murderous act, the citation says that the weeping of Rachel for her children would happen because of the sinfulness of human beings, not because God desires it to happen.

But second and more importantly, that angry man forgot that God used Joseph to save Jesus from Herod’s armed troops so that Jesus, God the Son, could later go to the cross. There, Jesus bore the sins of us all, setting us free from the damnation and eternal separation from God we all deserve. Jesus wasn’t spared execution when Joseph whisked Him off to Egypt, any more than you and I are spared the horrors of a universe drowning in sin and death. Instead, Jesus was the last of the Bethlehem innocents to die.

Jesus would also be executed by a human race, Jew and Gentile, bent on having and being its own gods and kings. The difference between His death and the deaths of the other babies in Bethlehem and the deaths of us all is that His life and His life alone offered on a cross paid the eternal debt we all owe God for our sin. 

Jesus fulfilled the prophecy given to Isaiah: “...he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:5) 

Despite what my angry commentator said, God didn’t spare Jesus on that horrible day in Bethlehem and let everyone else “take their chances.” Jesus was born so that He could die for us. Jesus knew this. Referring to His death on the cross as His baptism, Jesus once said: “I have a baptism to undergo, and what constraint I am under until it is completed!” (Luke 12:50)

The death of the sinless Christmas Child on the cross at Calvary was the perfect act of obedience to God that you nor I neither desire nor are able to perform. It was for His submission to death on the cross that, “God [the Father] exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name…” (Philippians 2:9)

Jesus was sent to Egypt not to be spared the hardships, adversities, and death of this world, but so He enter into those hardships, adversities, and death and redeem them by winning an eternity of peace, rest, and salvation for all who believe in Him. 

Herod was a king who wanted power for himself. Jesus is the King Who surrendered the advantages of His deity in order to make it possible for each of us to be justified by God’s grace through faith in Him alone. 

Jesus freely gives blessings none of us deserve: forgiveness, God’s presence with us through the joys and sorrows of this life, and life with God that never ends. 

Because Jesus went to the cross, we can say with the apostle Paul: “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32)  

Jesus is no haughty, distant despot. Although our sin put Him on His cross, He makes us His friends. 

Paul also writes elsewhere in the Bible: “For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!” (Romans 5:10) 

This King wants to give us everlasting life with God, a life that begins now as, by the power of His Word and the Sacraments, we can say, “Jesus is my God and my King!”

Friends, Jesus is our only hope and sure foundation today, in this new year, and always. He’s now accomplished all that He came to do for us, which is why the last of the Bethlehem innocents would declare with His dying breath on the cross, “It is finished!” This year, you can trust in Jesus and what He has done for you. You can claim Him as your gracious, loving King! Amen

Tonight's Weeknight Study of Romans, Chapter 6

It's Gut-Check Time for American Christians

Small groups of protesters, representing, at most, about 30% of the American people, have been protesting social distancing and sheltering-in-place orders lately, claiming them to be infringements on their personal freedom.

But here's what I think, folks, from my perspective as a Christian and a student of American history.

My freedom ends when it infringes on your freedom.

The Constitution's Framers never believed in unbridled rights or allowing freedom to become license.

Babies and adolescents believe that freedom is being able to do whatever you want to do.

But when you grow up, you understand that, in Justice Holmes' famous example, freedom of speech does not allow you to yell, "Fire!" in a crowded theater.

The vast majority of Americans want a slow, controlled, and, when needed, easily-reversed, return to more normal social distancing. They want government to fulfill its function as pronounced in the Preamble of the Constitution, to form "a more perfect union" by striving to "establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity..."

Freedom does not, whether from a Christian or a constitutional perspective, give anyone the right to willfully endanger others. The apostle Peter writes in Scripture to Christians, "Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as God's slaves." (1 Peter 2:16) To be a slave of the God we know in Jesus Christ means to be set free to live lives of love for God and love for neighbor.

Yes, there are economic implications to continued sheltering-in-place. Our unemployment systems, operating on antiquated software, need to be updated. Government and all of us will probably have to do much more over the next year-and-a-half to help each other through this unprecedented crisis.

But on our currency, we Americans claim as our motto, "In God we trust," not "In money we trust." If we can take sensible, if sometimes unpleasant, actions to get through this crisis together, we will emerge stronger for it. We will preserve the most precious economic assets we have: healthy, living human beings.

It's gut-check time for Christians in America. Will we be full-tilt pro-life? Or will we join the pro-death advocates who say that having a few more bucks in their pockets is more important than the lives of their neighbors?

The answer should be clear. And most people know that.

[Armed protesters in the gallery of the Michigan State Senate chamber in Lansing four days ago.]

Confident and Free

"But you belong to God, my children, and have defeated the false prophets, because the Spirit who is in you is more powerful than the spirit in those who belong to the world." (1 John 4:4, Good News Translation)

When, by the power of the Holy Spirit, I'm able to confess that Jesus is Lord, it proves that I belong to the Lord, that the Lord has given me the gift of faith, and that I am in Him, part of His new creation. I needn't fear evil and I can live confidently in the freedom of God's grace.

Like Luther, I can tell Satan that yes, I am a sinner, but what of it? Jesus, my God and Savior, has overcome sin, death, and the devil. There is nothing that Satan or the world can do to me that won't result in my being with God in eternity forever.

Period!

Not Good Enough? So What?

A reminder that we are saved only by God's grace (charity) through faith in Jesus Christ.

So, no more worry over whether you're good enough.

You're not.

Neither am I.

But Jesus' sinless life voluntarily offered for sinners like us is more than good enough. Trust in Him and what He has already done for you, then get on with living your life free of self-absorbed speculations as to whether you're good enough.

All human hope boils down to three simple statements of truth:

Christ has died.

Christ has risen.

Christ will come again.

Christ then, has everything in hand. Trust in Him rather than your own "miserable works and doings" and He will set you free to be all that you could try to be through the works and doings. Christ will live in you and, like the sheep in Jesus' parable of the final judgment, when Jesus extols you for the good accomplished in your life of faith, you will wonder, "Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?" (Matthew 25:37-39)

Where the living Christ is received in faith, Christ saves. And Christ works in and through people who daily welcome Him.

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

My Only Brag

[These are reflections from my quiet time with God this morning. In quiet time, I stop to confess my sins in Jesus' name and to honor God; look at His Word, watching for anything in the Bible (reading it a chapter a day) that He seems to want me to consider; listen for the implications of the passage that has struck me; respond with how I pray this word from God will affect the way I live this day.]


Look: “...far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” (Galatians 6:14, NIV)

“As for me, however, I will boast only about the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ; for by means of his cross the world is dead to me, and I am dead to the world.” (Galatians 6:14, GNT)

Despite all his brilliance and dedication, Paul refuses to brag about anything but Jesus’ cross.

We brag about ourselves, our families, our achievements, our places of work, our connections, our churches, our political parties, and lots of other things and do so, in almost all cases, to elevate ourselves, to impress others, to get a piece of the world’s glory. (Even though the glory given by the world, along with its money, power, and conquests, mean nothing when we die.)

Paul is saying that on Jesus’ cross, his concern for the recognition of the world was also crucified. So was all the glory that the world has to offer. None of it has power over us any longer. None of it matters. By His cross, Jesus destroyed the power of the world--its estimation of us, its possessions, its affirmation (all on loan, at best)--over us. We are free to live in the gracious approval of God that belongs to all baptized believers in Jesus Christ.

Our only boast then is in the One Who, by His sacrificial death on the cross, sets us free, Jesus.

Listen: Jesus frees believers from the need to boast, brag, or burnish our reputations. I am a sinner saved by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ, alone. That’s my brag. That’s my glory.

Of course, the old Adam still lives in me. So, I am daily tempted, even within my own mind, to elevate myself, to shine my own apple. I do this even though I understand that whatever good I am or do comes from Christ and whatever bad I am or do comes from me. Daily, my call is to submit to the crucifixion of my old self so that, in submission to Christ, I can more fully share in the freedom from the dead ways of the world He earned for me on the cross.

In Christ, I am approved by God. I don’t need the approval of the world.

Respond: Today, Lord Jesus, crucify the world’s estimation of me as motivation for boasting. Whether the world thinks well or ill of me is irrelevant. Help me to only brag about You, Your grace, Your love, Your will, Your authority, Your power, Your death, Your resurrection, and the freedom You alone bring to those who submit to the crucifixion of the old self that allows the new self to daily rise in You.

Help me not to care about the estimation of me among the unwitting wolves in sheep’s clothing who lurk among Christians. They think that when they’re bragging about their own “holiness,” they’re doing Your will. They’re not. They are as much a part of the world which must be crucified to me as the most rabid secularists. Both are of the world, offering rewards and condemnations that will not survive Your return.

Help me to remember today that You alone set me free. Now and in eternity. You are my only brag. Amen

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

Free Delivery

[These are my journal reflections from spending time with God in His Word today.]

Look: “This is the same Moses they had rejected with the words, ‘Who made you ruler and judge?’ He was sent to be their ruler and deliverer by God himself, through the angel who appeared to him in the bush.” (Acts 7:35)

This is part of the speech of the first-century Christian Stephen, speaking to his fellow Jews, about to stone him to death for his faith in Jesus. The speech Stephen gives reviews central themes of Jewish history to show that Jesus fulfilled Old Testament prophecy for a Messiah and Prophet. Stephen also asserts that Jesus is “the Righteous One” come to earth, God Himself (Acts 7:52). Jesus, Stephen says, is no radical departure from the faith in God given witness in the Old Testament law and prophets, but its fulfillment.

In verse 35, Stephen is talking about the call of Moses by God to be the instrument by which God frees or delivers His people, Israel, enslaved in Egypt in Old Testament times.

Moses received this call from God in Midian, where he’d been living for forty years in exile. Moses had fled Egypt and gone to Midian shortly after he’d killed an Egyptian overlord who had been beating an Israelite (Hebrew) slave. He ran after another incident, when he tried to prevent two Hebrew slaves from fighting one another. Until that moment, Moses appears to have thought that his killing of the Egyptian soldier defending the Hebrew wasn’t witnessed. Instead, referring to the killing, one of the Hebrews asks him who he thinks he is, a ruler and judge of the Hebrews? Moses spent the next forty years as a fugitive.

It’s ironic (and typical of God), Stephen seems to say that Moses, who had been rejected by the Israelites as their leader was picked by God to be their leader.

Listen: But of interest to me is the competing set of designations for Moses in this verse.

Forty years earlier, Moses felt that the people of Israel had rejected him for seeking to be their “ruler and judge.”

Now, God sends him to the Israelites as their “ruler and deliverer.”

Both phrases see Moses as a leader for God’s people. But “judge” is how the enslaved Hebrews who rejected Moses had seen him. “Deliverer,” translating a Hebrew word that can also mean redeemer or liberator, is what God actually sent Moses to be.

It strikes me that often in life, we see people who want to deliver us as our judges. Of course, in order for us to accept the deliverance or freedom a person offers us we must accept the implicit judgment that there are things in my life that enslave me.

The enslaved Hebrews cried out about their horrible situation, their slavery which had now lasted over four-hundred years, but they didn’t want Moses reminding them of their need of deliverance. Who did he think he was?

When someone offers us freedom, our pride kicks in and we deny that we are enslaved in any way. “We don’t need anybody’s help,” we think.

The descendants of the ancient Hebrews, for example, when offered freedom from sin, death, and futility by Jesus, denied that their people had ever been slaves to anyone, even though they’d been enslaved through the centuries by Babylonians and Assyrians and, at the moment they denied it all, were under the thumbs of the Romans.

Their reaction is no different from the addict, whether their addiction is to work, money, alcohol, drugs, food, sex, whatever. All will, at least initially, deny their enslavement.

It’s this pride, this need to hold onto the lie of self-sufficiency, “having it together,” of being gods to ourselves, that prevents us from taking up the offers of others to help set us free.

That pride is why the Israelites saw Moses as their judge rather than their deliverer. It’s why the people who stoned Stephen to death heard the good news of Jesus he proclaimed not as liberation from sin, death, and futility, but as a judgment that they needed freedom from those things.

When God brings up my sin and mortality with me in His Word, He doesn’t do it to judge me. God doesn’t want His interchanges with me to end in terminal guilt or fear of living and dying.

God points my my sin and mortality so that I can see how far I am from being like God, how far I am from having it together, how helpless I am before the reality of my own sin and dying, and how hopeless my existence is without His deliverance. When I see these things, I know to return to Him. And because of Jesus, I know that I turn to a High Priest (Jesus Himself), “who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin” (Hebrews 4:15) and who has, through His death and resurrection killed the power of our sin and mortality over our lives forever.

Moses came to the people of Israel as an agent of God’s deliverance. God comes to me in Jesus Christ, reminding me of my slavery, so that He can be my deliverer. “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest,” Jesus says in Matthew 11:28. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” He says in Mark 1:15.  

According to Stephen, many of his fellow Jews, like many people in the world today, saw God, his Old Testament agent Moses, and Jesus, God enfleshed, as only judges.  They did so because they refused to turn to God and be set free by Him.

And freedom is what Jesus died on a cross and rose from the dead to give to us: Freedom from sin, death, and futility. And so, the apostle Paul wrote to first-century Gentile Christians who thought that salvation and new life as free gifts from God through faith in Jesus was just too good to be true: “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” (Galatians 5:1)

“Repent, then, and turn to God,” the apostle Peter told a crowd of his fellow Jews at the temple in Jerusalem shortly after the crucified and risen Jesus had ascended to heaven, “so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord…” (Acts 3:19)

Too often, Lord, I turn to myself rather than to You. In some way, I’m running from You as a judge when I do that. “It would be pathetic if I couldn’t handle this on my own,” I seem to think. “I should be able to get this done,” I think at other times without a thought of you. “I don’t regret doing that,” my attitude implicitly says about things I should regret.

But God, I’m grateful that Your Word leads me to repent--to change my mind, to turn from the direction in which I’ve been walking and turn back to You.

I’m grateful that Jesus died so that, despite my inclination for denying my sin, mortality, and need, You have come into the world, died, and rose to deliver me from myself. Thank You that Jesus came to be my Ruler and my Deliverer.

Response: Lord, help me today to live as a person set free from my enemies--sin, death, and darkness--and rest easy, not in the world or my achievements or anything but  in the grace of Jesus Christ, the One Who delivers me from all evil. In His name I pray. Amen

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

How Evil Happens, Why It Matters, and How Freedom Comes

[This was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, on Sunday, July 15.]

Mark 6:14-29

With its account of John the Baptist’s execution, our gospel lesson from Mark today is so laced with evil that it’s disturbing.

But when you think of it, what we see in today’s Gospel lesson is a lot like what we see in life on Monday through Saturday. These are the evils—like the inhumane things that human beings sometimes do to one another—which, when you learn of them, make you wonder, “How could this have happened? How can people be so cruel?”

And I’m not talking just about murders or holocausts. I’m thinking mostly of the everyday evils, the cutting, harsh ways in which we all can diverge from the clear will of God for us to love God and love neighbor.

We all are sinners, of course. That’s the burden Jesus came to share with us, the weight He took on His own shoulders on the cross so that all who turn from sin and trust in Him will have life with God forever, a free gift from the God Who loves us. 

As Christians, we’re called to do daily battle with our sin, through daily repentance and renewal. 

The failure to hear what God’s Word says about our sin, acts as a wall between God and us, between life and death. 

We’re called to keep grabbing the strong, outstretched hand of Jesus Christ so that the power of sin and death over our lives can be destroyed by God’s powerful grace and deathless love. That isn’t always as easy as it seems it should be.

Most of you have heard about the frog in the kettle so many times that you’re tired of it. But it gets told a lot because it packs a lot of truth. A frog haplessly plopped himself into a kettle full of water that sets on a stove top. Shortly after he got there, someone turned on the burner underneath the kettle. The frog, being a cold-blooded critter, adaptable to the world around him, didn’t realize he was being boiled to death. 

Only insane people set out to be evil. Yet, like the frog in the kettle, sometimes people who should know better, are capable of evil, of cruelty to others. We allow our kettles--our environments, the world and the people around us, as well as our inborn tendency to think of ourselves first--to dictate how we will act and react in everyday life.

Herod Antipas was a man who should have known better than to fall into evil. He had been schooled in God’s will through a knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures, what we know as the Old Testament. On top of that, Herod had good political reasons for avoiding evil: Though his family had no legitimate claim on the honor, they had for generations held themselves to be Israel’s royal family. It was so important to Herod Antipas to be seen as the “king of the Jews” that he had undertaken to build a new temple on Mount Zion, the same spot in Jerusalem where, a thousand years before, King Solomon had built the first temple. Both spiritual training and political common sense then should have kept Herod from evil.

But our Gospel lesson for today tells us that Herod perpetrated a horrible evil: Ordering the execution of John the Baptist, a man Herod knew to be innocent, whose only crime was speaking the Word of God. 

How that happened, a piece of history you know well, comprises most of the lesson. It comes in what the moviemakers would call a flashback. Herod gets reports about the miracle-working ministry of Jesus and is convinced that John has come back from the dead. We’re then told about the night Herod threw a birthday party for himself (who throws a party of himself?), how the daughter of his wife—the wife he had stolen from his brother--had danced for him, pleasing Herod, and how—probably a little more than drunk—Herod had promised the girl anything in exchange for the dance. 

How she had asked her mother what to ask for and was given the chilling reply, “The head of the prophet of God on a platter.” 

And how, in spite of what Herod knew to be right, he complied with the girl’s expressed wish. 

It was an act of evil equal to anything you might see in your news feed or on the TV news today. 

But unlike those news items, I believe that Mark’s flashback can help us to avoid falling into evil ourselves.

It does this by helping us to see that evil happens, first of all, when we want what we want more than what we want God wants. That was Herod’s problem. He wanted to please this young woman and appear to be a man of his word, no matter how sick and ill-advised his word may have been, more than he wanted to honor God.

That kind of thing can happen to us, too. Years ago, a man came to see me and explained how he bilked his company for thousands of dollars and got himself fired. I tried to understand how this otherwise upright man fell into this evil. “I just knew what I wanted and saw stealing as the way to get it. I just forgot about God.”

Second, evil happens when we’re more concerned with how we appear than with who we are. Herod kept his vow to his wife's daughter because he didn’t want to seem like a welcher to his guests.

A pastor I worked with while I was in seminary taught me a valuable lesson. One week, he made a mistake, one that the congregation needn’t have known about, not a sin, but a failure to do something which cost the church some money. The first thing that pastor did the following Sunday morning during the announcements was stand up and apologize. If that pastor had worried about appearances, he wouldn’t have said a word. But he was willing to admit his imperfections and gained credibility for it.

If to no one else, it’s essential that we own our sins and imperfections before God. It’s only when we’re open with the Lord Who knows about is anyway that He can take His holy scalpel and remove the unrepented sin that blocks His grace from penetrating into our lives. 

In Psalm 32:3-5, King David, tells God: “When I kept silent [about my sin], my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy on me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer. Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord.’ And you forgave the guilt of my sin.” 

This is why in another one of the Psalms, David asks God, “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” (Psalm 139:23-24) 

It’s only when we’re open to undergoing the spiritual surgery by which the God we know in Jesus Christ removes the power of sin over our lives and replaces it with Himself as God, Savior, King, and Friend that we can know the healing of His grace!

Third, evil happens when we ignore the Word of God. Herod, in spite of the judgment against his actions he could hear in John’s preaching, liked to listen to it. He knew that John’s words were from God. Yet, at his birthday party, he turned a deaf ear to God’s Word.

Hebrews 4:12 tells us: “For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” 

And 2 Timothy 3:16-17 reminds us: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” 

When you and I spend time in God’s Word each day, asking God to show us the truth He wants us to see and act upon that day, we’re reassured again that this God Whose love for us is so desperate that He went to the cross, went to hell, and rose from death for us, will never leave us or forsake us. 

God’s Word gives us the power to live in the light of His Good Friday, Easter Sunday love!

But all of this still leaves us with a question: What’s in it for us? At the end of our Gospel lesson, after all, Herod was still alive, still on his throne, and John’s body was taken away by his disciples for burial. Herod had caved into evil. John had remained faithful to God. 

So, what’s in it for us when we resist evil?

Of course, there’s the obvious answer…and the true one. Those who faithfully seek to follow the God we know in Jesus Christ will, in spite of our sins and failings, spend eternity with God. 

But there are more immediate rewards for those who commit themselves to keeping hold of Christ’s hand and resisting the temptation to sin. They’re mentioned in our lesson from Ephesians for today. We’re given, we’re told “every spiritual blessing.” 

Herod went to bed on the night he killed John the Baptist knowing that he had killed an innocent, that he had done evil. That reality, I believe, haunted him and he felt utterly alone, evil, and foolish.

Unlike Herod Antipas, John the Baptist lived and died with the certainty that, even in the midst of things he couldn’t and didn’t fully understand, in resisting evil, in seeking to follow God faithfully, he had a Lord and Advocate Who would never desert him, not even beyond the gates of death.

If you remember nothing else from this morning, please remember this: 

The simple truth is that God is present for all who want God around.

A true story I’ve told before. She was dying and I visited her in the hospital. "Are you angry with God?" I asked her. "I was at first," she answered honestly. "But then I remembered that He's right here with me. Somehow that helped me." 

It can help us too. Knowing that, as we turn to Him and away from evil, God is with us always makes the pain and sacrifices of resisting evil worth it. 

In Jesus, the crucified and risen Lord, we know this to be true! Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, and a sinner saved from myself only by the grace of God given in Jesus, in Whom I trust.]