Stick with Jesus

[Below is the text prepared for my sermon delivered this past Sunday, April 28, during worship with the people and guests of Emma Anderson Memorial Chapel in Topsail, North Carolina. The chapel is a nondenominational ministry. Here is its website. And here is a link to the entire service from this past Sunday.]

John 15:1-8

Jesus tells us today, “I am the true vine…” (John 15:1)

But what does this mean?

In the Old Testament, God’s people, the descendants of Abraham, ancient Israel, are sometimes referred to as “the vine” or “vineyard.” The prophet Isaiah sings about God and His vineyard Israel: “Let me sing for my beloved my love song concerning his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; and he looked for it to yield grapes…” (Isaiah 5:1-2)

God called His Old Testament people into being so that a people saved by God’s undeserved grace would “bear fruit.”

They would be counted righteous by God NOT on the basis of anything they did, but solely because they trusted in and remained connected to the God Who chose them to be HIS.

And as God’s people, they would bear fruit: God’s life would spring from them for all the world to see. “I am the Lord,” God tells Abraham’s descendants in Isaiah 42:6,  “I have called you in righteousness; I will take you by the hand and keep you; I will give you as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations…”

Ancient Israel was to be God’s vine or vineyard in the world and through it, others would encounter and know the God of the universe who gives new and everlasting life to all who repent and believe in Him. 

But the Old Testament tells us how God’s people rebelled against God, falling into idolatry, the lie of self-sufficiency, and inevitably, treating others with injustice. These are the things that happen when people sever their connections to God.

But, unlike ancient Israel, Jesus is the true vine. Jesus is Israel as Israel was meant to be.

Jesus obeys God’s Law perfectly as ancient Israel was meant to do.

Jesus loves God and loves neighbors, as ancient Israel was meant to do.

Jesus is the light to the nations, as ancient Israel was meant to be.

Because He is the true vine, the true Israel, in Jesus, Who is truly God and truly man, the whole world can see, know, receive faith in, and be connected with God. As Jesus told the apostle Philip, “If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” (John 14:7)

Now, after identifying Himself as the true vine–the faithful Israel, Jesus tells us: “Every branch in me [that is, everyone who believes in Jesus and draws life from Him. Every branch in me] that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes [literally, the word Jesus uses here is cleanses], that it may bear more fruit. [And then He speaks this Gospel promise TO YOU…] Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you.” (John 15:2-3)

There’s been a lot of mischief done with the words of Jesus in today’s lesson. Preachers–and I’ve been guilty of this too–read this passage and ask their congregations, “Are you bearing good fruit?” Then they’ll ask things like: “How many people have you shared the Gospel with in the past week?” “How many poor people have you helped?” “Have you been kind to everyone?” Then the preachers will tell their churches, “Bear good fruit! Amen.”

Those are all good and important things, of course. But none of it is what Jesus is talking about in today’s lesson. Let’s see what He actually does say.

But first, let’s stipulate that we all can confess with King David: “I have been evil from the day I was born; from the time I was conceived, I have been sinful.” (Psalm 51:5, GNT) We’re born sinners, unworthy of life with God.

The good news is that if, by the power of Jesus’ Word given to you through the work of the Holy Spirit, you and I are able to confess the truth that we are sinners AND our faith in Jesus Who died for our sins, then we know that we have passed ALREADY from death into life with God that cannot be taken from us.

If, because of His Gospel Word, you can confess Jesus is your Lord, you can know that you are already made clean by God.

Your death sentence has been commuted and you walk as a free child of God!

Saving faith in Jesus is made possible by the power of the Word from Jesus that He has given to His Church to declare to all the world. And this is the summary of that Word: Jesus Christ has already destroyed the power of sin and death over your life. He did that at the cross and as He did it for the whole world, He did it for you.

In Jesus Christ, all your sins are forgiven.

Fully.

Completely.

This is the Word that cleanses you, that cleans away the impurities of your life, that purges death, that makes you a branch heavy with fruit from Jesus.

In Jesus Christ, you can trust that you are forgiven and free.

Amen?

So, what is Jesus telling you today? Just this. You are not saved by the fruit you bear. But those who are saved will bear fruit.

Jesus doesn’t call you into some holy self-help program in which you bear good fruit to prove yourself righteous and holy. In your own power, you and I could never produce good fruit. Not even moderately OK fruit will sprout from dead branches disconnected from the true vine. Jesus says, “Without Me, you can do nothing.”

The imperative Jesus gives us in today’s lesson is not, “bear fruit,” but, “Abide in me…” Abide in Me.

In the Greek in which John wrote his gospel, the word translated as abide is menein. It means to stick to, hold onto, grasp hold of, never let go.

Jesus promises that if we will hold onto Him, He will flood us with forgiveness, grace, life, and peace, both in the days of this imperfect and fallen world in which bad things happen and in eternity, where we will live in the new heaven and the new earth that Jesus has set aside for all who believe in Him.

And, as we abide in Him, His life and His gospel will flow out from us into the world. We will do the good works He has created for us to do in our everyday lives as parents, grandparents, children, friends, bosses, employees, neighbors.

By the power of Christ’s Gospel Word living in us, we will be a light to the nations.

We will bear His fruit. 

But how do we abide in Jesus and so bear fruit? We abide in Jesus when we show up any time He says, “Come and get my Grace!”

We abide in Jesus when we receive His Word, worship with His people, receive His forgiveness as we confess our sins, and receive His body and blood.

We abide in Jesus when we hold onto Him in hard times and, what may be more difficult, in easy times.

As we receive Jesus’ gifts of Himself, of forgiveness and of new life, we bear fruit. We bear fruit because of Jesus, not because of us. 

How does Jesus’ Word cause good fruit in us? Let me give you an example.

In 2017, a friend of mine, a journalist, gave my name and contact information to another journalist in Washington. The journalist was doing a story and wanted to talk with a cross-section of pastors from around the country. I was nervous during and after the interview and was sure that I had rambled incoherently. But the journalist and I have maintained contact in the succeeding years. Recently, the journalist published a book and I’ve been reading it. In the book, the journalist tells about a past decision made after praying about it, getting good advice, and reading God’s Word, but still not being sure of what to do. The journalist concluded that under such circumstances, if we’re not out to glorify ourselves or harm others or sin in some other way, and if we’re clinging to Him, God will still claim us as His own. After reading that, I wrote a note to say how impressed I was with that statement. The journalist wrote back, “Thank you, Mark! It’s something I think about a lot and I think we talked about it when I interviewed you: not substituting my will for God’s will.”

Friends, I don’t remember saying anything about that in the interview done with me seven years ago, although I know that the journalist kept notes to prove I did. I’m glad that in my basically unconscious state, God caused me to say something helpful.

The point is that, before that interview, I did just what I do whenever I prepare to preach, teach, lead worship, visit a hospital or nursing home, or…talk to a journalist. I connect–I stick to–Jesus and I pray, “Lord, take over. Grant that in all I say and I do and am You will be honored and glorified and that I will do nothing to bring dishonor to Your name.”

Remain in Jesus, friends.

Remain in the true vine Who forgives your sins and has opened life with God and life from God to you.

And if you remain in Jesus, the true vine,…if you hold onto Him, no matter what, you needn’t worry about whether you’re bearing good fruit. Jesus will lead you to where you need to be and to what you need to do.

Hold onto Jesus, turning to Him daily as your God and Savior, and, because of Him, you will bear good fruit. Amen

 

The Old Testament Book of Ezekiel, Part 38

The Old Testament Book of Ezekiel, Part 35

Be Unburdened!

[Below you'll find live stream video of both worship services from Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio for July 9, 2023, as well as the text of the message shared during the services. WARNING: The video titled "11:00 AM Modern Worship" actually the "8:45 AM Traditional Worship" and vice versa. Got that? Have a good week. God bless you!]





Matthew 11:25-30

Jesus tells you today, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28)

This is the Gospel, the good news, in today’s gospel lesson that Jesus gives to you, that He does to you and does for you today. Literally, Jesus says, “Come to me, all those toiling and being burdened and I will give you rest.”

Many, if not all of you, are toiling and burdened today.

Some of you toil to be “good” people under the burden of old sins that you confessed and God forgave through Christ long ago.

Some of you toil under the weight of sins perpetrated against you, sins of which you either cannot or will not let go.

Some of you toil under the burden of thinking you must create a “best life” for you, your kids, or your grandkids.

Some of you are working to placate God, trying to pile up enough credits to get yourself into His eternal kingdom.

To you and me Jesus says today, “Let go of your burdens–all your guilt and shame, all your pride and self-righteousness, all your self-promoting or self-destroying religiosity–and I will give you rest. I will give you peace.”

Not everyone finds Jesus’ invitation compelling. In fact, it’s true to say that most of the people who have ever encountered God’s gift of new and everlasting life and of rest with Him through Jesus, most, have repudiated it, ignored it, walked away from it. Even derided it or tried to kill it off.

Jesus first spoke these Gospel words–come to me and I will give you rest–in the face of mass rejection of Him by His own people.

Earlier in chapter 11 of Matthew’s gospel, we’re told that as Jesus preached to crowds of people, disciples of John the Baptist, reflecting their leader’s skepticism, ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?” (Matthew 11:3) Jesus points them to what they are hearing and seeing Him do: giving sight to the blind, making the lame walk, causing the deaf to hear, raising the dead, and preaching His good news–His gospel–to the poor, to all who can admit that they are not self-sufficient, all who, on hearing Jesus’ word, realize that without Jesus, they can do no good thing. (John 15:5)

Also in Matthew 11, just before Jesus’ words in today’s gospel lesson, He denounces cities whose people have refused to repent–that is, to turn away from sin and the burdensome lie of self-sufficiency.

It’s in the face of this rejection and earthly failure that Jesus, God the Son, prays to God the Father. “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do.” (Matthew 10:25-26)

The Gospel, the good news from God that gives us rest, peace, and life with God is hidden from some people and it is seen and heard and trusted by others.

Now, anybody can see, hear, and trust in Christ’s Gospel. God is not a monster! God doesn’t pick winners and losers of salvation.

God’s message to the people of ancient Israel is His message for us today: “I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live.” (Ezekiel 33:11)

God wants to forgive our sins and give us new and everlasting life with Him.

But most people, thinking themselves “wise and learned,” unwilling to admit their need for forgiveness, or reconciliation, or peace, soldier on under the burden of self-rule. They refuse to daily turn away from the dumpster fire of sin, bitterness, and selfishness that rages in each of us descendants of Adam and Eve and cling to the lie that they (or we) can “be like God.”

These are people like Lot’s wife. Remember her? At the moment she was being graciously delivered from the hell of Sodom, told to not look back but to look ahead to the future into which God was taking her, she looked back anyway.

She may have thought to herself, “If I go back, I can make it better.”

Or, she may have thought, “I know what life was like back there in Sodom. I have no experience of the life God is taking me too.”

The wise and the learned are those who hear the Gospel promise of life and rest with God, but like, in the words of Proverbs, dogs returning to their own vomit, will not give up on the idea that they can be in control, or that they can make their lives right in their own power. (Psalm 26:11)

Jesus says though that “little children” are people who are open to His Gospel.

Don’t misunderstand Jesus here. Jesus doesn’t idealize childhood. The Bible is clear: We are all born sinners, intent on being masters of the universe, disinclined to love God or love neighbor. One of the favorite first words of children is still “No!”

What Jesus is saying is that when children are loved, they credulously and openly receive that love.

When some people hear the Law of God telling them that they were sinful at birth, they take in this truth from God and acknowledge it. (Psalm 51:5)

And when they hear Jesus say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (Matthew 4:17)--or “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls,” (Matthew 11:29) their resistance is melted. Their wills are overruled. They trust in Christ.

Now, friends, you know that if you are one of Christ’s little ones, trusting in Christ, turning from sin, receiving His promised rest, it isn’t because you’re superior to those still caught up in the lie of their own supposed wisdom or learnedness.

The Bible says “that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, ‘Jesus be cursed,’ and no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.” (1 Corinthians 12:3)

The rest that you have in God’s grace, given in Jesus, is a gift borne to you by God’s Word: preached, taught, read, heard, and received in the Sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion. The Bible reminds us that “it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God…” (Ephesians 2:8)

What does all of this mean?

Quite simply, it means this: Today Jesus wants to make a trade with you.

He wants your sins, your death, and all that you try to conceal about yourself from God, the world, even yourself. He wants you to put all of these things on Him. That’s what we do when we repent.

In exchange, He wants to give you all His righteousness, rest, peace, life, hope, joy.

Little children, receive all these gifts from Jesus today.

He tells you again now: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)

Give Jesus your burdens and He will give you rest in Him.

Amen

The Old Testament Book of Ezekiel, Part 31

Truth at the Jordan: The Message of John the Baptist

[Below is the message from this past Sunday's worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Matthew 3:1-12

This past week, a colleague of mine posted a picture on Facebook that probably expresses what we all secretly think on hearing about John the Baptist as we get ready for Christmas. Here it is:



Now, it’s true that we can call John the Baptist the last of the Old Testament prophets. We can also say that he called those who made a show of repenting for their sins and did other religious acts “a brood of vipers.”

But John also proclaimed the Gospel, the good news about God acting in the crucified and risen Jesus to save us from sin and from death and to give us life with God.

John proclaims both God’s Law, God’s commands that we love God and love neighbor, and God’s Gospel, the good news that God makes innocent any sinner who, by the power of God’s Word, trusts in Jesus as Lord and God!

We see how John proclaims these two elements of God’s message to all people especially in two verses of today’s Gospel lesson, verses 2 and 12. Let’s unpack each verse to see how John the Baptist shouldn’t be seen as the party pooper of our Advent and Christmas gatherings and, more importantly, how in his words, he gives us the Gospel, and in fact, gives us Christ Himself.

In  verse 2, John says, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” The word translated here as repent is, in the Greek in which Matthew writes his gospel, metanoiete. It literally means change of mind. But even that doesn’t fully convey what repentance is.

Looking at the Bible’s teaching on this subject, our Lutheran confessions tell us that, “repentance consists of two parts. One part is contrition, that is [listen to this] terrors striking the conscience through the knowledge of sin. [This isn’t terror at the propspect of being punished for our sin, but terror at the thought of being separated from God, the giver of every good and perfect blessing. The confessions go on to say that…] The other part [of repentance] is faith, which is born of the Gospel…[this faith] believes that for Christ’s sake, sins are forgiven. [Repentance then] comforts the conscience and delivers it from terror.” (Augsburg Confession, Part XII)

Repentance then is both sorrow for sin and, by faith, reconciliation with God Who, through Jesus, saves us from the eternal consequences of our sin!

So, in verse 2 of our lesson, John is telling us that, in Jesus Christ, God’s kingdom, His reign, the enveloping grace of God has come to us. We don’t have to do anything or be anything for this to be so. Before we ever gave God a thought, God decided to act and then acted decisively in Christ to come to us and save us from ourselves.

This word of good news from God tells us that we can turn from our self-absorbed, self-involved ways–turn from sin–and live under God’s loving reign now and always: forgiven, free, filled with hope!

Repentance assures those who confess their sin and their need of Jesus that we will be changed from God’s enemies to God’s friends, now and eternally!

In verse 12, John says of Jesus, “His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

At His second coming, His second advent, Jesus will “judge the living and the dead.”

Those who have harbored the fantasy that no God created the universe in which we live and those who have entertained the equally false fantasy hat they are good enough on their own to earn being part of the kingdom of heaven, will all be eternally condemned. Jesus says His angels will throw those who have refused to believe in Him “into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Matthew 13:42)

This is not what God desires. Otherwise He wouldn’t have bothered coming to be our Savior. The Bible tells us that God “wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth…” (1 Timothy 2:4)

But, just as you can’t blame the death of the man who decided to keep sitting on the roof of his house on the helicopter pilot who lowered a rope to save him from the flood, we can’t blame God when people who have refused Jesus’ offer of forgiveness and new life are condemned.

As Jesus says elsewhere: “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath [God’s condemnation of the sin into which we all were born]  remains on them.” (John 3:36)

But to those who have had their minds changed and their thinking clarified by God’s Word and have so, trusted in Christ instead of themselves, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.” (Matthew 25:34)

John the Baptist was sent by God in these last days of this universe’s life to tell us to turn to Jesus with our sins and regrets.

We can do that because Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, has already turned to us with His forgiveness and grace, working to not only change our minds, but our whole lives, to make us God’s people, to usher us into God’s kingdom.

The promise is true: “...if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

Friends: Because Jesus has already come near to you and comes to you again today, you can turn in daily repentance and faith to Christ and know you belong to God forever. Amen