Aiming Toward, "MIssion Accomplished!"

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]


John 17:1-11
Please pull out the Celebrate insert from your bulletin and look at today’s Gospel lesson, John 17:1-11. Keep it handy.

In this lesson, Jesus does an extraordinary thing: He lets us listen in on His personal prayer to God the Father.

Now, I don't know about you, but there are things in my personal prayer time that I want to keep strictly between God and me. I don't want anybody listening in.

But Jesus has no secrets. The Word made flesh, is an open book.

The entire Bible, in fact, reveals that God has always been an open book. The New Testament book of Romans reminds us that, “…what can be known about God is plain…, because God has shown it…”

We see God's openness in other ways. The Bible affirms, for example, that God’s law—His will and His commands for humanity—has always been written on our hearts, giving all of us a strong hint, long before we even hear the Name of Jesus, that there is a God Who made and cares about us.

But more than that, God has taken the time and effort and sacrifice to live out His love for us and make it possible for all who turn from sin and believe in Him to live with Him eternally. God has lived His love for us out loud for everyone to see!

In the prologue to his account of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, John the Evangelist says, “The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”

John goes on to say of Jesus, “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, Who is close to the Father’s heart, Who has made Him known.”

Jesus has no secrets. Jesus is in the disclosing business.

So, what exactly does He disclose to us in today’s Gospel lesson?

First: He discloses a heart filled with celebration.

One of my nephews, Andrew, is graduating from high school. There’s going to be a celebration later today. The unspoken theme will be: mission accomplished. That's the theme of all graduation parties!

(And sometimes, their theme is "Shwew!")

In His prayer in today's Gospel lesson, Jesus takes a victory lap. He exults in His accomplishment on earth even before He goes to the cross or is raised from the dead.

Jesus knows that He already is what He was sent into the world to be: “the way, and the truth, and the life,” the only way for human beings to know God and the only way to the life that the life-giving God of the universe gives to those who repent and trust in Christ.

Look at what Jesus says He has already accomplished at the moment He utters His prayer.

• In verse 6: “I have made Your Name known to those whom You gave me…” 
• In verse 7: “Now they know that everything You have given me is from You…” 
• In verse 8: “for the words that You gave to me I have given to them, and [they] know in truth that I came from you…”

Jesus’ earthly life had a mission. He came to make God known. All that he said and did was bent to that purpose.

In this prayer, Jesus rejoices in the strength that God the Father and God the Holy Spirit had given Him to accomplish it all and He prays, in essence, “Father, mission accomplished!”

As He prays, Jesus knows, of course, that He has one thing left to do on this earth, one more definitive act disclosing Who He is and Who God is.

He must die.

He must give His life for those given to Him by the Father.

This is the ultimate thing that Jesus discloses to all who are open to the truth. Martin Luther said that if we want to know what God is like, we only need to look to Jesus on the cross.

And that’s why with jubilation, Jesus, God on earth, intent on doing God’s would, on the Friday we call Good, having fully disclosed the heart, mind, and will of God, decide on the cross the moment at which He would breathe His last, call out to the Father, “It is finished,” (“My mission is accomplished.”)  and then give His life to God.

The Father wouldn’t let this be the end for Jesus, though. The sinless Savior Who offered His perfect life as the perfect sacrifice for our sin could not remain dead. He had to be raised up so that all people would know about their chance to turn to Him (turning away from their sin), entrust their lives to Him, and live with God eternally.

So, in this prayer, Jesus celebrates what He accomplishes for the glory of the Father and for our eternal good.

And then: Jesus discloses a request to the Father.

In verse 5, Jesus asks, “Father, glorify Me in Your own presence with the glory that I had in Your presence before the world existed…”

The glory of God was displayed in Jesus in many ways. It was seen when...

• He fed 5000 people with a few scraps of bread and some fish
• He turned water into wine
• He raised His dead friend Lazarus from the grave
• He gave sight to a blind man
• He empowered a paralyzed man to walk again.

The glory of God was seen in Jesus too, when at the waters of the Jordan River, where He was baptized, and on the Mount of Transfiguration, the Voice from heaven said, "This is My Son; listen to Him!"

And yet the glory of God disclosed in Jesus on all those occasions and others we might name, were mere hints, dim reflections, brief tastes of the glory Jesus once enjoyed as God the Son in the halls of heaven before the creation of this world!

Now, in this prayer, having accomplished all that He had set out to do in taking on human flesh, Jesus asks the Father to give that glory back to Him again.

The Father will do just that when He raises Jesus from the dead on the first Easter Sunday and so, makes the Name of Jesus the Name to which eventually, every knee will bow and every tongue confess, “that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father.” 

(It turns out that even those who reject Jesus and will tragically, live with the consequence of their rejection of “the only Son of God” will also, in the end, acknowledge the glory of God seen in Jesus.)

If there is one thing more than any other that Christ’s Church needs today, it’s a renewed sense of the glory of God! 

I’ve mentioned before the woman who approached me after worship one Sunday in a former congregation. She was upset with the words of Psalm 111:10: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom...” (The same words appear also in Proverbs 1:7 and 9:10.)

She affected that voice that some people use when trying to show their piety and said, “I don’t think that we should be afraid of God.” Look, Jesus says that we are His friends when we keep or strive to honor His commandments. He promises to stick closer to us than a brother.

But Jesus, God in the flesh, is not our buddy, not our rabbit’s foot, nor our ATM, nor our good luck charm.

He will be there to judge us at the end of history.

Paraphrasing Bill Cosby’s Cliff Huxtable, Jesus brought us into this world and He can take us out.

He is God almighty.

He alone deserves all our allegiance, honor, loyalty, and thankfulness because, through His “amazing grace,” He saves all who trust in Him from sin and its consequence, death.

We must understand that the God disclosed in Jesus Christ is not a salesperson with whom we can negotiate a price, but the Lord of the universe and that to have Him and the eternity only He can give, we must bow, we must surrender to Him.

It's when we understand this that we’ll be on the road to the wisdom that leads to life.

In this prayer in today's Gospel lesson, Jesus, Who laid His glory by for His time on earth, is reclaiming that glory.

But here’s the really astounding thing.

It’s a theme of the New Testament that the life of Jesus is replicated, reenacted, in baptized believers in Him. All who are baptized and live in daily repentance and renewal can say with the New Testament, “I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ Who lives in me.” 

This is what Luther was getting at when he said that whenever the devil came knocking at his heart's door with temptations, announcing that he was looking for Martin Luther, Jesus went to the door in his place and said, "Martin Luther used to live here. But now I live here. Now, go away and don't come back any more!"

It was because of Christ living in him, that the first century preacher Paul, before his death, could write to the young pastor Timothy with the same sense of fulfillment and jubilation we see in Jesus’ prayer in our Gospel lesson on the brink of His death.

Listen closely to Paul's words (this is from The Message translation):

I’m about to die, my life an offering on God’s altar. This is the only race worth running. I’ve run hard right to the finish, believed all the way. All that’s left now is the shouting—God’s applause! Depend on it, [God is] an honest judge. He’ll do right not only by me, but by everyone eager for His coming.

In his wonderful book, Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream, Pastor David Platt talks about how many American Christians think that Jesus’ call and command for radical discipleship, including the call to love all the world and to carry the good news of Jesus to all the nations applies to other people, not us.

In taking this attitude, millions of Christians turn a deaf ear to the needs of 4.5 billion people who may die today without ever hearing the Good News of new life through faith in Jesus Christ.

And in thinking that Jesus’ call only applies to some spiritual elites, we also deny ourselves the very sense of fulfillment and the enjoyment of God’s glory that Jesus exults in in today’s Gospel lesson and that He wants us to have!

We, each of us, need to consider how we can restructure our personal lives to fulfill the mission Christ has given to each of us, so that we too can exult in the sense of fulfillment from a life spent in giving God glory.

We may not be able to go to foreign countries in pursuing God’s intentions for our lives.

But each of us is called to fulfill the whole mission of Christ’s Church in our own individual lives. Our sponsorship, through World Vision of three year old Toiba in Kenya, involvement with CHAP, the 30 Hour Famine, the PPSST Food Drive, the upcoming local mission trip, Friend Day in November, upcoming servanthood evangelism events, and above all, our personal willingness to share Christ with the spiritually disconnected, are all ways in which we can lead the life of purpose that gives God glory that Jesus Christ wants each of us to experience.

We need to encourage one another in living out our Christ-given mission to the whole world. It’s to help us fulfill this single mission that Jesus prays in verse 11: “Holy Father, protect them in Your Name that You have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”

When I come to the end of this life, I want to be able to pray with the same sense of jubilation and fulfillment we see in Jesus in our Gospel lesson.

I want to be able to look back on a life in which I loved God, loved the world, and took my part in making some disciples of the world’s 4.5-billion unreached people.

I want to be able to say, “Mission accomplished.”

How about you?

If it’s your desire to fulfill God’s purposes for your life, ask Christ to live fully in you…and then go wherever He leads you. Amen

Christ or Culture?

Will we surrender to God or go along with the culture?

The daily need to answer that question has emerged as one of the major themes as we at Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, spend a year reading the Bible together.*

In Exodus, God commanded His people to have no other gods but Him. Compassion, not egotism, is behind this command. Only God can give life, after all. To follow any other god, literally spells everlasting death. To spare ancient Israel, God's people, from such a fate, God called them to be "holy," a word that means set apart for God.

The ongoing challenge (and demand) God issued to His people is voiced by Joshua, the leader of the Israelites who succeeded Moses, when Joshua says:

Now therefore revere the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord.
¹⁵
Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

But the Old Testament honestly reports that the lure of surrounding cultures repeatedly proved overpowering for Israel.

God called Israel into being to bring the possibility of new life from Him to all the world. Eventually, Christians believe, Israel gave birth to the Savior Jesus, God-in-the-flesh.

In Jesus, God issues the same command to all the world that He once issued to Israel. Before His death and resurrection, Jesus said:

³²“Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; ³³but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven." (Matthew 10:32-33)

Again, God commands trust and obedience out of compassion, not egotism. Life only comes through the God made clear to the world in Jesus of Nazareth.

But, as was true of the ancient Israelites, the lure of culture can sometimes prove overpowering. It's easier to follow the little gods you can see than it is to follow the God you can't see at the moment.

Besides, you're likely to find it easier going to go along with the culture than you will if you march to the rhythm of a different drum, especially if it's being played by God.

The contemporary American church isn't immune to going along to get along with the culture.

The conservative version of Christianity upheld by the "Christian Right" is a hyper American nationalism that uses the Bible to justify the rampant materialism and arrogance that non-Christians like Donald Trump readily endorse.

The liberal version of Christianity in vogue in "liberal Protestantism" attempts to put God's stamp of approval on cheap grace (that is, God's forgiveness without our repentance and salvation without trusting surrender to Jesus Christ) and, notably, the legitimization of sexual intimacy outside of marriage between a woman and a man.**

Whether done out of a well-meaning, but unintended, disregard for God's revealed will in Scripture or from an attempt to make their version of Christianity acceptable to a mass audience, both of these caricatures of Christianity are faithless.

They each are guilty of choosing favored cultural mores, rather than choosing to follow the God Who demands our acquiescence to His sometimes inconvenient truth. *

To be a "holy people," a people devoted to God, doesn't imply moral perfection. Christians are imperfect. We sin every day. As I've said elsewhere, we are recovering hypocrites who bring our lives before God each day in repentance, so that God not only can forgive us, but also perform reconstructive surgery on our souls.

To be a holy people, then, is to keep turning to God. It's to acknowledge the deep wisdom underlying Proverbs 3:5: "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight."

Believers in the God of the Bible are called to be subversives who run counter to the culture. "Choose this day..."

The God revealed in Christ or the gods of the prevailing cultures? "As for me and my house..."

*We started on March 9. We read about three chapters a day. Today's reading is 1 Samuel 28-31.


**This is the route chosen by my own denominational body. I pray regularly that it will reverse course.

"Coincidences"

When the "coincidences" that just happen to answer your prayers start to pile up, you may want to re-categorize them as "God-incidences." Thanking God for all the God-incidences He's sent my way this week.

Make cupcakes...

...not war.

This is a truth I'm thankful for...and take advantage of...every day.

"If we confess our sins, [God] is faithful and just to forgive us our sins..." (1 John 1:9). See here.

Unfortunately, He Saw The Trends Quite Clearly

William Booth, a nineteenth century Methodist preacher and founder of the Salvation Army, was evidently asked about what trends he saw unfolding in the twentieth century:

“In answer to your inquiry, I consider that the chief dangers which confront the coming century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, and heaven without hell.” [Source]

Praying that as the twenty-first century unfolds, God will reverse these trends through forgiven sinners who live in daily repentance and renewal.

[Note: I remember that we read Vachel Lindsay's poem, General William Booth Enters Into Heaven, in high school literature class.]

I Love New York!

And this new image of one of my favorite spots on the planet, Times Square, only makes me want to go back again sometime soon.

More on Revelation 20:11-15 from Hanns Lilje

I love the description of Revelation 20:11-15, about which I wrote here, by the late Lutheran scholar, Hanns Lilje (1899-1977):

The great description of the "last judgment"...has been represented...often in art. The element which distinguishes it from the mass of pictorial representations...is its strange, unearthly character. The whole scene is bathed in a transparent light which is not of this world at all...here everything that belongs to our earthly life fades out of sight...God's throne glows with a white radiance...[T]he presence of God is of such transcendent majesty that it can only be described indirectly...


Heaven and earth "flee away"...and fade into the background. They disappear; they are no longer there. This void means that all what made human life on earth possible has vanished. All that is left is a vast open space of spiritual emptiness, in which no human being could breathe or stand--peopled only by the dead in countless numbers, undifferentiated, without any earthly and historical differences, bound together by one thing only: that they are "before the throne of God." This expression really means the "second resurrection." All that the preceding chapters [of Revelation]...have constantly emphasized becomes clear: God has kept the last judgment in his own hands. It only seemed as though the course of history ran counter to his holy will. But no single day in earthly history has been able to detract for one moment from God's sovereignty.

Judgment, Works, the Lake of Fire, and Eternity: What's Up with All That?

The Biblical text on which today's Our Daily Bread devotion is based, Revelation 20:11-15, is interesting to consider in light of the recent publicized prediction made by one man that the world would end on May 21. As I pointed out here, only a misguided person or an unbelieving one would make such a prediction. Jesus makes that clear.

But that doesn't alter the fact that Jesus teaches that one day, life in this world will be brought to an end by God's decision.

Nor does it alter the fact that Jesus and the rest of the Bible teaches that some will spend eternity with God and others will not. (Whether some contemporary Christians believe there's a hell or not, Jesus clearly does believe that hell is real and talked about it quite a lot.)

Nor does it alter Jesus' teaching that one day all lives will be judged by God.

Revelation 20:11-15 tells us about the judgment, the only judgment recorded in the strange last book of the New Testament. Here's what it says (remember that the narrator is John, given a vision of the end of all things--and the beginning of new things--by the risen and ascended Jesus):

Then I saw a great white throne and the one who sat on it; the earth and the heaven fled from his presence, and no place was found for them. ¹²And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Also another book was opened, the book of life. And the dead were judged according to their works, as recorded in the books. ¹³And the sea gave up the dead that were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and all were judged according to what they had done. ¹⁴Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire; ¹⁵and anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.  

Many Christians, maybe especially Lutheran Christians, will be disturbed by the passage telling us, "the dead were judged according to their works." Doesn't the rest of the Bible tell us that we are saved by our faith in Jesus Christ because of the charitable grace God bears for the human race? Doesn't the rest of the Bible--the whole Bible, from Genesis onward--teach that we aren't saved from sin and death by our works?

Yes, the Bible does teach those things. And this passage doesn't disagree with any of it.

Notice that there are two kinds of books mentioned in the passage. One is the single book of life. It contains the names of all who have entrusted their lives to Jesus Christ.

But, another kind of book contains the records of the deeds of every human being.

These books represent the sober fulfillment of something Jesus said in different ways and times during His earthly ministry. For example, in Luke 12:2-3, Jesus says:

Nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. ³Therefore whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be proclaimed from the housetops. 

At the judgment, our lives will be transparently disclosed for all to see, like on a Jumbotron in a stadium. I cringe at that thought because I am a sinner, though, thank God, a forgiven one who depends on God's amazing grace. But this display of our lives, even what we thought was secret, will happen.

The question to be asked of us at this judgment, whether by those of us who have been saved by grace through faith in Christ or those who have spurned Jesus Christ and will be thrown into the lake of fire (go to hell), will, at this moment, be the same:

What did you do with the earthly life God gave to you?

Jesus, in the Gospel of John, of course, says that those who spurn Him and the new life He freely offers, condemn themselves to hell. He says that in His conversation with Nicodemus:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. ¹⁷Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. ¹⁸Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God." (John 3: 16-18)

He also says that hell will be the place in which those who have spurned His love will spend eternity regretting their decision.

This is what it means to engage in "gnashing of teeth," as Jesus calls it, to regret forever having blown the opportunity to become the children of God we were made to be:

There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrown out. (Luke 13:28)

Those who spurn surrender to Christ will be thrown into the lake of fire, an image of hell reminiscent of the lifeless roiling storms of primordial chaos in Genesis 1.

God is a God of relationship, Whose highest desire us for us to live in relationship with Him and with others. But God also respects our decisions in these matters.

The occupants of hell will regret the disconnection from God and others they chose in this life and live with that choice in eternal isolation.

Having opted for the "kingdom of me," the little fiefdoms we human beings try to establish in order to rationalize walking away from God and violating God's commandments, God will let those who have rejected Christ live in its deathly confines eternally.

For believers in Christ, the judgment described in Revelation 20 will be a moment also marked by regret that we have often fallen short of the glory of God and failed to live the useful lives God's Holy Spirit empowers those who believe in Christ to live. (Underscoring the importance of living the life style of repentance and renewal.)

But it will also be a moment of gratitude that our sins are covered by the blood of Jesus Christ, an appeal to the Father for mercy that will not be ignored.

And it will be a moment when we resolve to use the new lives given to those who believe in the crucified and risen Jesus, to glorify God to the fullest, whatever task God gives us in eternity.

Rather than being intimidated by this scene from Revelation, we need to simply surrender our lives and our days to the Lordship of Christ. A Christ-ward life today is the only certain preparation for a joyous, useful eternity, spent in the company of God and others.

In this passage, death itself is thrown into the lake of fire. So too are those who have spurned Christ. This is why Martin Luther wrote in his Bible next to Revelation 20:11-15:

"Born once - die twice; Born twice - die once."

Those who spurn Christ will die twice, here and at the lake of fire. Those who are born from above in baptism and who trust in Jesus Christ's grace, who die to sin in order to rise to newness of life, will die only once. 


The vision Christ gave to John, recorded in Revelation 20:11-15, isn't meant as a threat to anyone. Nor should Christians or the Church use it that way.

It states a simple fact, one on full display in every revealing encounter God has had with the human race from Genesis 1 until today: God is sovereign.

And this sovereign God wants to give you life forever with Him.

He will not force it on you. You may take it or leave it.

But why, even if we find faith hard to grasp onto, would anyone leave it?

Why would you try to live this life or face the world to come without the God of the universe by your side?

Even if you're a skeptic, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by telling God right now:

"Lord, I don't understand everything about you and it's hard for me to believe in You. I do understand that my deeds won't always look so good up on that Jumbotron at the judgment. I want to be clean. I want to live on clean motives. I want to enjoy relationships of trust and love with others. And I understand that these are things that You want to give to me. So, in Jesus' Name, I ask you to help me to have faith, to help me to trust in You, and please, start making me new today. I promise to read Your Word, the Bible; to check in with You in prayer each day; and to get involved with a church where I can serve You and share You along with others who, just like me, are imperfect people who want You in their lives. Amen."

Nor will you have anything to lose if you keep praying (and keep meaning) prayers like that every day for the rest of your life.

Live this life to the full and look forward to eternity--and God's new heaven and new earth--with joyful anticipation!

Faith in Christ can take root in your life and both this life and the one to come will be the better for it.

Be Healthy...Go, Share Jesus!

The healthiest Christians and the healthiest churches are those that look beyond themselves and their four walls. Jesus tells us to go, make disciples, not to wait for them to drop into our laps. You can't go fishing if you don't go where the fish are.

Six Lessons on How to Share Your Faith

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]

Acts 17:22-31
At the risk of sending you all for the doors at the outset, I’ll tell you that today we’re going to consider how to witness for Jesus Christ.

I’ve found that most sincere Christians want to share Jesus with others. But things get in our way.

And the biggest of these is fear. We’re afraid of saying “the wrong thing.” We're afraid of offending people the way some Christians do with their high-pressure tactics and their judgmental attitudes.

The result is that we don’t do anything. We don’t witness.

But we need to challenge our fears about sharing Christ.

Penn Jillette, one half of the magician-comedian team of Penn and Teller, is an atheist. Not long ago though, he said this about Christians who allow fear to get in the way of their sharing Christ with others (please consider his words carefully):

“If you believe [he said] that there’s a heaven and hell and people could be going to hell—or not getting eternal life or whatever—and you think that, well, it’s not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially awkward. . . . How much do you have to hate somebody to not [be a witness for Christ]? How much do you have to hate somebody to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them that?”

Even a thoughtful atheist understands a responsibility shared by every baptized believer in Jesus Christ. We Christians need to understand that responsibility too.

Pull out one of the pew Bibles and turn to page 703, please. Look at 1 Peter, chapter 2, verse 9. It reminds Christians, “You are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, God’s own special people.” Then Peter explains why God has made us these things: “That you may proclaim the praises of Him Who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.”

Indifference to the eternal destinies of others is not an option for those of us who follow Jesus Christ!

You and I haven’t been saved from sin and death just so we can sit around at church luncheons and visit with friends with whom we share a common faith…enjoyable as that is.

All baptized believers in Jesus have been made priests. A priest has two jobs: to represent people to God through our praying and to represent God to people through our witnessing for Christ.

Witnessing is the job of every Christian believer.

Disciple making is the job of every Christian believer.

After 35 years as a Christian, I confess that I’m embarrassed by my lackluster performance as a witness for Christ. What about you? And what are both you and I going to do about it? How will we witness for Christ?

Look now, please, at our second lesson, found on the Celebrate insert, Acts 17:22-31. Here’s the scene: It’s about 50AD and Paul, a tentmaker by trade, has set up shop in Athens, Greece, as he had already done in other ancient cities previously, looking for the chance to share Christ with others. Like him, whatever our profession, our real job is to share Christ in word and deed.

After spending parts of his days talking with others about Christ in the marketplace and the synagogue, Paul goes to the place in the city where all the leading thinkers go to talk things out, the Areopagus. It had once been a place where judicial judgments were rendered and had become a place where people talked about and debated ideas.

Here then from Paul's time at the Areopagus, recorded in our first Bible reading, are six lessons to teach you and me how to share Christ with others.

Lesson #1: Be ready, whenever the opportunity presents itself, to witness for Christ. In our second lesson, Peter tells us, “Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you…”

Paul was ready!

Digging into God’s Word, as we’re doing through Read the Bible in a Year, and helpless dependent prayer to God, are two essential ways God prepares us to tell others about the hope that we have in Christ.

Jesus tells us that we can be bold witnesses even when we confront people with hard hearts who persecute us for our faith. When we need the right words, Jesus says, “the Holy Spirit will teach you…what you ought to say.” Study God’s Word and pray; you’ll be ready to witness for Christ.

#2: Never be hostile. In Athens, Paul experienced a city that held to values and beliefs very different from his own. The Athenians worshiped all sorts of gods and godlets, rather than honoring the one God of the universe revealed over time to Israel and, ultimately, in Jesus.

The Athenians also loved the latest fads and the freshest big ideas. They lacked the steady joy and stability that Paul had through the singular focus of all his allegiance and belief on Jesus Christ.

Paul could have upbraided the Athenians for their faithlessness and flightiness.

But instead, as the Eighth Commandment (You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor), teaches Christians to do, Paul put the most charitable construction on the life and culture of the faithless city. Read his words in verse 22: “Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, ‘Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way.’” Paul wasn't hostile. He was charitable toward the unbelieving, spiritually disconnected people he met in Athens. We should be too.

Most unbelieving or spiritually disconnected people you and I know aren’t sinister atheists joined with Satan in a knowing conspiracy. They’re people who haven’t met the real God the Father or the real God the Son, Jesus.

Your unbelieving friends are just like you: sinners in need of a Savior. They would like to know God. They just haven’t been introduced to Him yet.

You can be the one to do the introductions.

Never be hostile!

#3: Meet people where they are. That’s what Paul does in verses 23 to 28. He mentions a statue to an unknown god, no doubt erected there by Athenians fearful of the bevy of gods they worshiped, who, by and large, viewed human beings as play things to be toyed with.

Paul meets the Athenians where they are, saying that this unknown God had been revealed for all to know. He’s the God of all creation, first revealed to the Israelites and now plain for all to see in Jesus. Meet people where they are, so you can help them see all that God is and the life-giving relationship He wants to give to them.

#4: Enter the worlds of your unchurched friends. Paul, we see, had spent time listening to and reading the Athenians’ own poets and philosophers. He was interested in them.

We need to show an interest in our unchurched friends. (And by the way, if you don't have any unchurched friends, do what Paul did: Make them!)

We have to be interested in others. One of the things that impresses me in reading the story of evangelist Billy Graham's life is that when he went to Wheaton College, where he might have been expected to major in Religion or Christian Ministry, he chose to major in Anthropology. He felt called to share the Gospel around the world and to do so, he wanted to understand people from around the world.

Paul was confident that the God revealed in Jesus was (and is) the one true Creator and Savior of the universe. But he was not arrogant. He entered the world of these unbelieving people with an appreciation of their value in the eyes of the God Who had died and risen for them.

God inspired my friend, Pastor Steve Sjogren, to create modern servant evangelism. Through practical outreaches like giving cold water or Coke to people at busy intersections, re-upping nearly expired parking meters, or giving away coupons to be redeemed at filling stations, all in the Name of Jesus, the stereotypes of churches as places of judgment that just want people’s money are undermined.

One of Steve’s outreaches involves cleaning toilets in places of business: bars, restaurants, filling stations, convenience markets. (He trained me in this outreach and later, the youth of my previous congregation used to go with me to do this.)

It’s an eye-opener when a harried clerk is told by two people holding cleaning kits, “We’re here to clean your toilets” and when the clerk asks why, hearing, “We’re trying to share God’s love in a practical way.”

Steve tells about what happened at one business where he and another church members did this outreach. As he cleaned the toilet in the men’s room, the clerk approached him and asked, “Why are you doing this again?” Steve said, “We just think that if Jesus were walking on the earth today, He probably would be cleaning toilets for busy people like you.”

The man said, as tears formed in his eyes, “That’s the kind of thing I think He would do today, too.”

Jesus is God Who entered a sinful world to share His life with people in desperate need of Him. As Jesus’ ambassadors, we need to be willing to enter the worlds of others and love them into relationship with Jesus.

(Later this summer, by the way, we’re going to do some kindness outreaches here in Logan so that we too, can share Jesus in practical ways with our unchurched neighbors.)

#5: When the time is right, make sure you convey the way to reconciliation with God. Look at verse 30. Paul says, in the Daniels paraphrase: “OK. You’ve been ignorant about this unknown God until now. But now, you know. He calls us all to experience oneness with Himself by repenting for our sins and entrusting our lives to Jesus Christ.” Paul also says, you see, that there will be a judgment day. All people will be judged, but those who have been made righteous (that is, made right with God) by believing in Christ will be with God forever.

And, he points out, the guarantee for that has been sealed by Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. We need point people to repentance and faith in Jesus as the way to reconciliation with God.

#6: Don’t go on and on. (This is something Ann has been trying to teach me for years!) Paul’s words about Jesus’ resurrection raised controversy. He chose not to argue. Instead, he left, willing to let the Holy Spirit use the short speech he had made to nudge people toward faith in Christ.

This is what social historian and pastor Leonard Sweet calls “nudge evangelism.”  The quickest way to turn people off to God is through long harangues.

It’s best to give people something to think about so that the next time they encounter you or another Christian, they’ll want to know more about Jesus.

People are always nudged to Jesus; they are never dragged to Him.

The Bible tells us that it’s the Holy Spirit Who makes it possible for people to believe in Jesus.

And Jesus says that it is He Who will build His Church, not us.

But, if we will ask God to help us to be faithful witnesses, God can and will use our witness to nudge people to faith in Christ.

So, these are today's six lessons on how we can be faithful witnesses for Jesus Christ to the unchurched and the unbelieving:

• Through Bible study and prayer, be ready.*
• Never be hostile. 
• Meet people where they are. 
• Enter the worlds of the unchurched. 
• When the time is right, make clear the way of reconciliation with God, which is repentance for sin and faith in Jesus Christ alone. 
• And don’t go on and on.

Now, I’ll follow my own advice, refraining from going on and on.

But, by all means, as you leave here today, go determined to share Jesus Christ with unbelieving and unchurched neighbors with boldness, love, and humility. Amen

*Of equal importance is regular worship with fellow believers, active engagement in church life, and regularly receiving Holy Communion. More on these things another time. They're all assumed here as this was a sermon given to a congregation of people who do these three things.

The Object of Christian Faith: God's Glory, Not Our Comfort

These days I am really enjoying a book recommended to me by our son, Philip. The book is called Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream by David Platt. This book inspires and challenges me to divest myself of a "culture Christianity" and to instead, Christ's call to radical repentance and radical discipleship. This was especially true of these words, which I read yesterday:

God blesses his people with extraordinary grace so they might extend his extravagant glory to all the peoples of the earth. This basic, fundamental truth permeates Scripture from beginning to end. Yet I wonder if we unknowingly ignore [this]...

We live in a church culture that has a dangerous tendency to disconnect the grace of God from the glory of God. Our hearts resonate with the idea of enjoying God's grace. We bask in sermons, conferences, and books that exalt a grace centering on us. And while the wonder of grace is worthy of our attention, if that grace is disconnected from its purposes [to empower believers to glorify and share the God made known in Christ with others], the sad result is a self-centered Christianity that bypasses the heart of God.

If you were to ask the average Christian sitting in a worship service on Sunday morning to summarize the message of Christianity, you would most likely hear something along the lines of "The message of Christianity is that God loves me." Or someone might say, "The message of Christianity is that God loves me enough to send his Son, Jesus, to die for me."

As wonderful as that sentiment sounds, is it biblical? Isn't it incomplete, based on what [we see] in the Bible? "God loves me" is not the essence of biblical Christianity. Because if "God loves me" is the message of Christianity, then who is the object of Christianity?

God loves me.

Me.

Christianity's object is me.

Therefore, when I look for a church, I look for the music that best fits me and the programs that best cater to me and my family. When I consider the house I will live in, the clothes I will wear, the way I will live, I will choose according to what is best for me. This is the version of Christianity that largely prevails in our culture.

But it is not biblical Christianity.

The message of biblical Christianity is not "God loves me, period," as if we were the object of faith. The message of biblical Christianity is "God loves me so that I might make him--his ways, his salvation, his glory, and his greatness--known among all nations." Now God is the object of our faith and Christianity centers around him. We are not the end of the gospel; God is.

[The bold emphases are mine.]

"Never Alone"

That's the title of a sermon based on tomorrow's Gospel lesson, John 14:15-21, which I wrote three years ago, here. I hope you find it helpful.

Tomorrow, I'll be preaching on Acts 17:22-31, a favorite passage of mine.

"You've Got Mail"

Fun!

May 28: Ninth Anniversary of This Blog

Tomorrow marks the ninth anniversary of this blog.

Frankly, I had no idea what a blog was when I started this one. I was just looking for a place to "park" my Sunday sermons and the columns I then wrote for a weekly Community Press newspaper in the Cincinnati area.

As you can see from perusing the archives on the right, it took some time for me to build up steam as a blogger. After a time though, it became a daily exercise and remained so for a few years. I believe that it sharpened my skills as a communicator, as the newspaper column had previously, and so I enjoyed the discipline of daily blogging.

What with changes that have come to my life in recent years, the blogging has become less frequent. But I still enjoy it a lot.

The blog has brought interesting people into my life, most of whom I've only "met" online. I have been able to actually meet several of my blogging colleagues though, back when I attended the first GodBlogCon at Biola University in California. That was a real treat!

But I truly have enjoyed corresponding with people from all over the world and count it a pleasure to have made your acquaintance in this way.

Though I have rarely advocated political positions here, I have, because of my interest in history and my past involvement with politics, sometimes written about politics and history. I seem to be doing a lot less of that these days. My focus is tighter as I take my cue from the apostle Paul, striving not to be distracted by the noisy and unimportant, and knowing nothing but the crucified Christ.

Besides, time and experience have shown me that I know a lot less about "everything" than I once thought I did. Preachers aren't pundits and that includes me. But of the God made known in Jesus Christ I am certain and I learn more about Him all the time; that's why I talk so much about Him here.

A few tidbits:

• The blog was originally called, Better Living, which was the Norman Vincent Peale-sounding name I had chosen some years before for the newspaper column I wrote beginning in 1998.
• The first post was a column I had written in September, 2011 regarding what to tell children about the terrorist attacks of that month.
• There have been a total of 5112 posts, many of them short "pointers," directing people to other places on the Internet. But there's been a lot of original writing here, some in embarrassingly great need of editing, ranging from grammatical correction through dramatic paring down, all the way to merciful deletion of entire posts. Despite the flaws, I've decided to leave it all here: the good, the bad, and the really ugly.
• I don't know for certain when I added SiteMeter to track visits to the blog, although I believe it was sometime in 2005. Since its installation, there have been a total of 724,443 visits to the blog, with 1,187,139 page views.
• Along the way, I've written a number of serials, most written especially for the blog and some being sermon series and sets of devotions used in the congregations I've served during these past nine years, Friendship Lutheran Church near Amelia, Ohio (I was there from 1990 to 2007) and Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio (where I've served since November 2007). My favorite sets of blog posts include the Happiness Project, 40 Days to Servanthood, Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, the Promise and the Perils of Democracy, Opening Your Spiritual Gifts, and two sets of posts I did, one on how Christians might think about immigration reform and another on how they might think about the 2008 presidential elections. (In neither of these last two sets of posts did I advocate specific positions. I simply sought to give people Biblical prisms through which they might consider the issues at hand.) (By the way, you can use the search function at the top of this blog page to look for anything mentioned above that might interest you. You can also do separate Google or Yahoo searches.)
• There are several posts that seem to attract traffic every day. One was written six years ago, just before my wife and I celebrated our thirty-first wedding anniversary, about the lessons I'd learned regarding marriage. Another dealt with the phenomenon of tiny houses. And another is one which I think simply attracts the traffic of those looking for photographs relative to the Holocaust and Holocaust Remembrance Day.

I hope that you've enjoyed your visits here. 

I also pray that God uses this blog not just to present Christ to readers, but also, I hope, to demonstrate that if God can love and redeem and use an imperfect, sinful person like me, God can love and redeem and use anyone!

Recent Pic/Videos from Days Off and Vacation (Part 1)

Earlier this week, we took two-and-a-half days to vacation, visiting my wife's brother and his wife in Virginia. We saw some sights in both Virginia and West Virginia together. Below is a little travelogue of that adventure, along with videos and photographs from some recent days off.

Here I am rhapsodizing about a beautiful morning we spent in northwestern Ohio at the home of friends near Napoleon. That section of the state is reclaimed swampland and is great farm country. It was May 11 and it was only later that day, with all the rain we've had in the Midwest, that farmers were able to get into their fields to plant crops. We were there for a sad occasion: the funeral of a dear friend who was a member of our first parish, Bethlehem Lutheran Church near Okolona.

This boring video was taken on the banks of the Kanawha River in West Virginia. The Kanawha is a tributary of the Ohio River and, as you can see, on May 22, was quite swollen. It was a gorgeous, sun-drenched day for travel. I sat in the backseat, reading most of the time, while my wife drove and my mother-in-law rode shotgun...just the way I like it.

While I gassed up the car, Ann cleaned the windshield. I also shot this video, taken at a filling station as we closing in on Roanoke. The "hills" to which I refer are, of course, actually mountains. Duh!

As I dorkily announce at the beginning of this video, here we were traveling along the New River in Virginia. Catch the mountains. Gorgeous territory! (As in people, so in geography: God doesn't make junk!)

It sounded like an aviary in the Virginia neighborhood where we stayed on Sunday and Monday nights. On Monday morning, I took a stroll and listened to the birds. This one, up on a utility wire, particularly caught my attention.

What follows are some images from our trip to Floyd, Virginia, the seat of Floyd County. If you're looking for the 60s, Floyd is one place where you might find them. Aging hippies live there, leavening the place with galleries, organic food shops, and liberal politics. It's a really neat little town.

Marking the difference in Floyd is an emporium called The Republic of Floyd. That caught Ann's attention because here in Hocking County, the town of Athens, home of Ohio University, in nearby Athens County, is often referred to as "the Republic of Athens" for characteristics like those of Floyd.

The Floyd County Court House, a small building staffed by hospitable people, has, like many southern court houses, a monument to Confederate veterans of the Civil War, in addition to one honoring US veterans.

Floyd has a big blue grass music festival every year, apparently a major draw. It's happening this coming weekend.

There's also a big classical music festival in the works for Floyd.

We had an early Monday lunch at a neat Irish pub called Annie Moore's in Roanoke.

In Franklin County, Virginia, we got to meet several German Baptist families who are involved with organic farming. We visited the produce stand of one such family and later the store of a family who own an organic dairy. (The ice cream was incredibly rich there, and a huge but delicious violation of my heart-healthy diet!)

More to come later.

Don't Be Troubled; Follow Jesus!

[This was prepared to be shared with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]

John 14:1-14
This morning, as we continue to celebrate Jesus’ resurrection from the dead on the first Easter Sunday, our Gospel lesson from John takes us to a time when Jesus was teaching His disciples just before His arrest and crucifixion. Please pull out your Celebrate inserts and read what Jesus has to tell us in John 14:1-14.

Verse 1 says: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.” Jesus speaks these words in the Upper Room just before His betrayal and arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane. The disciples sense that Jesus will refuse to wage a war to chase the Romans who occupy their country from Jerusalem. He won’t make Himself king by force. The pall of death hangs over them, a sense that their Master was going to be killed.

Whether they realized it or not, the disciples knew that the people of their world—Jews and Gentiles—like Adam and Eve, the first sinners, and like all of us who descend from them, wanted to “be like God.” And what better way to clear the way to being God-like than to kill off Jesus, the Word made flesh, God incarnate?

But Jesus tells the disciples not to be troubled. That may seem like an impossible command. But it’s not.

The fact is that troubles come to us, each and every day. But we need not be troubled by our troubles. Yesterday, Becky handed me a little sack containing three crosses. She told me, “Give these to anyone who needs a little reminder.” You see, during Danny’s recent hospitalization and heart bypass surgery, she had found a similar cross in the gift shop at Mount Carmel Hospital in Columbus. When things got scary, Becky touched that cross just to remind herself that Jesus was with her. When troubles come, we can place them and ourselves in the hands of Jesus. Troubles that overwhelm others will not trouble the follower of Jesus Christ!

Verse 2 tells us why we can go through life untroubled. Look at what Jesus says: “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.”

Man, I love this passage! Everyone who repents for their sin and entrusts themselves to Jesus—which what Jesus means when He speaks of believing in Him—can spend each waking moment of this life knowing that the risen Jesus, Who has conquered death through His death and resurrection, is readying a place for us with Him in eternity! That puts the troubles we face in this life in perspective. Wherever followers of Christ arrive in this life, it isn’t our final destination.

But we dare not be flippant about that. Eternity with God is a free gift. But claiming it doesn’t come cheap.

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus says that we can have none of Him or His gifts unless He takes precedence over everything—our fathers, mothers, wives, children, even our lives.

Look now at verses 4. Jesus says: “And you know the way to the place where I am going.” Whether they realized it or not, the disciples knew the way Jesus was going. They understood that the only way Jesus could claim the kingdom He had come into the world to establish was through a cross. And the only way we can claim the life that Jesus wants to give to us is for us to submit the crucifixion of our old selves, with all its self-driven sinfulness.

That’s not something we like. A man told me about an affair he’d been having for several years. He said: “I hate myself for doing this. I love my wife. I tell myself that I’m breaking things off. But, then I set up a time to meet the other woman.  I want her.”

I think that this man wanted me to tell him, “There, there. God understands how hard it is for you. You just can’t help yourself. Keep on doing what you’re doing.”

But the fact is that while Jesus loves sinners just as we are, He also calls us away from our sin. He calls us to enlist the help of the Holy Spirit to resist temptation. He calls us to follow Him, even when it isn’t easy. He calls us—He commands us—to yield ourselves to Him, even when doing so will lead us away from the sins we enjoy. We can't hold onto Jesus and our sins at the same time. We must let go of one and hold on to the other.

Elsewhere, Jesus says, “…the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction [that is, to hell], and there are many who take it…the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it…”

Anyone who would follow Jesus and take up the resurrection He offers to those who do, must also submit to the crucifixion of our old sinful selves. We must die to ourselves so that Jesus can raise us from the dead and take us into eternity with Him. And we must do this day in and day out as long as we're breathing and tempted by sin.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it memorably: “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” Death to self is painful; but it’s the only way to God and the wholeness He wants for us.

In the next few verses, let's be honest, Thomas and Philip play dumb. Look at verses 5 and 6 of our lesson: “Thomas said to him, 'Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?' Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.' The way that Jesus is going to eternity, to resurrection from the dead, also leads through a cross and death. And the only way you and I will reach eternity with God is through faith in Jesus Christ.

Faith in Jesus is more than intellectual assent. Faith in Jesus is betting everything you have—your whole life—on Him alone.

It’s submission to that crucifixion of self I mentioned.

It’s trusting that beyond all that troubles us, Jesus is there.

It’s trusting that as we let go of our sins—all our idolatries, materialistic cravings, gossip-mongering, hatred, thievery, sexual intimacies outside of the marriage between a man and a woman, and dishonoring of parents, whether lived, thought, or fantasized—beyond all that—Christ will give us a life filled with real living.

Faith is trusting that Christ will fill us with all the joy, peace, and excitement we try to steal when we sin, but that Christ gives freely when we surrender to Him.

Faith is trusting that Christ will catch us when we fall into His arms!

Psalm 139 is a prayer to the same God we meet in Jesus: “If I climb to the sky, you're there!  If I go underground, you're there! If I flew on morning's wings to the far western horizon, You'd find me in a minute— you're already there waiting.”

Christ waits for you and me today. He’s already prepared places for us. But only the repentant who follow Him through the cross will live in those places with Him.

In verses 8 through 11, Jesus deals with a request made by Philip. Philip tells Jesus, “Show us the father and we will be satisfied.”

This is interesting coming from the apostle Philip. Philip was one of the very first to spread the news that Jesus was the long-sought Messiah, the Christ, God’s anointed King. Early in John’s Gospel, we’re told that Philip went to Nathanael and said, “We’ve found the one that Moses and the prophets said was coming. He’s Jesus of Nazareth.” When Nathanael skeptically asked if anything good could come from a blighted little town like Nazareth, Philip had said, “Come and see.”

Philip was a visual person. He had once seen Jesus and believed that Jesus was the Messiah.

But now, facing the troubling proposition that Jesus would be killed and no longer with him and his fellow disciples, Philip wanted to see God the Father.

Jesus tells Philip, “If you’ve seen Me, you’ve seen the Father.”

Some people, sometimes because of their troubles and fears, sometimes because of their boredom and lack of faith, want to see God.

Others, maybe to make themselves seem important or pious, will even claim to have special knowledge of God, including when Jesus is returning to the earth.

But the fact is that God can already be seen clearly by those who dare.

He can be seen in Jesus, on the pages of Scripture, in the waters of Holy Baptism, in the bread and the wine of Holy Communion, and in this fellowship of recovering hypocrites and sinners that the Bible calls “the body of Christ,” the Church.

The Bible introduces us to Jesus and when we see Him, we have seen the Father.

Our Gospel lesson ends with Jesus making a big promise. In verses 12 to 14, Jesus says: “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.”

While on earth, Jesus performed miracles, signs pointing to His identity as Lord of the universe. But He also voluntarily limited Himself in that time to living one human life.

Today, the risen Jesus can be everywhere simultaneously. He's here right now as we gather in His Name. He's in heaven at the same time. He can be with billions of others who call to God in His Name all at the same time.

The risen Jesus carries our prayers and our lives before the Father. And while we know that life on this earth isn’t and never will be perfect, I’m confident in saying that everyone here, either in their own lives or in the lives of family members, has been touched by all that Jesus does through His people.

Whether it’s to bring healing, hope, or simple direction for our lives, Christ uses His Church to do greater things than He accomplished while on earth.

The Church is the conduit by which Christ’s grace and power is brought into the world each day. A woman approached me after worship. I had never met her before, but our church—one of my previous congregations—had prayed for her. Her cancer was in remission. “I don’t know what my future holds,” she told me. “But I knew when the people of the Church were praying for me. God became very present to me. And that has changed me forever.”

I later  presided over that woman’s funeral. A life had been changed for eternity because Jesus is still empowering His people to pray, repent, believe, proclaim, love, and serve their way to doing greater things than He accomplished during his three decades of life on earth.

Whatever troubles we face, we know where we are going and we know that Christ will do great (and unexpected) things through those who follow Him. We need not be troubled. That's because Jesus is “the way, and the truth, and the life,” the one and only way to God for the whole human race. Keep following Jesus and keep sharing Him, confident of the place He's preparing for you. Amen!

Forever Young

See here.

Check out Psalm 92:

It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to your name, O Most High;
²
to declare your steadfast love in the morning, and your faithfulness by night,
³
to the music of the lute and the harp, to the melody of the lyre.
⁴
For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work; at the works of your hands I sing for joy.
⁵
How great are your works, O Lord! Your thoughts are very deep!
⁶
The dullard cannot know, the stupid cannot understand this:
⁷
though the wicked sprout like grass and all evildoers flourish, they are doomed to destruction forever,
⁸ but you, O Lord, are on high forever.
⁹
For your enemies, O Lord, for your enemies shall perish; all evildoers shall be scattered.
¹⁰
But you have exalted my horn like that of the wild ox; you have poured over me fresh oil.
¹¹
My eyes have seen the downfall of my enemies; my ears have heard the doom of my evil assailants.
¹²
The righteous flourish like the palm tree, and grow like a cedar in Lebanon.
¹³
They are planted in the house of the Lord; they flourish in the courts of our God.
¹⁴
In old age they still produce fruit; they are always green and full of sap,
¹⁵showing that the Lord is upright; he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.

Christians Having Fun...by Being Christians

Earlier today, a bunch of folks from Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan and friends had a blast...by being Christian!

This was "pick-up, sort, and deliver" day for our PPSST! Community Food Drive.

The letters, PPSST, stand for pasta, peanut butter, spaghetti sauce, soup, and tuna. Here's how PPSST unfolded:

On Saturday, May 14, members of Saint Matthew distributed empty sacks provided to us by the Kroger store in Logan, with a note attached. The sacks were left at 700 Logan doorsteps. The attached note told folks that the following Saturday, May 21, sometime after 11:00AM, we would pick up sacks filled with the PPSST items.

Of course, members of Saint Matthew also added items they wanted to give as well.

After we picked up the items today, their expiration dates were checked, then sorted and boxed.

Then, we took the items to Hocking County Job and Family Services, which works with the unemployed and needy persons in our community. This dedicated government agency knows the needs of people and will distribute the collected food to persons on their clientele lists. Any additional food items we might receive beyond today will go to the Clearing House Assistance Program (CHAP) emergency food bank.

This is the third year that we've undertaken this particular servanthood project. As usual, it was a lot of fun!

This year, it acquired an additional letter; it used to be PSST! But it's still a great practical way for us to join our neighbors in sharing the love of Christ with others.

We've distributed empty sacks and picked up filled ones in different Logan neighborhoods in each of the first three years. The response has been great everywhere we've gone.

On a monthly basis, Saint Matthew members donate food items to CHAP. That, PPSST, and other undertakings are all examples of how we strive to obey Jesus' great commandment to love God and love others.

[Phyllis is a blur as she sorts items.]

[Some of the boxes filled with food taken to Job and Family Services.]

[By the way, this is some of what I had in mind when I wrote about Christians getting on with the business of living, here.]

When Will the World End? Who Cares?

Though they may disagree on particulars, all Christians believe that one day, Jesus will return, bringing an end to this universe and fully establishing the new heaven and the new earth the Bible talks about.

That's why many of us, including we Lutherans, confess in the Nicene Creed, the most widely accepted statement of Christian belief in the world, that Jesus "will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end."

But anyone who claims to know the day, month, hour, or year of Jesus' return either is, at worst, a counterfeit Christian or, at best, a misinformed one.

A quick look at words of Jesus cited in three of the New Testament books--Matthew, Mark, and Luke--known as "gospels" will show this. Jesus says:

"Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

"But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." (Mark 13:31-32)

For an attentive Christian, these words raise a question which, ultimately, we may find unanswerable: If Jesus is God enfleshed and if He and the Father are one, as He teaches and as we believe, then how is it possible for the Father to know the date of Jesus' return without Jesus knowing it?

I personally can only speculate that as part of God's risk of subjecting Himself to temptation and sin and being human in order to bond with the human race for whom Jesus came to die and rise, it was decided that God the Son would be walled off from any unfair advantage over the rest of us in matters like knowing when this world will end. It may be a topic for discussion in eternity one day, though I suspect that by then, it won't matter much to us.

But the real take-away from Jesus' words is that He claimed to have no knowledge of when He would return to close the curtain on life in this world.

And why would that be? Because it's not important to know.

Following the words of Jesus cited above, He also says:

Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.”

Jesus' point is clear. Don't waste time speculating. Don't waste money on billboards and ads in major newspapers saying you know the date of Jesus' return. Nobody, no matter how convinced or convincing they may be, knows. Our job is just to be ready for His return.

And who is ready?

• All who have taken up Jesus' offer on the free gifts of forgiveness of sin and everlasting life by turning from sin (repenting) and entrusting their lives to Him (believing).
• All those who, out of gratitude for the free gifts of Jesus, seek to live out the great commandment (love God, love others) and the great commission (make disciples, new followers of Jesus, by sharing the true story of what Jesus did through cross and empty tomb for everyone).

I don't know when Jesus is returning. Nobody on earth has a clue about that. But you'll be ready if you let Jesus be the ultimate boss (Lord) of your life. Now, trusting in Him, get busy with living!*

*This is exactly what the members of our congregation, Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, are going to do--get busy--as we conduct our community food drive today. Sharing Jesus in practical ways is one of the things we Christians need to be about, not speculating on when the world will end.

How to Have Faith

"I wish I had a faith like yours," a man told me one Sunday. "It makes me feel guilty that I don't."

"Don't ever wish you were someone else, especially not me," I answered. "I believe in Jesus, for sure, and I'm grateful that He went to the cross and rose from the dead for people like me.

"But I'm just a forgiven sinner. And every day I still do, say, and think sinful things, things that don't show love for God or love for others. I have to go back to God every single day, asking Him for forgiveness and for help in living like a Christian."

The man said that he understood all that. What he wanted was a stronger faith. He wanted to be more sure about Jesus.

With a clearer grasp of what the man was getting at, I then shared with him one of the most important truths I've learned on how to appropriate faith in Christ, as well as on how to enjoy a deepening relationship with Christ.

"Here's what I've found," I told him. "You have to live into faith. No amount of praying, reading, or thinking will get you there, as important as those things are. Faith in Christ is a gift from God. All you have to do is grab hold of it. And you can grab hold of it when you live your way into it."

As many who have read this blog or heard me preach know, I was an atheist when my wife and I first married. Marrying an atheist wasn't the smartest thing Ann could have done. She was a Lutheran Christian and it would be hard for her to build a strong marriage with a husband moving in a different direction from the one in which she moved.

But early in our marriage, mostly to get Ann off my back for sleeping in late on Sundays, I started going to worship with her at the Lutheran congregation of which she was a member.

I liked what I saw and experienced there. The members were real, down to earth people who dealt with real issues in their lives and also had real faults. What I learned from them, as I've told others, is that the church--any church--is a hospital for hypocrites, a place for sinners to come and be nudged toward a new way of life by the God we meet there.

I found that whatever tough times or personal flaws of character the members of Ann's home church dealt with in their lives, they kept coming back to Jesus. They kept seeking healing and the power for living morally better lives in the hospital for hypocrites, the church.

In worship, they confessed their sins, heard God's Word of forgiveness and new life through Christ, and tried to follow Jesus in their everyday lives.

In spite of myself, I found that I wanted to be like these people. I wanted to have faith in Jesus. But I really didn't know how to get it. (I was also too embarrassed to tell even my wife that this was what I wanted. I guess I didn't want to appear either weak or ignorant.)

Then, without knowing that this desire to have the faith was percolating in me, the pastor of Ann's church stopped by our apartment one evening. "Would the two of you take over as leaders of the junior high youth group?" he asked.

I had never admitted to the pastor that I was an atheist. But I was still on the roll of a Methodist church in which I'd been confirmed. So, I tried to use that as a an excuse to say, "You know," I told him, "I'm not even a Lutheran." He wasn't buying it. "We won't hold that against you," he said with a smile. Left out of defenses against taking on this task, I retreated, certain that Ann would put a stop to the whole thing. "Ann just told him, "We'll do it." "Well, if Ann wants to do it," I told him, "I guess I could try to help her."

This was a turning point in my road to faith. My wife and I were suddenly supposed to provide some spiritual leadership to young people. That entailed getting to know the kids and providing them with an environment in which it was safe for them to talk with God and interact with others in their own unique Christian way.

I started doing things that were needed for me to play my role with some sort of authenticity and effectiveness. I...

• showed up for the evening youth group gatherings
• hung out with the kids
• listened to what was happening in their lives
• helped plan activities
• listened to their Bible devotions
• tried to pray, though at first seemed a little weird to me.

Later, I began to more seriously do things that would help me understand what I was doing alongside my wife when we hung out with the youth. Among other things, I...

• attended worship regularly
• began to read the Bible (I couldn't believe I was doing this. But I was...and enjoying it!)
• started attending adult Sunday School class and adult Bible studies

Notice the progression: I moved from activity to appropriation of the faith; from living the Christian faith to actually believing it.

If you want Christ in your life or if you want to enjoy a deepening faith relationship with Christ, I recommend following this pattern. If you're not a Christian, find a church and, without expecting to be a leader (in fact, always expect and aspire to be a servant), volunteer to be involved in some ministry the congregation does. It might be...

• helping collect food for area needy
• corresponding with a child sponsored by the congregation through organizations like World Vision or Compassion International
• driving an elderly person or a family with young children to church or to doctor appointments
• joining in whenever the congregation does a community kindness outreach
• if you're a musician, offering to play your instrument (it could be brass or woodwind, strings or piano, guitar or bass, harmonica or bongo drums, whatever) for worship or for other gatherings 
• volunteering to go on a church mission trip, whether it's in town or to impoverished Third World locations
• helping the homeless

It could be a million other things like these.

But whatever it is, if you want faith or you want a deeper faith, find a worthy Christian ministry and get involved.

Live into your faith and the living Jesus will live in you in ways that bring you confidence, hope, and...a deeper faith.
As long as you haven't landed at a church filled with institutional gatekeepers or where your particular talents are wildly out of sync, I believe something incredible will happen to you. As you live as a believer in Jesus, God will turn you into a believer in Jesus.

If you're a member of a congregation, this will entail getting off your tail. It will mean getting in the game. Suddenly, I think you'll find, that a faith you once found boring or meaningless will come alive. Jesus will come alive to you.

I have seen this work in countless people. But how? The answer, I think, is that Christian faith is not about us. It's what God has done for us in Jesus. And it's about sharing forgiveness, hope, and new life that comes from God with others. Living into Christian faith--serving others in Christ's Name before we fully understand what that means--gets our minds off of ourselves, cultivating the belief that, no matter what, God is with us.

Freed from the slavery to ourselves, God's Spirit empowers us to trust in Christ and to get on with the business of living.

When that happens, the Spirit has an open will on which to imprint new ways of living and thinking.

Live into Christian faith and it will grow inside of you.

Want to Know Why N.T. Wright's Books Are So Great?

Whether writing for general audiences, for clergy, or for Biblical theologians, the qualities of deep reverence for God and thorough scholarship are apparent in the writings of N.T. (Tom) Wright. This short post tells you why. Humility before the Lord and the world has made Wright a powerful spokesperson for Christ in this confused and confusing age.

Here is a link to the N.T. Wright page on Amazon. Laypeople, clergy, and scholars alike will really enjoy his 'For Everyone' commentaries on the books of the New Testament. They're great for anyone wanting to understand the New Testament.

"Why your best try is such a miserable failure"

Matt Johnson presents Martin Luther on our unfree human will.

This Just In: I AM a Dork

My dorkiness was confirmed today (once again) by the fact that I was psyched to rip into the package containing the latest volume in the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible. There had been a delay of several months since the publication of the last book and in an email to me about two months ago, a spokesperson for the company wasn't certain when the next installment would be released. He assured me that, as a subscriber to the series of books, the next volume would be sent to me as soon as the ink dried. So, it came as a happy surprise for me to see it in my mailbox today.

Of course...ahem...my excitement may have been deepened by the fact that a note on the packaging indicated that the new book's subject is the Old Testament book, Song of Solomon (aka: Song of Songs), a sometimes saucy celebration of the marital love enjoyed by husband and wife.

Whenever I read or think about Song of Solomon, I remember the episode of M*A*S*H in which Father Mulcahy, visiting the wounded and sick, comes upon a soldier reading the Bible intently. Delighted, Mulcahy asks the young man what book of the Bible he's reading. The soldier says, "Song of Solomon." Mulcahy grabs the Bible from him and says that it might be a bit too much for him to read right then.

But, back to my dorkiness. Anybody who is serious about understanding Scriptures will be well helped by all the commentaries in the Brazos series. I own all the volumes published so far and each one has deepened my understanding of the Biblical books covered and helped me in thinking about their theological, practical application. I've been especially helped (so far) by Stanley Hauerwas' volume on Matthew, Risto Saarinen's on The Pastoral Epistles and Philemon and Jude, and David L. Stubbs' work on Numbers.

God Can Heal Our Wounds Today

Thanks to Pastor Deb Grant for this.

'Healer of Our Every Ill,' #738 in With One Voice, comes to mind here. It was composed by Marty Haugen. You can find clips from the hymn here.

The Only Way to God

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]

John 10:1-10
There’s a common belief held by many in our culture these days. You hear it all the time, whether in barber shops, on TV talk shows, or at church meetings. It’s the belief that all religious convictions are equal in their ability to lead people to God. You don’t need to give your sins or your life to Jesus exclusively, some people assert. They say, “All religions are headed to the same place.” Is that true?

Not according to Jesus! And in today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus uses two illustrations to point us to Who He is and to the relationship with God that you and I…and every person on the planet…can have only through Him.

But before considering what Jesus has to tell us today, we should set the scene. How is it that Jesus came to speak the words we find in John 10:1-10?

It all started when Jesus gave sight to a blind man in John 9. That caused a controversy because Jesus dared to do this loving deed on a Sabbath day. Jesus’ action made some of Jesus' fellow Jews--the Pharisees--so angry that when the blind man He healed said that Jesus must be from God, they threw the man out of the temple, no longer considering him a faithful Jew.

Of course, at one level, the Pharisees were nothing like people today who claim that all religious beliefs lead to God. The Pharisees believed that only by abiding by their extensive lists of religious rules could one be right with God. But, based on what God has revealed of Himself in both the Old and New Testaments, both the advocates of anything-goes spirituality in the twenty-first century and the Pharisees of the first century have one big thing in common: They are equally wrong. Accepting the assertions of either group will lead us away from God and the life God offers only in Jesus Christ.

Over the centuries, starting with a people to whom God gave a land and a promise, God has revealed Himself and His plan for the human race. From the beginning, the plan for a right relationship with God and for a life with Him that lasts forever has been the same. We are to give our lives back to the Giver of our lives and give our lives only to Him.

Genesis says that Abraham, the patriarch of Biblical faith, believed in God and God’s promises and that God “reckoned it to him as righteousness.” Abraham was right with God because he entrusted his life to God. He believed in God.

The New Testament book of Hebrews tells us that through the centuries, God revealed Himself through the prophets of Israel, but in these last days, God has revealed Himself definitively in Jesus. If we want to live with God, we need to listen Jesus.

All who turn from sin and believe in Jesus, God the Son, have the same blessings enjoyed by Abraham: rightness with God and life with God.

It isn’t because God is an egomaniac or because God wants to establish an exclusive club that the first commandment is, “You shall have no other gods” or that God commands exclusive fidelity to Jesus Christ.

It’s that God wants to give us life and only He can give it. Indeed, He will only give us life and, as Jesus puts it in today's Gospel lesson, life "abundantly," through Jesus Christ and our faith in Him.

All other roads are dead ends, literally dead ends.

So, in today's lesson, Jesus says that He is the shepherd of God’s sheep. Only Jesus can lead us into God’s sheepfold. People who try to get into the kingdom of God by other means are—whether through good works, other religious beliefs, or all manner of cosmic niceness—are, Jesus says, thieves and bandits. Look at verses 2 to 5 of the Gospel lesson printed on the Celebrate insert:

The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.

In this illustration, Jesus is the shepherd. God the Father is the gatekeeper.

For just a second, think of God’s kingdom as a show everybody (including you and me) wants to see. The problem is that the gatekeeper—God the Father—will issue tickets to only one kind of customer: People who are absolutely clean and clear of sin.

That would leave us all on the outside, pining for a relationship with God because, as the Bible says, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

Standing there in our sins, we would be without hope except for one thing: Jesus, the shepherd of the sheep, tells the gatekeeper, “It’s OK. She’s with me. He’s mine. You can let them in. I paid for their sins on the cross, the sacrifice of a sinless human being who didn’t deserve death on behalf of all other sinful human beings who deserved death.”

All who repent and believe in Christ are ushered into God’s eternal kingdom—long before their lives on this earth have ended, if they dare. Even now--even today--if you dare to trust in Him, you are living in Christ's eternal kingdom. As our second lesson from Peter reminds us, until we rise again, we live in a fallen world where suffering and challenges happen. But if suffering is a reality that can and does come to any of us, it's better to go through this life with Jesus leading us than to try to go it alone.

Those who heed Jesus’ voice live each day knowing that whatever our sins, deficiencies, and shortcomings, we belong to God forever! He is our ticket into eternity!

Like sheep attuned to the shepherd’s voice, when you dial into God through a relationship with Christ, you begin to know His voice. It brings incredible comfort, hope, and energy, straight from God, into your life!

Sometimes that voice will come with direction we'd rather not hear or will call us to do things we'd rather not do. I was the first person in my seminary class to interview for a call. It was for an associate pastor's position. There was another candidate who would be interviewing. Her candidacy made mine a long-shot because she had done her internship at that congregation. But my interview went well and, before Ann and I headed back to Columbus, the senior pastor told me he would be in touch in a few days. Days turned into weeks and weeks turned into a month, and still no word from the senior pastor or the congregation.

More than a month after the interview, I was scheduled to be at the district convention, where, along with all the recently graduated seminarians, I would be trotted onstage to be introduced. In the evening, a service of Holy Communion was held in a college auditorium. We had just finished confessing our sins when I looked to see that senior pastor. "Mark," he said, "God wouldn't let me take Holy Communion until I came to apologize to you. I'm so sorry I never contacted you to let you know that the other candidate received the call. I didn't want to tell you that, so I kept putting off contacting you. Would you please forgive me?"

You see, that senior pastor was known by the Shepherd of the sheep, Jesus. And he knew Jesus. So, when Jesus called on him to make things right, that's exactly what he did.

The Shepherd speaks to His children in other ways too.

A member of this congregation recently told me that after her husband died, she was sobbing in her bed one night, seeking comfort, when she sensed a hand on her shoulder. So real was the touch she felt, that she reached around to feel for the unseen hand. No hand was felt, but the touch was no less real. In that quiet exchange, one of Christ’s sheep heard His voice of comfort and healing. She was comforted because she is one of Jesus’ sheep. Jesus knows His own and His own know Him!

A friend of mine has pastored a Lutheran congregation for decades. In spite of his faithfulness and innovative leadership, the congregation hasn’t grown. It’s actually declined in membership, attendance, giving, and activity. Day after day, year after year, he has prayed and worked faithfully, sharing Christ, leading people to deeper levels of faithfulness. But things have only gotten worse.

Then one day last year, after a long time in prayer, he sensed God asking him, “You pray for this renewal to happen, for new people to come to faith in Christ. But have you prayed that all the evil in the world that conspires against that happening be kept from this church, kept from its people, kept from the places where worship and education and planning happen?” No, my friend told God, he hadn’t done that in prayer. “Do it now!” God seemed to tell him forcefully.

And so, my friend went all through the church facility, praying in every room, asking God to take control of all that happened there, to displace Satan and all evil from every inch, and to fill the building and the people of the church with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with the power and truth of the Word of God!

Things haven’t yet changed in that congregation. But my friend now knows they will change. That’s because after he had prayerfully surrendered himself and his congregation and prayed that God would prevail over all evil that assailed them, the good shepherd assured him that all he had prayed for would come to pass.

God gave him a vision of a sanctuary filled with joyful people excited to be in God’s presence, excited to give themselves in worship to God on Sunday morning in anticipation of using their whole lives to worship God through the week. The voice of the shepherd spoke to my friend and he was filled with comfort, renewed hope, and holy energy!

But Jesus uses another image in our lesson to describe Who He is; He says that He is also the gate to eternity.

Years ago, Ann and I went to a party and realized after we got back home that we’d locked ourselves out of the house. Long story short, with Ann’s help I was able to push myself through a first-floor window that we had left partially opened. I was halfway into the house by this route, my arms and torso inside, my legs still hanging outside, when a thought crossed my mind: How would I explain this to a policeman? After all, if you belong somewhere, you don’t have to break in. You go through the front door.

Jesus is the front door, the only door—the only gate—to life with God, to the abundant, everlasting life that God wants to give to all people. You can't get into God's kingdom in any other way! “No one comes to the Father except through Me,” Jesus says elsewhere. “If you know Me, you will know the Father also. From now on, you do know Him and have seen Him.”

The real quest of the Christian life is to get to know the God revealed in Jesus Christ. This “quest” isn’t an onerous task. It’s a joy like falling in love.

That’s why I hope that every member of Saint Matthew will not only regularly worship and receive the Body and Blood of our Lord, but also join us, even belatedly, in reading the Bible in a year.

I hope that every member will be in Sunday School. (Yes, every member.)

I hope that we’ll all make prayer a daily habit.

I hope that you’ll help us share Christ in a very practical way when we collect those filled grocery sacks next Saturday during our PPSST! Food Drive.

These are all ways to follow the voice of Jesus, ways to enter more deeply into a relationship with God that only comes through Jesus.

This past week, at the graveside of our friend Betty, we heard her confirmation verses. Betty chose them sixty years ago when she was confirmed at the age of 23. They're words of Jesus from Matthew 10:32-33:

"Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.” 

Freedom from sin comes only to those who turn away from the dead-end ways of the world and trust the only One Who can give us forgiveness and new life, Jesus, the good shepherd and the gate—the front door—to eternity.

Let yourself get to know Him better.

Trust in Him and in His Word alone.

As you do, you’ll hear His voice over the din of an often-confusing world and He will lead you to a life prepared for you, a life that here will sometimes bring inexplicable challenges, but also a life that never ends, a life filled with the presence of God, today and always.

The Shepherd is calling you today. Follow Him…and live!