The Hour Is Getting Late

Today is the Sixth Sunday of Easter. Below, join the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, for worship. Beneath the video, find the written text of today's message. God bless you!



Acts 17:29-31
The Bob Dylan song, All Along the Watchtower, famously covered by Jimi Hendrix, contains an apocalyptic vision that plays out in the dialog of a joker and a thief. In the second verse, we hear,

“‘No reason to get excited,’ the thief, he kindly spoke 'There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke But you and I, we’ve been through that, and this is not our fate So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.’”

“The time for having a false view of reality is through,” Dylan’s thief tells the joker. Life isn’t, to paraphrase Jesus, about eating, drinking, and being merry. It’s not about acquiring the most toys before the hearse takes our bodies to the cemetery. Like the thief crucified on the cross next to Jesus, who repented and turned to Jesus in faith, Dylan’s thief insists, “It’s time to get real. The hour is getting late.” That truth has a special urgency for me today. Maybe it does for you too. We all know that the conditions Jesus said were necessary for His return had already been met during His time on the earth: That’s why He said that His return to bring an end to the life of this old, dying universe could come at any time. But these days of the most lethal pandemic to visit the planet in one-hundred years remind us that we are mortal, that this life is fragile, that, whether for us as individuals or as the human race, “the hour is getting late.” And that’s true whether every one of us gathered for worship today survive this dangerous moment and this world continues for another million years or if Jesus returns tomorrow. The promise of God’s Word is, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Acts 2:21, Romans 10:13, Joel 2:32). God’s Word tells us that faith comes when we hear the gospel Word of Jesus, the Christ and, through our hearing of this good news and the faith in Christ this Word from the Holy Spirit creates within us, we are saved from sin, death, and eternal separation from God. But, are we listening? Are we paying heed to this Word from God, the Word about Christ, that can save us? Or are we speaking falsely? Are we among those who treat all talk about God, Jesus, life, death, judgment,  salvation, or the lateness of the hour, like a joke?

Our second lesson for today, Acts 17:16-31, presses these questions on us. Acts, you know, is the New Testament book of the Bible that tells what the Holy Spirit did in the lives of the first believers in Jesus through the first three decades or so after Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. In today’s lesson, the apostle Paul enters the city of Athens. Athens was a major center of thought and debate. It was also, as Paul noticed while walking through the city, a place in which people worshiped all sorts of gods, a bit like today, when people have “pick and choose” religion, even when their religion is atheism in which they worship human brains, will power, or cunning. Paul, who believed in God and had encountered the risen Jesus, may have been tempted to lash out at the Athenians for their idolatries. But Paul had bigger fish to fry. He needed to share the good news of new and everlasting life for all who repent--turn from sin and trust in Jesus Christ as their God and Savior--with these people.

All of which brings us to the last three verses of Paul’s message for the Athenians, a message for you and me and for the whole world this morning. Take a look, please, at verse 29. After quoting one of the Greeks’ poets who said that human beings were the offspring of a Deity the Greeks themselves didn’t know, Paul says: “Therefore since we are God’s offspring [as we are, since Genesis assures us that you and I are made in the image of God], we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill.”

“Let us not speak falsely now,” Paul is saying. Human beings worship false idols like money, security, power, and status. Why? For some, it’s because it’s easier to worship a god you can see--whether it’s a statue erected in the town square or Ben Franklins in our wallets--than to worship the God you can’t see. But the bigger reason that human beings worship idols is our love of control. All of our favorite godlets are things that, if we can acquire them, we think we can control to our own benefit. We’re prone to idolatry because we worship ourselves: our comfort, our freedom, our power. But, Paul says, this is a lie we tell ourselves. We are not in control and the quicker we realize that, the better off we’ll be.

Then Paul says in verse 30 of our lesson: “In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.” God is compassionate. God is patient with us. But Paul tells the Athenians (and us), “Now that you’ve heard the truth that you’re born in bondage to sin and can only be freed from God the Son Jesus, Who has overcome sin and death, you can’t go on living like you’ve been living.” Paul says it’s time to repent. To repent is to turn to God in sorrow for sin and in recognition of our need of God. When we repent in Jesus’ name, God not only forgives us for our sin, He gives us new and ever-renewing life with Him that never ends. Because of the power of sin and death, The Small Catechism reminds us that we need to live in “daily repentance and sorrow for sin” so that “the new person should come forth every day and rise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.”

Finally, in verse 31 of our lesson, Paul tells us, “For [God] has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.” The phrase translated as with justice is more literally, with righteousness. When Jesus returns, an event which His resurrection from the dead assures is going to happen, He will see two kinds of people. He will judge each person according to the version of righteousness they cling to in this life.

• To those who have clung to the notions of righteousness or right living favored by this world--whether it’s salvation by good works or material wealth or influence or ease, God will give this world and the eternal destruction for which it’s ticketed.
• To those who, like the thief on the cross at the last moment, cling to Christ alone for righteousness, God will give everlasting life in His kingdom.

The times for speaking falsely, for treating life as a joke, for putting Jesus off until some other time, for unrepentant sin, or for keeping Jesus at arm’s length have ended. In the next months--and likely in the next two years, if Jesus still hasn’t returned to judge the living and the dead, our lives, our worship, our church gatherings will look and feel different from what they have. Masks, social distancing, online worship and online small groups: Love for God expressed in love for neighbor and an unwillingness, like Jesus, Who refused to jump off the pinnacle of the temple, to put God to the test, will make precautions like these necessary.

But all of this only makes the call that Paul issued to the Athenians and that he issues to us today all the more urgent. First, we must understand that the God we know in Jesus is a living God not to be ignored. Second, we need each day to turn from sin and turn to the God we meet in Jesus. He alone gives life to those who trust in Him. And third, we need to cling in faith to Jesus. As a gracious gift, He covers us with the perfect righteousness of God so that when it comes our time to be judged, God won’t see us in our sin but will only see the Savior Jesus to Whom we cling. Dear friends, the hour is getting late; today and everyday, cling to Jesus Christ alone. Amen

Tonight's Weeknight Bible Study of Romans, Chapter 12

As I Went Out One Morning

Today, while preparing both for this evening's class on Romans 12 and the Sunday message, I've kept unaccountably hearing Bob Dylan's As I Went Out One Morning in my head.

The song appears on his 1967 LP, John Wesley Harding. (Dylan, who loves to riff off of and distort popular culture even as he remakes it, took the name from the Old West bad guy John Wesley Hardin. In his ode to a fictional Harding, Dylan sings of a kind of saintly Robin Hood "never known to kill an honest man.")

As I Went Out One Morning is a ballad. It has a fetching folk melody and is written in iambic pentameter, using the quatrain form. Simply put, each verse is composed of eight lines, each syllable having alternating accentuation. It fairly mimics the 1937/40 poem by W.H. Auden, As I Walked Out One Evening. Dylan's rhyme scheme is A-B-C-B-D-E-F-E for all three verses, each composed of two quatrains. It's a lyrical form that's particularly suitable to music.

But in listening to As I Went Out One Morning a few moments ago, I realized again that Dylan may have had more in mind than just creating a song or mimicking Auden.

Dylan presents us with three characters: the narrator, a damsel in chains, and Tom Paine. Paine, of course, was the famous writer whose pamphlet, Common Sense, George Washington ordered read to the suffering American troops at Valley Forge during the Revolutionary War.

According to Wikipedia, Dylan received the Thomas Paine Award from something called the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee in 1963. When, in his acceptance speech, Dylan said that he could understand the complaints about American society that JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald had voiced, he was booed off the stage. The Wikipedia article suggests that As I Went Out One Morning is Dylan's response to that incident, apparently resenting what he saw as an infringement on his free speech by an organization that celebrated free speech.

That may be.

But Dylan isn't always that straightforward in what he writes and I wonder if there isn't another layer of meaning here, no matter what experience may have immediately triggered the writing of the song.

Auden's poem was spoken by three voices: that of a man; that of a woman, his love; and a clock. The poem is about the impact and inevitability of time and what it brings.

The narrator in Dylan's song is undoubtedly Dylan himself, still smarting from the controversy he created at the awards ceremony. I take "...the fairest damsel that ever did walk in chains" to be America. Dylan sees this damsel as he is out walking "to breathe the air around Tom Paine's."

Paine's Common Sense was an important and inspirational document for the American Revolution. It portrayed the Revolution as a war for liberty. Freedom would then be "the air around" Tom Paine.

But in 1775, Paine wrote another important essay in which he called for the abolition of slavery. He would become more vocal on this as time went on. The failure of the United States to see that the principle of freedom should necessarily mean the abolition of slavery embittered and angered him. The damsel in chains then is the United States, imprisoned by its failure to abide by its own founding principle.

As in 1963, America still bears the chains of its slave past. The chains still wrap us tightly with the continued existence of racial injustice.

At the end of the song, Dylan sings:

Just then Tom Paine, himself
Came running from across the field
Shouting at this lovely girl
And commanding her to yield
And as she was letting go her grip
Up Tom Paine did run,
“I’m sorry, sir,” he said to me
“I’m sorry for what she’s done”

I'm not a huge fan of Thomas Paine. He correctly enunciated the principle of liberty as foundational for the United States. But he failed to learn, as Washington, Hamilton, Jay, and others did, that liberty can't be maintained if there isn't mutual accountability. That's why after the United States tried to walk on the single leg of freedom as an operating principle under the disastrous Articles of Confederation, the Founding Generation (without Thomas Jefferson, who was in France) wrote the Constitution. That completed the American Revolution and ratified its principles, freedom and mutual accountability, the latter of which many seem to forget about today. The two together are needed to avoid the tyranny of the mob on the one hand and the tyranny of elites on the other.

But, if what I think Dylan is saying in this song is accurate, I believe that he's right. We will never breathe the air around Tom Paine's--the air of true freedom, if we don't finally and fully divest ourselves of racism. Otherwise the damsel in chains will keep imprisoning us all. Slavery and racial injustice are the things done by the damsel for which Tom Paine apologizes in the song. 

Dr. King was right when he said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”


Bob Dylan - As I Went Out One Morning from Rufus Corleone on Vimeo.

[According to Wikipedia, Dylan has performed this song only once since he recorded. For a guy who performs constantly, that's remarkable.]

Who's Wise?

In starting my review of Romans 12, which we'll be covering during our weeknight Bible study over on Facebook tonight, one part of one verse really struck me. It comes in verse 16. Paul says: "Never be wise in your own sight."

I think it's probably true that the moment we think we're wise, we're not.

Biblical Christian faith does not value self-sufficiency. God calls us into a community of shalom, of peace with God, with others, and with God's creation born of faith in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ.

And if we consult with only ourselves over our decisions and attitudes in life, we create a self-confirming feedback loop in which we assure ourselves that what we want to do or believe is right because it's what we want to do or believe. This is a prescription for being unwise.

That's why listening is so important for Christians.

First and foremost, we're to listen to God. Not our hearts. ("The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?" says Jeremiah 17:9) Not our thoughts. (There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death," we read in Proverbs 14:12, ESV). Not our preferences. (When Jesus asked God the Father that the cup of suffering He was to "drink" in His suffering and crucifixion, He also prayed, "...not my will, but yours be done." [Luke 22:42]) We need to listen to God, through His Word.

Second, we need to listen to committed disciples of Jesus Who also listen to God and will pray with us and for us.

Third, we need to listen to the wisdom of others, whatever their backgrounds, who have acquired expertise and experience from which we can benefit. All true wisdom originates with God, even when the person imparting it doesn't themselves believe in God. "For the LORD gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding. (Proverbs 2:6)

Above all, we should confidently ask God the Father in Jesus' name for wisdom. James 1:15 says, "If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you."

The longer I live, the less confident I am in my own wisdom, in my own capacity to discern truth or make the right decisions. But the longer I live in relationship with Christ, the more I tune into God the Father through Jesus, God the Son, the more confident I am of the decisions and attitudes God commends me to adopt. I more deeply appreciate Jesus' words to His disciples (including me) in John 15:5: "I am the vine; you are the branches...apart from me you can do nothing." I gain a deeper confidence knowing that I have asked for God's wisdom through Christ, assured like the apostle Paul that "I can do all this through [Christ] who gives me strength." (Philippians 4:13)

Just a few thoughts.

Tonight's Weeknight Bible Study of Romans 11

Tonight's Weeknight Bible Study of Romans, Chapter 10

Tonight's Weeknight Bible Study of Romans 9

Due to technical issues, we weren't able to do the weeknight Bible study on Monday evening. But we met this evening. I hope you find it helpful. God bless you. Living Water Lutheran Church

Christ's Assurance in Uncertain Times

Below you'll find, first, the entire online worship service from Living Water Lutheran Church of Centerville, Ohio. Then, the text of today's message. God bless you.



John 14:1-14

We're now some weeks into the need for sheltering-in-place and social distancing because of the coronavirus. Even as some businesses start to re-open, we know, especially those with children and those who, like me, are in multiple at-risk categories, that the new normal under which we've been living will continue for some time to come.

We may find that discouraging, even when we understand the wisdom my nephew posted on Facebook this past week, “For the record, the virus doesn’t just go away because you’re tired of being inside.” 

My Catechism students tell me when we gather each week on Zoom, “I miss my friends.” 

And people who fully understand why we can’t go about our lives as usual still wonder when there will be testing, contact tracing, and a vaccine, things that will allow them to go to work again. 

One pastor said this past week, “I’m tired of giving sermons into a computer camera.”

To all of us, Jesus says today, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me.” (John 14:1) 

Now, if this is all that Jesus had to tell us, we might dismiss these as hollow words. But Jesus gives us substantial reasons for why our hearts need not be troubled, why we can believe in Him in any and all circumstances, even when we face death itself. In fact, in today’s gospel lesson, John 14:1-14, Jesus gives us four good reasons for why our discouragement should give way to hope and confidence that can only come to those who believe in Him.

Jesus’ words today come from His farewell discourse, spoken to His disciples--His followers--on the night before He was betrayed and arrested, the day before He would offer up His sinless life as the perfect sacrifice for human sin. 

Although Jesus knows with perfect foresight the suffering that awaits Him, His thoughts are not about Himself but about the disciples who will soon watch Him die. He wants to comfort them. 

He wants to comfort you today too. 

So, Jesus gives us here four assurances that will allow us to live with untroubled hearts as we believe in Him.

Jesus’ first assurance is in verses 2-3: “My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”

The believer in Jesus lives with the daily assurance that no matter what, even beyond death itself, there is a place prepared for us. Whether it’s in the midst of a lethal pandemic here or in the perfect face-to-face fellowship with God that we will one day enjoy in eternity, Jesus has a place for us. Our place is with Him. 

He has a place for us now when we come to His table, when He speaks His life-giving Word to us, when we pray to the Father in His name. 

And Jesus will have a place for us when we die and, like Jesus before us, the Father raises us up to live with Him forever. Jesus has a place for us and it’s with Him. That’s His first assurance to us today.

Jesus’ second assurance for us today is in verses 4-6 of our lesson: “‘You know the way to the place where I am going.’ Thomas said to him, ‘Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?’ Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’”

Here, Jesus assures us that if we know Him, we will always know the way to go, even when we feel lost or discouraged. We go to Jesus. 

That’s because Jesus is the way to God. Jesus is the way to a life filled with the forgiveness, love, and presence of the God Who made us and has the destiny of the universe in His hands. 

Life in this imperfect world presents its detours; Martin Luther talks about, “false belief, despair, and other great and shameful sins…” But when Jesus is our way, we have the way through sin, death, and darkness to God Himself. Jesus is the only way to the salvation, eternal life, and wholeness that God alone can give.

Jesus’ third assurance comes in verses 7-11: “‘If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.’ Philip said, ‘Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.’ Jesus answered: ‘Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, “Show us the Father”? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves.’”

Jesus says in John 10:30, “I and the Father are one.” When you know Jesus, you know the true God Whose love for us destroys the power of sin, death, futility, doubt, and discouragement over our lives and lifts us up to life with God.

Jesus’ fourth assurance comes in verses 12-14: “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.”

Jesus tells us that when we believe in Him, trust in Him, He will do His work through us. Because from His place at the right side of the Father, He can dispatch His Holy Spirit to work in all the billions of baptized Christians who seek to serve God and to serve others in His name, Jesus does greater things now than He did while He walked on earth. 

On top of that, every Christian can pray in Jesus’ name, meaning that we pray according to His will and His character, and see His divine love and power unleashed in the lives of those for whom we pray.

It’s amazing to witness what God can do when we trust in Christ. This past week, I’d just completed one of the midweek Facebook Live Bible studies. I was sure that it had gone horribly. I was sure it had been a total disaster. Then I read some of the comments people sent. “Tonight was a very comforting way to end my day!” one person wrote. “Thanks for tonight. Had a few hours of ‘woe is me’ today but feeling good now,” said another. “So reassuring,” wrote another. To the extent that those comments were true, it had nothing to do with me and everything to do with the Lord Who promises to do great things through those who trust in Him.

So, you and I as baptized believers can live each day with confidence, hope, and assurance because of the crucified and risen Jesus. Because of Him, as we turn from sin and turn to Him in trust we know that we have a place with Him, that He is the Way to the Father, that He is the Truth on Whom our lives can be built, and that He gives us a life with the Father that reflects the glory of God Himself. That includes times like these of a pandemic, sheltering in place, and social distancing. Jesus tells us today, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me.” 

This week, may He help us live with untroubled hearts as we trust in Him: the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Amen

Tonight's Weeknight Bible Study on Romans, Chapter 8

Thursday Night's Weeknight Study of Romans, Chapter 7

Tonight's Weeknight Study of Romans, Chapter 6

Tuesday Night's Weeknight Study of Romans, Chapter 5

The Dark Shadow

Yesterday saw the fiftieth anniversary of the Kent State University shootings in Kent, Ohio. I wrote this early this morning over on Facebook.

It's one of those events that happen in life when you remember exactly where you were when you heard about it.

I was spending the day at Columbus North High School doing an article for our West High School Occident newspaper about a typical day at another city high school, comparing and contrasting. I even remember the name of the guy who told me about the Kent State shootings, a North High student, president of the student council, someone I met precisely once.

I don't know where he'd heard about it, but he said, "I just found out that the national guard killed four students at Kent State." I couldn't believe it!

The Ohio Primary was the next day, May 5. Jim Rhodes, who had had what many would characterize as a successful two-term governorship, was running for the Republican nomination for US Senator. His opponent was Robert Taft, Jr. Taft was the grandson of a president and the son of "Mr. Republican," Bob Taft, Sr., and the father of a future Ohio governor. Taft obviously had solid name recognition, buttressed by the fact that he had been, back when such things existed, an at-large member of the US House of Representatives, representing the whole state. But Rhodes was so popular that he was expected to win handily.

Not after Kent State. He was the one who'd sent the Ohio National Guard onto the campus and, as a friend of min rightly pointed out on Facebook those guardsmen were probably not trained in crowd control. Rhodes lost the primary to Taft.

That aside, it was a moment when middle America, until that point accepting of Lyndon Johnson's escalations of the war and Nixon's Vietnamization policy (i.e., a head fake) in which he talked about withdrawal but escalated and widened the war, began to take a second look. People forget that polling at the time still found a majority of the American people supported the war effort. Two and a half years later, Nixon would defeat the World War II-hero, but total opponent of the Vietnam War, Senator George McGovern.

But on May 5, 1970, almost everyone, I think, was sickened by the death of four kids engaging in what appeared to be peaceful protest.

Was that the day America changed, when we moved from blithe complicity with the actions of our government, believing that our presidents would never tell us lies (as polling in the 1950s and 60s repeatedly showed) to where we are now: always cynical, never trusting, susceptible to every cockamamie conspiracy theory that comes down the pike?

Things like that rarely happen on a single day. It took a succession of days corrosive of trust and cohesion to turn America into the balkanized, distrusting rabble that it is today, so divided, suspicious, and sunk in our partisan tribal silos that we can't seem to muster the patriotism or common sense to address an obvious national emergency with resolve and unity. Supporters of the respective parties don't mind the outrages committed by pols from their own tribes, so long as they believe their preferred agendas are advanced.

Human sin and selfishness were not invented on May 4, 1970 or the other sad days that fueled a cynicism as unrealistic today as the credulity that once characterized Americans was.

But since the days of Johnson, a crude, well-intentioned egomaniac who lied to get us to fight in Vietnam, and the cynic Richard Nixon, who tried to steal our Constitution, the shadow of their sins have hung over the presidency, the government, and country.

We need to learn to trust each other again and we need leaders worthy of that trust.

Tonight's Weeknight Study of Romans, Chapter 4

It's Gut-Check Time for American Christians

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

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

My freedom ends when it infringes on your freedom.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Want to Memorize God's Word?

Just click on the "...minutes ago" that appears below my name and it will take you to the two-minutes-twelve-seconds-long video.

Friday Night's Weeknight Study of Romans, Chapter 3

Tonight's Weeknight Study of Romans, Chapter 2

Tonight's Weeknight Study of Romans, Chapter 1

Who can stand in God's presence?

Psalm 15 was part of the appointed reading for my quiet time with God today. The psalm was composed by King David, ostensibly after the ark of the covenant was brought into Jerusalem.

In it, David describes who is qualified to, effectively, live with God.

We delude ourselves if we think that any of us intrinsically possesses these attributes. The person who reads these verses and thinks, "That looks like a picture of me, wonderful person that I am," is lying to themselves.

But we can be covered with these attributes and the Holy Spirit can begin to construct them in our lives only as we turn in daily repentance and renewal in the name of Jesus to God.

Baptized and forgiven, Christ also covers with perfect righteousness everyone who believes in Him.

Jesus' worthiness becomes our worthiness, enabling us to live with God, even though we all fall far short of being the kind of person that David describes in the psalm.

My prayer is that because of what Jesus has done for sinners like me in His death and resurrection, His Spirit will work on me again today to conform me to the image of Jesus (Romans 8:29).

Here's Psalm 15:

1 Lord, who may dwell in your sacred tent?
Who may live on your holy mountain?

2 The one whose walk is blameless,
who does what is righteous,
who speaks the truth from their heart;
3 whose tongue utters no slander,
who does no wrong to a neighbor,
and casts no slur on others;
4 who despises a vile person
but honors those who fear the Lord;
who keeps an oath even when it hurts,
and does not change their mind;
5 who lends money to the poor without interest;
who does not accept a bribe against the innocent.

Whoever does these things
will never be shaken.

Father, through Jesus and by the power of the Holy Spirit, work once again today to make me this person "even when it hurts." Amen

Tonight's Weeknight Study of the Gospel of John, Chapter 21

Seeing the One We Need

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



Luke 24:13-35

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

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

They’d been blind. 

But now they could see.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now they saw evil. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Which brings us back to the road to Emmaus. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen

Overcoming Our Addiction

"The sorrows of those who run after another god shall multiply..." (Psalm 16:4)

This passage hit me during my quiet time with God today.

The fundamental problem we human beings have is that we have a natural inclination for worshiping false gods. Naturally unwilling to trust in the God revealed in Jesus, the God we can't presently see and can never control, we prefer to bet our lives on other gods. They're everywhere: our own smarts, talent, and strength; our feelings; our families; our countries; money, success, sex, stuff. Even Christians are prone to idol worship when they make of Jesus a demanding dictator who is only placated by our religious acts.

Idolatry is addiction. Whatever our idols are--whatever we devotedly "worship" (i.e., prioritize) for the "blessings" we think they can give us--will, in the end, leave us disappointed, depleted, and dead. Only the living God revealed in Jesus Christ can give us life to the full.

Until we heed Christ's call to turn away from the little gods that make us miserable, we will never be free. And we will know self-inflicted sorrow.

God, set us free of our penchant for idol-worship. Help us to follow Jesus--the Way, and the truth, and the life. Help us to honor You alone as God so that we can live in the joy only You can give, now and always. In Jesus' name, Amen

Tonight's Weeknight Study of the Gospel of John, Chapter 20