2 Promises from Jesus

[This is the message as prepared for sharing at the funeral of Erma, a ninety-eight-year-old who joined our congregation, Living Water Lutheran Church of Centerville, Ohio, a few years ago.]

Romans 8:31-39

John 11:21-27

I didn’t have the chance to know Erma well. But there are a few things I did get to know about her. For example, she was devoted to her family and willingly talked about them at length anytime I asked. She was an incredibly hard worker, a characteristic fostered in her while growing up on a farm. She seems to have been able to tackle and conquer almost anything she put her mind or her hands to do: sewing, rug-braiding, cooking, lawn work, gardening, painting, decorating. She also had a forceful and memorable personality, even in her waning days: She was neither short on opinions nor a sense of humor. She was also a realist: She understood that life around here doesn’t last forever; so, she had already given away many of the things she wanted to go to others long before she passed.

While her family can gratefully say Erma lived a good, long life, the loss of a mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, inevitably leaves a hole in your life. So today, I want to share two promises from Jesus that can encourage you now and in the future.

The promises of Jesus, God the Son, can be trusted. Jesus bore the punishment of death for sin that we deserve. Then, He rose from the dead to open up eternity with God to all who repent and believe in Him. So Jesus and His promises really can be trusted. I love the way Saint Paul’s words in Romans 3:4 are rendered in The Message: “Depend on it: God keeps his word even when the whole world is lying through its teeth.” You can bet your life and eternity on the promises of Jesus.

So, two promises from Jesus then. The first is recorded in the passage from Romans we listened to a few moments ago, Romans 8:31-39. There, Paul, no stranger to adversity or suffering, said to all who put their trust in Jesus as God and Savior, “...neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future,nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)

Because Jesus has risen, He can be with us no matter what circumstances confront us in this life. A friend of mine was dying, cancer cutting her down at what seemed too young an age. “Are you ever mad at God?” I asked her. “I was at first,” she said. “But then I remember He’s right here.” The book of Hebrews in the New Testament refers to Jesus as “our great high priest,” and says that in Jesus, “we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted [or tested] in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.” (Hebrews 4:15) And it’s this sinless Savior Who sympathizes and stands with all who turn to Him right now, today. That’s Jesus’ first promise to you today.

The second promise from Jesus I want to share with you is found in our reading from the Gospel of John. There, Jesus has gone to the village of Bethany after the death of His friend Lazarus. His sisters Martha and Mary are disappointed with Jesus. They’re convinced that if Jesus had arrived sooner, Jesus could have prevented their brother’s death. Shortly after this, of course, Jesus will raise Lazarus from the dead, a sign pointing to Jesus’ power to overcome the deaths of every sinful human being who believes in Him. But before Jesus ever performed a miraculous sign, He spoke a Word to create faith in Him in the ones asking for help. Faith in Christ doesn’t depend on miracles, although Christ sometimes works miracles; faith in Christ depends on God’s Word and on what God did for us on the cross. Jesus tells Mary: “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.” And then Jesus asks her, “Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26) At this word of promise, even in her grief, Mary replies, “Yes, Lord,...I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.” (John 11:28) Because Jesus rose from the dead, you can know that the promise of everlasting life with God through faith in Jesus alone is true. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life,” Jesus famously promises. (John 3:16)

And so, today and in the days ahead, you can live your lives in the light of these two sure promises from Jesus. First, He can be with you always. For those who believe, Jesus is never further than a prayer, a Bible reading, a worship service, or a sacrament away. Second, He can give you the peace and hope of knowing that all who believe in Him will live with God always. Not just in the imperfect confines of this fallen universe, but one day in the perfect peace of eternal life in the direct presence of Jesus Himself. Today and always, turn to Jesus; that’s where hope, peace, and life are found. Amen

The Word from God

[Here's a video of today's 11:00 AM worship service from Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. Below, you'll find the text of today's message.]



Luke 5:1-11

Our Gospel lesson for today begins: “One day as Jesus was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret, the people were crowding around him and listening to the word of God.” (Luke 5:1) A Lutheran Bible commentator of the last century insisted, rightly I think, that the preposition in the last phrase of that verse shouldn’t be translated as “word of God,” but “word from God.” In today’s lesson Jesus, the Word of God made flesh, speaks the Word from God to a crowd of people who, for reasons they may have been unable to articulate, are hungry to hear from God.

Are you hungry to hear the Word from God? Not just on Sunday but every day? 

Or are you so sated and enticed by the junk food of this world–its temporary rewards, entertainments, and distractions–that you don’t have time to listen to the Word that the God we know in Jesus wants to give to you?

Human deafness to God is the greatest pandemic in our world today. I find myself afflicted by this deafness to God more often than I care to admit. And it’s a pandemic of resistance to God’s Word that is far more deadly, eternally so, than we may imagine. We prefer to hear almost anything to hearing the Word from God. This past week on social media, Lutheran theologian Chad Bird shared an observation by a contemporary Roman Catholic cardinal: “The world no longer hears God because it is constantly speaking, at a devastating speed and volume, in order to say nothing.”

But what the Word that God has for us, for the whole world collectively and for each of us individually, is far from nothing. 

In his prayer to the Father on the night of His arrest, Jesus says, “Your Word is truth.” (John 17:17) 

In Old Testament times, the psalmist tells God, “Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.” (Psalm 119:105) 

And during Jesus’ ministry, Simon Peter, whose call as an apostle we consider today, tells Jesus: “You have the words of eternal life.” (John 6:68) 

Truth, guidance, eternal life: These are just a few of the blessings God gives us in His Word. Jesus Christ came into our universe to give us this definitive Word from God. And today, we see that that Word from God brings three major effects to us.

Now, you’re familiar with this incident. Jesus is teaching by the Sea of Galilee, here called the Lake of Gennesaret. It's daylight hours and, because the professional fishermen of Galilee only fish from dusk to dawn, there are two boats on the shore. Jesus climbs into one owned by Simon Peter to continue His teaching. You see, there are a series of craggy inlets around the Sea of Galilee, each forming perfect amphitheaters. This is what allows the large crowd listening to Jesus to hear Him now even though He’s likely speaking in a normal voice. Teaching done, Jesus, tells the professional fisherman Simon Peter, “Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.” (Luke 5:4) Peter knows from years of experience that there will be no catch of fish in the middle of the day. Despite his doubts, Peter paid heed to Jesus’ word because, as Scripture tells us elsewhere, Jesus “taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law.” (Matthew 7:29) 

You know what happens next. It’s a miracle at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry with Peter that will later be matched near the end of the resurrected Jesus’ ministry with the apostle (John 21:6): a haul of fish so great that Peter had to call for the boat of James and John to help bring it all in.

It’s here that we see the first effect of the Word from God. The first thing that happens to us when we encounter the Word from God is this: We see God’s sinlessness and we see our sin. 

Peter knows that in Jesus, He is seeing God face to face. Peter tells Jesus, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!” (Luke 5:8) 

The Word from God shows all of us how far from God we are, how filled with sin, how unworthy to be in God’s presence, how unloving we are compared to God, how ungracious toward the sins and faults of others. 

I have an idea that’s exactly why so many people avoid listening to God’s Word and try instead to drown it out with the dead and dying things of this world.

But God doesn’t readily give up on us. That’s why Jesus says what He does now to Peter, the very words God has always spoken to those who come into His presence and are both intimidated by His power and overwhelmed by His holy perfection. “Don’t be afraid,” Jesus tells Simon. (Luke 5:10) 

This is the second Word from God we receive from Jesus, "Don't be afraid." 

Jesus is saying: “Yes, Simon; yes, human race; yes, Church, you are sinners and you deserve death and condemnation. There’s a chasm you cannot forge that lies between us. But I am the bridge between God and you. You need not be afraid that your sins will pull you away from My love. You need not fear condemnation.” 

There are many things in this world we might rightly fear: putting God to the test, suffering, causing suffering to others. But we need not be in terror of God. 

God’s Word tells us that, “...there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus…” (Romans 8:1) 

Your sins may convict you, but Jesus, the one to whom you turn in daily repentance and trust, has set you free from sin and death. 

This requires no work or effort on your part. 

You needn’t fear that you’ve failed to take the right steps. (You haven’t and can’t, by the way.) 

You needn’t fear that you’ve not believed enough or done enough. (Again, you haven’t and can’t.) 

On His cross, Jesus has justified, qualified, and sanctified you for life with God, now and always. There, Jesus did all the good, followed all the right steps, taken the perfect path of obedience so that He, though sinless, could absorb all the sin and death of the human race so that we can be set free. 

That’s why Jesus tells Peter, and us, “Don’t be afraid!”

We see a third thing that Jesus’ powerful Word from God does to those who listen to it. Jesus tells Simon Peter, “from now on you will fish for people…” (Luke 5:10) 

After saving us from sin and death in Holy Baptism, creating faith in Christ within us through His Word, and sustaining us on His body and blood in Holy Communion, the third thing the Word from God from Jesus gives us is a whole new life! 

No longer afraid of condemnation, Jesus’ Word gives us a new life, a new reason for living. 

Our mission in life becomes, no less than it became the mission of Simon Peter, to follow Jesus and to fish for people, that is, to share the Word from God so that others can, like us, repent, believe, and have everlasting life with God. Jesus enlists us to share His Word everywhere.

There’s a small group composed of several men from Living Water and another man who’s part of another area congregation. They began meeting together over God’s Word several years ago, at the time we began our discipleship initiative. Even in the pandemic, they found ways to remain connected to God and each other. 

In the past year or so, a friend of two of the men, an unchurched man with no apparent connection to Christ and His Church, learned he had cancer. As the disease grew worse, the two small group members visited their friend, both at the hospital and later, at a hospice care facility. 

At one point, they shared a Christian book, Jesus Calling, with him. Later, during one of their visits, they shared another book, John Eldredge’s All Things New. 

On a subsequent visit, one of the group members asked their friend, “Did you read that book?” 

“Yes,” he said, “I’m counting on it.” 

The group member asked his friend if that meant he was receiving the Word from God that Jesus is Lord and Savior, the One Whose death and resurrection brings the forgiveness of sin and everlasting life with God? “Yes,” their friend said. 

Then they prayed together to declare their Word-given faith in Jesus. Their friend’s mother was there at the time and as the men prayed, she wept tears of joy. 

Three days later, that man died and, I am sure, because of His faith in Jesus and His Word, entered into the everlasting arms of God. 

Friends, Jesus’ Word sets us free to be His agents of grace in the world, to be fishers of people.

The Word from God that comes to us in Jesus is powerful! 

This Word shows us our distance from God and convicts us of our sin and shows us our powerlessness before life and death. 

This word also convinces us that in Jesus Christ, we need not fear condemnation because all who trust in Him have everlasting life with God. 

And this Word gives us an entirely new life, one in which our whole mission, our whole reason for living is changed by our gracious God. We’re empowered to live for the only mission worth living–or dying–for: to be fishers of people, makers of disciples, messengers of God and His love for everyone we meet. 

There is no better way to use the earthly lives God gives to us than that, to be fishers of people! 

May Jesus and His life-giving Word do God’s work in and through us. Amen

How Sermons Happen...at least for me

For me, every sermon I’ve preached for the past thirty-seven years has started with prayer for the Holy Spirit’s guidance.

Typically, the process proceeds to sitting down and making notes on the text, including little reminders of Scriptural words, ideas, and motifs I suspect are at play in the text. As an example, my initial notes for this week are shown.

After this, I go to the original Greek of the text, in the case of the New Testament, or the Hebrew, in the case of the Old Testament. I’ll translate the Greek, which I know, and consult an online “interlinear” literal translation of the Hebrew texts because I never learned Hebrew. I’ll do studies of individual words in the text that seem important to me.

Then, I study what Biblical scholars have to say about the text.

To help me frame the sermon, I then try to articulate what the Law and Gospel couplets are in the text.

What are Law and Gospel?

‘The Formula of Concord,’ one of the basic confessional statements of the Lutheran Christian movement, says this about the Law. “Everything that proclaims something about sin and God’s wrath is the proclamation of the law, however and whenever it takes place.”

When a passage in Scripture reveals our sinful human nature that’s the Law. As the apostle Paul says, the most that God’s Law can show us is our unrighteousness. God’s Law is unable to give us a right standing with God. Preachers who only proclaim God’s Law or their own warped versions of that Law—as the Pharisees often scorned by Jesus did—render a disservice to God and those who hear them. If a sermon is only a guilt trip, it’s not a sermon.

The Gospel is altogether different from the Law, although the Law points us to our need of the Gospel.

Martin Luther wrote: “The gospel…does not preach what we are to do or to avoid. It sets up no requirements but reversed the approach of the law, and says, ‘This is what God has done for you; he has let his Sin be made flesh for you, has let him be put to death for your sake”…the gospel teaches exclusively what has been given us by God, and not—as in the case of the law—what we are to do and give to God.“

As one Baptist pastor writes: “Roughly speaking, the gospel is that Jesus died on the cross as your substitute and rose again from the dead. Jesus took away the sins of the world, including your sins…” (Shawn Lazar, ‘One Point Preaching’)

One of the things for which I repent when I look back on my old sermons is how often my sermons have amounted to faithless law diatribes rather than faithful calls to both repentance for sin and new life and forgiveness from the God now revealed to all people in Jesus Christ.

Once I’ve decided on a Law/Gospel couplet—most texts have many possible couplets, I come to the hard part. That’s finding the entry point, an idea, a story, a thought, that can help people enter into and be entered by the text and that may serve as a continuing motif by which the Holy Spirit can do His work on both congregation and preacher. The primary work of the Holy Spirit is described by Jesus in John 16:7-11 as basically to convict us of our sin and to convince us that God gives Jesus righteousness to those who believe in Jesus. “The work of God [for human beings] is this,” Jesus says in John 6:29, “to believe in the One He has sent.”

That’s how a sermon should end, assuring people we can trust that Jesus, God the Son, through His death and resurrection, has done everything necessary to eternally save us from our sinful selves. Our call is, by the power of God’s Spirit, the One Who gives the gift of faith, to trust in Jesus and what He has accomplished for us on the cross.

My aim in writing my sermons is to say enough but not too much. I write three pages, a space-and-a-half between lines, in 14-point Arial font. Sometimes, the sermons go just a little over three pages, others a bit less.

It’s by processes like these, I’m sure, that pastors all over the world try week after week to share the truth about you and God and to extend God’s grace to you. It’s wonderful, rewarding work, and some weeks, by the power of the Holy Spirit, it actually happens in helpful ways.

 

The Old Testament Book of Genesis, Part 38 (Final Part)

The Old Testament Book of Genesis, Part 37

The Powerful Word!

[Below is a video of today's 11:00 AM worship service with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. After that, you'll find the text of today's message. God bless you this week with a growing faith in Jesus Christ.]



Luke 4:16-30

I was ten years old when my mom spoke words to me that have had an impact, both good and ill, on me ever since. 

She said: “I wish I knew your IQ. You are so intelligent, Mark.” 

On the one hand, those words helped me, for the rest of my life, to feel free in loving to learn. 

On the other hand, they have sometimes made me arrogant.

Such can be the impact of words spoken by human beings like my mom. 

In light of that then consider how much greater the impact can be of words spoken by the Word made flesh, Jesus, God the Son. 

It is Jesus the Word Who is the means by which we come to saving faith in Him. As Saint Paul says in one of my favorite passages in Scripture: “...faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ…” (Romans 10:17) 

But it’s possible to hear the Word of God and spurn Christ, faith in Christ, and the life with God now and in eternity that God gives to those who believe. This happens when human hearts are hardened to God, caught up in the greatest idolatry of all, the worship of self. As we will see today, it even happens to people who confess faith in the God now revealed in Jesus.

In our Gospel lesson for today, Luke 4:16-30, Jesus returns to His hometown of Nazareth. News of His ministry, filled with the proclamation of God’s Word and miraculous signs, have reached the folks here. He returns to Nazareth as a celebrated rabbi of rising importance.

In those days, when a recognized rabbi visited the synagogue on the Sabbath, they were invited to read one of the appointed lessons for the day. On the day that Jesus visits the Nazareth synagogue, He finds the appointed text from Isaiah, and, having recently been affirmed by God the Father at His Baptism, where God the Holy Spirit also anointed Him as Messiah, He reads: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19)

God first gave these words to Isaiah to tell the people of Israel, hundreds of years before, that their exile under foreign conquerors would end. It did end. But when Jesus preaches in Nazareth He says that this Word is also about Him. “Today,” He tells the worshipers, “this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:21)

Jesus claims that God has anointed Him to speak His Word that first, proclaims the Good News, or the Gospel, to the poor, whether their poverty is financial or spiritual. He has come to those who, like you and me, are born helpless, unable to resist the temptation to sin and death that comes to us from our human nature, from the world, and from the devil. Jesus has come also to set free all those held as prisoners, in bondage to sin and death, like you and me. He has come to give sight to those who are blind both physically and spiritually, incapable without God’s Word coming to them, of seeing the God of undeserved grace. 

And Jesus comes to bring the year of the Lord’s favor. This last “mission” of Jesus is wrapped up in the Old Testament provision for ancient Israel of a Jubilee year, which came every fifty years. 

In Jubilee years, God said in Leviticus, all prisoners were to be released, whatever their crimes; all debts were to be forgiven, however much the debt was; and all families were to be given back the properties to which they were entitled when their ancestors first entered the Promised Land, no matter if the property had been lost through mismanagement or misfortune. 

The Jubilee year was a time of pure grace, undeserved forgiveness, and new life. 

Now Jesus is proclaiming the Jubilee of all Jubilees, one to last for all eternity. This Jubilee brings eternal forgiveness and eternal life with God to all who believe in Him. “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

Initially, Jesus’ fellow Nazarenes react positively to this Word. They feel a pride of ownership and entitlement. 

But as will happen with Jesus’ fellow Jews (and with their Gentile overlords) on Good Friday two years later, they can’t accept that someone with whom they think they’re familiar could be Who He claims to be. 

They demand that Jesus prove Himself by performing a sign for them, a miracle like the ones He’s done in other places. But they have the cart before the horse. The miraculous signs of Jesus’ power over life, death, destitution, and eternity have always been performed in the lives of those who first, however tentatively, believe the Word about Him as the Savior Who brings God’s salvation. 

The Nazarenes want what they can get out of Jesus without trusting in Jesus. They want faith without repentance. They want goodies without discipleship.

This is often our problem too, which is why so many Christians are babies in their faith even though the Gospel Word that brings faith in Christ and growth in that faith has been shared with them many times.

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

Now, like a skillful surgeon, Jesus wields the Word of God to cut away the fatal growths of ethnic, religious, and familial pride–sin–that would prevent His Word from giving His fellow Nazarenes the gift of saving faith He wants to give to all. “Surely…you will tell me, ‘Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.,” Jesus tells them.

He reminds the Nazarenes that in Old Testament times, God sent the prophet Elijah, not to all the Jewish widows who may have felt themselves entitled to God’s favor because they were Jews, sending him instead to a widow who was a foreigner. 

And God didn’t use the prophet Elisha to heal a Jewish leper, but a leper who commanded a foreign army. 

God sent His prophets to perform signs of His grace to these foreigners because they admitted that without the God long revealed to the Jews, they were poor, imprisoned, blind, and oppressed by sin and darkness. They knew how much they needed God, the God now revealed to all of us in Jesus. 

Do we know how much we need Jesus every single day? Or do we only turn to Jesus when we think we could use Him?

Are we willing to daily repent and believe in Jesus' Word?

The people of Nazareth are too proud to receive grace. And now, having heard Jesus’ powerful, life-giving Word of grace, we witness the powerful impact of Jesus’ Word on those who refuse to believe. 

The hometown crowd realizes that Jesus is telling them that they have no special hold on God, that God loves all people, that their self-righteousness and ethnic pride don’t impress God. So they take Jesus to the brow of the hill on which Nazareth is builtg to throw Him over the edge to His death. 

It’s here that Jesus actually does perform a miracle, although the Nazareth crowd doesn’t perceive it: He walks through the crowd and keeps on walking. Jesus will submit to death in order to conquer it for us, but now is not the time. Good Friday (and Easter) will happen at a time appointed by God and not a moment earlier or a moment later than God has decided. The God revealed in Jesus will have the final Word.

Jesus the Word then, reveals two important truths to us today. 

The first is that He has come to set you free from sin and death and that when you trust that Gospel Word, you are free. Right this moment. Eternity with God starts when we believe this Word, no matter what we’ve done or what we’ve been. That's the Gospel and it's for you, friends! 

The second thing is that the free gift of His salvation comes by way of the cross. 

It comes by Jesus’ cross. The Messiah will be rejected by the world, even by His own people, so that Jesus can save those who believe. His rejection at Nazareth foreshadows His impending rejection at Jerusalem. 

There’s another cross: ours. Jesus will later say, "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me." (Luke 9:23) We bear our cross as, in response to Jesus’ word, we set aside our pride and daily confess our need of Jesus, Who gives us the riches of His grace, freedom from our sin, eyes to see the love God bears for us always, and freedom from sin, death, and the devil.

Once more this morning, Jesus comes to us in His gracious, Gospel Word and, in Word-inspired faith we can now say, “Today, God’s salvation has been accomploshed in our hearing.” This is the power of His Word for us. May God help us daily to receive Jesus and His Word. Amen