How to See Jesus

[This is the sermon prepared for today's worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio. While the one given had a lot of what's here, this isn't the actual sermon delivered.]


Mark 9:2-9

On this Transfiguration Sunday, the last Sunday of the Epiphany season, we’re going to explore the Gospel of Mark’s account of the day that Jesus took three of His disciples--Peter, James, and John--to a mountaintop and His glory as God was made plain to see.

But to set the stage, we need to look at a passage in the Gospel of John. So, turn to John 1:14, please. John, you remember, says that Jesus is the Word, Who was with God and was God. John then says this: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us...”

The biggest word in that verse is the verb, dwelt. In the Greek in which John originally wrote his gospel, the word translated as dwelt is eskenosen. It’s the verb form of a noun, skene, which means tabernacle or tent.

John is saying that God Almighty took on flesh and experienced everything that we human beings experience because He pitched His tent among us.

Now, the idea of the tent or the tabernacle was important in the centuries before Jesus, in Old Testament times. In the 21st. century BC, God called a couple He later renamed Abraham and Sarah to leave their comfortable lives in the land of Ur, in what is today known as Iraq, and go live in a place God would show them after they’d gotten their start. God said that He would also make this childless and elderly couple the ancestors of God’s own people, of which we as people who confess Jesus Christ as Savior and God, are part. From the moment God called, Abraham and Sarah knew that they were just passing through this life and so, lived in tents or tabernacles.

Some six-hundred years later, about 1450 BC, the descendants of Abraham and Sarah, having been freed from slavery in Egypt by God, spent forty years in a wilderness before entering the land God had promised their ancestors. In the wilderness, they slept in tents.

During their journey, the Old Testament says, God led them by a cloud. God was in the cloud, a bright and overwhelming presence shining within it. God’s perfection would kill any imperfect human being who came directly into His presence and, in fact, the Abraham’s descendants--the Hebrews, AKA Israelites, AKA the Jews--begged their earthly leader Moses not to let them be exposed to God’s presence. The cloud in which God’s presence and glory were shrouded were OK at a distance distance. But they didn’t want to see God up close.

But the fact is, God has never wanted to be removed from us. God cares about us. And while we should always approach God with reverence and awe, knowing that He is the Creator and we are His creatures, we also treasure knowing that we were made for intimacy with God, an intimacy God craves. That’s why God didn’t want to stay in the cloud away from His people.

Turn to Exodus 25:8. There, God is giving instructions to Moses on how His people are to worship Him and He says: “And let them [God’s people] make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them.” By now, you can guess what God told Moses in the original Hebrew: “Build a tent, a tabernacle, for Me, that I may pitch My tent, live, among them.”

For many years, God’s people lived in tents while the presence of God lived among them in a tent that also housed the Ten Commandments. In the very inner sanctum of this tent was a place called “the holy of holies,” the place where the holiness of God dwelt on earth.

Five hundred years after God gave those instructions to Moses, King Solomon built a temple which, like the tent in the wilderness, was a copy of God’s heavenly throne room. In the midst of it was the tabernacle, the holy of holies, the place where God pitched His tent. It could only be entered only once a year, on a day known as Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. A priest, after making several sacrifices for his own sin, would enter the holy of holies to sacrifice a perfect, unblemished lamb for the sins of God’s people, then sprinkle the waiting worshipers with the blood of the lamb, assuring them that their sins from the previous year had been atoned for and forgiven. A curtain concealed the holy of holies, a wall that the people feared to breach, afraid, just like their ancestors, of meeting God face to face.

Now, we come to our Gospel lesson, Mark 2:2-9. Take a look at it, please.

Six days before the events the lesson recounts, Jesus told His disciples: “Truly, I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.”

Now, Jesus takes His core leadership group--Peter, James, and John--to a mountaintop. While there, verse 3 says, Jesus “was transfigured before them [His appearance was radically changed], and His clothes became dazzling white...” Suddenly, Peter, James, and John, though they didn’t yet understand it all, saw Jesus in the bright splendor of His deity.

Look now at verse 4: “And there appeared to them Elijah and Moses...” The main strands of the Old Testament scriptures are the Law and the Prophets. The Law and the Prophets pointed to Jesus and here was Moses, the great Lawgiver, and Elijah, Israel’s greatest prophet, conversing with Jesus.

Look at what happens next, in verse 5. “Then Peter said to Jesus, ‘Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings...”

Can you guess what the word translated as dwellings might be in the original New Testament Greek?

It’s skenas, the plural word for tents or tabernacles.

Jesus says nothing to Peter’s well-meaning but misguided suggestion. But there are two problems with what Peter wants to do.

First: Peter is putting Moses and Elijah on the same level with Jesus. Peter still doesn’t understand that Jesus is God in human flesh.

Second: When the Word became flesh and pitched His tent among us, God signaled that He was busting out of the confines of tents or clouds or any of the other straitjackets in which we try to put God.

God wants to come into your life right now, today, with all its messiness and drama, boredom and challenge, joy and sorrow.

God wants to be your friend and Savior.

God doesn’t want you to wait for the sweet by and by to have an intimate relationship with Him.

God wants in on every part of Your life, to clean up what is sinful and ugly and to give you a new life.

Peter doesn't understand any of these things about God yet. It's out of this ignorance, Mark tells us that Peter suggests building coequal dwelling places or monuments for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah. Peter “did not know what to say,” Mark tells us in verse 6, “for they [Peter, James, and John] were terrified.”

Their fright no doubt increased with what happened next. Look at verse 7: “Then a cloud overshadowed them [a cloud again] and from the cloud came a voice, ‘This is My Son, the Beloved; listen to Him.”

Not long after these events, the God Who came to tabernacle among us would die on a cross and, strangely, the curtain of the temple, the wall between God and the human race, breached only rarely, would tear in two, from top to bottom.

No longer would human beings need to offer sacrifices or live without the constant, sustaining presence of God in their lives.

Through Jesus, all who turn from sin in His Name and trust in Him alone as their God and King can have immediate access to God.

Need your sins forgiven? Approach God in Jesus’ Name.

Need guidance on how to live your life? Come to God in Jesus’ Name.

Wrestling with a tragedy or setback that has befallen you? You may not get an answer to the question of why, but you will get God by your side.

Jesus Himself was and is the only sacrifice needed to bridge the gulf between a perfect God and imperfect people like you and me. He is, as John the Baptist said of Jesus, "the Lamb of God, Who takes away the sin of the world."

After the voice of God the Father spoke on the Mount of Transfiguration, Jesus stood alone with Peter, James, and John.

But those three apostles still could’t yet understand what you and I can understand, if only we will open our wills, minds, and hearts to Jesus. Here's why. Notice that Jesus says, in verse 9, “to tell no one about what they had seen, until the Son of Man had risen from the dead.”

You see, none of us can really see Jesus for Who He really is, God in human flesh, until we see the cross of Jesus and know that it was our sins--yours and mine--that made Jesus’ death necessary. The wages of sin is death and sinless Jesus took the wages we earned on His sinless body.

And none of us can see Jesus for Who He really is until we accept by faith the testimony about His actual, physical resurrection from the dead. Jesus rising from the dead is the sure sign that He and He alone is the way to new, eternal life with God.

Until Jesus' death and resurrection happened, no matter how amazed Peter, James, and John must have been by Jesus' transfiguration, they could not see Who Jesus really was...and is.

Today, at this moment, you and I can't see the risen Jesus physically. But we can see Jesus by faith in Him. Here are five ways that can happen:

• First: Read the New Testament. The New Testament is the cradle in which the baby Jesus can be found, His cross can be experienced, and His empty tomb can be seen. Starting on March 8, you can be part of Read the New Testament in a Year, digging into and discussing the second great part of God's written word for the human race, the Bible, with other members of the Saint Matthew family. As we read and discuss and pray over the New Testament, we're going to see Jesus together. 
• Second: Pray in Jesus' Name.
• Third: Receive Holy Communion every time it’s offered. “This is my body; this is my blood,” Jesus says of the bread and the wine. In Communion, Jesus literally comes to us and enters us. He is as present and as powerful for us when we receive the body and blood by faith in Jesus, as He was to Peter, James, and John at the Transfiguration.
• Fourth: Spend time in fellowship with God’s people, including regularly worshiping, studying Scripture, and praying with people who believe in Jesus. The Bible says that "iron sharpens iron," meaning that as we challenge and affirm one another, we grow. If you're intent on seeing Jesus, you can't go solo; you need to hang out with and learn from other believers.
• Finally: Ask God to show you the ways in which you may have displeased him. King David prayed, "Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting." We need to submit to a spiritual examination by God and to confess the sins God makes known to us. Jesus died a rose to tear open the curtain--the wall--that sin had put between us. Our sins, the things we do that hurt God or hurt others, can become new walls between God and us. When we ask God to show us the walls we’ve erected against His will, God forgives our sins and dismantles the walls, and we get a clearer view of Jesus, God in the flesh.

Jesus wants to pitch His tent in your life every day. He wants to live with you now as well as live with you in eternity.

These five things--reading the New Testament, praying in Jesus' Name, receiving the Sacrament, living in fellowship with believers in Jesus, and asking God to show you your sins so that they can be dismantled by the forgiveness He offers to all with faith in Jesus--can be means by which Jesus helps us see Him in our lives today.

May you always see Him clearly, starting now.

The Gift of Self-Control

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


1 Corinthians 9:24-27
This past week, I went for a checkup with my cardiologist. After the assistant had done her thing and the doc had looked over my files, he walked into the examination room and said, “Everything looks good.” Then, with a smile, he asked, “What’s with the weight?” I had gained six more pounds since our last visit, putting me about 27 pounds above my ideal weight. The culprit? I love bread.

So, I’m asking God to help me exercise self-control in order to more faithfully treat this body, which the Bible reminds me is not my own, but something that, with His death on the cross, Jesus bought back from sin, death, and the devil. And it’s this body that, if I endure in my faith in Jesus Christ, will rise again from the dead when Jesus returns on what the Bible calls “the Day of the Lord.” The Bible also teaches that every Christian’s body is: “a temple of the Holy Spirit.” To take care of this body, I need self-control.

We live in a world that, in many ways, discourages self-control.

Lady Gaga sings, “I was born that way,” encouraging people to commit whatever sins they think consistent with their inborn natures.

TV commercials and shopping channels prompt us to waste money on products—from mouthwash to financial planning services—for which often false promises are made.

Married men and women engage in what they think of as harmless trysts, while other people mouth smutty talk, giving no thought to how, as they do these things, they debase the gift of sexual intimacy God has given to them.

Pornography, it’s estimated, is a $10 to $15-billion industry, in which devotees are encouraged to idolize sex (or, as the Bible puts it, to worship the creation instead of the Creator) and end up viewing other people as objects to be used for their own pleasure, rather than as fellow human beings made in the image of God.

Obesity is becoming a pandemic: About one-third of all adults in the United States—33.8%--are obese.

All of these instances (and countless more) and the heartaches and the wedges they drive between God and us, between others and us, and between us and the people God made us to be, exemplify human sin and a death-dealing lack of self-control.

The Bible has a lot to say about self-control. And for good reason.

We’ll see why self-control is so important and how we can have it in a moment.

But let's first establish that God Himself wants us to exercise self-control in how we live.

Please look at Genesis 4:6. These are words spoken by God to Cain, one of Adam’s and Eve’s sons, after his offering of leftovers to God looked bad compared with his brother Abel’s grateful offering of the firstlings from his flocks: “So the Lord said to Cain, ‘Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.”

It was a lack of self-control that caused Cain to not give God first place his life, to resent his brother for Abel’s grateful faith in God, and to despair of the importance of his own life…in other words, to sin. God is telling Cain to exercise self-control, to master his sinful impulses.

Our second lesson for today was written to the church the apostle Paul founded in the Greek city of Corinth. The letter was written in about 54AD. Look at what Paul says in our short second lesson. His words are worth reading and hearing again:

Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it. Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one. So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified.

Paul, of course, is using an analogy or a metaphor, both comparing and contrasting the life of a follower of Jesus Christ with the life of an athlete.

An athlete exercises self-discipline: She trains; he practices; they exercise and watch what foods they eat.

In Paul’s day, athletes who won their contests—a race or a wrestling match, for example—didn’t receive money, gold medals, commercial endorsements, or trips to Disney World. They received wreaths, made of laurel leaves, placed on their heads. Wreaths are perishable and they were dead shortly after given as awards.

Paul says that he and all Christians live our lives—we run—for a prize that is imperishable, one that will never wither or die. The prize is the gift of a relationship with God, here and eternity.

It’s a gift for which we don’t compete. All who believe and are baptized are already gold medal winners. We are saved by God’s charity (His grace) through our faith in Christ.

We cannot earn—or achieve—our way to a saving relationship with Christ. Jesus died on a cross, absorbing all the poison of our sin and selfishness, paying the debt to God we owe for our sin, then rising from the dead, so that all who repent for their sin and give their lives to Christ, are saved from sin, death, and futility as a free gift.

It is possible for us to kick away the life that Christ offers to us freely, though.

We kick Christ and life with God away when we lose our self-control and let the world, the devil, and our sinful selves call the shots in our lives.

But as anyone who has ever tried to take off a few pounds can testify, self-control, the mastery of self, the punishment of self in order to bring it into submission to the loving will of God, is not easy.

The good news is that we can have self-control.

Let me show you where the power for self-control can be found. Turn to Galatians 5, starting at verse 18, in the Bible.

There, Paul says that if we are led by the Holy Spirit sent by Jesus Christ to all who believe in Him, we aren’t condemned by the law. The power of sin to keep us from living with God has been destroyed.

Then, beginning with verse 19, Paul describes “the works of the flesh”: the things we do when we rely on ourselves instead of on God. It’s not a happy list! Look at it:

“adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies [that’s advocating or actively living doctrine contrary to the teachings of Jesus and the Bible], envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like.”

Paul says that people who make a practice of these things “will not inherit the kingdom of God.” They push Jesus and salvation out of their lives.

But look at verses 22 and 23 to see what the Spirit produces in us when we daily and continuously give ourselves to Christ and ask for God’s guidance and help:

...love, joy, peace, longsuffering [that’s patience in the face of difficulties and opposition to us for our faith in and witness for Christ], kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control…

In other words, as we consciously submit our every moment and our every decision to God’s evaluation, correction, and wisdom, we will be given the power to exercise self-control. We’ll experience the peace of God that passes all human understanding.

Every time we make decisions, we evidence either the self-control that comes from God or the lack of self-control that comes from sin.

Here’s a (far from perfect) eight-point checklist you might want to use when you’re confronting any decision in your life. These might help you to invite God's Holy Spirit into the process to give you Godly self-control:

• If the decision will take you down the easy path, you probably shouldn’t take it. Jesus says in Matthew 7:13-14, “…the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction…the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life...” 
• If what you're considering doing is what you want to do, you probably shouldn’t do it. Proverbs 14:12 and other Bible passages tell us: “There is a way that seems right to a person, but its end is the way to death.” The key is not to rely on your own thinking or common sense, but on the wisdom God freely gives to those who ask for it. 
• If your prospective decision appeals to your ego, watch out. 1 Corinthians 10:31 teaches: “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God.” Ask yourself, “Will this decision glorify God?”
• If your feelings are leading you to a decision, you may want to avoid it. Through the prophet Jeremiah, God reveals that: “The heart is devious above all else…”  Unless we, in the words of Psalm 51, are praying regularly and submissively for “a clean heart…and…a new and right spirit within…,” it’s almost always wrong to base our decisions on what we feel. 
• If a trusted Christian friend warns you against a prospective decision, reconsider it. Proverbs 24:6 tells us that “in abundance of counselors, there is victory.” 
• If you haven’t sought the counsel of at least one Christian friend, you may be about to make a bad decision. Jesus told Nicodemus that a sinful world refused to come to Him, the light of the world; instead, they huddled in darkness because they didn’t want their evil to be exposed. If we're not willing to share the decision we're contemplating with at least one other follower of Jesus Christ, we need to ask ourselves what we're hiding and why.
• Is this decision designed to please others, not God. Paul says bluntly in Galatians 1:10: “If I were still pleasing people, I would not be a servant of Christ.” As followers of Jesus Christ, our decisions should not be driven by the opinions of others, even if the opinion in question is that of just one other person.
• Finally, never make a decision if you haven’t been regularly reading God’s Word and praying. Jesus says that wise people build their lives on Him alone. And the Psalm tells us that God’s Word is a light to our path and a lamp to our feet. When we make decisions without regularly reading God's Word and regularly talking things over with God, we are flailing in the dark.

Self-control is the fruit of a life lived in total surrender to the God Who has done everything needed for us to have a life with Him that never ends. As we submit our lives to Jesus Christ and invite Him to be the final authority over us, our lives are transformed.

In following Jesus, we may not always earn the world’s applause or make bigger pay checks, but we will be able to face our Lord at the ends of our lives and say with Paul: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith."

And we will hear Jesus say, “Well done… Enter into the joy of your Master.” Amen

8-Point Checklist for Decision-Making

[This is taken from my sermon for February 12, 2012.]

Here’s a (far from perfect) eight-point checklist you might want to use when you’re confronting any decision in your life. These might help you to invite God's Holy Spirit into the process to give you Godly self-control:

• If the decision will take you down the easy path, you probably shouldn’t take it. Jesus says in Matthew 7:13-14, “…the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction…the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life...” 
• If what you're considering doing is what you want to do, you probably shouldn’t do it. Proverbs 14:12 and other Bible passages tell us: “There is a way that seems right to a person, but its end is the way to death.” The key is not to rely on your own thinking or common sense, but on the wisdom God freely gives to those who ask for it. 
• If your prospective decision appeals to your ego, watch out. 1 Corinthians 10:31 teaches: “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God.” Ask yourself, “Will this decision glorify God?”
• If your feelings are leading you to a decision, you may want to avoid it. Through the prophet Jeremiah, God reveals that: “The heart is devious above all else…”  Unless we, in the words of Psalm 51, are praying regularly and submissively for “a clean heart…and…a new and right spirit within…,” it’s almost always wrong to base our decisions on what we feel. 
• If a trusted Christian friend warns you against a prospective decision, reconsider it. Proverbs 24:6 tells us that “in abundance of counselors, there is victory.” 
• If you haven’t sought the counsel of at least one Christian friend, you may be about to make a bad decision. Jesus told Nicodemus that a sinful world refused to come to Him, the light of the world; instead, they huddled in darkness because they didn’t want their evil to be exposed. If we're not willing to share the decision we're contemplating with at least one other follower of Jesus Christ, we need to ask ourselves what we're hiding and why.
• Is this decision designed to please others, not God. Paul says bluntly in Galatians 1:10: “If I were still pleasing people, I would not be a servant of Christ.” As followers of Jesus Christ, our decisions should not be driven by the opinions of others, even if the opinion in question is that of just one other person.
• Finally, never make a decision if you haven’t been regularly reading God’s Word and praying. Jesus says that wise people build their lives on Him alone. And the Psalm tells us that God’s Word is a light to our path and a lamp to our feet. When we make decisions without regularly reading God's Word and regularly talking things over with God, we are flailing in the dark.

In my life as a Christian, I have made good and bad decisions and because I'm as human as the next person and so, as inclined to forget God and all that He has done for me, I will, as long as I'm breathing, undoubtedly make more bad decisions. Thank God for the forgiveness and reconciliation God offers to all who come in the Name of Jesus in genuine repentance, seeking God's forgiveness and renewal in their lives.

I know this: If we make good, Godly decisions, we have less to regret than when we have when we go our own ways.

Martin Right to Apologize for Tweets, But Shouldn't Bow to Bullies of Political Correctness

Liberal CNN commentator Roland Martin has been suspended by the news network for two Twitter posts which gay activist groups have rightly seen as demeaning to homosexuals and which could be construed as advocating violence against gays.

Martin, again rightly, has apologized for the two tweets and gay groups have expressed appreciation for the action of CNN and the statement of Martin. Stereotyping is unfair and even hinting at calling for violence against persons for their appearance is wrong.

But, this account says that some gay groups are also upset with columns, like this one Roland Martin wrote in 2006. In this particular piece, Martin, a Christian whose wife has been a Baptist pastor for decades, explains why the majority of the African-American Church cannot see living out a homosexual life style as anything but sin. In it, Martin speaks truth against the prevailing powers of American culture. Here are a few excerpts:

[What must be understood is] that the fundamental issue is that gays and lesbians want to be accepted and embraced by the church, and not acknowledge that they are engaged, in the eyes of the church, in sinful behavior...there will never be a happy medium on this issue.

As individuals, gays and lesbians - those claiming to be born this way and others who say they have evolved to live a homosexual lifestyle - are naturally going to want to live their life as they see fit. And yes, the last thing they want to do is sit in a church and listen to someone from the pulpit castigate their way of life. I get that. But someone who is living with a member of the opposite sex while not married also doesn't want to hear that being preached. And surely the man or woman cheating on their spouse prefers not to hear their behavior cast as being sinful and unGodly.

But for Christians, going to church is not supposed to be a feel good exercise. We are expected to be convicted, and encouraged to walk away from sin and live a more Christ-like life. In my church, this goes for the woman who is an alcoholic, the child who continues to be disobedient to his parents, the young lady who is hell-bent on stealing, and the person who is gay.

Yet what churches must do is make it clear that their doors are not closed to anyone, even if you homosexual.

My wife, an ordained Baptist minister for 20 years, has counseled many men and women to walk away from the gay lifestyle, and to live a chaste life. She has asked heterosexual men and women to abstain from sex until marriage. For her, the obligation is to her calling as a minister of the Word, rather than bowing to societal pressures. She loves gay and lesbian church members dearly, and prays with them, talks to them, and breaks bread with them. But what she cannot do is compromise the integrity of the teachings of Christ.

It would be nonsense for the body of Christ to launch a gay and lesbian ministry that is not focused on teaching God's Word - including those that address homosexuality. Preaching about the dangers of becoming drunkard - which Paul wrote about in the Bible - must be taught alongside of Jesus' admonition in Matthew 19 that God has only called a man and woman to marry.

If a gay or lesbian individual is not willing to belong to a church that preaches this, then they should join whatever house of worship to their liking. But if someone expects to join a church that is rooted in the Bible, then they should be prepared to hear a sermon that might, in the words of the Rev. Frederick D. Haynes III of Dallas' Friendship-West Baptist Church, "bowl down your alley or sit in your pew."

The church is called to love our fellow man, preach the good news and set the captives free - free from a life of sin.

That isn't being homophobic. It's being a Christian. And no one should have to apologize for that.

Martin's tweets were wrong and he's to be commended for his apology.

But he has nothing to apologize for in upholding, as he does in the column cited above, the Bible's teachings that sexual intimacy is reserved for men and women in lifelong marital covenants with God and each other.

There's a lot of bullying happening today, even within our churches. 

The bullies of political correctness, heedless of the loving will of God, want to shut the mouths and the scruples of any who try to speak God's liberating Word to those imprisoned by their own sinful desires. These folks push a false gospel of tolerance that tolerates the spreading of lies that contradict the will and Word of God while being harshly intolerant of anyone who dares to question the prevailing mores of contemporary culture. These are the same kinds of folks who, in bygone days, would have stoned the prophets and said:

"Do not prophesy to us what is right; speak to us smooth things, prophesy illusions, leave the way [of God], turn aside from the path [following God], let us hear no more of the Holy One [God]..." (Isaiah 30:10-11)

Church, we dare not shut up!

To be silent in the face of sin is a sin itself and something for which we will have to one day give an accounting to our Lord.

If we are silent, Christ will pose the same question to us that He will undoubtedly pose to all who have claimed Jesus as Lord, yet acquiesced to sin, including the churches that allowed swastikas in their sanctuaries in Nazi Germany, churches who today embrace the worship of goddesses as well as the God ultimately in Jesus Christ, and churches who turn the salvation God offers for free to all who turn from sin and believe in Jesus Christ into an achievement of human works, among others. The Lord is sure to ask:

Why didn't you love your neighbor enough to speak the truth to them about the dangers to their immortal souls posed by their sins? Why didn't you lovingly call them to turn to Christ, Who forgives sins and gives those who humbly surrender to Him the power of His Holy Spirit to resist sin and walk with Him?

As Martin rightly says, we need not apologize for telling the truth. God's truth is the only thing that can set any of us free...from sin and from death. Are we willing to idly watch as people destroy themselves? Don't we love them enough to tell the truth no matter what society says?

These are questions I ask myself each day and I pray God will give me the strength of character and faith to follow His way and not my own.

Audio of This Morning's 'Read the Bible in a Year' Discussion (February 8, 2012)

The people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, have been reading the Bible in a year's time and then, discussing it in weekly gatherings. This is audio from the morning's discussion, covering (ostensibly) 1 Corinthians 13 to Ephesians 3.



BIG MISTAKE in the audio: I said that the region of Asia Minor, basically modern Turkey, was the first place that followers of Christ were called, Christians. That isn't true. That actually happened in Antioch, in Syria. Nonetheless, what I say here about the importance of Turkey as, in many ways, the "cradle of Christianity" holds true.

What is Contentment?

One of my favorite blogging pastors, Mark Roberts, has some thoughts on what contentment looks like. His perspective doesn't conform to your usual picture.

Renouncing Our Rights to Live in Freedom!

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

1 Corinthians 9:16-23
We Americans are firm believers in our rights. The Declaration of Independence says that we are endowed by our Creator with “certain unalienable rights.” That may be true.

But let me ask you a question: If God had a task for you that entailed giving up one or all of your rights, your freedom to do what you wanted to do, what would you do?

This is not an abstract question. It’s the question that every Christian, especially we American Christians where we have what I call "a glut of options," must face every day.

Are we willing to renounce our rights in order to be servants of Jesus Christ alone? Are we willing to to live lives designed by God and not by us?

In his book, You Were Made for More, Pastor Jim Cymbala tells the true story of Mark Hill, an architect who graduated from an Ivy League school, Cornell, and later went to work for the great architect, I. M. Pei.

But in the midst of a career that provided him with a high six-figure income, Mark began attending the church of which Cymbala is senior pastor, the Brooklyn Tabernacle. It was then that God grabbed hold of Mark and gave him his life mission.

When a call went out for volunteers to teach Sunday School, he decided to teach elementary-age Children’s Church. “I loved it!” he later remembered. “I had such a feeling of being in God’s will. And the kids responded energetically.”

One thing led to another and today, Mark Hill works full time, alongside his wife, with youth programs at the church. Being a church youth worker has meant giving up on the income that his hard work, education, and experience would have otherwise given him every right to expect. But he’s renounced those rights in order to voluntarily perform the mission Christ has given to him.

Of course, you don’t have to give up your day job in order to fulfill the mission Jesus Christ has for you.

Take the apostle Paul, for example. Paul traveled thousands of miles to share the gospel of Jesus Christ: the good news that we human beings, born slaves to sin and bound for death and hell, can be saved from sin, death, and futility when we respond to the gracious love of God by turning from sin and believing in Jesus, Who shared death with us and wants to share His resurrection with all who trust in Him.

Paul wrote most of the books in our New Testament. He started churches, counseled new Christians, developed leaders. He was an apostle, a word meaning sent one, sent by Christ Himself to take the Good News of Jesus into far and often hostile places.

For his efforts, Paul suffered beatings, imprisonments, stoning, shipwrecks, and false accusations. But, in spite of all he gave to the mission entrusted to him by Christ and all that he endured to fulfill it, "apostle-ing" wasn’t even Paul’s day job.

He was a tentmaker.

As Paul saw it, his profession made it possible for him to do his real job, the same job you and I have as baptized believers in Jesus Christ: Changing the world by sharing Christ with others.

Martin Luther once said that there are two conversions that must happen in the life of every Christian. First, there must be the conversion to faith in Jesus Christ. Second, there must be a conversion of our pocketbooks. It takes time for new Christians to realize that, in grateful response for all that God has given to us, how we give and spend our money (along with how we spend our lives) should put God first. Paul understood that this second conversion may take longer even than the first.

So, although he had every right to expect a pay package that would allow him to do his work without worrying about how to fill his belly or pay his bills, Paul didn’t demand this of the new Christians who made up the new congregations he started. Paul said that, while he would never brag, if he wanted to, he could brag that he had shared the Gospel with those converted to Christ by his preaching and teaching, without asking for a penny.

In the verse that comes just before our second lesson, Paul says to the people of one of the churches he founded, in the Greek city of Corinth: “I have made no use of any of these rights, nor am I writing this so that they may be applied in this case. Indeed, I would rather die than that—no one will deprive me of my ground for boasting.”

But take a look at what he says next, in our second lesson, printed on the Celebrate insert: “If I proclaim the gospel, this gives me no ground for boasting, for an obligation is laid on me, and woe to me if I do not proclaim the gospel!” Then, slip down to verse 18, where he writes: “What then is my reward? Just this: that in my proclamation I may make the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my rights in the gospel.”

God, Paul is saying, has given me a responsibility to share the Gospel, free of charge, with others. When I do that, I’m only doing my job and shame on me if I don’t do it, whether I get paid for it or not.

Christ had set Paul free of sin and death. So, he chose to use his freedom to make himself a servant of Christ alone.

In connection with Paul's sentiments, speaking personally, I know that I've always seen what's referred to as my "pay package" as an allowance. God has called me to be a pastor and whether God intended me to do it full time in a congregation like Saint Matthew or, for no pay, with a church that couldn't afford a pastor while I worked another job, I would feel bound to take up the mission Christ has given to me. And shame on me if I don't do just that, "pay package" or not! After Christ has set me free, why would turn around and enslave myself to a "pay package"? There is nothing more disgraceful than "pastors for hire," who seem to always be angling for more money!

In his essay, On Christian Liberty, Martin Luther wrote:

A Christian…is the most free lord of all, and subject to none; a Christian…is the most dutiful servant of all, and subject to every one. 

This is exactly what Paul is talking about when he writes what he does in the last five verses of our second lesson. They’re worth reading. Take a look at them with me:

For though I am free with respect to all [that is, I have no obligations to nobody but to Christ Who, alone, has freed me from the power of sin, death, and futility], I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them. [I have voluntarily made myself the servant of everyone so that I can introduce them to Jesus Christ.] To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law) so that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some. [This doesn’t mean that Paul got along to get along. He wasn't playing the game of political correctness, telling the cultures in which he served what they wanted to hear, as both liberal and conservative churches do for their preferred constituencies in North America in 2012. It means, rather, that he lived alongside Jews, Gentiles, and the weakest of the world in order to credibly share Christ with them. He disavowed whatever rights he had as a Jewish scholar or a Roman citizen or a noted intellect or a free male in order to win a hearing for Jesus Christ.] I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.” 

In setting aside whatever rights or glory the societies of his world might have had to offer, Paul, like his Savior and our Savior Jesus, chose to use his Christian freedom to serve God and others.

He renounced his rights to pursue the mission Christ had for him.

So, what has this all got to do with you and me?

Everyone, it seems, wants the world to recognize their rights.

Everyone seems to want what they see as belonging to them: attention, comfort, respect, money.

Selfishness, self-absorption, demanding our rights, and carving out what some people call “me time,” are common themes of the day.

People think that by diving deeper into themselves, they’ll find peace.

But that’s a lie!

Life, joy, purpose, and peace: These things only belong to those who recognize that none of them are our rights. They are gifts from the God we meet in Jesus Christ.

And it is only those who renounce the idea that they’re entitled to anything and instead, recognize that every good and perfect gift comes from the God we know in Jesus Christ alone, who experience life, joy, purpose, and peace.

Whether you’re a plumber or a preacher, a teacher or a doctor, a farmer, a student, a repairperson, a nurse, a retiree, or a millionaire, if you are a follower of Jesus Christ, you have the same privilege and the same mission.

The privilege is knowing that because of Christ and your faith in Christ, nothing can separate you from the love of God. You belong to God for all eternity and nothing—not disease nor death, not unemployment nor the unkindness of other people—can separate you from God's love. You can live your life with complete boldness, knowing that you are in the palm of God’s hand always.

The mission is to share the liberating good news of new life through faith in Jesus Christ with everyone you meet, even organizing your life so that you can meet more people and share Christ with them.

A woman, writing in Decision magazine years ago, told about sensing that God wanted her to take her family overseas so that she could be a missionary.

She excitedly told her husband about this “call.” He wasn’t sure his wife had been called to go overseas at all. He suggested that she test this call first.

Why not try reaching others with the Good News of Jesus in their neighborhood, something she had never previously attempted, he said, and see where that led?

Disappointed, she nonetheless agreed to this plan. She wracked her brain for awhile to come up with some ways she could be a neighborhood missionary, then hit on an idea.

She and her husband lived in a community that was growing. Lots of people were moving in all the time. She would bake bread and welcome newcomers to their community. No Bible tracts. No religious jaw. Just a welcome from a neighbor.

At first, the woman thought that she was wasting her time on some insignificant activity. But over time, as she organized her life around pursuing this mission outreach, she became friends with a number of the newcomers.

When a crisis developed in their lives, they would call her for help or ask her for prayers.

Many asked her the reasons for her joy and helpfulness to others and she was able to tell them about Christ.

Over the decades, this woman saw hundreds of people who previously had no connection with Christ come to believe in Him, in part because she organized her life around sharing Christ in a simple, practical way.

Living out our mission for Christ may entail renouncing the attention, comfort, and respect the world gives to its movers and shakers and its success stories.

It may cause us discomfort or even suffering.

That’s OK. As Paul writes elsewhere: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory…to be revealed to us…”

When Christ returns, the dead in Christ rise again, and we begin to reign over a new heaven and a new earth alongside Christ in eternity, the mad scramble to assert and maintain our rights will be shown for the sham and the shame and the waste that it is.

In the end, when we see Christ, the only thing that will matter is whether we have held onto Jesus Christ, because anything else we may hold onto—anything we may think we have the right to hold onto—will slip from our mortal hands.

Only the God we know in Jesus Christ is immortal.

And only Jesus Christ, the conqueror of death and sin and futile living, is worth living and dying for.

Only Jesus Christ can give us the eternity of forgiveness and fellowship that none of us has any right to expect!

So, what about it? Are you willing to renounce your worldly rights in order to live for Christ alone?

Are you willing to live the mission of sharing Christ with others, whatever your job?

If you are, let God know it…and then seek, however imperfectly, however inconsistently, however constantly you (and I) will need to repent and to be renewed by God’s Holy Spirit…live it!

Live it!

Amen!

Of Pens, Swords, Keyboards, & Throwing Businesses Under the Cyberbus

I don't know that I've ever written a review of a restaurant or retail establishment on my blog or on any of the social media outlets, other than to say we particularly enjoyed or appreciated a place. (The Olive Tree in Hilliard and the Giant Eagle Market District in Upper Arlington, both of which we love a lot, come to mind.)

But Beth McShane makes an important point in a post she titles, The Pen is even mightier than the sword: Our pens (or furious keyboard-tapping fingers) can cause a lot of damage to some establishments, especially to those mom and pop businesses whose owners have a genuine commitment to customer satisfaction and product improvement.

McShane writes:

There is an unfortunate trend among some social media dabblers to tweet first and ask questions later. The days of asking to see the manager when you have a complaint has been replaced with reaching for the iPhone and tweeting directly from the dinner table. Don’t like your haircut? Try talking to the salon before giving that one star review on Twitter. You owe it to them to give them a chance to make things right before you go public with scrutiny.

I like Beth's alternative strategy.

By laying aside our pens, swords, and keyboards long enough to get explanations or better performances in response to the second chances we provide, we might save the reputations of earnest merchants who really do want to the right thing and, unless the fly actually belongs there in your soup, generally have a great product. (You'll have to watch the great Grover clip from Sesame Street that Beth provides at her post to get that.)

So, please check out Beth McShane's post.

By the way, in mentioning McShane's post calling for giving merchants and retailers with whom you're disappointed the chance to make things right, I haven't really wandered from my usual bailiwick of Biblical Christianity.

For example, the eighth of the Ten Commandments, the list of basic moral laws God gives to the human race for us as long as Planet Earth is still spinning on its axis, God says, "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor."

In that edict, it's clear enough that God doesn't want us to spread untruths about others. But back in the 1520s, in a book called The Small Catechism, Martin Luther penetrated to the deeper levels of God's intent for this commandment, when he explained that:

We should fear and love God so that we do not betray, slander, lie, or gossip about our neighbors, but defend them, speak well of them, and put the most charitable construction on all that they do.

By Luther's perceptive summation, we see that God wants to be sure that, even when a neighbor doesn't meet our expectations, we restrain ourselves from "throwing under them bus." That would include cyber-buses like Twitter, Facebook, or your own blog where you fume about the deficiencies of products or services.

Maybe the businessperson who disappointed you was having a bad day (like Mr. Gower in It's a Wonderful Life) or you didn't understand that the menu really did promote Cream of Mosquito soup (see the Grover video).  (Matthew 7:12)

When we obey the eighth commandment--a tough proposition, I might add--we're really fulfilling what has been called Jesus' golden rule: "So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you" (Matthew 7:12).

If we do have complaints or questions though, the Bible suggests that we investigate things before complaining to the world. In Matthew 18:15-20, Jesus lays down a process for Christians to resolve conflicts with fellow Christians. But its principles clearly have broader application.

The bottom line is that if you have a beef with someone, you go to them first...not the entire Internet. You may be able to get things resolved without resorting to wielding the sword of a blog post or Facebook or Twitter update.

After all, wouldn't you rather help solve a problem than have the privilege of bellyaching in cyberspace? Yeah, me too.

Turns out Beth McShane's advice is good in a lot of ways! You can also follower her on Twitter: @BethMcShane

What Does "Hallelujah" Mean?

“Hallelujah” (also sometimes rendered as "Alleluia") is another English transliteration of a word imported from another language. 

In this case, the original word is from Hebrew, the language in which the majority of the Old Testament was written.

It means, “Praise Yah!” 

“Yah” is the first syllable of the Name that God as identified as His own to Moses at the burning bush. Yahweh is I AM. 

The ancient Hebrews and even many modern Jews today feel that God’s Name is too holy to be used in its entirety. Because their hesitation about using the full Name, they often said, “Hallelujah!,” meaning, “Praise Yahweh!” 

The Name by which God has ultimately revealed Himself to the world is, “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” 

As Luther writes in The Small Catechism, God gives us His Name so that we can use it to bring God, “prayer, praise, and thanksgiving.” All other uses are vain, meaning nothing, thereby disrespecting God and misusing the gift of God’s Name to us. 

By the way, Jesus several times identifies Himself as Yahweh, as when He told His fellow Jews in a grammatically awkward phrase: “Very truly [Amen, amen!], I tell you, before Abraham was, I AM!” (John 8:58)

What Does "Amen" Mean?

Worshipers at Christian churches use the word, "Amen" a lot, usually at the ends of prayers. But what does it mean?

The word “amen” is what’s known as a transliteration. A transliteration happens when a word is taken from another language, as is, to mean the same thing in the new language as it did in the language from which it was taken. 

The New Testament was originally written back in the first century, in Greek. Greek was then the "second language" of the world, much as English is today. 

But "Amen" in the Greek was actually a transliteration from yet another language, Hebrew. It was also transliterated into the language Jesus used every day, Aramaic.

“Amen” means truly! It's a word that underscores the truth of a statement that comes before or after it's said. Or, as in the case of prayer, it denotes faith in the God to Whom prayer is offered.

When in English translations of the Bible, we see Jesus saying things like, “Verily” or “Truly,” it means that the original Greek cites Him as saying, “Amen” or even, “Amen, Amen!” 

Of course, as mentioned above, Jesus’ everyday language was Aramaic. But He and the fishermen and tax collectors among His disciples, given the cosmopolitan region in which they grew up, probably were conversant with Aramaic, Hebrew (the language used in the synagogue), Greek (the international language of trade and scholarship), and Latin (the language of their Roman conquerors). His earliest followers composed the books and letters that now make up the New Testament.

"Four Challenges"

These four challenges were shared on Cyber Daily Devotion.

Then, my colleague Pastor Glen VanderKloot shared them.

Thought provoking stuff from God really has no expiration date. So, here it is:

“Four Challenges” Cyber-Daily-Devotion
Today's Author: Pastor Bill

Scripture: Job 9:4
“For God is so wise and so mighty. Who has ever challenged him successfully?” NLT

The story is told of a man with just enough religion that out of curiosity he challenged God. “God if you exist then speak to me as follows:”

• 1. “Like you did Abraham sending him to a far off place.”
• 2. “Like you did David that caused him to slay a mighty giant.”
• 3. “Like you did Elijah when you fed him by Ravens.”
• 4. “Like you did Paul when you set him free from chains that bound him.”

God did not hesitate to answer:

• 1. God sent a Missionary to invite the man to Africa to help minister to people with HIV/AIDS. Fear gripped the man and he refused to go.
  2. God sent an Evangelist to minister to the giant in the man and set him free from pornography. Insecurity shook the man and he would not listen.
  3. God sent a Preacher to speak to the man and feed him the bread of life --- all about HIS gospel. The man considered the Preacher an unenlightened cripple and walked away.
  4. God sent the man his son to apologize for many years of wrongs and set him free from bitterness and un-forgiveness. The man refused to listen since he had long ago abandoned his son.

Two weeks later the man decided to end his challenge with God because his requests had not been answered.

He said, “God you had your opportunity and blew it --- I’m moving on.”
 

God said, “Who shall we send next?”

The man was blinded by his self centered ego and could not see:

• 1. His invitation like Abraham to travel to because of fear.
• 2. The demise of his pornography giant because he was too insecure.
• 3. His spiritual food because he was expecting hamburgers and hot dogs.
• 4. His release from un-forgiveness as he was looking for a hand cuff key.

If you find yourself in a situation like this may I encourage you to remember two things:

• 1. God will never stop trying
• 2. Your answer is never the way you think it should be

Prayer: Father thank you for answering prayer in your way and not in my selfish perspective, “My way or the highway attitude.” In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen!

What's your theme for 2012?

Charlie has chosen "gratitude." At the start of the second month of this still new year, with your resolutions possibly in tatters, you might want to read this post Charlie Lehardy wrote a few weeks ago.

"It is never about self"

Blogging friend John Schroeder talks about marketing advice given to a new blogger contains a deeper truth for us all.

Let Christ Exercise His Authority to Give You Peace

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

Mark 1:21-28
N.T. Wright tells the true story of an incident that happened several years ago. You may remember it.

The operators of a tourist boat, filled with cars and people on their vacations, failed to close the boat’s doors properly.

After the boat had shoved off, water began to pour into the boat. People began to panic. People were terrified and their shrieks of fear filled the air.

Suddenly, a passenger--not a crew member--took charge of the situation. In clear and confident tones, he told people what to do.

A sense of relief began to replace the panic as the man’s fellow passengers realized that someone was taking charge. Many were able to get on lifeboats that they might otherwise have missed in the dark and the frenzied rush.

The man who took control also went down to find people trapped in the hold, then formed a human bridge, holding onto a ladder with one hand and the mostly submerged ship with the other, enabling more people to cross to safety.

Later, this man was found drowned in the boat’s hold. As Wright puts it: “He had literally given his life in using the authority he had assumed—the authority by which many had been saved.”

In today’s world, we don’t much care for the whole idea of authority. We don’t want anybody telling us what to do, even when the person in authority seems to know what they’re doing and to have our best interests at heart…even when the authority figure in question is God.

It’s so hard for us to trust even the God we meet in Christ. Yet Jesus tells us (and backs up the authority of His words through His death and resurrection): “I am the way, and the life, and the truth. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”

Do you believe that Jesus has the authority to make that command and that promise? Or do you repose greater trust in yourself, your family, your work, your wits, or your pleasures?

Do you believe that Jesus is the one and only "God and human" chain that can connect you to God and the life you were meant to live?

The choice between heaven or hell, life or death, purpose or futility, connection to God and others or utter, stark eternal aloneness inheres in the issue of who you will give authority over your life.

In first-century Judea where Jesus lived, there was no shortage of people who claimed to have authority. Roman governors and soldiers, priests, Sadducees, Pharisees, scribes, tax collectors: They all barked out orders, religious and secular.

And while they could command submission, none could command respect. None of them acted like the passenger who saved so many on that tourist boat, a man many of his fellow passengers had probably never met, but were willing to follow. And none of the would-be authority figures people encountered in Jesus' day spoke or acted or lived or talked like Jesus.

All of this may help to explain our Gospel lesson for today, where we’re told that Jesus’ fellow Jews in the synagogue at Capernaum were “astounded” by Him, because, verse 22 says, “He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.”

What gave Jesus authority? Two things, I think.

First, Jesus taught as one who wasn’t looking out for himself.

Later in Mark’s gospel, we learn that Jesus said of Himself, “…the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, to give His life a ransom for many.”

We don’t know if Jesus used those same words in the synagogue at Capernaum, but the worshipers there that day would have clearly sensed that when Jesus called them to follow Him, He wasn’t doing it to feed His ego, fill His wallet, or gain political power.

The New Testament says that though Jesus was equal to God the Father, He “emptied Himself,” became our slave and died on the cross for our sins so that the Father could raise Him up, opening eternity to all who turn from sin and believe in Jesus.

Jesus had authority because He was looking out for you and me, not Himself. That's why He prayed in that garden, “Father, not My will, but Your will be done.”

Here’s the other thing that I think gave Jesus’ teaching authority: He taught as one with un-derived authority.

By that, I mean when Jesus spoke, He wasn’t quoting the God of the Old Testament, the God Who spoke to Abraham and Moses and the prophets. Jesus was and is the God Who spoke to the world into existence, founded the nation of Israel on the barren womb of Sarah, led His people out of slavery in Egypt, and promised that Israel would fulfill its mission to be a light to all the nations by being the birthplace of the Savior of the nations, Jesus.

Scholars say that when rabbis taught in the synagogues of Jesus’ day, they would preface their points with phrases like, “Moses said…” or “Rabbi So-and-So taught…”

Jesus had no need to resort to citations or footnotes to buttress the power of His words.

Though the worshipers at Capernaum could not have articulated a confession of Jesus as God in the flesh, the Messiah King, they knew that there was something more authoritative, something more powerful, about Jesus’ teaching than the teaching they ordinarily heard.

Like the disciples who, several years later, met the risen Jesus on the road to Emmaus, not at first recognizing Him as He taught them God’s Word, the worshipers at Capernaum must have felt too: “Were not out hearts burning within us while He…was opening the Scriptures to us?”

But if the worshipers there that day couldn’t say with certainty that Jesus was more than just a carpenter from Nazareth, someone there knew the facts.

Please look at verses 23 and 24 of the Gospel lesson. Mark says: “Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, ‘What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.’”

The demon understood that Jesus was God in the flesh.

The problem, from Jesus’ viewpoint, was that the people of Capernaum didn’t yet understand the full truth about Jesus. And unless people understand that following Jesus means submitting to the daily crucifixion of our sins and our inborn desire to be the ultimate authorities over our lives, they’re not ready to follow Jesus.

That’s what Jesus meant when He said later in His ministry: “If any want to become My followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross [meaning, take responsibility for your sins and ask Christ to destroy their power over us] and follow Me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for My sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?”

There are many people who follow Jesus because they see Him as a cosmic rabbit’s foot or a dispenser of blessings for which they can make deals.

But Jesus isn’t making any deals.

He is in the gift-giving business: He gives forgiveness and new life to all who surrender their lives to Him.

But surrender means the crucifixion of our old selfish ways.

And, even when we do that, day-in and day-out, Jesus doesn’t promise that all will go smoothly.

Think about this: Even after Jesus brought his good friend Lazarus back from the dead, Lazarus had to die again! Bummer!

But Jesus does promise to be with us always and, as He said to Lazarus’ sister on the day He called Lazarus from the grave: “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in Me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.”

Jesus couldn’t risk seeing the people of Capernaum come to follow Him on the testimony of a demon, though. When the enemies of God define what it means to follow Jesus, they always get it wrong, either turning Christian faith into a spiritual Disneyland with no difficulties or a painful struggle to please an unkind God. In Jesus’ cross and empty tomb, we see that neither picture of God is true.

But, at Capernaum near the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, neither cross nor empty tomb had happened yet. So, Jesus did something that, afterwards, His early disciples would see as a sign—an epiphany—of His identity as God in human flesh.

Look at verse 25. “Jesus rebuked [the demon], saying, ‘Be silent, and come out of Him!” Jesus later used the same word translated as “be silent” when He commanded a roaring storm that had Jesus’ disciples fearing for their lives. “Be still!” He told the wind and waves, causing His disciples to ask, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey Him?”

Good question! The answer can be found in Genesis 1, where we’re told that before the universe was formed, God’s Spirit moved over “the deep,” a roaring storm, and spoke to it—“Let there be light…” “Let there be dry land…” “Let there be grass and fields and trees and fruits…” “Let us make human beings in our image…”

The people of Capernaum didn’t understand yet that Jesus was God as well as man. But they were astonished. “What is this?” they ask one another. “A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey Him.”

A friend of ours came home one day to discover that his wife had left him to take up with another man. He was devastated.

In a vain effort to drown out his pain and claim control of his life, he threw himself into long workdays punctuated by non-stop busy-ness. He didn’t have a demon. But the devil seemed to be riding on his back.

Another friend finally got to him. He talked with him about how Christ had helped him through tough times and gave him hope for tomorrow.

Our friend finally heard Jesus telling him, “Be still and know that I am God.” Day after day, he let Christ take authority over his life.

That didn’t make all his pain or his questions go away. But as he began to walk each day with Christ by his side, the need for frenzy did go away.

He didn’t have to keep trying to assert the control over his life that he once thought he could have or needed to have. Christ had set him free. He came to know peace in the midst of the insanity and pain of life in this world.

Christ wants to give you that same peace today. Turn from a self-driven life. Turn to Christ. Jesus has the authority to change your life for eternity. Let Him do it. Surrender to Him. Amen

It's a Frightened Clown!

So, we were stopped at a red light in Lancaster, Ohio. Ahead of us was an SUV without a spare tire where it should have been. In its place, we saw the face of this frightened clown.

Audio of This Morning's 'Read the Bible in a Year' Discussion Group

We're reading the Bible together in a year at Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio. Each Wednesday, we have two discussion groups, one in the morning and one in the evening, of the week's readings. This week's readings were Acts 16 through Roman 9.

A few points:

1. Von Staupitz told Luther to not come back to him with "puppy sins," not "baby sins," as I erroneously said here.

2. The question was raised as to whether Martin Luther suffered from epilepsy. No, he didn't. But he may have had Meniere's Disease, "an inner ear disorder that affects balance and hearing."

For your information: My favorite biography of Martin Luther originally written in English is Here I Stand by Roland Bainton.

"I Want to Believe in God, But Find It Hard"

"I want to believe in God, but find it hard. What can I do to believe?"

I got this question this past Sunday after we'd invited listeners to our church radio broadcast to text us. 

I understand how hard it can be to believe. For a decade, I considered myself an atheist. I scoffed at the notion of God. A superficial understanding of science and its discoveries of the mechanics of life had led me to conclude that God was a fiction. After all, nobody had seen God while peering into the depths of space, the oceans, or subatomic particles.

This was silly on my part, of course. because there isn't a conflict between believing in God and being engaged in--or appreciating--science. As someone has said, "Science is largely, thinking God's thoughts after God."

The Bible and Science each ask different questions about the universe in which we live.

Science asks: What? When? How? These questions are important in helping us to understand the mechanics of the universe and how we can harness or "co-conspire" with them to do useful things.

But the Bible asks other questions, ones that science is incompetent to answer: Why? Who? The religions of the world show that human beings have considered these two questions and come up with all sorts of creative answers to them. But the Bible is the testimony of thousands of people over thousands of years who weren't speculating about why life exists or who made it, but reporting their encounters with the One Who created the universe and revealed His will for humanity and creation.

The Bible claims that over time, God has revealed Himself to the human race and ultimately, in the person we Christians call God the Son, Jesus. In Jesus, a man in Whom the full deity of God lived, we see a God of infinite love and rectitude.

According to the Bible, faith in God isn't something we claw to attain. It's God's gift to those who are willing to believe. The Bible also says that it's God's Holy Spirit, the third Person of the one God, Who persuades us to trust in God as revealed in the crucified and risen Jesus.

"God," we might tell the Lord, "there are lots of things I don't understand. I have many questions. And so much in the world is untrustworthy. But I want to trust in You. If Jesus displays Who You are, then I want to believe in You."

If you want to believe, God will build up faith in Him within You. You may feel that your faith is only, as Jesus once put it, the size of a small mustard seed. But that's OK. God doesn't judge us on the size of our faith, only on the One in Whom we place our faith.

As Jesus told 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."

A little faith in the big God we meet in Jesus, Who gave His life for us and then rose to open up eternity to those who trust in Him, is all you need. And if you want to believe, then I would say, you already do believe.

But your question indicates that you want your faith to grow. God wants the same thing.

That's part of why God has given you the Church.

Find a congregation where the Bible is preached and Jesus is exalted as the only pathway to knowing God.

Then get involved in that church's Sunday School and Bible studies and service projects.

You will learn more of God and you will see up close and personal, ordinary people like you and me, who wrestle with life's troubles and tragedies, yet trust in God. Your faith will grow in the process.

God bless you as you grow!

It Starts With Us

[This sermon was prepared to be shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, on January 22. We had to cancel worship because of icy conditions. But the sermon was shared via the local radio station that carries our Sunday worship services and has done so since 1962.]

Jonah 3:1-5, 10
This morning, I want to walk through the six verses that make up our first lesson, taken from the Old Testament, Jonah 3, verses 1 to 5 and verse 10, and see what God wants to reveal to us this morning.

Jonah 3, verse 1, says: “The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time.” 

I love the understatement of this passage! You may remember the first time that God’s word came to Jonah, a prophet who lived in the Judean coastal city of Joppa eight centuries before Jesus was born. The first time God called Jonah is recounted in Jonah, chapter 1, verse 2. It says: “Go at once to Ninveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before Me.”

God gave Jonah simple instructions. He was to go to Nineveh, the most important metropolis of the Assyrian nation and decry their sin.

In those days, all of God’s people, the Judeans, probably feared Assyria, a rising world power. But Jonah clearly hated the people of Assyria and its major city, Nineveh.

So, instead of doing as God directed, Jonah booked a berth on a ship headed for Spain.

Things didn’t go well for him after that! God stirred up a storm on the Mediterranean. Jonah knew that the lives of all on the ship were threatened by his faithlessness toward God.

So, he told them to throw him overboard. As soon as they did so, the storm ended. They were spared.

But what about Jonah?

As you know, God caused him to spend time in the belly of a great fish. Jonah was there for three days, praying. Finally, the fish vomited him onto dry land.

After trying to thwart the will of God, Jonah was exhausted, filthy, and smelly.

You know what I’ve learned over the years, folks? This world can be a hard place. We have no control over the evil that the devil and this world sometimes bring against the most faithful people we know. That’s hard and horrible.

But there are others kinds of suffering we may undergo over which we do have control. It’s the suffering that comes to us when we who claim to believe in the God ultimately revealed to the world in Jesus Christ, but deliberately contradict the Word and the will of God. It's the kind of suffering Jonah caused himself when he refused to do what God told him to do.

I once counseled with a man, a pillar of his church, who gave generously to Christ’s causes in the world, but who was deeply unhappy. As I scratched below his surface talk, I leaned that he was having an affair. He was alienated from the kids he constantly discouraged. He was drinking to excess, which, in turn, was a major cause for multiple hospitalizations and ever-worsening health. 

It was clear why he was so unhappy: As was true of Jonah when God sent the storm to disrupt his Mediterranean escape, God hadn’t given up on this man. So God was making this man miserable, waging war for his soul. He was still close enough to God to feel badly when he continued to do what he knew in his soul and from the Word of God was wrong!

When we who claim to be believers in the God revealed in Jesus turn our backs on the will of God, God will put us in the vise of what the psychologists call cognitive dissonance: the miserable condition that comes to those who claim to see reality in one way, yet live in a different way.

If people who confess Christ brazenly violate the will of God—using God’s Name for anything other than prayer, praise, and thanksgiving, for example; or, cheating others in business dealings; or, spreading unconfirmed rumors without knowing the facts; or, having a sexual relationship outside of the marriage of a man and a woman; or whatever the sin may be—God will hound them until they have either repented and returned to Christ or until they have totally stopped their ears and hearts to God.

After he headed for Spain, God didn’t given up on Jonah.

God had apparently not given up on Nineveh, either. If God hadn’t wanted the people of Nineveh to repent for their sins and believe in Him, He wouldn’t have called Jonah to go to them, either the first or the second times.


If you're listening to me today, having taken the time to go to worship or listen to the Saint Matthew radio broadcast, it shows that God hasn't given up on you...and, whether you're willing to admit it or not, God hasn't given up you either!

Listen, folks: Pray that God will always make you miserable when you ignore His will.

If your conscience bothers you when you realize you’re guilty of sin, that is a very good sign. Only those who have left themselves within range of God's loving arms feel guilt for their wrongs. And it's only when we're touched by guilt that we go to God for the forgiveness and the power for living eternally with God that only Jesus Christ can give.

The New Testament book of Hebrews says, “Endure trials for the sake of discipline. God is treating you as children; for what child is there whom a parent does not discipline?”

Followers of Jesus Christ will rise again to live in God’s new heaven and new earth and God disciplines us to prepare us to be the useful, joyful people you and I are going to be in eternity. Earthly pains can yield heavenly gains!

Verses three and four tell us that Jonah, battered from his battle with the God he claimed to serve, “…set out and went to Nineveh, according to the Word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, 'Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.'” 

Jonah may have said those words with relish. He hated the Ninevites, after all.

But even if Jonah meant his message for evil, God meant it for good!

Jonah hoped that the words he spoke from God would fall on deaf ears and that God would destroy the Ninevites.

He underestimated the power of the Word of God, though. Through the prophet Isaiah, God says, “My Word…shall not return to Me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” God's Word has the power to melt the hardest of hearts and turn them to God! If we let it, God's Word can penetrate our darkest times with the comfort of His presence and the promise of eternity.

When I get up to preach on Sunday mornings, I believe that, even if it happens in the life of just one person, the sermon will accomplish something.

• It may cause one unrepentant sinner to ask for God’s forgiveness. 
• Or lead one atheist or doubter to turn in faith to Christ. 
• It may bring comfort to one grieving person, hope to one despairing person. 

I believe all of this because I’m confident that when we lift up the Word of God in all its fullness, God’s Word will accomplish great things.

Jonah was a less than enthusiastic preacher. It didn’t matter. He was speaking the Word of God and the Word of God has power!

Look at verse 5 to see how much power: “And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.” 

I almost have to laugh every time I read this verse. Jonah never mentioned God! But the power of God’s Word is such that those who are open to it know it when they’ve heard it.

Folks, there are people you know who are steeped in sin who are just waiting to hear your invitation to turn from sin and believe in Jesus. You won’t be judgmental if you deliver this message to them. You’ll be sharing the greatest love the world has ever known: the love of God that saves sinners from death and futility to live with God, imperfectly today and one day in eternity, in complete perfection.

Don’t be discouraged when people aren’t receptive to your word about Jesus. I turned down people's invitations to follow Jesus for years before God used my wife, Ann, to introduce me to a group of joyful Lutheran Christians whose faith was so infectious, I wanted follow Jesus. During my atheist decade, I was once invited to a Christian movie at the Ohio Theater in Columbus by a friend. As we sat in the theater afterward, I told him, "No, I don't want Jesus in my life." Little did I know that thirty-plus years later, I would be captain of the team that counseled thousands of people who said, "Yes" to Billy Graham's invitation to follow Jesus during Dr. Graham's 2002 Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky Mission at Paul Brown Stadium. Just because people say no to your invitations to experience or follow Jesus the first time doesn't mean that's their final answer. As a disciple-maker for Jesus, you aren't responsible for other people's answers, only for praying for them and sharing Christ's invitation.

And don’t be surprised when people take you up on your invitations to join you for church or Sunday School or Bible study or prayer. “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold,” Jesus once said. “I must bring them also, and they will listen to My voice.” You and I are called to be the voice of Christ in this world! If we’ll just be open about our faith in Christ, we’ll be amazed at how many people are receptive.



In Jonah, chapter 3, verse 10 we're told: “When God saw what [the Ninevites] did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed His mind about the calamity that He had said He would bring upon them; and He did not do it.” 

God’s character is never changing and constant:

• God will always love you passionately. (Sadly, hell will be filled with people God loves. But God will not force His love and forgiveness on anyone.) 
• God will always hate sin and not allow it in His presence. 
• God will always command that you repent for sin and trust in His Son. 
• God will always welcome those who repent and believe, like the father who welcomed the prodigal son.
• God will always have a place ready and waiting for you in His heart and in His kingdom if you're willing to turn from sin and give your life to Christ. 

Even though God is unchanging, God can change His mind. He did so when it came to His planned destruction of Nineveh. God used Jonah's half-hearted preaching to turn people from enemies of God into children of God. God wanted to save the people of Nineveh from condemnation and hell. He wants to do the same thing for every person in Logan and Hocking County today.

So, I challenge you (and me) to do two things with our lives. First, to take stock of our own lives, asking God to show us what we may need to repent for. Make this a daily practice. In Psalm 51, King David prays to God, “You desire truth in the inward being.”

When we get honest with God about our sins, He gives us forgiveness and helps us to live our lives differently. God’s Holy Spirit will help us to be sensitive to how we can keep walking in the will of God and to remain sensitive to the call to repentance that will put us back on the right track. When we daily repent and renew our trust in Jesus, God will help us to live the faith we profess.

Second, don’t be reluctant about going to your friends with the truth about their sin and their need of Jesus’ forgiveness. This is not being judgmental. When Jesus says, "Judge not, lest you be judged," he is warning us against making judgments that are unfair. But if a friend of yours was stepping out into traffic, you wouldn't decide to say nothing because of some fear that you would be casting judgment on your friend's bad decision, would you? No way. You'd yell loudly and clearly, "Stop!" Loving our neighbors as we love ourselves, which Jesus commands of every Christian, must entail caring enough about others to tell them that their favorite sins are hurting them, hurting God, and putting their eternities at risk.

I'm convinced many people want to hear the simple message Jesus delivers in today’s Gospel lesson: “Repent, and believe in the good news.” They're just waiting for the Christian who is bold enough and loving enough to share it with them. It's a message I want to share with you today. If you have wandered far from God, then I invite you to turn from sin and death and turn instead to Jesus and the life that only He can give. Life on this earth isn't perfect. But you don't want to draw another breath or take another step without Jesus Christ as your God and companion. And you surely don't want to step into eternity, whenever that might happen, without Jesus as your Savior and king. Turn to Him now and live!

God has a simple plan for renewing the people of the world. It begins with us.

First, we daily and consistently repent and trust in the God we know in Jesus.

Second, we invite others to repent and trust in this same God.

If the Ninevites proved open to this message, maybe the Loganites will too. Maybe the people of the world will be open to it.

Are you ready for that?

Then, start with repentance for your own sins and trusting Jesus to forgive you and make you new each day.

Then, start telling others what an amazing God He is. Amen