Tuesday, August 29, 2023
Monday, August 28, 2023
Four Truths from Christ
Matthew 16:13-20
Today’s Gospel lesson finds Jesus leading the twelve disciples into the town of Caesarea-Philippi.
Caesarea-Philippi was a bad place. It’s where Herod Philip, son of Herod the Great, the puppet king of Rome, lived.
Idolatry was rampant there. The town had one temple devoted to the Roman god Pan, the god of unbridled sex--sex without meaning or love, and another temple devoted to the worship of Caesar.
It’s here though that Jesus starts an important conversation. There are four truths that Jesus reveals in this conversation that I want to hold up to you this morning.
Truth #1: Jesus is higher and greater than the world, by its own knowledge or wisdom, could ever know.
Jesus started this conversation by asking the Twelve, referring to Himself, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” (Matthew 16:13)
The disciples tell Jesus what they’ve heard people calling Jesus: “John the Baptist…Elijah…Jeremiah…or one of the prophets.” (Matthew 16:14)
All of these are high titles to apply to Jesus. But they’re not nearly high enough!
After hearing what titles the people of the world are giving Him, Jesus asks the Twelve: “Who do you say I am?” (Matthew 16:15)
Simon’s answer is breathtaking: “You are the Messiah [that is, the Christ, the anointed King and Savior promised by God for centuries], [and, if that wasn’t enough,] the Son of the living God. [God the Son, God in the flesh.]” [Matthew 16:16]
Now, if Jesus was anything less than all that Simon claimed Jesus to be, Jesus’ response to Simon’s confession would be monstrous. Jesus could then be dismissed as a madman or a liar.
But Jesus tells Simon: “Blessed are you [Justified are you, made righteous are you, by this confession you’ve just made], Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven.” (Matthew 16:17) “You’re right, Simon,” Jesus is saying, “You’re blessed with saving faith in Me as God and Christ, as God and Messiah.”
But how did Simon, of all people, know this about Jesus?
It wasn't because he was smart, wise, perceptive, or insightful.
It was God Himself Who revealed Jesus’ identity as Christ and God to Simon.
In our own power, by our own intellects, no human being could ever figure that out about Jesus. God Himself must show us Who Jesus is. The Bible says, “No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.” (1 Corinthians 12:3)
One of the reasons regular worship attendance is essential to Christians is that the Holy Spirit uses the Word and the Sacraments, which we know are God’s Word made visible, to lead us to the same confession about Jesus made by Peter, that Jesus is our King and our God.
As the Holy Spirit uses these means--Word and Sacrament--to give us faith and build our faith, we’re able to confess that Jesus is “...the [very] image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created…” (Colossians 1:15-16)
Truth #2: Being led by God the Father to confess Jesus as our God and our King changes us forever.
After Simon makes his confession, Jesus says to him, “I tell you that you are Peter…” (Matthew 16:18) He gives Simon a new name. In Jesus, our old sinful selves are killed and our new selves rise to new life with Him. The confession that God empowered Simon to make changed his identity.
My identity was changed when I was baptized as an infant, when God’s Word and promise and water met and through the Name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, I was claimed by God. The pastor said: “Mark James, child of God [not Mark James Daniels, the name my parents used for me when I was in trouble], you are marked with the cross of Christ and sealed by the Holy Spirit forever.”
Of course, those whom God has claimed and those who have confessed Jesus as God and King can walk away from God. They can shut down their relationship with God by turning away from Jesus and His people. I did that for ten years of my life.
Sadly, people walk away from Jesus.
But Jesus never gives up on His lost sheep and like the prodigal son’s father, will run to us when we turn to Him. The God Who woos us to faith works to “seek and to save the lost.” (Luke 19:10)
Truth #3: Jesus will build His Church through those who receive the gift of faith in Him.
Jesus tells Simon Peter: “on this rock I will build my church…” (Matthew 16:18) The word Jesus uses for rock here is slightly different from the name He’s just given to Peter. So, it isn’t Peter the man on whom Jesus builds His Church. He builds His Church through all the people God has led to faith in Him.
And the Church remains on a strong foundation not because of programs or the charisma of its pastors and teachers, not because of its buildings or membership rolls, but because of Jesus Christ alone.
Wherever the God we know in Christ is faithfully proclaimed and the Sacraments are rightly shared, Jesus Christ is building His Church. Just as our salvation is His work alone, the life of His Church is His work alone; our call is to attend to His Word and His Sacraments, to gather with His people to receive His gifts. This is how Christ builds His Church, no matter the size of its denominations or congregations.
Truth #4: Satan will assault God’s people, the Church, but nothing, nothing, will defeat the Church.
Jesus says, “...the gates of Hades will not overcome it.” (Matthew 16:18)
We can expect Satan to hate it when we as congregations and individual Christians confess faith in Jesus.
In the last parish I served, I made known my belief that the denomination of which we were then a part was departing from the authority of God and of His Word over His Church. In the course of a few months, our house was broken into and robbed, the church building was broken into and robbed six times, a drunken man slammed into and totaled both Ann’s and my cars and proceeded to bring a handgun onto our front porch as we waited for the police, and, despite having none of the expected underlying conditions, I had a major heart attack. A Christian woman with whom Ann worked observed, “Someone doesn’t want you two around here.” But we prayed and continued; today, that congregation is part of the North American Lutheran Church.
Jesus says elsewhere: “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33) Whether in this life or on the Day of His return when He calls we believers from our graves, we can trust His promise: “...the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.” (Matthew 24:13)
Satan cannot defeat, destroy, or rob us of saving faith in Christ and everlasting life with God. We know that Christ and His Church will prevail!
At the end of today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus tells the Twelve not to tell anyone that He was the Messiah.
The reason for this is that He still hadn’t gone to the cross, where He bore the punishment for sin that we deserve and He still hadn’t been raised to life so that all who turn to Him in repentance and faith will have everlasting life with God.
Many people in Jesus’ day believed that the Messiah would be a magical military or political leader who would wave his scepter and make the country’s borders secure, give everybody wealth, and keep foreigners out, none of which had they taken place, could overcome human sin or the condemnation and death our sin brings.
In fact, I think that the worst thing that can happen to us is for us to get our ways because when that happens, it makes us satisfied with the goodies of this life rather than hungering for life with God that never ends!
Jesus is our Messiah, our King, because, on the cross, He destroyed the ability of sin and death to keep us from life with God. Jesus delivers the fruits of His crucifixion and resurrection–the fruits of forgiveness, new life, eternity with God–to those who, empowered by God just like Simon Peter–can daily turn from sin and daily turn to Christ in trust and hope.
Jesus has given these four truths to you to receive and believe today and so that you too might be blessed with faith that, through Him, every one of your sins is forgiven and you have life with God right now and forever. Amen
Wednesday, August 23, 2023
Monday, August 21, 2023
What is Faith in Christ?
Matthew 15:21-28
Just before the event recounted in today’s gospel lesson, Jesus had an encounter with Pharisees from Jerusalem. They confront Jesus for allowing His disciples to break God’s Law that said good religious folks must undergo ritual cleansing before eating.
Jesus explains that it isn’t the things that enter our bodies from outside of us that make us unclean in the eyes of God. Instead, it’s the sinful nature inside each of us that leads us to commit sins that makes us unclean. Jesus says, “...out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what defile a person…” (Matthew 15:19-20)
Then, as if to demonstrate what He means about not being defiled by what comes from outside of ourselves, our lesson for today finds Jesus, the pure, perfect, holy, Son of God, going into territory that Jews deem unclean, the region of Tyre and Sidon. This area hugging the coast of the Mediterranean was a land whose people were notorious idolaters and sinners. The whole region is regarded by Jesus’ countrymen as evil.
And here’s Jesus going into this unclean land to encounter a Gentile woman with a saving faith in Him that the Pharisees and most of Jesus’ fellow Jews would reject.
We all know the central importance of faith in Christ. Every little child in the Church knows John 3:16: “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.”
Romans talks about faith and salvation too. "...But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe [who have faith]." (Romans 3:21-22)
Our salvation in Christ isn’t based on what we do or even on what we are, but solely on what Christ has done for us and our faith or trust in Christ.
But what does it mean to have faith or to believe in Jesus?
The great Lutheran preacher of the last century, Bo Giertz, posed this very question and said that the Canaanite woman in today’s lesson illustrates exactly what it means to have faith in three ways. So, I want to take those three insights of Giertz and talk about each of them.
To have faith in Jesus means, first of all, to set all one’s hope on Jesus. That’s an enormous statement!
Faith in Jesus means that we trust that He, God the Son, is the author of “every good and perfect gift” (James 1:17), the supplier of everything we need, from our eternal salvation to our next meal. He is “our daily bread” in this life and the next.
We may wonder where this woman got her faith in Jesus. The gospel of Mark tells us in recounting this same incident, that the woman had “heard” about Jesus. (Mark 7:25) So, in some form or another the Word about Jesus had traveled from Capernaum, which is where Jesus’ ministry was centered at that time, to Tyre, about the distance from Dayton to Springfield.
This Word about Jesus had done its work in this desperate woman. By this second-hand Word about the Lord and Savior of the world, the mother of the demon-possessed girl, had come to believe in Jesus. She set her hope on Jesus.
The apostle Paul asks in Romans: “How…can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?” (Romans 10:14)
And He says that once the Word about Jesus reaches people, the Holy Spirit can create faith in Christ within them: “...faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ.” (Romans 10:17)
The Canaanite woman had been given the Word about Jesus and through it, had come to set her hope on Him.
To have faith in Jesus means also not to think much of oneself. I’m not talking about “self-esteem” here.
The Canaanite woman, a Gentile who stood outside of the covenant God made with His people, the Jews, through Abraham, knew that she didn’t deserve anything from God.
When she approaches Jesus, we’re told, “A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, ‘Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.’” (Matthew 15:22) And again she says, “Lord, help me!” (Matthew 15:25)
The woman acknowledges Jesus as Lord, that is, as Yahweh, God of all, and as the Son of David, the Messiah King, true God and true man.
She asks for His mercy. “I am a sinner, Lord,” she is effectively telling Jesus, “I don’t claim to be entitled to anything. I can’t claim to be a good person. But because You are good, because of Your grace, I ask, I beg. for Your mercy.”
As I’ve explained before, we sinners who cannot perfectly obey God’s Law nonetheless keep it when we acknowledge that we are rightly judged to be sinners by that Law–the Ten Commandments–and turn to Christ for mercy, grace, and forgiveness. This is what the Canaanite woman does!
When Jesus tells her that it would be morally wrong to take blessings away from God’s people to give them to dogs (what Jews called Gentiles), outsiders, the woman fully understands. No parent would be right to scrape the food off the plates of His own children in order to feed dogs. This is, in essence what Jesus is telling the woman. The woman agrees with Jesus but says, “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” (Matthew 15:27)
Now, this incident occurs between two miraculous feedings by Jesus: the feeding of the 5000 in Matthew 14 and the feeding of the 4000 in Matthew 15. At both feedings, there were leftovers, 12 baskets-full at one and 7 at another.
“Lord,” the Canaanite woman is saying, because of her faith in Jesus, “don’t give me the choicest of Your blessings. I know Your grace is overflowing. Just give me the leftovers. Just give me Your crumbs. I know You and I know that will be enough!”
Faith means not to think too much of ourselves, but to always think of how great, good, gracious, and wonderful is the God we know in Jesus!
Finally, Giertz says, “faith holds onto Jesus even if He does not seem to answer.” Why does Jesus delay answering the woman’s prayer for her daughter? Why does He seem to delay or not answer our prayers? I don’t know. Like you, I’ve experienced God seeming to tarry in answering my prayers in Jesus’ name. And I’ve experienced things going completely differently from what I prayed would happen.
But, like the woman, our call is to keep praying and seeking from the God we know in Jesus the blessings we feel we need and trust Him to sort things out as He, in His grace and wisdom, sees fit. This is the point of our praying, “Thy will be done.” We trust and pray in the certainty that it is His pleasure to show mercy to those who cling to Him in faith. And when the answers to our prayers seem to be delayed, Jesus blesses us with His presence and places us in the comforting presence of His people.
The woman in our lesson trusted in Jesus as God and King. She acknowledged her sin and that she didn’t deserve God’s favor. She expressed faith in the enormity of God’s grace that could provide even for her, an undeserving sinner.
Friends, whether in this life or the next, Jesus loves to bless and reward such faith. It is people with this kind of faith that are meant when the Bible tells us, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
And so, Jesus tells the woman that the disciples wanted to send away: “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” We’re then told: “And her daughter was healed at that moment.” (Matthew 15:28)
How does one acquire such a faith?
You don’t decide to have it.
You can’t work to get it.
God gives it to us through His Word and His Word made visible in the Sacraments. He speaks faith into us.
Through the Word about Jesus, we know that Jesus is our God and King, that we are sinners saved by grace through faith in Jesus, that all our sins are forgiven, and that Jesus wants to give us His mercy. By the power of the Word about Jesus, you may believe that this is all true! Amen
The Gospel of John, August 20, 2023
Saturday, August 19, 2023
Truth for the "Self-Sufficient"
Months ago, when Jim Lopez conveyed the invitation to me to speak here tonight, I was honored to be asked and because I so believe in the work of Whole Truth, I immediately said, “Yes!”
When, a few days ago, Jim reminded me that last year’s speaker was Anthony Muñoz, I wondered whether I hadn’t made a big mistake.
But if you’re willing to scale down your expectations to about a guy at 5’8” and 150 pounds, with no past or present athletic ability, I want to spend a few minutes sharing my heart with you about Whole Truth Ministries.
Now Jim, who is a member of the congregation I serve as pastor, Living Water Lutheran Church, was the first one to tell me about Whole Truth. Once a month, Jim takes a spread he prepares for women and men served by this ministry. Several years ago, he asked if I would be willing to tag along with him and provide a Bible study.
I need to make a confession. When I agreed to do the Bible study, I had two reactions.
The first was wondering whether the men and women in recovery to whom Whole Truth ministers would be interested in what I had to say. Over the past thirty-nine years, I’ve gotten asked to do lots of presentations to groups. Usually, Bible study for these groups has been nothing more than a box to be checked.
My second reaction, the one of which I’m most ashamed, was thinking that in doing a Bible study, I would be the one giving and the folks sitting around those tables at dinner would be the ones receiving. What a lot of egotistical rot!
Never have I been around a group of people who, almost universally, were so hungry for the Word of God, so hungry for Jesus, “the living bread who comes down from heaven” and the “living water…” that becomes a “spring…welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:14) In their desire for Jesus and the new and everlasting life that only Jesus can give, the recovering folks I’ve met and interacted with at Whole Truth have given me far more than I have ever given them.
Above all, they’ve given me an important reminder. Jesus once told His disciples–and you and me, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; [and then He said] apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5)
Apart from Jesus, we can do nothing. Do you believe that?
You know what I think?
I think that when our lives are going reasonably well, when things are OK at work, when our families are healthy, when we’ve got a comfortable home and get to take nice vacations, it’s easy for us to think that we can handle life without Jesus. Jesus, at most, becomes an add-on accessorizing our lives. We’re sure that through our brain, brawn, willpower, and stick-to-it-iveness, we’ll be OK. We even think that our charitable works–even these good things we do, speak to our self-sufficiency, our personal agency.
We think this even though God’s Word tells us, “... it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Ephesians 2:8-10)
The truth is that even your being here tonight, raising money for Whole Truth Ministries, is a good work that God already created for you beforehand. You’re only walking in it here this evening. (I don’t know whether he wanted you to walk into your double bogey or not. That’s another issue.)
But here’s the thing: Though we may doubt Jesus when He tells us, “Apart from Me, you can do nothing,” the recovering community served by Whole Truth Ministries doesn’t doubt that.
The reason for that is simple: When you’ve come to the end of yourself and Jesus Christ is all you’ve got, you realize that Jesus is all you need.
The folks with whom I’ve shared the Word of God at Whole Truth are often already steeped in the Word of God because, down in the bottom of life, in the lowlands of human experience, the God revealed in Jesus Christ reached out to them through His Word and the work of Whole Truth, which is built on His Word!
Whole Truth is a ministry of God’s Word. Its primary ministry is to serve the Word of God to the people it serves.
The New Testament says that “the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword…” (Hebrews 4:12)
The two edges of God’s Word, the two ways God speaks to us, are Law and Gospel.
The Law gives us the will of God and leads us to recognize that we’re sinners who, no matter how hard we work to fool ourselves into believing we’re self-sufficient, good people, without Jesus Christ, we can do nothing. Nothing that matters. Nothing good. Nothing helpful. Nothing lasting. The Law means to drive us to the ends of ourselves to the foot of the cross where Jesus freely gave His life for self-sufficient sinners.
The Gospel is God’s good news that He covers those who are at the end of themselves and come to Jesus by faith, with the righteousness, life, grace, peace, and hope that only come from Jesus Christ.
People who have been reached by Christ and His gospel are those who recognize the delusion of self-sufficiency, lay aside their defenses, and compelled by the Word of God, confess that “Jesus is Lord. Not me. Jesus alone.”
It is the Gospel, the good news of forgiveness, new life, fresh starts, and everlasting hope freely given to those who turn to Jesus, that I see in the people served by Whole Truth Ministries.
They may have once thought when they were abusing various substances that they were making their own decisions, even as their lives spiraled out of control. The Word of God given to them by Whole Truth, turns them from the self-destruction that happens when we cling to the lie of self-sufficiency and shows them Jesus, “the way, and the truth, and the life.” (John 14:6)
Whole Truth Ministries has helped me see this more clearly and I thank everyone involved in it for their ministry to me in Jesus’ name.
I also thank you for the support you’re giving to Whole Truth, making it possible to reach even more people who need this ministry.
Finally, I want to remind you that the Word of God about Jesus Christ, the gospel, the good news, that is changing the lives of so many through Whole Truth Ministries can transform all of our lives. You aren’t and you don’t need to be self-sufficient either. The power of God, given in Christ, can lead us each day and change our eternity.
The Gospel of Mark records only one sermon preached by Jesus, encompassed in a single verse: “The right time has come…and the Kingdom of God is near! Turn away from your sins and believe the Good News!” (Mark 1:15, GNT)
If we all are reminded by Whole Truth Ministries to turn away from sin and the garbage that bedevils, distracts, and harasses us in this life, and to turn in trust to Jesus, our Good News, its work will impact more than the just community it directly serves. It will impact and change for the better the lives of all who are part of it.
Thank you.