Matthew 13:24-30;36-43  "WHAT SHALL WE DO ABOUT THE WEEDS?"
August 2, 2020 - Pentecost 9

   Jesus told them another parable:  “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.
   “The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’
   “‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.
   “The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’
   “ ‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters:  First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’”  …
Then he left the crowd and went into the house. His disciples came to him and said, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field.”
   He answered, “The one who sowed the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one, and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels.
   “As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.”

Alan, my brother-in-law, farms near New Ulm along with his sons-in-laws Mitch and Eric. To compete in the today’s agricultural environment the farm has evolved over four generations. The milk cows are long gone, replaced with beef cattle. Cash crops provide the bulk of farm income. I can’t begin to guess at the investment in real estate (land – owned and rented), machinery and technology. More than once Alan has told my sister, “If you hear that something’s happened to me, don’t rush to the hospital. Call the lawyer, because you’re gonna need him.” 

In talking to Alan, you’d quickly realize he knows his stuff. He plows and plants by entering GPS coordinates into a computer in the cab of his six figure tractor. He knows what’s going on with the soil in various tracks of land. Everything necessary to get a crop in and out of the ground is taken into account. You’re left with the impression, “Nothing gets by this guy.”

In Jesus’ Parable of the Weeds and the Wheat we meet an equally knowledgeable farmer. He accurately assesses a threat to his operation and wisely advises his workers on how to handle it. Because this is one of those stories for which Jesus provides the interpretation, we’re able to easily decode its seven elements. The sower is “the Son of Man,” Jesus himself; the field is the world; the good seed are “the sons of the kingdom,” believers, “the righteous;” the weeds are “the sons of the evil one,” unbelievers; the enemy is the devil; the harvest is “the end of the age” (Judgment Day); and the reapers are the angels. So now we can carry Jesus’ straightforward story over into real life with no effort, right? Yes and no. Jesus could have made the point, “Bad things are going to happen in the world until the end of time, so you'd better brace yourself.” But the illustration with its details make his point more vibrant and the reasoning behind it much more clear.

Let’s think about Jesus’ Parable of the Weeds and the Wheat, recognizing its timeliness. To do so, let’s ask the question which the servants put to the farmer-boss: “WHAT SHALL WE DO ABOUT THE WEEDS?”          
          
A week ago Jesus told his Parable of the Sower and the Seed where the seed fell on four different types of soil:  rocky, weedy, hard-packed, and good.  He used that as a picture of how God’s Word works when proclaimed – often hindered by the condition of the human heart and occasionally, by God’s grace, productive as it yields an impressive harvest of faith and the fruits of faith, good works.

Today, Jesus once more focuses on a man planting seed, but this time we’re not particularly interested in where the seed falls, but the crop that results. The farmer wants a good crop so he uses the best seed. We might assume that he’s careful when scattering the seed so that it falls on good soil. My brother-in-law knows, for example, what crops grow best in the sandy soil of their bottomland acreage along the Cottonwood River and what crops grow best up in the more fertile, black soil fields surrounding the farmstead.

But all the careful planning in the world can’t compete with sabotage. The farmer had an enemy who, for some reason, wanted to ruin his crop or at least see it compromised. Under cover of darkness, suggesting that his actions were nefarious, this enemy sowed ζιζ?νιον (zizanion, phonetic:  dziz-an'-ee-on), a type of darnel in the field.[1] This is a weed has been termed “wheat’s evil twin” because as it grows it looks just like wheat until it ‘heads out’ and the grain appears. It kernels are black and it carries a poisonous fungus which is harmful if eaten. So it’s the exact opposite of the life-supporting wheat among which it’s growing.

The servants are alarmed. They know their master desires only good results. Surely he did not plant seed mixed with this garbage in it and he confirms their thinking: “An enemy did this.” The servants suggest uprooting the weeds because they’re an impediment to the growth of the wheat. But as the farmer analyzes the situation and tells them that it’s better to let the two be. The roots might be intertwined or their proximity to each other might mean that as they try to tear out the weeds, the wheat is going to get uprooted too. “Let both grow together until the harvest.” Later each can be gathered up and separated, with the good crop brought into the barn and the weeds sent to the burn pile.

The picture Jesus paints, as shown by his explanation, is what we see in our world. Side by side there exist wheat and weeds – people who are good because God has made them good through Jesus (“sons of the kingdom” he calls them) and people who are not good, wicked, (“sons of the evil one”). These later have a negative, harmful effect on everything in this world and fight against the well-being of the wheat. Jesus’ point is that these “bad” plants did not come from him. Their origin is from an enemy – God’s enemy, the devil.

Satan has been God’s enemy nearly from the beginning. Created perfect like the other angels, Satan quickly became unsatisfied with his position. He recruited a band of similarly minded, malcontent spirit beings (angels become demons) to join his rebellion. Rebelling against the all-holy, almighty God is not a smart thing to do. The devil lost not only the battle but his position as well.[2] Still bitter, Satan’s goal is to get as many people to join him in endless misery, suffering for their sins as he’s going to suffer for all eternity for his sins.
History proves that the devil has had more than a little success in persuading people to join him. He’s sown weeds in the field of this world. We look around and see people who clearly don’t care about God and what he’s done for them. Any spirituality they may have is superficial or a religion of their own imagination against which Scripture warns, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.” The “sons of the evil one” regard Christianity as pointless – even goofy – because it causes a person to miss out on ‘the present’ with its emphasis on ‘glory deferred.’ The most ardent of the weeds are convinced Christianity is not just wrong, but dangerous and they actively oppose it. We looked at Paul’s experience in Corinth last week and met some of these critics and naysayers and the frustration they caused the Lord’s Apostle. Yet, thinking back on that instance, Paul did not organize a counter demonstration targeting the unbelieving Jews of Corinth; he didn’t picket in front of their synagogue; he didn’t launch a resistance movement. Taken to the extreme, such horribly misguided approaches have resulted during the Middle Ages, for example, crusades against infidels and inquisitions to expose heretics. Jesus said, “Let both grow together …”.

We might draw a parallel with what’s happening in large cities across America and especially in our nation’s Pacific Northwest in Portland and Seattle —   protests where violence is directed against authority labelled unjust and overbearing. It’s a toxic atmosphere. And we might conclude, “Boy, it’s awfully ‘weedy’ out there!”  We might even be inclined to think, “I’m sure glad God planted me here where my values as a believer fit in with generally accepted Midwest values.” We might go so far as to think, “You know, if God chose to send ‘the big one’ – that long-predicted earthquake that’s supposed to send California and send that tier of western states slipping off into the Pacific Ocean, I’d be okay with that – no big loss.” Yet, that’s hardly a charitable attitude, is it? But these people don’t need our contempt, they need our compassion, our prayers, and our Christian witness.

There are, on this side of eternity, some things we simply cannot change. Weeds are going to exist alongside wheat. Jesus is essentially saying, “Accept that and trust my Father. He’s working his good purposes all the time, even when it doesn’t seem to make sense.”     
“Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?” Paul asks in Romans chapter 11. In that same place in the Apostle’s line of thought he praises God for a wisdom that is lightyears beyond our own. “How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! … For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever!” God allows weeds and wheat to grow together for reasons often known only to him. Yet we can be always be certain it will be for the ultimate good of his people.

On a personal level God may – through that “weedy person” – bring a trial into your life so that you lean on and depend on him more completely. He may well use the ‘poison fruit’ that that person produces to encourage you to bring forth fruit in keeping with your faith —   living your life in such a way that it thanks God for what he’s done for you.

Ultimately, we are unfit to judge between the weeds and the wheat. Confessions and actions may give indication one way or another. But unlike that zizanion and the wheat – whose differences are completely on the outside – the difference between believer and unbeliever is a matter of the heart. We can be deceived by weeds pretending to be wheat and we can misjudge wheat and mark it as a weed. We can’t peer into the heart; we can’t know a person’s faith. So we leave those judgments for God and trust that, when the harvest comes, he will make the proper decision.

That harvest will mean the end. Come Judgment Day there’ll be no more chances, no more options. The crop in the field has no more chance to grow once the sickle or combine is taken to it. Its time in the field is gone and it moves onto the next stage. Jesus makes clear what happens to the wheat and weeds … 

As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.

This is less a warning and more a message of comfort for the wheat. In the end God is going to take everything that hurt us and caused us pain here in time and get rid of it once and for all. Like weeds bound into a bundle and burned, …

• everything that ever tempted us to sin and rebel against God,
• everything that mocked us for our faith, and
• every last thing that ever brought us misery will be no more.

Pain, suffering, problems of any sort will be absent in heaven. There will be only joy in the eternal mansions of God’s storehouse.

Remember, though, that being brought into the barn has nothing to do with us. We could have just as easily been marked as weeds and sent to the burn pile to face the flames. But that’s the disaster Jesus came to prevent. At the risk of pushing our Savior’s picture to places where he didn’t intend it to go, Jesus’ blood shed on the cross is like fertilizer that fundamentally changes the plants it touches. We were weeds, sinners destined for hell, but Jesus rescued us. That we are brought into the barn is no testament to how good we are. When we find ourselves in God’s barn, it will always, only be because of grace. That undeserved love of God delivered us from that hopeless situation so that, at the end of this age, we will “shine like the sun in the kingdom of [our] Father.”

While still wheat in the field, let’s surround ourselves that which will strengthen us. Let’s be rooted in God’s Word personally, as families, and as a family of believers in this congregation and so allow God to nurture and fertilize our faith. If we sense Satan returning and trying to sell his lies of how wonderful it is to be a weed, let’s send him packing. He is no friend. Jesus rightly labeled him our enemy, as well as God’s enemy. Satan’s lies, though tempting, have no power over us. Our Savior has triumphed over his deception.

We will dwell in the storehouse of our God forever. That gift is for everyone, even those we might deem to be against us, even the weeds among the wheat, so share it.  You just might find that at the last day God has turned those you thought were weeds into wheat, fellow heirs of God’s kingdom!

Praise God who tends to his field and ensures that, despite the problems around us, we all have exactly what we need!

Amen.  

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Acts 18:1-11  "SCATTERING SEED AND THE CURIOUS POWER OF GOD"
July 26, 2020 - Pentecost 8

  After this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. There he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all Jews to leave Rome. Paul went to see them, and because he was a tentmaker as they were, he stayed and worked with them. Every Sabbath he reasoned in the synagogue, trying to persuade Jews and Greeks.
   When Silas and Timothy came from Macedonia, Paul devoted himself exclusively to preaching, testifying to the Jews that Jesus was the Messiah. But when they opposed Paul and became abusive, he shook out his clothes in protest and said to them, “Your blood be on your own heads! I am innocent of it. From now on I will go to the Gentiles.”
   Then Paul left the synagogue and went next door to the house of Titius Justus, a worshiper of God. Crispus, the synagogue leader, and his entire household believed in the Lord; and many of the Corinthians who heard Paul believed and were baptized.
   One night the Lord spoke to Paul in a vision: “Do not be afraid; keep on speaking, do not be silent. For I am with you, and no one is going to attack and harm you, because I have many people in this city.” So Paul stayed in Corinth for a year and a half, teaching them the word of God.

With most of our stay-at-home neighbors working at beautifying their yards this spring, my wife and I decided it was time to get rid of an eyesore in our front yard, a 35 ft blue spruce. Winter-kill had left it with lots of barren branches and nuisance seedlings growing beneath it and a strangling vine weaving its way up the trunk had all but sealed the tree’s demise. We called a tree cutter, negotiated a fair price, and had the tree taken down, the stump ground out, and the hole backfilled with black dirt. 

Now we’re nursing the grass seed that’s supposed to be growing where the tree stood. I say supposed to be  because in mid-summer that’s easier said than done. Spring and fall are when you get the ‘best catch’ at seeding a lawn —   summer, ah, is more challenging. We’ve had to buy and hook up a sprinkler, monitor day-to-day how moist the soil is to get the seed to germinate, move the hose to mow the rest of the lawn, sow additional seed in those glaringly bald spots – and, be patient.     

Whether you are a homeowner trying not to have the crummiest lawn on the block or a farmer expending a lot of time and energy in planting hundreds of acres and nurturing fields of corn or soybeans or whatever —   success hinges on the seed doing its thing. That seed needs, in the right proportion moisture, warmth, and sunlight to sprout, otherwise – no plant. Amazingly, the Creator has built all that into that package.  The grower needs to be patient and trust. 

All these factors come together in our lessons with their emphasis on the seed of the Word working in the human heart to yield faith in Jesus. Isaiah 55:10 records the Lord’s promise, “As the rain and snow come down from heaven … so is my word that goes out from my mouth:  It will not return to me empty …”. The Word of God has its own curious, built-in power to bring about the desired results. Our text is a case-in-point. 

Acts 18:1-11 examines this issue from the human perspective. Luke, author of Acts, hands us a snapshot of Paul the great missionary in a moment of professional crisis. He’s been scattering the seed all over Greece and now he’s in Corinth, telling people about the Savior Jesus. But the seed doesn’t seem to be growing. Paul is perplexed. One sentence of our text even makes it seem as if he's lost patience altogether. That runs counter to our perception of Paul, doesn’t it? Paul is the guy who is not about to let anything rattle him. He’s the guy who said, “I can do all things do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”  He’s the guy who would write in Second Corinthians about ministers of the Word, “… our competence comes from God.”  However, here he appears anything but sure that the seed of the Word is going to grow. He’s frustrated and fearful, even while he’s trying to be faithful. 

This picture of Paul running-on-empty is insightful for us because of how God fills his Apostle with hope.  “Do not be afraid; keep on speaking, do not be silent. For I am with you ...” . Jesus gave Paul a much-needed shot of spiritual adrenaline and our Lord does that for us when we struggle in similar moments of doubtfulness.
 
Here’s the background to Acts chapter 18. By the time Paul reaches Corinth, he has already faced beatings, floggings, imprisonment, humiliation, a riot, and a city that thought he and his message were really strange (that was Athens). All of that has transpired within the span of just a few weeks from time Paul set foot on the European continent. When Paul arrived in Corinth, you have to wonder what was going through his mind (???). 
The mission work had been rocky in most places, but still God had caused a small congregations come together. Like Hansel’s and Gretel’s breadcrumbs in the forest, there was a trail of believers throughout Greece leading here to Corinth. Now, Paul had hit “the big time.” In Paul’s day Athens was past peak, a city of maybe only 10,000 inhabitants residents - not large. Corinth, on the other hand, was big and bad! It was a commercial hub with a population of 100,000 plus! It also had a reputation for immorality that would make Las Vegas blush. The people there needed the Savior from sin Paul was preaching.

On arriving Paul met a couple of believing tentmakers, Aquila and Priscilla. They welcomed him into their home. Paul did his own share of tentmaking with them, but he was first and foremost a missionary. So he went to his fellow Jews, people familiar the Old Testament, who spoke the same language and had the same customs, people who were looking for the coming of the Savior as he had. “Every Sabbath Paul reasoned in the synagogue, trying to persuade both Jews and Greeks.”  He wanted them to see what he had seen, to know what he knew about this Jesus. He wanted them to know that Jesus was their living Savior who had fulfilled all of God’s prophecies. Paul was so focused on this task that when his co-workers Silas and Timothy arrived, Paul stopped making tents and “devoted himself to preaching the word and testified to the Jews that Jesus was the Messiah.”   

But sometimes no matter how much seed you scatter, the results appear meager. Many of Paul’s Jewish hearers turned a deaf ear. Then they stepped it up and actively opposed Paul’s message and became abusive —   slandering him, blaspheming his so-called Messiah, and rejecting the gospel of Christ. They tried to silence Paul by their abuse. Paul does something that we might take to be out-of-character – almost seems to ‘lose it.’ He is so perturbed by the response of his critics that “…he shook out his clothes in protest and said to them, “Your blood be on your own heads! I am innocent of it. From now on I will go to the Gentiles.””  For the sake of the gospel, for his own soul’s sake, and for the sake of the souls of those who did believe, Paul left his countrymen behind (not an easy thing to do). Paul was going to take the gospel to those who would listen, even if they were unbelieving pagans.

He actually didn’t go too far, maybe 30 feet. He went next door to the synagogue, to the home of Titius Justus, a Greek ‘worshiper of God’ who’d been attending synagogue services. That home was quickly transformed into a house church. There Paul began to preach and to teach about Jesus, the Savior who died to bring peace with God and forgiveness for guilt, the Savior who lives to break the chains of sin, the Savior who lives to give sight to those lost in darkness, the Savior who lives to give life that lasts forever.  Paul sowed the seed and it took root among the Gentiles! “… many of the Corinthians who heard him believed and were baptized.” Even Crispus, the synagogue ruler, and his entire household believed in Jesus. The Lord was richly blessing this mission work!

But, then, the pattern suddenly seemed too familiar. In a moment of serious reflection Paul stopped short.  Celebration over the gospel’s success was tempered with realism. Was he about to experience again what he had experienced in Philippi or Thessalonica? Would a mob rise up against him? Would angry people with red faces and jets of stream shooting out their ears get him thrown into jail or run out of town? Paul was waiting for the proverbial ‘next shoe to drop.’ 

Forgive the Lord’s Apostle if in this moment he was starting to feel burned out, worn down, alone, … even afraid after enduring so much. Have a little heart for this gun-shy man of God starting to have doubts about his work. You’ve met other ministers of the Word in the midst of what I earlier termed a ‘professional crisis’—    Elijah under a broom tree in the desert. The sower was conflicted; but the seed grows. 
  
“… [my word] will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” As we puzzle-piece together these experiences of Paul over the past two months, we can conclude that – yes! – this is why Jesus feels it necessary to pay Paul a visit … at night … in a vision. This is the Apostle’s ‘gentle whisper moment.’  Into Paul’s doubt, into his weariness, into his hesitation, and into his fear came, Jesus came with a message of peace: “Don’t be afraid…”. Throughout Scripture, our Savior has always used those words to calm the troubled hearts of his fearful people. The Lord spoke those words when he appeared to his people in the Old Testament. Jesus spoke them to his disciples during his ministry and a form of them to his disciples after his resurrection. They’re words of peace for fearful hearts.

“Do not be afraid; keep on speaking, do not be silent.  For I am with you, and no one is going to attack and harm you, because I have many people in this city.”  The sower was urged to continue his work of sowing because success resided in the see. Jesus urged Paul to proclaim far and wide the gospel without fear. Why?  Jesus was right there with him, protecting him, and blessing him. It wouldn’t be déjà vu all over again as Yogi Berra once said.  Paul could settle in there at Corinth and start bringing in the harvest. With fears silenced, Paul “stayed there a year and a half, teaching them the word of God.”

Are there times when you feel like Paul … worn down, tired of the grind, tired of the struggle? Do you periodically, given what’s going on in your life – the seven Monday’s in a row, the gray skies that refuse to part, sense that you are fast approaching the point of throwing in the towel —   or throw up your hands in exasperation? As confident as you and I might think we are, feelings of uncertainty and frustration and hesitation do hit us now and again. They are part of the Christian experience … our living as the redeem of God in this still sin-corrupted world. These feeling threaten to undermine our trust in God’s guidance. They may even begin to lead us to question our Father’s love for us. These fears come naturally to us all. 

But —   and here’s the big “BUT.” But we are never left alone to cope with these crushing struggles.  Into such doubt, into such weariness, into such loneliness, into such hesitation, comes Jesus, our living Savior and Lord.  He brings words filled with peace that quiet all our fears:  “Don’t be afraid … for I am with you… ” —   the very same words Jesus uses here to silence Paul’s fears. Behind those words is a guarantee, a guarantee made when Jesus put himself in your place under that crushing burden of life’s struggles; a guarantee made when Jesus took all your doubts and fears and worries and uncertainties and put them on himself on the cross; a guarantee made when Jesus abandoned his tomb on Easter morning. He came out of the tomb, but all those doubts, fears, worries; all that loneliness and uncertainty stayed inside – along with your and my sin, guilt, and death. In so doing, Jesus brings peace to our fearful hearts.
 
Because we serve a living Lord Jesus, you can get up in the morning and carry out the unique calling God has given you in your Christian life right now. Those callings vary for each of us, depending on what season of life you happen to be in and what role you occupy:  parent, grandparent, husband, wife, student, mentor, friend, fellow church member. God has set you into that position and he allows you now to extend his love to others. You needn’t live in fear or question what will be, but instead faithful carry out the work God has given you in his strength —   to live his love in every aspect of your life. You can even tell others about their Savior so they know why Jesus died and lives today. You can tell others in the confidence that God’s Word works. Sow the seed and trust its power.

Amen.
 

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Matthew 11:25-20 "REST FOR THE WEARY IN JESUS"
July 19, 2020 - Pentecost 7

   At that time Jesus said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do.
  “All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.
  “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

I’m going to read some familiar words for you. Can you tell me where they are found?
 
                                                                Give me your tired, your poor,
                                                                Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
                                                                The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
                                                                Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.
                                                                I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
 
Too easy, perhaps – especially with that last line. These are the words of poem by Emma Lazarus and they are found on a cast bronze plaque fixed to the base of the Statue of Liberty. To my knowledge the cancel culture crowd hasn’t advocated tearing down “Lady Liberty” – and that’s a good thing! For nearly 250 years now the United States has been offering rest and peace for ‘huddled masses’ longing to be free. Our country has a reputation for being a land of opportunity. Immigrants by the hundreds of thousands still long for the blessings of peace and prosperity America provides.

Listen to even greater words of freedom, peace and rest, etched forever on the pages of Scripture: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” Jesus offers rest for the weary – a rest and peace that nothing else in this world can offer. The 4th century church father, Augustine, wrote,
 
When you have a right relationship with the Father through Jesus Christ you have the peace and rest of knowing you are loved by the true God in this life and all eternity. I long for more of this peace and rest in my life, and I’m sure the same is also true for you as well.
   
Ironically, Jesus spoke these words to people who did not want the perfect peace and rest that he had come to bring. We read, “At that time Jesus said, ‘I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. …’”.  “At that time” refers to the time when Jesus warned the residents of Capernaum, Bethsaida, Korazin – the towns and villages in what was ‘ground zero’ of his earthly ministry – warned these people that Sodom and Gomorrah would have an easier time of it in the Final Judgment because they had rejected him. They wanted nothing to do with the true peace and rest he was offering free of charge. Oh, they wanted the peace and rest that come with prosperity. When he fed 5000 with five barley loaves and two small fish, they immediately had ambitions to forcibly persuade Jesus to become  their king who could then give them whatever they wanted. But when they came to do that and he refused, they walked away in disgust.

Yet did you notice that Jesus praised his Father for hiding the real blessings of peace and forgiveness from the “wise and learned, and reveal[ing] them to little children”? In Romans 1 we are told that people remain blind to the real blessings the Lord has for them because stubbornly and blindly want to continue in their unbelieving state. Paul writes, “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.” In its sinfully corrupt state the human heart cannot but reject the gospel. It is adamant there is no god – at least no personal, relatable God who created everything and rules the universe to this day.

So, for example, in the estimation of the wise and learned of our day, it’s not an efficient and productive use of one’s time to pray to God for an end to our pandemic —   it’s better to ‘work the science’ and ratchet up the research labs of our pharmaceutical companies and come up with a vaccine. Although God has given us an awesome promise: “Call on me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you will honor me.” that means little or nothing. Likewise, the natural human heart turns a ‘thumbs down’ to what God offers in Jesus:  the forgiveness of sins, life and salvation – those real blessings which have no par with anything on earth.

Yet, Jesus praised his Father for taking these real blessings and giving them to “little children.” Who are they? You and me! Jesus thought so much little children. He had a soft spot in his heart for them, was eager to take them up in his arms, and even said:  “… the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.” It’s a miracle of grace that God can take the mind of a wise and learned person and give that individual the faith and trust of a little child. It’s not that they give up their intelligence and become spiritual dolts. Rather, they’re born again by water and the Spirit. As a little baby learns to trust his or her parents as they hold him or her close, so God plants child-like faith and trust in people such as us so that we believe that his words are true. This is what God wants for everybody, as Jesus acknowledges, “Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure.”

Listen as Jesus next inserts himself into that parent-child illustration. “All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” From eternity Jesus was fully committed to carrying out his Father’s plan. The two are on the same page – more so than any two individuals have been! They have one will and one goal:  our salvation. John writes, “No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.” With our limited human reason, we can’t grasp the love that existed between the Father and the Son from eternity. Before he died Jesus prayed, “Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.” This glory and this love between the two go beyond anything we mortals know, but Jesus came here to let us be part of both and to experience his peace and rest now and forever.  That Jesus wants this for all people, he makes clear in saying, “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.”    
To prove further that Jesus wants all people to find this peace and rest in him and his Father, listen again to his beautiful invitation: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”

“Come to me …” Jesus says. He doesn’t invite us to seek out other religions as equal paths by which we can get close to our God and experience his love in our lives. He says, “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me."  He says, “Come ...”, and those gracious words work inside of us causing us to change our thinking, creating in us the trust and the faith of a little child.

Jesus invites all who are “weary and burdened.” Every one of us is afflicted with a huge burden – the sense that we really do need to measure up to God’s expectations (keep his law, follow all the ‘rules and regs’) to be accepted by him. But Jesus did not say, “Come to me all you who’ve got it together, or all you who are doing great and are model Christians.” The invitation goes out to people like us who share the burden of Paul who wrote about the restlessness and lack of peace in his life: “… what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.”

And what does Jesus promise? Rest. The Hebrew word for rest is “Sabbath.” Genesis tells that after six days of creation God rested on Day Seven. The Lord used that day to admire the splendor of all the work he’d accomplished. ‘Wow, what a masterpiece!’ he thought – not in pride, but with a sense of satisfaction because he had created it all for us. And now God wants people like you and me to take time and enjoy all those very real blessings he provides for us in Jesus.

Jesus’ invitation continues:  “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart … For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” The rest you have in Jesus is a wonderful rest, but it’s also a burden – which is a paradox, a contradiction. For the unbelieving world says, ‘find your peace and rest in the pleasures of this life, … or in your relationships with other people, … or even in yourself’ – and believing in Jesus is dismissed as a crutch. To face that opposition and be looked at askance because of our faith in Jesus is a burden we bear. It is a “yoke” placed over our shoulders, but it’s a light burden and an easy yoke.

We are not that removed from pioneering days in this country. Somewhere in the Village of Yesteryear at the Steele County History Center you’ll find a yoke (at least the picture of one). It’s that heavy wooden beam a farmer used to join two draft animals together – a pair of oxen, the strongest of animals, was typically your best bet. With that arrangement the farmer was well able to break the virgin prairie soil of his homestead. A yoke made a difficult task easier. Jesus’ yoke illustration speaks to our partnership with him and how what is otherwise difficult without him becomes easy with him. Joined to Jesus we're in a position to deal with anything life throws at us – especially this opposition from the world. We are able to face all things, even the future, unafraid.

Isn’t it something how – especially here in our country – people are unnerved by the pandemic? They’re anxious and frazzled. I recently came across an article from an advice column in the newspaper, an “Ask Amy” article. Let me share it with you. It is titled:  PANICKED ABOUT COVID:
 
Dear Amy: I need advice on how to handle a neighbor situation.

The elderly lady across the street, who has always been a little crotchety, has now utterly lost it. She prowls the neighborhood, looking for “COVID violations.”
 
Two neighbors talking from opposite sides of the street get 10 minutes of screaming profanities because, in her mind, social distancing means not socializing at all.

She has called the police on another neighbor so many times that the cops told her not to do it again. The reason? There were three cars parked in his driveway. He has his daughter’s family staying with him, which she considers “a party.”

My parents came over for my father’s birthday and she called the police on us, reporting an “unsafe large gathering spreading the virus.”

She has also called the police on lone joggers without a mask and gloves, even though she herself doesn’t wear them.
She has now set up video cameras conspicuously around her lawn, one of which is pointing directly at our house. She has commented that she can see in our windows and has berated us for not wearing a mask and gloves … in our own home!

My husband has suggested that we start mooning out the window. I would prefer a solution that doesn’t involve her having photos of our naked backsides. I also don’t want to be forced to keep the curtains closed.

How can we reason with the unreasonable?  (Signed: COVID Fishbowl)
 
Amy had an answer. As a bottom line she wrote this:
 
Live your life. Do not “moon” her. Stay calm and polite if forced to interact with her. Imagine what it must feel like to be in such a state of rage over things you cannot control. Avoid her and (if possible) feel sorry for her.
 
Now, I’m not suggesting that as Christians we simply kick back and, with a cold drink in hand, sit under a shade tree in our backyard totally unfazed, unconcerned. But the fact we’ll want to keep foremost in our minds is that God’s got this covered. He’s been through every pandemic throughout time and has used each for his good purposes. God took care of his people long ago in Old Testament times and he will take care of us today. He has promised to stand beside us: “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” In his Sermon on the Mount Jesus asked, “Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?” The psalm writer confessed, “My times are in your hands” and “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” We’re not going to get to heaven one minute earlier or later than God has planned for us. The writer of Psalm 125 established that truth so beautifully, saying: “Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be shaken but endures forever. As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people both now and forevermore.”
 
Are you PANICKED ABOUT COVID?  Friends, don’t stress. Jesus wants everyone to enjoy his rest and he's given it to you. Look who is yoked with you and listen to what he tells you:  “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” You don’t have to sweat the little or the big stuff. You’re not alone. The Jesus who gives you peace and rest promises to be with you your life to help you and support you. His peace and rest are yours now and forever.

Amen.
 

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1 John 2:15-17  "LOVE WHAT LASTS”
July 12, 2020 – Pentecost 6
 
   Do not love the world or anything in the world.  If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in him.  For everything in the world – the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes, and the boasting of what he has and does – comes not from the Father but from the world.
   The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.

She had been a woman of means before. Now 75 years old, she lived in a small, modestly furnished house behind her son’s home. She and her late husband had owned a large, spacious home on acreage in the Texas hill country. They had accumulated a lot of possessions from their travels, a perk of working in the c-suite of a large multinational corporation. But, following her huband’s death, she made the concious decision to downsize. In fact, she confided to the pastor who served at her new church-home: “It hit me one day that I didn’t really get anything from all this stuff around me. Without my husband here it meant very little to me. So, I just sold it all.  Everything! I sold the land, the house, and everything in it. I told my son, ‘I just want a little house with one of everything.’” Then, growing more serious, she said, “And you know what the funny thing is, pastor? As each possession sold, I felt a little bit closer to God. It turns out that all those things were between him and me, and I never knew it.”

In that moment of full disclosure, the smile on her face witnessed to a long-sought sense of contentment.  She was at peace. Unfettered – free of ‘all that stuff’ – she understood what the Apostle John tells us here: “Do not love the world or anything in the world.  ...  The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.”  Isn’t that spiritually mature perspective about the things around us admirable, something we would want for ourselves? The Bible truth brought home in this brief text is “LOVE WHAT LASTS.”    
 
Few temptations have troubled believers through the centuries more than worldliness. There are a lot reasons for this. First, we’re surrounded by the world. Even if we climbed aboard a SpaceX Dragon capule and rocketed up to the International Space Station we couldn’t escape it. It’s what we see and sense. We can touch it and hold it.  Apart from divine revelation and the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit, it’s the only reality we can grasp. Second, the world offers what our sinful natures long for:  instant gratification.  The promises of God on the other hand are heavily weighted toward the future and eternity. Third, in an effort to be ‘relevant’ – in misguided attempts to “become all things to all men” – the church has frequently become like the world rather than the light of the world. Finally, the love of the world is a dangerous temptation for Christians because Satan would like us to believe we can both love the world and love God.  But John makes it clear they are mutually exclusive. You can either love God or you can love the world, but you can’t love both. So, “LOVE WHAT LASTS.” 
  
John wrote this letter to Christians who were being misled and confused by false teachers.  We call these false teachers hell-bent on deceiving God’s people and therefore the object of John’s warning “Gnostics” – derived from the Greek word for knowledge, γν?σις (gnosis).  These false teachers claimed to have a special knowledge that nobody else knew.  But John says that they were still in darkness.  These heretics tried to entice people with promises of the attainment of a higher, more complete Christianity, but their doctrine and life revealed that they didn’t have a clue about God and the way of salvation.  

To refute their claims that true faith is purely subjective and that doctrine and behavior don’t matter, John gave his readers three tests by which they could evaluate these heritics – and their own faith – to see if it was authentic. There was … the ‘moral test’ – obedience; the ‘relational test’ – love for others; and the ‘doctrinal test’ – teaching and believing the historical gospel of Jesus Christ. This section, these verses, is an application of the ‘moral test.’ Authentic faith is marked by obedience and love for God above all things. 

“Do not love the world or anything in the world.  If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”  We need to define two words. The first word to understand is love, in Greek ?γ?πη (agape)  This type of love is a commitment, an act of the will, rather than a feeling. It is a one-way love. It is the love that caused God to send his Son to die for a hostile world. It is the kind of love husband and wife promise to one another in marriage. And just as you cannot commit to lifelong love for more than one person, so you cannot love God and love the world. It’s impossible to be committed to both.

A second word to define is world, in Greek κ?σμος (cosmos). It originally referred to the well-ordered nature of the universe as the Lord God created it. But here, John uses it to describe the organized system operated by Satan in opposition to Christ and his gospel. Later here in this same letter John would write “we know that … the whole world is under the control of the evil one.”  The world consists of unbelievers whose strings the puppet-master Satan is control – all those who operate on the basis of ungodly thoughts, attitudes, motives, values and goals. The world is everything that stands opposed to Christ, his gospel and his glory.

What, then, does it mean to not love this world?  John doesn’t mean that we are to disparare anything material … you must hate your house, hate your car, hate whatever (although when things break down it’s kinda hard not to hate them). John doesn’t mean that believers should empty their bank accounts, sell all their possessions and live in seclusion and poverty, though through history some have done so. (Think how in the earliest centuries of Christianity some believers pursued an ascetic life, living out in the desert perhaps in primitive communes, away from everything that mighty pollute a person’s thinking. Or, think of how during the Middle Ages monestaries were popular places of retreat from the world and the cloistered life was regarded as particularly pious.) But from what follows it’s clear that John see this love to be renounced and avoided is primarily a matter of attitude and motivation. “For everything in the world – the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes, and the boasting of what he has and does – comes not from the Father but from the world.”

Worldliness is an approach to life where sinful desires hold sway. To be worldly means to operate on Satan’s principles. It is to move through life driven by personal ambition, selfishness, greed, and pride. It is to have sinful desires for things you do not have and sinful pride in what you do have. Rather than living to please God who judges the heart, the worldly person tries to impress other people who look only at outward things. Worldiness is the misvaluing of what really ought to be treasured, kept close to one’s heart. Recall Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Mount where he laid out the contrast like this:  “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” 

John’s primary concern is not drawing up a detailed list of positive and negative behaviors so you can check the boxes on all these and leave all those boxes unchecked. No, his concern is why you do what you do. He is interested in motivation. Do you do what you do because you love and want to be loved by the world or because you love and want to be loved by God? Again, it’s just gotta be one or the other because it can’t be both. 

One thing about this choice of which to love:  the world or God —   on our own we would and could never choose to love God.  From birth we were Satan’s children. We were dead to God, blind to his blessings, and hated his will. We were capable only of loving the world, until God stepped in to change things. Later John says in what I’d hope is a familiar Bible verse, “We love because he first loved us.” 

God demonstrated this committed love to the sinful world over and over. God knew exactly what would happen shortly after he created a perfect universe. He knew that the crown of his creation would ruin it by sinning – but he created it anyway. Later when God looked at the world and saw … “that every inclination of the thoughts of [man’s] heart was only evil all the time,” he could have scrapped it all and started over – as he proved in the Flood; but in love he preserved Noah and his family so that you and I would have the chance to be born and believe and be saved. God knew exactly the type of world he was sending his Son into by placing him in Mary’s arms – a world that would hate him, reject him, unjustly condemn him and crucify him – but God loved the world enough to sacrifice his Son to save it. God knew your heart, your desires, your sins before you were born, he knew that you would disobey his commands and live as his enemy – but through the waters of Baptism he reached into your heart and he cleansed it, created faith in it, and wrote your name in his Book of Life. You cannot love God and the world, but neither can you choose to love God instead of the world. So God chose you. With his Word and sacrament he created life where there was only death, love where there was only hate, and children where there were enemies. That's grace.  That's God’s love for you. Because God chose to love us, we, in faith, can choose to love him above all things.

From that love residing now in our hearts we begin to make correct valuations and are much more easily able to categorize things under the headings of “keep” and “let go.” Like that 75 year old woman in the story with which we o we make conscious decisions to hold on to God’s gifts of his Word and sacraments, of his forgiveness in Christ, of the hope of life eternal that is ours in Jesus, of the companions with whom we share this journey through life. These are eternal treasures, the things that last. Fairly obvious, then, are also things we can jettison or regard of lesser importance:  our heavily padded retirement accounts, our finely appointed homes, our gizmo-laden cars and SUVs. 

“The world and its desires pass away but the man who does the will of God lives forever.”  Some day all of this stuff that we are tempted to set our hearts on will disappear into nothingness. This world will be destroyed on Judgment Day, along with all those have loved it instead of the Father. We are among those who deserve to receive that eternal destruction, but we will not because of God’s grace. The certainty of our salvation – our hope –  is found in Jesus Christ. The Father sent his Son to be the one who loved him enough to atone for all of our failures. The Father send Jesus to be the One who never once loved the desires and cravings of this world in order to make us righteous. Jesus came and loved his Father in everything, preaching his message, obeying his commands, and fulfilling his mission. Then, in that perfect love for his Father, Jesus gave his life unto death. He died for all of this world’s sins, our sins, sacrificing himself so that we would not be destroyed. Then Jesus was raised to life so we would live forever. An eternity of blessing is what the Lord has in mind to share with us, not some paultry trinkets, but eternal treasures. Jesus once said, “… my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.”  This is will of God – to believe all this … that Jesus has done it all for you. And this is what makes your and my salvation sure. 
 
Can anything that is of this world offer you anything like this? Can any amount of money, any amount of fun, any amount of ‘good times’ compare to the eternal joys that await you in paradise? Not a chance! “The world and its desires pass away …”, but the grace and mercy of God endure. So, “LOVE WHAT LASTS." Love not what the world gives, but love what the Father offers to you in Christ. Love exclusively what lasts, and you will live forever.

Amen.
 

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Galatians 5:1-6,13  "FREED TO SERVE"
July 5, 2020 - Independence Day Weekend

   It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.
   Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. For through the Spirit we eagerly await by faith the righteousness for which we hope. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.
   You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another in love.

Independence Day, the Fourth of July, is a day for Americans to rejoice in the precious gift of freedom. It is a day to pay tribute to the men who were instrumental in making it happen. 

We remember those who lived by the determination, “Give me liberty or give me death” (a quote attributed to Patrick Henry in a speech made to the Second Virginia Convention at St. John’s Church, Richmond, VA, in 1775). We acknowledge the statesmen who wrote into our Constitution such a multitude of freedoms – political, personal, and religious – that we can scarcely imagine what life without such privileges would be like. The ‘framers’ of the Constitution were James Madison, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Samuel Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and John Jay. And although monuments (statues) of some of these men have become targets of derision recently, we are truly indebted to them because without their efforts we would not be truly free.

But there’s also an element of danger in our Fourth of July patriotism – one might almost say, our Fourth of July religion. We tend to think of America as a Christian nation and by many metrics it is. Our coins carry the motto, “In God We Trust.” Is our freedom perhaps a payoff – a reward – for our trust in God? Is freedom an in-born right for the children of God? Do Paul’s words to the Galatians lend support to that idea? Not if we look carefully at what the Apostle is saying.  

When Paul wrote, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free” he was writing to people who had very few of the political and personal freedoms we enjoy. Galatia, their homeland in the heart of Asia Minor had been swallowed up by a more powerful nation. The armies of Rome had overrun their land and forcibly incorporated it into their empire. Galatia in Paul’s day was just another Roman province. The people didn’t have the right to self-determination. 

So what was Paul talking about when he says, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free”? Paul wasn’t a political activist. When he came to Galatia he didn’t agitate for “human rights,” or organize resistance groups, or train freedom fighters. He simply preached the gospel. “I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” was true of Paul wherever he went. There is something more important than civil liberty; there is the freedom Christ brings:  release from sin and its awful effects; peace with God and the assurance of endless blessing.

History recounts the tremendous price paid to secure our American freedoms. The cost was not insignificant for the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Of the fifty-six men who put their names to that piece of parchment five were captured by the British and tortured as traitors before dying. Nine fought and died from wounds or the hardships of the Revolution-ary War. Two lost sons in battle, and another had two sons captured. Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned. Several lost immense holdings and died in poverty. One man, John Hart, had to leave the bedside of his dying wife. His thirteen children had to flee for their lives. For more than a year he lived in forests and caves. He returned home to find his fields and gristmill wasted, his wife dead, and his children vanished. Freedom did not come easily to those men. The love of country demonstrated by their sacrifices makes our patriotism seem slight.Infinitely greater was God’s love for fallen humankind. On his sacred honor God had pledged to do what was necessary to restore our sin-ravaged world. In his Son, God did. Jesus left the glories of heaven to live here for a time to fix what was wrong with people. Because of the tremendous price Christ paid, our lives are changed forever. We are free! 
   
In the past four, going on five, months we’ve made significant concessions for the sake of the greater good –to try to curtailing the spread of coronavirsus. But it’s inconceivable that Americans would intentionally and with no regard relinquish our hard-won freedoms —  e.g., surrendering to a foreign power. We are committed to safeguarding our liberties and do so passionately. 

Yet Paul was compelled to write to the Galatians because they were dangerously close to doing the inconceivable … with respect to their freedom in Christ. They were teetering on the edge of forfeiting their position as children of God through faith in Jesus. How? Why? 

Shortly after Paul left Galatia, false teachers showed up. These false teachers are sometimes called “Judaizers,” because they insisted on the observance of the rituals and way of life prescribed for God’s ancient people, the Jews. Their emphasis on a slavish obedience to the Law – in the minds of these false teachers – was truly honoring the Lord and showing yourself to a genuine descendant of Abraham. But, in fact, by telling the Galatains that they had to do more than trust in Jesus alone … they had to keep the Law inviolate, down to the last little detail … they were undermining gospel message of grace alone. You can hear Paul’s stern warning, “Stand firm and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”  

God’s Law was expressed in various, somewhat overlapping forms:  the ceremonial law pertained to Israel’s worship life; the civil law pertained to Israel’s organization and functioning as a society; and the moral law spelled out right and wrong. (This is the aspect of the Law with which we’re most familiar because of its summary in the Ten Commandments).   The Law had good, wholesome purposes. It exposed sin. It regulated human behavior. It identified problems needing correction. One thing the Law was never intended to do was save sinners. It wasn’t a fix-it plan! It couldn’t repair the broken relationship that existed with God because of man’s inherent sinfulness.

The Ten Commandments, for all their simplicity and common-sense approach to a well-ordered life —   the Ten Commandments just can’t make a person right with God. Only the gospel of Jesus Christ can do that. So the Apostle Paul was essentially telling the Galatians, “Accept no substitutes. Jesus is your Savior. Look to him. Don’t ever let go of him. Your freedom in Christ is far too valuable!”

We need to remember this when the ‘Judaizer within’ (our self-righteous Old Adam) suggests that ‘I’m not so bad, certainly better than the person nextdoor’ – the attitude of the Pharisees in Jesus’ day. We do not save ourselves through our imagined upright life, our noble thoughts, our kind words, our charitable deeds. There is one Savior —   Jesus. Jesus did what was impossible for us morally-inept, powerless-to-correct-our-lost-conditioned sinners. He lived in perfect holiness before God. No slip-of-the-tongue debauched word ever crossed his lips. No hateful, lustful, or prideful thought ever entered his mind. He 100% obeyed his Father’s will. Jesus lived this exceptional life in our place and then he died the death we had coming. For us Jesus fulfilled the requirements of God’s Law, and so set us free from them, those requirements. Paul told the Christians at Rome, “Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.”

To live in a free country, with freedom of speech, free enterprise, freedom to chose a path —   that is fantastic! But to be a member of God’s kingdom and to be … free of the demands of God’s Law, free of an accusing conscience, free of pressure to try to earn one's salvation because it's already been given to you. That is an infinitely greater freedom. That is the freedom to which we have been called in Christ.

3. Free to serve our fellowman

But the Apostle Paul also alerts us to the fact that we have not only been set free from something; we’ve been set free for something. He concludes, “Do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love.” As Christians our focus is certainly upward. We are oh-so-grateful to an incredibly gracious God for the Savior he has sent. But our focus is also outward as we look around us to see those we are able to help as we give expression to our love for Christ. We’ve been set free of the demands of the Law so that we might freely do what God wants – his will – and serve each other. Paul makes that clear in the words, “Serve one another in love,” going on in the very next verse to elaborate:  “The entire law is summed up in a single command, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

Martin Luther the Reformer wrestled a long time with matter of being right with God. If you’re familiar with his story you might recall it was a very personal struggle, an agonizing one —   as Luther thought, “I just can’t be good enough! As hard as I try, I just can’t please God and he will never let me into his heaven.” Like most people, like those false teachers who came to Galatia who were hung up on the fulfilling the demands of God’s law down to the last detail, Luther felt that having a right relationship with God was all up ‘on him’ ... on his back. His behavior, good or bad, was the sole determiner of whether he would spend eternity with or apart from God. 

When Luther discovered the truth that God counts the sinner righteous for Jesus’ sake, Luther was set free. He became a changed person with new directions and goals. He saw his life as an opportunity to thank to God for rescuing him in his Son. On learning that the Greek word for “freedom” (elueqeria) sounded very much like his own last name, Luther, he went around calling himself “Martin Freedom” – not because he wanted generate publicity for himself, but because he wanted to teach those who would hear what he had learned from Paul’s Letter to the Galatians. The old Martin lived no longer; a new Martin was now in charge.

A chapter earlier in this same letter, Paul wrote this about the sinful nature which used to control him:  “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” The gospel message transformed Paul completely. He went from being a ‘Jesus-chaser’ (a rabid persecutor) to being a ‘Jesus-follower’ (a passionate disciple). We, too, take on in Christ new identity, an identity that gladly and eagerly seeks to do God’s will.

Nowhere does the heart set free by faith in Christ have greater freedom to love and serve one’s neighbor than in a free country. So we pray in one of our more commonly used prayers of the church:  "Almighty God, grant to your church your Holy Spirit and the wisdom which comes down from above, that your Word may not be bound, but have free course and be preached to the joy and edifying of Christ’s holy people that in steadfast faith we may serve you and in the confession of your name abide to the end through Jesus Christ our Lord."

In America, the land of liberty, we may share the good news of a Savior wherever, whenever, and with whomever we please. There is no one to whom we may not speak, no one whom we may not help, no place where we may not go and serve in Christ’s name.
 
In observing another Independence Day – especially under these highly unusual circumstances of the coronavirus pandemic and all the societal drama that’s playing out, let’s not take lightly God’s blessing of freedom. We are are politically free people. This is the setting in which the Lord lets us exercise to the full our spiritual freedom – the freedom to show our love for him by a life of service to our family, church, community, and country.

Amen.

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Number 27:15-23  “SHEPHERDS WHO LEAD AT THE LORD'S DIRECTION”
Pentecost 4 – June 28, 2020

  “Moses said to the Lord, “May the Lord, the God of the spirits of all mankind, appoint a man over this community to go out and come in before them, one who will lead them out and bring them in, so the Lord’s people will not be like sheep without a shepherd.”
   So the Lord said to Moses, “Take Joshua son of Nun, a man in whom is the spirit, and lay your hand on him.  Have him stand before Eleazar the priest and the entire assembly and commission him in their presence. Give him some of your authority so the whole Israelite community will obey him. He is to stand before Eleazar the priest, who will obtain decisions for him by inquiring of the Urim before the Lord. At his command he and the entire community of the Israelites will go out, and at his command they will come in.”
   Moses did as the Lord commanded him. He took Joshua and had him stand before Eleazar the priest and the whole assembly. Then he laid his hands on him and commissioned him, as the Lord instructed through Moses.
   
Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay has a cult-like following of fans who devour (obsess over) his cooking shows. My brother-in-law is one of them. He is an avid watcher of programs such as Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, Hell’s Kitchen, and The F-word (the “f” stands for “food”). The programs air on Hulu®, Netflix®, and elsewhere.

One of Ramsay’s shows featured a segment running over a several seasons where he taught his children where their food comes from. They raised different kinds of animals in the back garden of their London home. They raised five turkeys. No problems there. The turkeys just needed a pen and some feed. Then they raised a couple of pigs. Again, no problem, because all the pigs needed was a pen, a hut, and some mud. But then they tried raising two Welsh lambs and their mothers in their back garden and quickly realized why being a shepherd is a fulltime job.

What could be so challenging about keeping a few sheep for a few months, when all that’s needed is grass and water? Well, two weeks in —   all of sudden, their lawn was gone! Apparently they had underestimated how quickly the sheep would look up at him as if to say, “So now what do we eat?”  Gordon Ramsay was discovering first-hand why shepherds’ lives are fully occupied moving their flock from hill to hill to pasture. It’s not to stave off boredom, but because when sheep stop moving they quickly deplete everything they need to survive.  

Ramsay had to find another patch of grass for his sheep to keep eating, and needed to do it fast. The sheep were moved from one posh London backyard garden to another with the same results. Finally, the four ravenous sheep were moved to a country estate where they had plenty of grass to live out the rest of their lives in luxury. Pperhaps not the most practical solution, but a happy TV ending.
 
Now to the point:  sheep need a shepherd.  Without a shepherd constantly tending them and leading them to pasture, the sheep wouldn’t thrive. They would probably die.

I am sure you noticed that we have nearly identical statements in our readings. As Jesus looked out over the crowds streaming toward him, his compassionate heart went out to them “because they were … like sheep without a shepherd.” Much earlier Moses expressed a similar concern for the Israelites as he considered his immanent departure. After forty years of leading these people, his time at the helm was at an end. They were near their final destination, but not there yet. Like Gordon Ramsay’s sheep, they needed to keep moving and find a pasture/home. Who would pick up the mantle of leadership? Who would be his successor? Moses prayed:  “Appoint a man over this community …, so that the Lord’s people will not be like sheep without a shepherd.”

We pull these thoughts together under the theme “SHEPHERDS WHO LEAD AT THE LORD’S DIRECTION” and note two truths … 1) in humility, they don’t think of themselves as irreplaceable; … 2) in confidence, they serve with their God-given abilities.

1. In humility, they don’t think of themselves as irreplaceable.

After trying to lead the people of Israel for so long —  after originally being saved from drowning in the waters of the Nile and brought up in Pharaoh’s palace, after murdering an Egyptian and fleeing into the desert –only to be told by a burning bush to return and tell the Israelites that God was about to set them free, after leading the people across the parted sea to Mount Sinai where the Ten Commandments and chapter upon chapter of the Lord’s words delivered to him, after putting up with the people’s stubbornness and unwillingness to put their total trust in God; and after leading them from place to place in the wilderness, mobilizing soldiers to fight off potential attacks and subduing armies so that they could come to the threshold of the Promised Land, Moses’ job was done. He had shepherded these people, with varying degrees of success, through an entire generation.

Now, all of those – give or take – who had originally come out of Egypt were gone. All of those included in the census that started the book of Numbers, all those who had seen the power of God release them from their captivity —   their lives had come to an end. God had promised the Israelites a homeland grander than they could ever possibly have hoped for, but nearly all would never set foot in it.

Moses had learned that this would be his fate. An incident back at Meribah, when he acted in anger in the presence of the people and struck a rock with his staff to bring forth water (God had told him to speak to the rock) —  that disobedience would bar his entrance. Aaron, Moses’ brother, had already been “gathered to his people” on a mountaintop in nearby Edom. Now it was Moses’ turn to climb Mount Nebo, survey the sweeping vista of the land below, and die.

Moses might’ve objected. “Hold on! We’re almost to Canaan. It's just over there and, God, you mean to tell me you’re not going to let me in and my services are no longer needed?” But Moses didn’t object. He bent his will to God’s will. In humility, he did not think himself irreplaceable.

As he prepared himself mentally for all of this, Moses thought about his people’s future. He knew them well. While the Lord has done great things for them in the wilderness, still everyone who saw the full extent of God’s care and protection, everyone who was there when God led them out of their slavery in Egypt, was gone. Their past was simply a story told around the campfire. And if leading those who had actually seen God’s work in Egypt was hard enough, who could possibly try to lead those who only knew of these things from the memories of their parents and grandparents —  who could lead a generation of people whose lives have been shaped by their parents’ complaining and stubbornness, those whose lives have been saddled with the inherited baggage of their parents’ lack of faith? If Moses had a hard enough time with the first generation, who could possibly lead the second? So, he makes this request: “Appoint a man over this community to go out and come in before them, one who will lead them out and bring them in, so the Lord’s people will not be like sheep without a shepherd.” In short, “I know that I’m replaceable, but provide these people with a replacement – another shepherd – who will lead them on.”

It is hubris (sinful pride) that causes us to think we are irreplaceable, to imagine that God would be lost without us. He loves us dearly – in Christ. What a sacrifice he made so that we could belong to his family – his own Son, offered up, for us. Marvel at that!

In grace God slots us, his people, into vital positions where he includes us in his mission. I’m a parent who trains up a child in the way he or she should go. I’m a grandparent who tries to set a Christian example for my grandkids. I’m a church member who cares about the spiritual life of a brother or sister in Christ when he or she is struggling or tempted or despondent and in need of encouragement.  Maybe I don’t have the highly exalted opinion of myself that the Pharisees of Jesus’ day did, but I do have a sinful nature that can easily protest God’s decisions, insist I know at least a little bit better, and put my agenda of his.

You know what happens in a situation such as that? Other people often get run. Moses really laid into the people at Meribah. “Listen, you rebels …”, he bellowed. No shepherd’s compassion there and God’s judgment was just: “Because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them.” The shepherd had tripped over his own staff and fallen spread-eagle on the ground. Yet, in grace, picked God Moses up, dusted him off – forgaving him for the promised Savior’s sake, and allowed him to continue.   

On returning to ancient Rome victorious generals rode in triumph through the city to the people’s cheers. A slave, it is said, would be positioned in the conquering hero’s chariot just behind him and, holding a laurel wreath over his head, would whisper two words, “Memento mori” … “Remember you are mortal.” If you are in a position of leadership or influence, or if you are part of a team that must work cooperatively, operate with an honest self-assessment. Pastors need to do this, too, because they are subject to the temptation to let ego run wild. None of us are not irreplaceable, but all of us are indespensible. (I’ll let you chew on that momentarily.)

God has not founded his church on you or on me, but on Jesus. Jesus is the Good Shepherd and we are under-shepherds, who serve at the Lord’s direction.

2. In confidence, they serve with their God-given abilities.

So the mantle is passed to Joshua, ... Joshua, one of the two spies (out of the original twelve) sent to scope out Canaan; ... one of only two who actually was willing to trust that God would allow them to conquer the land; ... one of only two, who, opposing the rest, said, “The Lord wouldn’t have led us here simply to let us fall.” Joshua had proved faithful at a point when nearly all those around him had turned their backs. Now faithful Joshua is given the task of leading Israel into the Promised Land. He will be their next shepherd.

 

Matthew 7:15-29  “WATCH OUT FOR FALSE PROPHETS”
Pentecost 2 – June 14, 2020

  “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.
  “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’
  “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”
   When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law.
 
Starting in 2003 the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, the part of the US Treasury Department charged with issuing our paper currency, began including enhanced security features on various denominations – first the $20 bill, then the $10 bill, $5 bill, and finally the $100 bill. You might remember noticing the subtle, but highly technologically advanced changes introduced, all intended to make counterfeiting more difficult:  watermarks matching the profile of the individual on the face of the bill that become visible when held up to the light, small holographic-type images that change color from copper to green, and a thin colored security ribbon with images that shift as the bill is tilted. These new security features are deterrents in the production of the funny money that costs consumers billions of dollars each year.

Still, people are still foolish enough to try to make money the illegal way. In 2016 an international ring of counterfeiters produced $70,000,000 worth of bogus $100 bills. These foreign nationals set up shop in New Jersey outside New York City and on high-speed presses cranked off sheets of near perfect bills using engraved plates, even altering serial numbers and treasury seals. It was a sophisticated operation. A low-tech, but creative approach was used by a 34 year old mother of six, Tarshema Brice, who was arrested in 2014 for printing $20,000 worth of fake bills in the kitchen of her home.  She took $5 bills with a specific watermark, soaked them in a degreaser, used a toothbrush to scrub the ink off the paper and then on her HP inkjet printer printed scanned images of $50 or $100 bills.

If a fake bank note winds up in your pocket or purse, you’re on the hook. Neither a merchant, nor a bank, nor the government is under any obligation to exchange it. So it’s sad when someone gets stuck with counterfeit cash. Sadder still is when someone gets stuck with a counterfeit christ peddled by a false prophet. That’s the situation Jesus envisions in our Gospel. He warns: “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.”  Today we examine Jesus’ warning, as if studying the intricacies of a newly-release dollar bill, because we don’t want to be stuck with what’s spiritually worthless, a detriment to our soul’s welfare.
 
It’s near the end of his Sermon on the Mount that Jesus issues this warning against wolves in sheep’s clothing. Over the span of three chapters (five, six, and seven) Matthew records the Sermon on the Mount where our Savior has talked about the blessedness of following him.  “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  ...  Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”  Jesus described God’s people as salt and light.  He taught about prayer and invited, “Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”  And just prior to our text, he made this appeal, “Enter through the narrow gate.  For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.  But small is the gate and narrow is the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”  Far too precious are the gifts of God’s grace to relinquish them voluntarily or to have stripped from us by rip-off artists – by wolves in sheep’s clothing.

False teachers, preachers and friends come across as nice people. They’ll tell you what you want to hear. Make no mistake, they’re dangerous! They deny the truth of God’s plain Word. They substitute sand for the solid rock of Christ. Their fruit – that which is revealed by their conduct and teaching – is rotten. It’s bad fruit.

Jesus continued, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’”

God actually devotes a fair amount of the Scriptures to warning us against people who will play fast and loose with God’s Word, who treat the Bible like a wax nose bending this way or bent to suit to their liking. They’re dangerous Jesus says, because students of false teachers are doomed to share the same eternal destruction as their teachers. Peter cautioned the believers of his day, “But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you.  hey will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them – bringing swift destruction on themselves.”

So what kind of false teachers do we encounter today?  You can access a broad swath of preachers on television and the internet, some are what we could be termed ‘plain vanilla’ preachers with a meager following – attracting the curious and a few faithful; others have achieved an almost celebrity status, building an ecclesiastical empire.  One preacher, the most popular in America today, holds forth from the pulpit of a Texas mega church, has a million Twitter followers, and his own channel on XM radio.  Yet a blot on his resume, a significant dent in his Christian credentials that no Bondo® (body putty) has been able to smooth over, was a serious, tell-tale gaff made in an interview in his early career.

When asked on a nationwide talk-show whether he was a ‘fire and brimstone’ kind of guy, this smiling preacher, who has no formal seminary training, said, “No. That's not me.  It’s never been me.  I’ve always been an encourager at heart.  …  I don’t have it in my heart to condemn people. I’m there to encourage them. I see myself more as a coach, as a motivator to help them experience the life God has for us.”
 
When asked whether people of other faiths who don’t believe in Christ would go to heaven, he replied, “You know, I’m very careful about saying who would and wouldn’t go to heaven. I don’t know.” He could have hit a homerun ball, but whiffed completely. Later, after receiving criticism from the evangelical community for his remarks, he issued a retraction of sorts, but this man has continued to reveal by his preaching (his ‘fruit’) that his take on the gospel is substantially different from the good news proclaimed by our Lord Jesus.   

Another high-profile pastor observed that many of those people who unacquainted with Jesus Christ are put off by the cross. It is too much of a negative stereotype. So his mega-church does not display the cross in its sanctuary and in his preaching he avoids emotionally-charged words such as damnation, wrath, hell, sin, blood, mercy, redemption, and salvation.

You might be familiar with the phrase ‘theology of glory’ – a more biblically accurate characterization the feel-good-about-yourself, aim for prosperity and self-fulfillment preaching commonplace in too many churches today. Attendees really don’t come to hear the Bible as such, but to hear how be personally successful, or better society or their relationships, because – they are told – that’s what Christians do and care about.

Might we be susceptible? Might false teachers be scratching our itching ears? We’ve been taught in confirmation class to know better, still we can fall victim to the lies of these wolves in sheep’s clothing. How?  By building our foundation on the shifting sand of teachings more aligned to this world. Clearly we are vulnerable, otherwise Jesus wouldn’t have warned us against wolves in sheep’s clothing.

How can witness the truth to friends caught in the devil’s deceptions, if we are not sure of the truth? … if we’ve forgotten them, because the last time we really studied the Bible in depth was years ago?  If we do not taken the time to sink our spiritual roots deep into the rich soil of God’s Word, our faith is going to grow shallow and be weak and open to the bad fruit the devil is peddling through wrong theology and counterfeit christs.

So, what are we to do? Open up our Bibles.  ead the Word penned by the hands of men as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. Hear the heavenly Father speak to you through the voices of his prophets and apostles. Listen to every word of Christ and put them into practice. Then you are like a wise man who built his house on a rock.

When someone claims that to preach the Bible, but will not condemn unbelievers for their unbelief, read this passage to him, the words of  Jesus: “I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me.” For those who are proposing a cross-less Christianity, open your Bible and read 2 Corinthians 1:23: “We preach Christ crucified.” Or for those who shy away from a life of difficulty, poverty, and persecution for Christians, tell them that Jesus was serious when he said, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” 

Jesus’ words are the Rock upon which our salvation is built. Every one of them is important and every one is valuable. All of them together declare God’s truth and refute the lies of false prophets.

Christ’s work and his words make our life strong and secure. The beams of our house are made out of the mighty cross of Christ.  His blood marks the posts of our door. The same nails that pierced him have built you up. The house of our faith then becomes eternal and immovable, because the Holy Spirit has been the contractor who’s built our faith and life on the foundation of Jesus Christ, the rock of our salvation. With our faith built on Christ’s words and works, no tidal wave of false teachings will ever move us.  We rest safe and secure in the truths of Scripture.

When wolves try deceiving us by dressing up in sheep’s clothing, follow ever more closely the Great Shepherd of the sheep. Jesus is the Shepherd who laid down his life for his sheep. He is also the perfect Passover Lamb, who shed his blood for his wayward lambs and sheep. He washes us clean in his baptismal waters. He feeds us with his own body and blood. He dresses us in the holy Lamb’s clothing.
 
Sadly, there are many who have accepted counterfeit cash. Sadder still, there are many more who’ve accepted counterfeit christs peddled by false prophets. To avoid being hookwinked, remember there’s only one Scripture that points unerringly to the one Savior. Be amazed at his teaching. For he teaches as one who has authority – the authority of the Son of God, your Savior, the Rock upon which your faith is built.  In a world of counterfeit christs, he is the only real thing.

Amen. 

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2 Corinthians 13:11-14 "THE STORY OF YOUR LIFE"
Trinity Sunday – June 7, 2020

   Finally, brothers, good-by.  Aim for perfection, listen to my appeal, be of one mind, live in peace.  And the God of love and peace will be with you.  Greet one another with a holy kiss.  All the saints send their greetings.  May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all?.

It can be pretty fascinating when someone tells the story of his or her life. The stories of people’s lives told in biographies and autobiographies are often some of the best-selling books on the market. They’re often some of the most popular movies too when the books are converted to screenplays. Two recent biopics that I’ve seen (both on Netflix in case you’re curious) are The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind and Steve Jobs. 

The first is an inspiring, heart-warming story … pure family entertainment … about a 13 year old boy from Malawi in central Africa, William Kamkwamba. The young man’s fascination with science prompted him to build a wind turbine from lumber hewn from indigenous trees, old bicycle parts, and materials collected in a scrapyard. His MacGyver-like invention watered the parched fields around his village and saved lives at a time of severe drought. William Kamkwamba furthered his education, and received a scholarship to Dartmouth College. 

The Steve Jobs biopic covers 14 years of the lifetime career of the man who co-founded Apple Inc.  Jobs – as many of you know – was a pioneer in the personal computing revolution of the 70’s and 80’s.  He parted ways with Apple in very public spat with the man who became the company’s CEO.  Jobs went on to have a hand in developing the visual effects industry (Pixar Studios).  He then came back to Apple to resurrect the company when it was on the verge of bankruptcy and subsequently introduced the world to the iPod and portable music, and to the iPhone, and to several iterations of Apple computers.  I appreciated the movie’s look into Jobs’ humanity and insecurities.

What draws us to movies and books such as these is the fascination we have with the real life stories of real people which are often more often more amazing or more unusual than any fictional account a writer could try to write.

What about your life? Do you have a captivating story to tell, one people would pull off the shelf at a bookstore to read (at least the dust jacket) or plunk down money to see at a theater? While we’d likely scratch our heads at trying to figure out how to tell the stories of our lives, someone from 2000 years ago has done it for us. The Apostle Paul uses some brief, but powerful words to tell the story of the mystery of the Holy Trinity and the Trinity’s role in your life and mine. With these familiar words of blessing, he causes you and me to marvel at this mystery because this is ... “THE STORY OF YOUR LIFE.”

1.  The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ 

The story of the Holy Trinity in your life has starts with grace – with the absolutely undeserved, amazingly self-sacrificing loving-kindness of Jesus. Why start with something not one of us has ever deserved? Simply put, if not for the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, you and I wouldn’t be here! The story of your life would be completely different and it wouldn’t have a happy ending.  

When your life began at the moment of conception, when God caused the miracle of life to happen in your mother’s womb, there was something wrong ... not necessarily something wrong physically, but something wrong spiritually. Right there wrapped around your developing DNA was a deadly, growing sinful nature. You see, your parents had passed on to you what they had received from their parents and what they in turn had received from their parents and so on and so on all the way back to Adam.

That deadly sin tainted your life at conception. It began to show itself after you were born and as you grew … a cruel or hurtful word here, a selfish or heartless action there, a constant stream of self-centered, my-way-or-the highway thoughts that continues to try to dominate your thoughts. There was no real joy, no real satisfaction, no real peace, no real hope no real love in your life, because it was all corrupted with sin.

Sadly, by nature we are so blind with sin that we think we like it! Who of us doesn’t like to get our way? By nature, we like to get the attention. We like people to see how great we really are. Your sinful nature loves to polish up those “great” things you do for others, your neighbor, your company, your school, your community, and tries to brush under the rug the envy, the arrogance, the self-centeredness, the lovelessness you’ve felt or shown.

Yet deep down inside, you and I know it can’t last and it won’t. We know that nothing in this life lasts forever because sin has consequences. Things break … relationships fall apart … corrupt motives or despicable acts are revealed, and over it all, death looms. The ancient curse of the holy God rings out from the earliest pages of Holy Scripture, “For dust you are and to dust you will return.”  Sadly, for so many, the story of their lives, no matter how prosperous, no matter how successful, no matter how popular, no matter how famous, ends with death ... physical death leading to eternal death in hell separated from God’s love for all eternity.

The story of your life and the role of the Trinity in your life are more amazing than any autobiography or biopic shown on the silver screen. We could spend the rest of eternity talking about this story of the Trinity in our lives. Until we reach eternity, it’s a story for you and me to share – the grace of Christ, the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.  

Praise be to the triune God, because that, dear friends, is the story of your life!

Amen.
 

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Acts 2:1-21 "SEE THE MIRACLES OF PENTECOST"
Pentecost Sunday / Festival of the Holy Spirit – May 31, 2020

   When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. Utterly amazed, they asked: “Are not all these men who are speaking Galileans?  Then how is it that each of us hears them in his own native language?  Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?” Some, however, made fun of them and said, “They have had too much wine.” Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: “Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. These men are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning! No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: "‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy. I will show wonders in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows of smoke. The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord. And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’

The year 2020 will be remembered as the year when plans were upended, when routine activities and familiar events were curtailed, modified, or outright cancelled.  Important personal days, which would normally have been anticipated and celebrated, were suddenly relegated to being of lesser importance – compared to slow the spread of a virus. We know about the sense of loss experienced by the Class of 2020, our graduating high school and college seniors. A walk-across-a-stage, receive-your-diploma-along-with-a-handshake, photo-op graduation ceremony —  that kind of day just couldn’t be.  Couples, too, have had to alter plans for their wedding day.  Our niece’s church wedding has evolved into a scaled-back, family-and-close-friends outdoor event on the farm of her fiancé’s parents. 
  
Today, however, is a good day, a great day in fact —   and not just because we’ve received the go-ahead to have in-person services again. Today is Pentecost, the birthday of the Christian church. This day was/is pivotal in salvation history because it marks that moment in time when the good news of Jesus as Savior began its spread throughout the world.  

It is important that we understand what happened on the first Pentecost and see that it is still happening right now. That’s our brief focus today as we “See the miracles of Pentecost.” We will see how God the Holy Spirit blessed the message of the apostles on that first Pentecost, and we will see how he blesses our message as well.
 
Before focusing on that first Day of Pentecost, let's back up a week and a half. Remember what happened ten days ago?  Jesus ascended into heaven in plain sight of his wide-eyed, mouth agape disciples. Before ascending into heaven, Jesus said to them, “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”  Jesus had chosen these men to be his witness to the world.

They seem to have the proper credentials to be Christ’s witnesses, since they've been with him for three years. But would you have chosen them to be witnesses of Jesus? Just look at them! They don’t look like they are fit for this mission. Most of them came from Galilee. Some of them were fishermen. One was a tax collector which meant he would have been hated by the Jews.  Another one used to be a zealot who hated the Roman government. Just looking at them as a group would make you think they shouldn’t be witnesses for Christ.

Look, too, at what they had done – how they had acted:  Peter proved how timid and cowardly he could be … for when a servant girl pointed out that he was a disciple of Jesus, Peter denied it. Thomas was a doubter … for he refused to believe that Jesus rose from the dead, even though the other ten disciples told him it was true. On a number occasions we are told how the disciples squabbled among themselves, debating about which of them was the greatest – the most deserving of special honor in Jesus’ coming kingdom. How could these men possibly be witnesses for Christ throughout the world?

Those miracles still happen today, for it is the Spirit’s ability to convert – to bring spiritual life to the spiritually dead, and that can’t be stopped or even be put on pandemic pause.  It’s happening right now for people throughout the entire world who are being led confess what we confess … that Jesus Christ is our Savior.  What a miracle that is!

Amen.
 

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Ephesians 1:16-23 "NOW, HE'S EVERYWHERE!"
Seventh Sunday of Easter / Sunday of the Ascension – May 24, 2020

   I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.  I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.
 
A man was describing to a friend a scene he had witnessed on a trip he recently taken to the mountains of Colorado. He was driving uphill on a major Interstate highway when he overtook a long freight train going the same way, but at a slower speed. The train was being pushed by two diesel locomotives that sounded as if they were straining even at full power. He was surprised, having come from the Midwest, and thought, “Is this how they move trains in the mountains? Just two engines pushing all that weight?” A few minutes later he came alongside the front of the long string of cars. There he saw five more locomotives pulling the train – seven engines in all. And when he saw that, he learned a lesson.

You see, the man had been under some serious strain for quite a while. He was feeling tired – exhausted would be more a more accurate word – and he was wondering whether he’d be able to hold up under all the pressure, … even make it through another week. Seeing that train, it dawned on him that his life was like that —    he had felt as if he was pushing a load uphill with all his might … his energy near to the point of running out. What he had forgotten that God was there —   that Christ was there —   in the lead, at the front of his life, pulling with a power far greater than his own strength. Jesus was there pulling him through the valleys and up the mountains of life. More than that, Jesus – his God – had made a tremendously reassuring promise to him: “Never will I leave you;     never will I forsake you.” Christ would always be there for him. That is the message of Ascension.  

The word ascension comes from the event spoken about in Scripture at the end of Luke’s Gospel and the beginning of Luke companion volume, the Acts of Apostles. It is the event in Christ’s life that took place 40 days after Easter. The main lesson that we learn from the Ascension of Our Lord is this:  “NOW, HE (Jesus Christ) IS EVERYWHERE.” He is no longer confined to a certain place as he once was when he was physically beside his disciples and walked with them and talked with them. Now Jesus has ascended on high and he is everywhere with all of his disciples – with you and me, too.

If you were asked to name the top four events in Jesus’ life, what would you say? … to what would you point? Obviously, there is his birth; there is his death; there is his resurrection. But finally, there is his ascension into heaven. Forty days after Jesus rose from the dead, the risen Christ gathered some of his followers on a mountainside outside Jerusalem. He spoke to them words of encouragement and then he physically – visibly, in plain view of these followers – rose into the air, up and up, until a cloud hid him from their sight. Why did Jesus do this and what does it mean for us today? We find the answers to these questions in the verses that are this morning’s text.

Again, most of the time when Jesus here – during the days of his earthly ministry, he could only be in one place at a one time. The twelve year old boy Jesus was in the Temple courts conversing with the learned teachers and could not be with his parents who were making their way home to Nazareth after the Passover, so he was missing and they were worried and had to turn around and go back and find him. Prior to Easter, Jesus would walk and eat and sleep – like everybody else. Speaking in theological terms, we call that time Jesus’ State of Humiliation. He humbled himself, voluntarily lower himself, and did not make full use of his divine power.

Then came Easter, and everything changed! Jesus once more took up the full use of his divine power. Now, although he still had a human body, things were different. He passed through the solid, rock walls of Joseph’s tomb and then an angel rolled back the stone away from the entrance to let the world know his grave was empty. On Easter Sunday afternoon Jesus went for a walk with two followers to the village of Emmaus; then he disappeared in an instant. Easter evening he paid a visit to his frightened disciples and literally just showed up. For the next 40 days Jesus appeared in on-again, off-again fashion, confirming to them that he had really, physically risen. But now, it was time for that to end, time for Jesus to be fully glorified, as he was from all eternity.

Why didn’t Jesus just stay here on this earth? It would be tempting to say that scenario would have been preferable. But imagine if Jesus would have stayed —   what would it have been like to be a Christian? Everyone with an illness would be competing to get healed by him, competing with each other to get noticed and have him address their needs. We’d all want him to solve our problems, provide world peace, stop wars, cause our relatives to come to church with us. What do you think your chances of talking to him would have been? Even if every one of us would only get 20 seconds with Jesus, that would mean that only about a million and a half people a year would get some time with him … and the rest of us would have to wait!
The Ascension marks the end of Jesus’ visible presence on this earth – when he is only in one place at one time. The Ascension marks the beginning of Jesus’ invisible presence on this earth, when he’s everywhere at the same time. Look especially at the last six words of our text from Ephesians: “And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be the head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.” When Jesus ascended into heaven, that was the moment he began to fill “everything in every way.”

Now when you pray to Christ and someone else in Africa prays to Christ, he is with you and listening to you, and he’s with that person in Africa and listening to him. He knows and answers both of your prayers at the same time. When you are traveling across the country, Christ is with you. But he’s also with your relatives back home. Now, he’s everywhere!  The Bible tells us that Jesus fills everything in every way. How can that be, you ask? Remember, Jesus is God, and if he’s God, he can do whatever he wants.
Is this good or bad, that Jesus is with you and watches you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? Maybe there’s a part of us that doesn’t like to hear that, because that means that he sees us when we sin. He’s always with you. You’re never on break. He’s always watching you, listening to you. He knows exactly what’s going on with you … 24/7 … because he fills everything in every way. Does that make you uncomfortable? Does that make you feel guilty?

Remember, the Jesus who is always with you, is the Jesus who died for your sins. You can always turn to him, confess the sins that you have committed, and know that he forgives you, every time. Every time you stumble and fall in your Christian life, Jesus is right there, to lift you up, and to strengthen you to become the Christian that you want to be. Every time you hear the Word of God, Jesus is right there. It’s Jesus who is speaking to you, not just the pastor. Every time you receive the Lord’s Supper (as we pray we will once more be able to do), Jesus is there. It’s not just the pastor standing there giving you Christ’s body and blood and telling you that your sins are forgiven. Jesus is there with the pastor merely echoing the words of your Savior.

A Christian died and went to heaven. While he was ‘up there,’ he had a chance to talk to Jesus face to face. “I was always with you,” Jesus said to the man.

“I know, the man said. “Sometimes, though, it felt like you weren’t with me, that I was all alone.”

“Oh, but I was with you,” Jesus said to the man. “Remember when you were young, and you made that mistake, and you had to spend the night in jail?”

“How could I forget?” the man said.

“I was with you in there. I heard you pray to me and ask for forgiveness, and I forgave you. Remember when your boss called you into his office, and you thought you were going to get a promotion, but instead, you were downsized and out of a job that day? …  right after you bought a new house and your wife was pregnant —   do you remember that?” Jesus asked the man.

“Of course.”

“I was there with you. I heard you when you prayed for help. And I took care of you. Remember when you were in the waiting room and the doctor came in and told you that your wife had died, and that night, you were all alone in your house? I was with you.”

“I was always with you. I never left you. I heard every prayer you prayed. I forgave you every time for every sin you committed. I was always there.”

Friend, that’s the kind of God you have. You don’t have a God who sits up in heaven, far away from you, who watches you from a distance, who often is too busy to pay attention to you. Maybe if I pray hard enough and long enough, he’ll pay attention to me. That’s not the kind of God you have.

You have a God who is with you right now, who came down to this earth 2000 years ago and became a human being. You have a God who died for you, who took your sins away. And instead of ascending up into heaven and leaving the world, he ascended into heaven and now fills every inch of the world. Instead of being up there all by himself relaxing, away from you, he is down here with you, working in your life, blessing you and guiding you. That’s the kind of God you have. You never have to ask, “Where is God?” He is right here, right now.

Someday, you’ll be able to have a conversation with Jesus Christ in heaven, and he will remind you of all sorts of moments in your life, moments when he was with you. Until then, remember - he fills everything in every way. He is with you right now, tomorrow, and always, and that is the message of the Ascension.

Amen.

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Acts 17:22-34 “REVEALING THE UNKNOWN GOD”
Sixth Sunday of Easter – May 17, 2020
 
  Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.
  “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’
  “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone – an image made by man’s design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.”
  When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject.” At that, Paul left the Council. A few men became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others.
 
What would you think about a girl who has an empty picture frame on her nightstand and tells you that it is a picture of her dad? She doesn’t know who he is, so she makes him up. She talks to him at night. She writes him letters and sends him gifts, addressing them to “my dad” and hoping that somehow they get to him. Yet through it all —   there’s never any response, never any personal connection, no personal relationship, no assurance that he actually loves her or even thinks about her. Even if she dreams up an ideal father, she never actually gets to meet him, sit in his lap, or fall asleep in his arms.
 
How sad when people have the same sort of feelings about God! Imagine it, … you know there’s a God, but you figure he’s distant —  perhaps thinking about you at times, but then maybe not. You send up prayers to him, but you’re not certain they’ll ever be heard or answered. Because the uncertainty is so depressing, you make up your ideal god. You decide how you want to craft him – what you want your god to be like. But even if you dream up a god that fits what you want, deep down you know that he’s just that —   a dream, a creation of your mind. You have concluded that the real god is distant and unknowable.
 
So you do what you can. You send him gifts. You give money to charities and you hope that he is paying attention. But you hope as well that he is not paying too much attention so that he can read the selfishness in your heart as you write that check out. You hope that he’s watching another channel during your bad moments, and you hope that he is really tuned into you during your good moments. And you really hope that it isn’t the other way around. You call him by all sorts of names. You call him “God.” You call him “nature” and to cover your bases you support appealing environmental causes because you’ve told yourself that it is the right thing to do. Your demonstration of good stewardship of the earth shows you respect him – or respect “it.” You also are careful to say nice things about the man named Jesus just in case he really did have some connection with God. A lot of people think he did and you want to play it safe, too.  
 
Maybe you even make bold pronouncements about what God would or would not do … all the time knowing for sure, because he is the “unknown God.” When things go well for you, you assume that he’s happy with you; when things don’t go well for you, you assume that he must be upset with you. Yet as you look at your life, you can’t sense any rhyme or reason to why things happen the way that they do. The lyrics of Freewill by the 80s rock band Rush seem to ring so true:  “A planet of playthings / We dance on the strings / Of powers we cannot perceive.” When things go poorly and you can’t find anyone on earth to turn to —  well, then you just can’t find anyone to turn to because God is unknown to you and what little you know of him at the moment seems to suggest that he has it in for you. So you stare at the empty picture frame and throw up your hands in despair at ever getting a picture to fill it.
 
That is how much of our world today lives. People are, as Paul said, “religious in every way.” But the true God is unknown to them. As a result there’s a sad emptiness to their existence. Paul saw it and sensed it as he walked about the city of Athens. Luke reports that the Apostle was “greatly distressed” as he realized the spiritual state of the people.
 
Are you “greatly distressed” when you see similar things in the lives of people you know? You should be! If not, consider what it means to you that you know the Unknown God. It means that you wake up in the morning and you know how the God of the Bible feels about you. You know he takes a keen interest in you. He cares about you and your family. He’s fully aware of what’s happening in your life in the present because he’s not “out there” on the edge of the universe but he with you – at your side. His imminence – his proximity to you, closer than close – is due to Jesus.
 
And because you’ve “met” Jesus (believe in him as Savior), you know, as Paul explained to the Athenians, that the true God not only made you, but also “determined the times set for [you] and the exact places where [you] should live.” You know your life has not been a succession of random occurrences. Your life has been under his control and direction from the moment of your conception straight on through to this present hour. And it’s going to continue to be that way until that appointed moment when his holy angels snatch your immortal soul out of this dying world or Jesus himself comes on the clouds of glory to claim you and every other believer and takes us all to heaven. It is most definitely true, as the Apostle noted,“in him we live and move and have our being.”
 
More than your knowing about that divine awareness of who you and what’s going on in your life, you also know how the true God feels about you. From his revealed Word you know, first of all, that it is exactly as you suspected, as your conscience has told you —   God doesn’t look kindly on sin in general or your sins specifically. You also know from his revealed Word that it’s worse than you suspected. You know that this God hates all sin – yours included (though you secretly believe you are morally superior to say, pick-a-number … 82% … of your neighbors). Your picture of God is not a fuzzy, vaguely defined picture of a God who periodically sticks a pin into a little doll with your name on it, brings you some earthly suffering, and sends you on your way. No, your picture is a clearly defined one of a God who punishes sin justly with eternal death in hell.
 
With the clarity of this picture of the true God fixed in your mind, you also understand why some people much prefer to live with their malleable, self-made image of an Unknown God, whose feelings and actions they can leave purposely vague and undefined. Such a god they don’t have to fear. Such a god, they can tell themselves, will give them a pass on just about anything.
 
But you know not only the true God’s holy justice, you also know, secondly, his perfect love. You know that Jesus is most certainly someone who had a connection with God! It is the closest of connections:  Jesus was (and is) God’s eternal Son! You know that as you read about Jesus and watch him in the gospels. You have a crystal clear picture of who the true God is and what he’s like. As Jesus said in last week’s Gospel Lesson from John 14: “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” When you see Jesus, you see the true God. When you see Jesus’ perfect life, you know that the true God is perfect. When you see Jesus healing people, making time for one hurting person, you know that the true God is a God to whom people aren’t numbers, but names, faces, individuals, and souls. And when you see Jesus dying on a cross to pay the punishment for all sins, you know that the true God is a God of unimaginable, personal love. He is a God who will never leave you or forsake you. He is a God to whom you can always turn for help, comfort, reassurance, and forgiveness.
 
You know the peace, hope, and joy that come from having your picture frame filled in, the peace, hope, and joy that come only from seeing and knowing the true God. In fact, that’s probably not as accurate as it could be, because we can’t draw an exact parallel between your situation and the little girl who one day gets a picture of her father in the mail. Because even though her father now has a face, she still has a rather impersonal relationship with him. No, the exact parallel with your situation would come if that little girl was staring at that empty picture frame and her father showed up at the door to say that he'd come home and he was never leaving her. That’s the kind of relationship you have with the Unknown God who’s become known to you by faith in Jesus. It's a relationship where he knows you personally, loves you personally, and is personally active in your life.
 
No wonder Paul was “greatly distressed” that the Athenians didn’t know this God! Although they gave every impression of being knowledgeable and even wise people, by confessing that they did not know who this God was they were left sitting in front of a blank altar, praying to a blank picture, stumbling around with an image in their minds of an Unknown God.
 
So when the opportunity came along to talk to the Athenians heart-to-heart and bring clarity, Paul took it. Admittedly, it wasn’t exactly the ideal preaching opportunity. They had already tipped their hand as to what they thought of Paul’s teaching by calling him a “babbler” (literally, someone who, like a bird, picks up a seed of knowledge here and there, but really doesn’t know much). The learned men of the Areopagus seem to have invited Paul to speak to them mostly out of curiosity. So Paul could hardly have been hoping for a warm reception or a warm response to his sermon, but he went anyway.  
 
Do we go when we have similar opportunities, … or do we buy into the age-old argument that there are two things that dare never be discussed in polite company – politics and religion? Do you pray for God to open doors … that he would you chances to talk about the Unknown God to others who are obviously in the dark and groping about for spiritual truth? Or have you gotten good at slamming shut those open windows as though the draft might make you sick? Do you decide ahead of time who won’t listen, and who therefore isn’t worth your breath? Paul didn’t.
 
It is never a good idea to limit the work of the Holy Spirit and presume to know what he will or will not accomplish through the Word. Because Paul revealed the Unknown God to the men of Athens that day, he practically got laughed out of the Areopagus! But he didn’t leave emotionally beaten down and bedraggled, with the proverbial “wind knocked out of his sails.” He did not leave emptyhanded, rather he left with some souls won for Jesus. These souls were important enough that the Holy Spirit caused their names to be record in this history book of the early church, Dr. Luke’s Book of Acts. God named these individuals:  a man named Dionysius, a woman named Damaris, and others.
 
So, speak when the opportunity arises – when the Holy Spirit opens that door or window. When you begin to speak, begin to speak from where people are spiritually, and don’t be surprised that’s where they are! Where else would you expect them to be? Paul says that God has made his presence known to people – pre-written this rudimentary religious ‘software’ into their brains “so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him.” That’s why people think about and talk about the Unknown God. Begin there and go on from there. Acknowledge their interest in things spiritual as the Apostle Paul did. His non-threatening opening was … “I see that in every way you are very religious.” Of course, they were! All those marble statues and altars proved it. Paul didn’t start by yelling at them, deriding them, and saying: “You poor, misguided fools! Your knowledge of God is so pathetically limited! Let me tell you ignoramuses a thing or two!” Paul had more tact and love for them.
 
Paul understood the learning curve needing to be surmounted and how that could be accomplished only with the Spirit’s help through the preaching of crucified and risen Christ. These men of Athens were like someone reaching for something in the dark, trying to grasp something nearby but just out of reach. So Paul began by acknowledging that they were searching – even implying that their search was a good thing. Then he told them that he wanted to help. He started where they were and talked about what they knew. And he did so ... to get them to where they needed to be, to have them know what they should. He knew the only reason they did not know these things was because he hadn’t yet told them. 
 
So also with you – if there are friends, relatives, acquaintances, neighbors ("FRAN"s for short) in your lives whose religion consists of an Unknown God, people whose god is dreamed up or result of misperceptions from childhood fantasy or adulthood fears —   if they do not yet know the God who created them, loved them, and saved them, realize it is only because you haven’t yet told them. Don’t start by berating them for what they don’t know. Instead, take what they do know – that God is powerful, that God is holy, that God hates sin – and then tell them what you know: that hr is also love, that he sent his Son to take the punishment for sin, that they can have a personal relationship with the God who was previously unknown, and that the Bible fills in that blank picture frame in great detail.
 
Sometimes we don’t think like that – in terms of our being in a position to reveal God to people plainly. Sometimes we figure that the reason people don’t know the true God and his Son is because they’ve heard the message before – and rejected it. That’s probably not true anywhere near as often as we might think. The fact is that many people with whom we come into contact probably haven’t heard law and gospel at all – or at least not for many years – or, if they have heard it, it was presented poorly, with so many errors added in, that it was an incoherent, incomprehensible mess. You’d probably be amazed at how little your FRANs actually know about God and especially about his Son Jesus! But you know him (Jesus), and them (Father and Son) – and know it with ‘super-clarity,’ thanks to the Holy Spirit!
 
So do like Paul did. Revealthe Unknown Godto them. Fill in the picture frame. Introduce them to their Unknown God so that they too may know how good it is to be in a relationship with the known God.
 
Amen.

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