God's One-Sided Bargain

Texts:  Genesis 15:1-18; Luke 22:14-30

TWO VERSES FROM OUR READINGS this morning sound the keynote for today's sermon.  The first is Genesis 15:17 and it says,

When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. 

The second is Luke 22:20, which says,

In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you. 

One verse that's familiar, one verse we may find to be obscure.  But both have to do with the covenant of grace that the Lord our God makes with us, not counting the cost to Himself, that you and I might be saved.

The making of covenants is fundamental to Biblical history.  Our God is a covenant-making God.  But let's not think that the making of covenants was some special Bible thing off in a category by itself.  No, it was basic to human life and civilization back in ancient times and it still is today.

People make different kinds of covenants with one another, for different purposes.  Treaties.  Bargains.  Marriage vows.  Contracts.  You name it.  All of these involve the parties promising to do certain things for one another.  Very often they stipulate the penalties the parties will face if either of them fail to live up to their side of the bargain.  The general form was, "Do this, and this benefit will follow.  Fail to do this, and this penalty will follow."  As you might expect, if one party to a contract was more powerful than the other, the weaker party incurred most of the obligation and most, if not all, of the penalties.  But what would you think of a covenant where the stronger party took all the obligations and all the penalties to himself, and all the benefits came to the party that was weaker?  That's not how it happened in the ancient world, and it's not how it happens today.  But that's exactly what the Lord God Almighty does for us in the covenant of grace He has made with us for our salvation.

Genesis chapter 15 begins with the word of the Lord coming to Abram in a vision:

"Do not be afraid, Abram.
    I am your shield,
    your very great reward."

At the outset, we see God conferring a benefit on the man Abram.  And who was Abram?  Was he some hero or demigod who had the right to deal with the Lord God Almighty as an equal?  No, he was a nomadic herdsman of Syrian descent whom God out of His own free grace had elected to be the one through whom all the nations of the world should be blessed.  God of His own choice gave Abram the right to expect something of Him.  So to this wonderful assurance Abram basically responds, "How will I know that You will keep your promise to me?  You've promised to make me into a great nation and look, I still have no children and a servant of mine looks to be my only heir."

  And does the Lord say, "Trust Me?"  He could have.  But in grace He responds that indeed, a son coming from Abram's own body would be his heir, and He gives him the sign of the stars of heaven as His testimony that His promise is firm and sure.

Does Genesis say, "Abram did this or that to deserve that God should favor him"? or "God required these actions and good works from Abram as his part of the bargain"?  No, it tells us that upon seeing this sign,"Abram believed the Lord, and it was credited to him as righteousness."  All the action was on the Lord's side; all the passive receptiveness was on Abram's.  Abram simply received God's grace, and by that grace he received the righteousness of God that made it possible for him to walk with God in friendship and peace and receive His blessings forever.

But God has not finished making His one-sided bargain or covenant with this man.  The Lord says,

"I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it."

Again, as in verse 2, Abram asks for a sign that this indeed will take place.  God, being God, had every right to say, "Abram, you trusted Me before; go on trusting Me now.  Isn't My word enough for you?"

But the Lord doesn't do that.  Instead, the Lord God of the universe condescends to a man and grants him signs and seals to ratify the bargain, exactly as if it were one man making covenant with another.

The Lord commands Abram to bring certain animals of a certain age, along with two birds.  Abram obeyed, cut the animals in two, and arranged the halves opposite each other, with the birds opposite each other, though not cut in half.  Then Abram sat down to wait, driving the birds of prey away from the carcasses, waiting to see what the Lord would do, waiting to see what the Lord wanted him to do.

This strange procedure was a standard way of ratifying and witnessing to a covenant in the ancient Near East.  What could it possibly mean?  It might help if we turn over to Jeremiah 34.  There the leaders of Judah have made a covenant before God to free their slaves, but they've broken it and taken the freedmen into slavery again.  So the Lord says,

The men who have violated my covenant and have not fulfilled the terms of the covenant they made before me, I will treat like the calf they cut in two and then walked between its pieces.  The leaders of Judah and Jerusalem, the court officials, the priests and all the people of the land who walked between the pieces of the calf, I will hand over to their enemies who seek their lives. Their dead bodies will become food for the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth.

The covenant was sealed in the blood of the animals.  The idea was that the parties making the covenant would walk between the severed animal pieces, in effect saying, "If I break this covenant, may I be like this slaughtered animal.  May my dead body be food for birds of prey, with no one to drive them off."  Typically, it was the weaker party who passed between the pieces.  A weaker king.  The debtor who needed the money.  The people of a god.  The powerful party merely witnessed that all was done properly, to his benefit.

But what is this in Genesis between God and Abram?   It had been nighttime with the stars shining when the Lord first came to him in this vision.  It was now sunset of the day after   As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and "a thick and dreadful darkness came over him."  This was no ordinary darkness and no ordinary sleep, it was a sleep from the Lord.  Abram would not be asked to walk between the pieces; he would not be asked to do anything.  In fact, God wanted to make sure Abram wasn't capable of doing anything.  This treaty, this bargain, was going to be totally one-sided, and the one party making the promises, the one party obligating Himself to them was God and God alone.

In verses 13 to 16 the Lord sets forth the terms of the promise:  That Abram's descendants would indeed inherit the land, but not until the sin of the present inhabitants (here known collectively as Amorites) had reached its full measure and their judgement was due.

Now, we might think that doesn't exactly count.  If you tell me I've won the Publishers' Clearinghouse Sweepstakes but then tell me you'll make the check out to my great-great grandchild who hasn't even been born yet, and I'm getting on in years and don't have any kids in the first place, as a modern individualist I'm likely to say, hey, that wasn't what you promised before.  But our ancient ancestors were much more family and clan oriented than we are, and they understood that they lived on in their descendants.  A man like Abram would have taken no pleasure in receiving a blessing that would die with him.

So as Abram lies in deep vision-sleep, the Lord unilaterally declares what He will do.  And then, wonder of wonders, when the sun had fully set there appeared (verse 17) a smoking firepot with a blazing torch passing between the severed animal pieces. This was none other than a vision of the Lord God Almighty swearing an oath against Himself, saying, "May I be like these dead animals if I do not keep my promise to Abram my friend."

God Almighty Himself is conferring all the benefits!  And taking on all the penalties and obligations!  Most covenants then as now say, "Do this in order to receive that."  But God's covenant of grace says, "Believe this and receive that."  Or maybe putting it better, "Believe Me and receive this." God was witnessing blood against Himself if He should fail in any of His promises to His friend Abram.

What is this to us?  Everything.  Because in His grace, God's one-sided bargain with Abram set in motion the divine plan for our salvation.   He promised him a land to call his own, but the physical land of Canaan was only a sign of the kingdom of heaven that we, God's covenant people, will receive.  He promised him heirs like the stars in the sky, and physically, this came true, but even more numerous are those who are children of Abraham by faith, for all who, like Abraham, believe God and have it counted to us as righteousness.

But the greatest fulfilment of God's covenant with Abram came in the greatest of his descendants, who is Jesus Christ our Lord.  And so we see Him in the Upper Room, sharing a meal with His disciples shortly He is to die, and like God His Father so many centuries before, God the Son of God makes a one-sided covenant with those He loves and seals it in His own blood.  "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you," Jesus said.  For us He became those animals whose bodies were cut in two.  For us He walked the road to Calvary   Jesus did not bleed and die because He failed to keep His covenant of grace with us, He bled and died so that covenant could be put into effect.  His resurrection from the dead proves that this is true; because He rose, we know that we will rise with Him.

In this season of Lent, as we look forward to Easter and Christ's resurrection, let us remember that there is nothing we can do to deserve God's blessings of life and fellowship and forgiveness.  His covenant with us is like His covenant with our father Abraham, totally one-sided on God's part where it comes to action and obligations, totally benefitting us whom He has called to be His own.  Indeed, our new covenant in the blood of Christ is the ultimate fulfillment of God's promises to Abram, who believed the Lord and to whom that was credited as righteousness.  For as St. Paul says in Romans 4 says,

Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham's offspring--not only to those who are of the law but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all.

By faith we are the children of Abraham, the friend of God.  But even better, by faith in the shed blood of Christ, we are the children of God, who makes His extraordinary promises to us, and keeps them all.

Relying on What God Gives

Texts:  Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Luke 4:1-13

DID YOU KNOW THAT NOTHING in the Bible requires us to keep the season of Lent?  That's because our salvation depends on Jesus Christ and not on what you or I do the seven weeks before Easter. Nevertheless, our branch of the Presbyterian Church, along with other denominations of Christ's church worldwide, have judged that Lent can be a valuable time for Christians to think about who they are before God and about what God has done for us in Christ.  That way we can enter more fully into the joy of our Lord's resurrection.  How each of us chooses to observe Lent (or not) is totally between ourselves and God.  Traditionally, this has included periods of fasting, of abstention from the good things of the table or other pleasures of life.  Even unbelievers know enough about it to joke about giving this or that up for Lent, and some of them even do it, regardless of how they feel about God.

So I was surprised when I looked up the Revised Common Lectionary passages appointed for this morning.  The Gospel Reading is what you would expect for the First Sunday in Lent, one of the accounts of Jesus' fasting and temptation in the wilderness.  But the Old Testament passage is from Deuteronomy 26, and it's not about fasting at all, it's all about the good things of the earth and feasting  and rejoicing in the presence of the Lord!

Is there any connection?  I think there is.  In both these  readings the Holy Spirit reveals some wonderful things to us about the trustworthy provision of God, and can and must rely on Him totally, no matter what our situation might be.

But that can be difficult, managing to trust in God and what He provides for us.  Some of us are inclined to feel we don't need him when things are going well.  We say to ourselves, "My job is secure, I work hard and earn good money, my family and I have everything we want and we deserve it.  God, I'll call you when I need you, but not right now."  Others of us distrust the Lord when things are going badly.  We're sick, we're broke, the kids' toes are poking through their shoes, we hardly know where our next meal is coming from.  At such times, even Christians are tempted to ask, "Hey, God, if You're so great, why haven't you given me everything I need to live?"  Or we might say, "Yes, God, I know You're the great Provider, but it's my fault I'm in this mess.  I should have been smarter and more capable.  I can't ask You to help me until I've dug myself out of this hole myself."

But no matter which of these temptations you're pulled towards, our readings this morning are God's Word to you, calling you to depend on Him and what He gives, whether you feast or fast, whether you seem to have everything or feel you have nothing.

In Deuteronomy, Moses is addressing the people of Israel on the east bank of the Jordan shortly before they're to cross over and take possession of the Promised Land.  During forty years wandering in the desert they've had to depend on the Lord for pretty much everything. They've lived primarily on manna and quail sent straight from the hand of God.  They didn't even have to clothe themselves-- God made sure the garments they wore out of Egypt would not wear out and could be handed down to the next generation.  It was all God's provision all the time.  But Moses by the Holy Spirit looks forward to the time when the Israelites will have driven out the Canaanites and settled down on farms and grown crops of their own.  He sees the potential for danger.  What a temptation it will be for those Hebrews to say in the future, "All right, Lord, thanks for giving us everything we needed in the wilderness.  But see what I have produced for myself by the sweat of my brow!  Look what I've accomplished for myself!  Look how strong and capable I am!  Thanks, Lord, I'll call you if I need anything.  Bye!"

We can identify with that.  It's nice to have friends and family help us over a tough spot, but it feels so good to be past it and stand on our own two feet and owe nothing to any man.  But, Moses says, the children of Israel aren't to take that attitude.  They are to understand and acknowledge that, in the desert or in the Promised Land, they are totally dependent on what God gives.

To drive this lesson home, they are to observe particular ceremony which will involve doing and confessing certain things. They-- that is, the head of each household-- are to take some of the first of their harvest, put it in a basket, and take it to the high priest at the place where the Tabernacle is pitched, the place He has chosen as a dwelling for His name.  To the priest, as God's own representative, they are to say, "I declare today to the LORD your God that I have come to the land the LORD swore to our forefathers to give us."  Lesson No. 1: The land is a gift of God.

        After the priest has taken the basket and set it down before the altar of the Lord, the man was to confess before God his helplessness and the helplessness of his ancestors, and how he did not deserve that God should favor him.  "My father [that is, Jacob, called Israel] was a wandering Aramean."  Or as the NKJV puts it, "a Syrian about to perish."  This is lesson No. 2.  Abraham was pasturing his flocks in Chaldea (Iraq) when God first called him, but the family headquarters were in Syria at Haran.  And before Jacob and his sons followed Joseph down to Egypt, they were about to perish, because of the famine in Canaan.  All this time they were sheepherding nomads, without an inch of ground to call their own.  Who were they, that they should be self-sufficient and proud?

       And the head of household is to recount all the saving acts that God performed for them in Egypt, things no man could do, let alone the Hebrews, who were slaves.  And now (verse 9), the Israelite is humbly to acknowledge that God "brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey."  God gave it!  They didn't earn it!  It was all God's gift!  And in token of this fact, the man is to say, "And now I bring the firstfruits of the soil that you, O Lord, have given me."  Not, "I've brought these crops to pay You back," or "to show now what I can do for You, Lord."  No, even in the Promised Land the fruits of the soil are God's good gift.  All the Israelites are and everything they have are from His hand.

That's something for them to be glad about!  Verse 11 speaks of rejoicing, which is more than just having a thankful attitude, just like our Thanksgiving Day involves more than just thinking grateful thoughts.  For the ancient Hebrews, and really, for all human beings,  communal thankfulness meant eating and drinking and feasting.  The fact that the Levites and aliens are mentioned points this up.  They had no land to bring firstfruits from.  All this bounty was to be shared in a glorious feast in the presence of the Lord, because all of it represented the good things the Lord their God had given to each man and his household.

Here in Deuteronomy the faithful response to God's provision was feasting.  But with our Lord in the wilderness, trusting obedience meant continuing to fast.

In everything Jesus does, He acts as the New Israel.  He was and is the faithful Son of God the sinful children of Jacob had failed to be.  He kept His Father's covenant perfectly for Israel's sake, and for the sake of all whom God would choose to belong to His redeemed people-- including you and me.  So it's appropriate that Jesus should fast for forty days in the wilderness, for He is recapitulating Israel's wilderness journey, but without the quails and manna.  Luke tells us that at the end of that period he was hungry.  Starved or famished might translate it even more sharply.

And now Jesus faces a temptation for Jesus that's actually very similar to the one confronting the new Israelite farmer in Canaan 1,400 years before. Wasn't He entitled to reach out and take what He wanted and claim it for His own?  Forty days He'd withstood the temptations of the devil, and won every time!  Surely the trial was over now, and Jesus could enjoy all the privileges that came with being the Son of God in human flesh, including eating whatever He wanted.  He'd earned it, hadn't He?

And that's just what the devil tempted Him to do.  Satan renewed his onslaught.  Jesus was hungry, wasn't He?  "All right, Jesus, use Your power as the Son of God and transform a stone into bread."  And, "Hey, Jesus, Your mission in life is to bring forth a kingdom for Yourself, right?  Bow down to me, Satan, and I'll give You all the kingdoms of the world, with no trouble to You whatsoever."  And, "Well, Jesus, You want people to know God is with you.  Throw yourself down from the Temple and make God send His angels to save You.  He will, won't He?  And then everyone will follow You.  Isn't that what you want, Jesus, isn't it, if You're really the Son of God?"

After a forty days' ordeal, why not?  Why not prove one's power to oneself and all the world?  Trust in yourself and do it!

But Jesus didn't give in to it.  He was going to rely wholly on what God gave.  And so He confesses the truth about His Father and His relationship to Him.  Pervert creation and turn stones into bread?  Jesus responds, "It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone.'" That's Deuteronomy 8:3, and it goes on to say, "but on every word that comes from the mouth of God."  The Word of God is our ultimate food, the only thing in existence we truly cannot do without.  Worship the devil to gain the kingdoms of this world?  No, Jesus answers, "It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.'" Having God as our king is worth this world and all its splendor.  Force God to act in our behalf to gain glory for ourselves?  No, says Jesus.  "It says: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'" We trust in God and what He chooses to give us; we don't demand outrageous miracles so as to make us proud of having the Lord of the universe at our beck and call.

This perhaps is hardest of all, because it forces us to have God and His gracious will as our greatest desire.  Relying on God for what He gives is one thing when we secretly hope He'll grant us the most glittering desires of our hearts.  But what if He says No?  What if He says, "You must fast a little longer, My child, whether you choose to or not"?  What if God says, "A cross is in your future, and without it you do not come to Me"?

The cross was in Jesus' future, and that hour of total deprivation was God the Father's way to give us everything we really need.  The reward and provision for God's Old Covenant saints was the land of Canaan and all it could produce.  Our reward and provision, our Promised Land, is Jesus Christ the Son of God, crucified for our sins and risen for our life.  He is our home and shelter; He is the firstfruits we offer to God; He is our provision and our Bread of life.  He is what God has given to us, and without Him all feasting is dust and all fasting is in vain.

This Lent, if you fast, fast to see beyond the gifts of this earth to the Gift from heaven.  Discover how weak you are and how dependent on Him for life and salvation.  If you feast, see and taste and know the Lord your Provider in every good thing you enjoy, and long for the day when you will enjoy Him face to face.

Until that day, let us gratefully receive what He has given us at His Table.  For this is the Table of the Lord, spread for you.  A bite of bread, a sip of wine: What is there here that can compare with the splendor of the kingdoms of this world?  But here at the Lord's Supper our God has promised to confirm to you all the bounty of the universe, everything you truly need, all found in His Son Jesus Christ.  Here eat His body and drink His blood as your spiritual food, and trust that in them God has given you victory over your sin, Satan, and death itself.  The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is trustworthy and His promises are sure.  Participate in this fast; partake of this feast, and rely on Him the Father gives.  Amen.

Sought and Found

Texts:  Isaiah 49:1-7; Matthew 2:1-12

THERE'S A HYMN IN THE 1933 Presbyterian hymnal that goes like this:

I sought the Lord, 
            and afterward I knew
He moved my soul to seek Him, 
            seeking me;
It was not I that found, 
            O Saviour true;
No, I was found of Thee.

These words came to mind as I was studying our passage in Matthew chapter 2, and considering what the Holy Spirit wanted me to bring to you from it on this Feast of the Epiphany.

This story of the Wise Men visiting the Child Jesus is an old, familiar one, but the wonderful thing about God's holy Word is that He always has more to bring to us even out of the passages we know and love best.  We can see in these verses how Jesus is the high King of heaven whom the great ones of the earth worship and adore.  They show us how God begins to include the Gentiles in the kingdom of His Christ.  They move us to glory in the light of God's revelation, and to mourn over the blindness of His ancient covenant people, the Jews.  But this year I was struck by the theme of seeking and finding.

It runs all through our Matthew passage.  The strange men from the East come seeking the Child who is born King of the Jews.  Herod seeks to know where the Christ is to be born, and the priests and teachers of the Law find the answer in the book of the prophet Micah.  Herod seeks to know exactly when the star appeared, and commands the Magi to search carefully for the Child.  The Magi continue their search and at last find the Child Jesus and present Him with the gifts they have brought.  They then return to their own country by another route, leaving Herod without the information he wanted to find.

For the Wise Men in particular, the whole journey is an effort of seeking and finding. And we're used to regarding them in that way. Occasionally by the side of the road somebody will put up a signboard that says

                   Wise Men Still Seek Him

And everyone one knows exactly which wise men it's talking about, and Who it was they sought. But what I want us to ask ourselves today is, "Why?"  I mean, why did they go looking for Jesus?  How did they know they should?  Why on earth should a group of Gentile astrologers-- of all people!-- be interested in the infant King of the Jews?  Why should they be watching for His star-- and how is it possible they even knew this new heavenly body was His star?  And once they saw it, and why should they take the trouble to go hundreds of miles from what is now Iraq to pay Him homage?  Let's not take their journey for granted!  After all, what did the King of the Jews have to do with them?  There was no earthly reason these powerful and influential pagan men should have taken all that effort to seek and find the Messiah of Israel who was born in a barn, but they did.  Why?

We can find part of our answer in the course of human history.  Chaldea, where the order of the Magi flourished, was the heart of the old Babylonian empire, where the Jews had been taken in exile six hundred years before.  Even at the start of the 1st century Jews lived in those regions, and they had planted there a strong tradition of their Scriptures and of the knowledge of the God of Israel.  And so we see that these Wise Men, who were dedicated to seeking out ancient truth, came to know the tradition of the great King of the Jews who was to come.

But it didn't follow that this information would be personally  significant for them.  Humanly-speaking, there really was no reason why these Gentiles should search out the Child Jesus and be so full of joy when they found Him.  Let's understand this: It really wasn't their idea, it was God's.  It wasn't as if the Wise Men one day decided to go find the Incarnate God because it'd be the wise thing to do; they sought Him because God Himself in His purpose and wisdom from all eternity from had decided that's what they would do.  The Magi sought Christ because Christ, as the everlasting Son of God, first sought and found them.

Please keep in mind that we're speaking figuratively. The all-knowing, all wise God doesn't have to "seek" for any of us, because we're always present to Him and He knows exactly where we are at every moment.  But as He works in the hearts of His elect to bring us to Himself, the language of seeking and finding is a very appropriate.

The Wise Men needed God to seek them out before they could seek Him.  And the same goes for every last one of us.  Why?  Because naturally we are lost, wandering, and alone, without God and without hope in the world.  Because as Isaiah says in chapter 9, naturally we are people walking in darkness.  Because as St. Paul says in Ephesians, naturally we are dead in trespasses and sins.  We need God to seek us out by His grace, to find us, enlighten us, and make us alive.  We talk about "making a decision for Christ," and it feels like that's what we do.  But none of us can do any such thing unless God first has made a decision for us.  Look at the chief priests and the teachers of the law in our Matthew reading.  They knew God's Word backwards and forwards.  They didn't have to do any special research to tell Herod where the Christ Child was to be born-- they could quote Micah 5:2 from memory.  But their minds were darkened.  It meant nothing to them that this prophecy was possibly being fulfilled right then, five miles down the road in Bethlehem.  Why did God not choose to break through their darkness and unbelief?  It hasn't been given to us to know that.  But it is given to us, to you and to me, to know that the fact that you and I can be here worshipping our Lord Jesus Christ is a wonderful gift we could never deserve, a gift of pure grace.  God our Creator and Redeemer has sought us and found us, and He will never lose us from this day.

How do we know this?  How can we trust that God's grace will always find what it seeks?  Turn to our reading in Isaiah 49.  Here we see the Servant of the Lord taking up His commission.  He somehow is identified with God's people Israel, but He isn't the nation, because part of His task will be to redeem and restore the tribes of Jacob.  This Servant is the Israel that Israel could never be, the Messiah, the perfect and holy Son of God.  He is, as verse 3 puts it, God's servant Israel, in whom the Lord will display His splendor.  And though it seems as if the task He is given is impossible (for the sinful human heart is harder than any rock), still what is due Him for all His labor "is in the Lord's hand, and [His] reward is with [His] God."  Do you know what that reward is?  It's you who believe in Him and all His faithful saints, whom the Father has given the Son.  The success of Christ in saving us is certain, for God the Father Himself has promised to reward His Son by giving Him all those He has chosen for salvation.

God prepared His Son perfectly for His mission of salvation-- He was like a polished arrow in the quiver of God, and once He was set to the bowstring He would never fail to hit the mark God intended.  Verse 2 says the Lord "concealed me in his quiver," and for long centuries God's plan for salvation was hidden from human knowledge.  Who would have thought that the Saviour would be God Himself come to earth as a helpless Child?  Who could have conceived that the Lord of life would die on a cross to atone our sins?  But that's exactly what He did, and we could never see it or look for it or accept it if God did not reveal it to us.  His grace had to seek us out, so we could believe the good news of Jesus Christ and seek the One who had already found us.

It would have made sense if this wonderful salvation had only applied to the Jews.  Truly, when God sent His Servant the Messiah, it was first and foremost His purpose to redeem the chosen remnant of His ancient people.  Jesus was "formed in the womb," verse 5 says, "to bring Jacob back to him and gather Israel to Himself."  As Christ said during His ministry, He was sent to seek out the lost sheep of the house of Israel.  But hear what the Lord says to my Lord:

"It is too small a thing for you to be my servant
    to restore the tribes of Jacob
    and bring back those of Israel I have kept.
I will also make you a light for the Gentiles,
    that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth."

A light to the Gentiles, the Christ would be!  And even as a tiny Child our Lord Jesus was fulfilling that prophecy, as His Holy Spirit sought out those Gentiles from the East, Wise Men, nobles, princes of their people.  God found them and enlightened them and drew them to His Son.  And so these words of the prophet began to be fulfilled:

"Kings will see you and rise up,
    princes will see and bow down,
because of the Lord, who is faithful,
    the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you."

And the Magi were only the beginning.  We sitting here are Gentiles who have been given the light of Christ, because of the faithfulness of the Lord.  We are chosen in Him, God's beloved Son, Child of Mary, the true Israel and God's holy Servant, in whom the Lord displays His splendor.  In Christ the light of God is revealed to those who were in darkness.  In Christ the grace of God seeks and finds those who would never think of looking for Him.

And He invites us to His Table.  As we eat the bread and drink the cup we do so in remembrance of Jesus Christ who for us died and rose again.  But remember that in this sacrament God Himself does something for us.  Here at this Table God seeks to give us Christ and all His benefits: His love, His mercy, His forgiveness, His assurance, His grace-- all the overwhelming riches of Jesus our Lord, more precious than any gold, frankincense, or myrrh.  Receive Him here by faith. Like the Magi, bow before Him with gratitude and great joy. What you seek is here, for God Himself has first sought you, and what He seeks, He finds.

Worth Repeating

Texts: Psalm 136; Romans 8:31-39

       O GIVE THANKS TO THE LORD, FOR He is good:
        for His steadfast love endures forever.

Is this a statement worth repeating?  Our spiritual ancestors the ancient Israelites thought so.  All through the books of Kings and Chronicles, at times of celebration at the Jerusalem temple, frequently when the armies of the Lord go out to war, we read of this call and response being made between priest and people. It stands as a confession of faith for the Old Testament church.  And since the Lord's church is one church, it is a confession of faith for us.  The Lord is good; His steadfast love endures forever.  This is a confession we should take upon our lips daily.  We should find it marvellously worth repeating. 

    But what happens when the goodness of the Lord seems to fall short?   What if we feel that His love isn't exactly steadfast, or not exactly what we'd define as love?

    I was moved to preach on these two passages a couple weeks ago, long before a hurricane called Sandy began making its way up the Atlantic coast.  Around here we got off pretty light.  But elsewhere--!  Even now there are still people in New York and New Jersey who are cold and hungry and suffering.  They have no heat and no running water and they're short of food.  Ordinary people just like us in a terrible situation.  What if that was us?  Would we still be able to respond, "His steadfast love endures forever!"?  Would we want to?  Today's readings teach us that not only should we want to, even in the worst of circumstances, but through that same steadfast love of God, we can.

    The first step is to understand what this steadfast love is.  It goes way beyond a feeling or preference, it includes the active kindness and mercy of God toward men.  The word is hesed, and it describes how God is in Himself and also how God behaves as He reaches out to us in grace and favor.

    But here's our problem: We get the idea that if somebody loves us they should give us exactly what we think we want right now, whether it's the best thing for us or not.  And if he or she doesn't give it, it means they don't love us after all.  This attitude can make it hard for us to repeat that "His steadfast love endures forever!"

    I hope you and I aren't so childish as that.  I pray the Holy Spirit has opened our eyes to see that God shows His steadfast love towards us first and foremost in giving us a relationship with Himself, in allowing us to catch even the reflection of His greatness.  The psalmist proclaims,

        Give thanks to the God of gods,

and

        Give thanks to the Lord of lords.

Think of it!  Only we among the creatures are made in His image.  Only we are privileged even dimly to recognize who He is. The animals, the rocks, the trees: they worship God in being what they are, but they are totally unaware of the splendor and majesty of their Creator.  But Lord God has granted that we should see His glory, and in His love He has enabled us to enjoy Him in worship.  This is a privilege that nothing can take away from us, for God in His splendor always remains God.

    But as we see from verse 4 through 9, this loving God is more than great in Himself, He is also the Doer of wonders who made heaven and earth and all that are in them.

    And that includes us.  Our very existence is proof of the Lord's steadfast love!  He didn't have to create us.  He wasn't forced to give life to you or me in particular. We breathe and inhabit this earth out of the loving mercy of the Lord, and this should call forth our thanks-- even when that existence is threatened, because even in danger our lives are in His loving hands.

    For He knows our trouble and frailty.  Our God is not a wicked king who takes delight in being a tyrant over his subjects.  Our Lord is a God who shows His steadfast love in saving His people.  Verses 10 through 15 speak of the Exodus of Israel from Egypt.  That was the great founding event in the history of the Old Testament church. At the Red Sea God displayed His power and salvation right there in human history and forged the Hebrew people into the nation of His choice. A Jewish friend recently asked me how we could know that the God of the Bible exists.  I reminded him that the God of the Bible has actually acted in loving acts towards real people in real time to real effect.  As a Jew this friend isn't particularly faithful to the Scriptures, so I don't know how much my reminder convinced him.  But for us who are under His New Covenant, these verses about Israel's salvation from Egypt should move us to thanksgiving, for they remind us of the greater salvation the Exodus looked forward to.

    For as great as God's victory was over Pharaoh and all the gods of Egypt, even greater was the victory of our Lord Jesus Christ when He triumphed over sin, Satan, and death on the cross of Calvary.  As wonderful as God's love was when He safely brought His people Israel through the Red Sea, even greater was His love when He brought His Son through death to resurrection.  This was love shown to us, for we know that when Jesus rose from the dead, all of us who were chosen in Him from the foundation of the world were raised with Him as well.

    God shows His steadfast love for us in salvation.  But like the people in Staten Island and Queens, we want to be saved now and saved the way we want to be saved.  We can't judge those storm victims for being in the state they're in.  Even if they had evacuated, they couldn't have gotten far and they'd still be in dire straits.  And who of us can really visualize a fifteen foot tidal surge slamming up and washing away homes and taking out the power supply?  But when it comes to my sin and your sin and the sin of all mankind, we must judge ourselves.  I must give thanks for God's lovingkindness in salvation, because I myself am a sinner who needs to be saved.  No, none of us is Adam or Eve who first rebelled against God in the beginning.  But every day by my human nature and by my sinful acts I follow in my first parents' footsteps and I am covered in guilt.

    And so are you, and every human being who ever lived.  We do not deserve God's steadfast love or His favor.  In fact, it was the sin of mankind in Adam that disrupted creation so that superstorms like Sandy are so terrible and devastating.  In our chapter from Romans if we read verses 19 to 22 we see that creation was subjected to frustration and is in bondage to decay, because of the sin of mankind.  God in His steadfast love decreed that the creation should not be freed until we His elect are revealed as His glorious adopted sons.

    And this is what God has predestined us to be.  Our God doesn't merely rescue us and let us go where we will; He also guides us to our new home in Him.  This is what we see in verses 16 to 22 of Psalm 136.  Especially significant are the verses about the defeat of Sihon king of the Amorites and Og king of Bashan.  We can read their stories in Numbers 21.  The Israelites always knew they were going to have to fight the Canaanite peoples on the other side of the Jordan.  But Sihon and Og ruled on the east side of Jordan, and both of them attacked Israel with no provocation.  Oh, no!  Do we see terrible situations coming at us like that and conclude that God's love isn't steadfast and doesn't endure forever?  No!  That's when we like Israel stand strong in the power of the Lord and trust His steadfast love to help us overcome the foe. 

    Verse 23 and 24 tell us how even after Israel entered the Promised Land there were still times when, due to their disobedience and sin, they suffered humiliation and attack by their enemies.  But even then God's merciful love towards them prevailed and He saved them again and again.  And that's how God acts towards us who belong to Him through Jesus Christ.  In His steadfast love He keeps on forgiving our sins and redeeming and repairing what we destroy in our own foolishness.  It is worth repeating: "His steadfast love endures forever!"

    Let us never forget: God's salvation isn't something we deserve, it's something we need.  And in God's perfect timing, there it is for us!  Even as we cry out "How long, O Lord, how long?" we can also affirm that His steadfast love endures forever, because our God is a God who keeps His promises.  Did you know that the Lord told Abraham that his descendants would be oppressed for four hundred years in Egypt, and then He would save them?  Four hundred years!  All that time, God was working out His perfect plan, making the conditions just right.  It was the same in the centuries before Jesus won our salvation on the cross.  But what about all those who died before Moses?  Who died before Christ?  God's loving kindness extends to them as well.  All whom God has chosen are included in His great salvation, no matter when they lived and died.  The One who made the moon and stars is capable of seeing to that!  And one thing we must learn and hold onto: The salvation of God is not limited to this earthly life.  Its goal and purpose is to bring us into His presence in the life of the world to come.

    And so in the midst of storm and trouble; yes, even as "the nearer waters roll; while the tempest still is high" we can respond "For His steadfast love endures forever!"  Because we know that God in His grace and wisdom is working all things out for our salvation; and not only for our salvation, but also to make us holy and wholly glorified in Jesus Christ.

    For as we read in our verses from Romans 8, it is actually in the midst of trouble and persecution that we can lift up our heads and repeat that "His steadfast love endures forever!"  For above all we see His love displayed in His Son Jesus Christ, who suffered trouble, persecution, and death for our sakes.  The loving Father God who has saved us from our sins will certainly not let us be overcome by those who hate and harm us because of our salvation!

    It is sad, tragic, even, that so many Christians have been falsely taught that as soon as you ask Jesus into your heart all your troubles will be over.  And when trouble comes, they conclude God doesn't love them or isn't faithful, and they fall away.  Our unbelieving enemies sneer at us on the strength of this lie:  See, they say, your God isn't so powerful or loving after all!  Will we listen to their trash?  Will we let their attacks and taunts make us doubt the steadfast love of the Lord?  When we suffer  "tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword" for the sake of Christ, shall we conclude that all this means that God has forgotten us?

    No!  "In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us."  It is no mere mantra or affirmation when we repeat that God's "steadfast love endures forever"; we know it's true because of what Jesus Christ did for us.  In Him God is totally, irrevocably, and lovingly for us, so who or what can be against us?  He has given us His Son Jesus Christ!  What an immense and unfathomable act of enduring love!  Truly, "His steadfast love endures forever!"

    And lest we falter, lest we forget, our Lord has given us this sacrament of the Lord's Supper.  Here at His Table we have physical elements that we can see and touch and taste.  Here God confirms that just as surely as we take this physical food into our bodies for our nourishment, just as surely His Spirit nourishes us with the broken body and shed blood of Jesus Christ our crucified and risen Lord, to the nourishment of eternal life.  Brothers and sisters, as you partake of this holy meal, remember that no matter what happens, God's love is faithful.  For

    . . . neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Amen.  So give thanks to the Lord, for He is good.  And let God's people repeat: "For His steadfast love endures forever!"
   

True Discipleship, True Satisfaction, True Life

 Texts:    I Corinthians 10:1-17; Mark 8:27-37

    WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF you were a young man of 34, with a beautiful wife and two young children, you had your whole life ahead of you, and the authorities said you must hang?  And not because of any crime you'd committed, but because you were a practicing Christian and pastor who helped others live their lives as practicing Christians? If the authorities told you you could save your life if you denied Jesus Christ, would you do it?  What if they told you you didn't even have to revile Jesus, you could say Jesus was a great prophet but not the eternal Son of God who shed His blood on the cross for sinners, and that'd save your life.   Would you do it?  For the sake of your wife and children, would you compromise the truth about Jesus your Lord?   For the sake of your own life, would you be ashamed of Him and His word and deny that He is your Saviour and the only Saviour of the world?

    Or would you take up your cross and follow Him?

    This is the decision faced by Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani in Iran, but for him, it is a decision he has made.   He has decided in the face of all earthly pains and earthly joys to follow Jesus his Lord and Saviour, even if it means the death of his flesh in this world.

    Our Scripture texts for this morning ask us, can we, will we, make the same decision?  Brothers and sisters, it's useless for us to say that we aren't like Pastor Youcef, that we don't live under a cruel Muslim regime where converting to Christianity is a capital crime.  Even if we lived under the most Church-friendly government possible, we'd still have to decide whether to take up our crosses.  Because denying ourselves isn't something that starts with facing death for the sake of Jesus Christ and the gospel; no, it's something we have to do every day.

    In 1 Corinthians 10 we read how our spiritual forefathers came out of Egypt.  They were all followers of God through Moses.  They all shared in the blessing of God's people.  They ate the manna the Lord gave from heaven.  They drank the water that sprang miraculously from the rock in the wilderness.  But their hearts were committed to the Lord and His will.  They weren't willing to trust the Lord and His servant Moses to lead them into the Promised Land.  In the desert, not certain where they were going, the children of Israel were called to deny themselves and follow God through hardship to true satisfaction and true life.  But as St. Paul reminds us, most of them chose to deny God instead.

    He summarizes how this played out: They committed idolatry, worshipping the Golden Calf, claiming it was a statue of the Lord Yahweh who'd brought them out of Egypt.  They committed sexual immorality.  They doubted God, even the Lord Christ, and put Him to the test as if God could somehow come up lacking.  They grumbled and griped about the food and the conditions, even though the Lord never let them go hungry, never let their shoes or clothes wear out, even though He worked amazing miracles in their sight and over and over assured them that He could always to be trusted.

    "Idolatry" truly describes all these sins, for what is idolatry?  It's worshipping anything or anybody more than the triune God who made heaven and earth.  Idolatry is selfishness, especially the selfishness that goes against what we know God wants for us.  It's gaining the whole world though it should cost us our souls.  Idolatry puts loyalty to ourselves, our wants, even to our fears ahead of faith in the God who made us.  We don't have to be following a pillar of cloud around in a barren wilderness to be tempted to idolatry.  It happens every time the will of the Lord and our will comes into conflict.  And tragically, like the Hebrews in the wilderness, we give into the temptation.  We know the Lord wants us to do good to another and we can do good to that other person, but we choose not to because it's inconvenient.   We let our anger and annoyance boil over because it's so satisfying to "express ourselves," instead of showing forgiveness as the Lord Jesus has forgiven us.  Idolatry is at the heart of the current debate over government-funded contraception. Idolatry claims us when we eat or drink more than we should, when we watch too much TV or surf the Internet too long though we truly have better things to do.  It's idolatry when we snipe at and gossip about one another because it's so satisfying to feel superior to those we're complaining about.  And I know exactly how it is because I am guilty of many of these things myself.

    Like St. Paul, I don't remind you of these things to make you feel down or discouraged.  Rather, like him I speak to you as sensible people who have the mind of Christ.  The first thing we need to accept is that we will be tempted to deny our Lord for the sake of ourselves and our own satisfaction.  But as we read in verse 13, "No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man."  When you are tempted, there's no need to panic and say, "Oh, no one has ever faced this issue before, God cannot help me overcome it."  And there's no excuse to say, "This temptation is entirely new; God hasn't come up with a plan for this one."  No, God is faithful and God is strong.  He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability.  He will provide you a way of escape, so you will be able to endure the temptation and not give in.

    In our Gospel reading from St. Mark It's significant that our Lord warns His disciples and the crowds about taking up their crosses and following Him shortly after Peter has confessed that Jesus is indeed the Christ.  If He were not the Christ, this command would be meaningless.  He'd have no right to ask us to override our own wills and even give up our lives for Him.  Peter would have been justified in trying to deter Him from going to Jerusalem and certain death.  If Jesus were not the promised Messiah and King, He could offer us no help and no reward when we take up our crosses daily for Him.  But Jesus of Nazareth was and is the Christ, the Son of the living God.  His blood did take away the sins of the world.  He is truly the One who has life in Himself, who can give it to all who believe in Him.  He is worthy that we should override our wants and desires to obey and give honor to Him and Him alone.

    Last night as I was putting the final touches on this sermon, I read online that Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani had indeed been executed, yesterday afternoon.  The report was not yet confirmed, but if it is true, our sadness for our brother is mixed with joy.  He has lost his life for Jesus' sake and the sake of the gospel, and therefore he has saved it.  You and I probably will not be called upon to shed our blood for our Lord.  Nevertheless, taking up our crosses begins and continues every day as we choose to love Him and our neighbor more than we love ourselves.  This would be too much for us, but it is not too much for Him.  Jesus Christ is He who took up the great cross for you, and He is with you always to help you carry your cross for His sake and the sake of the gospel.  In our time of decision He gives us everything we need to choose Him over ourselves.  We have the word of Christ to read and remember and apply to our own situations.  We have the Holy Spirit to strengthen us when we are weak and failing.  We have His sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper, where we can see and feel and taste the truth of His love for us, where He renews in us the sacred reality of His death that wiped away our sins and His resurrection that gives us life forever more.

    Since this is so, come to the Table Jesus spreads for you.  Trust Him and know that even as you can taste and swallow the bread and the wine, just as surely His broken body and shed blood has purchased the forgiveness we need every day.  Come and take part in Jesus Christ and all His blessings, won for you on the cross.  Here with joy submit yourself to Him as His true disciple, and receive a foretaste of the true satisfaction and life that awaits you when the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.  In thankfulness and joy, decide for Him, for in grace and love Jesus Christ denied Himself and decided for you.  Amen.

Kingdom Manners, Kingdom Rules

Text:    Matthew 22:1-14

     I MISSED A WEDDING YESTERDAY.  THE groom is the only son of some friends of mine from way back, and I wish I could have gone.

    But they live all the way over on the far side of Illinois, and the drive was too far. So I followed custom and returned the RSVP card with my regrets.

     It's good to exercise good manners and follow the rules, especially on important occasions like weddings.  On this Worldwide Communion Sunday and every day of our Christian lives, Jesus wants us to know that when it comes to the marriage supper of the Son of God, we're both bound and set free by Kingdom manners and Kingdom rules.

    "The kingdom of heaven," Jesus begins in Matthew 22, "is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son."  Jesus told this parable in the Temple courts the day after His triumphal entry into Jerusalem.  A delegation of chief priests and elders of the people had marched up to Him to challenge His right to teach and act the way He did.  In response, He taxes them with their failure to carry out the responsibility God gave them as leaders over His people Israel.  Even now, when they should be the ones getting the people ready to receive God's Messiah and take their places at the great feast that will usher in the kingdom of heaven, these very leaders are deliberately ignoring the gracious call of God their King.   Will this parable wake them up, or will it make them more hardhearted still?

    This is no ordinary wedding Jesus is speaking of, it's the marriage for the son and heir of a mighty king.  Some of the customs will seem strange to us, and we may think that Jesus made them up for the purposes of His parable.  In fact, the manners and rules Jesus describes were expected behavior in ancient royal and aristocratic society.  The ancient Jewish Bible commentary called the Babylonian Talmud tells one parable of
    . . .  a king . . . who distributed royal garments to his servants.  The attentive among them folded them and deposited them in a chest.  The foolish among them went and did their work in them.  Days later the king asked for his garments.  The attentive among them returned them to him all sparkling; the foolish among them returned them to him all soiled.  The king was pleased with the attentive, but angry with the foolish.1

And the king gives orders that the foolish should be locked in the prison house.  Another parable tells of

    . . . a king who summoned his servants to a banquet but he did not set a time for them.  The attentive got themselves dressed and sat at the door of the king's house.  They said:  "Is anything missing at the king's house?"  The foolish went on with their work.  They said:  "Is there any banquet without toil?"  Suddenly the king summoned his servants.  The attentive gathered before him all dressed up while the foolish gathered before him all soiled.  The king was pleased with the attentive, but angry with the foolish.2

    Both these rabbinical stories and Jesus' parable of the wedding banquet reflected the customs of ancient Jewish society.  The priests and elders could never say, "That's impossible, Jesus!  You're just making that up to be mean!"  What the king did and what he expected from his guests exactly matched what everyone knew about good manners and obeying the rules.

    The two-part invitation, to begin with.  It took a long time to prepare a royal feast, and the king would give notice of it well in advance.  He'd invite his princes, his noblemen, and the head men and chief elders of all the towns under his rule.  As we saw from the Jewish writings, the king would send a beautiful festal garment, often made of shining white linen, to each guest.  They were expected to keep it safe and clean until the day they were summoned.  When you accepted the garment, you were committed to go.

    Then, when everything was ready, the king would send his servants around to his invited guests, saying, "Come to the feast!  Put on the wedding clothes I sent you and celebrate the marriage of my son!"

    The king in the parable is Almighty God.  The invited guests were the nation of Israel, especially their kings, priests, and rabbis.  These leaders claimed to love the Lord their God and to be waiting for His Christ.  And now, God the king has sent His servants the prophets to say, "The kingdom of heaven is at hand!"  And what do you think?  These guests refuse to come!

    Still, God didn't give up on His people Israel.  He sent more prophets to plead with them to get ready.  In that very time He sent John the Baptist and Jesus' disciples to announce the good news that the wedding feast was prepared.  You can hear the pleading in the king's voice in verse 4, as he says, "My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready.  Come to the wedding banquet."  Come, please, come!

    But, Jesus says, the invited guests pay no attention and go on about their business.  This was not something these men had a right to do.  These noblemen owed their positions to the king, and to disregard the wedding of the royal son for the sake of their everyday activities was an insult to their lord.

    But this is what the leaders of the Jewish people were doing.  Do you realize that if they had obeyed and welcomed Jesus, God could have brought in His kingdom in all its fullness, then and there?  But the priests and elders of His chosen nation thought their business, their speculations, their rules and manners, were more important than Almighty God's.

    And see how some of the other invited guests respond!  Jesus says in verse 6, "The rest seized his servants, mistreated them, and killed them."  Just so, the Jewish authorities from time immemorial had arrested, abused, and murdered the prophets God had sent; John the Baptist was only the latest to meet that fate.

    How ought a king of that time deal with this injury?  Could he just brush it off?  Absolutely not..  You harm a messenger of the king, you've harmed the king himself.  It's an act of open rebellion. No sovereign could let such a crime pass unpunished and expect to remain on his throne for any time at all.  So Jesus says, "The king was enraged.  He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city." 

    You may be thinking, "That's no fair!  Why not just arrest the murderers?"  But think of an ancient walled town, with the people inside of it loyal to the nobleman who is in rebellion against the king.  All become guilty together, all must be put down.

    In the same way, at the end of the age, God will send His angels to punish and destroy all those who remain in rebellion against Him, all those who killed His prophets or approve of those who did, those who hate His name and despise His word.  By God's grace, let us examine ourselves, that that crowd may that never include you and me. 

    Meanwhile, in the parable, the marriage banquet is ready.  In ancient Jewish tradition, the feasting together of the bride and groom and their guests, was the wedding ceremony.  The royal son cannot be wed until the guests have sat down.  Says the king, in verse 8, "‘[T]hose I invited did not deserve to come.'" What will he do for guests?

    The king does the unthinkable.  He commands his servants to "‘Go to the street corners and invite anyone you can find.'" Common, ordinary people.  Non-chosen people.  Whosoever will must come.  "So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, both good and bad, and the wedding hall was filled with guests."

    By saying this Jesus departs from every rule and custom of His day.  How could a great king dishonor his son by filling his wedding hall with the dirty, stinking rabble?  It was bad enough that the servants bring in the respectable common people, "the good," but they also gather the low-down, disgusting, "bad" people, like tax collectors and prostitutes and even-- heaven help us!-- Gentiles!

    But this is exactly what our amazing, loving Lord did.  God willed that when His people Israel rejected and crucified His Son, that His death should open up a wonderful avenue of mercy to you and me.  Few if any of us here have Jewish blood.  We were not His princes and noblemen, originally invited to the wedding feast of His royal Son.  No, we were foreigners to his promise, disobedient to God and lacking His law.  But now through Jesus Christ the crucified and risen Son of God, we, too, are invited to sit down at His feast with His faithful people in all times and places.  As St. Paul says in his letter to the Ephesians, "This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus."

    This promise is for you!  You and I had no right to the kingdom of God, yet the mercy of Christ extends to us and bids us come in to the feast.

    In the parable, then, the king comes in to view the guests.  And he notices a man sitting there in his ordinary street clothes, not wearing a wedding garment.  That tells us that all the other guests had shining wedding garments on.  Where did they get them?  The king hadn't sent wedding clothes to their homes; there hadn't been time.  Clearly, they got them at the door to the banqueting hall.  They put them on in accordance with the rules of the kingdom and made themselves ready to celebrate the feast.

    Isn't it the same way with us?  Here in this holy sacrament we participate in the wedding supper of the Lamb.  The church is the King's banqueting hall, and we enter through the door of baptism.  At our baptism the filthiness of our sin is washed away by the blood of Christ, and we put on the new robes of His righteousness, shining with His purity and brilliant with His truth.  As Paul says in his letter to the Galatians, "all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ." Solely because of the finished work of Christ both the so-called good and the truly bad are made clean and fit to celebrate the marriage feast of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

    But here is a man who somehow has slipped in without a wedding garment.  There he sat in his own clothes, violating the rules, not fit, not ready-- as so many people try to come into the presence of God today.  They say they don't have to repent of their sins and believe in Jesus Christ for God to accept them.  They think they can sit down and enjoy the good things of heaven in their own human righteousness.  The king challenges the man on his lack of wedding clothes, and the man is speechless.  And speechless everyone shall be who refuses to be covered by the righteousness of Christ that He won for us on Calvary.

    The king orders that the man be bound hand and foot and thrown into the outer darkness, where, Jesus says, "there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." 

    What kind of rule is this?  Aww, Jesus, he only showed up in the wrong clothes!  Can't you cut him some slack?

    No.  Brothers and sisters, the marriage feast of the Son of God is not a casual dress affair.  We're worthy to sit down at His table only if Christ has dressed us up in His righteousness alone.  He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through Him.  To insist there is any other way is to insult God our King and call Him a liar.

    By His Spirit and His grace, may we know better.  Jesus concludes the parable by saying, "For many are invited, but few are chosen."  Don't be afraid of this teaching, brothers and sisters.  Those who were invited but not ultimately chosen-- who were they?  The ones who despised their invitations.  The ones who hated and rebelled against the King who gave it.  The one who wouldn't mind his kingdom manners and refused to submit to the king's rules, who tried to get in by his own way instead.

    But you who acknowledge your unworthiness and have been cleansed by the blood of Christ your Saviour, come.  You who despise your own good deeds as filthy rags and have clothed yourself with the obedience of Christ, come.  You who realize that it's all the overwhelming love and grace of God your Father and King that brings you to this Table, come.  The feast is spread, the wine is poured, it is time to sit down.  With Christians around the world today; with the faithful in all times and places, let us celebrate the wedding feast of the Son of God.  In His name, come.
____________________________
1.  Babylonian Talmud, Shabbath 152b
2.  Babylonian Talmud, Shabbath 153aB

A New Kind of Love

John 13:34-35; 15:9-17

THE NIGHT THAT JESUS WAS betrayed to death for our sins, when the supper had been eaten and Judas the betrayer was gone, Jesus began to teach His disciples one last time.  As He counseled them He says, "A new command I give you: Love one another.  As I have loved you, so must you love one another.  By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."

    This command of Jesus was not just for the eleven disciples in the upper room.  It is also for us who claim the name of Jesus today, for us who gather around this holy Table.  But there is something about this command to love that should cause us to stop and question.  First of all, how can our Lord say that a command to love is "new"?  And secondly, what kind of love does it command?

    "A new command I give you: Love one another."  But what is new about the command to love?  As far back as the days of Moses in the desert, God's people were commanded to love one another.  In Leviticus 19, verse 18, it says, "Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself."  Again in verse 34, we read, "The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born.  Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt."   Jesus Himself said that after the command to love God with all our being, the greatest commandment is to love our neighbor as ourselves, and that these two commands sum up all the Old Testament Law and Prophets!  How can Jesus now say that the command to love is new?

    But there is something new about Jesus' new mandate. The old command to love said, "Love your neighbor as yourself."  Jesus' new command says, "Love one another, as I have loved you."  Obedience to the old command depends totally on our imperfect and fruitless efforts to keep God's law.  Obedience to the new command hangs wholly on the fruitful love of God given us through Christ Jesus our Lord. 

    Verse 9 says, "As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you." And as He has loved us, so we are to love one another.   In his commentary on John, John Calvin warns us against getting into speculations about the mystic love between the Father and the Son in the fellowship of the Godhead.  That wouldn't have been helpful to the disciples and it isn't helpful to us.  Jesus calls us to participate in the fruitful, joyful love of God.  For that we need another human being, a true Man, to show us what the love of God is like and teach us how to love like God.  And so Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, was born of woman and took flesh, and became a real human being.  During the three years of His earthly ministry the disciples witnessed how the Father loved the Son and how the Son loved them.  It was a love they could see and hear and handle.  It was a love they could refer to and say, "Yes, this is how we are to love one another!"

    But what kind of love is this that Jesus commands in John?  What kind of love did He display in all the gospels?  There's a peculiar factor in this love, which we mustn't ignore.  Look at verse 10:  Jesus says, "If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love." 

    Let's read that again: "If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love."

    I admit:that as Reformed Christian and as a human being still struggling with sin, when I simply read that statement, I'm troubled by it.  And I suggest that we all have to wrestle with this text, or we're likely to misunderstand the kind of love Jesus is commanding us to love.

    The Reformed Christian problem first.  I want to ask Jesus, "Lord, are You saying that You'll love us only if we obey all Your commands?  Lord, I remember those commands, and You made the Law of Moses even stricter!  But didn't your servant Paul write that by keeping the Law no one could be saved, and that if we try to earn Your love by keeping the commandments, we're still under the wrath of Your Father?  Lord, how can You say, ‘If you obey My commands, you will remain in My love'?"

   And from the Gospel, the Lord makes reply.  Look at the larger context for this verse.  Jesus had just taught the disciples that He is the Vine and they are the branches.  They-- and that means we as well-- must remain in Him if they are to bear fruit and know the joy of receiving whatever they ask from the Father.  Did the disciples or we get into the Vine by our own work or our own volition?  Absolutely not! 

    In the same way, it is Jesus Christ alone who brings us into His love. As He reminds us in verse 16, "You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit-- fruit that will last."  Jesus already loves us!  As we can read in Ephesians Chapter 1, we were chosen by God in Him before the creation of the world!  In love God predestined us to be adopted as His sons and daughters through Jesus Christ! 

    No, the keyword in John 15:10 is "remain."  Again, that might look like it's all up to us to keep Jesus loving us and not lose our salvation.  But see again what our Lord says in verse 16.  He has appointed us to bear fruit, fruit that will last.  Do you think God the Son can appoint anything that isn't going to happen?  Perish the thought!

    It is right for us to want to avoid any hint of salvation by human works.  But when Jesus says, "If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love," He means something more wonderful and joyful than anything our worries might suggest.

    But the sinful world also has a problem with linking love and obedience.  Sinful man too often loves "Because."  I love you because you're pretty.  I love you because you do nice things for me.  I love you because you're rich and take me to fancy places.  I love you because you listen when I go on and on about my troubles.  But let you the beloved grow old and ugly, or stop doing the nice things, or become poor, or get tired of listening to the same sob story, then I, a sinful human being, will stop loving you.  We see this in the prodigious divorce rate in Western society.  This kind of sinner might say, "See, even Jesus says I don't have to love you if you don't please me!"  This interpretation is a crime against Jesus' words.

    So, thinking people, including unbelievers, say, no, true love is unconditional.  It doesn't matter how cruelly the beloved behaves or how filthy and repulsive he or she is to the lover, the true lover must keep on loving and expect nothing, nothing in return.  And really (I once heard a sermon that preached this idea), if the beloved does return the love, even the littlest bit, the lover is no longer showing true, unconditional love.

    But here we have Jesus saying, "If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love."

    "Wow, Lord," we say, "that sounds awfully conditional to us!   Not only do You seem to be saying that our remaining in Your love is conditioned on us obeying Your commands, but also that You have to obey God the Father's commands in order to remain in His love!"

    But remember what we learned.  It is God through His Son who elects us into His love and appoints that we shall remain and bear fruit.  Again, God does not love us if we do this or that, He loves us in His Son.  And the Father does not love the incarnate Son if, He loves Him because Christ is His Son.  But because Christ is His Son and God is His Father, Jesus joyfully obeys His Father's commands and the Father takes joy and pleasure in the Son's obedience.  Whoever said that love expects nothing in return?  Not our Triune God!  Whoever said that love that's reciprocated is not love at all?  Not the holy Scriptures that testify to Him!

    No, the love with which Jesus Christ has loved us, the new kind of love He charges us to bear towards one another, is a love where joy is obedience and obedience is joy.  It is a mutual love where we strive to outdo one another in taking care of one another, in listening to one another, and in anticipating one another's needs.  It is the love shown by Jesus our Master when He knelt down and washed the feet of His disciples at the table that night, even though that was the job of the lowest of slaves.  It is the love He showed when He willingly laid down His life for us on the cursed cross, despising the shame of it (as Hebrews says) for the joy set before Him, the joy of becoming the Author and Perfecter of our faith. 

    God takes pleasure in receiving this obedient love.  At Jesus' baptism, God's voice from heaven said, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased."  At His transfiguration, Christ's disciples heard the Voice from the cloud say, "This is my Son, whom I love.  Listen to Him!"  True divine love is never reciprocated?  The love of God has no expectations?  What Christian can believe that?  The love of God is all about eager expectation!  In our verses from John, Jesus commands us to joyful obedience and He calls us His friends.  Beloved, there is no contradiction here.  What are friends for but to know one another's hearts?  And our Friend Jesus shares with us everything He has learned from His Father, and in prayer we may share everything with Him.  What are friends for, but to be willing to do any good thing for one another in love, as Christ has shown the full extent of His love for us in His death?  A servant obeys because he has to.  A friend fulfills his friend's commands because he wants to, and he receives his friend's joy and pleasure in return.

    This kind of willing, obedient love is the same love we in the church are now to show one another:  Loving each other mutually, eagerly, joyfully-- drawing always on the love of Christ continually being poured into our hearts by His Holy Spirit.

    The old command, "Love your neighbor as yourself," only served to show us how badly we failed at keeping God's law.  We not only didn't love our neighbor as ourselves, we couldn't love ourselves according to the image of God in us.  But Jesus' new command says, "Love each other as I have loved you."  By the blood of His cross He has already brought us into His love, just as He is always and eternally in the love of the Father.  The love of Christ is already here for us and in us, in all its fulness.  Now let us discover the secret of enjoying and blissfully living in His love: Let us love one another, as He has loved us.  The more we obey His new command, the more we will know the pleasure of God.  The more we know the pleasure of God, the more we will discover of His love and the more we will want to obey.

    Brothers and sisters, let us love one another.  Not some idealized imagining of what the ideal friend would be like, but one another, just as we are, in all our faults and annoyances and failings.  Let us love one another not only in thought and sympathy, but in service and action.  People, love your preachers, and we preachers, let us love the people.  Officers, love the laity, and laity, love your officers.  Love the member who has to do everything or she complains, and love the member who never seems to pitch in at all.  Love, yes, love even those in the church who are cranky and obstructive and never seem to love you back, because it was while we were still God's enemies that He commended His love towards us and sent Christ to die for our sins.  Loving church member, maybe God will use your obedience to soften the heart of that other person and bring him or her into the joy of our Saviour's love!


    "No greater love has any one than this, that He lay down his life for his friends."  This is love of God in Christ shown to us in this holy Supper.  Here we know the solemn joy of divine blood shed for us and divine flesh broken for us.  Here we experience the fullness of love, the love of Christ that dwells within us, the love of Christ that daily teaches us how to love one another, as He has loved us.

    May His joy be in us, and may our joy in Him and each other be complete.  Let us strive to outdo each other in eager, obedient, mutual love.  This is our Lord's new command: Love one another.

    In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Who Is This?

Texts: Deuteronomy 18:15-19; Zechariah 3:1-2, 6-9; 2 Samuel 7:11b-16; Matthew 21:1-16

    ALL WEEK PILGRIMS HAD been surging into Jerusalem.  The Passover was near, and hour by hour more and more people approached the gates to the city.

    But today, five days before the Feast, something was happening on the road from the Mount of Olives that was out of the ordinary even for this holiday time.  Down from the Mount rolled a stream of pilgrims shouting, "Hosanna to the Son of David!"   "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!"  And "Hosanna in the highest!"

    All this clamour seemed to be addressed to a Man riding in the midst of the crowd, seated on a young donkey with its mother close by.  The exultant pilgrims were cutting branches off the palm trees and spreading them  and their own cloaks on the road in front of Him.  Closer and closer to the city the loud and excited procession approached, until the Man and His supporters swept in through the city gate and into the Temple courts.  Still they cried out, "Hosanna!  Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!"  And the Man rode on, tall and regal on the cloak-draped beast, the very image of a King taking possession of what was His own.

    On Jerusalem and her citizens the impression was nothing short of seismic.  From one end of the city to the other the news spread, and their hearts were shaken to the depths.  "Who is this who has come?" they asked.  "Who is this?"

    From the Man's crowd of supporters the reply came, "This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee."

    Who is this?  Who is this Jesus?  People are still asking the question today.  Every year about this time unbelievers with little scholarship and less reverence claim to answer that question with their latest ideas.  They say, "He was an ordinary man buried in his family tomb."  Or, "He was a co-conspirator with Judas trying to gain political control."  Or, "Jesus was the husband of Mary Magdalene."  You've heard all the sensationalist theories, and I hope you know they're only good for making the authors money off of people fool enough to believe their lies. 

    But the question is still remains: Who is this?  Who is the One who rode into Jerusalem that Sunday afternoon so many centuries ago? 

    We don't need to come up with new theories: the Scripture itself answers question.  Not just with a few facts about a Rabbi who once walked the hills of Galilee and Judea; no, the Word of God shows us the living Jesus and reveals who He is for us today and will be forever.

    Who is this, riding into Jerusalem?  The Galilean crowds say to the people of the city, "This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee." 

    Could they have meant that Jesus was the prophet from Nazareth, so no one would confuse Him with some other prophets of God that were around?

    No.  Absolutely not.  Everyone knew that John the Baptist was the first prophet God had sent the Jews since the death of the prophet Malachi over four hundred years before.  From then until John, no person had spoken in the name of the Lord, at least not with God's approval.  But for the previous three years Jesus of Nazareth had been proving by His words and miracles that He had every right to speak in the name of the Lord.  He was the only prophet worthy of the name in Israel. Jesus, moreover, had shown Himself to be greater than any prophet who had come before.  His words were more authoritative than those of Moses.  His miracles were more wonderful and divine than those of Elijah and Elisha.  He was not simply a prophet, He was the Prophet.

    As we read from the Book of Deuteronomy, fourteen centuries before Jesus walked this earth the Lord God put His words into the mouth of His servant Moses.  Moses said, "The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers. You must listen to him."

    What does it mean to say "a prophet like Moses"?  Hear what the Lord Himself said about Moses, as it is written in Numbers 12, verses 6-8a:

    When a prophet of the LORD is among you,
          I reveal myself to him in visions,
         I speak to him in dreams.
    But this is not true of my servant Moses;
          he is faithful in all my house.
    With him I speak face to face,
         clearly and not in riddles;
           he sees the form of the LORD.

The promised "prophet like Moses" would speak with the Lord face to face.  He would hear and know the word of the Lord directly, and not through dreams and visions.  He would be "faithful in all God's house," and would declare the message of God fearlessly, without worrying what people might say or do to him.  The great Prophet to come would be one of the children of Israel. And the Lord commanded that the people must listen to him.

    Jesus was and is the Prophet like Moses whom the Jews had been awaiting for so long.  The cheering Galileans who marched beside Jesus as He rode into Jerusalem that day knew He was.  And by the grace of the Holy Spirit, our ears are opened to receive Him as the Prophet, too.

    The Apostle John writes, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."  The Greek for "the Word was with God" can be translated "the Word was before the face of," or "face to face with God."  From all eternity, Christ the Lord beheld the form and face of the Father directly, without needing any go-between.  As a Man on this earth that relationship and direct communication between Himself and the Father continued unbroken until the agony of the Cross.  John reports that Jesus said, "My teaching is not my own.  It comes from him who sent me.  If anyone chooses to do God's will, he will find out if my teaching comes from God or not."  Jesus received the word of God directly and He proclaimed it faithfully.  Just as with Moses, and even more than Moses, Jesus' word was and is the will of God for His chosen people.  The Lord said through Moses in the desert,

    I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers; I will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command him. If anyone does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name, I myself will call him to account.

Who is this,  riding into Jerusalem?  It is Jesus Christ, God's final and greatest Prophet. And to Jesus all mankind must listen, and Him all mankind must obey.

    Who is this, who enters the Temple area in such righteous zeal?  This Jesus acts as if He had the right to drive out those buying and selling there.  Wasn't it the priests of Israel, and especially the high priest, whose duty it was to make sure that the temple of God remained a house of prayer for all nations?  For the Temple was where the people met with God.  It was the place where the sacrifices were offered to make atonement for sin.  As Solomon prayed at the first Temple's dedication, "May your eyes, [O Lord], be open toward this temple day and night, this place of which you said you would put your name there. . . . Hear the supplications of your servant and of your people Israel when they pray towards this place. Hear from heaven, your dwelling place, and when you hear, forgive."  The high priest was charged with keeping himself and the Temple holy and pure.  And only he might carry the blood of the sacrifice into the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement, to turn away God's wrath so the people might live. 

    But as we read in the book of the prophet Zechariah, the high priests of Israel were sinful men themselves.  Joshua was high priest in Jerusalem after the people returned from exile in Babylon, and humanly-speaking, he was a pretty good man.  But even he is covered with such sin, his robes are so dirty before the Lord, that Satan in strict justice has every right to accuse him.  But the Lord rebukes Satan, and says that Joshua is a burning stick snatched from the fire.  The Lord then addresses Joshua and says,

     "Listen, O high priest Joshua and your associates seated before you, who are men symbolic of things to come: I am going to bring my servant, the Branch.  . . . and I will remove the sin of this land in a single day."

This Joshua and his fellow priests are men symbolic of things to come, in the day when God would send the righteous Branch of Jesse spoken of by the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah, through whom God would remove His people's sin in a single day.   Joshua and the other priests were emblems of the great and perfect High Priest to come.  The robes of this High Priest would be pure and His sacrifice for sin would be perfectly acceptable to God.  The name Joshua itself means "Jehovah saves," and it's the Hebrew version of the Greek name "Jesus."  The writer of the book of Hebrews says that Jesus is our High Priest forever.  Jesus is the One who is "holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens."  He is the One who sacrificed for our sins once for all when He offered Himself.  He is the One who serves in the sanctuary of heaven, in the true tabernacle set up by the Lord, not by man.  He is the One who has the right to cleanse the Temple, the right to encourage the praises of the children shouting "Hosanna to the Son of David!"-- even though the impure and faithless chief priests of His day wanted Him to keep them quiet. 

    Who is this, striding into the Temple and overturning the tables of the moneychangers?  It is Jesus, our great High Priest, who took the blood of His own body into the Holy of Holies of heaven, and made full atonement for all our sins.

    And who is this, whom the crowds on the road and the children in the Temple hail as the Son of David?

    As we read in our selection from 2 Samuel, God promised King David that

    I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, who will come from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he will be my son.

In the ordinary course of this world, God fulfilled this promise first of all in David's son Solomon.  He was born of David, his kingdom was established, and he built the house for God's name.  And God kept on keeping this promise in David's grandson and great-grandson and great-great-grandsons.  When it was necessary, God punished them "with the rod of men, with floggings inflicted by men," but David's line was never destroyed.  Even in the days of the Exile, the Davidic line continued, and ever since, the Jews had looked forward to the coming of the ultimate King of Israel, "great David's greater Son."  For in him God would keep His promise to David, in which He said, "Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever." 

    And now, on this first Palm Sunday afternoon, men, women, and little children are crying out to Jesus, "Hosanna to the Son of David"  "Hosanna!" they cry.  "Save us!"  And Jesus accepts their praise.  Before His conception, the angel told His mother Mary that her Son would sit forever on the throne of His father David.  All through His ministry,  Jesus announced the coming of the kingdom of God and in His commands and parables He made it clear that He Himself was the ruler of that kingdom.  Jesus before Pilate declared that He was a king, and not just a king of any single nation in this world; He was king of a kingdom that transcends this world, a kingdom that will endure before God forever.

    Who is this, riding into Jerusalem like a king ready to take His throne?  It is Jesus, the Son of David, the One to whom every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

    Who is this Jesus?  He is our King, enthroned on the Cross where He won the victory over Satan, sin, and death.  Under His gracious rulership we bow in humble joy and receive health, bounty, nurture, and peace that nothing on earth can give.  He is our High Priest, and the Cross was the bloody altar where He offered Himself up as the Lamb of God to take away the sins of the world.  In His broken body and shed blood alone we find redemption and are cleansed to stand in the presence of God.   He is our Prophet, the Prophet, and from the Cross His blood speaks the divine word of judgment against sin and the gracious word of hope for ransomed sinners.   From His mouth and His alone we receive the true meaning of the Scriptures and are called to eternal life.

    Jesus is your Prophet, Priest, and King, and He is mine.  So come to His Supper, all you who are baptised into His name.  At His Table He comes to you humbly, no longer on a donkey, but in these elements of bread and wine; on these He has promised to set His seal. Lift up your hearts to heaven and receive Him by faith, with thanksgiving. 

    Hosanna to you, Christ Jesus, our Prophet, Priest, and King.  Blessed are You who come in the name of the Lord.  Hosanna to the Son of David.  Amen.