Where Weakness Wins

Text:  1 Corinthians 1:18 - 2:5

WELL, TONIGHT'S THE SUPER BOWL, AND it's too bad the Steelers aren't in it.  They just weren't strong enough or smart enough or healthy enough to make it to New Orleans.  It's a real disappointment, but that's the way it works in this world.  To get to the big game you have to be smart and fast and accomplished, and that doesn't go just for football, but for all areas of life.  To really succeed, it takes smarts-- or, shall we say, wisdom-- and it takes strength.  Weaklings and fools need not apply

But in our Scripture reading for today, we have the Apostle Paul extolling the virtues of weakness and foolishness.  What's going on?  Have we been wrong all along about how the world runs?  Does he want us to see that in this life it's the weak fools who really win?

Not at all.   But St. Paul isn't talking about the game of this earthly life.  He's talking about a game that's much, much, bigger than that.

When it comes to understanding the Scriptures, the first rule is "Context, context, context".  That means first of all how the verse or passage works in the book its in and in the Bible as a whole.  Then it means understanding the historical and cultural context of the passage, what it would have meant to its first readers.  After that, we can begin to apply God's eternal Word to ourselves.

So even though you have the Scripture readings projected up on the screen, I hope you won't stop opening the Bible in the pew or bringing your own Bible to church and having it open during the sermon.  It will help you understand the context of what's being preached.

So what's the context of our reading from 1 Corinthians?  First and foremost, its context is the entire Bible, and entire Bible is the record of how God the Father brought salvation to a lost world through His Son Jesus Christ and how the Holy Spirit applies that salvation to the ones He has chosen.  As Jesus taught the disciples on the road to Emmaus, all of Scripture is about Him.  The first letter to the Corinthians is in the New Testament, which deals with how God brought the good news of Christ's salvation to the world and how His church worked through what that would mean in their lives.  In this letter the Apostle Paul responds to some misunderstandings that had come up in the church at Corinth, so they could live before God and with each other in a way that glorified the Lord who had saved them.  And the immediate context for what we read today starts at verse 10 of chapter 1 and goes all the way to the end of Chapter 4.  It has to do with wisdom and foolishness, weakness and strength, and being united in Christ instead of divided like those in this fallen world.

So if you do have your Bibles with you, I ask you to look over at verses 11 and 12 of chapter 1.  There Paul writes,

My brothers, some from Chloe's household have informed me that there are quarrels among you.  What I mean is this:  One of you says, "I follow Paul"; another, "I follow Apollos"; another, "I follow Cephas [that is, Peter]"; still another, "I follow Christ."

Over in chapter 3, verse 5, the Apostle writes,

What, after all, is Apollos?  And what is Paul?  Only servants, though whom you were called to believe-- as the Lord has assigned to each his task.

All right, what does this have to do with strength and weakness?  Just this: In the 1st century Grecian world, the teams (you might call them) that were the most looked up to and admired were not always the wrestlers and runners and chariot racers.  They were the schools of the philosophers.  The philosophers were the wise ones who could teach enlightenment and help you gain the ideal life in this world and in the next.  Now, these schools weren't like a college classroom with a professor up front lecturing.  Rather, think of a group of men (and a woman or two) gathered in a shady colonnade in the market place discussing and debating the latest ideas on wisdom and the ideal life.  The different schools of philosophy didn't agree on this, and so of course there were divisions between them.  Which one was the wisest?  Which one made the strongest, most noble case?  It was important to the Greeks.    Even the lower classes looked up with envy and admiration to the philosophers.

Before they were saved, the Corinthians might have said, "I admire the Stoics"; or, "I favor the Epicureans"; or "I follow Pythagoras."  But now, listen to them: "I follow Paul!" and "I follow Apollos!"  They were treating the Good News of Jesus Christ like just another worldly philosophy and seeing the apostles as leaders of different, opposing schools.  They were quarrelling about who was the wisest, the strongest, the best!

We don't have that exact problem in our day.  But sadly, we do have Christian leaders who will take their stand on some secondary point of doctrine, like social justice or worship styles or women in ministry, and insinuate that those who don't feel the way they do on it probably aren't saved.  We have everyday ordinary people-- maybe ourselves, God help us!-- breaking up into factions of one, each picking and choosing what bits of Scripture we'll emphasize and worshipping a Jesus of our own making.  As we can tell from verse 17, this partisan spirit threatens to empty the cross of Christ of its power.

Why is that?  Because, as we read in 1:18, "[T]he message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing but to us who are being saved it is the power of God."

Again, is Paul getting ready to tell us that weakness and foolishness is the real, true way to triumph in this earthly life?  Not at all!  Rather, he's telling us that what God has done for us in Christ has nothing to do with the world or its strength or wisdom at all!  He quotes from Isaiah 29:

"I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; 
the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate."

The wise ones of the Jews said the way to salvation-- that is, the way to power and glory with God-- was by making an effort and perfectly keeping the Law of Moses.  The wise Gentiles, especially the Greeks,  said it was through philosophy and enlightenment.  But God confounds them all with the fact of the cross, with a stripped and beaten Man hanging in agony on a shameful instrument of execution.  How foolish that seems to the unbelieving world?  Who could ever believe that one Man's death as a low, despised criminal could be the one and only way to divine fulfillment, happiness, and peace?  Through its wisdom the world could never know it.  If we thought about it ourselves for a thousand years we could never imagine it.  Even today, we have people in the church, in our denomination, who say the Cross of Christ is foolishness and we should forget all about it if we want to bring in the kingdom of God.  If you read news articles online or watch YouTube videos, you'll see how many people make fun of the idea that salvation from sin comes only through Christ and Him crucified.  The idea that we need to be saved in the first place makes them laugh even more.  Not only is the cross not obvious, it goes against everything the world knows is true.

But, as Paul says in 1:25, "[T]he foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength."  By the weakness and foolishness of the preaching of the gospel of Christ dead and risen again for our sins, God the Holy Spirit brings into our lives eternal wisdom and never-ending strength that we could never have imagined before He came and transforms our hearts and minds.

But how can we know this is true? Well, Paul says to the Corinthians, look what has happened to you:

Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth.  But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.  He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things--and the things that are not--to nullify the things that are . . .

Does Paul want them to start feeling proud of their lowliness?  Does he want them to compete for the title of Most Humble the way they've been competing over whose party is the greatest?  Certainly not!  Besides, the slaves and laborers of the Corinthian church knew there was nothing grand or glorious about their lot in life.  It was a dead-end, miserable existence.  Rather, if they should ever doubt the greatness of the cross, he wants them to think like this: "Hey, you know, that's right.  I'm only a slave.  I could never go near those groups of philosophers in the marketplace, except maybe to wash their feet.  I could never learn the path to enlightenment.  But here I am and I know the truth of Jesus Christ, the Lord of the universe!  To me, a mere slave, the eternal Creator has given the gift of speaking in tongues!  My fellow-slaves and I can prophesy in His name!  We can heal people and cast out demons!  We can do all these amazing things the greatest philosophers never dreamed of doing, and it's all because of what Jesus Christ did for me when He died on that cross over outside Jerusalem."  If God can transform our lives like that by the cross, don't you think He could cause the cross to become the means of transformation in the first place?  Or to put it the other way around, since God was able by the out-of-this-world foolishness of the cross to raise up His church in power and wisdom, can't we see how able He is to transform and glorify you and me?

Why did God do it this way?  Why go so opposite to what the world desires and expects?  The answer is in verse 29.  God wants to make sure that no one on earth can boast before Him.  He wants to make sure that none of us can say, "Here I am, Lord, standing in blessedness before Your throne,  because I made the effort and earned it!" or "Sure, that was all my idea, how to get myself saved."  No, Christ and Christ crucified alone is our wisdom from God, our righteousness, our holiness, and our redemption.  If we're going to talk big about anyone's greatness, let us magnify the amazing greatness of the Lord.

It was to forestall any human boasting that, when Paul came to preach the gospel in Corinth, he made every effort not to sound like one of their hero philosophers.  He didn't claim to have special, hidden, higher wisdom and he didn't use the eloquent rhetorical devices the great lecturers would use.  Paul knew the Corinthians' yen for human strength and wisdom, and he wanted to distinguish the gospel from all that, so the transforming power would be that of the Holy Spirit alone.  So, he says, "I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified . . . so that your faith might not rest on man's wisdom, but on God's power."

"I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified."  That is the message of the gospel.  That is the message of all the Scriptures.  Of course there are other things we need to know about God's dealing with us.  We need to know about God's righteousness and our sin.  We need to understand our need for a Savior.  We need to learn how to live our lives in thankful service to the Lord who has saved us.  We need to know about His return and how His righteousness and justice will prevail over all creation.  But the central thing is and must remain the cross, that foolish, weak, and shameful thing Jesus Christ submitted to one day outside Jerusalem.

Before all else, we need to realize how through it He has given us God's nobility, wisdom, and strength.   Whatever you do, especially whatever you as a church, be it the most routine meeting or fellowship dinner, do not ignore the cross, or depart from it, or forget its power.  For if you do, you'll wander blind in your human weakness and you're bound to lose.  If the preaching you hear from this pulpit gives you the idea that the Christian life is something you live by your own wisdom or strength of character, it is leading you to failure.  If any so-called Christian author would lead you away from the cross by reducing Christ's death to a mere good example, reject his or her false wisdom and return to the wisdom of God recorded in Holy Scripture.  Keep your eyes focussed on Him who in foolishness and weakness died for you.  He is Christ, for you the wisdom of God and the power of God.  And when it comes to a contest between the strength of man and the weakness of God, the weakness of God always wins.

"But They Laughed at Him"

Texts:    1 Corinthians 1:18-25; Mark 5:21-43

        PEOPLE LAUGH AT GOD THESE days. How absurd that anyone should believe in a Deity we've probably "just made up in our own heads."  We reply that our God could be seen and heard and felt when He lived on earth as the Man Jesus Christ, but the unbelieving world thinks that's a terrific joke.  How could a man be God in human flesh?!  How could one Man's death deal with the problem of our sins?!  Most hilarious of all, where do we Christians get off saying that people have any sin problem in the first place?  People laugh at Jesus, and they laugh at us.

    Maybe if we could go back in time and walk with Jesus in Roman-occupied Israel, we'd find that nobody laughed at God like that.  Everyone would respect Jesus and take Him seriously.  After all, Jesus was the Messiah, the Holy One of God.  And as His disciples, people would respect us take us seriously, too.  No one would dare to laugh, or say that Jesus-- or we ourselves-- was a fool.

    But we know that's not true.   We know it from our Scripture readings this morning.  Just as now, people in the 1st century had no trouble laughing at Jesus and laughing at Christians.  Why?  Because from this fallen world's point of view, Jesus seemed to go about His work in a very foolish way.  He didn't do things the way that was prescribed or expected.  Not even the religious people approved of what He did and why He did it.  Jesus deliberately went around turning things upside down.

    Now, not always.  In our reading from St. Mark's gospel, we see Jesus surrounded by a large crowd.  That's the way it was supposed to be--the famous rabbi, with the crowds hanging onto His every word.  And suddenly through the throng comes the respected Jairus, a ruler of the local synagogue, beseeching Jesus' help.  The man's little daughter is dying-- please, Rabbi, come and heal her.  Ah, yes, the high and respected ones look up to Jesus.  That's right.  And Jesus goes with the man to heal his daughter.  That's the way it's supposed to be, too.  And the pressing crowds enthusiastically come along.

    But what's this?  Suddenly Jesus stops dead, looks around, and asks, "Who touched my clothes?"  Even His disciples think this is an odd thing for Him to say.  Good grief, Lord, the people are all crowding against You!  Why ask who in particular touched Your clothes?  Jesus' modern detractors would say this proves He wasn't really God, because God knows everything, so Jesus should have known who had touched Him. They fail to comprehend what God gave up to become a Man, and so they laugh.

    But that day in the crowd by the Sea of Galilee, nobody was laughing.  They waited, and out of the crowd crept a woman who fell at Jesus' feet.  You can imagine the whispers that would have flown from ear to ear.  "Heavens!  Isn't that Hannah bat Itzak?  Doesn't she have some sort of bleeding trouble?"  "How dare she appear in public?"  "How dare she touch the Rabbi, even His clothes!"  Then, "Blood!  Blood!  Unclean blood!"  Nobody's pressing around Jesus anymore.  They've all drawn themselves and their garments back, lest they be rendered ceremonially unclean, just like this afflicted woman.

    And under the Old Covenant law they were right.  Back then our worthiness to approach God in worship depended upon our following certain rules of ritual cleanliness.  Why isn't Jesus following the Law and avoiding this woman?  Doesn't He know her history?  And even if He didn't before, He does now, because she tells Him of her twelve years of bleeding and suffering and isolation.  Does He draw back in horror?  No!  Jesus looks on her with compassion and says, "Daughter, your faith has healed you.  Go in peace and be freed from your suffering."  Sorry, Jesus, it doesn't make sense!

    Besides, Jesus, what about poor Jairus and his dying child?  Even while Jesus was still talking to the woman, men from the synagogue ruler's house came and reported that his daughter was dead.  No call for Jesus to come now.  Maybe if He'd ignored that unclean creature He would have been on time, but now, forget it.

    But Jesus won't forget it.  He tells the grieving father, "Don't be afraid; just believe."  What an odd thing to say!  But Jairus doesn't laugh.  He goes with Jesus, along with Peter, James, and John, back to his home where his daughter lies dead.  Already at the door the hired mourners are at work, weeping and wailing in honor of the dead child.  Jesus, really, isn't it too late?

    But our Lord says, "Why all this commotion and wailing?  The child is not dead but asleep."

    But they laughed at Him.  From every reasonable point of view, they had a right to laugh at Him.  You didn't need to be a professional mourner in that day to know what a dead body looked like.  The girl was dead.  Enough with the sick jokes, Rabbi.  You make us laugh.

    But Jesus isn't working from human reason.  He's working from the wisdom of God.  He isn't bound by the limitations of human strength, He's filled with the strength of God.  Jesus isn't controlled by the powers of death, He Himself is the everlasting Life of God.  He can confound all human expectations.  Taking the child by the hand, He commands, "Talitha, koum!" or, in English, "Little girl, I say to you, get up!"  And this twelve-year-old child gets up, walks around fully alive, and ready for something to eat.

    What?  Who is this who by the speaking of His word can restore life in what was dead?

    It is Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Son of Man.  He is the Savior of Israel and hope of the nations, great David's greater Son.  He came in fulfillment of all the ancient prophecies, but even those who claimed to be waiting for Him didn't recognize Him when He came and laughed at Him as a fool.

    In Jesus' day, good religious Jews were expecting God to act to save them, through a human Messiah.  But God chose to come to earth Himself, as the Man Jesus Christ, fully human and fully God.   Can our human minds get around how this can be?  No, but the mind of God can and did make it happen.  And so Jesus lived and served among us, and demonstrated His full humanity by accepting our limitations.  He was willing to be like us, getting hungry, thirsty, and tired.  He accepted that at times His Father would hide some things from Him, such as the identity of the woman who deliberately touched Him in the crowd.  But He was also eternal God, with power over life and death, whose very clothes carried the power to heal those who reached out in faith.

    But then Jesus was hung on a cross and killed.  Now where was the glorious divine kingdom He was supposed to bring?  The Romans mocked and the Jewish authorities scoffed.  They laughed at Him as He hung there.  Where were all His godlike pretensions now?

    But we know what happened on the third day.  God the Father vindicated His Son by raising Him from the dead.  God had the last laugh.  What a reversal!  See all the wisdom and disdain of the world turned upside down!

    But amazing as the resurrection is, as much as it upsets everything we assume about the way things are supposed to be, the cross of Christ challenges our worldly assumptions even more.  For as St. Paul says in his first letter to the Corinthians, to those who are perishing-- that is, to all who do not believe in Jesus Christ-- the message of the cross is foolishness.  For what was a Roman cross but a mark of defeat, death, and shame?  To be hung on a cross meant disgrace and weakness, the end of everything you stood for and the end of you.  But God in Christ took that shameful instrument and made it the only sign of the world's hope, glory, and life.  The only sign, I say, because God in His wisdom and power has ordained that only through the cross of Christ can anyone anywhere gain access to Him and enjoy life everlasting.

    The unbelieving world laughs at this.  It laughed in Paul's day and it laughs in ours.  Everybody knows you're in charge of your own salvation, say those who are perishing.   First century Greeks insisted that intellectual enlightenment was the way to union with God.  The Jews of that day were waiting for Jesus to do a miraculous sign that would come up to their standards.  Make all the Romans suddenly drop dead in the streets, perhaps.  And in our time, it's common wisdom that if there is a God you please Him by obeying the rules and making sure your good deeds outweigh your bad!  You're laughed at if you say otherwise.

    But God our Father steadfastly points all mankind to Christ and Him crucified.  All the derision, all the disdain of the world cannot change the eternal fact that it's only through the broken body and blood of Christ that anyone at all can be saved.  Just as Jesus took the corpse of Jairus' daughter by the hand and called her spirit back into her, so the Holy Spirit of Christ entered into us while we were dead in trespasses and sins.  He raised us up in God's strength and enlightens our minds with God's wisdom.

    And so, brothers and sisters, the world may laugh at Jesus and it may laugh at you, but let the cross of Christ be your unchanging message and your eternal hope.  On this good news we take our stand unshaken, even when so much that is good is being torn down and denigrated, even when laughter at the crucified Christ comes from the heart of the church.

    But what if those who laugh and scorn are those we love?  What if our friends and family call us fools and worse for trusting a dead and risen God?  We do them no favors by compromising God's truth to make them feel better about their worldly wisdom.  Stand firm in Christ; love them, pray for them, be always ready to give a reason for the divine hope that is in you.  Remember, there was a time when you, too, couldn't believe that Christ's death was enough to save you, maybe a time when you didn't think you needed to be saved.  The Holy Spirit made you wise with the wisdom of God; He can raise and enlighten and enliven those you care for, too.

    Jesus Christ came to earth as God in human flesh, to die and rise again that we might be raised by the power of God.  The Supper here spread confirms this reality to and in us.  Come to our Lord's Table and eat and drink unto eternal life.  And laugh, brothers and sisters, laugh, no longer in derision, but in holy, exalted, and overflowing joy.  Amen.

His Father's House and Business

Texts: Isaiah 11:1-9; Luke 2:40-52

IMAGINE FOR AWHILE THAT you're Mary of Nazareth. One day the angel Gabriel encounters you with the news that you, yes, you are going to bear the Messiah, the Son of David, the Son of God. You spend six months with your cousin Elizabeth, who is miraculously pregnant in her old age. Your husband-to-be Joseph is told in a dream that the Baby you're carrying was conceived by the Holy Spirit. Then the Baby is born, and before you have a chance to shake your head over the less-than-ideal circumstances, a band of shepherds appears and tells you a whole host of angels had told them to come and find your little Jesus, because He is the Saviour of the world. Forty days later, you go to the Temple to dedicate Jesus in obedience to the law, and not one, but two prophets come up and announce that your Infant is Israel's promised Redeemer. Then you return to Bethlehem for awhile, and one day, magnificent Magi appear from miles to the east, bow down and worship your Child, and give Him lavish gifts.

I think you'd be convinced that your Child Jesus was unique among children, and not just the way all mothers think their children are unique. You'd understand pretty thoroughly that He had a special relationship with God and that God had given Him a particular mission and purpose in this world. Even when you have to flee to Egypt because King Herod is after Jesus to kill Him, that'd just go to prove that your Son has a prodigious role to play in the history of nations and men.

But eventually you and Joseph return from Egypt and resettle in Nazareth. You get back to your everyday lives. And the other babies start coming: James, then Joses, then Judas and Simon. And two or three sisters for Jesus, too. You don't have time these days to ponder how divinely special your Firstborn is or marvel over His relationship to the Lord Most High. In fact, you get to taking for granted what an obedient, trustworthy, helpful kid He is. "Never a bit of trouble out of Jesus," you say to the neighbors, when you think about it at all. "I wish all the children were like Him." But it's been a long time since you've considered why there's no way they could be. Jesus is just the good kid every mother thinks she has.

Meanwhile, every spring you leave all the kids with their grandparents and you and Joseph go up to Jerusalem for the Passover festival. As a woman, you aren't legally obligated to go, but Joseph as a Jewish adult male is. And this year, Jesus has reached His twelfth year and become a bar mitzvah-- a son of the covenant. He's now a man under the Jewish Law, and He comes with you to celebrate the Feast, too. You travel in a great cavalcade of friends and relatives from Nazareth and the surrounding villages, singing the Psalms of Ascents and praising God. At last, you and your husband and your Firstborn stand in the crowd in the Temple courts as the Passover lamb is sacrificed, and you're filled with awe at how God saved His people from slavery in Egypt so long ago.

Do you stay for all for the Passover and for all seven days of the Feast of Unleavened Bread? Probably not. Jerusalem is expensive, and work is waiting back home.

So you, Mary, leave the house where you've lodged and start out ahead with the other women and the little children. It's a chance to catch up on all the news, and you're sure Jesus is safe with His father Joseph. They'll be with the men, who bring up the rear.

But that night you make camp, and rendezvous with your husband. You say, "Joseph, where's Jesus? I thought He was with you."

Joseph says, "I thought He was with you!"

You ask friend after friend, relatives after relative, if they've seen Him. No one has. You begin to get worried, and having to spend the night not knowing makes it worse. Jesus has never caused a problem like this! Where can He be?

At first light, you and Joseph head back south to Jerusalem, seeking and inquiring among all the pilgrims who're heading back north. "Have you seen Jesus? Have you seen our Son?"

Your anxiety grows. You reach the capital. Could Jesus be seeing the sights? Maybe He wanted to see the Roman soldiers drill at the Fortress Antonia. Could He have been drawn away by the excitement of the marketplace? In yourself you cry, "Oh, Jesus, Jesus, how could You of all my children do such a thing to me! Where are you? My heart is about to break!"

Finally, the two of you exhaust all the places where you think a smart, curious twelve-year-old boy is likely to be. Then one of you says, "Where haven't we looked yet?"

"We've looked everywhere!"

"What about the Temple?"

Together you hurry up the hill to Mount Zion. But this time you aren't singing psalms, your words are a jumble of panic and hope. You enter the Temple courts, and there on the terrace you see the gathering where members of the Sanhedrin are teaching during these last days of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. The listeners seem very excited. There is a rumble of sage old voices, and then, right out of the midst of those venerable scholars, you hear an adolescent voice raising a question. A familiar voice. The voice of your Son Jesus.

Jesus! You and Joseph simply do not care who those teachers of the law are, Gamaliel or Hillel or Joseph of Arimathea or the high priest Annas himself. You rush right in and there, sitting respectfully among them, is your Son Jesus. All around, you hear the learned men murmuring, "Amazing child! Remarkable young man! Such wisdom, such understanding! Such insightful answers to all the questions put to him! Would scarcely believe it if I weren't hearing it myself. Amazing!"

But that doesn't make you feel any better. You are overcome with astonishment at where your Boy is and what He's done. You look at Him and exclaim, "Son, why have you treated us like this? Look, so anxiously your father and I have been searching for you!"

And that firstborn Son of yours, that Child who never caused you a bit of trouble in His life, replies simply and very respectfully, "Why were you searching for Me? Didn't you know that I must be in my Father's house?" But it's been a long, long time since the angels and the wise men, and neither you nor Joseph can make head or tail of what Jesus could possibly mean. But He comes along with you obediently, and after this He is again the obedient, dependable, willing Son He always was-- if He had ever been anything else. And you, Mary, store up this incident in your heart, trying to work out what it means. It's only years later, after your Son has died and risen again, that you fully understand why you should have sought Him first in the Temple, His Father's house, and why He was so careful-- and so right-- to remind you and Joseph who His true Father really was.

"Why were you searching for Me? Didn't you know that I must be in my Father's house?" These are the first words of our Savior that we find recorded in Scripture, and we must consider them spoken in wonder and even disappointment. You do not search, either anxiously or not, for something that is in exactly the right place. You go directly to that place and get it. After twelve years Mary and Joseph should have known that Jesus' place and business was in the house of God. And as much as He was their son in human reckoning, even more He was and is the Son of His Father in heaven. It wasn't Jesus' purpose on this earth that He should live out His life as Jesus bar Joseph, the good and godly carpenter of Nazareth, building houses and mending broken tables and chairs. No, He came to earth to be the Jesus the Christ, to shed His blood to build up the house of His Church and to make sin-destroyed lives whole and new.

If Mary and Joseph could forget Who Jesus was and what He came for, how much more the rest of humanity down through history! You've heard what is made of Him, by unbelievers and by those who claim to be Christians alike. They say, "Jesus is primarily a great moral Teacher." Or, "He died to show us how much God loves us and how we should love one another." Or, "He came to be our Good Example for how we should live."

Friends, these ideas about Jesus seem really attractive and possible. But all of them make Him out to be the same thing Moses and the prophets were. They're about what we have to do to make ourselves acceptable to God, about Jesus somehow helping us keep the Old Testament Law, which is summed up in love to God and our neighbor. We didn't need the death of the incarnate Son of God to teach us that! We've known about morality and the love of God and right living for millennia! A purely human prophet would have done to remind us of all that.

But the Man Jesus was and is no less than the divine Son of God, come in human flesh to save us sinners and reconcile us to God. From His earliest youth He knew who His true Father was, and from His earliest youth He had a hunger and thirst for the word and counsel of God. Heeding God's word and counsel would eventually take Him to the Cross to die for your sins and mine, for that was the predestined goal of the Christ who was to come. Let us never get so used to Jesus that we make Him mundane and comfortable and merely human. To take Him for granted like that is to miss the new life He won for us in His blood, and all the blessings He came to give.

The scholars and teachers those three days at the Temple could well be amazed at Jesus' answers and understanding. If they'd only known it, He was giving the first proofs that He was the Messiah promised by the prophets of old. As Isaiah says,

The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him—

the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,

the Spirit of counsel and of power,

the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD—

and he will delight in the fear of the LORD.

Among the teachers we see the Boy Jesus overflowing with wisdom and understanding; and in His answer to His earthly parents we see how above all He delighted in the fear of the Lord. Later on, the writer to the Hebrews would say that Jesus, "for the joy set before Him, endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." From His earliest awareness He knew who His true Father was, and when the time was right, Jesus grew to understand that He had come to seek and save the lost, and to give up His life as a ransom for many. Jesus' focus on God's will for Him was total, even from His boyhood.

It is God's will for us that we be found in Christ, washed in His blood, clothed in His righteousness, enjoying His peace, focussing on His will, and delighting in the fear of the Lord. As His redeemed people, we now are able to follow Jesus' example as we choose our priorities in life and decide whom we will serve. When we know-- "know," mind you, not merely "feel"-- that any earthly authority is exalting itself above the revealed will of God as recorded in the Scriptures, we must obey God rather than man. And if our love for any human being-- parent, child, sibling, or spouse-- becomes an idol that takes the place of our love for God, that human idol must be dethroned, as much for that person's sake as for our own. God and His will for our lives must come first, as for Jesus they came first.

Jesus' place and business were in His Father's house. In Him, ultimately, our place and business are there, too. Wherever you go, whatever you do, study to be found in Him, living joyfully as a child of His heavenly kingdom. You belong in the salvation, love, and peace of the God and Father of your Lord Jesus Christ. May anyone who seeks your heart always find you with Him there, filled with His Spirit, expressing His wisdom, walking in His counsel, and delighting in the fear of the Lord. Not through your own works or virtue or strength, but through the finished work, the divine virtue, and the inexpressible power of our crucified and risen Lord Jesus, to whom be all honor and glory, now and forever. Amen.

Therefore, in View of God's Mercy

Text: Romans 11:33 - 12:8

A FEW YEARS AGO SHORTLY before Thanksgiving I received a donation request from a famous secular charity. Over and over it said that November was the time of year to "give thanks"-- or maybe it was, "be thankful"; I don’t precisely remember which--and therefore I should "give thanks" by giving a healthy amount to their cause.

It was and is a worthy cause, I’m not disputing that. But it struck me how the writer kept talking about us "giving thanks," but seemed to turn himself inside so as not to imply there was anyone or any Being we should give thanks to. It didn’t even seem important that the potential giver should be able to think of anything specific that he or she was thankful for. Thankfulness seemed to be an emotion or a state of mind unconnected with anything or anybody in particular, but seeing as how everyone was in America was supposed to feel that way in November, it would be really, really nice if we’d "give thanks" by being thankful with our money and write a check to this charity.

That may be enough for the worthy causes of this world, tapping into an emotion of thankfulness so we’re thankful with our cash or our volunteer service or whatever. But when it comes to the One who alone is worthy of honor, glory, worship, thanks, and praise, when it comes to Almighty God, it’s not enough simply to be thankful with, we have to be thankful for, and thankful to.

In other words, the Thank Offering we receive today is not something that stands by itself, a project that the women of the church do because it’s a good idea and a helpful thing to do. No, it is a joyful response to our Lord and God, for who He is and what He has done for us. It should be offered in view of His mercy.

St. Paul leads us in praise starting in verse 33 of the eleventh chapter of his letter to the Romans. He says, "Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!" We can never reach the bottom of what God has to give and what He knows and what He does with His knowledge. There is no way we can figure out what God does and why He does it. We cannot poke, prod, weigh, measure, analyze or comprehend the Triune God and His ways. We can only fall at His feet and give Him the thanks and praise He deserves.

This is true of everything God is and everything He does. But it’s especially true of the amazing salvation He accomplished for us in Jesus Christ. This doxology is the thanks and praise called for by the vision of God’s grace that Paul lays out for us in the first eleven chapters of his letter.

In the first three chapters of Romans the Apostle, writing in the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, shows us just how sinful we all are. We are all guilty before God. We’re all lawbreakers, we all deserve the sentence of everlasting death for offending against His holiness.

Wait a minute! Aren’t we pretty nice people? But pretty nice people think and do very wicked things every day of our lives. If we believe God should overlook our sin and not pass judgement upon us, it’s because our sin has blinded us to God’s overwhelming holiness. God could’ve decided to finish the job He started in the days of Noah and wipe humanity from the face of the earth and He’d have every right to.

But the thing is, He didn’t. From the middle of chapter 3 on through chapter 8, the Holy Spirit reveals how the one true and righteous God not only let us, the guilty, live, He also made it possible for us to live forever in blessedness with Him-- by sacrificing His beloved only-begotten Son Jesus Christ in our place. And all we have to do is accept that free gift by faith. And that isn’t a work of our own, for even the faith to accept His grace is another free gift from Almighty God.

Chapter 9 up to verse 33 in chapter 11 is all about God’s mercy in opening up this wonderful salvation to us Gentiles. He didn’t have to. He could’ve restricted it to His chosen people, the Jews. Instead, He has grafted us together with faithful Israel in one living tree, rooted in Christ and bearing fruit for the glory of God!

This mercy deserves endless thanks and praise! Jesus Christ our Savior and God made all this possible by the propitiation He won for us in His blood. He voluntarily took the punishment we deserved, He makes us adopted daughters and sons of God, and now shares with us the inheritance that by all rights belonged to Him alone. As Charles Wesley wrote in his hymn "And Can It Be?":

He left his Father’s throne above,
So free, so infinite His grace.
Emptied Himself of all but love,
And bled for Adam’s helpless race.
’Tis mercy all, immense and free,
For, O my God, it found out me!

How unsearchable are the judgements of God! How impossible it is for us mere humans to trace out His paths! It doesn’t make a bit of logical sense that our God would do what He did for us, but He did it.

And He did it without consulting you or me and it’s a good thing for us He did not. As Paul says, "Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been His counselor?" Some people think they could’ve given God better advice about how to be reconciled with humanity. They say they can do without Christ on the bloody cross. They try a hundred other ways to get into God’s favor; they say No Thanks to the free gift God gave humankind on Calvary and they try to earn their way to God on their own. But we who have been saved by the blood of that cross, we don’t understand it, either, but that only fills us with more admiration, thankfulness, and praise.

But is our thanksgiving designed to try to pay God back? Is that our obligation, to try to reciprocate His great and immeasurable gift to us? No, God is so great and glorious and mighty; what Jesus did for us is so rich and powerful, trying to even things up with God with our thanks would be incredibly foolish and futile and even insulting. We know that. For as Paul says in verse 35, "Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?"

No one has ever given anything to God, to put the almighty Lord of the universe in his or her debt. No one could ever counsel God on how and where and when and how He should do things.

How could we? For everything comes from Him, including us, everything comes through Him, and everything goes to praise Him. That is the where and how and why of everything that is made. All glory belongs to God forever. God is the reason we have everything to be thankful for, and He is the One we are thankful to. And so, He gives us the privilege and opportunity to be thankful with.

So we come to verse 1 of chapter 12: "Therefore, I urge you, brothers [and sisters] in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God-- this is your spiritual [or reasonable] act of worship." And in verse 2, "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." With our bodies and minds God enables us to give thanks to Him for His awe-inspiring mercy, wherein the eternal and innocent Son of God died to make us who were God’s enemies into His friends and children.

This phrase, "in view of God’s mercy, . . . offer" is so important! A lot of people say they don’t need to bother with theology and doctrine, they’re too busy loving Christ and serving Him. But friends, we can’t love and serve Christ if we don’t know Who He is and what He’s done for us! When we understand the teaching about how Jesus Christ died on a cross for our sins and rose again for our life, that’s what fills us with the gratitude and love that drives us to give and to serve! Otherwise, we’re loving and serving a Christ we’ve made up in our own heads! It is in view of the mercy of God in sending His Son into this world to die in our place, that we offer our bodies and minds in thankfulness to Him! God in His mercy has incorporated us into the body of His Son, in His mercy He by His Holy Spirit is renewing our minds more and more to be like the mind of Christ, and equally due to His mercy we can show our thanks with all He has given us.

A minute ago I said something about serving Christ. Strictly speaking, that is just a figure of speech. Do you realize that neither you nor I or any human being can directly serve God? Again as Paul says, "Who has ever given to God, that God should repay Him?" Rather, we serve God by serving our neighbor, particularly our brothers and sisters in the Church. And so we take up offerings like today’s, to serve our neighbor through ministries of education, health, nutrition, job-training, evangelism, and more. We are thankful with our money for the sake of others, because God in His riches and wisdom and knowledge has been so overwhelmingly generous to us.

But we see here in our verses from Romans 12 how our thankful response transcends mere money. A check or a few volunteer hours may be enough for a secular charity; our God expects us to show our gratitude with our very lives. God has given everyone of us gifts to be thankful with for the good of the Church and the world. God’s spiritual gifts are given not to bring glory to us who have them, but to be a means for us to show our gratitude for God’s mercy in Christ towards us.

It’s striking how Paul prefaces his exhortation about the gifts; he says: "For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgement, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you." This phrase, "measure of faith" . . . since the passage concerns the distribution of gifts for service, could this imply that God gives different amounts of trust in Him to different people, such that if, say, you find that your faith is small, your thankfulness through service can be small, too? No, God does not leave us that excuse for practical ingratitude. Rather, "the measure of faith" God gives us is the yardstick of the one faith of the Church, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was raised on the third day and appeared to many faithful witness, and that He will return on the Last Day to judge the living and the dead. Seeing the mercy of God displayed in the humility and victory of Christ, how can we think of boasting in our spiritual gifts, as if we had made them or earned them or as if we had them for our benefit and not for the sake of others? When we show our thankfulness through word or act or material possessions, we’re using only what God has given us to be thankful with.

But He has given us wonderful gifts of grace to be thankful with, and He has given us His marvellous mercy in Christ Jesus to be thankful for and Himself to be thankful to. It doesn’t really take a spiritual gifts survey to find out what your gift is: If there is something that gives you joy in the Lord as you do it, if it builds up the church and you simply must do or burst, where you sense the presence of the Holy Spirit guiding and aiding you as you serve, where you see others as well as yourself overflowing with thanksgiving to God as you engage in that activity or skill, that is a gift of grace you have been given for the sake of Christ’s one body, the Church.

It is good for us to be thankful with our money, as with the offering today. It is better still to be thankful with our lives, our bodies offered as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God, and our minds transformed and renewed to agree more and more with the mind of Jesus Christ. In this way God gives us more and more to be thankful to Him for, as we test and approve His good, pleasing, and perfect will, and so He gives us more and more to be thankful with. For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things: To the one Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, to Him be the glory forever! Amen.

Seeing Who's There

Texts: Proverbs 8:1-5, 22-36; John 14:8-21

HAVE YOU EVER NOTICED HOW HARD it is to see things that are really close to you?

Like last month when I went to the dentist for some fillings. I couldn't see the Novocaine needle. I couldn't see the drill. I couldn't see the little mould for the filling being fitted on my teeth. Same with the filling goop and the tool the dentist used to put it in. Couldn't see any of it.

No, it wasn't because I had my eyes shut. They were wide open, just like my mouth. I couldn't see any of these things, because they were Just Too Close.

You might say, "Good. When I go to the dentist's I don't want to see any of those things, either. In fact, I don't want to hear them or feel them, as well!"

If that's your opinion, I don't blame you. But there are some important things we had better see, but we don't because we're too close to them. Even something as important as God and who He is and what He wants for our lives.

Today is Trinity Sunday. It's the day the Church particularly celebrates the great truth that God has revealed Himself to humanity as God in Three Persons. This God isn't just "our" God or "the God of the Christians"; He's the one and only, true and living God. This Truine God is the Holy One who made heaven and earth and everything in them. He's the God in whom we live and move and have our being. He's the God before whom every knee will someday bow, whether they want to or not. This God calls out to us to open the eyes of our hearts and see Him as He really is.

But a lot of people say that the doctrine of God as Trinity is irrelevant. It's irrelevant, they say, because it's incomprehensible. How can a being be three, and also be one? They say it doesn't make sense, and no one can expect them to believe it. Not just pagans say this, but also people who call themselves Christians. But you go down that road, and you're not only failing to see the God who is actually there, you're also losing out on who you can be in relation to Him.

The doctrine of the Trinity is far from irrelevant; it's the framework for our creation, our redemption, and all our hope for meaning and joy. As our hearts begin to understand it, God enables us to step back and see Who is really there.

In our reading from the Gospel of John, Jesus is gathered with His disciples in the Upper Room. They have finished their last supper together, and the Lord is preparing them for what will happen as He goes to the cross. He comforts them, letting them know that He is the way to God the Father, and that He's going away to make it possible for them to come to the Father as well.

But Philip doesn't want doctrine, he wants experience. What does all this talk about Jesus going away and returning again have to do with knowing the Father? He says, "Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us."

Meaning, "Teacher, show us the all-powerful Divine Being who is Out There Somewhere. Be like Moses who brought the Law down from Sinai a long time ago, like Moses who saw God's back and lived."

We can't blame Philip. We would probably have been just as blind. Jesus answers him, "Don't you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father."

Did you get that? That is doctrine that illuminates experience! An ordinary human being could have said, "I'll point you to God." An ordinary teacher could have said, "I'll give you an example of how God wants you to live." Jesus says, "I am in the Father and the Father is in me." For He isn't just an ordinary human being. He's God in human flesh. He's the Son of God, the second Person of the Trinity, standing right in front of them!

If He isn't God, if the Muslims are right and, quote, "Allah has no son," then what Jesus said about Himself was either totally crazy or totally depraved.

But even our Lord's enemies have to admit that He comes off as the most sane, sensible Man who ever lived. This sane, sensible Man declares that He is in the Father and the Father is in Him. In fact, He is so identified with God that there is really no separation between them.

The disciples had been so close to Jesus, they hadn't seen this. They got so used to marvelling over His miracles, they hadn't really understood what they meant, what they demonstrated about who Jesus was.

But now they must begin to understand and see. So Jesus introduces the disciples to another divine Person who will be given to them by the Father and the Son, the Holy Comforter, the Spirit of truth. He tells them the Spirit already lives in them and will be with them forever. The disciples don't yet realize that they already know the Spirit, but the day is coming when they will. They will see who's there.

But the unbelieving world cannot see the Holy Spirit or know Him. Even if they think they do, they don't understand who He is. They say He's an impersonal force, or an extension of their own human spirits. They don't recognise that the Holy Spirit is true God, working in power in the world. His particular work is to call people to Christ and salvation in His shed blood. By His divine power Christians see and understand exactly who Jesus is and are built up in the loving obedience of faith.

A lot of people-- the author Dan Brown, say-- think the doctrine of the Trinity is something a bunch of theologians made up in the 4th century to grab power or to confuse people. Not at all! Rather, the writers of the New Testament books knew God and what He was like. So did the apostles and teachers of the Church who came after them. These men and women knew that Yahweh was the one and only God, and apart from Him there is no other. But they saw what Jesus did in His miracles and they heard what He preached and taught. They saw Him raised from the dead. And they had to conclude that He was true God, come to earth to live among us. And they received the gift of the Holy Spirit. They felt His power. They understood that to go against the Spirit's leading was to go against God Himself, because the Spirit was and is God.
How could they put all this together? They had to conclude that God was both One and Three. That He was God in Three Persons, God the blessed Trinity.

And they studied the Old Testament with the new, open eyes that the Holy Spirit gave them. And they saw that this truth about the triune nature of God was nothing new. It was there in the old writings all along.

In so many places in the Old Testament we read of the Spirit of God being sent by God to do His will. We read of God Himself promising to come to earth in person to straighten things out and bring in His kingdom of righteousness. And we have passages like today's in Proverbs 8, all about the call of divine Wisdom.

Please don't be distracted by the fact that Solomon has cast Wisdom as a noble lady. The Book of Proverbs is not really a book of human rules to live by, it's a call to live in covenant relationship with the God of Israel. In the first nine chapters Solomon sets the stage by contrasting holy Lady Wisdom with wicked Lady Folly. Holy Wisdom is the way to God and blessedness. Folly-- by which is meant all kinds of sin-- is the way to Hell and damnation.

But here's something interesting. Lady Wisdom is constantly portrayed as a distinctive person, not just as an idealized principle. She asserts that she existed before the dawn of time. She rejoices that she was there working with God when all things were created. She claims that to find her is to find life and favor from the Lord.

Who is this personage? Is she the so-called goddess Sophia or "Woman Wisdom" that the feminists are always going on about?

No. Rather, the Holy Spirit led our ancestors in the faith to understand that this picture of Wisdom in Proverbs is truly a picture of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. In 1 Corinthians we read that He is the Wisdom of God. In Colossians we learn that He is supreme over all creation, and that all things were created by Him and for Him. In the Gospels He cries out to men and women to believe in Him and be saved. And in our John passage, Jesus declares that He is the one way to find life and love in our heavenly Father, the Lord.

Christ our Wisdom calls out to us to hear and understand. He calls us to stop listening to our human wisdom that says the Trinity is irrelevant, and listen to the Wisdom of God instead. Christ our Wisdom teaches us to stop taking Him for granted as a great moral teacher or a good example, but to step back and see Him for who He really is-- God in human flesh, crucified for our sins, and the one and only way to the Father.

The truth about God is right here in front of us. It is close as the Bible on your nightstand, that testifies to Christ and all His works. It is as close as God the Holy Spirit witnessing in your heart that this Word is true. Jesus our crucified Saviour can show us the Father, because He is God. The Holy Spirit can show us the risen Christ, because He is God. Every promise Jesus made to us is faithful and sure, because every last one is the promise of God.

The doctrine of the Trinity helps us step back and see who is really there. And the doctrine of the Trinity helps us step forward again into deeper fellowship with our Lord and God. Other religions tell us to love God but they don't tell us how. Other religions say we should do good, but our best is never good enough.

But our faith in God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit assures us that we can love God because He first loved us. We know because He died for us, to save us from our sins! We can keep His commands because Jesus the Son of God kept God's commands perfectly for us. We're assured of a place at the the Lord's great eternal banquet, we join in the divine everlasting dance that is God, because the Spirit of truth has united us with Christ and brought us into the fellowship of the One, Holy, Blessed, and Undivided Trinity.

Don't fret if you cannot understand how God can be Three in One and One in Three. God and His nature is too big for our human minds to comprehend. But what He does for us and who He is for us, God has given us that to see. Let the Holy Spirit open your eyes and your heart. See and understand that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as He has revealed Himself to be. See that your life and hope in this world and the next depend on God being who He is-- not one god all alone, not three gods working together, but One God in three Persons.

See who is there. With the eyes of faith, look upon your triune Lord, and give Him all worship, adoration, honor, obedience, and love.