What Now?

Texts:  Isaiah 51:9-16; Matthew 2:13-23

THE PRESENTS ARE OPENED, THE DINNER is eaten, the relatives are on their way home.  You may be thinking about taking down the Christmas tree-- if you haven't already.  For all intents and purposes, Christmas 2012 has come and gone.  But has it made any difference?  What now?

In our Christmastide Scripture readings, Mary has brought forth her Child, the angels have sung, and the shepherds have come and gone.  Even in our Matthew account, today's reading comes after the visit of the Magi.  They've worshipped the holy Babe and returned to their own country by another route.  Christ is born, and what now?

Even in our own time, we ask what difference does Christmas make?  It's a little over two weeks since the atrocious slaughter of twenty innocent children and six brave teachers and staff at the Sandy Hook School in Newtown, Connecticut, and the emotional wounds are still open and raw.  What difference did Christmas make for them?  What about the dozens of innocent children that are victims of random gang violence in cities like Chicago and Boston and even our own Hill District and Homewood?  Not to mention the depredations of cruel rulers like the president of Syria, killing his own people for his political ends.  Shouldn't the birth of the Son of God have changed all that?  He was the newborn King, wasn't He?  He sits in glory at the right hand of God the Father Almighty right now, doesn't He?  So why do we have to put up with evil any longer?  Why are crimes still committed?  Why aren't vicious people restrained?  The night of the Connecticut massacre, I heard a radio commentator insist that atrocities like that have to make you question God and His goodness.  Why didn't God stop that shooter?  Couldn't He stop him?  Christ is born: shouldn't things be all better and different now?

Questions like these have been asked around this country the past two weeks, and they're asked every time a war, a plague, or a crime wreaks its destruction in this weary world.  But I hope and trust that you, my Christian brothers and sisters, know that despair and disbelief are not the answer.  The Apostle Matthew knew they were not the answer.  In the very passage where he recounts the disasters and woes that followed the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ, he also assures us that our heavenly Father was working out His gracious plan even as the powers of Hell were trying to do their worst.  None of these events caught God unawares, and none of them diminishes God's goodness and glory.  To show this, Matthew accompanies each of them-- the Flight into Egypt, the Slaughter of the Innocents, and the retreat to Galilee-- with a citation from the prophets.  The guilt of King Herod and his sons remains on their own heads, but the King of kings in His providence worked through these events, so the mission of His Son could be fulfilled and mankind could be saved.

Mary and Joseph were forced to take Jesus and flee to Egypt.  What a disastrous end to the beautiful scene of royal adoration!  To help us understand, Matthew cites Hosea 11:1.  It says, "Out of Egypt I called my son."  In Hosea the son is God's people Israel, chosen to inherit all the divine blessings and benefits and to be a light to the Gentiles.  But Hosea and the other prophets tell us that Israel failed at being God's son.  They rebelled against Him and broke His covenant.  God cannot go back on His promise, for He has sworn an unbreakable oath to father Abraham.  But He cannot bless a disobedient people.  What can God do?

He elected His own eternal Son, Jesus Christ, to be born into the world to be the holy Israel that Israel could never be.  That's who this Child is, and Matthew wants us to see that from the start.   In Jesus God recapitulates Israel's history, including the sojourn in Egypt, but this time, Jesus as God's human Son gets it right.  And because Jesus gets it right as the New Israel, we who believe in Him can share in all the blessings of divine sonship, too.   It was necessary for the Son of God to be led into Egypt and be called out from there again, so He could identify wholly with God's covenant people.  Our heavenly Father used the threats and paranoia of King Herod to accomplish His goal, though Herod knew it not.

But what of the Slaughter of the Innocents?  Historically, this was only one more of King Herod's tally of atrocities.  It was said it was safer to be Herod's pig than his son, because as a half-Jew he wouldn't eat pork, but he had no compunction about assassinating his wives and children if he thought they might be plotting against his throne.  So the extermination of maybe seven to twenty Bethlehemite infants and toddlers wouldn't give him a second thought.

But the deaths of these innocents gave their parents and families more than second thoughts.  And St. Matthew wants us to grieve with them, even as we continue in hope.  He quotes Jeremiah 31:15, where the prophet writes,

  A voice is heard in Ramah,
    weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
    and refusing to be comforted,
because they are no more.

Six hundred years before Christ, the Babylonians overran Judah. They slaughtered most of the Jews, and took a bare remnant into captivity in Babylon. Ramah, a town about five miles north of Jerusalem, was where the exiles, including Jeremiah, were assembled for deportation.  Jeremiah in his day used Rachel, Jacob's favorite wife, as a symbol for the entire grieving nation.  All of its dead and deported children were like Joseph and Benjamin, who you'll remember both spent time in captivity in Egypt and were both given up for dead.   Rachel was also identified with Bethlehem, because Jewish tradition said she was buried near there.  Matthew sees the fate of the little boys of Bethlehem and the lamenting of their mothers as a latter-day echo of what happened to the Jewish children during the Babylonian invasion.  But now it is worse.  In Jeremiah's time, the nation was being judged by God for their sin.  But the children of Bethlehem by any human standard were truly innocent, they had done no wrong.

But the passage in Jeremiah goes on to say,

This is what the LORD says: 
"Restrain your voice from weeping 
and your eyes from tears, 
for your work will be rewarded," 
declares the LORD. 
"They will return from the land of the enemy.
So there is hope for your future," 
declares the LORD. 
"Your children will return to their own land."

The innocents of Bethlehem were dead, but they were not removed or exiled from the care of Almighty God.  In Jesus' infancy they died for Him, but in His manhood He gave His life for them and for all whom God has chosen, whether they lived before Him or after, that they might have eternal life in the kingdom of God.

We're naturally appalled at the death of the innocent.  But shall we not be even more outraged at the cruel and unjust death of the only human being who was ever truly and wholly innocent, the sinless Son of God?  Yet He willingly suffered crucifixion for us, the guilty, the rebellious, the condemned, that we might be made innocent in Him.  We question God when young lives are cut off by crime, accident,  and disease, but how much more should we be afraid for those who are heading for eternal death in Hell because they do not know or believe in the Son of God?  Physical death is not the worst that can happen to us, and the souls of the holy innocents of Bethlehem are in the loving hands of God.  And so are the souls of the children of Newtown, Connecticut, and all other innocent victims of human cruelty and injustice.  For God Himself was born on this earth to share our pain.  On His cross He bore all our griefs, even the worst, and His resurrection proves that He is able to bring us through all suffering into the joy and blessing of God.

Jesus shared not only the crises of our lives, He also shared the drudgery and obscurity.  It's hard for us to understand how much the average Judean looked down on people from the north, on Galileans.  Matthew doesn't mention that Mary and Joseph were from Galilee in the first place, because he wants us to understand how God in His wisdom made sure that His Christ would be raised in a place like that.

For if it hadn't been for Herod, Jesus might have grown up in Bethlehem, just a few miles from Jerusalem.  From a human point of view, that could have been the ideal environment for an up-and-coming young rabbi!  Think of all the great teachers He would have had, and how much He could have learned!  Going from the age of the children Herod slaughters, and from the fact that the Magi visit Jesus in a house and not in the stable, we can conclude that the Holy Family remained in Bethlehem for quite awhile after Jesus was born.  Joseph was of the lineage of David, he probably found relatives there once the confusion of the census was over, and as a skilled, industrious man he would logically set up shop there.  But then the Holy Family had to flee.  And even when it was safe to come back to the land of Israel, they didn't dare resettle in Bethlehem because of Archelaus, who apparently was as bad as his father Herod.  So goodbye to being in the center of things near the capital, and hello again to little old remote Nazareth.

About this Matthew says, "So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets: ‘He will be called a Nazarene.'" This saying is harder to trace than the ones from Hosea and Jeremiah.  But it's very possible that he may have in mind a couple of places in Isaiah.  In Isaiah chapter 9 the prophet writes,

Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress. In the past he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future he will honor Galilee of the Gentiles, by the way of the sea, along the Jordan--
  The people walking in darkness 
have seen a great light; 
on those living in the land of the shadow of death 
a light has dawned.

Thus beyond all expectation, the prophet predicts that remote and humbled Galilee of the Gentiles will be where the light of God's Messiah will first have its dawn.  And in Isaiah 53:3 it is written,

He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.

We read in John's gospel that "Nazarene" was a byword for one who was despised.  And so Jesus was underrated, rejected, and persecuted in His lifetime by the religious and secular authorities, and at last even the people called for His crucifixion.  Jesus knew humiliation and scorn so He could become our sympathetic and gentle high priest.  As it says in Hebrews, He has been tempted in every way just as we are-- yet was without sin.  In His humanity Jesus experienced the everyday trials of human existence, so He can identify with us in all our griefs and bring meaning to all our sufferings.

But the question still cries out for an answer: Why do we have to go through suffering in the first place?  Especially why do the innocent suffer?  Couldn't God just stop it?  Couldn't God have stopped Herod, or the shooter in Connecticut, or any of the innumerable human monsters down through history?

We can ask that, but then we'd have to ask why God doesn't stop all evil-- including the evil we do every day.  Why didn't God stop you the time you punched your brother in the face as a kid?  Why didn't He stop you from passing on that cruel gossip against your best friend?  Why didn't He stop me the other day when I screamed at my dog for pulling food off the counter?  Why, oh why, didn't He stop Adam and Eve from eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?  Brothers and sisters, whether we understand it or not, God made this a world where our actions have consequences.  Rarely, our Lord intervenes with a miracle, but most of the time the laws of physics keep on working and causes have their effects, even when the effects are bad.  To stop it all would mean stopping the whole show.  One day our Lord will come in judgment and all transgression will cease, but until then it's inevitable that so much of what goes on in this fallen and broken world will be tragic and full of pain.

But the Son of God has been born into the world to redeem the world.  He came to experience our humanity and carry our griefs.  Jesus is God's beloved Son, the New Israel, who invites us to join Him in eternal sonship towards God the Father.  Jesus is the ultimate Holy Innocent, slain by evil but rising from the tomb in triumph over sin, death, and hell.  Jesus was obscure, despised, and rejected, and see, He sits at the right hand of the Majesty on high, glorified forever more.

All this He did for us, by God's eternal pleasure and good will. Christian friends, what now? What now!  Oh, give God glory, live in faith, rejoice in hope, and serve in love, for Christ was born, Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again.  This is the difference Christmas makes, and nothing will ever be the same.

Persevering Through Faith

Texts:    Psalm 16; Hebrews 10:19-25, 35-39; 11:1-6; 12:1-3

   HERE'S SOMETHING SHOCKING: I didn't watch much of the Olympics.  It's not that I didn't care, it's just that I don't have a working TV since the government switched everything to digital.  But even without being glued to the screen, I was aware of the accomplishments of our U.S. team and the other athletes who competed.  Talk about drive and determination!  Talk about pushing through against all odds and reaching the goal!  Those athletes were perfect illustrations of what it means to persevere.

    "Perseverance."  We don't use that word much in everyday speech, but it's an excellence principle for life.  It means to keep on keeping on.  To never give up.  To maintain confidence and  "just do it," despite all the obstacles in the way.  The entire Letter to the Hebrews is about perseverance, about focussing singlemindedly on one goal and not letting anything get in the way of our achieving it.  This goal is beyond anything earthly or temporal; no, set before us is the glory and joy of the heavenly kingdom of Jesus Christ our Lord, which we will enter fully when He comes again at the last day.  Reaching that goal involves living every day as witnesses to the grace of Jesus Christ, in our behavior, in our decisions, in how we treat one another, in what we say about who Jesus is and His will for the world.  It's like being an Olympic athlete in training to win the gold.  Focus. Dedication.  Perseverance.

    But bad things happen in this life.  We run into opposition when we confess Jesus Christ as the only Lord.  Often it's uncomfortable and inconvenient to live the Christian life God has marked out for us.  It can be damaging, even dangerous.  Does God really expect us to keep standing on His word and following Christ in situations like that?  Is it all up to us to grit our teeth and keep going?  Or has He Himself provided us a way for us to stay the course and persevere?  The Letter to the Hebrews gives the answer to this last question as a resounding Yes.   God has provided a way, and we need to take it, if we want to receive the reward He has promised.

    This letter was originally written for 1st century Jewish Christians who were shaking in their confidence in Christ.  Trouble and persecution were tempting them to give up on Jesus as their Messiah and Lord.  Why not go back to Judaism?  After all, the Jews were protected under Roman  law.  As a Jew you got a special religious exemption: you didn't have to worship Caesar; you were free to practice your religion according to the books of Moses.  Why take on more difficulty?   Wasn't the Old Covenant good enough after all?  Why not decide Jesus was just one more of the prophets, and live in peace?

    The writer spends the first nine and a half chapters demonstrating that the Old Covenant was not good enough; in fact, God had given it only to lead up to the New Covenant in Jesus Christ.  The prophets were not good enough-- they were sent to speak of Him.  Angels were not good enough-- they are Christ's servants and our servants for His sake.  Moses and the Law were not good enough-- Jesus God's Son is the true Builder of God's house.  Keeping the seventh-day Sabbath was not good enough-- Jesus alone is our true Sabbath rest and He's what the Sabbath observance was all about.  The animal sacrifices in the Tabernacle and Temple were not good enough-- the blood of bulls and goats could not permanently cover sins, that was done only by the blood of the sinless Lamb of God shed on the cross.  The whole priesthood in the line of Aaron was not good enough-- it took a unique, eternal High Priest in the order of Melchizedek to offer the one true and perfect sacrifice of atonement, even Jesus Christ our Mediator.  None of these Old Testament types and shadows were sufficient to save the Jews or anybody from their sins.  Only Jesus Christ the righteous one was worthy and able to do what we needed to present us holy and righteous before the face of almighty God.   We really need a Savior, and He's the Savior we need.  That was true for those Hebrew Christians and it's true for us today. 

    Do you believe that?  I hope and pray so, for everything that follows is based on the facts of who this Jesus is and what He has done.

     So in chapter 10, verse 19, our writer draws the logical conclusion.  He begins, "Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus . . . " Every Jew would know what the writer was referring to.  The Most Holy Place, or as the King James Version puts it, the Holy of Holies, was that room in the Tabernacle and later, in the Jerusalem Temple, where the Ark of the Covenant was housed.  The High Priest (and only the High Priest) would enter it only once a year, on the Day of Atonement, to obtain forgiveness for the sins of the people.  But the Most Holy Place spoken of here is not anything on earth, it is the very throne room of God.  And now it's not the blood of an animal that justifies entry, but the blood of Jesus.  And now it's not only the High Priest who is allowed to come into the presence of God, it's all of us whom the blood of Christ has covered.  Formerly, it was a fearsome thing even for the High Priest to enter the Holy of Holies; now we all can have confidence to come before our Lord and God, because Jesus Himself is our great priest over the house of God.  Because of who He is and what He has done, we have every reason to persevere in devotion and service to Him until we taste the wonders of His kingdom. 

    Understand this!  The goal and meaning of human life is blissful fellowship with the God who created us.  Our sin got in the way, but by the blood of Christ we can walk right in to the presence of God and trust that His forgiveness is ours!  Unfortunately we don't have time this morning to explore all the rich Old Covenant imagery the author presents to us.  But see these words he uses.  In verse 22 he urges us because of Christ to draw near to God in full assurance of faith.  In verse 23 he encourages us to hold unswervingly to the hope we profess.  Verse 24 incites us to spur one another on toward love and good deeds.  All these words hammer home the message that we can keep moving on in the Christian life, and we keep moving on because we can trust in Jesus who has saved us.  So don't give up!  Keep on keeping on as the Day of Jesus' return approaches!  Persevere!

    We did not read verses 26-31; they warn us against turning our backs on Christ as if His death meant nothing.  Verses 32-34 reminded the Hebrews how God had enabled them to stand strong in the face of earlier persecution and should remind us that what we have done for His sake once, He will enable us to do again.

    So in light of all this (as we pick up in verse 35), let us not throw away our confidence.   "You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God you will receive what he has promised" (verse 36).

    But let's be clear about this word "confidence."  If we don't watch it, we might think it's some feeling or effort we make in ourselves.  Like telling somebody to keep their chin up.  No.  It's not ourselves or our cheerful attitude we confide in, it's Jesus Christ whose blood enables us to enter the Most Holy Place of the throne room of God.  He's the One we can trust, He's the One in whom and through whom all God's promises to us will be fulfilled.

    And here's some essential encouragement: The time of struggle and trial will not be forever.  The day is coming when Jesus will return as the righteous Judge of the world, and all things will be put right.  Meanwhile (as the writer quotes the prophet Habakkuk in verse 38), God's righteous one-- that's you, who have been cleansed by the blood of Christ-- will live by faith.  By faith we do not shrink back and stop trusting Jesus; for to do so is the deserve destruction.  No, by God's grace we are those who believe-- who keep on believing-- and are saved.

    Faith is the key to our perseverance.  But what is this faith?  Ask people these days, and you'd think it was some kind of force.  Or again, something we ourselves gin up.  But the writer won't let us come away with this false impression.  No, he spends the entirety of chapter 11 giving us illustrations of what faith in God is.  We read only a few of those examples this morning, and what I want us to look at is this: That in every case faith means identifying God as trustworthy and living our lives based on that fact, even when the evidence of His reliability is not immediately before our eyes.

    "Faith," says 11:1, "is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see."  Our hope is in the return of Christ and the joy we will share in Him in His kingdom.  Is this a fantasy we've made up in our heads?  No!  We can be sure of it, because we have good and reliable evidence of the power of Jesus Christ, first and foremost in His resurrection from the dead.  It really happened.  Even though we didn't witness it ourselves, we can still trust in His promise to raise us, because He kept His promise that He Himself would rise from the dead.

    Again (verse 3), by faith we understand and confess that God made the universe by command of His word.  We have confidence in His nature and His power, that He was able to make everything we see and touch and enjoy out of nothing. 

    Then in verse 6, we read "Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him."  That should be obvious, right?  After all, why bother to please a being whom you don't believe to exist?  And why try to please a being who doesn't care about being pleased?

    The odd thing is, there are people who think they can be good without God.  They have some vague idea of what is Just or Right, but they refuse to identify that with Him who is just and righteous.  So in the end they are left to their own human conceptions of what is good.  But there is no true good in this world without it being anchored to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Faith has an object and a goal, and that goal is the triune God.

    And so, after the great account of the Old Testament saints who lived and died trusting in God and His promises, we come to chapter 12.  If we didn't understand before what perseverance means, if we were in any doubt about the object and focus of our faith, the writer makes it clear here.  "Let us fix our eyes on Jesus," he writes in verse 2, "the author and perfecter of our faith."  Jesus is the goal we run towards and He's the One who enables us to run at all.

    Something about verse 1, however: The "great cloud of witnesses" mentioned here.  Are they sitting in the heavenly stands cheering us on as we run the race marked out for us?  No.  The cloud of witnesses are those who, like the saints of chapter 11, lived and died testifying to the greatness and faithfulness of Jesus Christ.  They are the martyrs, if you will, who ran their races before us and won the crown of life that is promised also to us if we persevere.

    And we can persevere, for we run trusting in Jesus Christ and what He has accomplished for us.  Our faith itself is His doing-- He is its author-- He originated it and established it in us.  He is its perfecter-- He will bring it and us to the final goal of eternal life in Him.

    And He'll do this is in spite of the difficulties and disasters of this life.  For see what Jesus Himself endured: The cross, with its pain, shame, and degradation.  But He kept His eyes on the goal of pleasing God and the joy that would bring.  He is now enthroned as Victor in the great race.  Sure, we will have opposition from sinful men.  What do we expect, when we consider how they treated our Lord?  So let's not grow weary or lose heart.

    When I was a kid in elementary school, I'd walk home through the grounds of a nearby private girls' high school.  One day I picked up a strip of paper, maybe 3" x 12", an art class calligraphy exercise it was, and on it was lettered the motto, "Never lose sight of your goal, and it won't lose sight of you."  To a 5th grader this seemed very profound, and I took it home and taped it to my bedroom wall.  It stayed there for years, till I got to thinking, "Wait a minute, how can a goal keep sight of me or not, either way?"  After all, a goal is only a concept, not a person.

    But when it comes to persevering in the Christian life, this motto is very true.  For our goal is a Person.  Our goal, our object, the course we run and the One who keeps us running our course, are all Jesus Christ our living and victorious Lord.  We can trust in Him, all our confidence and assurance are in Him, and through faith in Him, we will persevere.

Last Things First

Texts:    Isaiah 64:1-9;  Corinthians 1:3-9; Mark 13:24-37

    WHAT IS OUR HOPE as Christians?  What is the goal and object of our faith?

    To hear some people talk, you'd think it was to make us nicer, more fulfilled individuals, with better marriages, families, and careers in this life.  And with higher self-esteem, too.  In such an understanding of Christianity, the Baby in the manger at Bethlehem is a nice encouragement, but the Son of Man coming again to judge all humanity is not to be thought of at all.  After all, in this world we're taught to put first things first.  But the Apostle Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians, isn't interested in the teaching of this world.  After he greets the saints, about the first subject he mentions is the second coming of their Lord and ours, Jesus Christ.  Hear what he says in verses 7 and 8:

    . . . [Y]ou do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The church in Corinth was eagerly waiting for Jesus Christ to be revealed.  And so they stood in the tradition of the true people of God, for this is the object of our Christian faith: that the great day of the Lord will surely come, when Christ will return as King, the heavens and the earth will be made new, and we will enjoy the kingdom of God in all its perfection.  These things-- The end of the age, the second coming of Christ, the Judgement, and so on-- are known as the Last Things.  And St. Mark, St. Paul, St. Peter, St. John, and all the New Testament writers follow their Master Jesus in urging us Christians to keep Last Things first.

        But why? 

    Because when we keep our focus on the second coming of Christ, we keep our eyes on God's goal for all creation, and when we keep our eyes on God's goal for all creation, we maintain and strengthen our hope in Christ, even in the midst of the troubles and worries of this world.

    And we need hope in this world.  Not the hope that consists in wishful thinking, but the firm and sure hope that depends upon a promise made by Someone we can trust now and into all eternity.  In our Gospel reading from St. Mark, our Lord Jesus declares that the time will come when

    . . . men will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory.  And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens.

Jesus calls Himself the Son of Man in this discourse.  And thus the disciples know that He is the coming King the prophet Daniel saw in his vision of the Last Things in Daniel 7.  But more than that, the title "Son of Man" tells us that it will be His own human Self, Immanuel, the Child born of Mary who rose from the tomb, who will sit on the throne of God.  And He is God, for the angels are His, and it is His to command them to "gather his elect" from wherever they may be.  That's us, who by the grace of God, have been called by the Holy Spirit into faith in our crucified and risen Savior, all of us in every time and place who have been washed clean by His blood.

    But not all of humanity shares this hope.  Not everyone knows that their eternal happiness depends on their keeping Last Things first. 

    Some don't believe there will be any Last Things at all.  I heard an interview the other night with a man they called an expert on the subject of the Apocalypse.  He admitted that cultures all over the world for the past three thousand years have had prophecies and stories that someday the world as we know it will be destroyed and then made new.  But, he said, all that was false; it was never going to happen.  No, he said, all talk about the end times is just a way for priests and rulers and others in authority to keep people focussed on some future state of perfection, instead of working and maybe fighting and rebelling to make things perfect here and now.

    What do we say to such a man and those who believe like him?  Do we let him undermine our hope, so we stop keeping Last Things first?  He quoted the famous atheist Richard Dawkins, to the effect that it's only some outgrown evolutionary stage that makes people look forward to a end to this age and the birth of one that is new.  Do we tie ourselves in knots trying to prove Richard Dawkins wrong?  There are people who have the gift of apologetics, and God strengthen them as they exercise it.  But there's something even better we can show.  When we speak of the second advent of our Lord and the end of this age, we're not just passing along some gut feeling or old tribal legend.  No, we are quoting the very words of the Son of God.  This Man told His disciples that He would be crucified by the authorities during His next visit to Jerusalem, and that three days later, He would be raised from the dead.  You could say it was inevitable that Jesus would be crucified sooner or later.  But no mere man, not even the wisest and cleverest, can say that He will rise again-- and actually do it.  It is not in the power of any ordinary man to make such a thing happen.

    But Jesus our Lord foretold His resurrection and it did happen, not in myth, not in legend, but in real history, under the authority of a Roman bureaucrat named Pontius Pilate.  When Someone like that tells us that He certainly will return and that by His power death and hell will flee away, you can believe Him.  Heaven and earth will pass away, but His words will never pass away.

    But others, while they may believe this world will end someday, aren't looking forward to it in hope. They can't imagine a better existence than they might achieve in this present age, and the idea of living in fellowship with the Son of God means nothing to them.  Why would they keep Last Things first?  Any second advent of Christ would ruin their whole day!

    And indeed, when we think of our sin, and the judgement to come on the world, how should creatures like us hope and pray for the day of the Lord?  In Isaiah 64 God's people plead that He would come save them in their day of distress.

        Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down,
               that the mountains would tremble before you!

They look forward to the Lord taking vengeance on His enemies and theirs--

        [C]ome down to make your name known to your enemies
           and cause the nations to quake before you!

But there's a problem.  God's people have been acting like His enemies themselves.  True,

        [the Lord] comes to the help of those who gladly do right,
        who remember your ways.

But Israel has not gladly done right.  They've continued to sin against Him.  "How then," Isaiah asks in behalf of the nation, "can we be saved?"

    What do you do when the One who is your only hope is also the One you most need to fear?  Not because God is some kind of abusive father, but because we have been like adult children who have taken advantage of and robbed and harmed and disgraced Him.  For know this, this passage in Isaiah is not simply about an incident in the history of ancient Israel, it also describes our position before God when we forget Him and go our own way.  In our selfishness and idolatry even our attempts at righteousness are like filthy rags.  How can we who neglect to call on the name of the Lord, who fail to lay hold on God and His goodness find hope in the coming of Christ?  Why should we want to put Last Things first?

    Because the Lord our God is our Father.  He is our Father because like a potter He has formed and made us.  But even more, He is our Father because He has remade us in the image of His Son Jesus Christ.  To cite St. Paul in 1 Corinthians again, thanksgiving can be made for us because of the grace that has been given us in Christ Jesus.  In our sins we were ragged and filthy, we blew away like dried-up leaves.  But in Christ we "have been enriched in every way."  Perhaps not in the material ways this passing world values, but in speaking and knowledge, in ways that build one another up in the faith of the Gospel of Christ.

    Or have we?  This was true of the Corinthians.  Whatever problems they may have had in other areas, they recognised and used the spiritual gifts God had given them.  Paul is saying that God the Father will keep them strong and faithful in the use of these gifts, so they might be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus.

    God has given us gifts by the Holy Spirit to serve Him in the Church as well, till Christ comes.  You do not need to take a spiritual gift inventory to find out what yours is.  Whatever the Holy Spirit is urging you to do, and you know it's the Holy Spirit's urging because it is confirmed by the Word of God, do it!

    This is what our Lord means by saying in Mark that we're like servants a master going on a trip has put in charge of various jobs to do while he's away.  So let's do them!  Let's put Last Things first by loving our neighbor with food and clothing and shelter.  Let us tell them that Jesus died for them just like He did for us, and invite them to church where they can hear the saving good news of eternal life in Him.  Let us do our daily work in ways that benefit others and glorify God, the Master Workman over all.  Let us live holy and gracious lives in the midst of this perverted and wicked world, so that when Jesus comes again we will have no cause to feel ashamed.

    Jesus says, "Keep watch!"  So live the life He has given you on earth to His praise and glory, always with an eye open and an ear tuned to His footstep at the door.  He may come tomorrow; He may for His good purpose delay another thousand years.  But it is the promise of Christ's second advent that gives all our work in this world its meaning and gives our earthly existence its hope.  This life is not one endless grind of things going on the way they always have; it has a purpose and a goal.  Christ came into this world as the Baby of Bethlehem to bear our sins and keep God's righteous commands for us the way we never could.  He will come again as the glorious Son of Man to gather His own that we may be with Him forever.

    Live in this blessed hope.  By His Spirit's power, serve Him in all you do.  And always remember to put the Last Things first.

Christ's Resurrection and You: A Building Not Made with Hands

Texts:  2 Corinthians 4:13 - 5:10; Luke 24:36-49

    ON THE WHOLE, I'M GLAD the rapture of the saints didn't happen last night at 6:00 PM.  There's  so much more on this earth I want to see and do and accomplish.  But if Harold Camping had been right, and even now we were standing in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ, I would possess something I so grievously lack right now.  And that's a full sense and knowledge of the splendour, the goodness, the graciousness, the beauty, the holiness, the indescribable greatness of what my great God and Saviour did for me when He died on the cross and rose again for my sake.

    To know Jesus Christ and the life-giving power of His resurrection is the most marvellous, desirable thing you and I can ever experience.  There is no end to the benefits we derive from Him!  We've seen these past weeks how Jesus' resurrection enabled us to be adopted as children of God.  How by it we are brought into His new covenant and brought into the nurture of our mother, the Church.  How Jesus rose again to strip off our old filthy sinful natures and clothe us instead in our new selves, which is the shining glorious garment of His righteousness and love.   How amazing is Jesus Christ our Lord, who was crucified for our sins and rose that we might live His life forever!  How glorious and splendid are all His gifts to us!  Just thinking about them, we should be in a continual state of rapture all day long!

    But you know how it is, and so do I.  The good things of this world, and its troubles as well, hang like a curtain between us and the jaw-dropping vision of Christ and His resurrection benefits.  It's not that we don't believe that Jesus rose again, it's just that other stuff is so present and so pressing, His resurrection and what it means to us isn't something that we consciously dwell on day after day.  It's for Easter Sunday, and maybe a week or two thereafter.  Good to know about, but not exactly relevant to what we're dealing with now.

    At least, that's how it seems.  It seems that way too with our own resurrection, the one St. Paul so eloquently writes about in 1 Corinthians 15.  That's for the future, sure, for the day when Jesus really comes back.  But that doesn't seem to be happening real soon. And in the meantime, I'll wager that none of us goes around with a secret smile and a little skip in our step because we, too, someday will have a glorious immortal body like the one Jesus Himself rose in.  I don't say this is the way we should be; it's just a fact of our human nature that it's woefully easy for us to get distracted from heavenly things and forget what we have and Whose we are.  It's especially easy when the distractions have to do with poor health, or poverty, or advancing old age, or the approach of death, for ourselves or those we love.  Who can think of their bodily resurrection when we have so much on our minds?

    But in the fourth and fifth chapters of his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul-- speaking by the Holy Spirit-- reveals that those very everyday difficulties and distractions should be signposts and reminders that point us ever and again back to our blessed hope of personal resurrection through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Not only that,  but our very weakness serves to show the great power of God in Christ.  As Paul says earlier in chapter 4, we carry the magnificent good news of Christ died and risen around in clay jars, "to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us."  And so, as our Epistle reading today begins, "‘I believed; therefore I have spoken.'" This is a quotation from Psalm 116:10, where the psalmist has been lamenting his neediness, his trouble, his nearness to death, and what he speaks of in this quoted verse is of his great affliction.   He brings his distress to God in faith that God is One who hears and heals and restores.  And so Paul evokes that same spirit of faith in us, but we have an even greater reason to hope in God than the psalmist did.  For we know that He who raised Jesus Christ from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and He'll present all of us together to Himself, in His very presence.

    This is our resurrection hope!  This is the gospel grace that even today is reaching more and more people, that thanksgiving may overflow to the glory of God!

    We hold this hope in light of-- perhaps I should say, in contrast to-- the very unhopeful situations we find ourselves in day after day.  Because we trust in the One who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead, because we trust that He will also raise us with Him, we do not lose heart.

    And it can be so easy in this world to lose heart.  We don't have to be suffering persecution for our faith; ordinary ageing and illness will do it.  We look in the mirror and see the wrinkles and we think, "Wait a minute, when did that happen?  I don't feel that old!"  Or worse, we gaze upon the pale form of a sick loved one languishing full of tubes in a hospital bed, and we know how true it is that our outer nature, our present physical bodies, are indeed wasting away.  But the resurrection life of Christ is even now working its revival in you and me, if indeed we are trusting in the One who raised Jesus Christ from the dead and who will also raise us.  Even now, He is renewing our inner nature, the new self in Christ, day by day.

    We might want to say to Paul, "Hey, you call what I'm going through a ‘light momentary affliction.'  What do you know about the cancer I'm suffering?  Paul, how can you minimize my parent's congestive heart failure?  Paul, people are calling me a hatemongering bigot for standing up for traditional gospel truth.  How can you call that kind of affliction ‘slight'?"

    Oops, scratch that one.  Paul knew a lot about being afflicted for the sake of Christ.  In fact, go back to verses 8-12 of chapter 4 of 2 Corinthians, or skip over to chapters 11 and 12, and you'll see that if any one had sufferings and afflictions, if anyone in Church history knew what it was like to have his outer nature wasted away, it was the Apostle Paul.  But he kept his eyes on the resurrection we're all promised in Christ Jesus.  And therefore he could say that if our present bodily troubles were put in a scale with the glory that will come to us in the resurrection, the glory that's coming to us will far outweigh them all.

    In fact, our present troubles go to contribute to the glory that is to be.  How can this happen?  Disease and trial and suffering aren't virtuous in themselves.  But as we set them in contrast to the resurrection that is to come; especially, as others see our resurrection hope in contrast to what we're going through here on this earth, we glorify our risen Lord, who has promised to share His glory with us.  So, as Paul says, our focus is no longer on how we see things to be in this troubled world; rather, we fix our eyes on what is unseen and eternal. 

    That is, what is unseen for now.  The unbelieving world may say, "Yes, you're looking at what's unseen, all right, because there's nothing there."  We reply, "No, there is something there, beyond the curtain of this failing earthly life.  There is Someone there, who walked this earth and lived and died and rose again for me, and one day I will see Him face to face and know that He is realer and solider and more weighty than anything that can be looked upon in this temporary world."

    Now, I need you to bear with me for a moment, because I'm going to inject something personal, and I don't want it to take away from the glory that belongs to the Scripture or to Jesus Christ, the Lord of Scripture.  It's just that I find it ironic-- or maybe appropriate-- that this passage speaks of looking and seeing.  You know about my eyesight, how I often have to wear two pairs of cheaters to read.  That's annoying, but I manage.  But in the past couple of days I've noticed some symptoms that may have serious implications for my eyesight, that may even require surgery.  I tell you this by way of confession, to admit that when I found this out I didn't feel too full of thanksgiving.  It can be really hard to keep your focus on things eternal when your imagination is telling you you might not be able to see things earthly for much longer.

    It's been said that the preacher can't preach to him or herself.  Maybe not, but the Apostle can preach to the preacher, and Paul has preached to me that whatever happens when I go in to see the eye doctor, the renewal of Jesus Christ is still taking place in me day by day, whether I feel like it or not.  And age-related things like this only go to remind us that this body we live in is like a tent.  Paul was thinking of the dwelling tents of the wandering Bedouins of the desert; we might think of a tent on a camping trip.  Either way, there comes a time when those things get wet and waterlogged and worn and full of holes.  There is no way they can be compared with our own solid house at home.  In the same way, our present bodies are wearing out.  But by the resurrection power of Jesus Christ, God Himself has prepared for us an eternal house in heaven, a building not made by human hands.  Of course it's not made by human hands!  For our eternal home, our resurrection bodies, are established on the foundation of Christ's resurrection itself, and no mortal had anything to do with that.

    The Scripture says that now we groan, longing to be clothed with our permanent heavenly dwelling.  We have to understand that that is truly our longing.  Some people, even Christians, think the goal is to get rid of this earthly tent, our physical bodies, and just fly away as a spirit, naked and free.  That may be great Greek philosophy, but it is not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.  No, we do not want to be found naked before God.  We must not stand before Him as bare unclothed spirits.  In fact, we can not.  We must be clothed with the heavenly dwelling that God has prepared for us for us, in order for us to know the eternal life that swallows up our mortality.

    Because, brothers and sisters, that is why God made you-- so you might be clothed, surrounded, protected, and made at home in the resurrection body He has prepared for you.  No matter what happens to you in this life, that new and heavenly body will be yours; you can believe that because God has given you the Holy Spirit as a guarantee on the purchase.  He witnesses to our hearts through the Word that Jesus Christ truly did die for us, that His resurrection was for us, and that we can take Him at His word when He promises that where He is, we will be also.

    And so, Paul says, things are actually switched around for us.  Our earthly natures say, "Give me as much time here on earth in this body as possible.  I'm in no hurry to go!"  But the Spirit keeps us looking towards what we don't yet see, and He makes us eager to see it.  He makes us long to move out of the temporary home of this tent and move permanently into our forever home with the Lord.  The Spirit of God makes us confident that we shall indeed some day be forever at home with the Lord, clothed in the glorious bodies He has prepared for us.

    Does this confidence give us the right to be so heavenly-minded we're no earthly good?  Not at all.  Here on this present earth or later on in eternity, our aim and pleasure should be to please Him who did not please Himself, but gave Himself up to save us all.

    Does our future hope lead us to conclude that this present life is meaningless, just a waiting room for heaven, as it were?  No, because we do have our future hope, we strive so that when we appear before the judgement seat of Christ, the things we have done in this present body will please Him and earn us His favor and reward.

    Jesus Christ is risen; He is risen indeed.  Not as a ghost, not as a disembodied spirit, but as a gloried Man of touchable flesh and bone.  And we will be like Him, on that day when He truly returns and gathers His saints to rejoice with Him around His throne. 

    That day is coming.  Someday we will be there, and we will at last feel the glorious weight of the splendor and majesty of our Lord Jesus and His finished work for us.  Whether the time is long or short, do not lose heart.  Make it your goal to please Him. And whatever you may be going through now, whatever now causes you to groan with longing or grief, keep your eyes focussed on Jesus Christ, the one who was dead, and see, He lives again.   He is your resurrection, He is your life, and in Him you will live and find shelter forever more.

Our Real Tangible Spiritual Resurrection Bodies

Texts: 1 Corinthians 15:12-20 & 35-49; Luke 24:33-49

AS I MENTIONED DURING the Joys and Concerns, I'm being treated for Stage 1C ovarian cancer. So a week or two ago I was sitting on a neighbor's front porch with her and her sister-in-law who was visiting from Denver. My neighbor had told her relative that I was undergoing chemotherapy, and she was very curious about the whole thing. At one point she asked, "Are you afraid to die?" I told her my surgeon says it's very probable I'm cured already, and we're just doing the chemo just in case. Still, if the cancer comes back anyway, I just have to remember how wonderfully much Jesus loves me and what He's done for me. "I believe in the resurrection of the body," I said. "You mean the resurrection of the spirit," said my neighbor. "No," I replied, "the resurrection of the body. Just like Jesus rose again with a real, glorified human body, we'll be like Him and have the same." My neighbor wasn't so sure she liked that idea. Don't our bodies just give us trouble? Who'd want to be stuck with one for all eternity?

Well, it's common for us humans not to be too excited about the idea of the bodily resurrection of the dead. Once after one of my seminary classmates had guest preached on the subject, a man of that church, one of their board members, came up to me and said, "I always enjoy it so much when you Wycliffe people come and preach to us. You always bring such novel doctrine!" "‘Novel'?" I asked him. "How's that?" "Well," he said, "I've always been taught that Jesus' resurrection body was just a spiritual one." "But," I said, "what about when He tells His disciples to feel Him to prove He still has solid flesh and bone?" "Oh," said the man, "Jesus just made it seem like He had a physical body so He wouldn't upset the disciples. He really was only a ghost!"

The doctrine of the bodily resurrection from the dead is a basic teaching of our Christian faith, but obviously many people have trouble accepting it. Even evangelical Christians can't always get their hearts around it: How many times at a funeral have you heard someone say their departed loved one is now an angel in heaven? But angels have nothing to do with resurrection. As it says in the book of Hebrews, angels are ministering spirits and Christ's promise of new life from the dead is not for them.

But it is for us, and I hope to show you how our bodily resurrection in Jesus Christ is not only true, but also is our hope and comfort and the very assurance of the everlasting love of God.

It all flows from Jesus and what He's done for us. Jesus' disciples weren't expecting Him to rise from the dead. Time and again He'd told them He'd be arrested and put to death and then rise on the third day, but their minds were kept from understanding it. So on the evening of that first Easter Sunday, when Jesus stood among them in the upper room, they were startled and frightened. Luke tells us they'd thought they were seeing a ghost! This was even after the two disciples who'd encountered Jesus on the road to Emmaus had come back to Jerusalem and reported what had happened! Now, the disciples were good Jews. They expected there to be some sort of bodily resurrection way off in the future, at the end of the age. But the idea that someone they knew and loved could be standing live and in the flesh before them after being so very dead three days before was simply unthinkable.

Nevertheless, it was true! "Why are you troubled," Jesus said to them, "and why do doubts rise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have."

Jesus was solid, and real! No way was He just a ghost or a spirit! No way was He fooling the disciples into thinking He had a resurrection body when He did not! And as they were still standing there in unbelief and amazement, Jesus asked them for some broiled fish and ate it in their presence!

Why did He go to such lengths to prove that He was truly, really, bodily risen? Why does it matter that Jesus' resurrection was truly a rising again, in the same body He died in, and not a mere apparition?

Because, as He told the disciples, this victory over death was what the whole of the Scriptures, all of God's grand and glorious plan, had all been leading up to! "This is what is written," Jesus reminded them (in verse 45), "The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations." Without the bodily resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, there is no forgiveness of sins! Without Jesus truly risen from the dead, death still would have its hold over Him. Without Jesus' rising again in the same body that went to the cross, death would still have its hold over us! If Christ is not truly risen, our sins are not atoned for, His life was in vain, and we are still under the wrath of God and headed straight to hell.

But as St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, "But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep." Jesus is the prototype, the forerunner of all who sleep in death. His bodily resurrection proves that His sacrifice on the cross was sufficient, fully-acceptable to God to atone for our sins. Had Jesus not actually risen, everyone would have known that He had died for His own errors and crimes. But He was and is the Sinless One who had life-in-Himself, as it says in the Gospel according to St. John. He rose in all the triumph of that life and He gives it to all who believe in Him. Some people will tell you that the Christian message is about being nice to other people. Brothers and sisters, every religious system in the world has taught we should be nice to other people, they just differ in which people we're supposed to be nice to! No, the basic message of Christianity, the main point of the Gospel, is that Jesus Christ is died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was raised bodily on the third day, and that through faith in Him we have forgiveness of sins and life forever. Not just some of your sins, but all of them! Peace with God and glorious joy with Him, now and always!

You may be saying, "I certainly believe that!" But some of the members of the 1st century Corinthian church were rejecting the bodily resurrection outright. Most of them were originally Gentiles, and they'd grown up with the Greek notion that the body and its flesh was at best just a vehicle, a donkey, you might say, for the mind and the spirit. At worst the body was full of corruption and evil, and no better way to see that was in a rotting corpse. Why would anyone want to come back in that? Don't we all want to get free?

This is where we see the providence and wisdom of God in choosing the Jews as His Messianic people. The Hebrew understanding was that each person was a unity of body, mind, and spirit, and to be a full, living human you had to have all three, and this is what God affirms in raising His Son from the dead. You get so-called theologians who claim that Jesus was "risen" in the disciples' hearts and imaginations and that was enough. No, that is not enough, not if Jesus was truly to defeat death, His enemy and ours. Any so-called rising of the God-Man that left His flesh to decay would have been no victory over death at all. Paul wants us to understand that in Christ there is life and victory beyond the grave, life and victory for the whole man and the whole woman. We have hope in Christ for this life and for the next.

And so faithful Christian preaching is not useless and we are not lying about God and what He has done. Your faith in Christ means something! It has a purpose, and its purpose is to unite you with your Lord who truly came back from the grave in a glorious, renewed body. Its goes to assure you that you and every Christian loved one you have lost will truly stand glorified and solid in their renewed flesh and bone, praising and serving God in the new heaven and the new earth. Even though at the brink of the grave, we mourn, but we are not to be pitied, for our hope is good for more than this life: it extends to all eternity.

Nevertheless, some hold to the conviction that this life is all there is. They were the type in Corinth who were questioning, "How are the dead raised. With what kind of body will they come?"

You can see by Paul's reaction that they weren't earnestly seeking knowledge, because his first word in verse 36 is not "How foolish!" but rather, "Fool!" Which is what you called someone only when you were sure they were a double-dyed, deliberately-blind moral trifler. Open your eyes, he says! The very course of nature shows us that it's perfectly possible for the final, mature form of a body to be different and more complex than its initial form. We see that, don't we? Think of the tomato seeds you may've planted in your garden this spring. Didn't look anything like the luscious tomatoes I hope you're eating now, did they? Not only is that tomato plant different from the seed you planted, but you don't get that plant and that fruit unless you bury that seed in the dirt and allow it to break down. In short, to die. Every day in every garden, in every farmer's field new life comes from death; isn't God, who is the ultimate Gardener, able to bring new life from our mortal bodies?

And then, there are all sorts of types of bodies in this world: human, animal, fish, bird, and on and on. We don't say, "Well, humans can't breathe in water, so I don't believe in a creature that can." No, we know that fish exist. Their makeup is different, and so they can do things humans cannot. In the same way, our resurrection bodies will be able to do things our mortal bodies cannot. The Bible does not go into a lot of detail, but from the example of Jesus, we can see that we will have power over nature so that we can enjoy it when we want to-- as in Jesus eating the broiled fish-- but we won't be hampered or hindered by it: Think of Him being able simply to appear in the upper room despite the locked door.

And for those who think the resurrection body will just be these same weak ones resuscitated, St. Paul reminds us that different bodies have different kinds of splendor. Our bodies now do have a certain kind of splendor, but it will be nothing compared to what we shall be like when we are raised from the death and are made like our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. For what was sown, or buried, is perishable. Obviously-- for the person died. But the renewed flesh Jesus gives can never die again. Dead flesh is something dishonorable, to be gotten out of sight as soon as possible. But our renewed flesh will be clothed in honor when we're raised at the last day, for we will share in the glory that is Christ's. The body that dies is weak and powerless; it is raised in the power of the everliving God. It is buried a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.

But many people read this word "spiritual" and say "See! Our bodies in heaven won't be physical! We'll be like the angels, who are all spirits!" But that's making the wrong contrast. The comparison isn't between "physical" and "spiritual" as regards the composition of our resurrection bodies; no, it's between "natural" and "spiritual," referring to how each kind of body is made alive. Look at it this way: our bodies here on earth have a lot in common with those of other animals. All animals-- humans, dogs, cats, cows, whatever, have a soul or what our ancestors called "the breath of life." As Paul quotes Genesis 2:7, "the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being." That's the natural way of things. And when that soul or or anima departs, the creature is no longer alive. But the resurrection body will be different. For before it was quickened by the soul, but then it will be made alive by the Spirit of God and can never die.

How can this be? Compare Adam and Christ, who is called the last or ultimate Adam. Our ancestor Adam was made of dust, and to dust he returned. Our Saviour Jesus Christ also shared our dust, but His life was from above, from heaven, and so the grave could not hold Him. Jesus is the Man from heaven who puts His Spirit in us to make us alive and to cause our weak and mortal bodies to be raised up glorious and immortal like His own.

Our flesh and blood as it now is cannot inherit the kingdom of God. But the same power that raised Jesus from the dead will raise our mortal bodies as well and make them like His own. This is a truth that all the religious systems and philosophies of this world could never conceive. It took Jesus the Son of God to reveal it to us, and He is the one who made it possible.

So give glory to God and rejoice in the resurrection victory He gives! It is your hope and your shield and the perfection of all God's plans for you. Already Jesus has put His Holy Spirit in you, as a down payment to prove that you will live eternally with Him. Not as a ghost, not as a spirit, not even as an angel in heaven, but as something much better: As a splendid, bodily, spiritual human being, who with all His saints will glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus!

Redemption Drawing Near

Texts: Jeremiah 33:14-22; Luke 21:5-36

A FEW YEARS AGO I WAS at a pastors’ conference where we were doing an in-depth study of the Book of Psalms. During one of the question and answer periods, one pastor gave his opinion that the psalms where God’s people complain of hardship, trouble, grief, oppression and so on simply shouldn’t be used in white middle-class American churches. Middle-class American Christians don’t have troubles like that, he said. Such psalms are irrelevant to our lives and we shouldn’t say them.

I wondered if he really knew what went on in his parish. True, we don’t tend to undergo suffering to the extent our brothers and sisters in Somalia or India or Saudi Arabia do. But we know what it’s like to have trouble. Especially with the economy as bad as it is and the future of our country as uncertain as it is, we find ourselves subject to worry, care, and for some of us, real hardship. The Psalms are given to us for our comfort, as is our passage from the Gospel of St. Luke.

. . . Comfort? Where’s the comfort in Luke chapter 21? It begins all right in verse 5, with the disciples pointing out the marvellous beauty of the Lord’s Temple in Jerusalem. Life was hard and uncertain when you were a poor Galilean peasant, and being a follower of Rabbi Jesus could make things even harder. The Temple, at least, was something solid and permanent. An ordinary Jew could rely on it and feel sure about things, even when life wasn’t so good. That’s because it was a sign of God’s covenant with His people Israel. The disciples and all the Jews could look at the temple and know that in spite of the Roman occupation and everything else they were going through, God was still with them.

So does our Lord Jesus confirm their confidence? No. He says, "As for what you see here, the time will come when not one stone will be left on another; every one of them will be thrown down."

What a knife in the gut! Good on the original disciples--they didn’t contradict Jesus (for once) or say, "But Lord! That’s impossible!" Instead, they asked, "Teacher, when will these things happen?" By now they’d learned to trust Jesus to know what He was talking about.

Jesus doesn’t answer their "When?" question. It wasn’t His will to give them an exact year and day and hour. Instead, He revealed to them and to us the circumstances surrounding the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem with it. And at the same time, Jesus let us know how we can recognise the end of the age and the time of His coming as Judge and King.

We’re looking forward to that, right? His coming will be the end of all our trouble and the beginning of our eternal bliss. But before that Day comes, things on this earth will not get better, they will get much, much worse. Wars. Natural disasters. Pandemics. Terror. Cataclysms in the heavens and on the earth. Jesus said so, and He can be trusted to know what He’s talking about.

A lot of Bible commentators and ordinary Christians, too, get confused over this prophecy. Some say the whole thing applies to the time in A.D. 70 when the Romans marched in and destroyed Jerusalem and dispersed the Jews to the four corners of the world. While others say it all has to do with events that will happen sometime in the future, and the destruction of Jerusalem long ago has nothing to do with it.

But Bible prophecy again and again is fulfilled in a layered way. God revealed His will in pictures and mirrors. One event in the short term would serve as a symbol for something to happen thereafter. For instance, God’s great salvation in freeing His people from Egypt is a picture of what God would do in freeing us His people from slavery to sin by Christ’s death on the cross.

And here in Luke 21, the terrible events Jesus prophesied for Jerusalem were a picture of what will take place someday in the future when God’s judgement descends on all humanity when the Son of Man returns as King. We know from the text itself that the two events have been put together in one prophecy, for the Holy Spirit has Luke write very clearly in verse 24 that "Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the time of the Gentiles are fulfilled." These events couldn’t all happen at once, in the past or in the future. When Jesus talked about the destruction of Jerusalem and about the end of the age, He wasn’t talking about the same time. Rather, He was talking about the same thing. And that thing is the process by which our sovereign God will judge unfaithfulness and evil in this world, install Jesus the Righteous Branch of David as King on the throne of the universe, and bring relief and redemption to His faithful people.

Advent’s a lot like that. It also has two parts. We look for the coming of Christ, the King. We prepare ourselves to receive Him in memory as the human Child born over two thousand years ago. But we also must make ourselves ready for His coming again in glory. We don’t know when that will happen; our Lord didn’t give us the year or day or hour. But it’s all part of God’s sovereign act of judging unrighteousness, making Jesus King, and bringing us redemption that He started long, long ago.

Let this passage be a warning to us, not to load God’s symbols with our own meanings. The Jews thought the Temple would stand forever as a sign of God’s favor to them. We humans see the Christ Child in the manger and think it’s all right to make God out to be weak and manageable and subject to our wants and desires. We sinners can cope with Jesus as a helpless baby. We can even take the grown-up Rabbi preaching woe to the Pharisees-- as long as we think "the Pharisees" are always Those Other People. But in our rebellion and idolatry we cannot take the Son of God hanging on a cross; much less are we ready to welcome the Son of Man come to judge us and rule over us forever.

None of us can accept Christ as He really is-- until God by His own unfettered will and sovereign initiative moves in our hearts by the power of His Holy Spirit and converts us into His own people. But when He does, we become a whole new people! People of redemption, people of righteousness, people of hope! In our Jeremiah passage, verse 16 says, "In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. This is the name by which it will be called: The Lord our Righteousness." But if you go to Jeremiah 23, it speaks there as well of the Righteous Branch raised up from David, and says "This is the name by which He will be called: The Lord our Righteousness." The Jerusalem Jeremiah foretells is not the city destroyed in his day. It’s not the rebuilt city overthrown by General Titus in A.D. 70. It is God’s new Jerusalem, His new Israel, His Church, and we can bear the name "The Lord our Righteousness" because it’s the name of our Redeemer Jesus, the righteous Son of David. We now belong to Him and live in Him, and because we do, we will escape the eternal judgement that will come on the God-hating generation of this world.

In verse 28 Jesus says, "Stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near." Interestingly, this word "redemption" doesn’t mean "ransom"-- for the payment that bought us out of slavery to sin was the blood He shed long ago on His cross. Rather, the word means "release" or "deliverance." When all the world is melting in terror and hiding from the wrath of almighty God, His people can stand on their feet like free men and women liberated by Jesus’ blood and expect to be freed from the persecutions and hardships of those last days. Be of good hope, Christian people! No matter how terrible things may get, God is in control and will bring you through. You may give your physical body as a witness to Christ and His gospel, but as to your soul, not a hair of your head will perish.

However, this is no time for complacency, Christian friends. As our Lord says in verse 34, both pleasure and hardship can weigh down our hearts so we lose faith in the goodness and saving power of God. At this season of the year, it’s doubly heart-breaking to hear someone say, "I’ve lost my job; at our house we won’t have any Christmas." Oh, no, no! You’ve lost your livelihood; does that mean you’ve lost Jesus the living Lord as well? You say you can’t give your children any Christmas this year? But my sad friend, God has already given Christmas to your children and to you as well! Tell them the story of the Son of God who became flesh, who died and rose for their salvation, and you’ve given your children more of a rich and blessed Christmas than most of the richest households will get around this fallen world!

Or there are hearts touched by tragedy, who say Christmas has been destroyed for them because of the grief that has torn apart their lives. If that is you, I beg you to see that this is the time for you to lift up your head, for your redemption is drawing near! Sorrow may have invaded your life, but the Son of God has invaded this world of sin and pain and death; His arm is stronger than the worse that can happen to any of us, and by His cross the victory is already yours.

The Devil wants us to be distracted and not be watching for the second coming of our Lord. He wants us to stop being faithful to Jesus in our everyday lives. For what is it for us to be on the watch? In every other place in Scripture where the return of Christ is described, keeping watch means to keep doing the work He has given you to do, cheerfully, in His name and to His glory. To watch means to endure the ordinary hardships of human life gracefully, drawing always on the power of your Lord Jesus Christ, so that when the greater trials come we’re used to depending on Him. And always, always, to watch means for us to seek and enjoy the means of grace-- reading His word, hearing it preached, praying in Jesus’ name, celebrating and sharing the sacraments He has given us, assembling and serving with His people, the church. In this way Christ Himself will prepare you to be a witness to Him, both in times of peace and in times of persecution and hardship.

After our sermon hymn, we will administer the sacrament of holy baptism to D---, daughter of S--- and L--- and granddaughter of C--- and J---. Do not be deceived: You may see only something being done to an adorable baby. But baptism is a sign of the great conflict between heaven and hell that Jesus describes in the Gospels. War is waged over the souls of little ones such as this, and by baptism we signify that we claim her for Jesus Christ. Greater than that, in baptism God claims her for His own, that she might not be in terror on the Day when Christ comes as Judge, but lovingly look up and hail Him as Her Redeemer and King.

This is God’s promise to us in all our baptisms. If King Jesus comes soon, we will undergo a baptism of fire we never could endure on our own. But our God is strong. He is in control. And just as He brought us through the waters of baptism to new life in His Son, He will also bring us through the deathly fire of that Day to eternal life and peace with Him.

Be of good hope. Your sin was judged and destroyed on the cross of your Lord Jesus Christ. In this Advent season, prepare yourselves to relive the coming of your King as the Babe of Bethlehem. And at the same time, keep watch and live prepared to welcome Jesus your King when He comes to receive you into His glory. In His name and by His power, you can stand and look up, for your redemption is drawing near.

Worthy of His Calling

Texts: Malachi 3:13 - 4:3; 2 Thessalonians 1:3-12

WHY SHOULD ANYONE WANT TO become a Christian? If you or I were talking to an unbeliever, someone we knew and cared about-- and the subject of church came up and that person should ask, "Why should I become a Christian? What’s in it for me?" how should we respond?

Maybe we could tell him about the fellowship and good times he could find as a member of a Christian church like 1st Presbyterian.
Maybe we could point to all the good works Christians do for other people and say how good she’d feel to be part of that.

Or, we could tell him that believing in Jesus will make him more fulfilled as a human being, that Jesus will give him a sense of purpose and higher goals for living. We could tell her that once Jesus is in her life, she’ll have new and wonderful ways to make her marriage better and help her raise obedient, well-adjusted children.

Or how’s this? We could even tell him (though really, we shouldn't) that faith in Jesus Christ will make him happier, more comfortable, and more prosperous in this world; and, if he cares about such things, it’ll also guarantee him happiness and security in the world to come. We could say that when you’re a Christian, Jesus solves all your problems, that once you have true faith, you won’t have to struggle with anything anymore. I mean, there are popular preachers out there who say that, and look how many people they have in their pews!

We could say all these things to an interested unbeliever. And some of them (some of them!) are true to an extent. But none of them get to the heart of what God has in store for us when we confess our faith in the Savior, Jesus Christ. If we wanted to be truly honest with our unbelieving friend or neighbor or family member, maybe we should quote to him the words of the late Dietrich Bonhoeffer: "When Jesus calls a man, He bids him come and die."

Ouch. That’s not a church marketing pitch designed to win a lot of customers, is it? And maybe, yes, that’s not what we’d want to lead with. But if we said that, it would be true, and once our unbelieving friend or you or I or anyone else understands the depths of that truth, we’ll see that it’s the most comforting, fulfilling offer we could ever be made. The call to become a disciple of Jesus Christ is God’s call for us to identify with and participate in the sufferings of His crucified Son. Christianity is all about the cross. Our very baptism depicts us being immersed in the death of the wounded Messiah. But that’s really good news! Because only by dying to ourselves, our wants, our needs, our sense of who we are and what we can do and what we should be, can we be raised with Christ to the new life of joy and fulfilment and meaning God has planned for us. Only by humbling ourselves and wanting and worshipping God for who He is-- adoring our Triune Lord in all the glorious splendor of His holiness because He eternally deserves it--can we find glory and meaning in this life on earth and beyond that, in our life face to face with Him in heaven.

Which is why St. Paul, in our reading from 2 Thessalonians, reminds us that our relationship with Him through His Son Jesus Christ is a calling. From our human point of view, we church members may think we analyzed the pros and cons of buying into this Christianity deal and said Yes because it made sense or seemed like a good way to live. But you and I could never even consider, never even imagine, never even desire belonging to Jesus Christ if God Himself from all eternity had not elected to bring us into fellowship with Him through the shed blood of His only-begotten Son. How could we? Like everyone else, we were lost in trespasses and sins. We were rebels against Him and His righteous will. We didn’t want God. Maybe we wanted some things we could get out of Him, but we didn’t desire God for Himself! And because of our idolatry and sin we deserved God’s wrath just as much as the most vicious serial killer or genocidal tyrant.

Now frankly, when I turn that around and preach it at myself, I want to say, "Hey, wait a minute. I’m not that bad! Actually, I’m a pretty nice person! And so are most of the people I know, even the unbelievers!" But that very thought alerts me to yet another area in my life where Jesus bids me come and die. I may think I know what’s what in this world and how things really are. But God in Christ calls me-- and you-- to give that up and see things His way instead. He calls us to accept the utter wickedness of sin-- any sin-- and the utter burning holy righteousness of God. At the very least, He calls us to submit to what He says about us and our helpless condition and have faith that His will and wisdom are always best, whether we understand it now or not.

But there is another sense in which our calling as Christians is a call to suffering and death. We see it in 2 Thessalonians 1:4 and 5. Paul says, "Therefore, among God’s churches we boast about your perseverance and faith in all the persecutions and trials you are enduring. All this is evidence that God’s judgment is right, and as a result you will be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are suffering." When we live openly and honestly as Christians in this fallen world, we will suffer persecution. It may be mild, it may be severe, but it goes with our calling. When God in His sovereign power claims us for His own, He makes us new creatures through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We no longer are the same kind of human beings we were when we were born in sin into this world. No, through Christ we are now children of God, sons and daughters of the Lord and Creator of the universe. It’s natural that those who are still in rebellion against Him will hate and despise and persecute us as well.

Here in America, that persecution hasn’t been the open sort of trouble that came upon the Christians in Thessalonika. Or that comes even now to our brothers and sisters in places like India and Somalia and Viet Nam. But if we are Christians called by God, if we are worthy of the calling laid upon us, there will be times when we certainly will encounter trouble, misunderstanding, opposition, and even outright persecution because we are who we are. In those times the first thing that has to die is our dream of fitting in with everyone else. "Can’t we all just get along?" is not necessarily a Christian principle! Yes, be at peace with everyone, inasmuch as it lies with you, as our brother the Apostle Peter wrote. But far above that, let us strive to be at peace with God our Father, who has made us His own. Being a Christian means desiring His pleasure, His promises, His rewards above everything this world can give, even when we see none of that coming true in the present time.

I wonder if our frequent failure to grow as Christians and as churches has a lot to do with our taking a consumer view of our relationship with Jesus Christ. If we buy into Him because we think He’ll make us more fulfilled and comfortable, how can we be the world-changing soldiers of the King every child of His should be? Suffering and persecution comes with the package. To think otherwise would be like somebody who joined the US Army strictly because of the college tuition and job benefits, then was astonished because the Government sent him overseas to fight. I remember a case like that back in the early ’90s, when the First Gulf War was going on. A woman, a medical doctor, had joined up for the educational benefits. But when her unit was called up to go to Iraq, she refused to go with them to exercise her skills in the field. She claimed going to a war zone wasn’t what she’d joined the Army for. There was a court-martial, then a civil case, and the judges all ruled against her. Regardless of any benefits offered, the Army is about fighting the enemy. You should know that going in. In the same way, the Christian life is about putting God first in everything, and being willing to take the flak the world will fire at you because of it.

But as we heard before, we don’t really join God’s army, we’re drafted into it. We’re called. At the end of this service, we’ll be singing, "Once to every man and nation/ Comes the moment to decide." And it’s true: from our side we do have to make a decision for Christ. But understand, we can make that decision, we can say Yes to Him, only because God has first laid His electing hand upon us and brought us already into His fellowship. And as He does He gives us all the benefits of belonging to Him through His Son.

The complainers in our reading from Malachi didn’t want the benefits of God. They wanted the benefits of this world, right now. "It is futile to serve God," they say. "What did we gain by carrying out his requirements and going about like mourners before the Lord Almighty?" Doggonit, they’d put a dollar’s worth of ritual and fasting into the divine vending machine and now they wanted their Coke! With change!

It’s worth noting that this is the same gang of priests and people that the Lord has been bringing a case against for the entire book of Malachi. Their "worship" was insincere all along. But even in this one passage, we see the error of believing in Christ because we think He’ll satisfy our self-defined needs. Friends, we have needs only God knows about, and only by His calling and faithfulness can they ever be fulfilled.

In both our passages we see one of these needs, the need to be saved from the wrath to come. Malachi reports that those who fear the Lord and honor His name will be spared in the day of judgment, as a man compassionately spares his son who serves him. In the great day of burning, the arrogant and every evildoer, all who claim they don’t need God and don’t want God, all who want God only on their terms and according to their preferences, all such will be destroyed like stubble. Paul takes up the same theme: Through him the Spirit promises that the Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven in blazing fire to punish those who do not know God and who don’t obey His gospel.

That’s not something we like to think of as happening to our unbelieving family and friends. But as Paul says, God is just. If someone says No to God, God will give him what he desires and say No to him.

But, as Malachi says, for those who revere His name, those who are the called according to His purpose, the Sun of Righteousness will arise with healing in its wings. Now "Sun of Righteousness" is a figure of speech for our Lord and Messiah Jesus, who comes as the Light of the World to bring salvation and enlightenment to all who believe. Paul reminds us that we will be glorified in Christ at His coming, and those who trouble us because we belong to Jesus will be paid back with trouble, according to His perfect justice. It must be so, for whoever will not accept the death of the Son of God in their behalf, will have to bear their own just death in themselves. This is not revenge or retribution, it is simple justice.

But beyond our need to be saved from the wrath to come, we need to know the glory and joy of true fellowship with our Lord. Malachi says that God’s faithful ones will be His, like a treasured possession a man gathers up and preserves. Or as some translations puts it, we will be His precious jewels. But the benefits of Christ are not only for the day of our Lord’s return. No, Paul prays for the Thessalonians and for us that by His power God may fulfill every good purpose of ours. This prayer is for us now, and since Paul is writing by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, we can confidently take it that he prays for things it’s God’s intention to give. God promises to bless and prosper every good work offered up in sincerity and love to His name! Even the least act prompted by your faith, He will bless; even the slightest humbling of our wills, even the least endurance of suffering or trouble for His name’s sake, He will remember and reward with good. And why? So that the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in us, and we may be glorified in Him.

This is why we should be Christians. This is why we should tell our unbelieving family, neighbors, and friends about Him and what He has done for them in His death and resurrection and invite them to become Christians, too. Not for our own glory, but for glorious fellowship and fulfillment in Him. Not through our own good works, but through His grace and His grace alone. He calls us to suffer, because when we suffer with Him, we gain the reward of His suffering; He calls us to die, that in Him we might gloriously rise. Let those who will, seek God only for the earthly goods they can get out of him; by His grace we will seek Him for Himself and the glory of His name. Christian, Jesus calls you to suffer and die with Him, and then enter with Him into glory; may our God count you worthy of His calling.

24-Karat Faith

Texts: 1 Peter 1:3-16; Mark 6:6b-7, 12-29 5:21-43

WHEN I WAS IN FIFTH GRADE I decided when I was grown up I’d go to Africa and be a missionary. I imagined myself suffering hardship in the jungle, facing down a fearsome witch doctor, maybe being taken captive by cannibals (I’d been watching too many cartoons) and being in danger for my life, all in defense of the faith. Oh, yes, it seemed really romantic and exciting, the idea of suffering and maybe even dying for the cause of Jesus Christ.

But one evening I was up in my bedroom contemplating this. And I got into one of those silly poses kids do, and slipped and knocked my nose with my knee. Hard. Good golly, that hurt! It hurt so bad I could hardly stand it.

And that was the end of my missionary ambitions. I figured, if I could hardly deal with the pain of my own knee hitting my nose, how could I remain faithful if those cannibals started poking me with their spears?

Now that I’m grown I can laugh at my childish ideas about foreign missions. But today’s Scriptures bring out my real error, and it wasn’t just my ignorance about Africa and its people. My real mistake was focussing on my potential sufferings and my potential glory, instead of on the suffering and glory of my Lord Jesus Christ. I was thinking how I would win the victory over evil forces in this world, instead of rejoicing over the great salvation my Savior and God had already won for me.

I doubt that I’m alone. That’s how a lot of us picture of facing persecution for the faith. We imagine how we’re going to successfully stand up against it-- or maybe we dread how we might fail. We see ourselves as heros in the war against the world and the devil-- or we hope Jesus will let us stay behind the lines and not get into the fighting at all. But as Mark and Peter both remind us, in the war of God vs. Satan and good vs. evil, the true focus isn’t on us and what we will do, it’s on Jesus Christ and what He has done for us. Yes, we will benefit from what He has done. We will receive praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. But our victory will be ours only because first it is His.

But perhaps you think this has nothing to do with you. Maybe you’re sure you’ll never face persecution for the sake of Jesus Christ at all. I suppose, compared to what our brothers and sisters in Muslim and Communist countries are going through, we have nothing to complain of. But Christian persecution isn’t only having somebody put a knife to your throat and yelling, "Deny Jesus Christ or I kill you!" The spiritual battle against us is much more subtle than that, and if we don’t recognize our little skirmishes and cling to Christ and His benefits in them, we’ll certainly fail when more severe tests come our way. If you belong to Jesus Christ you face persecution for His sake every day, and the battle isn’t merely against the world and the devil, it’s against our own fears and desires as well.

The Apostle Peter notes in verse 6 of our reading that now on this earth we may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. The implication is that if we haven’t already, we soon will. This word "all kinds" in the Greek literally means "many colored." Some griefs and troubles are screaming red like fire, some are pale gray like ash. They are all part of our warfare against this world, the Devil, and our own indwelling sin. We don’t like them, we aren’t called to go after them, but God in His sovereign will allows them as the means to test and purify our faith in Him, so it will come through like pure, 24-karat gold.

Persecution for Christ’s sake is inevitable, since we’ve been born again, we’re new creatures, and what we are will always be at war with what we used to be. Don’t imagine that your part in the battle will always be clear cut and dramatic. For then you won’t recognise a trial of faith when it comes.

We see how trivial, how pedestrian the battle can be in our reading from Mark’s gospel, where he tells us about the martyrdom of John the Baptist. This is the man Jesus Himself called the greatest of those born of woman, and the culmination of the Law and the prophets. If anybody, you’d think John would go to his death in some glorious spiritual last stand.

But no. John is beheaded and his head served up like some exotic dish because of the everyday earthly lust and spite of one woman, Herodias, an amateur dance performance by her daughter Salome, and the lust, pride, and political fear of Herodias’ brother-in-law and unlawful husband, King Herod. Herod had put John away in prison so he couldn’t go around the countryside reminding the people of how he, Herod, was violating God’s law in running off with his brother’s wife. But he had no desire to torture or execute John for his message. Mark tells us Herod feared John, he was puzzled at him, but he liked to listen to him. We have no reason to believe that John in prison did not keep on proclaiming that the kingdom of God was at hand, that the Messiah had arrived, and that people should repent and obey the law of God. Being in prison was a form of persecution, of course. But from Herod’s point of view, he wasn’t standing against the Jewish faith when he imprisoned John; no, it was simply the best thing he could do politically. And when it came time for John to die, there was no crisis, John did nothing specific to make Herod behead him, it was just one more of those everyday situations when human selfishness wanted its way and nothing was going to stop it.

It’s the same with us, disciples of Jesus Christ who bear His name. Your struggles and trials as a Christian will most likely not be spectacular. Those who oppose you may not have any idea they’re causing you to suffer for Christ’s sake at all. But you should be aware of it. Think of those times when you feel pressure to compromise what is right because your boss thinks it’s good for business. Think of situations where a little voice inside tells you to give God the glory for something good that had happened to you, but you hear your own voice taking credit for it yourself, because you don’t want to seem "too religious." Call to mind those times when popular opinion on certain political and moral issues goes against the will of God as revealed in the Scriptures, and you’re ridiculed or called a bigot when you stand up for what you know to be the truth. These are the trials of your faith in Christ, allowed so it will come out more pure than 24-karat gold.

Think, too, of those times when pressure from other people isn’t involved at all, when the grief is in your own situation. Some of you may be struggling with financial hardship at this time, even unemployment or impending bankruptcy. You may have learned that you or someone you love is facing a deadly or painful chronic disease. How is your faith in Jesus Christ? Does this trial make you rely on Him and His faithfulness all the more? Does it make you search out the depths of His love for you and move you to love and trust Him for all you are and all you will have? Or does your trouble cause you to doubt Christ and His benefits-- or even, sometimes, to forget Him altogether?

These kinds of grief seem so ordinary and earthbound, hardly anything to do with being a Christian at all! But these everyday trials are the beginning of the refinement process for your faith, and if your faith turns out to be only 2-karat gold or no gold at all, where will you be when the ultimate trials come?

And they will come. Already our Congress is contemplating legislation that would make it hate speech for Christians to stand up for Biblical moral principles. Already in countries like Great Britain and Canada Muslim sharia law is allowed to hold sway in some areas, and Muslim leaders declare it’s their goal that sharia be in force throughout the world.

What shall we do about it? Expect the government to rescue us? Certainly, whatever we can do as citizens we should do, just as St. Paul appealed to his Roman citizenship whenever the time was right. But we must never expect the United States government or any other human institution to stand between us and the persecutions that will come because we bear the name of Jesus Christ. They will come, they must come, "so that your faith-- of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire-- may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed."

It is Christ who brings us through the fire and Christ alone. His heavenly Father and ours has given us new birth into a living hope in Him, through Christ’s resurrection from the dead. This hope is not like the earthly wishing that says, "I hope it rains before my flowers die" or "I hope I get a new job before I start missing mortgage payments." This hope is in the person and work of the deathless Son of God. It teaches us to look beyond our earthly troubles to the sure and solid inheritance He has won and preserves in heaven for us.

Our brother Peter reminds us that no matter what happens, in this life we are shielded through God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. Individually we have already been saved and justified through the shed blood of Jesus Christ, and when our Lord comes in glory and takes us to Himself, His work of salvation will be perfected in us and in all creation and the total victory will be His.

Even now we see the evidence of that coming victory. We see it when the Spirit of Christ in us enables us to do things we thought we never could and certainly never could without His aid. We see it when we find ourselves coming to the assistance of someone we have feared, not through compulsion but out of Christian love. Maybe you’ve taken a stand for Christ and you were nervous about it, but then you found it wasn’t so hard after all, and you found yourself caring about the person you were speaking to and wanting them to know Jesus and receive His heavenly inheritance, too. Maybe you said No to that business compromise or refused to be depressed by the current economic situation, because the Holy Spirit had filled you with the inexpressible joy He gives in Jesus Christ. This is the power of Jesus Christ working in you.

Jesus’ apostles witnessed the first fruits of Christ’s victory over sin and Satan when Jesus sent them out in His name to preach repentance, to heal, and to drive out demons. His power in them was so great that King Herod thought John the Baptist had been raised from the dead. Herod thought that when John’s headless body was buried, the Baptist and the power that was in him were dead and gone. But the power of God manifest in Jesus Christ our Lord can never die. Our hope in Him is living and sure, and our inheritance in Him can never perish, spoil, or fade.

24-karat faith trusts totally in Jesus Christ and what He has done for us. God our loving heavenly Father permits griefs and trials and persecutions in our lives , to prove to us and the world that our faith is not in ourselves or our own boldness, not in human systems or governments, but in Christ alone. 24-karat faith maintains us in an attitude of obedience to God, focussed on Him and His will, confiding only in Him.

To this goal, Peter admonishes us to prepare our minds for action. Be sure that grief and trials will come to you, some because you belong to Jesus, some simply because of your human condition. Meet them as one who belongs to your faithful God and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Study God’s word; know what He has done for your ancestors in the faith, so you also may be ready to meet trouble honorably and courageously in the strength Jesus gives. Set your hope on the grace He gives you even now, grace that will be fulfilled when He is revealed in glory. Through Him you can renounce the ways of Herod, Herodias, and Salome-- through Him you can stop being impelled and hemmed in by your fears and desires and instead live free in the holiness of Almighty God.

It was easy for me to give up my grade-school dream of being a Christian missionary because it really wasn’t about Christ at all. The truth was that I’d recently started at a new school, some of the kids were picking on me, and I figured that if I was going to suffer persecution, I may as well do it in a good cause. But now I understand that my mission field back then wasn’t someday in Africa, it was right there, right then, on that school playground.

And now my mission field and yours is wherever we are and in whatever situation we might be. Our field of battle is wherever the world, the devil, and our own sin set themselves up against the Kingdom of God. Our faith will come through the fire like 24-karat gold, because Jesus who died and rose again empowers us, protects us, and keeps our heavenly inheritance secure for us. Trust in Him like Peter, believe in Him like John, for He is your risen Lord and your gracious, living Hope.

To Him be all glory, honor, and praise, with God the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit, now and forever, amen.