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.

Worth Repeating

Texts: Psalm 136; Romans 8:31-39

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

        Give thanks to the God of gods,

and

        Give thanks to the Lord of lords.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Newborn from God

Texts:    Romans 6:1-17; John 3:1-14

    IN A LITTLE WHILE WE WILL BAPTISE H-- A-- B--, infant son of H-- and D-- B--.  I was told that H-- was born on the 15th of this past August, so he's not quite two months old.  Once this child was not even thought of, but now he's a little person living here among us.  Even in these past two months he's growing, developing, and gaining strength.  What will he look like when he's big?  What will he be able to do? 

    We marvel at the glory of human life, especially when we find it packaged in a little child.  But human life is not enough.

    And what a miracle H-- is!  If anything on this earth could be called miraculous, it's the birth of a newborn child.  We know from science how minuscule we all start out in our mothers' wombs, but somehow the genetic coding works together and a new human being is born!  And now, see how intricate, how delicate, how marvellously-formed a tiny baby is!

     A child like this is indeed is an earthly miracle.  But earthly miracles are not enough.

    And think of the spirit in this child, already manifesting itself.  Here is a new soul with all its dreams and possibilities ahead of it.  How can we look upon a infant like this and not be inspired to contemplate the mysteries of life and the universe and beyond?

    Certainly, the human spirit is an amazing thing.  But the human spirit is not enough.

    All this is not enough, for we know from Scripture-- and from the testimony of our own hearts-- that we are not what we should be or what we were created to be.  We are sinners who  fall short of the glory of God.  We treat God, our neighbor, and ourselves in ways we ought not, and we fail to give God and our neighbor the honor and consideration they deserve.  St. Paul in our passage from Romans 6 speaks of people who would insult the grace of God by using it as an excuse to sin all the more.  He needs to command even Christians not to let sin reign in our mortal bodies.  So wonderfully formed our bodies are, with tremendous capabilities and strengths, but we have to be warned not to use them as instruments of wickedness.  Paul urges us not to let sin be our master, to stop being slaves to sin-- and by this we understand that having sin as our master is the ordinary condition of human life.  It's the problem we were born with and still struggle with, no matter how old or how young we are.  Because we are sinners, our lives lead to death, our miracles are fleeting, and our spirits end in frustration.  All our human glories are not enough.

    But maybe (some might say), but maybe all this about sin is just Paul the Apostle talking.  After all (people say), Paul didn't want anybody to have any fun.  He just obscured the real Jesus-- the kind, loving, gentle, inclusive, all-accepting Jesus who'd never lower anybody's self-esteem or judge them or make them feel there was anything about them that God couldn't like.

    Oh, really?  That's an imaginary Jesus people make up in their own heads, and not the Christ of the Bible.  We can read what Jesus Himself said about the natural condition of humanity.  In John 3:18-20, He says,

    [W]hoever does not believe [in Jesus the Son of Man] stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.  This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.  Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.

"Men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil," says Jesus, the Son of God.  Not some men, but all men, and that includes us women, too.  It just comes naturally for us to do what is bad and wrong and to try to hide our guilt in the darkness, away from the righteous judgement of the holy God.  We are born with sin as our master and condemnation is what we naturally deserve-- Jesus has said so.  The tiniest child, the most aged, venerable senior, all of us come into this world as children of darkness and not as children of light.

    So what must we do?  Try harder?  Aspire to please God by acts of charity and service?  No, for even our best and kindest acts are polluted and degraded by selfish motives.  No matter how much we try, we fail to meet the standard of goodness set by God's own righteousness.  It's beyond human capability for anyone by his or her own efforts to have eternal life and not perish under the judgement we so properly deserve.

    Human life, human spirit, and earthly miracles are not enough.  We need divine life and the Holy Spirit, given to us by heavenly miracle.  It's not enough for us once to have been newborn-- we need also to be newborn from and by and through God.

    When Nicodemus, the member of the Jewish ruling council, came to Jesus by night, he wondered whether Jesus' presence marked the coming of the kingdom of God.  The coming of the kingdom was an event all good Jews eagerly awaited.  Jesus has been doing miraculous signs in Judea and Galilee, and Nicodemus recognizes by this that Jesus is a teacher sent from God, and the Lord is with Him.  Plainly, the next question is, "Rabbi, are You the Messiah, and will we see You inaugurating the kingdom of God very soon?"

    Nicodemus was expecting the time when God would fulfill all His covenant promises to His chosen people, an unending time of blessedness and joy for those who belonged to Him, with a simultaneous experience of punishment and woe for the enemies of God and Israel.  To a great extent, Nicodemus and his good Jewish countrymen were right.  But it's more than that.  The kingdom of God also has to do with the condition of every human heart.  Is God our Sovereign and Master-- or will we continue to be enslaved by sin?  Jesus gets right to the point: In order to see the kingdom of God-- that is, to be able to experience it, live in it, and enjoy the eternal life that only God can give-- it wasn't enough to have been born of the bloodline of Jacob.  No, "No one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again."

    For Nicodemus this is such a bizarre thing for Jesus to say that he tries to imagine an adult man crawling back into his mother's womb and having her deliver him all over again.  Absurd and impossible!

    But Jesus is not talking about anything natural or anything of this earth.  This new birth is from first to last an act of God by the power of the Holy Spirit.  In order to participate in the kingdom of God, we must be newborn from God.  Jesus says, "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit."   Elsewhere in John's gospel the Evangelist records how Jesus promised the Samaritan woman living water that would become a spring welling up to eternal life.  When He preached at the Feast of Tabernacles Jesus spoke of "streams of living water flowing from within" those who believed in Him, by which He meant the Holy Spirit, which believers would receive.  Repeatedly in Scripture water, especially flowing, running water, is used as a means of physical cleansing and refreshing, and as a symbol for spiritual cleansing and revival.  John the Baptist baptised people in the Jordan River, so they might be ready to accept the Messiah when He might be revealed to Israel.   Behind the physical element of water stands a powerful truth about what God does in the human heart so each of us can be fit and ready to see the kingdom of God.   

    And you and I can't do or be a single thing to bring the kingdom of God to us, or to make ourselves clean enough to see and enter it.  Jesus won't allow Nicodemus or us to delude ourselves.  We must have a spiritual rebirth, and that can happen only by the will and pleasure of the Holy Spirit Himself, who is God.  Can you or I control the wind?  No, we only see its influence and feel its force.  And so it is with the new birth from above-- it's totally up to God and His sovereign will.

    But we can take heart.  "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life."  God has provided the way for us to be born again and to have the life and Spirit that is more than enough.  Jesus Himself is the way, and as we believe in Him through the work of the Holy Spirit, we pass from life to death, from condemnation to adoption as sons, from darkness into light.

    Baptism is God's divinely-ordained sign and seal of this tremendous heavenly reality.  We take a common element, water, plain old H2O, and as we in faith invoke the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, our Lord promises to apply His promises to us and our children.  Our Christian baptism is our initiation into new and eternal life-- because, St. Paul says (again, in Romans, chapter 6), our baptism into Jesus Christ is our baptism into His death.  In John 3:14 and 15, Jesus says that "Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life."  By this He looks towards the death He was to suffer on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins.  His death washed away the guilt and stain of our sins in His own blood, and in the waters of baptism we are symbolically plunged into the blood of Jesus, that we might arise cleansed and purified and worthy to enter the kingdom of God.

    No one who refuses to come to God through the medium of Christ's atoning death will see life.  But if we are united with Him in His death, as Paul says, we will certainly also be united with Him in His resurrection.  With Christ in death, with Christ in newborn life-- this is our hope and our glory.

    But we also rejoice that when we are baptised into Christ, our old sinful self stays dead so we are no longer slaves to sin.  Oh, yes, that old sin nature still hangs around within it us, nagging us and tempting us to go back to what we used to be.  But now that we have been baptised into Christ, we are no longer what we used to be.  We are newborn from God-- truly innocent, truly perfect, truly holy-- because we have been united with Jesus Christ, the truly innocent, perfect, and holy one.

    As we baptise H-- A--, we express our faith that God will do for him what He has promised in Jesus Christ.  He is only a tiny child, and will not be able to express his faith in Christ as His Lord and Savior for many years.  But it was in our very helplessness that God took the initiative to revive and quicken us and raise us up in the power of the Spirit so we might call Jesus Master and Lord.  The Word of God written will teach H-- about Jesus and His death for him, and through the ministry of Christ's church as you surround him with your love and godly example, this child will come to  acknowledge and confirm the blessing of newborn life God gives to him and all of us in Christ. Young or old, whether you are a recent convert or a long-standing pillar of the Church, let us reaffirm our own baptisms, and humbly accept the what God has done for us through the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.  For God so loved you that He gave His only-begotten Son, that if you believe in Him, you will not perish, but have everlasting life.  By His sovereign grace you are reborn into eternal life.  God has done it, let us receive it, and praise His name forever and ever.  Amen.

A New Kind of Love

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

Fear, Love, and the Salvation of God

Texts: Acts 8:26-40; 1 John 4:7-21

THERE'S A LOT TO BE fearful about these days. The economy's going down the sewer. There's a strange new kind of flu going around. The Middle East is blowing up worse than ever. And the politicians in Washington seem to spend all their time thinking up new ways to take away our rights and liberties, not to mention our money.

The world is filled with Fear, and to paraphrase a certain poem, "If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, maybe you haven't grasped the situation!"

With all this, the Apostle John comes along with His First Letter and says, "Perfect love drives out fear." He commands us to love one another, and that will prove whether we have perfect love, as in, "The one who does not love does not know God."

That's putting a big burden on Love! Maybe you remember the hippie days of the late 1960s, early '70s. A lot of us were running around babbling about Love, Peace, and Flower Power. It was all "Make love, not war." The idea was that if we would all just bliss out and love everybody, all the nasty, scary things in the world could be magically overcome or ignored into oblivion. I was just young enough during that time to be skeptical about how that was going to work. And in the end, it didn't. My Baby Boomer generation turned out to be just as greedy, hateful, and rapacious as any other, we were just more sneaky and sanctimonious about it.

Is this the kind of love the Apostle John is talking? The warm-fuzzy, head-in-the-sand, self-seeking human love that fades out when the situation gets scary or just inconvenient?

No, John is speaking of the tough-as-nails, purifying, self-giving, fear-defying, eternal agape love of Almighty God. He begins our passage with this command: "Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God." This love of God is what we're to do our loving with, not some feeling we've imagined or felt or come up with on our own.

In the Greek this passage actually begins with "agapetoi ," which means "Beloved," or, "You who are loved with the love of God." So verse 7 could well read, "You who are right now already loved with the purifying, selfless, fear-defying love of God, love one another with the purifying, selfless, fear-defying love of God, for purifying, selfless, fear-defying love comes only from God." In other words, you've already got what you need right now to obey this command and stand up to fear, because you've received it from God Himself.

In the same vein, verse 8 would read, "Whoever does not love with this purifying, selfless, fear-defying love of God does not know God." Obviously not, because God Himself is this sort of love, and only those who know Him can love this way.

Moreover, the love of God will certainly show itself in anyone who has it. Not all at once, but if someone claims to know God and never, ever shows any sign of Christian love, you have every right to doubt his or her salvation.

But this agape love of God: how do we know it can face down all our fears and make it possible for us to love one another?

We know it, as John writes in verse 9, because God sent His only-begotten Son into the world that through Jesus Christ we might have-- not just bios-- physical life-- but zoe-- the eternal life of God. Think of what Jesus Christ did for you and me on the cross! He faced down all the terrors of sin, death, and hell. He defeated every last thing that we should ever be afraid of.

Verse 10 gives us a true picture of God's purifying, selfless, fear-defying love: It's not that we came up with this kind of love towards God and He rewarded us by loving us back. That's putting it the wrong way around. No, God initiated this love. He embodied it in His Son and His sacrifice for us. When Jesus shed His blood, beyond all else He dealt with the most fearsome thing you or I would ever have to face. Not disease, not death, not even all the devils of hell: Jesus turned aside or propitiated the wrath of God. He, the innocent Lamb of God, died in the place of us guilty sinners. And why? Because God so loved the world, as John writes in his Gospel. Because, as Paul writes in Romans, God was demonstrating His love for us, even while we were still rebellious sinners.

So, John continues in verse 11, "Beloved, since this is how God loved us, we also ought to love one another."

Let that sink in for a moment . . . God loved us when we were wretched, wrong, and undeserving. In response, we are to love one another with purifying, selfless, fear-defying love . . . even when the other person is wretched, wrong, and undeserving.

Oh. So we're supposed to let others walk all over us? After all, Jesus put up with cruel insults and dehumanizing treatment! Is that the love God demands that we show others?

But look at Jesus. No one victimized Him, not even when they nailed Him to the cross. The Scripture clearly teaches that Jesus humbled Himself and laid down His life willingly. When He submitted to humanity's scorn and cruelty, He did it on purpose so humanity might be redeemed from sins like scorn and cruelty. The love of God demonstrated in Jesus Christ always triumphs over the evils thrown against it, and raises us up to new life. The love of God can never condone sin, or promote it, or give up against it. The love of God wants nothing but the best for the object of His love, and that best is Jesus Christ and everything He gives.

Make no mistake: The purifying, selfless, fear-defying love of God working in us will call us to endure pain and insult from the unredeemed world. If you are persecuted for Jesus' sake, you follow in His steps. You exhibit Jesus Christ and His salvation to the world, that more and more people might be saved.

John says in verse 12, "No one has beheld God at any time"-- not with the physical eyes, that is. But as we love others as God loves us, with the same purifying, selfless, fear-defying love, the world will see in us an image of God working in love. As we grow more and more like His Son, that image is being perfected in us. How can you know if you're really saved? You know it by the presence of the Holy Spirit in you, bringing you along, conforming you to the image of Jesus Christ, assuring you of God's gracious love for you, encouraging you to show His love, helping you to repent when you fall short, and never, ever giving up on you.

Again, what's the primary way we show the purifying, selfless, fear-defying love of God? As verse 14 says, it's by bearing witness that the Father has sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world.

Notice what John says. For many years, "Christian witnessing" has meant "telling people how Jesus has improved my life/made me a better mother/made me a nicer person," etc. What I'm about to say may go against everything you've ever heard on the subject, but hear me: That is not Christian witnessing. Yes, Jesus may well have done all that for you. But our true witness to Christ is telling the old, old story of how God's only Son came in love to take on our flesh and hung on a cross to take away our sins and rose from the dead to bring us new life. We testify with John in verse 15, that if anyone confesses that this risen Jesus is the Son of God, God will make His home in that person and that person will forever be at home in God. That wouldn't be possible without the cross. And the cross was possible only through the purifying, selfless, fear-defying love of God that we have come to believe.

This is the loving witness we see in Acts, in the account of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch. Philip the deacon could have had every reason to be afraid in this situation. An angel speaks to you, that's frightening enough. But then the Spirit directed Philip to speak to a total stranger who by his clothes and jewelry and the style of his carriage was obviously a high government official. Philip's fellow-deacon, Stephen, had been martyred not long before. How could he know this official wouldn't turn him over to the Jewish authorities? And then, the man was a foreigner. And he was a eunuch-- pretty much all courtiers were in those days-- and the Law of Moses forbade any man with damaged genitals to be admitted to full fellowship with the people of God. What if Philip were doing something, well, unkosher in offering the Gospel to him?

The striking thing is, fear is the last emotion you'd attribute to Philip. There's simply no question of it. He's so full of the love of Jesus Christ that he comes right up to that man in his chariot and strikes up a conversation. He preaches Jesus Christ to him out of the Scriptures, just as we are commanded to do, and the Holy Spirit confirms the love of God towards that Ethiopian and moves him to believe and be baptised and go on his way with joy.

That is what our attitude will be when we love with the love of God. John says it again in verse 16: God is love. The world says, "Love is god," by which they mean unbridled sex and selfishness and emotional highs that don't last. That kind of love is cheap and shabby compared to the everlasting love that God is. God gives us His glorious, strong, fear-defying love to live in. It's like a castle He builds for us. It's fortified against all assault, and that castle of love is God Himself. He keeps us and defends us and perfects us in His love. He shields us from everything that could make us afraid.

Especially, His love for us in Jesus Christ shields us from the fear we would otherwise have on the Day of Judgement. We don't think much about the wrath of God against our sins. We don't spend time fearing it. But in the end-- literally-- it's the only thing we should really, truly be afraid of. Financial hardship, illness, starvation, grief, frightening as they are, they all come and go. Even if they end in death, people will say, "Well, now he (or she) is at peace." But the righteous wrath of God says No, for after this comes the judgement. His verdict will be final and those who have rejected Christ and His love will bear the horror and fear of their decision into eternity.

But if truly we have received the love of God shown us in Jesus Christ, we have no need to fear the Day of Judgement. We can be confident in that dreadful day, because already in this world God is working out His love in us, making us into models of Himself. There is no fear in love, for perfect love casts out fear.

Yes, but how do we get this perfect love? I used to think it was up to me, and knew I would never succeed. But the Holy Spirit helped me understand what John is saying here. You and I cannot gin up this perfect love. Rather, this perfect love is the purifying, selfless, fear-defying agape love of Almighty God. It's the love He puts in us by faith in the death and resurrection of His Son our Lord Jesus Christ.

In verse 18 it says that "fear has to do with punishment." Wait a minute: Aren't we afraid for a lot of other reasons as well? But when you think about it, the root of fear really is dread of punishment or retribution. Have you ever noticed how physical pain or sadness or uncertainty is worse when it's tied up with the feeling that you're alienated from other people and from God? Suffering is more fearful and harder to bear when you feel it might somehow be your fault.

I'm thinking of a situation in my own life. I won't go into detail, but members of my family and I find ourselves deeply concerned about a certain relative of ours. I've been very afraid and worried for her. And I find myself saying to myself, "Of course I'm afraid and worried for her! I love her, don't I?" But I have to admit that what I'm encouraging in myself really isn't love. Love is warm and expansive and open, even when it's full of sadness and pity. What I'm feeling over my relative is tight and cramped and closed. It has to do with me trying to atone for my own guilt in not doing more to prevent the situation. It's about me not quite trusting God to take care of her when I can't, so I make myself sick over the situation and imagine that means I'm in control.

I admit it: I am not yet perfected in love. And, I'm willing to guess, neither are you. We still fear. We still wallow in our guilt instead of giving it up and accepting the forgiveness Jesus won for us on the cross. We still try to make our faulty human love do when we could love with the saving love of God. Nevertheless, bit by bit, more and more, we love, because He first loved us.

And in case we should think this is all just a bunch of nice-sounding religious philosophy, John brings us down to everyday specifics in verses 20 and 21. Church member, do you consider yourself to be a lover of God? All right, how do you treat your brothers and sisters in Christ? How do you treat your pastor? Do you encourage them, build them up, support them, work in harmony with them, and always seek their highest good? Or are you always looking out for that juicy bit of gossip to spread? Does it give you a charge whenever you can undermine your opponent, so he or she won't look good? Do you keep a list of grievances and refuse to forgive, especially people in the church?

The Holy Spirit has a word for people who behave like that, and it is "Liar." For how can anyone love the unseen God as his Father if he hates someone who is his brother in Jesus Christ, whom he sees face to face?

No, the end and object of God's love for us is very practical. We must obey the command of our Lord Jesus Christ and love one another, as He has loved us.

And let us rejoice in that! God has loved us and does love us, with a love that is pure, selfless, and fear-defying. He proves it to us by the salvation He gives us in His Son Jesus Christ. Down with fear and let us stand firm in His love. This world throws many fearsome things at us, but what's the worst it can do? We and those we love could die, true. But for us who are God's beloved, to die is gain, for it means forever being with our loving Lord. In this encouragement, beloved, let us love one another with a purifying, selfless, fear-defying love, for purifying, selfless, fear-defying love is from God.

Alleluia, amen!

What Love Looks Like

Texts: Numbers 21:21:4-9; John 3:14-21

WHAT DOES SIN LOOK like? What does Love look like? More to the point, what does Love look like, the kind of Love with the power to overcome sin?

Our modern culture is sure it knows what love looks like. Love is always nice and caring and therapeutic. It never, ever, gives offense. It never tells anyone he’s wrong or implies that anyone is headed in the wrong direction. Love never says No. What really matters in love is that each person’s wants and desires and yearnings should be indulged and gratified. And if anything gets in the way of that gratification, including any law of God or man, it should be ignored or struck down.

That’s how our culture sees love. But can that love overcome sin?

I suppose that depends on our picture of "sin." In our world today, sin is usually seen as "brokenness" or "disease." It’s not anything we did or do or are, it’s something that’s been done to us. So that even if we end up hurting others or ourselves, that’s not really our fault. We’re gripped by an addiction! We’re suffering from an emotional disease! Something outside ourselves makes us do antisocial things and we just can’t help it.

Maybe the indulgent, therapeutic kind of love can deal with this kind of "sin." It "deals" with it by overlooking it and minimizing it and curing it. It says, "What you did isn’t so bad and you’re okay just the way you are!" It says, "You’re a victim and with our help you won’t have to face anything bad or difficult, ever again!"

These pictures of sin and love are widespread in our culture. So widespread, in fact, that you may be thinking, "Yes, love is the opposite of being judgmental! And sin really is nothing but brokenness, and we need therapy and healing, not condemnation!" And in our human relations, certainly there are times when judgment must be reserved. Certainly, there are occasions when the sinfulness of this world system gets hold of a person, and he or she absolutely needs to get psychological help in order to get free of that phobia or neurosis or whatever, before he or she can do what is right and good.

But for most of us most of the time, it’s convenient to see love as indulgent and sin as something we can’t help, because it vindicates us as good, okay people.

It works wonderfully-- until we look at the God-Man Jesus Christ, and gaze upon His understanding of sin, and see the kind of love it took to overcome sin. Then our blindness is stripped away and we see the enormity of our offenses, and how great and awesome is the love of God that defeated it for our sakes.

What does sin look like, according to our holy God? In John Chapter 3 the Jewish ruling council member Nicodemus has come to Jesus by night to learn more about this wonder-worker from Galilee. Jesus immediately comes to the point of His ministry on earth: To bring new, eternal life to dead, lost sinners, so they might enter the kingdom of God.

But Nicodemus doesn’t get it. He misunderstands what Jesus means about being born again. And when Jesus uses the example of the wind to show how the Holy Spirit can do whatever He wants without human help, Nicodemus replies, "How can this be?" So in His mercy our Lord gives him a picture of human sin and divine love that he surely cannot misread, an example from Israel’s history that surely Nicodemus has known from his youth. Jesus says to him, "Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man [that is, Jesus Himself] must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life."

So we look at our reading from Numbers, and we think, Hey, what the Israelites did doesn’t seem that bad. We’d complain, too, if we’d been tromping around a desert for forty years eating the same old manna and never knowing where our next drink of water was coming from! Wasn’t the Lord a little, well, cruel in putting His people to death for such a small offense?

But when we defend them and prosecute God we prove that we, too, are guilty of the same sin. Think who these people were! Think who this God was, that they were blaspheming against! They were the children of the Lord’s promise. He was and is the Lord of heaven and earth, who’d rescued them with power from the overwhelming might of Egypt. He’d fed them miraculously with the bread of angels, as it says in Psalm 78. He provided them with all the water they needed! He gave them victory over every army that marched out to block their way! Year after year after year they’d seen that the Lord God of Israel could be depended on totally. When they complained on the way around Edom, they weren’t just speaking against Moses and their living conditions, they were speaking against the Lord Himself! And we are exactly the same, when we exalt our desires and fears up against the faithfulness of God.

The Lord sent our spiritual ancestors a punishment that was a picture of sin itself. What does sin looks like? It looks like snakes that bite us so we die. Sin is hissing, insidious, and sneaky, and it fills us with the fire of death. The Hebrew word translated "venomous" actually means fiery, and I’m afraid that by using the familiar term our modern translation has lost us something.

Ancient writers spoke of a little red serpent called the "dipsas," whose name means "thirst." It could bite a man without being felt, but its venom would engender a raging, burning thirst that made the bitten one run mad and commit any crime or dishonor to slake it. All the time the victim would think it was thirst alone that was the problem, but drinking all the rivers of the world dry could not keep him from fiery death.

That’s a picture of sin. We think our problem is something outside ourselves, something we desire, and if we can get it we’ll be all right. But the venom of sin is in us, working through all our members and taking us down to death.

Whether the fiery serpents in question were the dipsas or some other kind of poisonous snake, they were a perfect image of the Israelites’ sin.

But Israel in the desert couldn’t pretend it was mere hunger and thirst that was killing them. They couldn’t even pretend it was the fiery serpents themselves, as if death would stop if God would be more "loving" and take the snakes away. They faced the fact that it was their own sin they were dying of. They repented and said to Moses, "We sinned when we spoke against the Lord and against you. Pray that the Lord will take the snakes away from us."

So Moses prayed for the people. But it’s striking: Numbers does not tell us that the Lord took the snakes away, at least, not at that time. Something crucial had to happen first.

The Lord commanded Moses to make a model of one of the snakes and transfix it on a tall pole and set it up where the people could see it. Moses made it out of bronze, and if you’ve ever seen new bronze, you know it’s a bright fiery reddish-gold. The dying ones were to look away from themselves to an image of their death fixed to a pole, and by looking they would live.

Even today, superstitious people make charms and amulets that are supposed to ward off evil. But this wasn’t like that. The bronze serpent raised up by Moses didn’t prevent snakebite; it healed and saved those already dying of it. And the power was not in the image itself, it was in the Lord their God. The Israelites had refused to see that He was able to bring them safely to new life in the Promised Land. But now in this crisis they had to look to His remedy if they wanted to live, no matter how strange or repellant it appeared.

Our Lord Jesus said to Nicodemus and He says to us: God’s provision for our salvation is like His provision for His people Israel. It is only by looking to the Son of Man lifted up on the cross and believing in Him that we can enter the kingdom of God and have eternal life.

We all know John 3:16. It says, "For God so loved the world, that he gave only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life." The love the world believes in says God gave His Son to be our Good Example, to show us that if we try hard enough we can overcome our sins. But the burning, relentless, pure love of God tell us that God gave us Son to be crucified to bring new birth to people who were perishing in sin.

Jesus tells us that He wasn’t sent into the world to condemn the world. Why? Because we humans and the systems we create aren’t really that bad? No. Jesus didn’t need to come to condemn the world, because the world and its inhabitants are condemned already.

We get the mistaken idea that we all start out neutral. If we’re ordinary worldly sinners we think we make ourselves worthy of eternal life or death depending on whether our good deeds outweigh our bad ones, or the other way around. If we’re a certain kind of religious sinner we think we start out neutral and God arbitrarily sorts us into the "saved" and the "damned."

But no. You and I and the littlest baby born a minute ago are all born damned. It’s the default position, as they say in the computer world. And until grace of God intervenes we like it that way. "This is the verdict," our Lord says, "Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil." Without Jesus Christ crucified we would all willfully go on in death and sin, hissing and murmuring and biting against the one true and holy God. But God sent His Son into the world to make it possible for us not to be damned. He caused His Son to be transfixed on that cross to make it possible for us to come out of darkness into His glorious light. It is all God’s love working in us and for us!

The bronze serpent lifted up in the wilderness was a symbol of the people’s death; in the same way, the cross of Jesus Christ lifted up on Calvary is a true picture of our death that He died for us. In His cross we see all the vicious ugliness of our sin. On the cross we see the righteous, holy Lamb of God made sin for us. His cross was the cross we had earned and His death the death we deserved. Nevertheless, by looking to that terrible object in faith we come to enjoy all the beauty and peace of eternal life. In that cross we see the ultimate demonstration of the overflowing love of God!

This is marvellous good news! Look and see what good news it is for you! The light of God is showing you that sin is far more horrible than the world can ever picture, yes, but the love of God is far more glorious and powerful to defeat sin than we could ever imagine or hope!

What does our sin look like? It looks like the evil of the innocent Son of God dying in agony on a cross. What does God’s love look like? It looks like the grace and mercy of the innocent Son of God dying in agony on a cross! Dying, He destroyed our death; rising, He restored our life!

So rejoice in His victory, and live in the new birth you have received in Jesus Christ! When you are tempted to minimize the evil and effect of sin, see how your Saviour suffered to overcome it. When you feel the venom and thirst of sin in your life, look to Jesus lifted up to be your refreshment and cure. When you feel that you can never be good enough for God, see Christ’s arms stretched out on that fatal tree, and be assured that He has been good enough for God for you.

Look to Him, and live. For our crucified Lord is not merely a picture of the sin-overpowering Love of God-- Dying and rising, Jesus Christ is the Love of God Himself.

The Voice of the Lord

Texts: Isaiah 42:1-9; Matthew 3:13-17

WHAT WOULD IT BE LIKE to hear the voice of the Lord?

I mean, actually physically hear the voice of God?

How would we feel? Thrilled? Privileged? Would we be pleased with ourselves because, hey, the Lord God Almighty is speaking to me!

Would hearing the voice of God with our ears be a comforting and comfortable thing? Would it assure us that we are loved and cared for by Him?

Or, rather would it not make us cower down in awestruck fear, overwhelmed by God’s glory? Would it not convict us of our puniness and our sin?

That’s how it was with the Children of Israel when they heard the voice of the Lord at Mount Sinai, after Moses had brought them out of Egypt. The voice of the Lord in their ears was too much for them! They begged Moses to ask the Lord not to speak to them audibly any more. "You talk to the Lord, Moses," they cried. "We can’t bear it!"

The psalm used in our Call to Worship, Psalm 29, is about the awe-inducing effect of the almighty voice of the Lord. And even here, it’s not the direct voice of God, it’s the voice of God as He expresses Himself through wind and thunder, through tempest and earthquake. It’s a wonderful thing to experience from a safe distance, but you wouldn’t want the full brunt of it bearing down on you.

When I was in college in Kansas, during wild thunderstorms people in my dorm would go out on the front porch and cheer God. A really bright flash of lightning would streak down, and be followed by a stupendous clap of thunder, and we’d yell, "Yeaaa, God!!"

I don’t know how many of us were sincerely giving praise and who was just being flippant. But I’d wager that if that lightning had hit us, or if that roaring wind had collapsed that concrete porch roof on our heads, we wouldn’t be going, "Yeaaa, God!" anymore. We’d be too overwhelmed to say anything at all.

And that’s what it’s like when it’s merely the voice of God speaking through Nature! How much more awesome, how much more unbearable would be the voice of God hitting our ears in its unshielded self!

We imagine it would be wonderful to hear the direct, unmediated voice of Almighty God, because we forget how utterly high and majestic He is compared to us.

It’s not just that we are created beings and He is the everlasting Godhead who dwells in inexpressible light and glory. Adam was a created being, and he communed with the Lord God in the garden of Eden as friend to friend.

No, the thing that would make the unshielded, audible voice of God unbearable to us is the fact that we are rebellious and sinful created beings. The unmediated voice of the Lord would remind us painfully of that fact, as it reminded the Israelites in the desert. It would remind us that we have broken His law and betrayed His trust. The naked voice of God speaks judgement on all our little schemes for getting in good with Him and climbing up to heaven on our little four-foot step-ladders. Actually hearing the voice of almighty God would not be a pleasant thing. It would be a terrifying and devastating thing indeed.

But our Lord God does love us, in spite of our sins. He cares for us and wants to reconcile us to Himself. So from of old He spoke to certain chosen individuals, to patriarchs like Abraham and poets like David and prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah. I would dearly love to know what that was like, whether they heard the Lord’s voice with their ears, or in visions, or only in their hearts. However it was, He made them able to bear it, so they could bring His message of repentance and love to His people.

But somehow, His people, most of them anyway, were deaf to what the prophets had to say. Their life, their hope, their entire purpose for being was bound up in the Word of God, in what the Almighty Lord spoke to them. But when He spoke to them by the prophets, His people wouldn’t listen, and when He spoke to them directly, they couldn’t listen.

But praise His name! His prophets kept on listening, and we have the record of what some of them heard. And so in the 42nd chapter of the prophecy of Isaiah, we read what the Lord said about the Servant of His who is to come.

This Servant, says the Lord, will carry the Lord God’s message of justice to the nations. He will bring the peoples of the world into the Lord’s covenant. His service-- or, we could say, His ministry (for the word "ministry" means "service") will mean light to the Gentiles, sight to the blind, and freedom for the captives-- captives of oppression and tyranny or captives to sin. All these gracious things the Servant will do.

Now here is a sad thing: Our Jewish cousins generally interpret this passage to refer to the Jewish nation. The work of this Servant of the Lord, the rabbis say, has to do with the good influence the Jews will have in the world. And it’s true, the Jews have had great and glorious influence in this present world, in all sorts of ways.

The trouble is, this Isaiah passage can’t possibly be talking about a mere mortal, or any group of mere mortals. The Lord says the Servant will "bring forth justice" and "establish justice on the earth." How can any man, however noble, do that? It’s hard enough for even the best of judges to judge with total righteousness in even individual cases. Only God Himself can establish justice over the entire earth!

And the Lord says the islands-- that is, the remotest parts of the world-- will put their hope in the Servant’s law. Is this some system of laws generated by a man or a nation? No, for even the best system of human laws, even the U.S. Constitution itself, for example, falls far short of the perfect law of God! But the law of the Servant isn’t the law of any man, it’s the law of God. If the Servant had made it up for Himself, the Lord would not praise Him for establishing it. But He not only commends Him for it, He declares that the Servant will do this in the power of God’s Spirit.

And, says the Lord, His Servant will be a covenant for the people. The passage doesn’t say, "You will administer or draw up or deliver My covenant for the people"; no, the Servant will be that covenant Himself. All the good promises and protections of belonging to God and being His people will be wrapped up in the Servant. All the pledges of God will be Yes and Amen in Him. No mere man can claim that!

Only God can do all these things. Only God can claim this glory. The Lord Himself says it in verse 8:

I am the Lord; that is my name!
I will not give my glory to another
or my praise to idols.

No sinful, fallen human being could do all these things and gain all this praise. Only the Lord God Almighty is capable of carrying out these tasks. Only the Lord God Almighty Himself can be His own perfect Servant, the Chosen One, the One on whom His Spirit rests.

But if the Servant is somehow God Himself, don’t we still have the same problem? How can we hear this message of justice and hope and liberation? For as Psalm 29 says, the voice of the Lord shakes the desert, the voice of the Lord twists the oaks and strips the forests bare!

This is how we will hear it: We will hear it softly and tenderly; earnestly, pleadingly. In verse 2 of our Isaiah passage the Lord says,

He will not shout or cry out,
or raise his voice in the streets.

The Servant of the Lord would be the Lord Himself coming to us with the voice of love and forgiveness. He would not come as a conqueror, nor as an angry overlord marching into a rebellious city to claim his rights. No,

A bruised reed he will not break,
and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.

He would support and encourage what is good; He would have mercy on our weakness. He would speak so we could hear Him; His voice would be pitched so we could respond.

It would be wonderful to hear the voice of the Lord like that. But it seems too much to hope for.

But it isn’t too much to hope for. The Servant of the Lord, the hope of the nations who was and is God Himself, has come to us, and His name is Jesus the Christ. Our passage in Isaiah introduces Him and His ministry seven hundred years before He would appear, and our gospel reading from St. Matthew introduces Him as He begins His ministry on this earth.

As Jesus our Lord comes to be baptised, we see Him coming in humility. We see Him entering into our weakness and sympathizing with our frailty. John the Baptist says, "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?" He’s right, humanly-speaking, to say this. For John’s baptism was a sign of repentance from sin, and our Lord Jesus had no sin to repent. But Jesus is the Servant of the Lord who has been called in righteousness, and He submits to baptism to fulfill all righteousness. His very willingness to share the sign and symbol of our sin-- though He never sinned Himself-- declares His good news that we can share the reality of righteousness in Him. The baptism of our Lord Jesus Christ speaks of new life and repentance that don’t depend on our efforts, but on the liberating, eye-opening, covenant-making mercy of God.

Jesus was baptised for us in the Jordan River, and as He came up out of the water, heaven was opened and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on Him. As the prophet Isaiah said,

Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen one in whom I delight;
I will put my Spirit on him.

And a voice from heaven is heard: it is the voice of the Lord God Almighty, saying, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well-pleased." The unshielded voice of God was heard by the ears of man: heard by John the Baptist and his disciples standing around, and they were not overwhelmed, they were not judged, they were not destroyed!

How could this be?

It could happen because here at the Jordan the voice of God gave testimony to Him who was and is and will always be the voice of God on earth. From now on and forever more, the Man Jesus the Christ, the Son of God, is the Voice of God speaking to humankind. From now on, what God does for mankind He will do through Christ. The voice of God at the Jordan River testifies that this one Man, this Galilean, is the Servant of the Lord who will not make a clamour in the streets, who will not rant and scream to lord it over others, but who will be the Son of Man, preaching the Good News of new life in Him, the humble King of Glory who came not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.

If you want to hear the direct voice of God, look to Jesus Christ. Look to His obedient life. Put your utter trust in His sacrificial death. Hear Him call you to share in His glorious resurrection.

Accept no counterfeits. Whatever voice does not glorify Jesus Christ, whatever voice is an enemy to His cross, whatever voice would tell you there are other ways to find divine justice, liberation, and light--that is not the voice of God. Jesus Christ is how God speaks to us. Jesus is the Voice of God to us, recorded in His holy Word, testified to in our hearts by His Holy Spirit.

Jesus is the voice of God to us now, just as much as He was to those who heard Him preach and teach in Galilee and Judea long ago. In fact, He is more so, for now He has ascended into heaven and can minister to His people in every time and place. For as the prophet says,

In faithfulness he will bring forth justice;
he will not falter or be discouraged
till he establishes justice on earth.
In his law the islands will put their hope.

This is our Saviour. This is our Lord. He calls you to trust in Him, to trust what He did for you at His cross where the voice of His blood spoke forgiveness and covering for your sins. He calls you to let Him open your eyes, that you might see your sins for the filthy things they are-- and then see them taken away, totally removed, by the power of His sacrifice. His voice is calling you out of the prison of your prejudices, your limitations, your ungodly fears and your agonizing memories. He speaks to free you from the deep dungeon of your brokenness, to bring you into the wideness of His marvellous wholeness and light.

Will you hear His voice today? You may say, I was baptised as an infant; I’ve known Jesus all my life. If that is your thought, yes, praise Him for that grace. But we who have known Jesus all our lives need to hear the voice of the Lord just as much as the one who has never heard or responded to it at all. We need to hear His Word daily to support us, to uphold us, to help us persevere until the day we are made perfect in Him. We need the testimony of His Spirit confirming His truth to us. With open ears and willing hearts, let us hear and follow our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the Voice of the Lord: He calls us to repentance, He gives us hope, and He invites us to share His justice, His liberation, and His light.