God's Right to Choose

Texts:    Isaiah 41:8-14; John 6:28-51

     SERMON TITLES ARE TRICKY things.  For awhile I thought I'd call this message, "Whose Right to Choose?"  But that might've been a distraction.  Some of you might've spent first two-thirds of the service thinking, "Oh, goodness, is she going to preach on That subject?" and I wouldn't have blamed you one bit.  Even if you thought I might be upholding the position you take yourself, you still might've wondered why on earth I'd march in here and raise such a controversial matter.

    So instead, the sermon title is "God's Right to Choose."  And even though this message won't tackle the subject of abortion, we will be exploring another subject that's been just as controversial in the history of the Church.  And that's the doctrine of God's sovereign right to choose who shall be saved.

    But with all the issues facing the Church these days, especially with all the divisions and troubles facing us in the PC(USA), why bring up a matter nobody cares about any more?  Ask any average Christian about how we get saved, and they'll say you have to make a decision for Christ.  That God gives us evidence about who Jesus is, but it's up to our own free wills whether we come to him or not.  Only those hyper-intellectual folks in the Reformed camp keep pushing the idea that salvation is all up to God.  Right?  Isn't that the popular opinion?  So why should I rake up the matter?  Why not just let sleeping dogs lie?

    First of all, dear friends, because our Gospel reading from St. John clearly teaches that we made our decision for Christ because God the Father first made His decision for us.  Second, because if we take the credit for bringing ourselves to faith we rob God of His rightful glory.  And third, if we go around thinking it was up to us to get ourselves saved, we might well worry about whether we can keep ourselves saved.  No, we need more assurance than that, and it is only the doctrine of God's sovereign choice that is faithful to Scripture, that gives Him the glory, and can keep us happy and secure through the temptations and perils of this earthly life.

    Our text from John 6 is a portion of Jesus' Bread of Life discourse.  You remember that He fed the 5,000 on the other side of the Sea of Galilee, and how the crowds chased after Him.  They wanted to make Him king so He could keep on feeding them with miraculous physical bread the rest of their lives.  He must be the Messiah! they think, and that's what the Messiah should do.  Jesus is no politician.  He bluntly tells them they're wrong.  No, He tells them rather to work for the food of eternal life, which He, the Son of Man will give them.  For He is the Son of Man who has God the Father's approval.

    The people conclude that to have eternal life, you must have the Father's approval.  This is true.  And to get God's approval, they assume, you have to do some kind of work to please Him. Well, we'll see about that.

    So at the beginning of our reading the spokesmen ask, "What must we do to do the works God requires?"  Another way to putting this is, "What must I do to be saved?" or "How can I earn eternal life."  Jesus' answer is, "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent."

    Did you notice how our Lord put that?  It wasn't, "The work God requires from you is to believe in Me."  No, it's "the work of God."  Right here we see that belief in Christ is the only way to eternal life, but that belief is not something we do for ourselves, it's all God's sovereign work and grace.

    The crowd wasn't comfortable with that.  They understood that Jesus was referring to Himself.  But if they were going to accept Him as the bringer of eternal life, they weren't going to be hornswoggled, no, not them!  Hey, Jesus, you gave us earthly bread, can you give us some physical bread from heaven?  Let's have some manna and see you outdo Moses, if you can!

    Jesus teaches them, and us, that the true bread from heaven is not the manna God gave through Moses in the wilderness long ago.  The true bread of heaven is Jesus Himself, whom the Father has given.

    We need to remember that and take it to heart.  Too often people see Christianity merely as something that'll make life better for us in this world, and then, oh yes, fire insurance when we die.  And when Christians suffer in this life, unbelievers jeer that our religion "doesn't work."  Or we ourselves wonder if God doesn't love us any more.  No!  No matter how much we may lack the bread of this world, no matter how much we may suffer from grief or want or trouble, God Himself gives us Jesus Christ, the Bread of Heaven, and Jesus has given us life that can never be diminished and never be taken away.  As our Lord says in verse 35, "He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty."

    We must come to Him if we are to have eternal satisfaction and eternal life.  Again, in verse 40 Jesus says, "For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life."  But how can we come?  How can we look to Him and believe?  It's our sinful human nature to reject Him!  Jesus says to the people, "You have seen me and still you do not believe."  In verses 41 and 42 they grumble and complain that He dared to claim He was the Bread from heaven.  Wasn't He just the son of Joseph the carpenter?  Never mind the multitude He fed yesterday with a few loaves and fishes.  Never mind all His healings and exorcisms and the dead people He'd raised!  They were too clever to believe He was able to give them eternal life!

    Let's not deceive ourselves.  If we'd witnessed for ourselves what Jesus did we wouldn't automatically believe.  It takes more than great information about Jesus to bring us to faith in Him.  Even some atheists are willing to look at the historical evidence and admit that Jesus really did do miracles and He really did rise from the dead.  But those facts aren't enough to compel them to believe in Him and be saved.

    No.  Salvation is the singlehanded work of God the Father.  "All that the Father gives me will come to me," says Jesus.  To be saved, we must be given to Christ by the Father.  In verse 44 Jesus states, "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him."  And the word translated "draw" doesn't mean to attract or to woo, it means to drag a dead weight, like hauling a wrecked car out of a ditch, or even to pull someone against their will, like dragging a lawbreaker off the jail.  Because when it comes to Jesus and salvation, we are dead weights.  We are criminal offenders against the holy law of God.  We cannot help ourselves into salvation.  Until God's saving grace comes upon us, we don't really want to be saved.  Eternal life in Christ is the gift of God and comes from Him alone.  Moreover, the choice of  who will inherit eternal life belongs to God and God alone.  He alone has the right to choose.

    But why does the Father choose to save some and passes others by?  The exact choice of who shall be elect and who not is hidden in the mind of God.  But in various places in Scripture, such as Romans 9, we read that His purpose is to make the riches of His glory known to the objects of His mercy, even us, whom He has called.  God works out His purpose in the mystery of election, and it will bring Him the praise and glory that is His due.

    Some preachers can be heavy-handed with this doctrine. Believe me, I know. I sat under a preacher like that for several months just after I graduated from college.  He probably didn't mean to, but I and a lot of other members of the congregation got the idea that the world was full of people just yearning for a chance to believe in Jesus Christ and be saved, but God arbitrarily chose some for heaven and purposely sent the rest to hell, even if they were seeking for heaven with all their might.  And this was supposed to bring God glory.

    The fact is, we don't start out good, or even neutral.  St. Paul says in Ephesians 2 that all of us were born dead in trespasses and sins; like everyone else, we were the proper objects of God's righteous wrath.  Jesus Himself in John 3 tells Nicodemus that "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 their deeds will be exposed."

    Brothers and sisters, God does not need to choose for anybody to go to Hell!  The Scripture says nothing about God electing anyone to be lost.  Why?  Because tragically, it would be redundant.  God doesn't need to condemn us; we condemn ourselves by our sinfulness and our sins.  The people of this world demand justice.  O, let me never demand justice, for if God exercised His justice on us not one of us could be saved. Our entire salvation depends on the injustice of the sinless Son of God dying in our place!

    No, the thorny question is not, "How could a loving God choose some to be condemned?" but "How could a holy God choose any to be saved?"  As Charles Wesley wrote in his hymn,  "Amazing love! How can it be that Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?"

    But some will worry, "If salvation all depends on God and there's nothing I can do about it, how how can I know if I'm chosen?  How do I know if I'm saved?"  To you I say, "Do you want to be saved?  Do you believe not merely that Jesus died and rose again, but that He died and rose again for you?  Do you look at your past attitudes and actions, especially those things you thought were going to put God in your debt, and see how foolish and wrong they were?  Do you want to do better, not because God will punish you if you don't, but to show how thankful you are for Jesus and what He's done for you?  That is the Father drawing you, dragging you from death to your new life in Christ."

    And because your salvation had nothing to do with your goodness or anything you deserved, the Father worked it according to His sovereign choice, you how can relax and be confident in His love.  Jesus says in verse 37, "All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away."  God is not going to change His mind tomorrow about giving you to Christ!  In verse 39 our Savior says, "And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all he has given me, but raise them up at the last day."   Our Lord repeats this promise in verse 40 and 44. God's choice of you is forever!  By His choice He saves us, He keeps us, and one day, by His unchanging choice He will raise us up in glory in His heavenly kingdom, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

    We have this sure and certain hope of the resurrection, because God chose Jesus Christ to be the living bread who came down from heaven.  For the bread of life is His flesh, which He gave for the life of the world.  Whoever comes to Him will not hunger, and whoever believes in Him will not thirst.  God has exercised His right to choose, and all satisfaction, all joy, all fulfillment of life and bliss of heaven are found in Jesus Christ our crucified and risen Lord.  In Him we are chosen, in Him we are saved, in Him we find eternal life.  Be at peace, for by God's gracious choice He will keep you in Jesus His Son, and Jesus  will surely raise you up at the last day.

"But They Laughed at Him"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Christ's Resurrection and You: Where Is He Now?

Texts:    Hebrews 4:14 - 5:10; 7:23 - 8:2; Acts 1:1-11

    SHORTLY AFTER EASTER, I GOT a message on Facebook from my oldest niece.  She said she and some of her friends were discussing Jesus' resurrection, and they found that there was a question that stumped them all.  That is, where had Jesus gone after that? When did He die the second time?  Where was He really buried?  And where could she look in the Bible for answers about this?  She wanted to know for herself, and she wanted to tell her girlfriends, too.

    Immediately I shared with her the good news of our Lord's ascension that we are celebrating today, and pointed her to some verses that would assure her that Jesus had never died again.   I felt bad that I couldn't do more at the moment, since I was in the middle of something, but I hoped I'd given her even to start on.

    But I felt worse-- shocked and saddened, actually-- that my 40-year-old niece and her friends would have the need to questions like that at all.  She attends church regularly.  From what I know of him, her pastor seems to have his head screwed on straight when it comes to doctrine.  How could she even imagine that Jesus could have died a second time and not understand that He's in heaven even now in His glorified human body? How terrible for her to be thinking that Christ's victory over death wasn't final and absolute!

    But then I had to think: How much do any of us, even us Christians, think and know about the Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ?  This past Thursday was Ascension Day.  How many of us commemorated it then?  We have the big celebration of Easter, then next thing we know, it's Pentecost Sunday and the Holy Spirit's coming.  And sometime in between, Jesus just seems to have slipped away.  Where did He go?  Where is He now?  I had to be glad my niece was asking the question in any form at all.

    Our reading from Acts shows us that Jesus did not merely slip away: He departed, and He did it openly.  Remember how in the Upper Room before His crucifixion, Jesus told His disciples that it was needful that He go away, so He could send the Holy Spirit to them. But for forty days after He rose they'd been seeing Him in that very physical resurrection body of His-- physical, except that in it He could transcend physical limitations like distance and solid walls and locked doors.  And it seems that the disciples were getting used to that.  It was just like old times, almost, having Jesus around eating with them and teaching them.  The disciples had to be shown that that time was coming to an end, that now a new order was to begin when Jesus would send the gift His Father promised, even the Holy Spirit.

    Moreover, the disciples had to understand where Jesus had gone.  He couldn't just fail to show up one day, and never return.  St. Luke leaves no room for any theories about Jesus quietly retiring to the countryside like I heard somebody or other theorize recently, or going off to India to become a guru, like the New Agers believe.  Jesus made sure the disciples saw Him physically taken up before their very eyes.  A cloud enveloped Him until both He and it were no longer visible.  This was no ordinary cloud of water vapor.  The disciples were Jews and knew their history. They would certainly realize that this was the cloud of God's presence that led the children of Israel in the wilderness, the cloud of glory surrounded Jesus, Moses, and Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration. This cloud was a visible manifestation of the presence of God Himself, and in it Jesus stepped directly from the realm of this world into the heaven of God His Father.

    But you can't blame the disciples for standing there looking "intently into the sky as he was going."  Or for keeping on looking after He had disappeared.  We'd do the same.  It took two men in white--angels-- who suddenly stood there with them to tell them that Jesus had been taken from them into heaven.  The angels promised, too, that He would come back in the same way they'd seen Him go-- riding on the clouds of heaven.

    And between the time of His ascension, and the time of His return in glory, where is our Lord Jesus?  He indeed is in heaven, at the right hand of the Father in glory.

    So what is He doing now?  Has He finished with us, now that He is high and exalted?  Is He simply back to enjoying the rights and privileges of being the Son of God, with never a thought for His people here on earth?  Never think it!  There's a 19th century Welsh hymn whose chorus is a dialogue between the men and the women of the congregation.  It begins with the question, "Who saved us from eternal loss?" ("Who but God's Son upon the cross?") and it ends with the women asking, "Where is He now?" and both men and women sing together, "In heaven interceding."

    That's exactly where He is, and exactly what He's doing there.  This is the meaning of Christ's ascension, and the wonderful truth our verses from the Letter to the Hebrews reveal to us.  Jesus is indeed the One who intercedes for us before the Father.  He is our great High Priest who even now represents us to God, Who even now can point to His one, perfect, and everlasting sacrifice that forever will atone for our sins.

    In Hebrews 4:14 Jesus is described as our great high priest who has gone through the heavens.  The ancient Jews understood that there were ranks of angels and other heavenly beings, and ranks of the heavens in which they dwelt.  Paul speaks of this in 2 Corinthians 12, when he tells about a man in Christ-- himself, actually-- who was somehow caught up into the third heaven, the paradise of God.  By saying that Jesus had gone "through the heavens," the writer makes it clear that our Lord has gone all the way into the divine Holy of Holies, all the way into the presence chamber of almighty God.  Nothing stopped Him, nothing disqualified Him; Jesus is right there sharing His Father's throne.

    Therefore we have every reason to hold firmly to the faith we possess.  So we trust and believe that Jesus Christ died for our sins, and that His blood atones for all our unrighteousness, redeems us from death, and makes us holy before God.  We have faith in Jesus, our great High Priest.

    I think we Christians, especially we Protestants, have gotten so used to the idea of Jesus as our Intercessor that we forget it means He is our High Priest and that we need one just as much as ancient Israel did.   They needed a high because they were in themselves unholy in God's sight, under His wrath, and they needed sacrifice offered for them so they could be accepted by God.  So do we.  Not just anyone could make this offering. The high priest represented all the people, especially on the Day of Atonement when he took the blood of the sacrifices into the Holy of Holies.  He was one of them, a Jew like they were, but he had a special appointment from God.  The priest was to be God's chosen man, who could identify with the people and he with them.  That's what we need as well.

    The Jewish system found its fulfillment in Jesus Christ, incarnate by the Holy Spirit through the Virgin Mary.  He is definitely is a high priest who can sympathize with our weaknesses.  In Hebrews chapter 1 we read that Jesus the Son of God took on true flesh and blood and shared in our humanity. He wasn't an angel or a mere divine appearance, He was a man like us.  Like us, on this earth Jesus was tempted in every way we are.  But unlike Aaron and his descendants, Jesus did not fall into sin. Unlike them, He did not have to first sacrifice a bull for His own sin-offering before He could make atonement for the people.  Jesus our sympathetic High Priest  was holy and without sin.  Therefore, He can represent us in heaven as an Intercessor who is totally acceptable to our holy God.

    With Jesus as our high priest, we can approach the heavenly throne of grace with confidence, knowing we'll receive mercy there for His sake.  Verse 2 of chapter 5 says that the high priest "is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and going astray, since he himself is subject to weakness."  Jesus knows what it's like to be in this mortal flesh.  Again, He does not have to offer sacrifices for His own sins, but in verses 7 and 8 we can see how in His heart and in His flesh He suffered for us, how as a Man He truly had to go through the ache and agony of sorrow over our sins, how finally He had to submit to the torture and death of the cross.  Jesus the Son of God earned His high priesthood as the Son of Man, and so, even now, He is in heaven sympathizing with our weaknesses, dealing gently with us when we go astray, and representing us in matters relating to God.

     But we see in 4:4 that it wouldn't have been enough for Jesus to be our fellow-human, if God had not personally chosen Him.  God called Him to the honor of the high priesthood, just like He called Aaron in the early days of Israel, so long ago.  In the words of Psalm 22, the Lord God has said,

    "You are my Son;
        today I have become your Father."

And in Psalm 110 God says to Him,

    "You are a priest forever,
        in the order of Melchizedek." 

    Jesus Christ has been appointed by the Father to be our representative forever.  He's not like the priests of the line of Aaron of the house of Levi. The Aaronic priests could not continue in office forever; they were mortal and one after another, they all died. In contrast, God says that Christ is a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.  Melchizedek, king of Salem and priest of God Most High, is referred to in Hebrews 7:3 as being "without father or mother, without genealogy, without beginning of days or end of life."  Figuratively-speaking, he is deathless, and so he is a walking prophecy of the Son of God who lives forever and exercises the same kind of priesthood that never ends and never can be destroyed.

    We don't have to worry about Jesus our High Priest dying a second time and leaving us with some inadequate or unsympathetic successor.  No, because He lives forever He is able to save completely everyone who comes to God through Him, because He ever lives to make intercession for us.

    Let us take comfort in these words.  I know my sin, and I know I need a lot of interceding for.  And I think you realize the same thing about yourself.  There will never come a time when Jesus our ascended Lord stops pleading for us before the Father.  He always lives, and because of that, Jesus can keep on interceding for us.  At the same time, interceding for us is what Jesus always lives for!

    Jesus meets our every need.  He has ascended to the Father: as verse 7:26 puts it, He is exalted above the heavens.  So while He has experienced human weakness and can sympathize with us, at the same time He is holy, blameless, pure, and set apart from sinners.  That's the kind of high priest we need.  Jesus is acceptable in God's presence and so His prayers on our behalf are acceptable to God.

    Jesus is qualified to be our eternal high priest by His merciful humanity, by His divine appointment, by His suffering and intercession for us here on this earth, by His deathlessness, by His purity and holiness, and by His ascension to the throne of God.  All these qualities were required in the One who was to be our Intercessor and Advocate before God the Father.  As Hebrews 8:1 states, "We do have such a high priest, who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven." This is a sanctuary much holier than the Most Holy Place of the tabernacle or the Temple could ever be.  Jesus serves in our behalf in the very presence of God; this is what He ascended into heaven to do, and what He now lives and enjoys living to do.

    So now, whenever you are in trouble, whenever you are tempted, whenever you think the world, the universe, and God Himself are all turned against you, think.  Remember.  You have a great High Priest, Jesus the great High Priest, Who for you has gone through the heavens to the holy heart of God, and even now He sympathizes with your weakness and deals gently with you.  No sin that you can repent of  is beyond His power to forgive, for He sacrificed Himself for sins once for all when He offered Himself.   When you're convinced that you can never be good enough for God, think.  Remember.  Jesus is your holy and blameless High Priest, and He credits His perfect obedience to you.  When you don't know how or what to pray, think. Remember.  Jesus is there, even now, representing you to His Father and yours.  He is able to save you completely, for He always lives to intercede for you.

    So let us hold firmly to the faith we profess.  Christ our crucified and risen Lord has gone through the heavens and has sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.  "Where is He now?"

    "In heaven interceding!"

Sovereign Grace, Healing Love

Texts: 2 Kings 5:1-19a; Luke 17:11-19a

HAVE YOU EVER MADE a terrible mistake? I don't mean something ordinary like forgetting to take the meat out to thaw, I mean committing some terrible trespass. You yelled at your spouse in anger and called her a filthy name. You blurted out a secret that wasn't yours. You punished your child for something he didn't do. Maybe you did something that seemed to be really good and helpful at the time, but when you came to yourself you realized it was the worst thing you could have done. Whatever it was, you couldn't just say, "Oops, sorry, didn't mean to do that!" Even if you didn't exactly "mean" to do it, the damage you did was lasting and deep. People were wounded and upset, and they were going to stay that way for a long time.

That wasn't really a mistake, what you did, it was a sin. As a decent human being, when you realized the enormity of your trespass, how did you feel? You didn't blow it off, I don't think. You apologized, of course. You asked forgiveness. You repented. And repented. And repented some more. But your friend/spouse/child was still so hurt! How could you ever have done that to them? You felt they never could forgive you. That you shouldn't forgive yourself. Maybe you should tear your garments like the lepers of old time and go about in wilderness places ringing a warning bell and calling out, "Unclean! Unclean!" Your guilt seemed to cling to you. It seemed to break out all over you like some loathsome skin disease. How could you merit forgiveness after what you'd done? "Unclean, unclean!"

We have two stories about lepers in today's Scripture readings. As we look into them, let's keep in mind that in Bible times, leprosy and other disfiguring skin diseases were not just a physical illness somebody might get, they were visible symbols of sin. A leper was a walking billboard of the damage sin did and how it separated a person from God and his neighbor. It depicted decay and corruption and a living death.

The laws of Moses about leprosy and so on can be found in Leviticus 13 and 14. If you read those chapters carefully, you'll notice something curious: The problem with these infectious skin diseases wasn't just that the sufferer had a disease, it's that it made him look mixed and mottled. Not uniform. Not whole. Not clean. It even says in Leviticus 13:12-13 that if the disease spread so far that the sufferer was a flat white all over his body, the priest could declare him clean again.

The laws ostracizing lepers were like the laws against mixing wool and linen in your clothing or plowing with a donkey and an ox yoked together or sowing two different kinds of seed in one field. These restrictions seem strange to us, but they were God's way of hammering home how His chosen people Israel had to remain purely dedicated to Him alone. Thoroughly. Faithfully. Cleanly. All those situations and conditions were symbols of mixing with the pagan nations. They were pictures of the false worship that tried to honor Gentile idols side by side with Jehovah God. From the very birth of the nation, God was impressing on them that they were to be whole and pure and devoted to Him alone. The salvation of the whole world depended on it.

And so you had the leper, with his red and white and brown skin, a picture of unfaithfulness to God. You had the corruption of his flesh as a symbol of the corruption of death and sin. You had his enforced separation to be a demonstration of how God's people must separate themselves from sin. It was terrible for the leper, but even more terrible is the effect that sin has in the idolatrous, unrepentant heart. Israel had to see and fear.

But who wants to live life as a negative sermon illustration? "Keep away! Keep away! Unclean! Unclean!" You could do nothing, nothing to help yourself. You could only pray that God would heal you and you could go show yourself to the priest, make your sacrifice, and be pronounced clean again.

And so we come to the story of Naaman, the Aramean (or Syrian) general. You notice first that he still seems to be living in his own house and he is able to go to the palace of the king of Aram. He also travels to the palace of Joram, king of Israel, and to Elisha's house with a large retinue. He isn't under the ban to live separated, for he's a Gentile. You may be thinking, good for them, they didn't have those Hebrew restrictions and rules. Yes, but they also didn't have the glorious covenant promises attached to those restricted and rules. And the Gentiles didn't have the sovereign power of Jehovah God working through the prophets that could heal a leper like Naaman.

So up comes the great General Naaman to the door of Elisha the prophet-- and the man of God doesn't even come to the door to greet him! Don't be mistaken-- Elisha isn't afraid of catching leprosy himself. No, he's expressed his purpose in the previous verses, where he tells King Joram to "Have the man come to me and he will know that there is a prophet in Israel." Naaman expects Elisha to "come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy." He wants Elisha to do something. But Elisha wants Naaman to know that he, Elisha, is only God's prophet, the channel through which God works. Naaman has to learn that it is the Lord and the Lord alone who heals.

And so he has the servant tell Naaman to go dip himself seven times in the Jordan River-- the dirty, insignificant, piddling Jordan River. There was nothing healing or magical about the waters of the Jordan! If Naaman was going to be healed there, it would obviously be by God's sovereign grace alone.

The great General Naaman had to show his faith in the God of Israel by following the order, no matter how disappointing it was. Happily for him, he listened to his servants, got over his rage, and obeyed.

And what happened then? We read in verse 14 that "his flesh was restored and became clean"-- that is, healthy, whole, and unblemished-- "like that of a young boy." God didn't just put him back to middle-aged normal, He renewed his skin so it was like the skin of a little child!

That was worth killing his pride for! Naaman hurries back to thank Elisha for what he had done. Thanks to him, he has come to know the Lord Almighty! He says, "Now I know that there is no God in all the world except in Israel." The Lord God Jehovah, the God of Israel, is God alone! So never again will he worship any God but the Lord. He then requests the two mule-loads of Israel's earth. I admit-- the commentators are divided on why he does this. But most likely, like all the Gentiles of those days, Naaman believed that a god or goddess could be worshipped properly only on his or her own territory. With this earth he could make an altar or maybe scatter it in a shrine in his own home, so to make himself a little Israel in Syria, a sacred spot where the Lord was God and would accept his sacrifices. Naaman didn't quite understand that the Lord was God in all the earth, but he understood that the Lord was the only God who was really real, and the Lord honored the intent of his heart.

But there's one more thing Naaman needs before his cleansing will be complete. As commander of the army of Aram he was literally the Syrian king's right-hand man. And one of his duties was to attend his sovereign into the temple of the false god Rimmon and support him with his arm as the king made his reverences to this so-called god. As a Syrian he couldn't exactly go home and announce he wasn't going to do that any more. But how could Naaman bow down to Rimmon when he was now wholly devoted to the Lord as the only God? Would the Lord Jehovah graciously forgive him for bowing down his body in that idol temple, now that he would never again bow down his heart or his mind? He'd have to keep on doing it for a long time. Could the Lord forgive him for that? Might He? Would He?

And Elisha replies, "Go in peace." And Naaman goes, cleansed not only in body but also in spirit. "Go in peace," for by faith he has been made clean and well.

The grace God showed through Elisha foreshadows the greater grace He showed the world through the Messiah Jesus, the Son of God made flesh. Our passage in Luke tells us that Jesus was on His way to Jerusalem to be crucified. He was travelling through the borderlands between Galilee and Samaria-- Samaria, where around 925 years before His Father in heaven had healed Naaman through His servant Elisha. On the outskirts of a village Jesus encounters ten lepers, nine Jews and one Samaritan. They know He is a prophet who can heal them. They stand at a proper distance and call out, "Jesus, Master, have pity on us!"

It doesn't take the supernatural mind of Christ to know what those lepers wanted. They wanted to be cleansed and healed. They had no hope for healing in themselves, their only hope was that God's prophet Jesus will do it for them.

And He does. "Go, show yourselves to the priests." Leviticus tells us it wasn't the priest's job to cure the leper, it was only his job to declare before God and man that the leper was already cured and therefore had become acceptable and clean. The Old Covenant was still in effect and Jesus honors His Father's plan in it.

All ten of these lepers had faith enough immediately to head for the home of the closest priest they could find. They were sure Jesus could heal their bodies. And He did. "As they went," Luke tells us, "they were cleansed." They became like Naaman after he had bathed in the Jordan River, their skin restored to radiance and health.

But only one was cleansed in his spirit. And ironically, that one was the Samaritan. The despised half-breed. The unkosher foreigner. He immediately comes back to Jesus praising God loudly, enthusiastically, deep-heartedly for his healing. He throws himself at Jesus' feet-- this mixed-race Samaritan-- and thanked Him and thanked Him.

"Where are the other nine?" Jesus asks. Where are the nine Jews? They were all cured. Why didn't they also come back to render Him honor and thanks? Did they take their position as sons of the covenant for granted? Could it be that when the nine Jews obtained the bodily healing they wanted, they no longer needed the Son of God?

But the lone Samaritan has returned, and like Naaman the Syrian he praises the God of Israel and gives Him the glory. And like Naaman, his cleansing was complete. Jesus says to him, "Rise and go; your faith has made you well." The healing he received extended to his inmost soul, and it drove him to the feet of Jesus in gratitude and praise.

That is what Jesus can do with your sin, and with mine. He can take even the worst of our sins away and restore us to be like little children. We can be wandering around like lepers in the isolation of our guilt, separated from God, from other people, even alienated from ourselves, and He brings us the cleansing cure we never could obtain on our own. He can step into situations where we have wreaked havoc on other people's lives and work a miracle of restoration and hope. He does this by the forgiveness He won for you and me in His death on the Cross. There He paid for all our sins. We did deserve God's punishment. We did deserve God's wrath. But as Isaiah the prophet says, "By His wounds we are healed."

How do we receive that healing, especially as Christians who still sin every day? What do we do when we just want to beat ourselves up, when our guilt tells us how we don't deserve the forgiveness of God at all?

We remember the word of Elisha the prophet. He said, "Go wash yourself seven times in the waters of the Jordan and you will be restored." Let us, you and me, plunge ourselves again and again into the waters of our baptism. As often as we need it, as often as we sin, let us remember how the water of baptism recalls the blood that flowed from Jesus our Master as He hung on the cross. That blood makes a full, free, and complete covering for all our sins, no matter whom they affect, no matter how terrible they might be.

But as we bathe in that precious flood, what are we looking for? Is it enough for us to feel better about ourselves and have our relationships with others restored? Or do we want something more?

Yes, let's want something more. Let's lay hold on how good God is and rejoice in forgiveness He brings. Let's seek to be bound ever closer to Him, so we reject all mixed devotion and joyfully worship Him alone. May we never take His covenant love for granted, but always return Him the thanks He deserves.

Leprosy was a sign of confusion, corruption, and death. But we have been cleansed from the leprosy of our sin, we are healed every day by the blood of Jesus and given wholeness, purity, and life. This is the gift of God through His crucified and risen Son.

People of God, remember your baptism. Remember His blood that cleanses you still. Together, let us all return to the feet of Jesus and give Him unending thanks and praise. Amen.

Therefore, in View of God's Mercy

Text: Romans 11:33 - 12:8

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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