Unfinished Business, Part 1

Text: John 21:1-22

ONE THING I'VE LEARNED over twenty years of preaching is that my sermon title is not Scripture.  A preacher might think the title she's come up with when she's planning worship is really good and appropriate, but when she really gets into the text the Holy Spirit might have other ideas about where the sermon should go and what it should be called.  And over an even longer time of being a church member sitting in the pew, I learned that when this happens and the preacher doesn't let the congregation know, the typical church member is liable to spend half the preaching time waiting for the preacher to get to some point that fits the title printed in the bulletin, and for him the sermon falls flat.  People naturally expect the sermon content to match the printed sermon title, and they can get thrown off when it doesn't.

So as you might have guessed, this happened to me this past week.  The title I initially chose for today's sermon, "What About It?" no longer matches what the Holy Spirit wants me to bring to you from today's text.  A better title might be something like "Unfinished Business."

From the purely human point of view, the protagonist of our reading from the 21st chapter of the Gospel according to St. John, is the Apostle Peter.  Or, as he is also called, Simon son of John.  And the risen Jesus clearly has unfinished business with Him.  Peter held a unique position among the apostles, and so we have to be careful about applying everything that John writes about Peter directly to our own lives.  But all Scripture is written to build us up in faith and life in Jesus Christ, and since we are to follow and imitate our leaders as they follow and imitate Christ, this 21st chapter of John can certainly guide us as we believe and live in light of Jesus' resurrection.

The events John records happened during the forty days between Jesus' resurrection from the dead and His ascension into heaven.  Think how strange a period this must have been for His disciples!  It was a time of waiting, when uncertainty and hope were all mixed up together.  Christ indeed was risen; His body had been renewed and transformed in unimaginable ways.  So never again would He go back to being the same old human Jesus they'd known in the three years previous.  On the other hand, He was definitely there with them bodily and tangibly; that is, when He was there with them.  And then, their Lord had told them He was sending them out to preach forgiveness of sins in His name.  So the disciples were no longer just students, they were to be teachers with His authority.  That first Resurrection Day evening in the upper room, Jesus had breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit."  On the other hand, the full outpouring of the Spirit and His empowering for ministry was several days or weeks away.  And until it fell upon them they could not begin their mission.  This business of being an apostle was unfinished.

Peter, along with the other disciples, was an ordinary person living in the most extraordinary reality humanity has even known.  A Man he knew, his Teacher and Friend, had been brutally crucified but now was risen gloriously from the dead!  Jesus had conquered sin and death and brought life and immortality to light through His mighty resurrection!  Any time now Peter and the others would be released to go out and tell the good news. But what was he to do with himself in the meantime?  He was only human, with twenty-four hours in the day to fill.  Sometimes they all could see and fellowship with their risen Lord.  But often it'd be just Peter and the other disciples, wondering when Jesus might appear next.  No human being can live in a high state of watchfulness and spiritual fervor all the time.  Even when something has occurred that's changed us and all human history, ordinary sinners like Simon Peter, like you and me, sometimes have to exhale, and think and do ordinary human things.

So we shouldn't be surprised that at some point Peter (or some other disciple) should say, "I'm going out to fish."  A lot of preachers (including me, I'm afraid) judge him harshly for proposing this, but we sin against mercy when we do.  It's totally understandable that Peter and the others might go fishing.  Jesus wasn't with them at the time; maybe they hadn't seen Him in awhile.  They were home in Galilee, the boat was available, and a little extra income for their families would be a welcome thing.  Peter wasn't announcing that he was giving up on Jesus and going back to being a full-time commercial fisherman.  No, this was a one-time proposition, and you'll notice that we never read that Jesus rebukes Peter for coming up with the idea.  It's my thought-- and keep in mind this is only my thought because we can't know for sure-- that what motivated Peter to go out fishing that night was the pressure of uncertainty and waiting.  When you don't know quite what to do, the handiest thing can simply be to do the thing you know how to do best.

We can learn something from this.  When we know exactly what Jesus wants us to do in a situation, we should do it.  We should remember His resurrection and His power and fearlessly obey His word and His will.  It can be something as momentous and long-term as going overseas as a missionary or as momentary but equally significant as calling a friend to offer a word of comfort or stopping to smile and open a door for a stranger.  When the Holy Spirit of Christ is clearly leading you, obey.

But what about when life is just going on in the ordinary way?  What if we're uncertain what God's special will is for your life?  Remember that whatever you do and wherever you are, you belong to Christ, and He is risen.  Do your work, enjoy your family and friends, and take advantage of the good things of this world, including recreation and amusements, with thanksgiving and good sense.  Being a child of God doesn't dehumanize you or take you out of the world.  Knowing that Jesus is risen doesn't oblige you to live continually on some high plane of spiritual ecstasy.  In fact, what seems to be your ordinary work and play may be Christ's special mission for you.  But in everything, keep your eyes open and your ears attuned to perceive your Lord when He comes to you with the clear word of His will.  For you are His disciple, and His business with you isn't finished.  To you He certainly will come with His word and will, sometimes when you least expect it-- as we shall see in our reading.

So, the seven disciples launch the boat out onto the Sea of Tiberias (which we also call the Sea of Galilee) and get ready to fish.  But this night the luck is against them, or maybe they've lost their touch.  They fish all night and catch nothing.

And then dawn begins to break over the water.  Dimly in the morning light they can see a figure standing about a hundred yards away on the shore.  A voice calls out, "Friends, haven't you any fish?"  The Stranger seems to know they've had no luck; in fact, in the Greek this question is definitely put in the negative.  And the disciples have to admit, "No."  So the Stranger tells them to throw their net into the sea on the right side of the boat and they'll get some.

Ordinarily, this would be a silly thing for some random person to suggest to a bunch of commercial fishermen.  If the fishing was bad at night, it's going to be worse in the morning.  Are they beginning to wonder just Who this is that has commanded them?  At any rate, they comply.  And when they do, they can't haul in the net, so many large fish are in it.

Oh, my.  Oh, my!!  What memories would be going through the heads of Peter son of John and James and John the sons of Zebedee!  Three years before, as St. Luke tells us in chapter 5 of his Gospel, these men had had another night of fishing with no luck.  And in the morning the Rabbi Jesus came along.  They'd met Him before, as St. John tells us, down in Judea with John the Baptist.  The Baptist said He was the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.  But by the world's reckoning, Jesus was only a carpenter turned rabbi and no fisherman.  But He'd told them to push out and try again.  That time, Peter had grumbled a bit but did it to humor the Master.  Three years before, when they complied they also caught such a large number of fish the net began to break.  And now it was at the word of the Stranger on the shore, a tremendous catch is leaping into their net again.   John the beloved disciple cries out, "It is the Lord!"

But this time there's a difference.  Three years before when these things happened, Simon Peter fell at Jesus' knees and begged Him, "Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!" But this time Peter grabs his cloak, jumps into the water, and wades to shore as fast as he can.  He's still a sinful man, but Peter now knows that in Jesus there was salvation, forgiveness, and love.  Regardless of the unfinished business in the boat and in his heart, he wants to be where Jesus is.

Brothers and sisters, let us run to Jesus, for He does not change.  He is the Son of God who rules over heaven and earth and everything in them.  The power He shows when He first calls us from our sins He still possesses when we are old both in years and in the faith. He is always able to use His authority for our good and His Father's glory.  What changes is we ourselves and our understanding of Him.  In our early years of walking with Christ we know Him a little, but He brings us on to know more and more.  Where once His holiness made us focus on the filth of our sin, He remakes us so we own His holiness as our only hope.  Like Peter who jumped out of the boat and waded to Jesus, we're still sinners; becoming totally free from of sin is unfinished business that won't be completed till we ourselves are raised to be like Christ.  But in His resurrection power He is working in us and for us, so that the sight of Him more and more will bring us gladness and joy.

The other six disciples continue to tow in the net full of fish.  When they arrive at the shore, they see that a charcoal fire is burning there, with fish already roasting on it, and bread as well.  Where could Jesus have got fresh fish so early?  This was a time and culture with no 24-hour grocery stores and no refrigeration.  He invites the disciples to bring some of the fish they've just caught, but He has no need of them.  The risen Christ is the Lord our Provider who requires nothing from our hand, but in His brotherly love He calls us to participate in His work.  Don't ever believe that without us, the Church on earth, the God who raised Jesus from the dead can do nothing.  If Christ our Lord wished it He could convert every one of His elect by the direct action of His Holy Spirit working in their hearts.  But in His grace and love He allows us to be His ambassadors and agents, bringing the food of His salvation through His word and sacrament, serving Him as we serve our neighbor in acts of comfort, encouragement, and relief.  But here in John 21 we see how Jesus told the disciples to come to breakfast and eat.  He took the bread and gave it to them.  He did the same with the fish.  Whatever we have to give comes from Him, and to Him we return our thanks and praise.

I'll have the privilege of filling your pulpit again in two weeks, and at that time, God willing, we will finish looking at this passage and see what it has to teach us about life and ministry in light of the resurrection.  Until then, I want you to consider that even though Peter seems to be the protagonist of this passage, the true central character is our Lord Jesus Christ.  He is the central figure of all of Scripture and all of history, and He has unfinished business with each and every one of us.

For we, too, are living in an in-between time as we wait for Christ's return.  God has credited with His righteousness, yet we still struggle with sin.  We look back to His resurrection and live our lives in the knowledge and joy of it, yet it won't be made perfect in us until we receive our new bodies and are made perfect in Him.  Nevertheless, whatever we do, whatever He calls us to, let us live open-eyed in hope, ready to obey His commands whatever they may be.  And whether our spiritual eyes see Him or not, whether we feel His presence with us or we don't, He is with us, He provides for us, and in His good time, His heavenly business with us will one day be complete.  Amen.

Exercising Good Judgement

Text:  Luke 12:54-13:9

WE ALL FACE DEADLINES IN life.  In school or at work, the time comes when the project or assignment is due and it's time for it to be assessed.  Someone's going to come and judge your work, and will you pass the test?

But what if you don't know when the deadline is?  Or maybe, what if you claim you don't know when the deadline is?  Is that any excuse?  Or will the judge come and tell you you had all the information you needed; you should have been ready, you should have known?

Most Christians know that Jesus Christ is returning at the end of time to judge the living and the dead and to inaugurate His heavenly kingdom.  But we may not know that one of His most important roles during His time on earth was that of Old Covenant judge.  He came to wind up the old way of relating to God, based on works, and to bring in the new way, based on faith in Him.

The sayings of Christ in our Luke reading today are primarily addressed to the Jews of Jesus' time.  But we, too, can take warning from what He says, and be ready.

Our Lord is teaching the crowd.  He draws an analogy with the weather.  "When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, ‘It's going to rain,' and it does."  The people of the day are really good at interpreting the appearance of the earth and sky.  So why don't they know how to interpret the present time?

What is Jesus referring to?   It goes back to the days of Moses.  God called His people Israel out of the land of Egypt and chose them as His own nation.  At Mount Sinai God gave the Law.  The Law, beginning with the Ten Commandments, was more than just a list of dos and don'ts; it was the Covenant between God and His people.  It drew a picture of what they were to be like in order to please Him and to be worthy to call Him their God.

We know what happened, don't we?  The Covenant of Sinai was broken more than it was kept.  God's people frequently behaved worse that the pagan nations around them.  But the prophets of God always foretold the time when a new and more perfect covenant would be made between God and Israel.  A time was coming when the Promised One would appear, the Messiah, and He would perfectly keep the Covenant.  He would be the perfect Israel, and would embody the obedience that God demanded.  But this would be a time of cataclysm and change.  When He came He would put to judgement the disobedience of the people, and prove who was worthy to enter into the kingdom of God and who was not.  John the Baptist said what this one would be like.    He predicted, "One more powerful than I will come, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.  He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.  His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.

We know that when Jesus came He did not carry the program of God's covenant judgement as far as John the Baptist expected.  This was due to God's mercy, to give the full number of God's elect among the Gentiles the chance to come in.  But Jesus by His coming did exercise covenant judgement upon Israel.  And as He speaks to the crowd, He judges their tendency to fool themselves about God's times and seasons.  They knew the prophets, they knew what was to happen when Messiah came.  It was as clear and certain as the rain clouds rising in the west and the wind blowing from the south.  But they wanted to deceive themselves about the implications of what was happening.

They should stop deceiving themselves and exercise right judgement.  For the time was coming when the sin of the people would be judged.  Jesus gives the analogy of someone going before a magistrate.  The scenario is that of a civil lawsuit, and the idea is that you, whom Jesus is addressing, really are guilty of harming your adversary.  The point is clear-- Israel has broken God's covenant and He has the right to satisfaction.  So don't deceive yourself and think that when judgement comes it'll be all right.  No, repent now, be reconciled now, for when the day of judgement comes it will be too late and there will be no help for you.

Jesus wants His fellow-Jews to understand that judgement is coming, it's imminent, and they deserve it.  But there are always people who want to concern themselves with other people's sins and other people's judgement, in an attempt to make themselves feel better about their own situation. So we hear that at that time, as Jesus was teaching these things, there were some who mentioned to Him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.  This was a famous incident involving a power play ruthlessly executed by Pontius Pilate.  You have to wonder if this situation was brought up so the people present with Jesus could comfort themselves with the idea that  well, at least they hadn't done whatever those men did!  Jesus knows this is exactly where they're coming from, which is why He asks then if they thought those Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because this horror had come upon them.  Yes, of course they thought that.  At least, they hoped so?  But no!  They were no worse!  "But unless you repent, you too will all perish."  Not necessarily by the hand of the Romans, but in whatever way God will in His judgement ordain.

And if people are going to bring up cases, what, Jesus says, about those eighteen people who died when the tower in the Siloam district of Jerusalem fell on them?  Was their guilt greater than that of anyone else in Jerusalem?  Absolutely not!  "But unless you repent, you too will all perish."

Why?  Because the time of judgement is at hand.  The time is coming soon when God will settle His scores with disobedient Israel, and the only escape will be to repent of their sins and throw themselves on the mercy of God.

To drive home the point, Jesus tells a parable regarding a fig tree planted in a vineyard.  Both the vineyard and the fig tree were well-known Scriptural images for Israel, and the expectation of fruit was a standard analogy for God's expectation of righteousness and good works from His people.

And now the One who has the right to look for those good works has come, but doesn't find any fruit.  For three years He's been coming and hasn't found any.

It's tempting to think the three years mentioned in the parable might refer to the fact that it's now towards the end of His three-year ministry.  But God had been looking for good fruit from Israel; that is, covenant faithfulness, for a whole lot longer than that.  The crowd listening to Jesus knew that if a fig tree was going to bear fruit, it'd do it in three years.  The owner of the vineyard has the right to expect fruit from this tree, but where is it?  All it's doing is taking up room in the vineyard.  Why not cut it down?  But the gardener asks for more time for the failing fig tree.  Jesus doesn't want us to go overboard with identifying the people in the parable with particular members of the Holy Trinity.  The point is that the fig tree, that is, God's Old Covenant people, are being given another chance to bring forth righteousness before God.  It's one more year in the parable; in real life the time may be even shorter.  Jesus' hearers had better not take any chances when it comes to themselves.

We know from history that judgement came upon the Jewish nation in A.D. 70, when the Roman legions under Titus marched in and destroyed Jerusalem, including the temple and its walls.  Judgement was complete and terrible.

But what about us?  Is it good judgement on our part to ignore the will of God and behave however we want, because we're covered by the grace of Christ?  Not at all!  It's true that our new covenant in Him is sealed by His blood and righteousness and not by sacrifices we might offer or deeds we might do.  But we, too, are called upon to repent, to exercise good judgement and depends on Jesus utterly.  For as the writer to the Hebrews says,

We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away.  For if the message spoken by angels was binding [that is, the covenant of the Law given on Mount Sinai], and every violation and disobedience received its just punishment, how shall we escape if we ignore such a great salvation?

The cross of Christ brings us mercy that covers the sins of all who believe.  But we cannot expect our Lord to overlook the sins of anyone who takes His mercy for granted and presumes upon His righteous judgement.

Not only in this season of Lent but all year round, let us flee to Christ for forgiveness and safety in the day of reckoning.  For the day is coming when Christ surely will return.  Can we stand with confidence in that day?  Let us do the deeds that belong to repentance, not because we think we can put God in our debt, but because we are humbly grateful for what Jesus our Savior has done for us.  For He is the righteous Judge who surely will come, but He is also the Lamb of God on whom judgement fell that we might escape the judgement we deserved.  He has paid the uttermost penny for us; He is the fruitful fig tree that national Israel could never be.  So exercise good judgement and trust in Him and Him alone.  For then, when He, the Good Judge, comes to judge the living and the dead, you will be able to stand before God in confidence and joy, trusting in Chris and His merits, and giving Him praise and thanksgiving throughout all eternity.

Relying on What God Gives

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The More Certain Word

Texts:  2 Peter 1:16-21; Luke 9:28-36

WHICH IS BETTER: TO KNOW JESUS, OR to know about Him?  Is it more important to learn from the Bible learn who Jesus is and what He has done, or should we focus on knowing Jesus personally in our hearts?

Surveys have been taken of evangelical Christians, and the great majority say the essential thing is to feel Jesus living in your heart.  The Bible is important in telling us how to live, the majority responded, but it's not that crucial in helping us experience the Jesus we should be living for.  "Heart knowledge" trumps "head knowledge" every time, and "Word" constantly takes a back seat to "Spirit."

If this is true, if all these Christian brothers and sisters are right about this, we can expect that the Apostle Peter would be right at the forefront leading those who would say experience is better than knowledge.

For who had an experience of Jesus Christ like the Apostle Peter?  Three years walking with the Savior, starting with seeing Him baptised in the Jordan.  Imagine, witnessing that miraculous catch of fish in the Sea of Galilee!   Being one of Jesus' inner circle along with James and John!  Getting out of the boat at Jesus' invitation and for a few steps actually walking on water!  Being the first to seriously confess Jesus as the Son of God!  Even the horrible experience of denying Jesus three times surely affected Peter in a deeply-felt way, especially when Christ later forgave and restored him.  And then Peter saw Jesus after He was raised from the dead, and witnessed His wondrous ascension into heaven.  And perhaps most impressive of all, Peter the ex-fisherman, alone among the disciples along with James and John, beheld the Lord Jesus Christ revealed in divine glory and majesty on the mount of Transfiguration.

Think of it!  Peter had the ultimate experience of Christ a man could have on this earth.  He saw and spoke with Jesus shining forth bodily as the eternal Son of God!  Imagine how he and the other two disciples
must have felt!  What cold historical facts, what writing, what words could ever compete with that?

But the amazing thing is, in his second letter to the churches, Peter does not base everything in the Christian life on his experience, even his experience of Jesus' transfiguration.  He doesn't urge God's people (including you and me) to strive to get a mountaintop experience of Jesus like his.  Instead, he cites his mountaintop experience as evidence of the power and authority of the Word of God that witnesses to Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.  He wants all who read this letter to know and understand who Jesus is, not because we have some spiritual experience or feeling about Him, but because we have received and believed reliable testimony to Christ through the prophets and apostles.

To see this more clearly we need to go back to the start of Peter's letter.  So if you have your Bible open look at verse 2.  Peter writes: "Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ our Lord."  Grace and peace come through knowledge of Christ.  This word in the Greek, to quote Bible commentator Norman Hillyer, "denotes exact and full knowledge of God and his ways, which follows as a consequence of conversion to Christ."  In the next verse the apostle writes that we have everything we need for life and godliness, again through our knowledge of God (same Greek word) who called us.  He has given us his very great and precious promises (verse 4), promises given to us in His holy Word, including those spoken through the prophets concerning the coming Messiah.  In verses 5-7 Peter urges us on to the practice of many active Christian virtues.  Why?  Because (verse 8), these qualities will keep us from being ineffective and unproductive in our knowledge (there's that word again!) of Christ.  This knowledge of Christ is the good news of the gospel, telling us what Jesus did for us on the cross and how He has saved us by His own precious blood.  No experience of ours could ever tell us that!  It takes the word of Scripture ministered by the Holy Spirit to get this good news into our minds and into our hearts, and there it bears its fruit.

This knowledge of Christ and His finished work is so important that Peter says (verse 12) that he's going to keep on reminding us of it.  Even we who have heard and believed the gospel need to have our memories refreshed about these things.  It is so important that Peter is going to argue from his apostolic experience to prove to us that the Word he speaks is trustworthy.  So as we read in our epistle selection,  "We [apostles] did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus." 

Now, right here we see a number of things.  By bringing up "cleverly invented stories" Peter introduces the fact that there were those claiming to be God's prophets who were spreading that very thing.  Later in chapter 2 he will warn us against them and their corrupting influence.  The testimony of Peter and the other apostles isn't like that.  They are giving the church the true word about Jesus Christ, the facts about Him and His ministry on earth.  In our passage we also see that the truth the Apostle is emphasizing goes beyond salvation through the cross and to the time when Jesus will come again in glory.  How can we believe Peter's word about this?  He saw a preview of it.  He, James, and John were eyewitnesses of Jesus' majesty on the sacred mountain.  They saw Him receive honor and glory from God the Father.  They heard the voice from the Majesty Glory-- that is, from God Himself-- declaring "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased."  If Peter tells us that Jesus Christ is coming again in power and great glory, we should believe it.

Having heard Peter recount what he heard and saw of the glory of Jesus, it would be good for us to turn to the gospel of St. Luke and read what the Holy Spirit has recorded for us there.

We see that Jesus took the three disciples and went up onto a mountain.  We're not told which of the mountains of Israel it was, and that's a good thing.  Otherwise we'd all be trooping up it trying to get the same experience for ourselves, and totally missing the point of what God revealed there.  We are told He went there to pray; that is, He entered into intense communication and fellowship with God the Father.  Jesus had gone up into the hills to pray before, but on this occasion "the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning."  And then, "two men, Moses and Elijah, appeared in glorious splendor, talking with Jesus."  Why Moses and Elijah?  Why not David and Abraham?  Because together Moses and Elijah represented the Law and the Prophets.  In their glorified persons they stood for all the promises and predictions God had sent to His people Israel throughout the Old Testament.  They represented the Word of God that had always pointed towards the Messiah who was to come.  And now that Messiah, that Christ was here, and the two blessed Old Testament saints were speaking about His departure.

Departure?  What does it mean, "His departure"?

It might help to know that the word in the Greek is "exodus," which for Greek-speaking Jews and God-fearers would raise the echo of the exodus from Egypt.  It would remind them-- and should remind us-- of the great day when God led His people out of slavery under the leadership of Moses.  And now Jesus the Son of God was about to lead His people out of a greater slavery, the slavery to sin.  The befuddled disciples didn't understand it then, but soon they would know that Jesus would accomplish that through His sacrifice on the cross.  Jesus was about to depart in a particular way.  By His death He would perform the divine act of liberation that the law and the prophets had predicted.  Everything that had been written in the Scriptures led up to that crucial event.

We read in Luke what Peter said on the occasion, and it's significant that he doesn't mention it in his letter.  I don't think it was because he was embarrassed to.  Rather, how Peter felt about the Transfiguration wasn't important.  What was important was the fact of Christ's glory and the revelation of who He was.

Luke tells us something more that was said by the voice from the Majestic Glory.  The voice of God also said about Jesus, "Listen to Him!"  Listen to His word!  Listen to what He tells you about your need for His atoning death!  Listen when He tells you He is coming again to judge the living and the dead!  Moses and Elijah represented the Word of God, but Jesus Christ was and is the living Word of God, standing there transfigured before the terrified disciples.  The Law and the prophets all give witness to Jesus.  Listen to Him!

Peter personally heard the voice of God testifying to Jesus' divine Sonship when they were with Him on the mountain.  But should we believe Jesus is the Son of God only because of Peter's experience?  Well, in a way, yes, because he was one of Christ's holy apostles and the Spirit spoke the word of God through him.  But Peter adds this as well: "And we have the word of the prophets made more certain."  That is, "We have more than my apostolic experience; we have the fact that Jesus fulfilled all the prophets spoke about Him."  The Greek in this phrase literally means, "we can take a most firm hold on the prophetic word."  You and I can rely on what the prophets said in the Old Testament and take our stand on it, because in Jesus Christ it all came true.  We should and must pay attention to what the Scriptures say to us, because they are our light in this dark world and will help us see our way "until the day dawns and the morning star rises in our hearts"-- that is, until Jesus comes again.  We can rely on what God's New Testament prophets, the apostles and evangelists have written by the power of the Spirit, because they have written by the power of the Holy Spirit.  For Old Testament or New, prophecy-- by which is meant the entire Word of Scripture-- never was a matter of human beings making up things out of their own heads.  No, true prophecy, the authentic Word of God that points to Jesus Christ and Him crucified and risen, is from God and God alone.  It is to be believed and trusted and by it we should direct our lives, until the day of Jesus Christ.

The Word is essential; our feelings aren't enough.  Our personal experience of Christ won't save us and won't preserve us-- unless it's based on a true knowledge of Jesus Christ and what He actually said and did, as recorded in the Scriptures.  This world is very dark, squalid, and dismal, and if we rely on our emotions to assure us that we are saved, we will stumble and fall.  If we trust our feelings to guide us in what we should do, we are in grave danger of going astray.   But we have the truth of Christ recorded for us in God's written Word, and it shines as a light to all who have been called by God's own glory and greatness.

Let us thank God for those times when we feel especially happy or joyful in Him.  Let us praise Him for seasons of blessed peace and comfort.  But do not lose heart when trouble and distress and darkness come.  We have the prophetic word made most certain, for it testifies to Jesus Christ and what He has done.  He did it for you, to give you hope and everything you need for life and godliness through knowledge of Him.  He is the Word of God Incarnate, the Word made flesh.  He is the bright morning star, the same Jesus who was transfigured on the mountain, the Son of Man who died on the cross and rose for you in glory.  This same Jesus has promised to return and take you to live with Him in blessedness forever and by the testimony of the apostles and prophets we know His promises are good.  By the power of the Holy Spirit may His glorious word be established in your heart and may you grow in grace and knowledge of Him until He comes again.  Amen.

Father, Give Us This Day

Texts:    Proverbs 30:7-8; 1 Timothy 6:3-10; Luke 11:1-13

    WITH THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION JUST a few weeks away, there's a lot of debate over the sorry state of the national economy.  Both sides disagree on who's to blame for it all, each claims it's the other side's fault.  This morning we won't get into who's right and who's wrong on the question, but one thing I think we can agree on is that the economy is still in trouble.  People are still losing their homes, their jobs, their savings.  Experienced adults are having to make do with part time and occasional work, and it's not enough to live on.  Many people having given up on finding gainful employment altogether.  People are scared, even panicking.  Some of those people might be folks you know.  Some of those people might be you.  We hear about the working poor.  Our times have given us the hidden poor-- those who still appear to be middle class, but they're desperately hanging on by their fingernails, knowing that if something doesn't develop, if something doesn't change, they'll soon slide down into ruin.  What do our Scriptures for today say to people in that condition?  What do they say to us as we struggle with our own financial worries, or worry about the struggles of those we love?

    We could be superficial.  We could take our passage from 1 Timothy with its verse about the love of money being the root of all kinds of evil, and conclude we should feel guilty about wanting to provide materially for ourselves and our families.  We could imagine we're being told that money doesn't matter at all and we shouldn't bother to provide materially for ourselves and our families. 

    And then our passage from Luke 11.  As it winds up, Jesus seems to be saying that whatever we want, we can ask God for it and He'll give it to us.  That's what the prosperity gospel preachers say.  That you can have anything you desire-- houses, cars, wealth-- if you just ask God with enough faith.  So if we don't have the material things we want and need, does that mean we don't have enough faith?  Is that what Luke is teaching us?  And are St. Luke and St. Paul at odds with each other, one saying God wants us to have money and the stuff it'll buy, and the other telling us that money and possessions are somehow evil?

    We know better than that.  The Holy Spirit is the Author of Scripture and He does not contradict Himself.   And it's not the purpose of the revealed Word of God to give us financial advice.  No, these passages and all the verses of the Bible that talk to us about money and material things speak with one voice, and they all intend that we should have the right attitude toward these things, because we first have the right attitude towards our holy Father God. 

    Lest we should say great riches are always a sign of God's blessing, or conversely, in case we should claim that poverty is  good in itself because God only favors the poor, let us take our verses from Proverbs 30 as our keynote.  They say,   

    Two things I ask of you, O Lord;
            do not refuse me before I die:
     Keep falsehood and lies far from me;
            give me neither poverty nor riches,
            but give me only my daily bread.
        Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you
            and say, ‘Who is the Lord?'
    Or I may become poor and steal,
            and so dishonor the name of my God.

    You probably remember the Prayer of Jabez fad a few years ago.  We were told that the formula to a happy, God-blessed life was to be found in a prayer prayed by an otherwise unknown Judahite mentioned in 1 Chronicles.  I suggest that we in our times might take this prayer of Agur son of Jakeh especially to heart.

    "Keep falsehood and lies away from me," he implores, and aren't we surrounded by untruth and even active opposition to the Truth every day we live?  But beyond this, see what Agur prays regarding material possessions.

    First of all, he does pray regarding material possessions and his prayer is recorded in Scripture as an example to us.  There is nothing shameful or guilt-inducing about wanting our material needs to be met.  God created us with physical bodies.  They were part of us when Creation was still "very good," and our heavenly Father knows we need food and clothing and shelter from the elements.  He knows it's good for us to have and enjoy things to delight the eye, to stimulate the soul and to rejoice the heart.  Of course we are in need of material things, and it is right and holy that we should ask the Lord God for them.  For when we ask, we're acknowledging that we depend on Him, that we know that every good gift comes down from Him in heaven, even our life itself.

    But what shall we ask?  Shall we ask to win the lottery and be rolling in cash?  Shall we beg God to give us a higher salary than anyone else in our company, not because our work earns it, but because we want to feel how much more important we are than anyone else there?

    No.  By the Holy Spirit Agur prays, "I may have too much and disown you and say, "Who is the Lord?"  That is the snare in riches.  That is where the love of money proves to be the root of all kinds of evil.  It's when money and possessions come between us and God.  Money can so easily become an idol, especially when one has so much of it he believes he is entirely self-sufficient and no longer needs his Lord.  Indeed, in his letter to the Colossians St. Paul frankly labels greed as idolatry.  The person who on an earthly level has earned his or her fortune is particularly in danger of falling into this pit, for if he will not exalt God as the Giver, he begins to raise up himself as the author and perfecter of all he has acquired.  You may have heard the expression: "He's a self-made man, and he worships his Maker."  But rich or poor or in-between, we have only one Maker, who is the divine Creator of heaven and earth, and only one Provider, who is our Father in heaven, and only one Master, who is the triune Lord.  And if we deny Him; if we stand on the highest pile of possessions the world has ever seen and stick our paltry human noses in the air and proclaim that we are the captains of our fates and the masters of our souls, we are poorer than the frailest, sickest, most starving Christian child in the refugee camp at Darfur, for we, unlike that child, have lost God.

    At the same time, Agur prays that the Lord not give Him poverty.  God certainly is described in the Bible as the special Defender of the poor, but there's nothing noble or virtuous about poverty in itself.  Like riches, it offers its own temptations to idolatry.  Agur feels that if he should become poor, he might be driven to steal.  And what is theft?  It's another way of refusing to trust God, of preempting His right to give you what He wills for you in His good time.  Theft, too, is driven by greed, which is idolatry.  When a child of God descends to stealing to provide for himself, he dishonors God not only in the crime itself, but in what the theft says about God's ability to provide.  It declares that the Lord is not to be trusted.  But when one is poor and desperate, waiting on the Lord is a difficult thing to do.  "My family and I are hungry now!" we might protest.  "I have the right to take what I need!"  With Agur we pray we will never be led into such temptation.

    In all of this prayer, the main thing is not the petitioner's material state, the main thing is his relationship to Almighty God.  Agur knows his weakness.  He also knows God's strength: up in verse 5 he writes, "Every word of God is flawless; he is a shield to those who trust in him."  But how easy it is in our weakness not to trust!  And so, he prays that the Lord will give him "neither poverty nor riches, but only his daily bread.  "Give us this day our daily bread," O Lord.  Assure me that I will have enough for my needs, and may I trust You to do the same thing for me day by day,  tomorrow and the next day and the day after that, not because I see the provision, but because I see You.

    And so, hundreds of years later, when the Son of God walked the earth in human flesh, His disciples came to Him and asked Him to teach them how to pray.  What comes first in the prayer our Lord taught?  It is that we may be given to acknowledge who God is and be fully submitted to His will.  He is our Father: kind, loving, benevolent-- and in charge.  May we always hold His name holy-- that is, may we realize that God is never a means to an end; rather, He is the end and purpose of all things in Himself.  May His kingdom, His everlasting dominion come, and may it be established here and now in me.  Once we understand the greatness of God, we can properly ask Him to fulfill our material, spiritual, and emotional needs.  Like Agur, our Lord teaches us to pray each day for our daily bread and for preservation against temptation to sin against God.  And Jesus teaches us to pray for our greatest need of all: for forgiveness of our sins, and for grace to forgive those who sin against us.

    Jesus commands us to pray believing in the goodness of God, trusting our relationship with Him.  He tells two parables to illustrate this.  We haven't time this morning to examine them in detail, but the point is clear: If a friend will bother himself to help a friend in need, how much more will our loving God open the door to us and give us relief.  If a human father, even an evil one, will give his son good things, how much more will our Father give good gifts to us, the children He has adopted in His Son?  And not just good things, but the best thing-- The Holy Spirit, who is His very presence with us.  If we have nothing else in this world, if we're being starved to death in a prison someplace but have the Holy Spirit living in us and ministering Christ and His benefits to us, we have all we need.

    I pray that you and I can get our hearts and minds and desires around this.  This same truth is what the Holy Spirit through Paul teaches Timothy-- and us-- in the First Letter to that young pastor.  "Godliness with contentment is great gain," he writes.  "For we brought nothing into the world and we can take nothing out of it.  But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that."  "Godliness" is far more than an aspect of our own character or personality.  It's not walking around being holier-than-thou or bragging about all the things we don't do.  No, godliness is a state of being in continual fellowship with God in Jesus Christ, continually seeking His will and trusting in His love.  If that is how you know and walk with your Provider, if you have learned the happiness of trusting Him for your daily bread, you are way ahead of the game when it comes to material wellbeing.  If the Lord should grant you more than food and clothing-- and I suspect He has favored all of us this way-- rejoice in His gifts and thank Him for all He has done.  But wanting to get rich for the sake of getting rich can cause us to fall, as Paul and Agur son of Jakeh say, into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that can plunge us into ruin and destruction.

    Brothers and sisters, there is nothing wrong with wanting to be successful at our work.  There is nothing wrong with wanting to be compensated fairly for the labor we do and the work product we produce.  St. James in his letter condemns those who withhold wages from the workman, and the executive in his suite is just as much a workman in what he does as the lowliest sweating ditch digger.  The hazard, again, is lusting after wealth for its own sake, so you can sit back and rely on it and not on God.  The danger is learning to despise the riches that is God's Holy Spirit living in us.


    But how shall we stand in this world of lies and falsehood, in these times when financial uncertainty tempts us to try to get rich quick or to take matters into our own hands and steal?  We stand on Jesus and His death and resurrection for our sakes.  God gave up His Son for us: is there any other needful thing He will withhold from us He loves?  As Paul says in Romans 8, "He who did not spare His own Son, but gave him up for us all-- how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?"

     Not all at once, and not everything we are convinced we need, not necessarily even what we think is best.  We may pray the prayer of Agur son of Jakeh in faith, and the Lord may say No, and give us riches and the responsibility that comes with them.  He may will that we taste poverty, and learn to trust Him not merely for our daily bread, but for our very breath hour by hour.  In all our prayers, may we seek to know God, His graciousness and His glory.  May we desire above all things to be found in Christ, who died for us.  May we rejoice in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, now and in all eternity.  For however the economy is going, whatever our fate on this earth may be, that is a prayer that our Lord will always answer with a gracious, loving Yes.  Amen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

His Father's House and Business

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"We've looked everywhere!"

"What about the Temple?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him—

the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,

the Spirit of counsel and of power,

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

and he will delight in the fear of the LORD.

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

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

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

God's Answer to the Blue Christmas

Texts: Jeremiah 31:7-14; Luke 2:21-40

HAVE YOU EVER HAD A BLUE Christmas? I'm not sure why this year in particular, maybe it's the economy, but in the weeks leading up to this Christmastide I seemed to hear even more talk than usual about how stressful, depressing, and sad Christmas can be. You probably heard talk like that, too. It reflects a real problem. For many people, Christmas hurts. Maybe somebody you love admitted that their Christmas wasn't feeling merry. Or maybe the person having a blue Christmas was you.

Going by our passage in Luke 2, a blue Christmas isn't anything new. I wonder if that's what Mary, Jesus' mother, started to have when she heard all the words of Simeon in the Temple. There she was with her husband Joseph, bringing her infant firstborn Son Jesus to be dedicated forty days after his birth, according to the dictates of the Law. This venerable old man hobbles up to her, takes her Baby in his arms, and begins to prophesy. At first his words are full of comfort and hope. Simeon says:

"Sovereign Lord, as you have promised,
you now dismiss your servant in peace.
For my eyes have seen your salvation,
which you have prepared in the sight of all people,
a light for revelation to the Gentiles
and for glory to your people Israel."

What an act of God this was! A total stranger, seeing the salvation of God in this six week old infant! Mary's Child, bringing light and knowledge of the Lord to the Gentiles! This tiny Baby, recognized as the glory of Israel! How amazing! How marvellous!

But Simeon wasn't finished. He fixes his gaze on the young mother and prophesies:

"This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too."

Wow. And a merry celebration of the Messiah's birth to you, too, sir.

But Simeon spoke truly. Yes, the birth of Christ our Lord was and is an occasion for celebration and joy. Just ask the shepherds and the Wise Men. But there is a sad side of the birth of our Lord Jesus as well.

Let me say right now it's not the sadness we experience when we say we're having a blue Christmas. If we sat down and examined our feelings, we'd probably see we were depressed because we didn't have the time, money, or strength to make this Christmas all we wanted it to be. Or we were feeling upset because people around us expected us to make their Christmas the way they wanted it to be. Sadness might've gripped us because certain loved ones couldn't be with us on Christmas, maybe never again-- or because we were having to spend Christmas Day with people whose presence-- and presents-- we could do without. A blue Christmas can come because we're in a depressed state anyway and all the general cheer clashes rudely with the way we're feeling.

I'm not here to judge those wishes and moods. But know this: the tragedy and sorrow that God our heavenly Father mixes in with the happiness of His Son's birth is both deeper and darker than the blues we might feel at Christmas time. And God has determined that both His Son and we must go through that deeper darkness and woe if we are to emerge into the light and exaltation of Resurrection joy.

For why did the eternal Son of God choose to take on flesh and be born as a baby in this world? Is the nativity of our Lord merely about an adorable child in a manger, and we can forget about Him now that the new year has arrived? No, Jesus Christ came to this earth with a mission and a purpose. He came to bring God's judgment upon sin and Satan. He came to redeem His people from slavery to death and raise them up to live with Him forever. And He did all these things through the suffering of His cross.

Christian friends, without the Cross there is no point to the manger! Without the suffering of Calvary there is no joy in Bethlehem. Without the tearing of His flesh for the sins of the world, the Word made flesh brings no joy for us. Jesus was born to die, for without His death, there could be no payment for sins, no Resurrection, no life. But Jesus Christ the Son of Mary did die and rise again, that we His people might live and dance and sing for joy forever in His heavenly kingdom.

But before that would happen, our Lord walked the road of human suffering with us. And again, as Simeon said:

"This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too."

For others, too, from His infancy the coming of the Messiah Jesus meant trouble as well as peace, condemnation as well as rejoicing, and a sword in the soul as well as comfort and joy.

What? The Messiah's advent didn't bring universal cheer? We know that wasn't true by the reaction of King Herod. But even today, we don't have to be a paranoid ruler to have a hard time accepting the newborn King for who He is. Each of us is born bound up in our human sin nature. And unless and until God reaches out His hand in mercy to us, we think that's all right and normal. We think we're good enough the way we are, and God will let us and all our friends into heaven because we're nice people. But from the very beginning of His life Christ our Lord disturbs our peace and tells us we're living a lie.

Take His name. In Luke 2:21, we're told that "On the eighth day, when it was time to circumcise him, he was given the name Jesus, the name the angel had given him before he had been conceived." Jesus means "Jehovah saves." It's the same as the name "Joshua," but our Lord wasn't called that name because Mary and Joseph liked the sound of it. No, Jesus was given that name because He was to be the Savior of the world.

But that's uncomfortable, isn't it? To say Jesus has come as our Savior says that we need to be saved. His very presence on this earth condemns us for our sins. They aren't simply mistakes, or missteps, or inappropriate actions, or any of the other words we use to cover up what we do, they are sins, deepest offenses against our holy and righteous God. To say Jesus as a Good Example, most people are fine with that. But to proclaim Him as the Savior, Jehovah God come in human flesh to do for us with we could never do for ourselves, we sinful humans don't like that idea, do we? Not really.

But when the Holy Spirit convicts us of our sins, the news of the coming of Jesus who is Jehovah our Savior is the best news of all. When we accept that no amount of trying hard will make our Christmasses or our lives the way we-- or God-- want them to be, our eyes see Jesus as the glorious salvation that allows us to lay down our burdens in peace. Where stubborn sinners fall, repentant sinners rise on the grace of our Lord.

And then, there is offense in this world in the fact that Jesus was circumcised at all. As a Jewish boy, of course He would be. But nothing that is recorded of our Lord in the Gospels is done by accident. Circumcision was the sign of God's gracious covenant with Abraham. It was the outward, visible sign of God's one-way agreement with Abraham, where God promised to do great things for Abraham and his seed, including the blessing of all nations through him. All Abraham had to do-- if you call it "doing something"-- was receive the promise of God by faith. Ever since that time maybe 2,000 years before Christ, the sons of Abraham regularly received circumcision as the sign of God's covenant with them. And just as regularly, they broke God's covenant by failing to walk before the Lord in faith.

Jesus was born to be that ultimate Seed of Abraham who would walk before God the Father in perfect trust and righteousness. His faithfulness condemned Israel's violation of the covenant with Abraham. His inheritance of the promises of God shows up the failure of the false sons of Abraham who forfeited their inheritance by their faithlessness.

But for us who are the spiritual seed of Abraham through faith in Christ, all the promises of God belong to us through Him. Doesn't matter if we're born Jews or Gentiles, through trust in Jesus we become children of Abraham, too, and we inherit the perfect righteousness that Jesus showed on earth, especially in His death and resurrection. Through Him we rise, while unbelievers fall.

And then, Mary and Joseph bring Jesus to the Temple to be dedicated to God, as it is written in the Law of the Lord at Exodus 13, verses 2 & 12. The Law said that every firstborn male offspring belonged to the Lord. If it were a clean animal, it was to be sacrificed. If it were a human boy child, he was to be redeemed-- a price had to be paid to God to buy back His life. This is what Jesus' parents are doing for Him in the Temple. Through them by this action God identifies His Son with us.

What I mean is this: Because of creation, all our lives belong to God. He has the right to give us life or to take it away, simply because we are His. But because of Adam's fall, all our lives are forfeit to God because of sin. The wages of sin is death, and that's what we deserve. The traditional redemption of the firstborn symbolized this double debt to God. But when Jesus was redeemed by His parents, He became identified with all of us enslaved sinners who owed a debt to God we could never pay. He perfectly obeyed the Law of Moses that condemned us every time we broke one of its statutes. And so by His sinless life and sacrificial death Jesus became our Redeemer. He has paid the price we owed. And now because of Jesus' righteousness our Father God regards us as His own obedient children, made Christ's own brothers and sisters by His blood..

This is a cause for rejoicing, is it not? This hope is why we are filled with gladness at Christmastide, and all through the year! But there are those who reject the idea that they need a Redeemer. We rejected that idea until the Holy Spirit came upon our lives and showed us the depth of our sin. Jesus indeed grew up to be a sign that was spoken against, as the scribes and the Pharisees, the very religious people who should have recognized Him as Messiah and rejoiced in His coming-- those scribes and Pharisees rejected Him and spoke insultingly against Him. And why? Because they felt they did not need a Redeemer. Or if they did, they wanted to be redeemed from the power of Rome, not from the power of sin, death, and the devil in their own lives.

And so our Lord Jesus was arrested, condemned, and crucified as a blasphemer and liar, and thus the final part of Simeon's prophecy came true-- a sword pierced the soul of Mary, Jesus' mother.

But that wasn't the end of the story, was it? Oh, no. For the torn flesh and shed blood of Christ purchased the redemption of Jerusalem, as the prophetess Anna looked forward to, and not just of Jerusalem, but of all the world. The Resurrection of our Lord on the third day proved that He was, indeed, the Son of God, the Redeemer of Mankind, the faithful Seed of Abraham, the Savior of the world. The tragedy and woe that Jesus went through for our sake bought for us eternal gladness and peace that passes all human understanding, no matter what our circumstances might be at this Christmas or any other. Through Him the word of the prophet Jeremiah has come true, that the Lord will turn our mourning into gladness; that instead of sorrow He will give us comfort and joy.

The birth of our Lord did involve sorrow and woe, and that trouble was deeper than what we experience when we are having a blue Christmas. But it doesn't exclude that trouble. For when we bring to light the thoughts of our own hearts, we see that much if not most of our earthly Christmas sadness has to do with what we cannot do and what this world cannot provide. But rejoice, child of God! The birth of Jesus Christ, Immanuel, is all about what we cannot do and what this fallen world cannot provide! Offer up your inadequacy, your anger, your sorrow, and your need to Him, and accept Him in simple faith. In Christ, God has done for us all we could not do for ourselves; He has provided us with everything we need to be joyful and comforted in Him.

So let us dance and be glad; let us shout for joy on the heights of Zion! For the Lord has redeemed His people and will shepherd us forever. Christ, the Light to the Gentiles is with us; Jesus, the Glory of Israel has come!