Unfinished Business, Part 2

Text:  John 21:1-22

TWO WEEKS AGO in the twenty-first chapter of the Gospel according to St. John we began to see how the risen Christ works in us, from the perspective of the Apostle Peter.  We saw how Jesus meets us in the ordinary activities of our daily lives, even when we not be looking for Him.  We were reminded how He transforms us by the saving power of His cross, so we can run to Him and His holiness in spite of our sin.  And we saw again how Jesus, our Lord and God, provides us with everything we have and need, and though He doesn't need our help, still He calls us to participate in His work in the world until He comes again.

This morning we're going to go deeper into this last truth as we examine the second part of this passage.  We left Peter, James and John the sons of Zebedee, Thomas, Nathaniel, and a couple of the other disciples on the western shore of the Sea of Tiberias (the Sea of Galilee) gathered around a charcoal fire eating breakfast with the risen Jesus.  Imagine the mixed emotions Peter might be feeling.  You know how it is when there's something wrong between you and a good friend; when you've offended or hurt him in some way.  He's treating you like everything's all right, but you know, you just know that the two of you have unfinished business.

And there certainly was unfinished business between Simon Peter and his Lord.  Back in John chapter 18, in the hours before Jesus was crucified, there'd been another charcoal fire with Peter standing near, that time in the courtyard of the high priest.  Some distance away Jesus was standing His farce of a  trial.  Peter had already denied knowing Jesus when he was let in at the courtyard gate.  And by the flickering fire Simon Peter had denied his Lord the second and third times.  In a few hours Jesus was dead and now it was too late, the offense could never be put right.  But now here was Jesus, risen from the dead and sitting there with them! But for Peter, the joy had to be mixed with the nagging feeling that Jesus must still be terribly, terribly disappointed in him.  Would it be worse if the Lord left the unfinished business unfinished? Or if He openly called Peter out on his sin?  Either way, could their relationship ever again be the same?

Then it happened.  After they'd all finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon, son of John, do you truly love me more than these?"

Notice how Jesus calls Peter by his birth name, Simon, and not by "Peter," the name He gave him?  "Peter" means, well, not quite "rock" like the Rock of Gibraltar, but more "rocklike" or "rocky."  It signifies strength and steadiness, but Simon had been anything but strong and steady the night Jesus stood His trial.

Then see how Jesus asks him if he "truly loves" Him, "more than these."  It bears repeating that the Greek word the NIV translates "truly love" is "agapas," the second person singular of the verb related to "agape," which means selfless, deathless, Godlike love, the love that for the sake of righteousness would cause a man to die even for His enemies.  "Simon", Jesus is gently asking, "what about all those grandiose professions of unbending loyalty you spouted in the Upper Room?"  "I will lay down my life for you," Peter had said.  "Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death!" Peter had said.  "Simon," Jesus says now, "do you truly love Me,  agapas me , more than these?"  The night our Lord was arrested Peter had sworn, "Even if all fall away, I will not."  Peter had been so sure he loved Jesus with unshakeable, deathless       love, that his love for Jesus exceeded the love of any of the other disciples.  That had been his fervent boast.  So, "Simon, do you truly love Me like that?" Jesus asks. "More than these others do?"

What can he say?  Peter tries to get round his shame by replying, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you."  But what's this?  Peter isn't using the verb form of "agape" that Jesus used, but the verb form of "philia," or brotherly love.

Now, let's not sell philia love short.  It's far more than just liking.  It's the kind of love that would cause a sister to spend her last dime to bail her sister out of jail, or a soldier to fall on a grenade for a comrade in his regiment.  But it tends to focus on people you're in a mutual relationship with, those you know would do the same for you.  It doesn't have the same self-abandoning quality as  agape. Peter has to step it down and profess to a love that is not so high.

Once more, in verse 16, Jesus asks Peter, "Do you truly love Me, agapas me?"  Why does He ask this again?  Because the Lord bears true agape love towards Peter, and He wants to make sure Peter learns what he needs to learn.  Peter needs to really hear and respond to Jesus and not just say what he hopes he can get away with or what he thinks Jesus wants to hear.  Their unfinished business needs to be finished, not glossed over.

And again Peter can only say, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you-- philo se."  "Yes, Lord, I love you like a comrade-at-arms or a brother."  Peter can no longer claim that his love for Jesus is unlimited and Godlike.  It is, he decides, a good, solid, devoted human love.

But then, in verse 17, once more Jesus asks Peter, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" That is, in the Greek, "Do you  phileis me?"   The Evangelist tells us that Peter was hurt at this.  Not because Jesus had asked him about his love for Him a third time, but because the third time Jesus had changed the word for love He was using.  He switched to the term Peter was trying to accommodate himself with.    "So, Simon, do you really love Me with philia love?"  How the reminder must have probed the depth of his betrayal!  Fall on a grenade for Jesus?  Back there in the high priest's courtyard he couldn't even admit to knowing Him!

But still, this philia love is what Peter intends towards Jesus and it's the least that Jesus deserves.  So he appeals to Jesus' deepest knowledge of his heart: "Lord, you know all things; you know I love you-- philo se!"

What is was our Lord trying to accomplish with all this?  Just this: It was still His intention that Peter should be the leader of the Apostles and the chief evangelist to the Jews throughout the Roman world.  But Simon Peter couldn't be all that as long as he was depending upon his own strength and good intentions.  He had to be-- not humiliated--but humbled, so he would depend wholly on the strength and resurrection power of Jesus Christ instead.

Brothers and sisters, our Lord hasn't called us to be the Prince of the Apostles like Simon Peter.  But He does call us to love and serve Him with a right appreciation of our intentions and abilities.  He wants us to walk humbly in His presence, depending on Him alone.  It's bad enough when we hang back from serving Him because we think it's all up to us and we feel inadequate and scared.  It's worse when we pull the "Stand back, Lord, I'll defend You!" act, as if we were St. George and Jesus were the helpless maiden who needed to be rescued from the dragon.  Because fear may cause us to cry out for Christ's help, but when we boast in our own strength, we forget our need of Him altogether.  Then He can do nothing with us until by the Holy Spirit we are moved to repent.

But what does Jesus command Peter each time the apostle confesses, "Lord, you know I love you, that I  philo se"?  "Feed my lambs," says Jesus.  "Take care of my sheep.  Feed my sheep."  Peter is the model and prototype of all the pastors and elders Christ has put into His Church to build her members up in the Christian faith and ministry.  All right, Peter loves the Lord with philia love.  How can he show it?  How can any leader in the church show it?  By bringing the people of God, young and old, to a deeper, richer, truer, heart, mind, and spirit knowledge of and relationship with the Lord who died to save them from their sins and rose to give them eternal life.

From the Holy Spirit's work as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles we know this feeding and care taking primarily means preaching the Good News of Jesus Christ and His saving work.  Not just to bring in new converts, the lambs, but also, always, to sustain the sheep, the more mature saints.  For we who have been in Christ's Church longer also need to be comforted and corrected by repeated reminders of who Jesus is and what He has done for us.  Otherwise we forget and wander off on our own imaginings about Jesus and what He's about.  We go astray.

Brothers and sisters, we live in dangerous times when pastors and elders especially need to adhere faithfully and firmly to these commands of Jesus.  And I'm not now talking about bombs set by American citizen terrorists or infringements on our liberties by our own government.  No, I'm referring to a  trend that's set in in some parts of the evangelical wing of the Church, that would reject totally what Jesus commands Peter and all pastors to do.

This danger starts with the insistence that we should stop using the word "sheep" for God's people.  It's demeaning, some Christian leaders say, and it implies that we're all stupid and helpless.  And yes, it isn't exactly a compliment to be called a sheep.  They do tend to wander off.  They eat stuff they shouldn't.  They refuse to drink unless the water is still and not running.  They get dirty and diseased and smelly.  But God in His wisdom chose to incorporate this term for us in His Word because that is exactly what we are like when we're left to ourselves in our sin.  Helpless.  Wandering.  Consuming poisonous weeds.  And not very clever, and the most intelligent among us can sometimes be the stupidest of all.  He chose this word moreover because it exalts Jesus Christ as the Good Shepherd who keeps us safe and healthy, who laid down His life to rescue us from Satan, that old wolf.  Without His loving favor we are prey to every false religion and wild beast of lying worldly ideas that comes along.  But Jesus does save and preserve us, and He does so by the hand of faithful undershepherds like the man He was making Peter to be.

Along with this, there are also those in our time who'll admit that God's people are His sheep, but they say it's up to the sheep to feed themselves.  That's the only way, they insist, for the church to be "seeker sensitive" and "missional." Pastors like Bill Hybels of Willow Creek Church in Chicago and Steven Furtick of Elevation Church of Charlotte, South Carolina, have said openly that members must become "self-feeders"; that those who want to hear more about the doctrines of grace on Sunday morning are on the way to becoming "spiritually obese"; that it's not their job as pastors to take care of the already-saved, they have to focus on the lost.  These men are right that the local church should be as outward-looking and concerned for unsaved sinners as Jesus is.  We must not be a private club where we care only for ourselves.  But they seem to forget that without pastors and elders continually building the membership up by the Word and sacraments of Jesus Christ we have nothing to take into the world.  If we sheep (and that includes all of us) are left without the shepherds God has appointed for us, if the shepherds refuse to do their Christ-given jobs, we will be walking pieces of unfinished business, with nothing to offer anybody but our own failing, faulty human efforts.

It would be bad enough if this "self-feeding sheep" mentality were a problem only in nondenominational churches, but some evangelical Presbyterian leaders are also beginning to suggest that that's what it takes to be missional.  Brothers and sisters, whatever you do, make sure that the person in your pulpit feeds constantly with the sincere milk and the strong meat of the Word of God, not only in preaching, but in care and visitation.  For only then will you be strong enough to reach out to those who do not know our great Shepherd and the only Lord.

Jesus in this episode in John led Simon Peter into a new knowledge of himself and of Jesus' will for him, and closed the unfinished business they had between them after Peter's denial.  But Peter is not exactly comforted when Jesus goes on to indicate how Peter will finish his life on this earth, in a martyr's death.  He no longer boasts proudly about facing it without fear, but he can't help wondering if John will experience the same.  But the command of Jesus to him and to us is immovable: Never mind my will for him (or anybody else), you follow Me.

For Jesus' business with us is never finished, at least, not until He comes in glory and we are perfected in Him.   We love imperfectly but are to go on loving, not depending on our love but on His; we serve in and with and through the gospel Word, not boasting in our own strength but humbly relying on His.  And the strength and love of Jesus are perfect and sure, for He who died has risen from the dead, and He is with us now and forever more.

Always Being Reformed According to the Word of God

Texts:    Nehemiah 7:73b-12; Matthew 23:1-12

TODAY WE OBSERVE Reformation Day.  It was October 31, 1517, when the issues that'd been fermenting for decades  in the Church of Jesus Christ came to a head and nothing would ever be the same.  Reformation Day marks the official beginning of the Protestant Church, for when Martin Luther hammered his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, Germany, he was protesting against the evils and degeneracies that were rife in the church he loved.

    Luther was followed by Calvin, and Melanchthon, and Knox, and all the other great Protestant Reformers who lived and died by this confession: That we are saved not by our works, but by Christ alone by God's grace alone through faith alone to God's glory alone, this truth being revealed to us in Scripture alone.  In the life of the people of God, reformation is not a one-time thing; it's required again and again, as often as we go astray from the truth of the grace of God and as often as He sends His Spirit to bring us back to Him again.

    In our Scripture passages this morning we read of two occasions in Israel's history when God's people were in desperate need of reformation.  In Nehemiah, the reformation is underway.  In Matthew, it appears to be too late.

    The assembly in Nehemiah 8 takes place about a hundred years after the Jews were first given permission to return to the land of Israel after the exile to Babylon.  The exile shook to the foundations everything the Jews understood about their covenant with God.  But as they studied the Law and the Prophets, they came to realize that even in this terrible situation the Lord was still with them and still had a purpose for them.  They saw that it was their sins that had caused the Lord to drive them out of the land, and they returned to Judea with a heart of repentance and reformation.

    But as we read in the twin books of Ezra and Nehemiah, and in the book of the prophet Haggai, after awhile the returned exiles became complacent and lazy towards God.  They erected their own houses and didn't restore the Temple.  They feared the opposition of their non-Jewish neighbors and didn't trust God to protect them.  So they didn't rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.  Worse, they began to fall back into the same sins that had gotten them thrown out of the Promised Land in the first place: Marrying foreign wives and adopting their religious practices.  Desecrating the Sabbath.  Oppressing the poor, not supporting the worship of the Temple as prescribed by the Law of Moses, and so on.  Spurred on by Ezra and Nehemiah, they put in the effort and the Temple and walls were rebuilt.  But spiritually, they needed reformation.  How was it to come about?  Would it be enough if all the heads of households simply pledged to keep God's covenant?  They did do that.  But how were they to know what God's covenant will was?

    Nehemiah the governor and Ezra the priest and scribe knew:  True reform would come to the people only if they were brought back to the written Word of God, delivered to Moses in the Torah: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.  So in Nehemiah 8 we see the people, men, women, and all children who were old enough to understand, standing in the square beside the Jerusalem Water Gate, listening to Ezra read the Word of God to them. 

    How could they know God's will unless they knew God's Word?  God's people could be remade and remolded only according to the original plan and pattern He set for them.  The people listened to the Word of God read to them in Hebrew.  Most of them no longer understood their ancestral language, so the Levites went through the crowd and translated the Word into Aramaic for them, so, as it says in verse 8, the meaning would be clear.

    And the message of the Word became clear, painfully clear.  These spiritual ancestors of ours were devastated.  They were cut to the quick by the enormity of their sin.  They mourned and wept, as we read in verse 9. 

    Any true reformation born of God's Word and Spirit first convicts us of our sin.  The Scripture confronts us with how far short we fall of God's will for us.  It exposes how we have gone wrong, and God's Spirit moves us to grieve at how we have offended against the Lord who saved us once and loves us still.

    But after grief, the Word brings hope.  Its message of salvation does not leave us in our distress.  It doesn't stomp us into the ground and tell us how worthless and meaningless we are.  No, God's Word calls us to lift up our heads and rejoice in the Lord, for He has saved and forgiven us.  Through His power we can amend our lives and our practices and be the church He intends for us to be.  This is cause to celebrate!  As Nehemiah says to the people in verse 10, "Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is sacred to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the LORD is your strength."

    "The joy of the Lord is your strength"!  True reformation according to the Word of God brings joy!  Joy in the Lord who is our salvation, and strength, because God Himself is joyful when His people return to Him in faith and humility.

    God's people the Jews needed to be reformed by the Word of God.  And again and again up to the coming of Jesus Christ, their Lord and Messiah, they needed reformation. 

    The Pharisees began as a reform movement.  They started out well, in the days of the Maccabean kings, about two hundred years before Jesus was born.  They worked hard to call their Jewish brethren back to the Law of God and away from Greek and secular innovations.  But so zealous were they, that over the years they began to see themselves as the only true interpreters of the Word.  They were so anxious that everyone should keep all the laws of worship and ritual just-exactly, that they came up with all sorts of additional guidelines and rules setting out their ideas of what God in His Word had really meant.  This oral law took on the same force as the original Law that the Lord delivered to Moses, whether it was faithful to the original meaning or not.

    By Jesus' day, things had gotten very bad with the Pharisees, but they didn't realize it.  They didn't see they'd missed the whole reason that God had given the Law to Moses in the first place-- to prepare a holy people through whom the Savior of the world should come.  They were like a bride who's so concerned with getting the pearl decorations on her headdress just right that she forgets to show up at the altar to meet her groom.  The Word of God no longer had power to bring repentance and joy in their lives.  Or, should I say, the Lord had withdrawn His Spirit from them so that they could not and would not hear the truth of the Word, and repent and be saved.

    In chapter 23 of the gospel according to St. Matthew Jesus pronounces woe and condemnation on the Pharisees.  They were beyond being reformed and they sought to keep others from being reformed, too.

    Yes (as He says in verse 2), "The teachers of the Law and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat."  They were like college professors with multiple doctorates.  By training they were qualified to teach what God had given through Moses.  They were the only sect in 1st century Judaism who made any effort to instruct the common people in the word of God.  So, as they taught according to the Torah, the people should obey them and do as they say.  But do not do as they do, Jesus warns us.  Do not follow the way they show off their outward obedience and inwardly are full of impurity, meanness, and unbelief.  Do not follow the way they claim to love God, but reject His Messiah, Jesus Himself.  Do not make the teaching of the Word of God all about ourselves and our greatness, instead of us being all about what God has done.  Do not be like them and make the voice of Scripture a burden and a trial to one another, instead of a light bringing repentance and the joy of the Lord.

    The Pharisees thought they didn't need to be reformed.  They thought the way they were doing things was a reformation in itself. In Matthew 23 Jesus tells His disciples and the crowds that God was finished with the Pharisees and their pretensions.  So do not aspire to be called "Rabbi," which literally means, "My great one."  Do not look to any human being as your spiritual master or teacher, for Christ alone is your supreme teacher.  In the life of the spirit, do not adorn any man with the title "father," for God in heaven alone is the Father of all the faithful.  No, for "whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted."

    As Presbyterians, we celebrate the Protestant Reformation.  We proudly stand in the tradition of Luther and Calvin.  So is it enough for us to look back five hundred years to a reformation that is finished, accomplished, complete?  Or are we, in our own time and place, in need of reformation so we will be a church pleasing to our Lord Jesus Christ, the Head and Cornerstone of the church?

    Considering what's been going on in our denomination lately, I think most of us would give that question a resounding "YES!!"  As a church body, we do need reformation in our time.  But let's not deceive ourselves.  Yes, it's harmful for us to celebrate open transgression.  It's distressing when we who call ourselves "Reformed" don't extend the redeeming grace of Jesus to those who tragically identify with their besetting sin.  But it's worse when we fall away from the faith of Jesus Christ in ways that seem innocent, even helpful, and don't even notice how faithless we've become and don't realize how much in need of reformation we really are.

    How many of us would agree to the following tenets:
1) "A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth."
2) "God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions."
3) "The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself."
4). "God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when He is needed to resolve a problem."
5) "Good people go to heaven when they die."

    Does this sound like Christianity to you, let alone Reformed Christianity?  It is not.  It's a counterfeit, false religion called moralistic therapeutic deism.  There is no room here for the sovereign Lord of the Bible.  It says nothing about our sin and our desperate need for a Savior.  It has no real need of the Son of God who hung on a cross to purchase forgiveness for us.  It does not acknowledge that our sovereign God has a claim on every part of our lives, nor does it bow the knee in awe and thanksgiving at His grace that alone will allow us into His presence when we die.

    But this is the creed many of us live by, a false creed we must reject.  The watchword of the Reformed churches is that we are "Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda secundum verbum Dei"-- "The Church Reformed, always to be reformed according to the word of God."  Without close knowledge of God's Holy Scriptures, without the Holy Spirit confirming their truth to our hearts and conforming us to the image of Jesus Christ the living Word, our attempts at self-reformation will be worse than useless. 

    God's good news to us is that we are saved by Christ alone by God's grace alone through faith alone to God's glory alone.  This truth is revealed to us in Scripture alone, the Word of God that is as close as the Bible on our shelf.  Take up, read; repent, rejoice, and be reformed, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.

A Different Gospel-- No Gospel at All

Texts:  Jeremiah 2:4-13; Galatians 1:1-10

AS YOU CERTAINLY REMEMBER, in 2008 the president campaigned on a platform of "Hope and Change." But it wasn't just the Democrats who took that approach. My Republican state representative over in Beaver County ran with the motto "Change Is Good." And change isn't attractive only in politics. Young and old, we've all been through times when our lives seems so monotonous, so ordinary, so stifling that we just wanted things to be different. There's something alluring and refreshing about the idea of change, especially when things aren't going so well. Not about any particular change, just "change" in general.

And if we go for a different phone or alter the way we dress or vote in a new politician to represent us, maybe it works out and maybe it doesn't. Sometimes it doesn't make that much difference, and sometimes it seems to makes all the difference in the world. But when it comes to changes involving the Lord our God, it makes a difference not only in this world, it effects our lives for all eternity.

When the Lord God Almighty rescued the children of Israel out of Egypt about 3,500 years ago, they were ready for change. For long years they'd been laboring under the heavy yoke of Pharaoh and his taskmasters. They were groaning for relief and the Lord God of their fathers heard their cry and rescued them. He sent terrible plagues on the Egyptians and brought the Israelites through the Red Sea with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. As it says in our passage from Jeremiah chapter 2,

[The Lord] brought [them] up out of Egypt
and led [them] through the barren wilderness,
through a land of deserts and rifts,
a land of drought and darkness,
a land where no one travels and no one lives.

Ultimately He

brought [them] into a fertile land
to eat its fruit and rich produce.

That was a tremendous change! And definitely a change for the better. Out of slavery He brought them, to a wonderful land rich with produce and abundant with fruit, where they lived in houses they hadn't had to build and drank from cisterns they hadn't had to dig. But that wasn't the best part of the change God made for them. In Egypt, they were just that Hebrew rabble. But now, the children of Israel were the people of God, the dearly-loved possession of the Lord of the universe! They were His covenant nation, endowed with His laws and protected by His faithfulness! What a glorious difference! What a marvellous change!

So you'd think they'd be happy with their new situation and want to live in it forever. But as we know, in the wilderness it wasn't long before the Israelites started complaining that freedom equalled certain death and they'd be better off going back and being slaves again in Egypt. And pretty soon after the Lord brought them into the promised land-- well, let Jeremiah tell it:

Has a nation ever changed its gods?
(Yet they are not gods at all.)
But my people have exchanged their Glory
for worthless idols.

God's own chosen people turned their backs on Him, who was their Glory! They exchanged Him for the do-nothing, no-good, ersatz gods of the Canaanites they'd driven out! Yes, human beings have a hankering for change, but who ever heard of something like this, that a nation should change its gods as the Israelites had changed theirs? Go across the sea to Kittim, says the Lord through Jeremiah; that is, go to Cyprus and the Greek peoples there. Do they stop worshipping Zeus (though he is no god at all)? Send to Kedar; that is, to the Syro-Arabian desert where the Bedouin nomads live. Do they forsake their idols (though they're only wood and stone and cast metal)? So how could Israel and Judah forsake the Lord Almighty, God Most High who made heaven and earth and saved them to be His very own?

The clue is in verse 13:

"My people have committed two sins:
They have forsaken me,
the spring of living water,
and have dug their own cisterns,
broken cisterns that cannot hold water."

"They have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water." There's a saying that goes, "The Jews are like everybody else, except more so." We have no standing to cast stones at our Old Testament predecessors or at their modern-day children. If we'd been in their place, we would've done the same. We would have turned from the good change that God had brought us into and gone after a situation where we were in control. It's our fallen, sinful human nature.

A cistern is a good thing to have in a dry climate. I've wished I had one buried in my backyard this dry summer. Then when it rains I could store up enough water to take care of my garden. But it'd be even better if I had a fresh, flowing spring on my property! Cistern water is okay for the crops, but for drinking and cooking and even for bathing, it's a far-back second place.

The Lord our God is like a spring of living water to His people. We don't control Him; He's simply there for us with His goodness and grace. But we and our spiritual ancestors the Jews wanted gods they could control, that were like cisterns they'd dug and lined themselves.

When I was in college, I took a course or two on North American Indian Anthropology. And I remember my Anthro professor telling us that the gods and totems of the various tribes were expressions of how they wanted to see themselves. A tribe wanted to regard themselves as fierce like the bear or all-seeing like the eagle or cunning like the fox, so the bear-spirit or the eagle-spirit or the fox-spirit were what they worshipped. Yes, there was the idea of a Great Spirit, just like the nations of the ancient Near East acknowledged a God Most High. But for pagan peoples throughout history, that Spirit or God wasn't the One you really worshipped. No, you made your offering to Baal, the storm god, or Ashtoreth, the goddess of sex and fertility. And you could feel proud of yourself, because your nation was strong like Baal and prolific like Ashtoreth. And even when you feared your deities, you could bribe them to do what you wanted by offering the right sacrifices-- like burning one of your own children alive in the ritual fire, then the deity really had to listen. Besides, wasn't it great to worship gods where sleeping with temple prostitutes was part of the liturgy? I mean, talk about a worship experience!

So if you're an Israelite with this going on all around you, your inborn human desire for novelty and change and control could and did lure you away from the Lord. Even though He was the One who really did give you all that was pleasant and good. Even though you were throwing yourself right into the dead metal arms of worthless idols. Even though you were deserting the One who'd saved you and turning to different gods, who were not gods at all.

How could the Lord not judge His people? How could He not take them into exile? They had to learn that He alone was Lord and God, that He was their Life, their Hope, and their Glory. Not for their sake alone, but for the sake of all of us who would one day come to believe in Jesus, the promised Messiah of Israel. God had to change them from idolatry back into His people.

And in the fullness of time, our Lord Christ, the Son of David, the promised Savior, was born into this world. And things were better, in a way. At least Jesus didn't have to combat open idolatry as Jeremiah or Elijah did. No, the anti-God change in Israel was more subtle. The Jewish leaders in Jesus' day didn't worship Baal, but something even more deceptive: They worshipped their own ability to keep the Law of God. They depended on their own capacity to be righteous as God is righteous. Their teaching was that if every Jew could keep all the ordinances of the Law all day for just one day, the kingdom of God would come. But here comes Jesus proclaiming that now that He's here, the kingdom of God has arrived! And preaching and pronouncing and doing miracles as if He Himself is the divine King! That was a change they couldn't accept, and it got Him crucified.

But you know, that was God's plan all along. And far from being a victim, Jesus Christ took His throne on that cross and shed His blood to pay for the sins of you and me. He took the punishment for all our idolatries, for all our disobedience, for all the times we turn our back on the Lord our God. In His rising again we have new and eternal life through Him. This is God's one and only plan for the salvation of mankind. This is the Gospel St. Paul and all the apostles preached throughout the Roman world and beyond. Repent and believe that Jesus perfectly kept the Law for you! Accept the forgiveness that He won for you on the cross! If you're Jewish, turn from your failed attempts to follow all the ordinances and statutes of Moses and depend on Christ alone! If you're a Gentile pagan, turn from your worthless idols and believe in the Son of the one, true, and everliving God! This change is good!

This message was for the Galatians and it's for us today. We, too, were in the slavery of sin until Jesus saved us by His blood. We, too, worshipped worthless idols of our own making. We needed and every day need the change only Christ can give.

But somehow we all keep hankering after the kind of change we can control. Paul is upset and angry with the Galatians because they have "so quickly desert[ed] the one who called them by the grace of Christ and [have turned] to a different gospel-- which is really no gospel at all." This gospel is what we read in verses 3 and 4: It's the good news of "Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father."

Now, who is this one Paul says they've turned from, in verse 6? Some might say it's the Apostle Paul himself. But the following verses contradict that. Paul says that even if he himself should come preaching a gospel other than redemption and forgiveness of sins in the shed blood of Jesus Christ, "let him be eternally condemned!" Or, more bluntly-speaking, may he go straight to hell! No, verse 3 of chapter 3 tells us it was God the Holy Spirit who had called the Galatians into faith in Christ, and He's the One who calls us. It says, "Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?"

Ah. There it is again. Abandoning the Spring of living water and digging out leaky cisterns that can't hold a drop to drink. The different so-called gospel the Galatians were running after is the same one too many Christians go after today. Perverters of the gospel had come to Galatia, preaching that to if you wanted to be really saved you had to keep the food laws, the feast day laws, the handwashing laws-- all the parts of the law of Moses that Jesus Himself had already fulfilled and abolished by His perfect righteous life and death. But the Galatians were ready to set His sacrifice aside to observe all that, just to "make sure."

Today we don't aspire to keeping all the kosher laws. But we're still tempted to desert the Holy Spirit and change over to the false "gospel" of human effort. For instance, do you believe that Christianity is fundamentally about loving your neighbor as yourself and being good so God will reward you in this life and the next? If so, welcome to the land of leaky cisterns. Welcome to the approval of men instead of the approval of God.

Brothers and sisters, loving your neighbor as yourself is the result of the gospel of Jesus Christ! We love our neighbor because God has first loved us in the death and resurrection of His Son. Through Christ He changes us so we can truly love God and our neighbor. It is not our own effort that produces good fruit for God, but the Spirit working in us. Even our trust in Him is not something we work up on our own; our faith itself is a gift from our Father in heaven.

Jesus does it all! That's why Paul has to remind the Galatians-- and us-- that his apostleship is not from man or by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised Christ from the dead. Because there are teachers even today who claim Paul got it wrong. That all his preaching of the blood atonement was just a distraction from the "simple, pure gospel of walking in Jesus' footsteps" that the Savior "really preached." I don't know what so-called Savior these people are talking about, but he's not the Jesus Christ who shed His blood on the cross to reconcile you and me to Almighty God.

The idolatrous so-called "gospel" of salvation by our own efforts has been popular since the Garden of Eden. But the good news is, you don't have to be drawn away by it. You don't even have to depend on your own efforts not to be drawn away by it! Believe God in His word: Jesus has paid for all your sins. Trust Him and know that you have the Holy Spirit living in you, to lead you in the paths of righteousness, for His name's sake. And when you stray, as we all do daily, accept the forgiveness He has won for you.

Rest and rejoice in the change the Lord has made in you, and never change from the true and only Gospel of Jesus Christ, who gave himself for your sins to rescue you from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory for ever and ever. Amen.

What God's Word Can Do

Texts: Isaiah 55:6-13; 2 Timothy 3:16-17; 4:1-5

Good morning. It's day number 73 of the year of our Lord 2010. Do you know where your New Year's resolutions are?

Beginning of this year, I heard a lot about people resolving to read the Bible through by the end of next December. If you're one of them, I hope you're keeping to your plan.

There's one problem with Bible reading resolutions. It's how we can think of it as something meritorious we do-- or something guilt-inducing that we fail to do. Ever catch yourself falling into that trap? I have. That's the time to have a good laugh at ourselves. Boast about reading God's holy Word? We may as well brag about eating our dinners and enjoying them! God gave us food for the body to satisfy and nourish the physical man, and He gave us His God-breathed Scriptures to nourish and sustain our souls. They are His gift to us, and they come with virtue, strength, and power that proceed from His very throne. When we receive them with thanksgiving we see for ourselves what God's word can do.

Before anything else, He opens our hearts to receive the Scriptures as the Word of God. The sixteenth and seventeen verses of the third chapter of Paul's letter to Timothy read,

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

The Greek word New International Version translates as "God-breathed" is theopneustos. Other translations render it as "God-inspired." In the latest issue of Modern Reformation there's an article by Michael Allen, who teaches systematic theology at Knox Theological Seminary in Fort Lauderdale. Prof. Allen writes,

The Greek word theopneustos has been studied up and down, left and right. The image is that of God breathing out, a notion surely informed by the creation account when God breathed life into the dust and made man (Gen. 2:7). Just as God created by his word in Genesis, so God brings about the new creation by the proclamation of the gospel. To that end, God inspires or breathes out life into and through the writings of the apostles. The picture is not of texts, already written, now receiving blessing; rather, the notion is of texts produced by God's very breath.1

Since this is the case-- since all Scripture has been produced by God by the power of His Holy Spirit, it has divine power. Power to convict us sinners of our sin; power to apply the saving blood of Jesus Christ to our soul; power to give us new hearts and new minds and set us in the paths of eternal life through that same Jesus Christ. And once we belong to Him, all that is written in this book has power to teach, to rebuke, to correct, and to train us in righteousness, so, as verse 17 reads, "the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work."

Does this term "man of God" refer only to the preacher? True, in the Old Testament God's designated prophet is often called "the man of God." But we live in New Testament times, and we are people of the New Covenant. God Almighty has called us all to be people of God, called by His Spirit and washed in His Son's precious blood.

Nor does verse 17 refer only to men. Greek has one word for a male person, another for a female person, and a third for a human being in general. Paul's word in this text is the third one. Are you in Christ? Then God's power in the Holy Scriptures is for you, working His grace so every Christian will be equipped to do what is wise and loving and holy as we serve our neighbor in His name.

Nevertheless, God by His church does set some individuals aside for special office, to be pastors and teachers, elders and deacons, missionaries and evangelists. It is their particular job to make sure that you who belong to Christ are equipped to do every good work He has foreordained for you to perform.

It's a solemn and weighty charge. See how Paul challenges Timothy in the first verse of chapter four: "In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus." Even now, our Triune God is here, watching over and monitoring everything I say to you. It's my responsibility to preach not myself or my ideas, but the very oracles of God. Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel of Christ and Him crucified! Woe to any consecrated and ordained Christian minister who fails to proclaim the living Word Jesus Christ as proclaimed in the written word of the Scriptures! Woe to us now, and woe to us when Christ shall sit and judge heaven and earth. Paul invokes the holy name of "Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead," reminding us that we will all stand before Him and give an account, and especially we pastors and elders and teachers who were charged with properly handling His word. Friends, the last thing I want on my tombstone is "Here lies an original theologian." I want to preach the faith once and for all delivered to the saints, and if I ever get out of that path, I want my brothers and sisters in Christ to put me back into it.

For as Paul writes to Timothy, Christ will someday appear in the clouds-- maybe sooner than we think!-- and His kingdom will come perfectly and God will be worshipped as Lord over all. Even now, His kingdom is coming in power as faithful ministers and teachers boldly proclaim the God-breathed message of His word, which brings His new creation to life in formerly lost and rebellious souls. Shall we be excused if our preaching tears down the kingdom instead of building it up? No! We must use the Word rightly, and show the church and the world what it can do.

And so, says Paul, "Preach the Word." Proclaim Christ the living Word made flesh, crucified and risen for us. Yes, this command is addressed especially to us in the pulpit ministry. But all of us who bear Jesus' name must be prepared to explain the hope He has put in us. God gives us what we need to do that as His gracious gift: He gives us the Scriptures themselves to read and study. Faithful preaching to hear and imbibe. Bible commentaries written by godly scholars. Wise men and women in the church who understand the Word and can help us to understand as well.

And so God's word prepares us to proclaim it in season or out of season. Now, this phrase doesn't mean we should interrupt school or business or random conversations to exhort people to repent. But whenever the Holy Spirit moves in our hearts to tell someone what Jesus did on the cross to take away their sins, the Word makes us ready to obey, whether or not it's comfortable for us; whether or not the other person will receive the Gospel as good news.

Even so, the Holy Spirit in verse 2 addresses pastors and teachers in particular. The God-breathed Scripture "is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness," and that is our special charge as we minister among you. The Word corrects. It moves the Christian who is carelessly going astray back into the right road. May Toby and I and every other pastor correct according to the Word, not from our own human judgement. The Word rebukes. It confronts Christians with their wilful sins. It puts the lie to false doctrine. It snatches the rebellious from the fires of Hell. May we pastors rebuke according to the Word, not out of our prejudices and fears. The Word encourages. It doesn't despise the day of small beginnings. It binds up the wounds of the brokenhearted and nourishes the weak and the young. May we pastors encourage according to the Word, with the power and grace of Jesus Christ, not with the sloppy sentimentalism of this sinful world.

When we pastors faithfully preach the Word in season and out of season, it infuses you, Christ's body, with power to stand strong against the lies of the world and the wiles of the devil. It gives you backbone and mettle and a sure sword hand against anything that would tear you away from your salvation in Jesus Christ. The Scriptures faithfully preached give you Jesus Christ Himself, living in you by the power of His Holy Spirit, fighting and winning the good fight of God, regardless of who or what comes against you.

We pastors must show you clearly what God's word can do, for the time is short. Paul writes in verse 3, "For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine." I'm afraid this isn't just about the unbelievers Out There; it's also a warning about people inside the church.
We see it happening today, all around us. People aren't naturally interested in hearing the Word of God. The Scriptures hurt before they heal and kill before they make alive. The good news of Jesus Christ is not really good unless first we've heard and received the bad news of the Law. Sinful human hearts doesn't want to submit to that. We didn't want to submit to that, until the Word of God worked in our hearts to recreate us according to the image of Christ.

And so, in churches all over the world, men and women are flocking to preachers who will tell them what their itching ears want to hear. Pastor, give me a great "worship experience," but don't waste my time with preaching! Tell me how to get rich or how to have a better marriage, but don't say anything about the Cross! Convince me it's okay to say I'm a Zen Buddhist and a Christian at the same time, but don't claim that Jesus is the only way to God! Keep my church small and comfortable and family-like, but don't disrupt us with talk about the power of the gospel for the world! Tickle my ears with how I can feel good about myself by doing good deeds, but don't fence me in with your narrow-minded Christ-centered, cross-focussed, Law-and-Gospel doctrine!

In all these ways and more the people of our time turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. Any idea or belief that human beings make up to explain how things got the way they are and how they should be is a myth, and it's all a lie against the truth of the Word of God. And heaven help us, many formerly-faithful pastors are wavering in their convictions. Some of us are wondering if maybe it might be okay to let in a little-- just a little-- of these myths-- just to get people and their itching ears through the door-- and once they're comfortable in the pews, we'll hit them with the real Jesus. Don't we understand how false that is? Don't we realize that the only way to grow God's church is by laying the foundation of Jesus Christ dead and raised again according to the Scriptures? How can we be so weak as to doubt what God's word can do?

In our text you can feel Paul's concern to keep Timothy out of that trap. In 1 Timothy we learn of the false doctrines and false practices this young pastor was up against in his church in Ephesus. Both men and women were claiming all sorts of false things about Jesus Christ, or denying Him altogether. How easy simply to give in, to mix in a little of this and a little of that, just to keep the peace and attract more members. No, Timothy! No, Paul says to all of us pastors who hold to the reformed and evangelical Christian faith! "Keep your head in all situations!" The power of the word will keep us from being swayed by the temptations of the world. "Endure hardship!" Remaining faithful to Christ and His self-revelation in Scripture will bring us hardship, as pastors and as churches. Membership may well go down. People will call us bigots and fools, and some of those accusers will be fellow-members. "Do the work of an evangelist." There is to be no barricading ourselves behind the church doors and letting the world literally go to hell. Even against hardship and calamity God's Spirit strengthens us to go boldly into the world bearing the good news of Jesus Christ as witnessed in the Holy Scriptures! And finally, "discharge all the duties of your ministry." Every one of us has a ministry to our neighbor to carry out in Jesus' name. Everyone of us is responsible for feeding ourselves on the Scriptures and showing in the world what they can do.

We pastors have special duties, and the first of them is to open to you this book, the Bible, trusting that the Holy Spirit will work in your hearts and reveal to you God's power. If we fail to preach the Word, we have nothing to give you. Without God breathing His power into our lives through the Scriptures, we can bring only worldly hope and human wisdom.

But God has given us His holy Word, and as Isaiah the prophet says,

It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.

To read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the Scriptures is certainly our duty. A duty, the same way it's our duty to sit down and thoroughly enjoy a generous, appetizing, and nourishing meal spread out for us by the Father who loves us most. Sit and eat, Christian friends. Learn firsthand what this book can do in you. And so, by patience, and comfort of His holy Word, may you embrace, and ever hold fast, the blessed hope of everlasting life. Amen.

______________________________
1. Allen, Michael: "Getting Inspiration from Inspiration," Modern Reformation, Vol. 19, No. 2, March/April 2010, p.19

And Still the Same

Texts: Isaiah 65:1-12; Luke 15:1-10

BACK IN THE SECOND CENTURY AFTER CHRIST, THERE lived a man by the name of Marcion.

Marcion believed that the god of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament were two different gods. He taught the false doctrine that the Jewish god was wicked, cruel, and wrong, while the god Jesus preached was loving, good, and right.

We Presbyterians are not Marcionites. We believe that the God of Abraham is the God of Jesus Christ. We believe that the God who spoke through the prophet Isaiah is the God who inspired Luke the Evangelist, too. As two of our hymns today say, "From age to age, He’s still the same."

Sometimes, though, we wonder. Like when we look at today’s Scripture lessons. "Lord, what are you saying here? In Isaiah 65, it’s all judgement and retribution, sword and slaughter! But in Luke 15, Jesus Your Son tells us that heaven rejoices when You recover one single sinner! Aren’t You contradicting Yourself, Lord? How can these both be true?"

If honest questions like this are going through your mind, be assured that your Father God hears you in mercy and love. He wants you to get an answer you can understand. Questions like that aren’t unbelief. Unbelief is doing what Marcion did, throwing out most of the Bible because he couldn’t wait for the Holy Spirit to explain its difficulties to him. Unbelief is running up against some hard or disturbing part of Scripture and saying, "Oh, I don’t want to worship a god that’d do something like that!" and throwing Christianity out the window, without trying to get an answer.

No, your heavenly Father is the giver of good gifts, and especially He will give you the Holy Spirit and understanding if you will ask Him! What can the Holy Spirit tell us to make these passages clear?

Well, first thing, He reminds us not to go off half-cocked. We mustn’t read the Word of God with closed minds or lazy eyes. So let’s look carefully at our verses from Isaiah 65.

In the very first verses, the Lord, the God of Israel, speaks of how He reveals Himself in love to all mankind, Jew and pagan alike. Yes, Israel is His special chosen people. But even to the Gentiles (verse 1), even to those "who did not ask for me," He has revealed Himself. And to some of them, He gave grace to find Him, even though they weren’t even looking for Him at all. Even to a nation-- any nation-- who didn’t call on His name, the Lord has said, "Here I am! Look at Me!"

As for His own people Israel, as the Hebrew says, it’s like He’s spreading out His hands in prayer to them, despite their obstinacy and their wilful ways. Continuously-- "All day long"-- He calls and calls to them to return and know Him and His goodness!

Does that sound cruel to you? Does that sound like a god who takes pleasure in retribution and slaughter? No, that is a God who bends down to His undeserving human creation in patience, mercy, and love.

The teaching that God is love was not something first mentioned by Jesus or the Apostle John! It runs all the way through the Old Testament and on into the New!

But the love of our God is not careless, or indulgent, or weak. God cares how His people treat Him, one another, and themselves. He has a right to be angry when we spit in His face and say we’ll disobey, whether He likes it or not.

And most of the Jews of Isaiah’s time were spitting in God’s face. They offered sacrifices of animals and incense in gardens on brick altars, when the Lord had commanded them that their sacrifices should be offered only in His temple, on an altar of bronze.

Not a big deal, you say? All right then, why didn’t they obey God’s command? Why did they insist on making their sacrifices when and where and how they pleased? If they truly loved the Lord as He did them, couldn’t they please Him in this little thing?

But it was symptomatic of how bad their hearts were towards Him. His people practiced necromancy, telling the future by sitting in graveyards and bringing up departed spirits. Didn’t they have the living Holy Spirit speaking through the prophets to listen to? Of course they did. But they wanted their own word, not the Word of the Lord. As it says in verse 11, they worshipped the gods of Fortune and Destiny, instead of the Creator of the universe who orders everything everywhere by the word of His power!

Their ritual meals were a deliberate offense to the Lord their God. If you have a ham at home in the oven on timed bake, this condemnation of those who eat the flesh of pigs is not directed at you. After Jesus fulfilled the Law, God declared that all living creatures were clean for us to eat, as we read in St. Mark and the Book of Acts. But up until Jesus Christ, eating pork was forbidden for the Jews. God used pork and the meat of certain other animals to symbolize the unclean ways of the Gentiles that they were to reject and avoid. But here His people are happily slurping down pork soup and dog meat and horseflesh and who knows what all else, as part of a religious ritual, and along with it they’re slurping down all the other vile Gentile practices a meal like that would involve.

And to cap it all off, these rebellious souls think their practices make them especially holy! They turn up their noses at those boring, unimaginative people who kept on going to the temple to worship the Lord. They’d say to them, "Keep away; don’t come near me, for I am too sacred for you."

Did you get that? "I am too sacred for you." This, after they'd indulged in every sort of vile, God-provoking practice they could think of! They know what they’re doing is wrong in God’s eyes, but they keep on doing it, they embrace it, they identify with it, they’re proud of it-- and they put down people who won’t join them in it.

So the Lord gives the rebellious ones what they have earned. The wages of sin is death, in the Old Testament and the New. For a long time, our merciful God has been withholding the deadly wages these people have earned. But now, the day of reckoning has come. He will pay them back in full, into their laps, individually, every last penny. They did not reject the sins of their fathers: fine, they will receive their fathers’ back pay as well. All their worship of false gods in gardens and on mountain tops, all the open and deliberate defiance of the Lord their God-- it will be compensated to the full.

But why doesn’t God forgive them? Isn’t He a God of love?

George MacDonald was a mentor to C. S. Lewis, and he once wrote of a person who prayed to God, saying, "I thank thee, Lord, for forgiving me, but I prefer staying in the darkness: forgive me that, too." And the Lord replies, "No; that cannot be. The one thing that cannot be forgiven is the sin of choosing to be evil, of refusing deliverance. It is impossible to forgive that. It would be to take part in it."

That’s what God has to say to any petition like that. There are truly some things God cannot do. He cannot take part in evil. For the sake of His faithful chosen ones He cannot. For the sake of the Gentiles who have found Him He cannot. For the sake of the holiness of His own name, He cannot. God cannot and will not forever endure willful obstinacy and sinful rebellion, or all the world would be swept away and destroyed by it. His love is not a careless indulgence, it is a refining fire. Those who insist on remaining lost, He will give them their own will and let them have the godless life they desire. The horrible thing is, the godless life is death.

But our God is the God of patience and love, the First and the Last, from age to age the same.

And He says:

As when juice is still found in a cluster of grapes,
and men say, ‘Don’t destroy it,
there is yet some good in it,’
so will I do in behalf of my servants.
I will not destroy them all.
I will bring forth descendants from Jacob,
and from Judah those who will possess my mountains.

In mercy God the Lord will seek those who seek Him. He will give them and their flocks rest in the pleasant places of the land. He will show His love to them, even in their weakness, and forgive their sin. For when He revealed Himself, they found Him. When He called to them, they answered. When He came to seek them, they let themselves be found.

In the Old Testament and the New, our God is a God of love. His love is not alien to His justice, nor is His justice alien to His love. In Isaiah’s time, in Luke’s time, in our own time, He is still the same.

He was still the same as He lived and taught His people in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus’ parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin are truly beautiful pictures of the love of God. At the same time, they depict how terrible it is to stray out of the Father’s love and care.

It’s hard for us to grasp this. We’ve never been a smallholding shepherd with only a hundred sheep or a Middle Eastern woman who’s lost part of her dowry, that she might need to live on if her husband dies. To speak of the seeking love of God is also to speak of the terror of being lost from Him. If there was nothing wrong with a sheep going off by itself, the shepherd wouldn’t bother to recover it. If the woman didn’t care that one coin had disappeared, she wouldn’t put aside all her other chores and sweep and search till she finds it. Jesus is saying that being lost from God is a terrible, terrible thing, and that’s why His seeking, saving love is so amazing.

There is one big difference between the New and the Old Testaments, but it’s not a difference in God. It’s a difference in how He reveals Himself to us.

God revealed Himself to His Old Covenant people Israel through the Law, and called them to obey it. But they could not obey it. Even at their best, they wandered and failed. In the New Covenant, God reveals Himself to us in Jesus Christ. Jesus lifts from us the burden of keeping the Law, for He kept it for us perfectly in our place. As Isaiah says in chapter 53, "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him--" (that is, Jesus) "--the iniquity of us all."

In our Luke passage, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law think they’re sheep who’ve never strayed. But they’re just as lost and wandering as those tax collectors and sinners who are repenting their old sinful lifestyles and following Jesus and His word! Our Lord Jesus speaks ironically in verse 7 about "righteous persons" who don’t need to repent. Don’t they realize that none of us are "righteous" in the eyes of God? We are all lost sheep who need to be found! We are all sinful and need to repent. We are all under judgement; not one of us can do the least thing to save ourselves.

The New Covenant tells us, Stop trying! Without Jesus, we’re like that coin the woman worked so hard to find-- senseless, helpless, dead. We’re like dumb sheep going after the next thing, the next thing, the next thing, and straying farther and farther from our Shepherd and God. We need Christ the Son of God to clean away our sins on the Cross to restore us safely to the Father’s treasury. We need His resurrection power to rescue us from death and bring us to eternal life.

The Old Covenant law couldn’t do that for us. But the Old Testament warning remains: If you reject God’s saving love, if you insist on going your own way, provoking Him to His face and worshipping gods of your own making, He will let you have what you want. He will let you have what you want, even if your false god is your own attempt to be good instead of trusting wholly in the saving goodness of Jesus Christ. God will not send you to hell: you head there of your own volition, when finally and forever you say, "My will, not Thine, be done."

It’s an awful choice, isn’t it? Either you admit your helplessness and receive God’s love and life, or hold onto your godless autonomy and go down into darkness and death.

The Holy Spirit calls you to seek in faith the Good Shepherd who in mercy has sought you. He is the God of justice and of love, the One who was and is and is to be, and still the same. The Lord who made the world, who called Abraham and the prophets, is also the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And by faith in that same Jesus, this Lord is the God and Father of you and me. He’s been faithful to His promises of love from the beginning and He’ll be faithful to them forever. Let us praise Him for His holiness, let us praise Him for His justice, let us praise Him for His love.