Christ's Resurrection and You: The Dead Who Are Free

Texts: Isaiah 53:7-12; Romans 6:1-14

WHEN I WAS A LITTLE KID, BACK IN ancient times when we still called it Decoration Day, early in the morning on the 30th of May my mother would cut big white and pink blossoms from the peony bushes in the back yard, snuggle them into coffee cans filled with water, then she and we kids would climb into the car to make the ninety-six mile drive to the cemetery in Rossville, Kansas, to decorate the graves of our Zickefoose forebears.  I vaguely knew the holiday had something to do with soldiers who'd died in battle, and I didn't know if any of my ancestors had done that; I was only aware that remembering this side of the family is what we always did.

    If that's how it was then, now, almost fifty years later, most of us probably associate Memorial Day more with remembering our dead in general, than with honoring our military personnel who made the ultimate sacrifice so we might live in freedom and peace.  It would be a good thing if we could recapture some of the original meaning of the holiday. 

    But if it's right and proper and right for us to recall those who died to preserve our way of life here in the United States of America, it's even more fitting and essential that we remember, honor, and worship Him who fought and won the ultimate battle against sin, death, and the Devil: our Lord Jesus Christ, the Victim and Victor of the battle waged on the mount called Calvary.  Our soldiers, sailors, and airmen gave their lives that our lives on this earth might be better; but Jesus shed His blood so we might be freed from sin and know the joy of life eternal in the kingdom of heaven.

    From the world's point of view, Jesus of Nazareth was a very strange warrior.  A great champion should go to war with all His armor and weapons upon Him.  He should crush the enemy with superior force, fighting fire with fire and strength with strength.  But Isaiah the prophet foresaw how the Messiah would win the victory for us.  He writes,

    He was oppressed and afflicted,
          yet he did not open his mouth;
    he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
           and as a sheep before her shearers is silent,
     so he did not open his mouth.
        By oppression and judgment he was taken away.

Jesus our Lord never struggled to save Himself, He submitted to the death He died!  He was nailed to a cross between two thieves and by three P.M. on a dark Friday afternoon, it was over.  His nail-scarred, whip-slashed, and spear-pierced body was taken down from the cross and buried in a borrowed tomb and everyone, included His friends, thought He was defeated and finished.  As Isaiah says,

          And who can speak of his descendants?
    For he was cut off from the land of the living . . .        
     He was assigned a grave with the wicked,
           and with the rich in his death,
    though he had done no violence,
          nor was any deceit in his mouth.

    But it was for the transgression of God's people that He was stricken!  It was for us!  If anyone sacrificed all that others might live, it was Jesus Christ our Lord.  If anyone's death in battle seemed to be a disaster an injustice, and a tragic waste, it was the death of the sinless Son of Man.  But don't think to honor and remember Him by going to Jerusalem and decorating His grave.  We know better than that.  We know His was truly a "borrowed" tomb.  Every first day of the week we remember that Christ is not there in the grave, He is risen, He is risen indeed!

    And thus have the Prophet's words come true, that

    [H]e will see his offspring and prolong his days,
               and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.
   
    After the suffering of his soul,
           he will see the light of life and be satisfied.

For we know that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead: really, truly, physically; in a body that can never die again, glorified, without natural constraint or limit, able to taste the good things of this earth and to participate in all the joys of heaven.  We know that by His death Jesus fulfilled the will of the Lord our God, for He made Himself a guilt offering to make complete atonement for the sins of God's chosen people.  Jesus the Righteous One was willing to suffer the most shameful of deaths for us, He stood in our place, though we were transgressors who had fatally offended against God, and by His self-sacrifice He made intercession for us.

    Jesus our champion went to war against sin, death, and the Devil armed only with His holiness and His unfathomable grace towards for sinful humanity.  To the world, that looks like weakness.  But it was that holiness and grace that won Him the complete victory and earned Him the deathless title of Lord of Life.  What's more, through His selfless death and glorious resurrection our Lord Jesus grants the gift of life to us who believe and trust in Him.  Now grace reigns through righteousness, bringing us eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.

    There definitely is a similarity between the sacrifice made by our brave military personnel and the sacrifice made by Jesus Christ on the cross.  But our own roles in these conflicts are totally different.  In our nation's wars, we on the homefront pray for and support those doing the actual fighting.  In some wars, we've rationed our supplies and gone without to keep the war effort going.  But in the battle waged by Jesus Christ we're in a totally different position.  In no way could we claim that we helped or supported or sacrificed for Him in His struggle against the powers of darkness.  We couldn't, because we were dead.  We were dead, we were lost, we were totally helpless, without God and without hope in this world.

    But now Jesus has won the victory and in Him we have passed from death to life.  By grace we have been saved, not through our own proficiency at keeping the law, whether God's law or the law of our culture.  Well, then, to echo Paul the Apostle in Romans 6, "What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?"  Absolutely not!  That would be an utter contradiction of Christ's victory over death.

    We live-- because in Him our sin nature has been put to death.  How can we know this?  Were you baptised into the name of the triune God? Yes?  Well, as Paul asks, "Don't you know that all of us who were baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into His death?"  Our baptism shows that we personally participate in the death Jesus died.  Our old nature died with Jesus on His cross and was buried with Him in His tomb.  And so, as Paul says,

    We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

Not an easy task, is it?  We trust that for Jesus' sake God accepts us as holy and without fault.  He sees as we are in Christ and what we shall be when Jesus comes to judge the living and the dead.  But as long as we live on this earth in this mortal flesh, our old dead sin natures kept wanting to get up and wage war against the new life Jesus has put within us.  We were the dead who now live, and we are the living who daily must put to death all that is deadly within us.

    Is that all up to us?  Did Jesus make us alive by His death and resurrection, then go away and leave us to fight the battle on our own?

    Not at all!  For Paul reminds us, "If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection."  Do you think the Lord who won the victory over sin and rose from the dead will not also keep you safe for eternal life?  He is at your side every minute of the night and day!  His resurrection guarantees that you will triumph in your struggle against sin, and there's no longer anything in heaven or on earth that can allow the powers of darkness to win out over us in the end. Jesus has died and is risen again!  Our old selves were crucified with Him so our old body of sin might be done away with, so we'd no longer have to serve sin as its slaves. 

    I'm aware that even today there's a certain amount of ambivalence in various parts of the country about the Civil War.  But I hope every American everywhere now agrees that slavery is an appalling evil.  No human being should ever claim to own another man or woman or demand their time and work without pay.  But if human slavery was a shame and a horror, how much more terrible is slavery to sin!  And that's the state you and I were in before Jesus died to set us free.  A slave has to do whatever his master commands, whether he wants to or not.  But if-- no, I should say, since we're in Christ, we're no longer under the whip of sin and death; now we belong to our Lord Jesus who loves us and raises us up to new life in Him.  When Jesus hung dead on the cross, it looked as if He Himself were a slave, as if Death were His master.  But Christ has been raised from the dead and Death no longer has any authority over Him.  In His death He totally triumphed over sin, that old slave driver of humanity, and now He lives to God, the Source and Giver of Life, alone.

    What Jesus won, He won for us.  By His warfare we are free!  Our freedom from sin is not some inspirational thought we conjure up when we get into difficult situations.  It's the present reality for those who are joined to Christ Jesus by grace through faith.  You used to be dead; now you are alive in Christ.  You have died to sin, and you're been made alive to God in Jesus.  When sin was our master, we couldn't choose to do what is pleasing to God.  Even the thoughts and deeds this world calls "good" were corrupt and defective in His sight.  We could do nothing to save ourselves, nor did we want to.

    But now Jesus has won His victory in us and for us.  He has become our Lord and our King.  In Him we can say No to sin.  In His grace we can refuse to let sin rule in our mortal bodies so we obey its desires.  In Him we have been set free from the wickedness that we naturally wanted to do when we were slaves to sin, and we can live instead as redeemed and free servants of the living God.

    But some people don't seem to understand this. You know what has happened in our denomination, that the ordination standard has been officially revised.  Nothing in the new wording says anyone can or must ordain individuals who indulge in behaviors that the Bible calls sin.  It only talks about the Church "submit[ing] joyfully to the lordship of Christ" and about the examining body determining "the candidate's ability and commitment to fulfill all requirements" set forth in the ordination questions.  But we've learned to our shame that many in the PCUSA define the lordship of Christ in whatever way pleases them.  They say our natural bodily inclinations must be God-given, regardless of what Scripture says on the subject, and our most intimate relations have no bearing on the new life in Christ, and even can be a celebration of His creative love.

    Brothers and sisters, never think this can be so.  We died to sin, how can we live in it any longer?  Jesus our champion crucified our old sin nature on Calvary, how can we offer the parts of our bodies to wickedness?  Think of this word "instruments" as including the weapons a soldier would carry.  We're in Christ's army now!  Shall we use the faculties God has given us to go back and fight for the enemy?  No, all we have and all we are now belong to God.  So let us thankfully accept that reality and joyfully submit ourselves to Him according to His definition and His will.  He is our captain now, He gives the orders in this fight, and we know that as we offer our bodies to Him as instruments of righteousness we're fighting on the side that has already won.

    You were dead, and look, now you live!  The sin nature in you once lived its perverse life in your body, mind, and soul, but now it has been crucified with Christ!  Sin is no longer your master, and it's not up to you to win your freedom by keeping the law.  Jesus Christ, who died and rose again, has won the victory, and His grace rules over you in mercy, life, and love.

    Isaiah said of our Lord Jesus,

        Therefore I [that is, God] will give him a portion among the great,
           and he will divide the spoils with the strong,
    because he poured out his life unto death,
       and was numbered with the transgressors.

    Jesus won you away from sin forever when He died on the cross, and He brought you into new life in His resurrection from the dead.  On this Memorial Day weekend, remember those who have fought and died to preserve our life and liberty here in this nation God has given us.  But more, so much more! every day remember, honor, and worship Him who died and rose again that our old body of sin might be utterly defeated, and we who were dead might live in His life, liberty, and grace now and forever more.

Christ's Resurrection and You: Sunday Best, Every Day

Texts:  Colossians 3:1-17; Matthew 28:16-20

REMEMBER COMING TO CHURCH in your Sunday best?  Women and girls put on that suit or dress that rarely got worn any other day of the week.  Men and boys wore good slacks and jackets, white shirts, and ties.  Ladies, you'd never forget your hat, and everyone was clean and pressed with shoes shined and hair brushed, ready to come into the presence of the Lord.

    Maybe you still dress up to come to church.  But for the most part, the world has changed.  People wear whatever they feel like to church.  Some churches even advertise that with them, it's "casual dress" and people can "come as you are." And it's not just the lay people: in some denominations (and nondenominations), the pastors make a point of wearing T-shirts and jeans to preach in.  The idea is that casual dress sends the message that the love of God is open to all, whoever they are or whatever they've done.

    But it's one thing to reject "Sunday best" clothing from our bodies; it's quite another to exclude "Sunday best" from our hearts.  God probably doesn't care if we're casual in our clothing or if we dress up.  But He cares very much if we're casual about our obedience to Jesus Christ and our love for our neighbor in our daily lives.  When we are, it tells God and the world that we really haven't understood the power of Christ in His resurrection-- or that we don't really care.

    Up on that mountain in Galilee after He rose from the dead, Jesus commissioned His disciples to make disciples of all nations by baptising them and teaching them to obey everything that He had commanded them.  Because we have been saved by grace through faith in Christ's shed blood, we don't believe that we earn God's favor by our obedience.  But because we have been saved by grace through faith in Christ's shed blood, we strive to show our thanks and praise by doing what Jesus says.  We come as we are, but God doesn't leave us as we are.  Rather, we are to clothe ourselves with the Sunday best He Himself gives.

    One of my childhood pastors liked to say that the only command Jesus gave was for us to love God and one another.  I'd dispute him on that, now that I'm ordained myself and if he were still around.  But let's say he was right, that the only command of Christ is to love.  It's Scripture's job, not ours, to tell us what loving God and our neighbor means.  It includes holiness, righteousness, mutual consideration, self-denial, self-control, and a lot of other things that the unsaved world doesn't include in this word "love."  Jesus stated flatly that "all authority in heaven and on earth has been given" to Him.  That means He's Lord.  He and He alone has the right to set the dress code, so to speak, and define how we should look walking around clothed in His divine love.

    And if and since we have been raised with Christ, He wants to see our hearts and minds dressed in our Sunday best, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, all year round.  In Paul's Letter to the Colossians, the third chapter, he draws the design, you might say, of what our church clothes should look like and how they should be worn.

    Remember, you have been raised with Christ, so set your minds on things above.  Don't go on doing things the way the popular culture or the way your sinful nature wants to do them.  In Jesus' crucifixion, you died; in His resurrection, you were born anew; and now He keeps your real, eternal life safely hidden in the heart of God, in heaven where He reigns at the right hand of the Father in glory.

    So the first thing we have to do is take off the old, filthy, ugly clothing that belonged to our earthly natures.  Or as Paul puts it in verses 5 and following, "Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly."  First of all he mentions fornication, and the Greek word being translated means any kind of sexual immorality, inside or outside of marriage.  Take off, kill, reject any kind of impurity-- it's possible to have a dirty mind in a virgin body.  Reject passion or lust, which isn't just for things sexual; it also includes excessive desire for anything this world has to offer, such that we hurt our neighbor, corrupt ourselves, and dishonor God in the pursuit of it.  Cast off evil desires-- you know the ones you're tempted to, and I have mine-- and utterly stifle greed.  Because Paul is right: when we want some material object with that kind of passion, we're saying it's more important to us than God and it's the same thing as idolatry.  Now that we've been raised with Christ, the clothing of our minds should no longer be the casual, who-cares attire of this present world.  For God cares, and cares deeply, how we clothe ourselves in His presence, and those who insist on wrapping themselves in the rags of their sin will find themselves subject to the wrath of God, when Christ comes to judge the living and the dead.

    You used to be like that, before the Holy Spirit took hold of your life and caused you to be born again through the resurrection of Christ.  You used to do things like that.  And when now you still find yourself doing things like that, when you realize you're still thinking in these God-rejecting, deathly ways, call on the Spirit for help and get rid of that filthy attire right away.  It's the truth: you can be perfectly moral concerning what you do with your body, but if your mind is wearing attitudes like anger and malice, if you can't open your mouth without slandering someone or saying something abusive about them, you deny the resurrection of Christ and its power in you.

    Really, how can we church people, even pastors, elders, and deacons, be so cruel to one another as we often are?  What's our excuse?  Do we gossip about one another and distort the truth about one another because we think it's going to solve some problem?  Do we undermine one another's efforts with the excuse that we just want everything to be done right in the church?  Heaven forbid!  How can we be so foolish?

    These sins existed in the Colossian church, just as they do in our congregations today.  Let's stop going around with our hearts and minds and tongues dressed in such loathsome garments!  After all, we have taken off our old sinful self with its conniving and scheming and backstabbing and distortions.   Jesus' blood has taken that nasty outfit off of us and thrown it away; it's not even fit for the ragbag!  Jesus is risen, we are risen with Him and now we've put on our new selves.  It's our every day Sunday best, and it's a garment that Jesus renews in us day after day.  Our spiritual clothing is now cut in the image of God the creator Himself.  No longer do we dress to express ourselves: the clothing of our minds should now express the glory of Jesus Christ, who is all in all.

    But we have a problem in the church today.  Let's be frank about it: we have a big problem in our denomination. As you may have heard, a majority of our presbyteries has now approved a change to the ordination standards in our Book of Order.  The clause used to read

    Those who are called to office in the church are to lead a life of obedience to Scripture and in conformity to the history confessional standards of the church.  Among these standards is the requirement to live either in fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman (W-4.9001), or chastity in singleness.  Persons refusing to repent of any self-acknowledged practice which the confessions call sin shall not be ordained and/or installed as deacons, elders, or ministers of the Word and Sacrament.

From now it will say,

    Standards for ordained service reflect the church's desire to submit joyfully to the Lordship of Jesus Christ in all aspects of life (G-1.0000).  The governing body responsible for ordination and/or installation (G-14.0240; G-14.0450) shall examine each candidate's calling, gifts, preparation, and suitability for the responsibilities of office.  The examination shall include, but not be limited to, a determination of the candidate's ability and commitment to fulfill all requirements as expressed in the constitutional questions for ordination and installation (W-4.4003).  Governing bodies shall be guided by Scripture and the confessions in applying standards to individual candidates.

This wouldn't be so bad-- if the Presbyterian Church (USA) didn't have a long record of being extremely casual about Scripture and what it means by "the Lordship of Christ."  Colossians is clear: submitting to Jesus' authority means getting rid of sexual immorality of every kind.  But the majority of our presbyteries seem to think we could put on the new life in Christ right over the rags of the old life of this world.  Or worse than that, that the new life in Christ is all about celebrating and expressing what belongs to our old sinful style.

    The primary impact of this new Book of Order wording will be to allow the ordination of people who are indulging in extra-marital and non-marital sexual relations, whether homo- or heterosexual.  But our sexual lives aren't the only area where sinners deceive themselves about what Jesus' lordship requires.  How often have we known vengefulness redefined as justice, or cruel speech called honesty?  We all struggle with evil habits and ways that fit us like a second skin, and in every case   Jesus demands that we stop submitting ourselves to them.  Whatever your besetting sin was or is, you'll get nowhere in the eyes of God by arguing that you were "born this way."  He knows you were born that way.  You were born in sin and death, and so was I.  But now in Christ we have taken off the old self with its practices, and clothed ourselves with Christ and His perfect purity and righteousness.

    So how do we look in our ever-new Sunday best?  We look like Jesus Himself.  We look like the holy people God has chosen us to be.  We're compassionate to one another.  We're kind.  We're humble, gentle, and patient.  We bear with one another and we forgive the grievances we have against one another.  We forgive as the Lord forgave us-- for that is another way of expressing Jesus' great commandment, to love one another, as He has loved us.   It's true: every virtue that we're clothed in as Christians is an expression of Jesus' love, and His love perfectly harmonizes them all.

    There are difficult days ahead for our denomination.  We might be tempted to say that our Colossians passage just gives us a beautiful ideal of the Christian life, that can have no effect on the gritty realities we're facing.

    But this passage finds its true meaning as we live in it, walk in it, and wear it every day of the week.  Don't confuse casual dress for the body with carelessness for the heart and mind.  The resurrection life in Christ is not all about what's comfortable for me and you, and let the rest of the church look to itself.  No, we are members of one body.  God gives us our beautiful new selves to put on so we can live Jesus' resurrection life together, for the good of all.

    So as you put on your every day Sunday best, let the peace of Christ rule in your heart, the deep peace with God Jesus won for us on the cross.  Let that peace rule and regulate your spirit, so you can trust Him to bring good out of every situation and not lash out in anger and disappointment at what our denomination has done, even as you're called narrowminded or self-righteous for standing up for the truth of Scripture.  Be thankful, especially as you think how Jesus has saved you, even though you did not deserve it.  And minister to each other. Know the word of Christ and be ready to speak it to build one another up in comfort and hope.  Be filled with the wisdom of Christ so you know how to minister His love in the time of need. Be ready to admonish those who are falling into error, even as you maintain a spirit of patience and humility.  Fill your mind and your mouth with hymns and songs and spiritual songs that faithfully express what God has done for us-- you'll be amazed at how much sound teaching you can memorize that way.  And be grateful, for God Himself has laid out your suit, pressed your shirt, and shined your shoes.  All you have to do is put it all on and reflect the image of your creator.

    What should you look like in your spiritual Sunday best?  You should look like your risen Saviour, Jesus Christ.  So take off your old self and be clothed with His virtue, His wisdom, His peace.  "And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him."  Amen.

The Vindication of God

Texts:    Colossians 2:1-15; Matthew 28:1-10

      SEVERAL YEARS AGO, A BOOK of essays was published called God in the Dock.  It's by C. S. Lewis, and the title comes from criminal trials in Great Britain, where the defendant stands the whole time in an elevated open box, exposed to the stares and censures of everyone in the courtroom.  Lewis's argument is that we modern people no longer see ourselves on trial before God the Judge; rather, we put God on trial and act as judge over Him.

    You know how it is.  We put God in the dock for public disasters like earthquakes, tsunamis, and tornados; for private suffering like disease, poverty, and murder.  This is the wrong way around, since it's our sin that disrupted creation and causes us to do evil to one another every day.  If God wanted to, He'd have every right to wipe every one of us out all at once, for the wages of sin is death, and all of us are sinners.

    But there was a time when God was really in the dock.  It was a dark Friday afternoon outside the city of Jerusalem, nearly 2,000 years ago.  On that day a Man hung on a cross, being shamefully tortured to death for the crime of claiming to be God.  At the foot of that cross, and in hiding in the city, were women and men who knew that Man had never done an unjust or wicked or sinful thing in His life.  Yet this Man was suffering the most degrading, agonizing, disgusting form of execution practiced by a civilized society, a death designed to show to everyone what a low, despicable being the crucified criminal was.  Was that Man really guilty of what His enemies charged?  Were all His friends and disciples wrong in calling Him the Righteous One?  Or was the holy God actually turning His back on a truly innocent Man? After a few hours the Man was dead and buried-- and the wages of sin is death.    Could this Man ever be vindicated?   Could God?

    We know that that Man dying on the cross outside of Jerusalem that day was Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.  For the rest of that Friday, all the Sabbath, and into the eve and morning of the first day of the week, His disciples hid and mourned and simply could not understand.  God was in the dock, and it seemed as if the verdict would come in "Guilty."

    But as the Gospel according to Matthew tells us, early on the first day of the week, just as the sun was beginning to rise, Mary Magdalene and "the other Mary" went to Jesus' tomb.  Matthew doesn't tell us whether the women knew that the tomb not only was closed with the customary stone, but also was sealed and guarded.  He only tells us they intended to "look at it," and very likely, to mourn.

    In any event, it didn't matter.  For as the two Marys approached the tomb where Jesus lay, a violent earthquake shook the ground and angel of the Lord came down from heaven, rolled back the stone, and sat on it.  His appearance so frightened the guards they fainted away  like dead men.  And Jesus' tomb?  It was -- empty.

    Empty before the stone was rolled away.  Empty before the earthquake sent the ground reeling.  Empty before the angel descended and sat and greeted the women as they approached.  "Do not be afraid," he said to them, "for I know you that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said."

    "He is risen, just as He said."  And then, as the women hurried away to tell the Eleven the incredible news, Jesus Himself met them.  As it says in verses 9 and 10, "‘Greetings,' he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshipped him. Then Jesus said to them, ‘Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.'"

    Jesus the Crucified One was risen!  He was alive!  He was risen, just as He said, risen indeed!

    Brothers and sisters, the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ means many things to us, in this world and the next.  But one of the most important and magnificent things it declares is the vindication of God.  God was in the dock in the crucifixion of His Son.  But now, Jesus Christ is risen from the grave, and God the Son, God the Father, and we who believe in Him have been fully justified against any imputation of sin or censure: Divine vindication has come.

    First of all, the Man Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has been vindicated.  Did anyone think He was dying for His own sins on that cross?  No! The resurrection proves He was the Sinless One, dying for the sins of the world.  The resurrection of Christ proved that He, Himself, was totally righteous and innocent.  The grave could not hold Him, death had no power over Him.

    The resurrection vindicates Jesus' claims to be one with God, to be God Himself.  Only God has life in Himself; only God has power over death.  In John chapter 10, Jesus tells His opponents,

    The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again.

Jesus had declared that He would rise, that He could rise, for He is the only-begotten Son of God the Father.  In Him all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form (Col. 2:9).  He is the head over every power and authority, including death.  And by His resurrection, His divine claims are proven true.

    The resurrection vindicates Jesus' word as the word of God: "He is risen, just as he said."  Any human can preach comfort and holiness and beautiful ethics and morality.  But only someone who was God and who spoke the very words of God could promise that He would come back to life after being crucified, and actually do it.

    The vindication of Christ our God assures us that He and His word are to be trusted.  His sinless life and death has the power to save us from death and hell.  His word is to be received as the very word of God, for He was and is God, come to us in human flesh, risen from the grave, and ascended in that same flesh into heaven. When He says He will give eternal life to whomever believes in Him, we can take Him at His word.  Jesus was no criminal blasphemer, suffering on a Roman cross for His own sins:  He was and is the glorious Son of God, and as He hung there dying (as it says in Colossians 2:15), He was [disarming] the powers and authorities, [making] a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross."

    The resurrection of our Lord Jesus vindicates God the Father as holy and righteous. The dying thief whom Luke records admits that he and his fellow-thief were suffering the just punishment for their crimes, but this Man Jesus had done nothing wrong.  The disciples on the road to Emmaus, who didn't believe Jesus was already risen, asserted that He had been a godly and true prophet; in fact, they'd thought He was the Messiah sent to redeem Israel.  How could a good and righteous God allow a Man who had kept His Law perfectly to suffer death and decay like any other sinner?

    But, as Peter preached on the first Pentecost, God did not abandon Jesus to the grave, nor did He allow His Holy One to see destruction.  In raising His Son from the dead, God the Father proves that He is righteous and is on the side of the righteous.  God is vindicated against any charge that He is indifferent to evil or blind to what evil men and evil forces do.  No, even on the cross God was defeating evil, and the resurrection of Christ points forward to the Last Days when all righteousness will be vindicated and death, sin, and the devil will be crushed under the feet of our triune God forever.

    The vindication of God the Father in the resurrection of Christ assures us that the prayers of His saints are heard.  We can trust that at the right time He will rescue us from all our troubles.  And in the meantime, we can know that our sufferings have meaning and purpose.  God is our heavenly Father who loves us, and though, as Peter tells us in his first epistle, "for a little while [we] may have to suffer grief in all kinds of trials[, t]hese have come so that [our] faith-- of greater worth than gold, though refined by the fire-- may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed."

    The resurrection of Christ is not only the vindication of God, it is also vindication from God, vindication for us sinners whom He has called to belong to Him.  God is too holy to look upon sin; we sinners cannot endure in His presence.  Our sins have earned us the punishment of eternal death.  On the other hand, He has chosen us before the creation of the world (as it says in Ephesians 1) to be adopted as His sons in Jesus Christ.  How can God the Righteous adopt unworthy sinners without violating His holy justice?  How can He maintain His holiness and still fulfill His plan to admit us into His love?
    In Romans 3, Paul writes that God presented Jesus

    . . . as a sacrifice of propitiation, through faith in his blood.  He did this to demonstrate his justice . . . at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

The resurrection of Christ proves that His death was an atoning sacrifice for our sakes.  It demonstrates that His blood totally paid the penalty for our sins, and in Him we can stand fully accepted before the throne of God, as His beloved daughters and sons.  Christ is risen, and we are vindicated before our holy God.

    In our Colossians reading, Paul reminds us that formerly, we were dead in our sins.  We were "uncircumcised in our sinful nature,"  which is to say that we were outside of the saving covenant between God and His faithful people.  But now, God has made us alive with Christ, the One who was dead and is risen again.  Now we "have been given fullness" in Him and share the divine fullness which is His.  We have "been buried with Him in baptism and raised with Him through [our] faith in the power of God, who raised Him from the dead."  Colossians 2:14 assures us that in his death, Jesus "canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross."

    When Jesus was crucified, our sins and guilt were crucified with Him.  And with them died the punishment we deserved for them under God's righteous Law.  In Christ we are fully vindicated.  All charges against us have been wiped away!  As it is written in Romans 8, who can bring any charge against God's elect?  God Himself justifies and vindicates us!  Who can condemn?  Jesus Christ, who died and was raised to life, sits at the right hand of God interceding for us!  In the resurrection of Christ we can be assured that all our sins are forgiven.  And not only that, but through our risen Saviour we also enjoy all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, knowledge of the deep, deep love of God and wisdom of how He used the shame of the cross to bring us, even us, to the joys of life eternal.

    And so, as Paul urges us in Colossians, let no one deceive us by fine-sounding arguments.  Let no one take us captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, that depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.  God is out of the dock, and in Christ, He has cleared us from all charges as well. 

    So don't allow yourself to be put in the dock again.  The basic principles of this world say that the dead do not rise.  Too bad for the basic principles of this world.  God has come from beyond this world and raised up His Son Jesus Christ and raised us up with Him, as well.  Unbelieving human tradition tries to tell us that Jesus didn't exist, or if He did, He didn't rise and it shouldn't matter to our faith if He didn't.  But Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep in death, and all our hope in heaven and on earth depend on this truth.  Human tradition says it's up to us to vindicate ourselves in the eyes of God and the world.  We have to do good deeds and keep all the rules.  But Jesus Christ is risen, and we who were dead and helpless in our sins have been raised with Him.  He and He alone has brought us into His everlasting covenant by a circumcision not done by human hands but by Christ Himself in our baptism.

    The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the vindication of God.  The women who met Him outside the tomb that morning fell down at His feet and worshipped Him. They did right, for He was their Lord and their God.  And by His blood and rising, He is ours.  Do not be afraid.  Heed the voice of the angel; obey the word of your Lord Himself.  Go quickly and spread the good news: Your full vindication has come, for Christ who died is risen, He is risen indeed!

This Little Word 'In'

Texts: Ephesians 1:1-14; John 14:8-21

I, N-- IN. SUCH A LITTLE WORD, YOU MIGHT overlook it. Insignificant, really.

But ask a junior high girl if it matters what crowd she belongs to, she'll tell you this word ‘in' is a matter of life or social death.

Ask the product designer who has to gauge what people are likely to buy. His game or car or cell phone had better line up with what's in-- or his working life could be in its way out.

Or think of a person who's starving. Is ‘in' a meaningless word to one who more than anything needs food in him? For him, that word ‘in' is a question of life or death.

Our New Testament was written in Greek, and in that language ‘in' in a very little word, too. It's epsilon, nu: en, and even Greek readers might not be blamed if they happened to overlook it in the midst of all the bigger, more important-looking words on the page. But this little Greek word ‘en,' and its English translation ‘in,' means eternal life to sinners like me and you.

Still, we can find this little word ‘in' to be confusing. In our reading from the 14th chapter of the Gospel according to St. John, our Lord Jesus is speaking to His closest disciples the night before He will be crucified. We can expect that every word of this farewell address will be especially important. But then we get to verse 13, where it says, "Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me." And we have verse 20, where Jesus says, "On that day you will realize that I am in the Father, and you are in me, and I am in you." And the temptation is to say, "Wait, what? Jesus, you're saying that you're in the Father and the Father's in you and we're in you and the Spirit's in us and how can anyone keep this straight?" So we gloss over those parts and jump down to verse 23 where Jesus says, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching." Active obedience, that we can understand. All this about who's in whom and one being in the other, that's too hard.

But if we'll take the time to unravel what our Lord is saying, we'll find that this little word ‘in' invites us to enjoy everything our God is and everything He has for us, in this world and the world to come.

From the very beginning of this fourteenth chapter of John's gospel, Jesus has been teaching His disciples that they should identify Him with God the Father. They should trust Him as they trust God. He is leaving them, He says, but that's so he can prepare them a place in His Father's house. He's told them that He is the only way to the Father. He says that if they really knew Him, they'd know the Father as well. And He has good news for them: "From now on," says Jesus, "you do know him and have seen him."

But the disciples can't imagine how they possibly could have seen the Father. So, Philip speaks up and says, "Lord, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us."

Philip thinks Jesus is saying they can see the Father in Him the same way we speak of seeing God in the beauty of a sunset or in the power of a thunderstorm. But if Jesus is going away, Philip and the others want a more direct vision of the Person of God. Like Moses in the book of Exodus, they want actually to lay their eyes on Him, if only for a little while. Moses got a one-time view of God's glory, and that gave him the strength to go on as the leader of Israel. So if only Jesus would bring the disciples that same sort of divine vision, it'd be enough to help them endure after He's gone.

They failed to see who Jesus really was. And how blind we can be today! Even people who claim to be ministers of the Gospel believe and preach that Jesus came to point us to God, but that He wasn't actually God Himself. But Jesus has patience with Philip as I pray He will have mercy on us. He says, "Don't you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father." They'd lost the truth in plain sight! The whole point of Jesus' ministry, the whole object of all His preaching and teaching and miracles, was to demonstrate that He, Jesus, was God in human flesh. Not merely a messenger or a herald, but God Himself. To see Jesus was and is to behold God!

Therefore Jesus asks all His disciples, including us, "Don't you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?" To say that they are in one another is to say that this Man Jesus and the eternal God are totally identified with one another. What one is, the other is. What one has, the other has. What one does, the other does. So when Jesus promises you eternal life, He can give it, because He is the God of Life. When He promises that His Holy Spirit will lead you into all truth, He can keep that promise, because He is the divine Word of Truth. When He says that anyone who has faith in Him will do even greater things than the miracles He did, He can make that happen, because He is in the Father and the Father is in Him, continually working the power of God in this world.

For this purpose He sent us the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is our Counselor, our Paraclete-- literally, the One who comes alongside us. But it gets better than that. For as Jesus promises in verse 17, "You know Him, for he lives with you and is in you." There it is again, that little word ‘in'! The Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, is God in us, leading us into the life of divine truth and growing us in the truth of divine life.

Jesus a few days later will prove that He has the power of divine life when He rises from the dead. He says, "Before long, the world will not see me any more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day"-- after He has been raised, after the Spirit has been given-- "you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you."

"I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you."

But how can that be? Hasn't Jesus asserted that He and the eternal God are totally identified with one another? What one is, the other is. What one has, the other has. What one does, the other does. How can this be true for us and God? God is eternal and infinite; we are finite and mortal. God is perfectly holy, righteous, and true; we are impure, sinful, and false. God is self-sufficient life, uncreated, in need of nothing; we are dependent on Him for the least operation of the molecules of our cells. How can we be identified with God the Son, so that it can be said that we are in Him and He is in us?

Maybe it's just a subjective thing. Like the way we might identify with a hero in a movie or a novel. That hero inspires us, we try to be like him, and that makes us more heroic and better people. Same with Jesus, right?

Actually, no. It takes more than our emotions and imaginations for us to be in Christ and for Christ to be in us. It took Him a lot more, the breaking of His body and the shedding of His blood. St. Paul writes in the seventh verse of the first chapter of his letter to the Ephesians, "In him"-- that is, in Jesus-- "we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins." We are in Christ because He has redeemed us on the cross. As Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5, God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself. He identified with us in our sin and took the punishment for it in His own body. And having paid the price totally and forever, He identifies us with Him before the Father, and identifies Himself with us in the world. He credits us with His righteousness and holiness and imparts to us His life, wisdom, and joy. So that in Him and through Him, we can participate in the eternal blessed life of God. Verse 3 of our Ephesians passage says the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has blessed us with every spiritual blessing. How? Where? In Christ! There's that little word ‘in' again, that word that means so much. "For," Paul says, "he"-- that is, God-- "chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight." In Christ we were predestined to share the holy and blameless life of God! In love He planned for us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ! Again, in verse 6, God has freely given us His glorious grace, in the One he loves-- that is, in Jesus the Son of God, who is in the Father as the Father is in Him. In, in, in!

And He has made known to us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure, which He purposed in Christ. We fret and mourn over the evil and disasters that happen in this world, and it can be a total mystery how God will work it all out, or whether He's working it out at all. But in Christ, we can trust that the day will come when all will reach its fulfillment, and all things in heaven and on earth will be brought together under the one headship of Jesus Christ our Lord. In Him we have also been made heirs of God, so that we ourselves might be to the praise of His glory. The glorious riches that belong to God's eternal Son now are coming to us, too, because when the Father sees Christ, He sees us in Him as well.

So how did this happen? Was it because we were more virtuous or deserving than other people? Not at all. Rather, we were included in Christ when we heard the word of truth, the gospel of salvation. The proof and seal of our salvation is the presence of the Holy Spirit in us, commending to us the truth of Jesus Christ and what He did that we might be saved. For as Paul writes, "You were marked in him"-- in Christ-- "with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession, to the praise of his glory."

You are God's possession! The Son of God who is in the Father lives in you and you live in Him! Even in this time of Lent, when we consider soberly what it cost Jesus to redeem us, let us also praise God and give Him glory for the love and grace He lavished on us in His Son, that we might be saved.

It would be wrong of me to conclude without saying something about the disastrous earthquake and tsunami in Japan day before yesterday. You may have seen video footage of the seaside towns being overwhelmed by that raging black wave, that took boats, buildings, vehicles, and people before it. I watched these videos on the Internet, and it was agonizing to see doom flooding in to overtake these poor victims.

But equally chilling and horrifying was reading the comments many people were leaving on these clips. People were making racist jokes. Others were self-righteously opining that the Japanese "deserved" this because they still have a whaling industry. Still others, worst of all, were using this disaster as an excuse to blaspheme God and insult His faithful people.

Are the Japanese worse sinners than any others, that this tsunami overtook them? Were the people of Christchurch, New Zealand, worse than any, or the inhabitants of Chile, or Haiti, or Chicago in this winter's snowstorms, or anyone to whom natural disaster occurs? No, not at all. We are all equally guilty before our holy God. And by some cause or another, physical death will come to all of us someday, and for some of us, as for the people on the coast of Japan, death may come suddenly and soon.

When it does, may we be found in Christ, that we may eternally share every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms. May we already be at home with God, as Jesus promises in John's gospel, because by His grace Jesus has made His home in us. But if we refuse to be in Christ, if in our pride and wickedness we insist on remaining outside of Him, there remains no hope for us, only everlasting destruction.

‘In' is such a little word, but it holds a world of meaning when the One we are in is Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen King of heaven and earth. To be outside Him is death and disaster; to be in Him means communion with God and life and blessing forever more. Amen.

The Food That Endures

Texts: Exodus 16:1-20; John 6:22-40

I’M GOING TO TAKE A risk now: Even though I’ve just met you all, I’ll predict that sometime during this service you’ll be thinking about food. No matter how hard you try, some stray thought will cross your mind about what you’re going to eat once you get home, or how the roast is doing in the oven, or how crowded it might be at the restaurant where you always go after church. I’m not risking that I might be wrong about that; the risk is that now I’ve brought the subject up, you won’t be able to think about anything except food.

It doesn’t take much to get us thinking about food, does it? Here in America, even when times are harder than usual, our thoughts usually run to what we might be eating next and how good it’s going to taste. In other places and times, we’d more likely worry about where our next meal is coming from at all. Food means life and lifestyle and a whole lot of other important and necessary things, and it stands to reason we’ll often have it on our minds.

The problem is, we don’t take our concern for food far enough. We contemplate and worry about and work for the kind of food that will sustain and enliven and give pleasure to our physical bodies, but we neglect to go on to contemplate and desire and work for the food that will enliven and sustain and give pleasure to our immortal souls. We consume our lives going after the kind of food that feeds us for a little while then we need more or we die, but forget about the food that can make us live forever. Sure, let us think about food, but let us go much further and concern ourselves with the food that really matters!

In John, chapter 6, verse 27, our Lord Jesus Christ says, "Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you." Jesus the Son of Man has this special kind of food that sustains the new and different kind of life that we all need, and He promises simply to give it to us!

The people He originally addressed with these words, the crowd gathered around Him there in Capernaum, certainly needed this good news. They’d been running themselves to exhaustion the past several hours trying to get Jesus to give them more of the food that spoils. Yes, the bread and fish that Jesus gave them on the other side of the Lake was miraculously multiplied. But it remained plain ordinary bread and fish. Yes, God gave the Children of Israel manna in the wilderness, long ago in the days of the exodus from Egypt. But it was still food for the flesh, to be digested and done with; after a few hours, it would still breed maggots and spoil.

But that was the kind of food the crowds were after. That’s why they’d been searching so strenuously for Jesus. That’s why, as John tells us up in verse 15, they’d wanted to make Him king of Israel by force. Feed us, Jesus! Give us food for our bodies! We’ll do anything, we’ll be Your subjects and slaves, if You’ll just satisfy the hunger of our flesh! Their minds were stuck here on earth and hadn’t risen up to desire the food that endures to eternal life.

We’re often the same. Not just when we’re feeling hungry ourselves, but even in our Christian service. Too often we think our main calling as followers of Jesus Christ is to do physical relief work. To make sure the less advantaged are provided with food and clothing and medical care. And that once we’ve done that, we’ve done our duty as Christian disciples.

Now I’m really getting into dangerous territory, right? Yes, we should and ought and must show that kind of loving physical care for others. James the brother of our Lord says in his letter that if we see a brother or sister starving or naked and simply say, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed" and do nothing to meet his physical needs, we’ve clearly demonstrated that our faith in Jesus is meaningless and dead. But if food and clothing is all we give; if physical help is all we render, then we’ve given them only the food that perishes and we’re starving them of the food that endures. And that goes triple if the needy person is not yet a brother or sister in Christ. This mortal body is important, but it is doomed to die. What’s more, any well-meaning unbeliever can feed the hungry and clothe the naked. Only we as followers of Christ can go beyond that good work to do the best work of all. What’s the point of us going into the world in Jesus’ name if we nourish only people’s mortal bodies and fail to serve them the enduring food that only Jesus gives?

And yes, Jesus, alone, is the only Giver of that food. There’s a wonderful irony here in verse 27. "Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you."

Wait a minute! You don’t work for a gift! You just receive it! Are we listening? Do we have ears to hear? The crowd there in Capernaum were deaf to what Jesus had to say. They missed the part about the gift and asked, "What must we do to the works God requires?" We fall into the same trap today. Okay, Jesus, okay, You’re offering us a better kind of food that doesn’t go bad but lasts forever and nourishes eternal life. All right, tell us what we have to do to get it!

And to them and to us, Jesus replies, "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent."

That’s it. Just receive the gift of Jesus Christ, the Son of Man. He is the one whom God has approved. He is the one whom God the Father has sent from heaven to be our Bread of eternal life. Open the hands and mouth of your will and take Him in by faith. When you have done that, you have done all that God requires for you to be fed. Preach Him broken on the cross for the sin of humankind and you have fed a spiritually-starving world.

The manna in the wilderness was a wonderful thing. But the Jews of Jesus’ day were wrong to be fixated on it. The manna that God gave in Moses’ day was not the true bread of heaven, rather it pointed to it. Or rather, it pointed to Him, Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of the Father, sent into the world to die for our sins and turn aside the wrath of God we so deeply deserved. We all wander starving in the wilderness of our rebellion until God raises up the cross of Christ before us and leads us into the bounty of His eternal kingdom. Jesus tells us clearly, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty."

"Yes, Lord," we say, "but I’ve lost my job, my unemployment’s running out, and if it’s all the same to You, I’d prefer You gave me food I can chomp down on with my physical teeth." If that’s where you are, I can’t blame you. In my flesh I’m just as shortsighted. Before we can even desire Jesus to give us Himself as the bread of God, we first need to beg Him to give us a true and holy appetite for Him. Oh, that He would make us into sort of people, that if some persecutor should give us the choice between eating a meal and remaining faithful to Jesus Christ, we’d choose to starve our physical bodies so our spiritual bodies could live.

That heavenly appetite is not something we can gin up on our own. It’s not in our fallen human nature to crave the bread of heaven over the bread of this earth. We can never come to Jesus to feed on Him unless the Father first has put that craving in us by giving us to His Son. It is God alone who makes us desire Jesus the bread of life beyond all other satisfactions. The good news is, that if you even desire to desire this, it’s a good sign that the Father is drawing you closer, ever closer to eternal life in Him.

The Lord’s Supper is a sign and seal of the reality of God’s promise in His Son. This year we’re celebrating the 500th anniversary of the birth of John Calvin, and he said a beautiful thing about Holy Communion. He said that the heavenly reality of eternal life through the broken body and shed blood of Jesus Christ is given along with the physical elements of bread and wine. The bread and wine are not changed in themselves, but they certainly are set apart to a holy use and mystery. For when we eat the bread and drink the cup, looking in faith to the Son and believing in His power to raise us up at the last day, we truly receive all the holy and life-giving benefits won for us by Jesus Christ our crucified and risen Lord. St. Augustine, many centuries before Calvin, was asked, "How can one eat of Christ, the bread of heaven?" He answered, "Believe, and you have eaten."

For this is the work of God: to believe in the One He has sent. It not only is the work God requires, it is the work God Himself performs on our behalf. Belief itself is a gift from God the Father; our ability to exercise that belief is also a gift, and Jesus Christ, the food that endures to eternal life, is the greatest gift of all.

So be at peace in Him. Your life with God does not depend upon your works, your good intentions, or even on how much you feel you love and desire Him. It depends totally on Him, in the power of the Holy Spirit, through our Lord Jesus Christ. He has given you to His Son, He has given His Son to you, and whoever comes to Jesus He will never drive away.

The manna that fed the Hebrews in the wilderness was a picture and a preview of Christ the true bread from heaven. In our own lives, may every meal, every thought of food, remind us of Jesus the bread of life. May the food that spoils spur us on to crave and hunger for the food that endures, the food that is Jesus Christ alone. May this craving seize not only ourselves, but all who don’t even realize they are perishing without the Son of God. And may God in His love use us to spread that hunger so others may refuse to be satisfied with anything less than Christ, the true and ever-living Bread.

This is His Table, spread for you. Here taste of the bread which satisfies all hunger, and drink of the wine that slakes all thirst. Receive your Lord, Jesus, the bread of life. In thankfulness and faith feast on Him, and receive the food that endures to eternal life.

Living the Life of Christ in a Death-Ridden World

Texts: Deuteronomy 30:11-20; Colossians 3:1-17

TWO WEEKS AGO we celebrated Easter Sunday. We affirmed with joy that Jesus Christ our crucified Savior really is alive, that He has conquered death, and that we have new life in Him. And in the glow of Easter morning, we believed it.

But lately the world, the flesh, and the devil seem to be throwing everything at us to make us stop believing it. We keep hearing about death, death, and more death. There was the massacre in Binghamton, New York. We had three policemen murdered the day before Palm Sunday right here in Pittsburgh. Across the country, there have been other infamous murders and suicides we've recently heard about. The appalling thing is that in many of these cases, the accused perpetrators were those who should have been protecting their victims, not ending their lives.

What makes it worse is when the evil has a church connection. We claim that we've been born again to new life in Christ and that life is holy and transformed and nothing like the old corrupt life we were born into on this earth. But Death and the devil sneer back at us, "Oh yeah? So why does so much evil come out of the very bosom of the church?" We claim that sort of person couldn't be a real, converted Christian, but the world laughs in our face. Seriously. Read Christopher Hitchin's book God Is Not Great. Or check out the comments left under news articles on the Internet. The world says that if a priest or minister or Sunday School teacher commits a terrible crime, it just proves that Christians are no better than anyone else. And even if Jesus was actually raised from the dead, it doesn't make any difference, because we who believe in Him aren't changed. And Death and the devil laugh at us, saying, "You poor deluded Christians. You say your Jesus conquered Death. Well, we doubt it, since there's still so much of it around!"

So how do we prove that it makes a real difference that Christ was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures? How do we stand firm against all the assaults of this world that try to make us doubt what God has done to defeat Death?

And how can we become living demonstrations of God's victory, when our culture of death is telling us what Jesus did is no use?

The answer may surprise you. According to the Apostle Paul writing in the Letter to the Colossians, we do it by using the Enemy's own weapon against him. The devil comes against us in the power of Death; we take Death in our hands and turn around and destroy him with it.

Or rather, Jesus Christ the Son of God did that for us, and we do it in Him.

Let's back up into chapter 2. In verse 13, the Holy Spirit speaking through Paul writes that we all started out dead in our sins and in the uncircumcision of our sinful natures. Circumcision was the sign and seal of Israel's covenant with God, but we were outside of that covenant, without life and without hope. But, Paul says in verse 11, in Christ we have now been circumcised. We've been brought into the covenant of His life. How? As it says in verse 12, God buried us dead people with Christ in baptism and He has now raised us with Him through faith in the power of God to bring life out of death.

Jesus worked that miracle for us on the cross. He experienced the ultimate death, the death of the beloved Son of God who'd never known a moment of sin or been separated from His heavenly Father from all eternity. Jesus Christ snatched the Enemy's weapon out of his hand and, as it says in Chapter 2, verse 15, by the cross He disarmed the powers and authorities-- that is, Death and the devil-- and made a laughingstock out of them.

Do you trust in Jesus Christ? Then His death is your death and His life is your life! Yes, senseless, vicious, vile death still runs rampant in this world. We mourn it, we deplore it; when appropriate, we seek justice against it. But it does not nullify the victory of our Lord Jesus Christ. As it is written in Romans 6:9 and 10,

"For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God."

Death and this sinful world tries to convince us that because death still is at large in the world these 2,000 years since Jesus' resurrection, His resurrection went for nothing. How wrong that is! In 1 Corinthians 15 it is written that at the end of this age, when Christ will destroy all dominion, authority, and power-- all the power of the devil and his demons-- He will hand the kingdom over to God the Father. Then all his enemies will be put under His feet, and the last enemy to be destroyed is death.

But why does God put off His final victory so long? Why must we suffer and die from disease and old age, let alone cold-blooded murder?

God waits for the sake of His chosen, covenant people. It's God's eternal plan to bring in every last one of His elect children into the glorious life of His Son. Some of our brothers and sisters in the faith have not even been born yet. So our merciful, wise God holds back His ultimate victory until our number is complete.
Meanwhile, death is still our vicious foe, but Christ through His death has overcome it. So if you believe in Him-- if you have been buried with Jesus in His baptism and raised with Him in His resurrection-- death has no more power over you! As it says in Colossians 3, verses 3 and 4, "For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears"-- at the end of the age-- "then you will also appear with him in glory."

This isn't just a figure of speech, or a way of saying you've become more spiritual or you have some kind of higher moral awareness! No. These verses truly describe where Jesus Christ is safeguarding your true self through what He did for you in His cross and resurrection.

So then, the Scripture says, "Since you have been raised with Christ"-- since this is now the truth about who you are and whose you are-- "set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God."

Should Christians be better than nonChristians? If that means pretending we're not sinners saved by pure grace or that somehow in ourselves we're morally superior, no. But if it means we should live the holy life of Christ in a death-ridden world, absolutely. Yes.

It isn't automatic and it isn't easy, but that is His call on our lives. It begins with keeping in mind Whom we belong to and where He is keeping us.

So, "Set your hearts on things above." So should we Christians should just think Beautiful Thoughts all the time and totally ignore the trouble and warfare and evil that rages through this death-ridden world?. We know better than that. Setting our hearts on things above means taking up the weapon that is the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ and opposing Death daily with everything Christ has in us. We don't need to command angelic armies to be effective in this combat: Every last one of us is engaged in an epic struggle against sin and death-- right in the arena of our ordinary lives.

We begin with our own bodies and hearts. The Apostle says, "Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed . . . " These sins are all about satisfying our desires, lusts, and cravings in a way that leaves God and His gift of life out of the picture. The Scripture equates greed with idolatry, and that sums up this whole list. Whether we're perverting sex, or food, or property, or any other good thing, these sinful urges and impulses look to something other than God to satisfy our physical and emotional needs. We may as well say, "God, I don't believe You can be trusted to fill my needs or make me happy, so I'm turning to something else." In our reading from Deuteronomy Moses charged the children of Israel to choose life over death before they entered the Promised Land. He told them if they chose death it'd show itself in their turning to other gods, to worship and depend on them. And for their choice of death, the Lord God would bring death on them. Paul says the same: Because of sins like these, the wrath of God is coming. God must judge them and those who commit them, for they're part of the death that Jesus Christ will totally defeat.
But that is not God's plan for you. You have been raised with Christ, and His plan for you is life! So live according to that truth about yourself. The minute the idolatrous desire arises, kill it! The minute you realize you are misusing any good gift of God and making it a god instead of Him, call on the Holy Spirit to come to your aid. Raise up the sword of the Word of God and put that perversion to death.

In the same way, purge out the sins of the heart, the mind and the tongue. It's easy to think that sexual immorality is the worst of sins. But God just as much hates anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language, and lying. How many church members wouldn't even consider going to a prostitute or looking at pornography online, but they justify gossiping from one end of the day to the other? It's especially vicious when it's that sneaky, pretended-holy kind of slander that too often goes on in the church against those whom God has charged with leading the church. You know how it goes. The slanderer goes to the pastor, or the choir director, or the head of the Christian Ed. department, and says, "By the way, A Lot of People are complaining about you." And the leader says, "Who's complaining? What are they complaining about?" And the slanderer says, "I can't tell you. It was confidential! But they're really complaining!" You do that to a church leader, you may as well stick a dagger in his heart. Talk like that does not model the life of Christ; it jumps on the bandwagon with Death.

Truly, sins of the mind and mouth are symptoms of that same idolatrous, God-denying attitude. Think about the times you've given way to these sins. You likely felt threatened or fearful. You'd been dealt a real blow to your property or a relationship or to your self-esteem.

But it is not for us to flee to the idols of sin when we're in danger or afraid! No, we flee to the throne of God, where Jesus Christ is seated in glory. We appeal to His life; we don't seek our help from the minions of Death! We have taken off the clothing of our old sinful self like the filthy T-shirt you mowed the lawn in yesterday and put on the beautiful clean new garment of the new self, which is being renewed to look more and more like Jesus Christ.

This will show itself in how we treat one another in the Church. No double standards. No treating some members better or worse because of their skin color or national origin or age or sex ir whether they're rich or poor or went to college or didn't. Christ is all, He is in all of us, and in Him we treat every Christian brother or sister just as if he or she were Christ Himself.

The last few years, it's become fashionable for congregations to publicize their "casual" worship services, where people can "come as they are" and don't have to dress up to come to church. That may apply to the unconverted. But as believers in Jesus Christ and participants in His heavenly life, we are commanded to dress up to meet with Almighty God. In fact, we are to dress in our best wherever and whenever we may be. Our clothing is to be compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Our well-tailored shirt and slacks or our well-designed dress is to be patience with one another and forgiveness when another Christian has done us a hurt. And our coat and tie or our Sunday hat is love; not the self-centered, self-gratifying love of this world, but the deep, sacrificial, life-giving love we find in Jesus Christ.

This is how we live His resurrection life in a death-ridden world. We model His life as Christian individuals; but far beyond that, we demonstrate His life as His body, the Church. The peace of Christ promised here is the peace that should shine through this congregation and through all the congregations of Christ's church, for it is the peace with God that Jesus our Saviour won for us by His blood.

We started with the hard reality of death in the world, and with the world's doubt that we as Christians have any answer to that. And I wouldn't be surprised if an unbeliever should look at the words of verses 15b and 16 and say, "Huh. It says you Christians are to be thankful, and let the word of Christ dwell in you, and teach and admonish one another in it. And singing. You're supposed to sing-- in your hearts, yet. And here's this thing about ‘gratitude' again. What good will that do in a world where whole families are being killed and policemen are murdered just doing their jobs?"

By the Holy Spirit working in us, we know it will do all the good in the world. The word of Christ we are to lodge in our hearts and teach and admonish and sing is the blessed good news of the death-defying life He has won for us and all the world by His death on the cross. And the One to whom we are to be thankful, the One to whom we are to bear everlasting gratitude, is none other than the Almighty Creator God, Lord of the Universe and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the One who judges sin; He is the One before Whom death and the devil flee; He is the One Who has raised us up to heaven where Christ is, seated at the right hand of His power. And that power is not confined to heaven; it fills the whole world.

How do we live the life of Christ in a death-ridden world? We remember Whose and what and where we truly are. By the power of the Holy Spirit we put to death whatever in us doesn't match up with that glorious reality, and we walk in the life that is Jesus Christ Himself.

Thankfulness and gratitude keeps us remembering. Thankfulness and gratitude to God is the 180° opposite of idolatry. Death is still at large in this fallen world, and sometimes its face is overwhelmingly hideous. But more overwhelmingly beautiful and strong is the face of Jesus Christ, our crucified and risen Lord. We have been raised with Him, we are seated with Him, our true lives are safeguarded with Him, and so on this earth we live His resurrection life in the power of His name, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.

What Love Looks Like

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who Can Accept It?

Texts: Acts 1:1-14; John 6:53-69

HOW DID YOU CELEBRATE this past Thursday, May 1st?

Oh! Do I mean May Day, when labor unions in other countries and people of a certain political persuasion like to march in parades and celebrate their power and ideology?

Noooo . . . !

Maybe I’m talking about the old-fashioned May Day, when young men and maidens dance around the Maypole and you leave baskets of flowers secretly at your neighbors’ doors?

Noooo . . . !

Well, last Thursday was the National Day of Prayer. Am I asking how you celebrated that?

Closer, but still, no.

I’d like to know how you celebrated this past Thursday, which was Ascension Day.

Or did you miss it altogether? If you did, you’re not alone. A lot of Christians, maybe most of us, especially we Protestants, tend to overlook celebrating the Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ.

It’s not just that Ascension Day always comes on a Thursday. It’s also that the Ascension of our Lord itself is a hard idea to grab hold of, hard to get our minds around. We’re like the disciples out there on the Mount of Olives, gaping up into heaven where our Lord has gone, totally unable to understand what has happened and what it all means.

But it’s not God’s will that we should be left wondering what the Ascension of Christ means, or what it means for us. He has given us His Word that it means more for us than we can ever know.

Here again is what the Scripture says in the Acts of the Apostles:

‘So when they met together, they asked him, "Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?"

‘He said to them: "It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."

After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.’

Some skeptics claim the Ascension was just a plot device made up by the early Christians to get Jesus "off the stage," so to speak. I’d like to boldly assert to you today that "getting Jesus off the stage" of this earth in such a manner was entirely necessary. And that it was according to God's plan for our salvation.

For the physical Ascension of Christ shows that Jesus was a real Human Being with real flesh. He wasn’t a ghost, He wasn’t a phantom, He wasn’t an idealized figment of the disciples’ imagination. Even after He rose again, Jesus was a Man you could see and touch and sit down and enjoy a meal of bread and fish with. He wasn’t going to fade away, or peter out, or dematerialize, He physically had to leave.

His ascension also assures us that Jesus remains a human being, and He remains so for us.

A few years ago I was sitting in a college dining hall eating lunch, and we got to talking about theology. A younger student asked me, "What did Jesus do with His human body when He went back to heaven?"

And by the Holy Spirit-- it had to be the Holy Spirit--it hit me like a ton of bricks: He took it with Him! Our Lord Jesus Christ was taken up to His Father the way the disciples saw it happen, because the human body He took on when He was conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary, the body that hung on the cross, the body that was raised and glorified on the third day, Jesus keeps forever! What’s more, He keeps that body for our sake, so that He can always be our Mediator with God. Right now there is a glorious Being of human flesh and blood, a deathless Man sitting on the throne of the universe!

What's more, Jesus taking His physical glorified body into heaven means that human flesh is acceptable in the sight, in the presence of almighty God! One day we, too, will be raised with bodies like the glorified body Jesus now has. And we will be able to stand in the presence of God in those resurrected physical bodies, acceptable to Him!

How Jesus took His human body with Him is something we cannot know. But God allowed the disciples to witness enough to know that it was true. God sent His angels, the two men dressed in white Luke speaks of, to confirm to them that just as Jesus went bodily into heaven, He will return bodily as well.

The Ascension of our Lord is a fitting close to His earthly ministry. But it isn’t merely that. It’s also the final sign and miracle of that ministry. It puts the seal on Who He is and His love and grace towards us all.

A man who’d merely been reanimated, like in some TV show, would have to remain on this earth. The Son of God who has been raised from the dead, He has the right and ability to return in the flesh to heaven.

In John’s gospel, we read part of a sermon Jesus preached in the synagogue in Capernaum, shortly after He’d fed the 5,000 on the other side of the Sea of Galilee. The true bread of life, He tells the people, was not the loaves he’d broken for them on the hillside. It wasn’t the manna that God gave the people of Israel in the wilderness centuries before. The true bread of life is Jesus’ own flesh.

"Very truly I tell you," Jesus says to us, "unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day."

St. John records that many of the disciples were offended by this. They said, "This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?" They knew Jesus wasn’t advocating cannibalism-- heaven forbid! What bothered them was His claim that His human flesh was the means, the conduit of eternal life. They rebelled at the idea that this ordinary-looking Man claimed, as He said in verse 57, to have been sent by the Father in heaven. Jesus asserted that He participated in the eternal, undying life of God, and He promised to give that eternal life to anyone who participated in His flesh.

These disciples, the ones who turned back from following Him, couldn’t believe it. They refused to believe it. The Rabbi Jesus of Nazareth? Sent directly from heaven by Almighty God? Preposterous! Him? The Giver and channel of eternal life? Unthinkable!

Jesus didn’t back down. He brought their grumbling into the open and said, "Does this offend you? Then what if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before!"

Jesus promises the sign of His Ascension as proof that He is who He says He is. It’s a guarantee that He can do what He says He can do, when He claims that His flesh will give us eternal life.

Who is He?

He is the eternally-begotten Son of the Father, co-creator of all that is, eternal Wisdom from on high, almighty God. Jesus came from heaven and had every right to go back there.

Jesus Christ the Son of Man returned bodily to His Father in heaven, and by doing that, He proved that all He did was done in the power of God, the power He shared with the Father before anything was made.

What has He promised He can do?

He’s promised to give us eternal life through His flesh, in the power of the Holy Spirit.

We might think Jesus is speaking of Holy Communion in this sixth chapter of John. Not quite. Actually, Holy Communion and Jesus’ words here in John 6 are both speaking about the same reality: the life-giving power of the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, broken on the cross for our sins and risen for our restoration. Jesus says that if we want eternal life, we have to feast on Him, even-- as the Greek words say-- munch on Him, chew on Him, take Him into us totally. There’s no other way to have eternal life.

But how can we feed on Christ? Well, St. Augustine was one of the great Church fathers. Centuries and centuries ago he came up with a phrase that’s hard to improve upon. He said, "Believe, and you have eaten."

"Believe, and you have eaten." Believe that Christ’s body was broken for you, to turn aside the wrath of God that you deserved. Believe that His blood was poured out like wine to refresh your soul and make you new and clean in the sight of God. Believe, and feast upon the gift of Himself that He gives.

Jesus ascended into heaven to make these great and precious gifts available to you, right now. On earth, even as a resurrected Man, Jesus could only be local. He could only be with one group of his disciples at a time. But as He tells us later on in John’s gospel, "It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go, the Counselor [that is, the Holy Spirit] will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you."

As long as Jesus remained physically on this earth, the power and presence of the Holy Spirit remained focussed in Him. But we need His Spirit in us, working in our bodies, our minds, our souls! As Jesus says in verse 63 of our text, "The Spirit gives life; the flesh [that is, mere human effort on our part] counts for nothing." Jesus had to ascend to where He was before to make the life-giving power of His crucified and glorified flesh available to all people everywhere.

This is the will of God the Father in heaven. For as Jesus says in verse 65, no one can come to [Him] unless the Father has enabled him. When the Holy Spirit brings us to feast on our Lord Jesus Christ, God the Father is glorified in His Son.

Which for you and me means that God wants you to receive the food that is His Son’s crucified body. He wants you to drink your fill of the wine that is Jesus’ blood. He is eager for you to receive the eternal life that comes from the God-Man Jesus Christ, alone. God wants to lift you up to the throne of grace, where Jesus sits even now interceding for you. God wants you to participate in the community of joy and fulfilment that is the one holy, blessed, and undivided Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God gives you all these gifts and brings you into His love by Jesus Christ, His ascended Son, true God and true Man forever more.

Your ascended Lord is your food and drink, and He will never be taken away from you. Whatever happens in your life, whatever hardship or suffering you may go through; even if you should experience physical hunger, you will never lack what you truly need; you will never be famished or forsaken. Jesus says to you, "Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day."

The sad thing is, even today people reject Jesus, the Bread of heaven. They say, "This teaching about Jesus being the only way to eternal life, it’s too hard. It’s narrow and intolerant. Who can accept it?"

The truth is, unless the Father changes our hearts and draws us to Himself, none of us can accept it. In our own sinfulness, acting from our own corrupt flesh, we turn our backs on the Lord who would save us. But Jesus Christ Himself nourishes and revives us by the death and resurrection of His human body. He raises us to heaven by His glorious ascension. He enables us to accept His word and feed on Him in Spirit and truth.

Accept His word of life now, by the power of the Holy Spirit, working in you, giving you life. Accept it by the mercy of God the Father, who calls you to Himself. Accept it in the strength of your Lord Jesus Christ who died, rose, and ascended into heaven for you. Feed on Him with thanksgiving, for He offers you His flesh as real food and His blood as real drink.

Simon Peter said, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life! We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God!"

No other Lord. No other Bread. No other Life. Christ alone is the Son of God and Son of Man who has ascended where He was before! Believe in Him and eat. Be raised up with Him and live. And give Him praise and glory, with God the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen.

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Preached for Ascension Sunday, 2008