Working Together for the Truth-- or Not?

 Texts:    Acts 4:1-31; 3 John 5-10
  

    HAVE YOU EVER DAYDREAMED ABOUT the glories of the ancient church?  Oh, if we could've lived back then, when everyone faithfully drank up the apostles' teaching and the Spirit had His way in every heart and all believers worked together in love and unity to spread the gospel of Christ!

    But you and I all know that's nonsense.  Only people who haven't actually read the New Testament can get all dreamy and romantic about the early church.  They had troubles and conflicts just like we do.  Which works out well for us.  Really.  Because if they'd had no problems, we wouldn't have the Apostles' words written down for us to help us work out our difficulties. Because like our 1st century brethren, we too are called to keep on working together for the truth.

    As we continue our study of the Third Letter from John, today we'll be looking at verses 5-10. As we noted last week, this is a personal pastoral letter to a Christian named Gaius.  So John the writer, elder, and apostle, doesn't go into a lot of detail.  I'll try to flesh out the situation from what I've gleaned from the commentaries, and if the Holy Spirit commends my explanation to your mind and soul, good.  Take the best and leave what isn't accurate or helpful behind.  But this letter is in the Bible for God's good reasons, and when it comes to what is plain and open in the text, let's accept it gratefully so we may work together for the truth, as Christ's own church.

    In verse 5 John writes to Gaius, "Dear friend, you are faithful in what you are doing for the brothers, even though they are strangers to you."  Who are these brothers?  We see from later in the passage that they were sent from John.  As I mentioned last week, John acted as a kind of presbytery executive, or, as Pittsburgh Presbytery is arranged, he was like the Pastor to Presbytery.  These days, it's only in times of trouble or transition that a congregation has much to do with representatives coming from presbytery.  But in Gaius' day the New Testament was not yet concluded.  The apostles-- who were eyewitnesses of Jesus and His works-- were still speaking to the church in the authority of Christ, and still teaching men (and yes, possibly, women) to carry on after them.   The brothers John sent would be his personal students in Ephesus, where he lived before he was arrested and exiled to Patmos.  They'd go out to the local churches as missionaries and evangelists, to build up the believers in the faith and help them settle disputes in the peace of Christ.  These brothers from John were not personally known to Gaius; they were strangers to him, as John says.  But Gaius was faithful in serving them, because they came with the Apostle's authority.

    What might Gaius have done for the brothers?  First and foremost, he probably provided them room in his home, or made sure someone else in the church took them in.  He made sure they were fed, that their worn-out sandals were mended or replaced.  He might arrange a time and place for them to speak to the members of the church-- not necessarily an easy matter, as we'll see pretty soon.  Whatever he did, we know he did it lovingly and graciously, because as we see in verse 6,  the missionary brothers had come back from previous trips and told the church in Ephesus all about his love.  Now John writes that Gaius will do well to send them on their way in a manner worthy of God.  This tells us that a fresh team of missionaries is presently staying with Gaius, and brought this very letter to him.  When they finished their work in Gaius' town, with his help they'd go on to the next town or village on their itinerary, to preach the Word and strengthen the church.

    As Christians we should always do what we do for the church and its ministers in a manner worthy of God.  Remember that our God and Savior Jesus bought the church with His own precious blood, she is His, and when we serve the church, we serve Christ.  And keep in mind always the service God deserves in Himself.  His name is to be honored and feared, and, as John writes in verse 7, it is for the sake of the Name that these evangelist brothers went out.

    In our reading from Acts 4 we see how weighty it is to invoke the name of God in Christ, in the church and in the world.  Peter and John healed a crippled beggar and consequently preached  Jesus as the only Christ and Saviour.  For this the Jewish authorities threw them into prison and are now trying them before the Council.

    Peter and John aren't daunted.  They declare that it is by the name of Jesus that the man was healed.  Friends, the name of Jesus has power.  Peter maintains that there is no other name under heaven besides that of Jesus by which anyone can be saved.  The name of Jesus brings salvation.  The Council consult together and decide to order the apostles never again to speak to anyone in this name.   But Peter and John assert that to preach the name of Jesus is to declare the truth of what they had seen and heard of Christ and to obey what God has commanded them to do.  To speak in the name of Jesus is to declare what He has done.

    The Sanhedrin don't know what to do, and release the apostles.  When Peter and John return to the church, do they say, "Oh, guys, please tone it down about Jesus, you're going to get us all into trouble!"  No!  They recognise that the persecution the apostles have faced is just one more example of the unbelieving world's resistance to God and His Messiah, Jesus Christ.  And they pray that the Lord God will "Stretch out your hand to heal and perform miraculous signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus."

    The name of Jesus carries His power and authority in this world, whether the world likes it or not.  For the brothers to go out from John for the sake of the Name is for them to speak the healing and salvation of Christ. It's to command obedience to His Word.  So it's only right for the church in each town to house and feed and worthily send on evangelists and missionaries who come in Jesus' name.

     There was a time during our Lord's ministry, before He died and rose again, when it was appropriate for His disciples to find lodging for Him with friendly folk who didn't yet understand who He was.  But now wherever Christ's church has been planted, it's not up to the pagans to support our travelling preachers and teachers; in fact, they might well refuse to do so.  No, it's the church's privilege and duty to receive and entertain those who come to us in the name of the Lord, whether they drive over from Pittsburgh or arrive from the other side of the world.  As John writes in verse 8, "We ought therefore to show hospitality to such men so we may work together for the truth."

    Think of that!  You don't have to be a missionary or evangelist to work together for the truth that is Jesus Christ.  Simply opening your home or helping at a church supper in support of a preacher or teacher is pleasing and profitable in God's sight!

    But even in the early church, not all hearts were willing to be hospitable.  John says, "I wrote to the church, but-- "

    Wait a minute.  In verse 6 John said the brothers had told the church about Gaius' love, but here he talks about writing to the church.  Which church, where?  From the context, the verse 6 church is the congregation in Ephesus, and here in verse 9, it's the congregation in Gaius's town.  But I think it's on purpose that John doesn't make the distinction.  For the Apostle, the church is everywhere that Christ is faithfully preached and believed, all one body united in His love. There are local manifestations of the body, but one church, one apostolate, one saving Word; one Spirit and one Christ, to the glory of God the Father.

    But too often there are brothers and sisters in the local church who want to make it their private kingdom.  Men like Diotrephes, who loved to be first.  We've all known some Diotrepheses, and Diotrephas, too, in our time.  Judging from the power he wielded, Diotrephes was one of the pastoral team or a ruling elder, but a Diotrephes doesn't have to be ordained.  He-- or she-- is distinguished by his attitude.  Your typical Diotrephes would never say, "Yes, I want to cause disruption and disunity in the church and destroy the faith of many, because it feeds my ego."  No.  He'd plead, "I'm only doing it for the sake of the church!  I work so hard around here, if I stepped back nothing would get done!"

    John says Diotrephes will have nothing to do with him and his apostolic circle.  Diotrephes would answer, "Apostles?  We don't need no stinkin' apostles!  We know everything about Jesus Christ right here, we're doing just fine!"  Jesus sent out His apostles in His authority to be heeded and obeyed, but Diotrephes refuses.  He doesn't merely ignore John and his emissaries, he says nasty things about him, not openly in the church as official charges, but as gossip behind the scenes.

    Friends, it's shocking the malicious stories people will spread about pastors and church leaders.  I'm sorry to say I had a Diotrephes once who falsely accused me of everything short of murder and child sexual abuse.  We can conclude that for John it's bad enough for himself to be slandered at a distance, but Diotrephes willfully extends that evil personally to the brothers John sends.  He refused to welcome them-- by which we know he prevented them from speaking to the church in the Lord's Day services--and he wouldn't even permit other church members to extend hospitality to them.  Members who did, he put out of the church.

    Which brings us back to Gaius.  It really appears that he himself has been excommunicated for welcoming the brothers from John.  Notice that John doesn't make a victim out of him.  There's no "Poor you, that mean Diotrephes has treated you so badly."  No.  He commends and supports Gaius as he does the right and godly thing for the brothers, as they and the other wrongly excommunicated members work together for the truth, despite the in-house persecution.  But because of Diotrephes' attitude, this indictment of his behaviour can't come to the church, it has to be addressed to faithful Gaius. 

    For surely Gaius knows from experience what this bull elder-- as my EP calls them-- has done!  John doesn't need to tell him!

    Yes.  Surely Gaius knows.  But unlike a lot of modern church authorities, John will not leave Diotrephes in the dark as to the charges to be levelled when the Apostle arrives to exercise church discipline.  No fake niceness.  None of this vague "Well, you're not a good fit for this church" or "oh, the dynamics here are just bad."  No, Diotrephes will know exactly what he has to answer for.  And if he will wake up out of his self-deluded blindness and humble himself to hear, he'll know what he needs to repent of.  For even Christians like Diotrephes are called to work together for the truth, who is Jesus Christ our Lord and the church's only Head.

    One thing more, then I'll close.  Don't be too quick to assume someone in the church is a Diotrephes.  Sometimes people genuinely believe what they're doing is for the best.  You do the church no good by gossiping about them or keeping your mouth shut as you drop your membership. If someone in the church is pursuing a policy that's unhelpful or even harmful, go to him openly and honorably and let him know.  Most of the time you'll come to a deeper understanding of one another and be able to work together better than ever.

    In his Letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul writes that we are all

    . . . fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 

    To work together for the truth is to support and uphold and proclaim the message that John and the rest of the apostles preached, that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father, for there is no other Name under heaven by which every human being must or can be saved.  As we come to one another with this message, as we work to promote this true word, let us humble ourselves to serve and support one another.  May we welcome and be gracious to our brothers and sisters in the faith, whether they're sitting in the pew next to us or come from afar.  This is how we demonstrate the love of Christ that overcomes the world.  This is how we work together for the truth.

The Master's Property

Texts:    2 Timothy 4:1-5; Matthew 25:14-30

    HAVE YOU EVER DONE RENOVATIONS to your house?  Or maybe you watch DIY programs like Holmes Inspection on TV.  If you do, you know how it goes.  You start out to do some improvement, to put in a new bathroom or whatever, but when you do the tear-out you discover there's rot in the walls or the foundation is weak or the plumbing is about to burst.  And instead of getting straight to the fun things like tiling and painting, you have to go back and redo the basic structure.

        We're in that position this morning as we look at Jesus' parable of the talents as it comes to us in Matthew chapter 25, verses 14-30. We've got to do some tearing out before we can begin to build.  The problem is this word "talent."  In ancient times, it had nothing to do with someone's personal endowments or abilities, it was simply a unit of weight, used especially for mass quantities of precious metals.  Over the centuries, however, the English language has taken this word, from this very parable, and changed its meaning to connote our God-given natural abilities, or, as we say, our talents.  So we build on that to conclude that Jesus will hold us accountable for how we put our natural gifts like singing or reasoning or entrepreneurship into service for Him.

    And this is true. He will hold us accountable for that.  But in this parable the word "talents" is referring to something different from our abilities.  Look at verse 15.  It says there that the master gave talents of money to each of his servants, "each according to his ability."  The servants' abilities or natural gifts were something different from the property their master entrusted to them. What profit they would make from it would go along with the abilities-- or, as we would say, the talents-- they already had.

    The talents in this parable do not naturally belong to the servants themselves.  They are, as it says in verse 14, the master's property.  Very valuable property, too.  The weight of a talent varied across the ancient world, but in 1st century occupied Israel it came to 2,080 ounces.  To get an idea of its value, let's reckon it up as gold.  At yesterday's price, one of those talents would have been worth $3,718,728.00.  Just one.  This property is the master's, and it is very, very precious.

    As we heard last week, in these parables our Lord is answering the disciples' question in Matthew 24:3, " . . . what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?"  In the parable of the talents, a master goes away, and after a long time, the master returns.  The Master is Christ, and He warns us to be prepared for His coming at the end of the age. 

    Jesus begins the parable by saying, "Again, it will be like . . . " What will what be like?  Look back at verse 1 of chapter 25: "At that time"-- the time of His coming and the end of the age-- "the kingdom of heaven will be like . . . "  He is speaking of the time of His return.  So when Christ returns as Judge, it will be like a master who has entrusted his great and precious property to his servants and gone away, expecting to find they've turned a profit with it when he returns to settle his accounts. 

    Brothers and sisters, the kingdom of God will not begin with the moment of Christ's return.  We who believe in Him live under Jesus' rulership right now, and it affects how we His servants work with His property in the long weeks and months and years until He comes.

    So what is this property He puts into the hands of His servants?  If it isn't our natural abilities, if it isn't even the spiritual gifts He gives us for ministry, what could it be?

    We can find a clue in Matthew 13, in the parable of the sower.  There, various kinds of soil receive the same seed and yield different amounts of increase, depending on the nature of the soil.  In the parable of the talents, different kinds of servants receive the same kind of money in different amounts and yield different amounts of increase, depending on the nature of their abilities and attitudes.  Jesus tells us in Matthew 13:19 that the seed sown is the message about the kingdom of heaven.  The Master's property in Matthew 25 are the same thing: It is the good news about Jesus Christ the Son of God, come to earth to establish the kingdom of God as its divine Lord and King.  As St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15,

    [This is] the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. . . .  that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures [and appeared to many faithful witnesses].

Christ's servants the apostles were good and faithful.  By their labors we have received the trust of this good news, too.  His glorious gospel is the currency of the kingdom, and in this parable Jesus our Master charges us to put it to work for Him until He comes.

    So again, if we're talking gold, one servant receives five talents, worth around $18,600,000 at today's prices; one is entrusted with two, about $7,400,000; and the last servant is handed one talent at about $3,700,000.  Verse 16 says the first man immediately put his five talents to work. This man exerted himself to do business with his master's property so it might be increased, and the second servant did the same.

    So how do we exert ourselves in the business of the Gospel?  What is the Gospel's business, anyway?  The Word of Christ on earth has three primary purposes: For grace-- that is, to bring salvation and redemption to the sinner; for growth-- to build up the Church and each individual member in it so we achieve the full likeness of Jesus our Saviour; and for glory-- for the greater glory of God, and for the ultimate glorification of all His saints in Him.

    Each of us is given the Good News of Christ crucified and risen for us and for the sins of the world.  Our depth of understanding may be greater or lesser, but each of us in the Church have heard-- or should be hearing-- what Jesus has done for us.  According to the abilities we have from God, we minister this Word to one another and to the pagan at our door, so that grace, growth, and glory may increase and abound.

    Five-talent people might be those like St. Paul, or, more recently, someone like C. S. Lewis.  When the Holy Spirit brought him out of the darkness of modern paganism, Lewis took the wonderful riches of Christ's gift of salvation and multiplied it in his speaking and writing, and his profit to his Master increases to this day all around the world.

    We can't all be five-talent servants of our Lord.  But we can be good and faithful in our sphere and according to our abilities.  We can be like that wise Sunday School teacher who influenced the children in the church for grace, growth, and God's glory up to the time of her death.  We can be godly parents who lead our children in the way of the Lord, and never take it for granted that they know that Jesus died for them.  We can exert ourselves to increase in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ as we study His word and participate in His sacraments.  We can be good capitalists of the Word-- if I dare use the term in these protesting times-- and follow Paul's charge to Timothy in 2 Timothy chapter 4, being prepared in season and out of season to communicate the Word of Christ.  For all Scripture-- all of which speaks of Christ, as He Himself reminds us-- is God-breathed and is useful-- profitable-- for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness.  So, put it to work, beginning in your own life and the life of your household.  Paul's charge applies especially to us pastors and elders, but all of us who have been entrusted with the good news of Jesus Christ should be prepared at all times to give anyone who asks a reason for the kingdom hope that is within us, so our Master's property might increase.

    What about the third servant?  The other two each increase their master's property 100% and the master commends them, entrusts them even more responsibility, and invites them to share in his great happiness.  But this man buries his $3,700,000 in the ground and very disrespectfully hands it back to his master on his return.  In our understanding of the parable, did he ever truly belong to Jesus Christ at all?

    As any human being belongs to God, yes.  Physically, he was a resident worker in the master's household.  But in his heart and mind, he was not the master's man.  He's like those who sit in church for decades letting the preaching wash over them, but they're never actually converted.  They think they know all about God and what He's really like, and they think they're smarter than He is.  And kinder and more loving, too.  The Jews in Jesus' day knew that God for centuries had made a practice of only saving a remnant of His chosen people. But then He'd go and have mercy on Gentiles.  How was that fair?  "Hey, God, don't You have enough to do taking care of us Jews?  Why meddle with people who pledge allegiance to other gods?  They don't belong to You!"  And so in the parable, "Master, I knew you were a hard man, harvesting where you had not sown and gathering where you had not scattered seed."  A man like that today might reason, "God's going to save whoever He's going to save, whether I say anything to anybody about Jesus or not.  And He'll send to hell anybody He feels like, even if they're really good people.  So why should I get myself in trouble in this world by going around talking about Jesus?  Let God get back what He gave, and keep me out of it."

    This is a terrible distortion of the truth.  But many church members use it so they don't have to exert themselves to increase their Master's property in the kingdom of heaven.  The master in verse 26 in effect says, "So that was your opinion of me?  In that case, you should truly have been afraid to return my money to me profitless.  You should've at least put the money to the bankers so I'd get some interest out of it."

    Now, I humbly admit that I am not certain how our Lord wants us to understand and apply this.  Most Bible commentators I've read skip right over it!  Jews weren't allowed to charge interest, so perhaps the master is saying, "All right, you've called me a cruel man and a thief; why didn't you put my money out at interest so you could call me a usurer, too?"  In that case, it would be a warning against speaking ill of our Lord and God.  But Jesus often used the unrighteous practices and people of this world to illustrate truths about the good of the kingdom of heaven. So Jesus could be saying to so-called followers like that, "You were afraid to speak the Gospel yourself?  Very well, you should at least have opened your home to My apostles who were speaking it.  You should have supported My missionaries and evangelists, even if you never said a word about Me yourself.  Then you would have received for Me some of what they earned."  (This is just a possibility, and if the Holy Spirit commends it to you, good; if not, let it alone.)

    But Jesus' conclusion is clear: As Paul says, when Christ, the righteous Judge, returns on the last day, He will reward His good and faithful servants with a crown of righteousness-- a crown that will signify their responsibility over much more than He entrusted to them on this earth.  But those who take the Gospel for granted, those who think the message of Christ crucified is a word of intolerance and exclusion, those who play it safe in church and bury their Master's property, they will be cast away from His presence into outer darkness forever.  They will find that what they thought they had of Christianity and Jesus will be taken away, but those who truly have laid hold on the truth of the gospel and increased grace, growth, and God's glory in this world, they'll find their share in Jesus Christ and His work wonderfully increased in the world to come.

    Which kind of servant will you and I be?  Our Master Jesus has entrusted His property to us, the infinitely valuable good news of sins forgiven in His blood.  He has also given us abilities, natural and spiritual, so we can put the Gospel to work.  May we be those receive His trust and immediately set to work for the increase of His kingdom.  And when Christ comes again in glory, may He gladly say to us,

    "Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness!"

    Amen.

Taking and Giving

Texts: John 16:5-15; Acts 2:1-41

    I MADE A MISTAKE THE other day at work.  I ran my nose into the sidelight of a door.

    I substitute teach, and last Wednesday I was in for a Special Ed. teacher.  I was told to report to the cafeteria to supervise a particular child at lunch.  Only, this past Wednesday the school had a patio cookout for the students.  I approached the doors to the patio and looked out, seeing if I could see the child I was in charge of.  It was sunny out there, the outer doors were open, and I looked and looked but couldn't see the student or her homeroom teacher.  But I saw another teacher for the same grade.  All right, I'll go on out and ask her where my kid was.  Very purposefully, I headed out the door.

    Only it wasn't a door.  It was a sidelight, which the custodial staff had cleaned all the marks off.  Remember the old Windex slogan, "Glass so clean, it seems to disappear"?  It was like that.  I flattened my nose against that window, left a giant oil smudge on the glass, cut and bruised my nose, stunned myself, and blew the rest of the period sitting with a compress in the nurse's office.

    That was a mistake.  But we can make a bigger mistake in our thinking about God's Holy Spirit, Whose coming we celebrate on this day of Pentecost.  We can focus on Him and His gifts too much, as I should have with that sidelight, so we never see Jesus through Him.  Or we can see Jesus through Him, but forget that unlike that sidelight at school, He is an open door and He calls us to go through.

    What is the Holy Spirit's job?  Jesus says it simply in John 16:14: "He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you."  The Spirit takes everything about Jesus, from the first prophecies in the Garden of Eden to His ascension into heaven, and says to us, "All this your Saviour did for you."  He helps us understand why Jesus did what He did and said what He said.  He shows us who Jesus Christ really is and stops us from believing in false Christs of our own imagining.  His whole purpose on this earth is to lead us through Himself into the salvation and fellowship of our Lord Jesus Christ.  As Jesus says, the Spirit does not speak on His own.  His purpose is not to attract attention and glory to Himself, but to give glory to the crucified and risen Son of God, and to God the Father through Him.

    This is why it's important that we don't stop our Pentecost reading at Acts 2:13.  We need Peter's sermon to shows us the Spirit in all His taking and giving power.  Stop at verse 13, and we treat the Holy Spirit as the goal in Himself.  We bruise our noses on Him and never get through to what He wants us to experience and know.

    In Acts 2 we read that on the day of Pentecost, in the year that Jesus was crucified and rose again, the disciples, men and women, were all together in one place.  Suddenly, with rushing wind and flaming fire they were filled with the Holy Spirit and spilled out into the street, speaking in other languages as the Spirit enabled them.  They were all Galileans, but Jews and converts to Judaism from all over the Roman world heard them speaking to them in their own native languages, from east and west and north and south.  Speaking to them about the excitement they, too, could feel once the Holy Spirit fell upon them?  No.  In the power of the Spirit, these formerly-frightened souls were proclaiming the wonders of God.

    The Spirit is always about proclaiming the wonders of God.  He does not speak on His own, He does not draw attention to Himself; He speaks of what He hears from the Father.  He brings glory to Christ by taking what is Christ's and making it known to the world, that lost humanity might believe and be saved.

    We see the work of the Spirit in the sermon Peter preaches there in the street in Jerusalem. Immediately he quotes from the book of the prophet Joel, how the days would come when God would pour out His Spirit on all people.  God has spoken in Old Testament prophecy by the power of the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit keeps on showing us the truth of those words today. The last days spoken of by Joel had begun that Pentecost morning in Jerusalem, and we are still living in those last days. The Spirit is God's life-giving communication with His people, in prophecy and holy visions and divine dreams.  He entrusts the saving message to all kinds of people, regardless of sex or age or economic class.  The coming of the Spirit at Pentecost showed that a new age was dawning, and it will not end until the great and glorious day of the Lord will come.  God is speaking to us by His Spirit in these last days, and His message is this: That everyone who calls on the name of the Lord might be saved.

    But who is this Lord we must call upon?  Speaking in the Spirit, Peter declares that this is none other than Jesus of Nazareth.  Jesus proved He was the Messiah by His public miracles, wonders, and signs.  The people standing there either had seen Him do all this themselves, or they had it from reliable witnesses.  Jesus was accredited by God to be the Holy One promised by the prophets, the Lord and King who would deliver Israel and reconcile them to God.  The Spirit says, Call on Jesus' name and be saved!

    Yes, but what about the crucifixion? Wasn't Jesus condemned for blasphemy?  Didn't He die like a common criminal?

    In the strength of the Spirit, Peter is able to announce clearly and boldly: "This man was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge."  The crucifixion of Jesus Christ wasn't a sad accident, or just desserts, or yet another example of the absurd indifference of the universe.  It was part of God's plan for the exaltation of His Son and the redemption of our souls.  And so God raised Jesus from the dead, "because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him."

    We see here how the Spirit is taking what is Christ's-- His life, His death, and His resurrection-- and bringing glory to Him through it.  Especially, the Spirit animates Peter to demonstrate the truth of Jesus' resurrection.  If there's going to be Holy Spirit preaching, it has to glorify Christ risen from the dead. Look at Psalm 16! Peter urges the crowd.  King David was a prophet, and he foresaw that God's Holy One would not decay in the grave.  David speaks in the first person, but he cannot be speaking about himself, for as everyone knew, David's tomb was right outside Jerusalem.  Rather, he was speaking of the resurrection of the Christ Who was to come.  Peter and the other disciples could confidently testify that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and He indeed had been raised from the dead.  They were all witnesses of this fact.

    Not just in Peter's sermon but in all faithful preaching, the Spirit witnesses to the fact of Christ's ascension into heaven.  Jesus now is exalted to the right hand of the Father in majesty.  There in glory the Jesus receives the Holy Spirit as a gift to Him from the Father, and from His throne in heaven the Son sends the Spirit to us.  This is the same Spirit that enabled David to testify about Jesus, saying,

    The Lord said to my Lord:
           "Sit at my right hand
    until I make your enemies
           a footstool for your feet."

    The crowds in Jerusalem didn't witness Jesus' ascension into heaven.  Neither did we.  For that matter, the disciples themselves could not see what happened to Jesus after the cloud hid Him from their sight.  But the power and the testimony of the Holy Spirit in the lives of God's people prove that Jesus indeed is exalted on high.  Only One who was God Himself could promise to send the Spirit upon us and keep it.  Our ascended and glorified Lord has sent the promised Holy Spirit, and by His revelation we can be assured that God has made this Jesus, Whom our sins crucified, both Lord and Christ.  The Spirit brings our rebellious souls into submission to Him.  The Spirit opens our eyes to worship Christ as our God and heavenly King.  And the Spirit changes our hearts to accept Jesus as the one Saviour and Redeemer of our souls.

    The Holy Spirit spoke on that day nearly two thousand years ago.  He spoke in the words of Scripture written and by the word faithfully preaching.  This is still how He speaks today.  Churches think they have make things exciting and new if people are to believe in Christ.  No.  It is still through the Word that the Holy Spirit takes what belongs to Jesus and gives it to us, that men and women might repent and be saved.

    The people that day were cut to the heart by what Peter had said.  The Spirit convicted them of their sin, and they cried out, "Brothers, what shall we do?"

    The Holy Spirit's answer to them is the same for as for us:  "Repent and be baptised, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins."  Baptism is God's holy sign given to us in the Spirit that shows that we now belong to Him.  The Holy Spirit Himself is the seal of our baptism into Christ, come to live in us, to guide us into all truth, to bind us to God in Christ forever.  He is God's gift to us, for all who receive Jesus Christ by faith.

    Peter says, "The promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off-- for all whom the Lord our God will call."  The gift of the Holy Spirit transcends Israel.  He is not just for the old, the wise, and the learned.  He descends and dwells in everyone in all times and in all places, all whom God has elected to be joined to His people.

    On that day of Pentecost, the Spirit took what was Christ's and He gave it to the citizens and visitors of Jerusalem.  Luke records that about three thousand accepted Peter's message about Jesus that day and were added to "their number"-- that is, the number of God's Church.  Brothers and sisters, one of the Spirit's greatest roles is to incorporate us into the body of the Church through Christian baptism.  Paul's Letter to the Ephesians returns again and again to the truth that in the Spirit we are built up together to be God's dwelling place.  It is the Spirit who gives gifts to the members of the Church for the good of the Church.  We are to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace-- one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all. On that Pentecost morning the Holy Spirit gave birth to the Church of Jesus Christ, and to this day He is her life, her unity, and her power.

    Brothers and sisters, this same Holy Spirit is at work in the Church today. He is still taking what is Christ's and giving it to us, that Jesus might be glorified in heaven above and on the earth below.  He is still opening minds to the meaning and power of the Scriptures.  He is still entrusting men and women with the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ.  Even when we go astray, the Spirit is still convicting the Church and the world of our sins and calling us out of darkness into the light of the grace of God.

    The Holy Spirit is our open door into this grace.  I invite you now, accept His ministry in you.  Go through the door into the joy found only in Jesus, the Son of God.  The Spirit declares:  Jesus died for you, He rose for you, He ascended into heaven for you, He sent the Holy Spirit for you.  Accept the truth the Spirit brings, for He does not speak on His own, He speaks only what He hears, and His message is forgiveness, salvation, and joy in Jesus Christ, now and forever more.  Amen.

Worthy of His Calling

Texts: Malachi 3:13 - 4:3; 2 Thessalonians 1:3-12

WHY SHOULD ANYONE WANT TO become a Christian? If you or I were talking to an unbeliever, someone we knew and cared about-- and the subject of church came up and that person should ask, "Why should I become a Christian? What’s in it for me?" how should we respond?

Maybe we could tell him about the fellowship and good times he could find as a member of a Christian church like 1st Presbyterian.
Maybe we could point to all the good works Christians do for other people and say how good she’d feel to be part of that.

Or, we could tell him that believing in Jesus will make him more fulfilled as a human being, that Jesus will give him a sense of purpose and higher goals for living. We could tell her that once Jesus is in her life, she’ll have new and wonderful ways to make her marriage better and help her raise obedient, well-adjusted children.

Or how’s this? We could even tell him (though really, we shouldn't) that faith in Jesus Christ will make him happier, more comfortable, and more prosperous in this world; and, if he cares about such things, it’ll also guarantee him happiness and security in the world to come. We could say that when you’re a Christian, Jesus solves all your problems, that once you have true faith, you won’t have to struggle with anything anymore. I mean, there are popular preachers out there who say that, and look how many people they have in their pews!

We could say all these things to an interested unbeliever. And some of them (some of them!) are true to an extent. But none of them get to the heart of what God has in store for us when we confess our faith in the Savior, Jesus Christ. If we wanted to be truly honest with our unbelieving friend or neighbor or family member, maybe we should quote to him the words of the late Dietrich Bonhoeffer: "When Jesus calls a man, He bids him come and die."

Ouch. That’s not a church marketing pitch designed to win a lot of customers, is it? And maybe, yes, that’s not what we’d want to lead with. But if we said that, it would be true, and once our unbelieving friend or you or I or anyone else understands the depths of that truth, we’ll see that it’s the most comforting, fulfilling offer we could ever be made. The call to become a disciple of Jesus Christ is God’s call for us to identify with and participate in the sufferings of His crucified Son. Christianity is all about the cross. Our very baptism depicts us being immersed in the death of the wounded Messiah. But that’s really good news! Because only by dying to ourselves, our wants, our needs, our sense of who we are and what we can do and what we should be, can we be raised with Christ to the new life of joy and fulfilment and meaning God has planned for us. Only by humbling ourselves and wanting and worshipping God for who He is-- adoring our Triune Lord in all the glorious splendor of His holiness because He eternally deserves it--can we find glory and meaning in this life on earth and beyond that, in our life face to face with Him in heaven.

Which is why St. Paul, in our reading from 2 Thessalonians, reminds us that our relationship with Him through His Son Jesus Christ is a calling. From our human point of view, we church members may think we analyzed the pros and cons of buying into this Christianity deal and said Yes because it made sense or seemed like a good way to live. But you and I could never even consider, never even imagine, never even desire belonging to Jesus Christ if God Himself from all eternity had not elected to bring us into fellowship with Him through the shed blood of His only-begotten Son. How could we? Like everyone else, we were lost in trespasses and sins. We were rebels against Him and His righteous will. We didn’t want God. Maybe we wanted some things we could get out of Him, but we didn’t desire God for Himself! And because of our idolatry and sin we deserved God’s wrath just as much as the most vicious serial killer or genocidal tyrant.

Now frankly, when I turn that around and preach it at myself, I want to say, "Hey, wait a minute. I’m not that bad! Actually, I’m a pretty nice person! And so are most of the people I know, even the unbelievers!" But that very thought alerts me to yet another area in my life where Jesus bids me come and die. I may think I know what’s what in this world and how things really are. But God in Christ calls me-- and you-- to give that up and see things His way instead. He calls us to accept the utter wickedness of sin-- any sin-- and the utter burning holy righteousness of God. At the very least, He calls us to submit to what He says about us and our helpless condition and have faith that His will and wisdom are always best, whether we understand it now or not.

But there is another sense in which our calling as Christians is a call to suffering and death. We see it in 2 Thessalonians 1:4 and 5. Paul says, "Therefore, among God’s churches we boast about your perseverance and faith in all the persecutions and trials you are enduring. All this is evidence that God’s judgment is right, and as a result you will be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are suffering." When we live openly and honestly as Christians in this fallen world, we will suffer persecution. It may be mild, it may be severe, but it goes with our calling. When God in His sovereign power claims us for His own, He makes us new creatures through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We no longer are the same kind of human beings we were when we were born in sin into this world. No, through Christ we are now children of God, sons and daughters of the Lord and Creator of the universe. It’s natural that those who are still in rebellion against Him will hate and despise and persecute us as well.

Here in America, that persecution hasn’t been the open sort of trouble that came upon the Christians in Thessalonika. Or that comes even now to our brothers and sisters in places like India and Somalia and Viet Nam. But if we are Christians called by God, if we are worthy of the calling laid upon us, there will be times when we certainly will encounter trouble, misunderstanding, opposition, and even outright persecution because we are who we are. In those times the first thing that has to die is our dream of fitting in with everyone else. "Can’t we all just get along?" is not necessarily a Christian principle! Yes, be at peace with everyone, inasmuch as it lies with you, as our brother the Apostle Peter wrote. But far above that, let us strive to be at peace with God our Father, who has made us His own. Being a Christian means desiring His pleasure, His promises, His rewards above everything this world can give, even when we see none of that coming true in the present time.

I wonder if our frequent failure to grow as Christians and as churches has a lot to do with our taking a consumer view of our relationship with Jesus Christ. If we buy into Him because we think He’ll make us more fulfilled and comfortable, how can we be the world-changing soldiers of the King every child of His should be? Suffering and persecution comes with the package. To think otherwise would be like somebody who joined the US Army strictly because of the college tuition and job benefits, then was astonished because the Government sent him overseas to fight. I remember a case like that back in the early ’90s, when the First Gulf War was going on. A woman, a medical doctor, had joined up for the educational benefits. But when her unit was called up to go to Iraq, she refused to go with them to exercise her skills in the field. She claimed going to a war zone wasn’t what she’d joined the Army for. There was a court-martial, then a civil case, and the judges all ruled against her. Regardless of any benefits offered, the Army is about fighting the enemy. You should know that going in. In the same way, the Christian life is about putting God first in everything, and being willing to take the flak the world will fire at you because of it.

But as we heard before, we don’t really join God’s army, we’re drafted into it. We’re called. At the end of this service, we’ll be singing, "Once to every man and nation/ Comes the moment to decide." And it’s true: from our side we do have to make a decision for Christ. But understand, we can make that decision, we can say Yes to Him, only because God has first laid His electing hand upon us and brought us already into His fellowship. And as He does He gives us all the benefits of belonging to Him through His Son.

The complainers in our reading from Malachi didn’t want the benefits of God. They wanted the benefits of this world, right now. "It is futile to serve God," they say. "What did we gain by carrying out his requirements and going about like mourners before the Lord Almighty?" Doggonit, they’d put a dollar’s worth of ritual and fasting into the divine vending machine and now they wanted their Coke! With change!

It’s worth noting that this is the same gang of priests and people that the Lord has been bringing a case against for the entire book of Malachi. Their "worship" was insincere all along. But even in this one passage, we see the error of believing in Christ because we think He’ll satisfy our self-defined needs. Friends, we have needs only God knows about, and only by His calling and faithfulness can they ever be fulfilled.

In both our passages we see one of these needs, the need to be saved from the wrath to come. Malachi reports that those who fear the Lord and honor His name will be spared in the day of judgment, as a man compassionately spares his son who serves him. In the great day of burning, the arrogant and every evildoer, all who claim they don’t need God and don’t want God, all who want God only on their terms and according to their preferences, all such will be destroyed like stubble. Paul takes up the same theme: Through him the Spirit promises that the Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven in blazing fire to punish those who do not know God and who don’t obey His gospel.

That’s not something we like to think of as happening to our unbelieving family and friends. But as Paul says, God is just. If someone says No to God, God will give him what he desires and say No to him.

But, as Malachi says, for those who revere His name, those who are the called according to His purpose, the Sun of Righteousness will arise with healing in its wings. Now "Sun of Righteousness" is a figure of speech for our Lord and Messiah Jesus, who comes as the Light of the World to bring salvation and enlightenment to all who believe. Paul reminds us that we will be glorified in Christ at His coming, and those who trouble us because we belong to Jesus will be paid back with trouble, according to His perfect justice. It must be so, for whoever will not accept the death of the Son of God in their behalf, will have to bear their own just death in themselves. This is not revenge or retribution, it is simple justice.

But beyond our need to be saved from the wrath to come, we need to know the glory and joy of true fellowship with our Lord. Malachi says that God’s faithful ones will be His, like a treasured possession a man gathers up and preserves. Or as some translations puts it, we will be His precious jewels. But the benefits of Christ are not only for the day of our Lord’s return. No, Paul prays for the Thessalonians and for us that by His power God may fulfill every good purpose of ours. This prayer is for us now, and since Paul is writing by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, we can confidently take it that he prays for things it’s God’s intention to give. God promises to bless and prosper every good work offered up in sincerity and love to His name! Even the least act prompted by your faith, He will bless; even the slightest humbling of our wills, even the least endurance of suffering or trouble for His name’s sake, He will remember and reward with good. And why? So that the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in us, and we may be glorified in Him.

This is why we should be Christians. This is why we should tell our unbelieving family, neighbors, and friends about Him and what He has done for them in His death and resurrection and invite them to become Christians, too. Not for our own glory, but for glorious fellowship and fulfillment in Him. Not through our own good works, but through His grace and His grace alone. He calls us to suffer, because when we suffer with Him, we gain the reward of His suffering; He calls us to die, that in Him we might gloriously rise. Let those who will, seek God only for the earthly goods they can get out of him; by His grace we will seek Him for Himself and the glory of His name. Christian, Jesus calls you to suffer and die with Him, and then enter with Him into glory; may our God count you worthy of His calling.