Unalienable Rights

Texts:  Psalm 21; Galatians 3:26-4:7

WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

    We all recognize those stirring words.  They begin the second paragraph of our American Declaration of Independence, adopted by Congress 235 years ago tomorrow, on July 4th, 1776.  These words still resonate in us today, because our basic human rights are important to us.  They define our identity as free human beings.  We understand-- or I hope we do-- that these rights are not given to us by the government of our country; rather, they are the gift or endowment of our Creator God.  Our human rights under God are unalienable-- that is, they cannot be sold or given away, even by the one who possesses them.  The human rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are given to all people everywhere, and as the Declaration goes on to say, "to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

    Our nation was founded especially to affirm and defend these rights, and as American citizens we have to be ready to do whatever we can and must to defend them, whether the danger comes from a foreign enemy or from forces of oppression within our shores.

    But essential and important as these human rights are, as much as they are given to us by Almighty God, they pertain only to the kingdom of this world.  They belong to the order of Creation, to this present age which is passing away.  We enjoy these rights only as long as our mortal bodies stay alive.  When the children of earth die, they have no life, no liberty, they can pursue no happiness.

    But there is another kingdom with greater and better rights, a kingdom of Heaven whose citizens never die and whose dominion will never pass away.  There is a household of God, whose children enjoy their rights forever, a family from which no member ever has to depart.  And we who bear the name of our Lord Jesus Christ are citizens of that everlasting kingdom and enjoy its rights, even while we are citizens of the United States of America or of any other country under the sun. 

    Our reading from St. Paul's letter to the Galatians speaks of our rights as citizens of God's kingdom and members of His household.  We began with verse 26 of chapter 3, where it says, "You all are sons of God through faith in Jesus Christ."  We gain our rights as humans by being born of our mothers into this world; we become sons and daughters of God by the new birth that comes through trust in Jesus Christ and His atoning death for our sins. 

    Our first right in Christ is our becoming a son of God.  As it says in the Gospel according to St. John,  chapter 1, verse 12, "To all who received him"-- that is, Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh-- "to those who believed in his name, he"-- that is, God-- "gave the right to become children of God." In the kingdom of God we are more than subjects, more than servants, even more than citizens-- God has given us the right to be called His children!  And as John says in his First Letter, that is what we are!

    Our baptism was our rite of citizenship and adoption, for as Paul says in Galatians 3:27, "all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ" Again, it doesn't matter what country we were born in, it doesn't matter what race or sex we are: in Christ, God gave us the right to become His sons.  And so, as it is written, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.  If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise."  Not just sons, but heirs, heirs according to the promise to Abraham!

    God promised Abraham he would inherit, many blessings, among which was the promise that all nations should be blessed through him, through the miraculous offspring God would give him.  Jesus Christ is the ultimate fulfilment of that promise; as Paul says in Galatians 3:14, "He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit."

    In verses 4:1-3, Paul illustrates how formerly we were like  underage children or slaves in the eyes of God, under the control of the Law and of the basic principles of this world, without rights and without privileges in God's household.  If we had time, we would examine more carefully what those verses mean.  But this morning I'd like to skip straight to verses 4-6, where it says, 

    But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons.

    "The full rights of sons."  Now that Jesus Christ has come, we have been freed, redeemed, declared independent of the law.  Jesus the Son of God and Son of Mary perfectly kept the Law in our behalf.  He fulfilled all its righteous requirements and now, in Him, we have received the full rights of sons. 

    But I ask you, what are our full rights as full-grown, inheritance-worthy sons of God?  We can't answer that question without first asking, "What are the full rights of the Son of God?"  For it is only in and through and because of Jesus Christ that we are children of God at all.  Only in Him do we enjoy and exercise our unalienable rights in the kingdom of Heaven.

    Psalm 21 goes a long way towards answering that question.  It petitions the Lord in behalf of an unidentified Israelite king, probably King David.  It might seem strange for us to deal with a royal psalm on the weekend when we celebrate our independence from all human kings.  But our forefathers knew that although no one man or woman was worthy to rule over a free people, God, the Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer of the universe is still and always will be this earth's true Sovereign and Lord. 

    As we read through Psalm 21, we see that no human king could ever come up to this standard, claim all these rights, or inherit all these blessings.  Christ and His apostles all testify that David wrote as a prophet, and looked forward to the promised eternal King, great David's greater Son. In Jesus and only in Jesus, the Son of David, Son of Mary and Son of God, is this psalm fulfilled. 

    What are the rights of our Messiah and King?  Verse 1 begins:

    O LORD, the king rejoices in your strength.
               How great is his joy in the victories you give!

    Jesus has the right to victory.  Victory over sin, death, and the devil, victory over every evil force that stands opposed to God and to God's chosen people.  This right is unalienable: Jesus who died once can never die again; death has no more mastery over Him, and one day will once and for all put death under His feet.

    The right to victory is ours as sons of God in Jesus Christ.  On the cross He defeated death for us, and we, too, rejoice in the strength of God demonstrated for us.

    Verse 2 says,

    You have granted him the desire of his heart
               and have not withheld the request of his lips.

    Jesus has the right to the desires of His heart, and the granting of the request of His lips.  In the letter to the Hebrews we see that His earnest desire was that through His obedience many sons might be brought to the glory of God, so that He might be the firstborn of many brothers.

    And Jesus has granted us the right to have our prayers and petitions heard at the throne of God, as we pray them in His name and according to His will.

    In verse 3 it is written,

    You welcomed him with rich blessings
               and placed a crown of pure gold on his head.

    Jesus had the right to be welcomed into the very presence of God when He ascended into heaven, and even now He has the right to wear the crown as the Lord before whom every knee will bow and to whom every tongue will confess His sovereign worth.

    In Him we will have the right to wear crowns as rulers under Him, crowns that we will cast down before Him as we bow down in worship and love.  

    Verse 4 states,

    He asked you for life, and you gave it to him—
           length of days, for ever and ever.

    By His perfect life and sacrificial death, our Lord Jesus has the right to eternal life, length of days, for ever and ever.  He rose triumphant from the tomb on the third day, gloried, transformed, immortal.

    And now He endows us who believe in Him with His own everlasting life, so that our mortal bodies will be transformed to be like His immortal body.  In Christ we have inherited the right to the life of God that can never, never die.

    Verse 5 says,

    Through the victories you gave, his glory is great;
                  you have bestowed on him splendor and majesty.

    Jesus has indeed won the victory through the might of God the Father, and now He has the right to glory, splendor, and majesty.  This is not the transitory glory of this world; the splendor of Christ will last into all eternity.

    And so in Him we, too, will inherit glory, honor, and immortality, as Paul writes in his letter to the Romans, for we share in the inheritance of Jesus, the firstborn Son of God.

    Verse 6 affirms,

        Surely you have granted him eternal blessings
               and made him glad with the joy of your presence.

    Jesus as God's firstborn Son has the right to eternal blessing.  His store of riches is gladness in the presence of God.

    We in our sin deserved only the curse of God.  To stand in His presence with our wickedness on us would mean not joy, but misery and condemnation.  But through faith in Him Jesus has shared with us His right to take eternal pleasure in the presence of God Most High.  He has invited us even now to participate with Him in the blessings of that kingdom, where eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor mind conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him.
    Verse 7 assures us,

    For the king trusts in the LORD;
                   through the unfailing love of the Most High
           he will not be shaken.

    Jesus our King has the right to trust utterly in the love of God Most High.  He has the right and assurance that His trust in His Father will never be shaken. 

    And so in Him we have the right to trust God to save us totally and completely.  Jesus has promised that He will never leave us or forsake us.  Our adoption as sons in His name will never be undone, or repudiated.  God's love to us is unfailing.  In ourselves we have no right to it, but in Christ our right to God's love is everlasting and unshakeable. 

    In verses 8 through 12 we see that Jesus our King has the right to triumph and vengeance upon His enemies.  His enemies are sin, death, and the rebellious angels, but they also include the wicked among mankind as well.  The cowardly and those who are soft on sin will say that it's mean and intolerant to want to see God's human enemies destroyed.  After all, isn't He the God of love?  But what else is God to do with those who ally themselves to the end with the devil and his demons?  What else can be the fate of those men and women who keep on plotting evil against the Lord and His anointed?  At the time of Christ's appearing in glory He will have the right to make them like a fiery furnace, with the wrath of the Lord swallowing them up.

    Until that time we hope and pray that all sinners will come to enjoy the rights of the sons of God that we inherit now in Jesus Christ our Lord.  But in the day of His appearing we will have the right to see God's vengeance on our foes, and we will know that His judgement is righteous and just.

    These are only a few of the rights we enjoy as sons of God and heirs through faith in Christ Jesus.  These rights are unalienable.  No one can take them away from us, because they are His rights first and no one can take the rights of Jesus Christ from Him. 

    Yes, but what if we fall away from Jesus Christ?  Brothers and sisters, does the Bible not teach that the rights of Christ are unalienable?  Do you not know that one of the foremost of His rights is His right to you?  He has bought you with His blood, He has claimed you through faith (which is the gift of God and not your doing at all), and no one and nothing can snatch you out of His hand or alienate Him from you-- not even you yourself.

    Brothers and sister, as we celebrate our unalienable rights in this free land, remember that we possess rights that are  greater and even more unalienable in a land that is greater and freer still.  We are citizens and children of that land even now, even we are free to exercise our rights as its sons, through our Sovereign and only King, Jesus Christ: to whom be all glory, honor, and power in God the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, now and forever.  Amen.

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.

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!

Living in the Salvation of the Lord

Texts: Isaiah 26:1-15; Titus 2:11 - 3:11

TOWARDS THE END OF MY 3rd grade year, my parents split up. My mom moved herself and us kids to our grandparents'. That meant starting at a whole new school for 4th grade, and, let me tell you, things did not go well. My new class liked games I hated and had strange rules about what new kids should and shouldn't do and I didn't figure out which end was up till it was too late. At my old school I was one of the popular kids, I had lots of friends, and I was in on everything. At the new school, most of the time during recess, when I wasn't actually being bullied, I found myself alone on the hill next to the playground, just sitting there thinking. I thought about God and why He was letting all this happen to me. And I decided it was because the year before at my old school I'd helped tease a new girl whose mother had died and who only had her father to raise her. I never teased her about that, no, but I was ready as anybody else to make her feel uncomfortable. Because she was, well, different.

Frankly, I thought God was overdoing it with the punishment. I'd say, "Lord, I wasn't that mean to her!" But I never questioned that I was getting divine retribution for my sins. I was a church-going kid, and I knew I was supposed to be good. And if I wasn't good, God would punish me for it.

Because that's the way it's supposed to work, isn't it? If you're a Christian, you read the Bible to find out what God wants of you, and you do your best to follow His rules? And if you do, He'll reward you with salvation, and if you mess up, He'll punish you for what you've done wrong. And hopefully your good works will outweigh your bad and you'll make it into heaven in the end. Why shouldn't we believe that about Christianity? That's what every religion in the world teaches, why not ours?

But that's not what the Bible teaches about Christianity. Not at all. And our reading from Titus shows us how amazingly different our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ really is, so we can joyfully live in His salvation and never have to be afraid again.

If belonging to Jesus were about our human efforts to be good, the ancient Cretans would have been total failures at it. As you probably know, Crete is a large island in the Mediterranean Sea, about a hundred miles south of mainland Greece. About thirty years after Jesus died and rose again, Paul and Titus made a missionary journey there, and successfully planted churches in many of the Cretan towns. Paul returned to Athens, but as we read in chapter 1, he left Titus on the island that he "might straighten out what was left unfinished and appoint elders in every town." All churches need good leadership, but the Cretan churches needed it especially, because they were going to have to live in opposition to a very difficult, very wicked culture. All sort of sins abounded all around the pagan world, but the Cretans were a special case. Paul writes, "Even one of their own prophets has said, ‘Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons.'" Yikes! Not exactly what you'd call ethnically-sensitive or politically-correct, is it? But many writers of the time bear out the truth of the statement. Cretans were infamous for being habitual liars. I don't mean fish-story liars, but cheat-you-out-of-house-and-home liars. They were known around the Mediterranean for being vengeful and vindictive, men who'd cut your throat if you looked at them cross-eyed-- that is, when they weren't lying about feeding their faces and refusing to work.

And now many of these people had become Christians. Their lives needed to demonstrate the holiness and righteousness of God. What if Paul had written to Titus something like, "Titus, my son, you have many Cretan Jews there in your congregations: you make them elders so they can teach the Gentile believers the Law of Moses. That way they'll know what's right and what's wrong. The Law'll make honest, gentle, and industrious citizens out of them"? Would that have been the way of Christ? What if he'd written, "Titus, tell them that Jesus said to love your neighbor as yourself and to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. If the Cretans can get that behavior down, they'll be good Christians and God will be pleased with them"? What if?

But Paul didn't write that, because that's not the Gospel. Paul does direct Titus to teach the church members good and godly behavior, according to sound doctrine. But what is that sound doctrine? Here it is, as it's written in Titus 2:11: "For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men." Or, as the Greek says, to all persons. All our good Christian behavior comes after what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. All our striving to please God is how we live in the salvation He has provided for us.

God's grace that brings salvation comes first! Our Isaiah 26 reading shows us that salvation has always been a work of the grace of God. Isaiah writes, "You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast [or, him whose mind is stayed on You], because he trusts in you." Even from of old, God's people were called to keep the Law because first of all God had proved Himself to be gracious and trustworthy.

Isaiah looked forward to the time when the gracious salvation of God would be perfectly revealed to all humanity in the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth. Now Jesus has come and has perfectly kept the Law that we could never fulfill. Now He has died to ward off the wrath of God that we deserved for our sins and risen again to give us new and everlasting life. Now Jesus has put His Spirit in us so that we can say "No!" to ungodliness and worldly passions, and "Yes!" to self-control, uprightness, and godliness.

Could the Cretans do that without Christ saving them first? Could we? Of course not. For as Paul writes in verse 3 of chapter 3, "At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another." Paul includes himself and Titus in this guilty verdict, and when we look at ourselves, we have to admit it's true of us, too. We've never physically taken someone's life, but we certainly have dehumanized others, refused to forgive, or wished someone was dead in our hearts. We've all been led astray by what we felt like doing, so we failed in our duty to God and our neighbor. We've been rude and proud; we've gossiped and envied; we've disobeyed our parents, our teachers, the law of the land, and the Law of God itself. Not one of us can claim to be worthy to stand before a holy God, and He's not interested in our stories that what we've done isn't "that bad" or that He should punish somebody else who's so much worse, instead. Even when we try to do good our motives are mixed, our deeds are polluted, and we can never meet the standard He has given us in His holy law. How can we possibly please God? What can people like the Cretans or people like ourselves do to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly in this present age?

Nothing. We can do nothing at all. Left to ourselves, we can expect only judgment. "But," says Paul, "when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy." As the hymn puts it, "'Tis mercy all, immense and free! For O my God, it found out me!" We didn't deserve it, we could never earn it, God would have been perfectly justified in letting us all go to perdition as our sins deserved. But in His mercy "He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior." Our triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, poured out His salvation on us so we no longer have to fear the judgment of the law! By His free, unmerited, boundless grace He has justified you and me, declaring us Not Guilty and giving us credit for Christ's righteousness. He did this to make us heirs of His, looking forward in hope to all the riches of eternal life. As it says in chapter 2, verse 13, we now wait for that blessed hope, the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. He has already redeemed us from the power of wickedness, and now He is in the process of purifying us, making us fit to be His very own, worthy to live with Him forever. Now, through His finished work, Jesus Christ is making us into people who are eager to do what is good.

Not fearful of doing what is bad, but eager to do good! Now through the grace we have from God, we can live in the salvation He gives and do what is godly, righteous, and self-controlled because we are thankful to Him for what He has done for us. Because He's put a new heart in us and we want to, not because the Law has forced us to!

So do we just lie back and let the Spirit work? No, God gives us the means of grace in His Word and Sacraments and we must not neglect them. So Paul tells Titus to be sure to teach these things. Titus, teach the salvation we have in Christ and the new life that flows from it! Titus, teach the sound doctrine of salvation in Christ alone through faith alone! Titus, "encourage and rebuke with all authority. Do not let anyone despise you." We ministers and elders are charged to encourage those who are doing good, to rebuke those who are doing evil, and to help people to know the difference. Some might read "Do not let anyone despise you" as giving the pastor license to throw his or her weight around. Not at all. This command assumes that the minister first has submitted himself to the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and is teaching and guiding according to God's truth. When the faithful pastor is rightly teaching the revealed Word, to despise him or her is to despise God and His mercy.

And so, as it says in 3:8, the minister of Christ is to stress what the Lord has done for us and what He has rescued us from. We have trusted in God, and so now with joy we can be careful to devote ourselves to doing what is good. Now we can reap the benefits of a holy and righteous life, which is excellent and profitable for everyone.

This is the reward of our faith. Because Jesus has saved us, we can live in our salvation and please God through the Holy Spirit He has given. But the Lord knows we're often tempted to go back to our old ways. The old Adam and the old Eve in us are like weed seeds in a garden plot wanting to sprout up and choke out the good plantings again and again. It's our responsibility as Christians to keep running to Christ, to keep reading His Word, to keep calling on His Holy Spirit to enable us to say No to what is hateful to God and harmful to our neighbors and ourselves.

And it's the responsibility of the pastor and the elders swiftly to deal with problems that can disrupt the church and make our life in Christ more difficult. In verses 9-11 of chapter 3 Paul calls Titus to go against the Cretan culture of his time. This command is for today's church leaders, too. The world tells us to "celebrate diversity." But not when that diversity means departing from the truth that comes in Jesus Christ. We don't have many people today teaching we should return to keeping the Jewish kosher laws. More frequently our modern heresies say we should integrate Hindu or Muslim or nature-worshipping elements into our church services. Or believe in special revelations from the Holy Spirit that have nothing to do with God's revealed Word. We see it when Christians promote popular authors who allege that Christianity used to involve goddess worship or who invite their readers to doubt the truth of Scripture. When false teachers like that show up in the church, the leadership should warn them once, twice. Who knows, they may be sincerely mistaken and willing to repent. But if they will not listen, Paul says, have nothing to do with them. They have rejected the saving grace they were offered in Jesus Christ. They are warped, sinful, and self-condemned.

But you have received the grace of God that brings salvation. This is His good news to you whether you've been a Christian for sixty years or if the Holy Spirit is working in your heart to save you, today. Enough with fretting over being good so God will reward you with heaven! Believe in Jesus Christ: He has taken the punishment for your sins on the cross. Trust in His goodness: He has been good in your behalf. Receive the riches of His grace that He pours out upon you by His Holy Spirit, and live in the salvation of the Lord. Serve Him in true humility and joy, knowing that it is Christ who is working in you, both to will and to do. For as Isaiah the prophet says, "LORD, you establish peace for us; all that we have accomplished you have done for us." All honor, glory, wisdom and strength be to You, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now and forever more. Amen.

Don't Lose Your Freedom!

Texts: Jeremiah 34:8-22; Galatians 5:1-15

LET ME WISH YOU A VERY happy and grateful Independence Day.

How blessed we are to enjoy the freedoms and privileges of living in the United States of America! This nation was founded on the principle that our rights and liberties are inalienable gifts of the one Creator God and that government exists to protect and preserve those rights, not to dole them out by its own authority. Never, never should we take our freedom for granted. Always and forever must we watch and work to maintain our liberties, whether we're struggling against an intrusive government, against overreaching institutions, or against our own self-indulgence and complacency. Other nations have benefited from America's principles of economic, religious, and personal freedom, but our land is still the last best hope of liberty in this world. If America were to fall into tyranny and slavery, we wouldn't suffer alone; the darkness would fall on all nations of the earth.

But, brothers and sisters in Christ, terrible as it would be for us to lose our freedom here in the United States of America, it would be nothing to the eternal disaster we'd suffer if we were to lose our freedom in Christ.

St. Paul's Letter to the Galatians has been called a testament to Christian liberty. But strangely enough, it's not filled with joyous, God-praising, send-up-the-Roman-candles celebration. No, all the way through it's about the strictest rebuke to God's people to be found anywhere outside of the Old Testament prophets. Why? Because the members of the Galatian church weren't celebrating their freedom in Christ. No, they were on the verge of heading back into slavery! In the first verse of our passage, the apostle writes, "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery." This message isn't just for the disciples who lived in the first century A.D.; it's also for us and for any other Christian person who might be tempted to let their spiritual freedom go.

To understand what the Holy Spirit is saying to us, we need to know how the institution of slavery worked in the ancient world, and especially in Israel. First of all, God never established slavery as something that was good in itself. There were pro-slavery people in these United States who claimed that in the 19th century, but they were wrong. There are anti-Christian, anti-Bible folks who claim that now in the 21st century, and they're wrong, too. Slavery in the ancient world was a human accommodation to the evils and difficulties of the human condition, and the Law of God regulated it so those evils wouldn't bear so hardly on those who were enslaved.

There were two general kinds of slavery. One was the forced servitude you got when one nation defeated another in war. It's like when Goliath challenged the Israelites and said if he beat Israel's champion, Israel would have to serve the Philistines, and if Israel's champion beat him, the Philistines would serve Israel. Then there was economic slavery, or bond-servitude, where a person would put his time and labor under the mastery of another person for a given period to pay back a debt or just to keep himself alive. Sometimes, bond-slavery was involuntary, as when a thief would be sentenced to work for his victim to make restitution, or when your creditors would be given the right to sell you and your entire family into slavery, to pay back what you owed them. Today we have bankruptcy for situations like that, but in the ancient world it was unthinkable that a debt would be dismissed by a third party like a bankruptcy court. Either you worked it off, or your creditor forgave you.

But the Law given through Moses said that if you had a slave who was a fellow-Hebrew, you could make him serve you only up to six years. The seventh year, you were to let him go free, regardless of how much he still owed. This reflected the fact that God almighty had set all Israel free from bondage to Pharaoh when He liberated them from Egypt. As they had been released from the yoke of the Egyptians so they could worship God and enjoy His Sabbath rest, so, too, their fellow Hebrews must be released from servitude at the beginning of their sabbatical year.

Nevertheless, slavery was something you wanted to avoid if at all possible. If you were a Hebrew and yoked under it, you counted the days till your seventh year would come around and you'd regain your liberty. If you were an Israelite enslaved in another country or a foreigner enslaved to an Israelite, you prayed for the day when your armies would march in and set you free.

So in Galatians chapter 15, St. Paul warns the Galatian church that if they let themselves be circumcised, it would be a return to spiritual slavery; Christ will be of no value to them at all. Today, if you're the average non-Jewish guy in America, circumcision is something your parents decided to have done or not have done to you when you were an infant, for health or aesthetic reasons. It has nothing to do with moral and ethical obligations or with one's relationship to God. But in Paul's day, it was the sign written in every Jewish male's body that he was pledged to keep the whole law of Moses down to the last I-dot and t-cross. It meant he hoped to find his blessedness and salvation in his own obedience. If a Gentile convert submitted to Jewish circumcision he voluntarily called down on himself all the covenant curses the law demanded if he didn't perfectly obey all the covenant decrees, statutes, and ordinances.

We see the effect of covenant curses in our reading from Jeremiah 34. For years past, the masters of Israel and Judah had disobeyed the law about freeing their fellow Hebrews after six years. They'd been keeping them in perpetual bondage. And now, with the Babylonians laying siege to Jerusalem, King Zedekiah and all the slaveholding people of Jerusalem made a solemn covenant to set all their fellow Jews free immediately, and never to enslave their countrymen and women at all again. When you made a covenant in those days, you didn't just lay your hand on a copy of the Torah and swear to do something; no, a covenant was made in blood. We see in verse 18 how a calf was slaughtered and split in two with the pieces laid on the ground with room to walk between them. And every man who made that covenant walked between those bloody pieces and swore before God that if he did not keep his word, that the Lord should slaughter him and make him like that dead, dismembered calf.

The Lord took this oath of theirs seriously. When these perjurers changed their minds and forced their former slaves back into bondage, God swore that He would bring back the Babylonians and give the oathbreakers into their hands for death and disgrace. They had called their own blood onto their heads, and blood it would be.

In the same way, circumcision cut a covenant of blood between each male Jew and the God of Israel. The shed blood declared, "May the Lord shed my blood unto death if I do not keep and obey all of His holy law."

But as Paul points out earlier in this letter, the law, holy and righteous as it was, could never bring anyone to the blessedness of God; rather, through our inability to keep it, it brought down the Old Covenant curses upon us.

You have probably heard from your preachers in the past that the law of Moses was made up of the ceremonial, the civil, and the moral codes. Circumcision bound a person to obey all three.

The ceremonial law set forth how the God of Israel was to be worshipped, and in the fullness of time God revealed that all the sacrifices and holy days looked forward to the perfect Lamb of God, Jesus Christ. With the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord Christ, the ceremonial law was fulfilled and superseded. There is no longer any need for it.

Nevertheless, if any Christian should take upon himself Jewish circumcision, he would be obligating himself-- and his household-- to observe and participate in the temple rituals, turning his back on Jesus Christ who had come and set him free.

The civil law set out how things should be arranged politically and judicially in the commonwealth of God's holy people. God was Israel's true King, and they were to be righteous before Him. Thus the penalties that seem so severe to us, like stoning someone to death for adultery or breaking the Sabbath. These laws were designed to keep the nation pure and holy before God and the nations. In that Israel would be a fit channel for the coming of the Messiah, by whom all peoples would be blessed. Then Jesus our Messiah did come, and God made a new covenant in His blood and opened up citizenship in the holy nation to all people, Jew and Gentile alike. Ethnic Israel no longer was God's exclusive chosen people. And so Christ the civil code of the Law of Moses was fulfilled and superseded.

But if anyone should take upon himself Jewish circumcision, he would obligate himself to follow all the civil rules and bear all the penalties set out in the books of the Law.

That leaves the moral law, summed up as "Love your neighbor as yourself," and it binds all humanity, Jew and Gentile alike. Those who love the Lord can, like King David in Psalm 119, look into the law of God and marvel at its perfection, for it reflects the very glory and righteousness of God. But it also shows up how far short we fall of His glory. Never, ever, ever can we come anywhere near God's perfect holiness-- but that's the standard we have to attain, if we expect to gain life and blessing by keeping the moral law. In chapter 3 of Galatians Paul demonstrates that the law never could impart life to us. Rather, it was like a jailer who kept us locked up until Christ should come and declare us not guilty through faith in Him. Here in chapter 5 Paul says that by faith in Christ we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope. Christ has come and taken the covenant curses on Himself. He paid for our lawbreaking with His sinless blood. So now the moral code has not been superseded or set aside, but in Christ we depend not upon our own obedience to gain blessedness with God, but upon His. Now the law is our friend and guide as our faith expresses itself through love to our neighbor and to God.

That is, if we truly are trusting in Christ alone and not taking on a yoke of slavery again. I doubt anyone here, male or female, loses sleep at night wondering if he ought to undergo Jewish circumcision to make sure he's in good with God. But we have a hundred different ways we try to return ourselves and others to the yoke of spiritual slavery.

Do you ever catch yourself saying, "Oh, she's a pretty good person. She does a lot of good things. God wouldn't keep her out of heaven just because she doesn't believe in Christ!" You're binding that person in slavery under the law.

Have you ever said, "I just can't forgive myself for what I did to him"? Or worse, "I can never forgive him for what he did to me"? That's rejecting the freedom you have in Christ and returning to slavery under the law.

How about the people who think that following Jesus is about doing good things and being good people so God will be pleased with them? Maybe sometimes those people are you and me! That is a turning away from the mercies and merits of Christ and obligating ourselves again to the law.

What about those who preach that the cross of Christ only served to show us how we should love other people, with nothing about how His righteous blood turned aside the wrath of God against our sin? In this way they would seek to abolish the offense of the cross. For it is offensive to our hyper-tolerant age to assert that Christ's sacrifice is the only way for anyone to come into proper relationship with our God and Father. But when we turn our backs on the blood atonement and preach the cross as merely a good example, we throw ourselves back into the clutches of the law.

We certainly are called to obedience, but obedience to the truth that is in Jesus Christ. He died for you, He rose for you, He sent His Holy Spirit to live in you and guide you. In Christ we are free to do what is good, to fulfill God's will as we could not when we in bondage to sin and the law. The sin that remains in us tries to get us to misuse our freedom in Christ to indulge our sinful natures. To assert our own rights. To abuse one another, even hurting our brothers and sisters in the church. Cling to your divine liberty and do not be enslaved to sin in the name of a false freedom! In Christ you are free to "Love your neighbor as yourself," because He lives in you, He loves your neighbor through you, and sets you free to do wonderful things in His name you never imagined you could do before.

On this Independence Day, be grateful for the earthly freedom God has given you in these United States. But even more, be grateful and praise His name forever for the eternal freedom He has given you in Jesus Christ His Son. This world will try to tempt you to find your redemption in keeping rules, codes, and laws, but that is the way back to slavery. It is for freedom that Christ has set us free: Free to be justified, free to serve, free to love. Amen.

Liberated for Worship

Texts: Exodus 6:6-8; 8:1; 1 Peter 2:9-12; Romans 12:1-2

IT’S BEEN YEARS SINCE CHILDREN in the Presbyterian Church (USA) were required to memorize the Westminster Shorter Catechism in order to be confirmed. But say I were to ask you, "What is the chief end of man?" most of you could reply, "Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever."

There’s the meaning and purpose of human life, right there in those twelve little words. Human life is for the glorification and enjoyment of Almighty God. You and I and every human being ever born were made for worship. Everything in creation was made to focus us on the living God as our chief joy and treasure. Everything we do should show all creation how wonderful the Lord Almighty is. That’s how He made us to find fulfillment. That’s what He created us to do.

But we don’t see humanity carrying out that purpose, do we? We don’t even see it in ourselves, who bear the name of Christian. Ever since Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, we have turned away from worshipping God and enjoying and glorifying Him above all other things. In Romans 3:10-18, St. Paul reminds us of what is written in God’s holy law:

"There is no one righteous, not even one;
there is no one who understands,
no one who seeks God.
All have turned away,
they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
not even one."
"Their throats are open graves;
their tongues practice deceit."
"The poison of vipers is on their lips."
"Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness."
"Their feet are swift to shed blood;
ruin and misery mark their ways,
and the way of peace they do not know."
"There is no fear of God before their eyes."

God made us to seek Him, to do good to others to the praise of His name. He gave us tongues to speak His word and vocal cords to sing His glory. He purposed our lips to proclaim the health-giving truth of His righteousness and love and our mouths to utter blessings on Him and our neighbor. Our feet He created to run quickly to do His service; our whole being He made for encouragement and joy and peace, peace we would find in bowing before Him and worshipping Him, looking to Him in holy fear. But do we? Does any human being of his or her own volition truly seek the Lord and the kingdom of His righteousness?

No, we do not. We humans run after and worship every other god except the Lord of heaven and earth. Some of us worship forces of nature, depicted as idols of metal, wood, or stone. We so-called superior modern types, we worship the false gods of money, power, position, or family. If we’re really sophisticated-- and I use the term satirically-- we claim to be worshipping the Lord God Himself , but we make Him over in our own image. We say, "Well, the God I worship wouldn’t do that!" or "My Jesus would always do this other thing!" When the very word of Scripture declares that we’re telling total lies about the Triune God.

When it comes down to it, we fallen humans are really worshipping ourselves, just as Adam and Eve did in the Garden. Every sin, every act of human crime and warfare, every evil and disease that has come into this world, can be traced to that one vicious motivation that lies in every one of our hearts: We would be as God, and our chief end is to glorify ourselves and enjoy ourselves in our own way forever.

So as Paul continues in the third chapter of Romans, "Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God."

But why should God hold us accountable? What difference does it make to Him if we glorify and enjoy Him-- or not? When the Scripture declares that God’s wrath will come upon those who refuse to worship Him alone, isn’t He being arbitrary and unfair?

Seems like a reasonable question-- until the Lord opens our minds to understand just how things are. God must punish rebellion against Himself, first because idolatry violates the very reason He created us. It’s an outrage against the image of God in us all. Then, the wrath of God comes because our refusal to glorify and enjoy Him puts us in opposition to Him in a battle we can’t win. Our sin is like fierce waves pounding us like frail wooden boats to pieces against the rock of God’s righteousness. It’s true that God Almighty cannot bear sin in His presence, but more than that, we sinners could not bear His presence in our sin.

But the third reason God must punish our idolatry is perhaps the greatest of all, and the hardest for us in our fallen natures to understand: It is that He is God. He and He alone has the right to be praised, worshipped, and glorified now and forever. That’s what it means for Him to be God. He made us; we did not make Him. He commands us; we are not to command Him. Ultimately, everything ought and should and shall be done to His glory and to the praise of His name.

And so, for His own name’s sake, God Almighty did not leave us in our sin. He called us to be a people of His own choosing and provided a way for us to be saved.

In the days of Moses the Lord freed the Hebrews from slavery under Pharaoh in Egypt and led them out to be His chosen people. After the children of Israel came into the Promised Land the Lord gave them judges and kings and prophets, to liberate them from oppression by the Gentile nations round about them, and from the yoke of idolatry they so often took upon themselves. And we know that these wonderful acts of salvation looked forward to the greatest act of liberation of all-- that day when Jesus Christ, God’s own and only Son, hung upon a cross to take the wrath we deserved for our sins and to bring us salvation through His blood.

Why did He do it? Why did our Lord Jesus Christ suffer not only tortures of physical pain, but also the infinite horror of separation from His eternal Father? To save us from our sins, we reply. Yes, but why did He save us from our sins? Why did He set us free? Going farther back to God’s great liberation of Israel, why did He free them from Pharaoh? What was it all for?

The Lord our God freed us for worship. Over and over the Lord commands Moses to say to Pharaoh, "This is what the Lord says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me." Not, "Let my people worship, so they may go." Worship wasn’t a ruse to get the Hebrews out from under Pharaoh’s eye, as if God wanted him to think that they’d come back as soon as they’d offered their sacrifices. No, they needed to be liberated from their slavery so they could worship God as He has a right to demand. In Exodus 6, verse 7 the Lord declares, "I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God." He intended to bring Israel into a unique relationship with Him, where they could glorify and enjoy Him. In Exodus 1:12, the Lord tells Moses that their worship of Him at Mount Sinai would be a sign that it was indeed He who was with him.

If that was true for the children of Israel, how much more it is true for us, who are the new Israel in Jesus Christ! The Apostle Peter in his First Letter describes how it is with us:

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.

God chose us in Jesus Christ and called us out of darkness, that we might declare His praises! He liberated us for worship! When we truly worship Him, it is His testimony to us that He is with us and has set us free. Only God’s people can worship Him, and we become His people not by our efforts, or by what we deserve, but by His gracious liberating hand.

And from the days of Moses; even from the time of Creation, the worship God desires is like a beautiful bird with two wings. We worship God-- that is, we glorify and enjoy Him-- by coming together to hear His holy word read and preached, to receive the holy sacraments He has given to us, to sing His praises, to give our offerings, and to raise up our adoration and petitions to Him in prayer. And we worship Him with our lives as we serve our neighbor, those in the church and those yet outside of it. Peter tells us we should live such good lives among unbelievers that ultimately they, too, may glorify God. Paul in Romans 12 reminds us that in view of God’s mercy in freeing us from sin and wrath through the shed blood of His Son, we are to offer our bodies as living sacrifices to Him. By such continual acts of worship we "test and approve what God’s will is--his good, pleasing, and perfect will." As we worship Him in our lives we begin to know what it is to enjoy Him forever.

But we still have a problem, don’t we? We keep forgetting what we were saved for. To hear some preachers talk, you’d think God freed us from sin so we could have prosperous lives and happy marriages and well-behaved children and a sense of self-esteem and fulfillment. According to others, after Jesus has saved us by His free grace, it’s up to us to find our purpose under God by working really hard at some forty-day program, as if being a living sacrifice were something we have to do on our own. But no, God has saved us by Himself and for Himself, and having begun the work, He will bring it to completion.

But say we do acknowledge that we’re liberated for worship. The old Adam in us still wants to come up with his own ideas about what worship of Almighty God is. I’m sure you’ve heard people say, "I can worship God just as well or better on the golf course or at the beach as I can sitting in church." But the Bible’s answer to that is, No, you can’t. True worship of God is corporate-- it is offering of the whole royal priesthood, the people belonging to God. Even when we must be alone, our worship must acknowledge the spiritual presence of the whole body of believers. To claim it can ever be "Just Me and God" is to fall once more into idolatry.

But more than that, our worship together is not primarily a matter of what we give Him, but of what He gives us. Tell me, you who claim to worship on the golf course, are you hearing the Word of God preached? Are you hearing the bad news of God's wrath against your sin and the good news of Jesus Christ crucified to reconcile you to Him? And you who say you commune with God on the beach, are you receiving the holy sacraments our Lord has ordained? If not, how can you say you’re worshipping the one true God? Where our Lord does not give Himself in the ways He Himself has ordained, we are left worshipping idols we ourselves have made.

Then again, what if we want to remake worship to make it a better "experience," especially for the unbeliever? Let’s have more entertainment, louder amplifiers, better PowerPoint graphics, more exciting effects! Let’s get rid of boring sermons and sacraments and any talk about sin!

Beware, for if we omit or minimize the means of grace our Lord has given us, we’ll find we’re not worshipping the living God, but our idolatrous idea of Him. We can give a seeker the best "worship experience" in the world, but if we aren’t communicating the bad news of sin and wrath and the good news of salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, that man or woman will remain just as much a child of Hell as they were when they walked through the church doors. Worship is not about giving us great experiences, it’s about glorifying and enjoying the eternal, righteous, holy, and all-worthy Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Or what if we think worship is just what we’re used to and find comfortable, like a social club with hymns? What will we do when He roars like a lion in His Word and burns like fire by His Spirit? What will become of our tame Jesus idol then? It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God!

But take comfort, Christian friends. Our heavenly Father knows our weakness and comes to us in mercy and love. The worship of God is not a burden, it is your glory and your joy! Yes, we often fail truly to worship God as we come together as local churches. We don’t perfectly worship Him as we go about our lives in the world. But our Lord Jesus is here by His Spirit to forgive us, to guide us, to guard us, and to lead us more perfectly in His service. He is with us to teach us to desire the living God more than life itself, for He is Life itself. Our Christ has liberated us to worship Him, for it is in worship that He gives us His grace and strength; it is in worship that our God and Father receives the honor He is due; and in worship we come to fall at His feet, lost in wonder, love, joy, and praise.

In the name of Christ our risen Lord, wherever we are, whatever we do, may we glorify God and enjoy Him forever. As His liberated people, let us continually worship God.

Fear, Love, and the Salvation of God

Texts: Acts 8:26-40; 1 John 4:7-21

THERE'S A LOT TO BE fearful about these days. The economy's going down the sewer. There's a strange new kind of flu going around. The Middle East is blowing up worse than ever. And the politicians in Washington seem to spend all their time thinking up new ways to take away our rights and liberties, not to mention our money.

The world is filled with Fear, and to paraphrase a certain poem, "If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, maybe you haven't grasped the situation!"

With all this, the Apostle John comes along with His First Letter and says, "Perfect love drives out fear." He commands us to love one another, and that will prove whether we have perfect love, as in, "The one who does not love does not know God."

That's putting a big burden on Love! Maybe you remember the hippie days of the late 1960s, early '70s. A lot of us were running around babbling about Love, Peace, and Flower Power. It was all "Make love, not war." The idea was that if we would all just bliss out and love everybody, all the nasty, scary things in the world could be magically overcome or ignored into oblivion. I was just young enough during that time to be skeptical about how that was going to work. And in the end, it didn't. My Baby Boomer generation turned out to be just as greedy, hateful, and rapacious as any other, we were just more sneaky and sanctimonious about it.

Is this the kind of love the Apostle John is talking? The warm-fuzzy, head-in-the-sand, self-seeking human love that fades out when the situation gets scary or just inconvenient?

No, John is speaking of the tough-as-nails, purifying, self-giving, fear-defying, eternal agape love of Almighty God. He begins our passage with this command: "Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God." This love of God is what we're to do our loving with, not some feeling we've imagined or felt or come up with on our own.

In the Greek this passage actually begins with "agapetoi ," which means "Beloved," or, "You who are loved with the love of God." So verse 7 could well read, "You who are right now already loved with the purifying, selfless, fear-defying love of God, love one another with the purifying, selfless, fear-defying love of God, for purifying, selfless, fear-defying love comes only from God." In other words, you've already got what you need right now to obey this command and stand up to fear, because you've received it from God Himself.

In the same vein, verse 8 would read, "Whoever does not love with this purifying, selfless, fear-defying love of God does not know God." Obviously not, because God Himself is this sort of love, and only those who know Him can love this way.

Moreover, the love of God will certainly show itself in anyone who has it. Not all at once, but if someone claims to know God and never, ever shows any sign of Christian love, you have every right to doubt his or her salvation.

But this agape love of God: how do we know it can face down all our fears and make it possible for us to love one another?

We know it, as John writes in verse 9, because God sent His only-begotten Son into the world that through Jesus Christ we might have-- not just bios-- physical life-- but zoe-- the eternal life of God. Think of what Jesus Christ did for you and me on the cross! He faced down all the terrors of sin, death, and hell. He defeated every last thing that we should ever be afraid of.

Verse 10 gives us a true picture of God's purifying, selfless, fear-defying love: It's not that we came up with this kind of love towards God and He rewarded us by loving us back. That's putting it the wrong way around. No, God initiated this love. He embodied it in His Son and His sacrifice for us. When Jesus shed His blood, beyond all else He dealt with the most fearsome thing you or I would ever have to face. Not disease, not death, not even all the devils of hell: Jesus turned aside or propitiated the wrath of God. He, the innocent Lamb of God, died in the place of us guilty sinners. And why? Because God so loved the world, as John writes in his Gospel. Because, as Paul writes in Romans, God was demonstrating His love for us, even while we were still rebellious sinners.

So, John continues in verse 11, "Beloved, since this is how God loved us, we also ought to love one another."

Let that sink in for a moment . . . God loved us when we were wretched, wrong, and undeserving. In response, we are to love one another with purifying, selfless, fear-defying love . . . even when the other person is wretched, wrong, and undeserving.

Oh. So we're supposed to let others walk all over us? After all, Jesus put up with cruel insults and dehumanizing treatment! Is that the love God demands that we show others?

But look at Jesus. No one victimized Him, not even when they nailed Him to the cross. The Scripture clearly teaches that Jesus humbled Himself and laid down His life willingly. When He submitted to humanity's scorn and cruelty, He did it on purpose so humanity might be redeemed from sins like scorn and cruelty. The love of God demonstrated in Jesus Christ always triumphs over the evils thrown against it, and raises us up to new life. The love of God can never condone sin, or promote it, or give up against it. The love of God wants nothing but the best for the object of His love, and that best is Jesus Christ and everything He gives.

Make no mistake: The purifying, selfless, fear-defying love of God working in us will call us to endure pain and insult from the unredeemed world. If you are persecuted for Jesus' sake, you follow in His steps. You exhibit Jesus Christ and His salvation to the world, that more and more people might be saved.

John says in verse 12, "No one has beheld God at any time"-- not with the physical eyes, that is. But as we love others as God loves us, with the same purifying, selfless, fear-defying love, the world will see in us an image of God working in love. As we grow more and more like His Son, that image is being perfected in us. How can you know if you're really saved? You know it by the presence of the Holy Spirit in you, bringing you along, conforming you to the image of Jesus Christ, assuring you of God's gracious love for you, encouraging you to show His love, helping you to repent when you fall short, and never, ever giving up on you.

Again, what's the primary way we show the purifying, selfless, fear-defying love of God? As verse 14 says, it's by bearing witness that the Father has sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world.

Notice what John says. For many years, "Christian witnessing" has meant "telling people how Jesus has improved my life/made me a better mother/made me a nicer person," etc. What I'm about to say may go against everything you've ever heard on the subject, but hear me: That is not Christian witnessing. Yes, Jesus may well have done all that for you. But our true witness to Christ is telling the old, old story of how God's only Son came in love to take on our flesh and hung on a cross to take away our sins and rose from the dead to bring us new life. We testify with John in verse 15, that if anyone confesses that this risen Jesus is the Son of God, God will make His home in that person and that person will forever be at home in God. That wouldn't be possible without the cross. And the cross was possible only through the purifying, selfless, fear-defying love of God that we have come to believe.

This is the loving witness we see in Acts, in the account of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch. Philip the deacon could have had every reason to be afraid in this situation. An angel speaks to you, that's frightening enough. But then the Spirit directed Philip to speak to a total stranger who by his clothes and jewelry and the style of his carriage was obviously a high government official. Philip's fellow-deacon, Stephen, had been martyred not long before. How could he know this official wouldn't turn him over to the Jewish authorities? And then, the man was a foreigner. And he was a eunuch-- pretty much all courtiers were in those days-- and the Law of Moses forbade any man with damaged genitals to be admitted to full fellowship with the people of God. What if Philip were doing something, well, unkosher in offering the Gospel to him?

The striking thing is, fear is the last emotion you'd attribute to Philip. There's simply no question of it. He's so full of the love of Jesus Christ that he comes right up to that man in his chariot and strikes up a conversation. He preaches Jesus Christ to him out of the Scriptures, just as we are commanded to do, and the Holy Spirit confirms the love of God towards that Ethiopian and moves him to believe and be baptised and go on his way with joy.

That is what our attitude will be when we love with the love of God. John says it again in verse 16: God is love. The world says, "Love is god," by which they mean unbridled sex and selfishness and emotional highs that don't last. That kind of love is cheap and shabby compared to the everlasting love that God is. God gives us His glorious, strong, fear-defying love to live in. It's like a castle He builds for us. It's fortified against all assault, and that castle of love is God Himself. He keeps us and defends us and perfects us in His love. He shields us from everything that could make us afraid.

Especially, His love for us in Jesus Christ shields us from the fear we would otherwise have on the Day of Judgement. We don't think much about the wrath of God against our sins. We don't spend time fearing it. But in the end-- literally-- it's the only thing we should really, truly be afraid of. Financial hardship, illness, starvation, grief, frightening as they are, they all come and go. Even if they end in death, people will say, "Well, now he (or she) is at peace." But the righteous wrath of God says No, for after this comes the judgement. His verdict will be final and those who have rejected Christ and His love will bear the horror and fear of their decision into eternity.

But if truly we have received the love of God shown us in Jesus Christ, we have no need to fear the Day of Judgement. We can be confident in that dreadful day, because already in this world God is working out His love in us, making us into models of Himself. There is no fear in love, for perfect love casts out fear.

Yes, but how do we get this perfect love? I used to think it was up to me, and knew I would never succeed. But the Holy Spirit helped me understand what John is saying here. You and I cannot gin up this perfect love. Rather, this perfect love is the purifying, selfless, fear-defying agape love of Almighty God. It's the love He puts in us by faith in the death and resurrection of His Son our Lord Jesus Christ.

In verse 18 it says that "fear has to do with punishment." Wait a minute: Aren't we afraid for a lot of other reasons as well? But when you think about it, the root of fear really is dread of punishment or retribution. Have you ever noticed how physical pain or sadness or uncertainty is worse when it's tied up with the feeling that you're alienated from other people and from God? Suffering is more fearful and harder to bear when you feel it might somehow be your fault.

I'm thinking of a situation in my own life. I won't go into detail, but members of my family and I find ourselves deeply concerned about a certain relative of ours. I've been very afraid and worried for her. And I find myself saying to myself, "Of course I'm afraid and worried for her! I love her, don't I?" But I have to admit that what I'm encouraging in myself really isn't love. Love is warm and expansive and open, even when it's full of sadness and pity. What I'm feeling over my relative is tight and cramped and closed. It has to do with me trying to atone for my own guilt in not doing more to prevent the situation. It's about me not quite trusting God to take care of her when I can't, so I make myself sick over the situation and imagine that means I'm in control.

I admit it: I am not yet perfected in love. And, I'm willing to guess, neither are you. We still fear. We still wallow in our guilt instead of giving it up and accepting the forgiveness Jesus won for us on the cross. We still try to make our faulty human love do when we could love with the saving love of God. Nevertheless, bit by bit, more and more, we love, because He first loved us.

And in case we should think this is all just a bunch of nice-sounding religious philosophy, John brings us down to everyday specifics in verses 20 and 21. Church member, do you consider yourself to be a lover of God? All right, how do you treat your brothers and sisters in Christ? How do you treat your pastor? Do you encourage them, build them up, support them, work in harmony with them, and always seek their highest good? Or are you always looking out for that juicy bit of gossip to spread? Does it give you a charge whenever you can undermine your opponent, so he or she won't look good? Do you keep a list of grievances and refuse to forgive, especially people in the church?

The Holy Spirit has a word for people who behave like that, and it is "Liar." For how can anyone love the unseen God as his Father if he hates someone who is his brother in Jesus Christ, whom he sees face to face?

No, the end and object of God's love for us is very practical. We must obey the command of our Lord Jesus Christ and love one another, as He has loved us.

And let us rejoice in that! God has loved us and does love us, with a love that is pure, selfless, and fear-defying. He proves it to us by the salvation He gives us in His Son Jesus Christ. Down with fear and let us stand firm in His love. This world throws many fearsome things at us, but what's the worst it can do? We and those we love could die, true. But for us who are God's beloved, to die is gain, for it means forever being with our loving Lord. In this encouragement, beloved, let us love one another with a purifying, selfless, fear-defying love, for purifying, selfless, fear-defying love is from God.

Alleluia, amen!