Brought from Afar

Texts: Ephesians 2:11-18; Matthew 2:1-12

THE CHRISTMAS SEASON ISN'T COMPLETE, is it, without the Three Kings finding their way to worship the Baby of Bethlehem. We read in Matthew chapter 2 how the Gentile wise men arrived to worship the newborn King of the Jews. How they came from the east-- probably Persia, 800 to 900 miles away, how they followed the star, how they caused a great hubhub in King Herod's court with their request for directions, and how they hurried on to Bethlehem. We read of their great joy in seeing the star rest over the house where Jesus was now living with Mary His mother and Joseph His foster father. In our mind's eye we watched as they bowed down and paid Him homage as Lord and King and presented Him their gifts. We sighed with approval and gratitude when they heeded the warning of the dream and did not go back to report to Herod, but returned to their own country another way.

It's impressive what the Wise Men did. It took a lot of work and they overcame a lot of obstacles. In sermons in pulpits all over the world we're exhorted to be like them. "Wise men [and women] still seek Him," we're told, and we should go to any lengths to seek out Jesus, too.

Humanly-speaking, that's true . . . but it leaves out whose really doing the impressive work in our Matthew 2 passage. That is, it leaves out the role of God. Without the work and will of the Lord Most High, the Wise Men would have remained in Persia and never offered their allegiance and honor to Jesus, the King of the Jews. It is God who revealed to them that a great King of the Jews would be born. It was God who impressed on them that that birth would have worldwide consequences. It was God who hung the miraculous star in the heavens to guide them, and God who directed them to follow it. It was God who gave the prophecies in His word so the Wise Men could be directed to Bethlehem, and it was God who caused these great men to bow the knee to a peasant Child in a humble dwelling. Without the work of God, none of this would have happened. It was the work and will of God that brought the Magi from afar. It was the work and will of God that included the alien and alienated Gentiles in the kingdom of the Messiah of Israel. And it is the work and will of God that brings us from afar and includes us in the kingdom of Christ as well.

For what does Paul the Apostle say in Ephesians, chapter 2? By the Holy Spirit he writes:

So then, remember that at one time you Gentiles by birth . . . remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.

Brothers and sisters, this is talking about us! True, most of us were born into families who have been Christians for years. But most of us, I reckon, were not born of families with Jewish blood. Remember, there was a time when God's covenant promises were only for Israel. Only the Jews received the blessings of being His people. That excluded us who were of Gentile heritage. God Himself set the boundary of the ceremonial law between Jew and Gentile, to preserve His chosen people until Jesus the Messiah would appear. There couldn't help but be a dividing wall of hostility between us. The Jews hated the Gentiles because they were unclean and did not know the Lord. The Gentiles hated the Jews because they considered Jews to be strange and narrowminded and just plain weird for rejecting idols and worshipping an invisible God.

But now Jesus Christ has appeared in the world, and it is not our doing, it is the work of God. We Gentiles have been granted the epiphany that Israel's God is our God, as He is God over all the earth. The Jews have been granted the epiphany that the covenants of promise are now open to the uncircumcised. God accomplished this by the shed blood of His Son Jesus Christ. In Christ the dividing wall is broken down and we are one in Him, and one with His church in all times and places. In Jesus we Christians are one new humanity. He has brought us from afar and become our peace.

But it wasn't just Jews and Gentiles that were far from one another in the sight of God. We were also far from God. See what Paul says in verse 16. Both groups needed to be reconciled to God. Israel belonged to God but too often were far from Him in their hearts. Our Gentile ancestors did not know God and were far from Him in both heart and physical distance.

Note this: God did not need to be reconciled to us! God has never offended against us, but we by our sin repeatedly have offended against Him. And then we blame God for the consequences of our own sin and the consequences of the sins of others, starting with Adam and Eve and their disobedience in the garden. Our rebellion alienated us from God and put us far away from Him. As Ephesians 1:5 says, we were dead in our trespasses. Even those of us who were raised in families with godly parents were born into this deadly condition. All of us-- all of us-- deserve nothing but God's wrath until God has mercy on us and sends Jesus Christ to find us and reconcile us to Himself. Israel was helpless and enslaved until God called them out of Egypt and brought them nearer. This was part of God's great plan of salvation, so at the right time the Christ might be revealed. And now Jesus has come and shed His blood for our sins, so we aren't at war with God any more. As it says in verse 17, Jesus has come and proclaimed peace with God to us Gentile-born who were far off, and peace to His Jewish children who were near.

Think of it-- together in Christ we all have access to the Father in heaven-- the great Creator God who made us and loves us--though the one Spirit He has put in our hearts! No longer are we strangers and aliens, but together with the Wise Men, God has brought us from afar. He Himself has made us fellow-citizens with the saints, and members of His own household. If you make and keep one resolution for this new year, promise that you will study to know and appreciate how amazing that is! And what a wonderful gift God has given you! You are a citizen of His divine kingdom! You are a temple for His worship, His very dwelling place! You have been brought from afar and made a child of the only, true, and living God!

And please, make another promise to God and yourself: That you will remember how far away you used to be and in His power be His instrument to bring others near as well.

Because it's a sad thing: Even though Jesus two thousand years ago died on the cross to break down barriers and wipe out distances, we in His churches too often erect new barriers and imagine new distances to keep ourselves separate from people who are different from us. I've noticed there isn't a problem, usually, with sending missionaries to evangelize people "over there" in Africa or the Far East or other places far away. The problem is the barriers we erect between our congregations and those who are physically close to us, who are our neighbors and even our friends, but who are distant culturally or economically or religiously. What I mean is this: Suppose you're talking to someone, either a chance stranger or someone you know, and this church and its ministry come up. And you learn that they don't attend church anywhere. And it crosses your mind to ask him or her to come here the following Sunday. But you look at the person's clothes and think, "No, they're too shabby or too well-dressed to fit in here." Or you think, "They're Jewish-- or Muslim-- or Mormon-- or totally secular-- or whatever-- They're got their own thing going, they wouldn't be comfortable with us and we wouldn't be comfortable with them." So you don't give the invitation. Believe me, I know. I've been guilty of the same. The only thing that should stop us from inviting someone who needs Christ to worship with us is the certainty that he will not hear the Gospel preached from this pulpit. We should never keep silent out of discomfort and fear. Jesus Christ has broken down the barriers between one human being and another. No, not so we can run around celebrating our "diversity" as if being different were a virtue in itself. But so He could make us one in Him. And it is the privilege and glory of us who are already in His Church that He uses us-- our words, our service, our loving extended hand-- to bring the alienated and the lost from afar to enjoy His peace. Even if that alienated and lost one dwells in your very household.

The habits and ways of this fallen world put obstacle after obstacle in the way of the Wise Men as they came from the East to worship the Christ Child. The habits and ways of this fallen world put obstacles in our way before we came to Him. But God had mercy on us, as He had mercy on the Wise Men. He sent His only-begotten Son Jesus Christ into the world to die and rise again for our sakes. He sent His Holy Spirit into our hearts to convince us that this is true. Jesus came to us when we could never come to Him and He has brought us near by the shedding of His blood; He has made people of every race, tribe, language, and culture one body in His flesh.

This morning, the Lord's Table is spread before us. Here is Christ's epiphany to us, our God appearing to us through the elements of bread and wine. As you partake of this holy sacrament, receive the peace and reconciliation of Jesus in your hearts, as surely as you receive the elements in your mouth. Be reconciled to one another, as surely as God has reconciled you to Himself. Draw near to Him in gratitude and joy. Jesus your Lord has brought you from afar: this is His glorious work and His gracious will. Amen.

God at Work

Texts: Romans 3:1- 4:8; John 6:24-29

WHEN I WAS A KID, I COULD NEVER see the point of the Labor Day holiday. The day was about labor, right? So why did people get the day off?

Of course, I learned in time that Labor Day doesn't celebrate labor, it celebrates laborers. Especially workers who often were taken for granted for long centuries of human history. It was established in 1894 to highlight the achievements of men and women who worked in the mills, the factories, and the mines of America.

And America's workers have a lot to be proud of. Historically, we have the most productive labor force in the world. It stands to reason that labor should have a day to boast in what they've done for America and the world.

But it's not just America's workers who want to take pride in their accomplishments on the job. Everywhere in the world laborers want to feel that their efforts count for something. We have a basic human need to stand on our own feet and know we've got things under control for ourselves and our families. As it says in Ecclesiastes 2:24, "A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God . . . "

That's how it is in this world. We can say that's how things should be in this world; "under the sun," as Solomon puts it.

But human labor and human capability has a limit. There's one job only one Worker can do, and that's the job of reconciling lost and sinful humanity to the almighty Creator of heaven and earth. That one Worker is God Himself, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We humans can do a lot in this world to keep body and soul together and find fulfilment doing it. God gives us the time and talents and strength to make our living, and we have to put our backs into it ourselves if we want to get along. But only God Himself by Himself can accomplish the work of salvation and sanctification that brings us into His kingdom of everlasting life. Only He can overcome the sin and wickedness that separates every human creature from Himself.

But as we know, human history has been one long process of mankind disagreeing with that principle. We think that when it comes to our salvation, God helps them who help themselves.

From the dawn of time, every tribe and nation in this world from has been aware that there is a High God to Whom they owe worship and right moral behaviour. Every person ever born has it written on his or her heart that certain things are right and certain things are wrong; that there's a good way and a bad way to treat God and our neighbor. It teaches that God has the right to expect good behavior from us. This is called natural law, or conscience. It's not the possession of any particular faith or religion; it's what God has put within us because we are human beings made in His image.

Then there's also a distinctive people, the Jews, and the Lord God revealed to them His spoken and written Law. They didn't have to guess at what they had to do to please God and live; they had it down in detail.

But Jew or pagan alike, humankind has always distorted the law of God and watered it down into something they could manage. They felt that they could do enough to please God, and God would reward them for their hard work with prosperity in this life and maybe even eternal blessedness in the world to come.

Was the Creator of heaven and earth impressed? Did He look down on humanity and say, "Oh, my, you're doing your best, you should be so proud of yourselves! You've worked so hard, I'm going to give you a Labor Day parade!"

No. Rather, in Romans 3:19, the Apostle Paul, speaking by the Holy Spirit, says "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." The pagan peoples stand guilty because they've perverted and departed from the natural law written on the heart. The Jews are convicted because they have disobeyed the Law revealed through Moses. What's just as bad or worse, when they were supposedly trying to work to please God, everyone to whom Paul writes has been trying to earn their own righteousness by observing the law according to their own version of it. But the Scripture says that no one can stand righteous in the sight of God by doing that, no matter how hard they work.

But what about us, citizens of the United States and the western world? We live after the cross of Christ. Even if we don't actually belong to a church, our ethics and morals are pretty much based on the law of love that Jesus preached, right? If we just follow Jesus as our good example, and do the things He would do, won't that will be okay with God?

All the time we hear people say, "I work hard to do what's right. God will let me into heaven because of that." People say, "God knows I'm doing my best. He knows my heart, that'll be enough."

But even for us today, that is not enough. "Doing our best" and "making a good effort" is still us trying to justify ourselves by works of the law. We've lowered the standard for what it means to love our neighbor as ourselves and to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, but even so, we're still laboring to earn God's favor, so we can boast that we deserved it.

The Scripture, however, is clear. We are all defendants in God's courtroom, and every mouth is silenced before Him. The whole world is accountable before God, including ourselves. No one will be declared righteous by works of the law; rather, the law-- the revealed law and the natural law-- the law full and forceful from the hand of Almighty God-- shows us what great sinners we are. Jesus Himself proclaimed that the fountain of wickedness is us is the very heart that we think will earn us our ticket into heaven. And once the law makes us truly conscious of sin, we won't be boasting that God will accept us because He knows our hearts. We'll want to run and hide from His righteous anger.

What can we do? Our condition is nothing to have a parade about! Not unless it's a parade to the gallows.

The answer is, we can do nothing. God, the great Worker of salvation, does it all. As Romans 3:21 says, "But now--" Now, that we have been declared guilty and worthy of condemnation-- "Now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known." The law and the prophets all testified that this righteousness was coming. It came to us through Jesus Christ our Lord; He brought us perfect redemption through His sinless life, His atoning death, and His glorious resurrection. God Himself has worked to give us access to His own righteousness through faith in Jesus, and not even that faith was a work of ours. As it says in Ephesians 2, "It is by grace you have been saved, through faith-- and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-- not by works, so that no one can boast."

Our salvation is God's great labor from start to finish. Only He could have done it. The righteousness and justice of God demanded that sin be paid for. We couldn't pay it. No matter what we did, we could never be good enough to ward off the wrath of God that we deserved for our sins. But it was also the loving will of God that He would justify His elect. What was God to do?

What only God could do. God the Son, the second Person of the Trinity, came into the world as a perfect Human Being and died as a sacrifice of atonement to God. His blood covers all our sins. That way, God's holy justice is satisfied and He is able to say to those whom He calls to faith in Christ, "You are perfect and righteous in My sight."

This is what God did for you when He brought you to faith in Christ by the voice of His Holy Spirit. This is what He may be doing for you even now as the power of His word works in your life, convicting you of your sin and convincing you to trust in Christ alone for your salvation. This is God at work! This is the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, may His name be praised forever!

But you may have noticed something about yourself; I'm sure I've noticed it about me. It's that even after God has called us to faith in Jesus Christ, there's still that old sin nature hanging around in us. And it whispers, "You really did part of the work in your own salvation. God must've saved you because of something good you did or were!"

And isn't that what unbelievers think we Christians believe about ourselves? That we think we deserved to be saved because we're actually holier or better than other people? Heaven help us, sometimes we give them good excuse to think that. Let me ask you this, what is your attitude towards flagrant sinners? What do you think about homosexuals and drunkards and bitter-tongued gossips and adulterers? What's your attitude towards corporate CEOs or government officials who apparently are cheating the public? Does that immediately drive you to pray for their salvation? Or . . . ?

Let's admit it. The temptation is to say, "Thank God I'm not like that! Those people should try harder to do what's right! God should punish them and give them what they deserve!"

I hope you resist that temptation. I hope you flee it with every fiber of your being. It's true, people like that don't deserve God's mercy. Neither did you or I. Romans teaches that none of us has the right to boast of being holier-than-thou. We are not, not, not justified by our works of righteousness, or by anything we earned or deserved. No, we were saved by Christ's work of righteousness imputed to us by the one God of all.

We don't used this word "imputed" or "imputation" every day, but it describes what God does for us. Think of somebody who's horribly in debt. And a kind and rich person comes along and credits the entire amount of the debt to the debtor's account and totally pays it off. That money is reckoned as his and he gets the good of it. What he can't do is boast that it's his own money or that somehow he deserved it.

That's what God did for Abraham and what He does for us. Abraham simply believed that God had accepted him and he believed God's promises of blessing to him. Ultimately, Abraham's faith looked forward to the Messiah Jesus who was his many-times-great grandson. In the same way, it's not up to us to earn our righteousness, but simply to accept the righteous sacrifice of Christ in our behalf.

The Galileans who saw Jesus feed the 5,000 chased Him back to Capernaum because they wanted more of the physical bread He'd given. Jesus says, No, that's not the bread you should be working for, but the food that endures to eternal life that He, the Son of Man, would give them. These people were like us. They wanted everlasting happiness with God and they wanted to know what they had to do to get it. We'll work for it, Master, we really will! That's what we say, too. "What must we do to do the works God requires?" And Jesus answers, "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent."

This isn't "your work" that you have to do. It's the work of God that He does within you! God is the one worker of our salvation, He is responsible for it all. He saved us and He can save the most flagrant of sinners, regardless of who or what they may be.

And it's His work, not ours, that keeps us in His grace. Maybe you've picked up the idea that you were saved by Christ's death on the cross, but now it's up to you to make sure you stay saved. Brothers and sisters! It's all a gift! It's all God's workmanship! We can't brag about our salvation and we can't brag about how He's making us holy! Right now He's working in you by His Holy Spirit, forgiving your sins, making you more like Christ, drawing you to love your fellow-Christians and also all the poor dying sinners who need the Savior just like we do! It's all God at work!

So now, take a holiday from your own works, because God has put in all the labor for you. As you do His will, know that it's His Spirit working in you. With all God's justified and grace-imputed people, sing with King David that

"Blessed are they
whose transgressions are forgiven,
whose sins are covered.
Blessed is the man
whose sin the Lord will never count against him."

Blessed of the Father, rest in the work He does for you. And if anyone wants to boast, let him boast joyfully in the Lord.

To whom be all honor and glory, wisdom and strength, now and forever. Amen.

The War Within

Text: Romans 7:15-8:11

PLEASE PERMIT ME TO begin with something personal. About four weeks ago, I noticed that my body was doing something it shouldn’t have been. So I went on the Internet to look it up. The websites said the symptom could mean anything from a minor infection to cancer, and that you should see a doctor as soon as possible to find out. I got in for an appointment by the end of that week, I was examined, and they sent me to the Medical Center to undergo a certain test. I got that taken care of on July 1st. Then I settled down to wait for the results.

But we all know good and well that "settled down" isn’t the term you use when the diagnosis might possibly be cancer. Of all possible common diseases, it’s the one that seems to strike the most horror into us, the one we live in most fear of getting.

How come? Maybe partly because cancer isn’t like an infection or an injury, where some foreign thing attacks your body from outside, it’s your body attacking itself. You also have that with lupus and other autoimmune diseases. But somehow with cancer, the treachery seems worse. With autoimmune diseases, it’s as if the Army were to launch a military coup. But with cancer, it’s as if whole groups of civilians, whole streets full of your neighbors, suddenly rose up and started making war on the rest of you. It’s your own perverted cells taking over your healthy cells and making them traitors just like themselves. To fight cancer, in a way you have to make war on yourself, from the outside. And without aggressive treatment, the outcome for your body is defeat and death.

That’s a nasty thing to think of. It’s an even nastier thing to experience-- as I’m sure many of you know firsthand. You won’t blame me when I say I haven’t had an easy time of it since that test on the 1st. And that I won’t rest easy until I’ve got the results of the follow-up biopsy I’m to do in the next couple weeks-- assuming that cancer is not in the diagnosis.

It’s not nice, or comfortable, or pleasant to be talking about cancer on a Sunday morning. But it’s a good metaphor for the terrible reality St. Paul gives us in the 7th chapter of his letter to the Romans. Cancer is a civil war within. It pits your own body against itself. But sin is even worse. Sin is also a cancer; it’s a war against every human being’s body, mind, and soul.

Now, many good and thoughtful Bible scholars believe Paul is talking here about how things were with him before Jesus got hold of him and made him a Christian. Other good and thoughtful scholars say No, Paul is talking about the struggles of the Christian life. I can’t claim to be a scholar of any kind, but having looked at this passage for many years, I have to agree with the second group, the ones who say it’s about trying to live up to our holy calling in Christ after Jesus has saved us. To use good solid Church language, it’s about sanctification, not justification.

For look at what our brother Paul says: He says he wants to do good. He says he hates evil. The unjustified person can’t truly say that. People who don’t belong to Christ know they should do good, they say they want to do good, but their goodness stops when it’s hard, or inconvenient, or when others stop rewarding them for it, or if it’ll lose them money. The "goodness" of an unbeliever isn’t about being good for Goodness’ own sake or being good for God's sake, it’s about feeling good about themselves. The unsaved man has no concept of how deep and wide and humanly-unattainable true Goodness even is.

And unless he’s living in a war zone or some crime-filled neighborhood, an unsaved person has no real sense of the evilness of Evil. In fact, people who live where vice is the everyday way of life often get used to it. It’s like evil is inconvenient, but it’s how it is. Your neighbor may be a drug dealer who shoots up other drug dealers, but he’s your neighbor and far as you’re concerned, he’s a nice guy. Or even if he’s not, you respect him for how tough he is.

But God forbid we should go thinking that attitude only belongs to "Those People." We are all "Those People." We all wink at sin in ourselves and people we know. We’re all riddled with the cancer that is rebellion against God . . . until the Great Physician, Jesus Christ, comes to conquer sin in us and give us health and peace for the first time in our lives. Jesus comes like Dr. Christiaan Barnard and transplants into us a new heart, a heart that beats with the goodness that is Christ’s alone. And that’s when we begin to understand just how sinful sin really is.

But we Christians are in a strange situation on this earth: We’re hybrid creatures. We’re living with the heart of Christ and also with our old sinful heart of the flesh; we have Christ’s new nature in us, and our old human nature. But unlike in a hybrid car, say, those two natures don’t pull together. They pull apart. They’re at war with one another. They’re like cancer versus healthy cells. Jesus saves us, and like Paul we begin to delight in the law of God in our inmost selves. But there’s also a law of sin in us that pulls us to do what we ought not do. This law in our members, as Paul calls it, is like a cancer that wants to take over everything we are, until we go down into death.

But there’s this term, "the flesh." Maybe if we could just transcend our physical bodies and be more spiiiiiritual, maybe we could live up to our calling in Christ?

That idea’s been around for centuries, that our minds and spirits are good, they’re just dragged down by our evil bodies. But this idea is a mistake. Worse than that, it’s a heresy.

Matter is not bad in itself. God created it. Jesus Christ Himself rose from the dead in a material body. When Paul uses the word "flesh" in this passage he’s speaking of what we are by birth as sinful human beings--body, mind, and spirit. Nothing we have in ourselves will go to make us able to live up to the Law of God that we see in the face of our Lord Jesus Christ. We can try to cure ourselves by trying hard to be good. We can work till we drop to win the victory on our own. But it’d be useless. As Paul says in verse 18, "Nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh." Have you ever noticed-- it’s hard even to repent without sinning. And so with Paul we cry out, "Who will rescue me from this body of death?"

Who, indeed?

It used to seem odd to me that Paul says that in verse 24, then immediately says, "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" Was Paul giving thanks for the mess he was in? For the mess all God’s people on this earth are in?

But no. This is like a big red stop sign. Like a bolt of lightning. Like the world’s loudest coach’s whistle. It says, "Stop! Time out! Look over here and see what you need to see!"

And what we need to see is Jesus Christ and His righteousness. Jesus Christ and His power. Jesus Christ and His completed work. We can tie ourselves in knots worrying about how we just can’t seem to to live the Victorious, Holy Christian Life-- when the solution, the cure, the victory is right there in us all the time. Jesus Christ died to save us-- does He not now live to make us holy and whole? Jesus Christ lives in us-- does He not now work in us to please His heavenly Father and ours? There is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus!

Think of some sin you’ve committed lately. Some hurtful word you’ve said. Some foolish act you did. Some neglect of something you should’ve done, that hurt someone else very much. Yes, it was a sin. Yes, you were guilty, just as I am guilty of sins I can think of. But there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus!

How can this be? It can be because in Christ the Law of the Spirit of life has set us free from the law of sin and death. As it says in verse 3, God sent His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh-- though with Jesus, the flesh was not sinful, but pure and innocent as God intended from the first-- so that by the death of the flesh of Christ, sin might be condemned and dealt with. Our sin is condemned, but you and I are not-- because we are in Christ Jesus.

Since we are in Christ Jesus, Christ Jesus is in us, through the ministry of His Holy Spirit. That means Jesus Himself is living His sinless life in us, doing His Father’s perfect will, making us into the grown-up, healthy children of God He’s redeemed us to be. He doesn’t save us then leave us on our own! He sends us His Spirit and calls us to walk in Him: and walking in the Spirit is to live in the reality of Christ in us.

We hurt ourselves so much by thinking this walk is something we try hard to do. Like it’s one more burden laid on us that we can’t carry. No, living according to the Spirit is simply trusting that whatever God wants us to do to please Him, Jesus Christ has already done in us. It’s accepting the forgiveness He won for us on the cross and not flogging ourselves over past sins He’s already wiped away! It’s stopping ourselves whenever we want to take over or be in control and saying humbly and simply, "Lord Jesus, do Your will in me and through me, and I praise You for it."

I’m finally learning that the most fleshly thing I can do in my life is think I’m in control of things I’m not in control of. You know what I am in control of? Saying, "Lord Jesus, help me!" and getting out of His way.

Living in the flesh, on the other hand-- it’s what happens whenever we think we can do anything without our Lord, even the best things in the world. It’s using Jesus as our Example, and not submitting to Him as our Savior and Redeemer. Fleshly living is asking, "What would Jesus do?" then effectively telling Him to stand back, because, by gum, we’re gonna do it!

But life in the Spirit doesn’t work that way. Life in the Spirit is asking, "What has Jesus done?" and letting the finished work of your Savior grow to completion in you.

He has promised to make that happen. There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Whatever is happening in your life, He’s there to take over your fears, your cares, your temptations, your trials. He has already taken away your sins, and as Paul goes on to say farther on in this chapter, in all things you are more than a conqueror through Him who loved you. Jesus is the Great Physician whose boundless eternal life pushes back and totally cures the cancer of sin in your life and mine. The Holy Spirit dwelling in you is the guarantee. For as it says in verse 11, "If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit who dwells in you."

Nothing good or healthy may dwell in our sinful flesh; that is, our fallen human nature. But everything good and healthy and wholesome dwells in the crucified and risen flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ. Our old and new natures may be at war within us, but allegiance to Christ alone brings us victory and peace.

At the end of this service, we’ll sing the hymn "O Master, Let Me Walk with Thee." As you sing it, remember that your Master Jesus is the One serving the lowly and bearing the strain. He is the One moving the slow of heart to His ways. He, Jesus, is the Guide who brings the wayward home-- He is the One who works in you and through you and for you. Walk with Him in the power of His Spirit! To you He gives the hope and peace, the health and joy of His presence within. In Christ and Christ alone our sin has been cancelled, our hearts are cured, and the war within us will be gloriously won.

Remembering the Last War

Texts: Revelation 12:7-12; Luke 1:1-3; 17-24

TOMORROW, AMERICA WILL BE CELEBRATING Memorial Day. I remember as a small child going up to a cemetery in a small town in eastern Kansas and decorating the graves of dead relatives with peonies from our yard. Peonies in mayonnaise jars for the departed Zickefooses: that’s what Memorial Day meant to me.

But then I grew older, and I learned that Memorial Day used be called "Decoration Day," and it was the day to honor the soldiers who’d died fighting the Civil War. And that later, after World War I, it was the time to remember the service of any deceased veteran who’d served in any of America’s wars. And that eventually, it was called "Memorial Day." And even though we take time on the last Monday in May to think of all our loved ones who have gone before, the day is fundamentally about remembering those who have served in our armed forces, especially for those who died in combat.

It’s a fine and noble thing to remember our war dead. It’s a grim and difficult thing to think about war. But this Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, I want you to think about and remember war, the last war.

No, I’m not talking about Desert Storm. Or about the conflict in the Balkans, or Viet Nam, or Korea, or World War II. I’m talking about the last war, the final war that will be fought on this earth, the war that’s ongoing now, the war you and I and every human being are all in.

This is the war of wars. Its theater isn’t just the Middle East-- Iraq or Afghanistan-- it’s being fought everywhere believers in Jesus Christ are confronting and being confronted by our old enemy, the Devil. The weapons in this war are not guns and missiles and supersonic jets and tanks, they are the Word of God and the Cross of Christ. And the stakes are not land and resources or even human lives and freedoms in this world; at stake in this war is the everlasting destiny of God’s church and His own divine name and glory.

We get frustrated and angry with our leaders when a war lasts more than a couple of years. But the war we need to remember today has been going on since before the beginning of time and it will not end until sin, death, and Satan are finally defeated and all things are put under Jesus’ feet.

In Isaiah we learn that Satan was once the most beautiful and glorious of the angels, Lucifer, the son of the dawn. But he wasn’t content with that. He said in his heart,

"I will ascend to heaven;
I will raise my throne above the stars [that is, the angels] of God;
I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, . . .
I will make myself like the Most High."

This was Satan's first shot in his war of rebellion against Almighty God.

In Genesis we see his tactics. He attacks God by tempting Eve and Adam to sin against God’s command not to eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. In Job we see that even though he’s lost his home in heaven, Satan still can appear in the council meetings of the angels of God and accuse God’s people of wrongdoing, wrong speaking, and wrong motives.

In fact, that’s what the word "Satan" means. He’s like a nasty prosecuting attorney who’ll say anything and twist your words any which way to force the judge to declare you guilty and condemn you to death. His accusations are one more weapon he uses in his rebellious war against God and His saints.

We’re in this war, right now. Every human being is on one side or the other. The tragic thing is, ever since our First Parents said Yes to Satan and No to the Lord God, all of us are born into Satan’s army. The Holy Spirit, speaking in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, says that the default nature of man is to

"[Follow] the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient."

Our Lord Jesus Himself, as recorded by the Apostle John, frankly states that those who reject Him as Messiah and King are not children of His Father in heaven. No, they are children of their father, the devil, and they want to carry out their father’s desire. They fight on Satan's side.

The odds in this cosmic war seem awfully stacked against Almighty God! Not only are all of us born in rebellion against Him, not only do we all naturally pledge allegiance to Satan, but as Ephesians says, naturally we’re spiritually dead in trespasses and sins. We couldn’t switch over to God’s side even if we wanted to! And in our natural human nature, we don’t want to!

But don’t forget: Satan’s war against God is a rebellion, not a civil war. Most civil wars involve some sort of rebellion; that is, as brother fights against brother there’s generally a sense in which one side is defending the constituted government and the other side wants to overthrow or change it. But rebellions always involve the subjects of a government fighting against the government’s leaders and authorities with the idea of becoming the leaders and authorities in their place.

That’s what Satan is doing and has been doing from before the start of human history. Satan is not equal with God. He’s only one of God’s created angels, and he’s a fallen, debased angel at that. God is the one who is all-powerful and all-sufficient. Almighty God is the sovereign of the universe; He has the wisdom, strength, and authority to see that His will is done. God can make a way where there is no way, and He can win battles and wars that we think are totally lost.

And He wins them with the strangest of weapons. St. Paul says in First Corinthians that "The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God."

At the cross-- when Jesus the Son of God was hanging there dying and Satan and all the demonic forces thought they’d won, they’d won!-- it’s there that Almighty God was breaking their power forever. At the cross, where perfect Goodness was mocked and humiliated, it’s there that the rebellion of Evil was put down forevermore. At the cross, where our Lord offered up His body to be broken and pierced for the sins of mankind, God was bringing His chosen ones to His side.

The people of that time might have thought, "Oh, just another criminal gone to be crucified." Crucifixion was a common, if horrible, form of execution in the Roman world. But God proved His victory over Satan by raising His Son Jesus Christ from the dead. He poured out His Holy Spirit to bring convict us of our rebellion and sin and to confirm to us the life-giving power of the death our Savior died.

And so, by the preaching of the cross, God raises up in this world soldiers for His holy cause, sealing them for service by the power of His Holy Spirit. God is not alone in His warfare against that old serpent, the Devil. His army includes all the holy angels. And it includes you and me, all those who have been redeemed by the blood of Christ and made holy by His righteousness alone.

We see this in our Scripture readings today. The language of the book of Revelation is metaphor and symbolism, and it’s wise not to be too absolute with how to interpret it. But some things are very clear. If you back up in chapter 12, it describes what led up to the war in heaven in our reading. Verse 5 speaks of the birth of a male child, "who will rule the nations with an iron scepter." This refers back to Psalm 2, and designates Jesus Christ, the Son of Man. After the coming of Christ, everything is different. After Christ’s death and glorious resurrection, the Devil-- called the dragon in this passage-- no longer has any place in heaven. No longer can he stand in the council of the Most High and accuse the saints of God day and night. It doesn’t matter if you were an Old Testament saint looking forward to the coming of the Messiah, or a New Testament saint-- and brothers and sisters, that includes us-- who lives after the cross, God isn’t listening to Satan any more. The devil can chatter all he wants about our shortcomings and our failures to live up to the measure of Christ. But he’s firing blanks. He’s wasting his own time.

For us who believe in Jesus Christ, Satan is a defeated enemy. As the Scripture says, we have overcome him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of our testimony.

But let’s be very clear about what the Scripture means by "testimony." Some folks think it means telling people stories about themselves, where Jesus is the means whereby they got a happier, healthier, more prosperous life. No! The testimony that overcomes Satan is our witness to Jesus Christ and what He did to bring us from death to life. It’s the truth about how the blood of the Lamb washed away our rebellion and replaced it with His perfect obedience. We can’t fight the powers of darkness by showing people our higher bank balance or our perfectly-raised children! We can’t even do it by claiming what nice people we’ve become, now that Jesus is in our hearts. No, the only way to spike the Devil’s guns is to remind him and all his angels of the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ. We fight our part in the great war by constantly saying, "Yes, I am a sinner-- saved by grace. Jesus took the punishment I deserved and made me acceptable to God. There is now no condemnation for me. Satan, you cannot bring any charge against me. Jesus has paid the whole penalty and set me free."

We stand only on our Lord’s total faithfulness and we’re strong only in His strength. The Scripture speaks of the martyrs, who "did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death." Christian martyrs around the world even today are able to give up this earthly life, because they know that Jesus Christ their crucified and risen Lord is able to give them the resurrection life He has promised.

Verse 10 says, "Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom or our God, and the authority of his Christ." Jesus, shortly before He ascended into heaven, told His disciples that "all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me." Satan’s ultimate power is broken.

But the war is not over. The Devil has been cast down to earth, and he’s determined to make life as miserable for God’s people and for humanity in general, as long as he can.

You may remember, or maybe you’ve heard, about the D-Day invasion of Normandy in June of 1944. Historians are agreed that that was when the tide of World War II turned against the Nazis and their power was effectively broken. But it wasn’t the end of the damage they would do. In the Battle of the Bulge, the following December and January, over 19,000 American troops would be killed. And even more would die before Germany finally surrendered in May of 1945.

It is the same way with our enemy Satan, and will be up to the time when death and Satan and hell with be thrown for good and all into the lake of fire. He’s going to keep on fighting against us, because he knows his time is short.

He’ll fight against you by confusing you on what being a Christian is all about. He’ll get you thinking that it’s about having "your best life now" or about being nice to other people. He’ll try to make you embarrassed by talk of sin. He’ll whisper that it’s offensive to believe that we all deserve the wrath of God and the blood of Jesus is the only thing that can turn it away. He’ll make you go through persecution, financial trouble, or emotional and physical pain because you belong to Jesus.

Or he’ll be even more subtle than that. He’ll try to get you to be proud of your spirituality or your good deeds. Or he’ll try to make you into one of those people who goes around "sacrificing" themselves for others, whether the others want to be sacrificed for or not. He’ll even allow you to think you’ve got special power in yourself over him, if by doing that he can corrupt your relationship with God.

In the tenth chapter of the gospel according to St. Luke, seventy-two disciples return from preaching the kingdom and they’re joyful, because "Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name!"

It’s an innocent joy, but Jesus does not want them or us to put our focus there. Rather, He says, "Rejoice because your names are written in heaven." We did not write them there, He did, by the blood of His cross. He has given us power to trample on all the power of the enemy, but the power is not our own, it is His. We are like little children totally dependant on the strength and provision of our wise Father, and for that Jesus thanks the God of heaven and earth.

And we should thank Him, too. For by that we know that whatever Satan may throw against us, he will lose. The Father has given us to Christ the Son, and no one, not even the Devil himself, can snatch us out of His hand.

We are all in a war, of good vs. evil, life vs. death. God our Father has chosen to fight it with an army composed of holy angels, little children, and most of all, a Lamb that was slain. When you remember that war, remember most of all that it is the blood of that Lamb that guarantees us the victory. Trust in Christ’s perfect death. Accept the salvation He has won for you. And rejoice in hope, for by Him, with Him, and in Him alone, Satan is defeated and your name is written in heaven. Alleluia, amen!

The Organic Gardener

Texts: Colossians 1:9-23: John 15:1- 4

IF YOU TUNE IN TO radio station KDKA between 7:00 and 9:00 on a Sunday morning you’ll hear a program called The Organic Gardeners. Doug Oster and Jessica Walliser answer callers’ gardening questions, and they make a point of promoting the use of organic products and procedures to help the garden grow.

I’m only a beginner at this organic gardening thing. But if I understand it correctly, though, the principle behind it is to work with nature and not in spite of it. Even if there’s something natural you have to work against, like a deadly bug or a fungus of some kind, you use its natural enemies to oppose it, not some artificial compound that might do as much harm as good. Organic gardening means remembering that everything in your garden has its own characteristics, its own way of growing, but at the same time, you keep in mind that your garden is a system that’s all connected together. Every element influences every other element, and everything-- the soil, the plant stock, the sunlight, the watering, the fertilizer, the pest control-- work in harmony to make the garden fruitful.

In the gospel according to St. John, chapter 15, our Lord Jesus Christ refers to a very particular organic garden, the vineyard belonging to His heavenly Father. It’s in this vineyard that we His disciples are intended to grow and bear fruit.

A vineyard wasn’t a new figure of speech for the disciples. For centuries before them the prophets of God had likened Israel to a vineyard, planted by the Lord.

But Jesus makes a change to that traditional metaphor. He says, "I am the true vine." In other words, He, Jesus, is the one and only proper grape vine planted in the Father’s vineyard.

But what happened to the vines that were God’s people Israel?

Well, as we know, all sorts of problems can crop up in a garden, whether you’re going organic or keep on applying the Miracle-Gro and the Malathion. You could say that for centuries the divine Gardener had tried all sorts of cultivars and varieties in His vineyard. He’d tried people, priests, and kings. He’d tried prophets, scribes, and Pharisees. Some varieties were better than others. Some failed miserably and had to be rooted out altogether. But every rootstock was blighted by sin. No vine in His holy vineyard could ever give God the precious fruit of total obedience and joyful praise that He has a right to expect.

So in His marvellous wisdom, our God ordained that there would be but one Vine in His vineyard, one perfect and productive rootstock, and that one Vine is His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. If anyone wishes to be productive, he or she must be organically joined in as a branch to Christ, the one true Vine. You can’t bear the fruit that God desires if you’re off on your own. There is no pleasing God by your own good works or your own niceness. How can you? If you’re separate from Jesus Christ, you’re spiritually dead! To produce the luscious fruit God is looking for, you absolutely must share in the nourishment drawn up by Christ the Vine.

So if you by faith are joined to Christ the true Vine, is it now all up to you to work really hard to bear fruit and stay joined to Him? I remember being told this as a young Christian. I was taught that "fruit" equals converts, and the way you stay joined to the Vine is to bring more and more and more people to Christ. Personally. They have to commit right in front of you. Recite the Four Spiritual Laws. And if not, beware! You’re about to be cut off!

Certainly, it’s a wonderful and God-pleasing thing for us to tell others the good news about the Lord who saved us. It exalts His holy name when sinners confess His Son as their Savior and Lord. But making converts is not the only kind of fruit our God desires. And, Christian friends, we don’t stay joined to Christ the Vine by our frenzied efforts to bear fruit; no, we bear fruit by staying joined to Christ the Vine!

As Jesus says in verse 4, "Remain in me and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine." Bearing fruit for God will come naturally and organically simply by our being joined to our Lord, by receiving His power, His strength, His virtue, His wisdom, His perfect ability to please His Father in heaven.

But what about where Jesus says in verse 2, "He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit"? Doesn’t that sound like it’s up to us to work hard to do good works for God and stay joined?

Well, those of you who are gardeners: What have you noticed as you’ve done your pruning this spring? That the branches that aren’t popping leaves tend to be the dead ones! They’re the ones that’ve formed a hard nub of tissue between themselves and the main tree or shrub or whatever. No nutrients are getting through, and that branch withers and dies. It may look like part of the plant, but it really isn’t. It’s cut itself off from what it needs to live, and has to be pruned off for the good of the whole plant. Whereas the branches where the cells are open, the juices are getting through and you see growth.

Jesus says, "Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me." There is no other way. On the other hand, if we remain in Him, we will bear much fruit. We won’t be able to help it, because we organically are part of Him.

This is what the Holy Spirit, speaking through our brother Paul, wants us to understand in the letter to the Colossians.

Paul’s prayer for the Colossians and for us is that we be filled with the knowledge of God’s will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. Is this some esoteric higher knowledge that you have to study long years to attain? Do you have to read strange long-lost books in mysterious ancient languages to attain this wisdom of God?

No! Paul’s prayer is that we should grasp who and what Jesus Christ is, both in His divine essence and in His relationship to us. Paul wants us to get our minds and hearts around the fact that Jesus is the one and only true Vine and we through holy faith are His branches. That understanding and honoring Jesus is the only way we can live lives worthy of the Lord and please Him, as Paul says, in every way.

The life-giving nourishment of Christ the Vine comes into branches, into disciples who are open, aware, and ready to receive the strength and virtue He gives. It involves our whole heart, mind, and will. It’s not enough to say, "I love Jesus"; you must be eager to learn more about Him, drinking in the wonder of who He is and what He has done for you. As Paul says in verse 10 onward of our Colossians passage, bearing fruit in every good work happens as we grow in the knowledge of God, as we’re strengthened with all power according to His glorious might, and as we joyfully give thanks to the Father!

You might say that this divine knowledge and strength and thankfulness are the organic fertilizer our Lord applies to make us stronger and more fruitful branches! As it says, the Lord is doing this in us so we "may have great endurance and patience." Strong, enduring branches bear strong, wholesome fruit.

Our fruitfulness in Christ is organically connected to our awareness of what the Father has done for us in joining us to the Son. For formerly we were no branches of the true Vine at all. But now God has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of His Son. In Him we have redemption. In Him we have forgiveness of sins. Not by any good work or effort of our own, but through being grafted into our crucified and risen Lord Jesus Christ.

But who is this Jesus we are joined into? By Whom do we bear fruit? Is He just another way to heaven, as some people say? Is He just another great world teacher, just another voice in human history telling us how to be good and find fulfillment?

Oh, no, no! This Jesus our true Vine is unimaginably beyond that. Every time I read this passage beginning with verse 15 I think it should be accompanied by a full orchestra of thousands of instruments and millions of voices, not forgetting a few hundred pipe organs as well. Who is this Jesus who joins us organically to Himself? Christian, fall on your knees, for He is the exact image of the invisible God! He is the firstborn over all creation-- by which is meant the supreme One, the ruler, the eternal heir. Everything that exists-- stars, planets, nebulae, mountains, rivers, animals, you, me, everything down to the least element and atom-- came into being through our Lord Jesus Christ. By Him was created not only this physical universe, but the unseen, spiritual universe as well: angels, archangels, seraphim, cherubim, all principalities and powers-- all were created by Christ and for Christ. The Father made all things through the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit, for Jesus of Nazareth, our true Vine, is nothing less than eternal and ever-living God!

No other religious figure, no other being can make that claim! Not Buddha, not Mohammed, not Krishna, not Moses, not you, not me, not any other creature, human or superhuman, animal, vegetable, or mineral can be the one true Vine through whom alone we or anyone can please the one God of earth and heaven. Only Jesus Christ, Son of David and Son of Mary, only He was and is God, eternally begotten of His Father before anything was made. In Christ and in Christ alone all things hold together in one glorious organic unity.

And this Christ, this Jesus is our Head! A body is also an organism; it must be joined to its head to live. We who believe in Jesus Christ in all times and in all places, we who are the branches in Him, the one true Vine, we are His church, His body. He has made it so! Our very existence is bound up organically with His resurrection from the dead. Jesus has triumphed over death by His cross and empty tomb, and He communicates that triumphant new life to us as we remain and thrive in Him.

Jesus is our living Vine, and in and with His Father, He is also our organic Gardener. Jesus did not resort to artificial means to make us alive. No, He has reconciled us to God by the blood of his cross. And not just us, but all things, whether on earth or in heaven. By His all-sufficient death and resurrection, Jesus will make all creation, everything that is, into one harmonious, healthy, fruit-bearing organic garden.

Let’s not take this wonder for granted! It’s so easy for us to sit in church week after week, singing and praying, so easy for us to do our good things in Jesus’ name, and forget how easily it could have been otherwise! We aren’t volunteer plants that just happened to grow up in this garden called the Christian Church; no, God our gardener deliberately planted us here to be branches of His Son, the true Vine!

For once we all were very noxious weeds. As the Scripture says, we were alienated from God and enemies to Him in our minds because of our evil behavior. And a lot of that evil behavior was in our minds, and let’s not think it’s any less evil because we never got the chance to act on it. We were just like any other human being who ever lived on this earth: worthless to God and deserving only to be swept away and burned. But in God’s infinite mercy and grace He sent His Son to be our Gardener and our true Vine. Now through the death of Christ’s physical body we have been transformed into clean, blight-free, productive branches in Him, without blemish or accusation-- assuming, as Paul says, that we continue in our faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out to us in the gospel.

That gospel is the good news--yes, the good soil that Jesus Christ died for your sins and rose again to give you life eternal. It is the rain of having your sins washed away in His blood and the warm sunshine of the Father’s forgiveness and love shining on you for Jesus’ sake. It’s the strength and nourishment of Christ’s righteousness and obedience rising up through the root that is He alone, flowing into your whole being and making you able and eager to bear good fruit in every good work. That gospel is the good news that we can and must give up working and striving to bear fruit in our own feeble strength; that we can trust instead in Jesus Christ and the life and virtue He alone can give.

This is the gospel this church and every true church around the world joyfully proclaims to every creature under heaven. It is the gospel of Jesus Christ, the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation, the One supreme over all things, the head of the church, the beginning and the end, the firstborn from among the dead. Jesus is our reconciler, our peacemaker, and our awesome Lord and God. He has joined us organically with Himself; in Him our Gardener and true Vine, we will bear much fruit; to the glory of God the Father. Amen.

Afraid Yet Filled with Joy

Texts: Ephesians 1:15-23; 2:1-10; Matthew 28:1-10

GRACE AND PEACE TO YOU in the name of our risen Lord Jesus Christ!

In Matthew 28, verse 8 we read:

"So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy . . . "

Joy on Easter Sunday we know about. Christ is risen! But fear? What does fear have to do with the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ?

As it turns out, a lot. In fact, the amount of joy we feel at Jesus risen is only as great as the holy fear it brings.

St. Matthew tells us Mary Magdalene and the "other Mary" went to the tomb at dawn on the first day of the week after Jesus was crucified. They intended to look at the tomb, to do more to prepare Jesus’ body for proper burial. They weren’t prepared for what awaited them there. They had every right to be afraid.

First of all, there was the violent earthquake. That was frightening enough. But more terrible by far was the angel of the Lord who came down from heaven and rolled back the stone of Jesus’ tomb. Do you think this angel was like the little winged babies you see on Valentines? Or like the doe-eyed girlie angels you see in popular art, with their sweet simpering looks and their form-fitting robes? Think again! This was a mighty warrior of God, with a face like lightning and clothing white as purest snow! This was a being from heaven so terrifying that the soldiers guarding the tomb passed out in a dead faint!

I’m sure the women felt they were about to pass out likewise! But the angel strengthened them with his word: "Do not be afraid," he told them. For they were very afraid indeed. "I know you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay."

The women surely obeyed and looked; how can you disobey a fearsome angel of the Lord? And now they had something else to be afraid about. For they saw the tomb was empty! And obviously, it had been empty before the angel rolled the stone away! Where was Jesus? How could He not be there? How did He get out? There was no earthly reason His body could be gone! But His body was gone. He wasn’t there; as the angel said, He was risen!

This was indeed something to be afraid of, and something to be joyful about, too. The sight of the empty tomb laid the fear of God upon these disciples. Nothing other than the direct power and presence of Almighty God could have worked the great and awesome miracle those women were confronted with that first Easter morning.

And then-- and then-- as they hurried away, afraid yet filled with joy, they encountered Jesus Himself. Did they say, "Oh, Jesus, it’s only You. Hey, You’re alive again! Congratulations, that’s really great!"?

No! They fell at His feet in worship and holy awe! They recognised in Him the physical presence of Almighty God! Once more they have to be reassured. The risen Jesus comforts them, saying, "Do not be afraid." Why? Because it’s no big deal to stand in the presence of the God-Man who has defeated death? No, Jesus tells them not to be afraid because His defeat of death also defeats our sin and rebellion, all those things that made them-- and us-- unable to bear the presence of God. Because Christ is risen, heaven and earth are no longer split asunder; they’re brought together in joyfulness and love! The resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ does not remove the fear of God that is the beginning of wisdom; rather, it catches us up into that awe and wonder, where our holy fear is as blissful as our joy, and our joy is as stupendous as our fear.

That’s how it was for Mary Magdalene and the other Mary that resurrection morning. But is that really how it is with us? This morning, are we experiencing the holy fear of the resurrection of our Lord? Are our souls truly leaping and dancing in His resurrection joy? Are we so overwhelmed by the news that we need Him to calm us and tell us, "Do not be afraid?"

If not, could it be that maybe for us Christ’s resurrection doesn’t seem all that real? Kind of remote from our personal experience?

Think of it this way: Maybe late at night you’ve tuned your radio to Coast-to-Coast AM. No, I won’t make you admit it. It’s a guilty pleasure--I know. Coast-to-Coast is driven by guests and callers who are always talking about frightful wonders. UFOs and space aliens who snatch helpless humans out of their cars and their beds! The Bigfoot monster skulking through the woods! Goat creatures with long fangs that devour cattle and sheep and even humans when they get the chance! Shadow people who lurk just beyond your range of vision and want to steal your soul! This is all scary stuff!

Or it would be, if you believed in any of it. But you don’t. Or at least, I don’t. In fact, the only thing that comes close to scaring me on Coast-to-Coast AM is the ghost stories. And that’s because I think ghosts just might possibly be real!

Does the story of Jesus’ resurrection shake up your world? Does it overpower you with holy awe? Or is it just something interesting to hear about in church from time to time, almost like something on Coast-to-Coast AM?

But there’s something else about hearing stories of UFOs and hauntings and weird creatures. When you hear that kind of tale, do you come right out and say, "He made that up," or "That’s got to be a lie"? Or do you find yourself thinking, "Well, I don’t believe in UFOs and ghosts and weird creatures, but if that other guy wants to believe in them, that’s fine with me! They don’t exist for me, but maybe they exist for him. And that’s ok."

Sometimes it scares me, that we-- even we who claim to be Christians-- are tempted to put Jesus’ resurrection in the same category as space aliens and hauntings. We say, "Well, that’s what I believe, but if you over there don’t want to believe it, that’s all right for you." If that’s you, be very afraid. From there it’s just a little, little step to denying the resurrection of Jesus Christ as a fearsome and joyous cosmic physical reality. What’s to prevent you from switching things around? You might as well say, "Well, yes, it was fine for Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to be afraid when they encountered the risen Christ. But I’ve got nothing to be afraid of-- because I don’t quite believe it!"

Christian friends, the fact of Jesus’ bodily resurrection isn’t something we or the Church made up in our heads that people can choose to believe in it or not! It’s the supreme act of God worked out in human history! Christ’s rising again is a fearsome and joyful thing, to be wholeheartedly accepted and believed-- by everyone, everywhere, and at every time. Not because we feel like it, not because it’s exciting, not because it’s convenient or helps us with our troubles-- but because it’s true.

If you don’t believe in the rising again of our Lord Jesus Christ, if you’re not trusting in His resurrection power to bring you-- yes, you-- defeat over death and life with God forever, you’ve got more to be afraid of than you can ever imagine. You’re in for fear that has nothing whatever to do with joy.

Look with me at our reading from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. It’s all about the awe-inspiring, knee-rattling strength God exercised when He raised Jesus Christ from the dead and seated Him at God’s right hand in the heavenly realms. It’s about the power and riches and wisdom and eye-opening revelation that mighty act means for us who believe in Christ and His resurrection, who have been made alive with Him.

But what if you don’t believe in Christ’s resurrection or its power? What if the new life in Jesus holds no awe or fear or joy for you? What if you don’t care whether it does or not?

Well then, today brings you no good news. You’re still dead in your transgressions and sins. You’re still a slave to the devil, the ruler of the kingdom of the air. The spirit of Satan, not the Spirit of God, is working in you. If the resurrection of Jesus Christ means nothing to you, if it inspires in you neither fear nor joy, if it’s something that’s fine for other people but doesn’t affect you, you are still an object of wrath and God’s rightful anger still rests upon you.

Yes, God’s rightful anger. God has every right to be angry with us for our disobedience and rebellion and blasphemies against Him. One reason Jesus had to die was to pay the just penalty for our sins. His sacrifice absorbed the righteous wrath of God that was justly directed against our disobedience and turned it away from us. Jesus propitiated the wrath of God on the cross; otherwise, we would each have to stand before God in the judgement and make propitiation for ourselves. And that would mean everlasting death.

If the cross of Christ inspires in you no holy fear; if His resurrection offers you nothing of worshipful awe and terrible joy, it may be because you think you’re worthy and able to stand by yourself before God and turn away His wrath with your own pathetic goodness. But you can’t. None of us can! So I plead with you by the love and grace of Jesus Christ, repent in holy fear and accept His sacrifice for you. Joyfully accept the eternal life He offers you in His resurrection. Your own works cannot save you in the Day of Judgement; if you try it, you’ll learn what it is to experience naked fear in the presence of God-- and it will be too late to know the joy. It’ll be too late for Jesus to say to you, "Do not be afraid." You will have made your choice. If now you reject the holy fear and awesome joy of Christ died and risen for you, on that awful Day you’ll begin to know the unholy and unbearable fear of living without Him forever.

But you whom the Holy Spirit has enlightened, you who live by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, you who yearn for the hope to which He has called you--today is the day of boundless good news! You know the fear and the joy of Jesus’ resurrection. And your fear is as blissful as your joy, and your joy is as earthshattering as your fear.

You trust that Jesus died for your sins. You feel the fear of how great your sins are, and you know the joy that they are paid for in full.

You confess that you deserved God’s wrath against you. You shudder to think of the terror of it-- and you rejoice to know that because of Christ, God’s love shines upon you instead.

You believe that Christ the Son of God has defeated death. You tremble in awe at how much mightier the life of God is than the death wielded by Satan, and you exult in blessing, because in Christ, you share that divine life to the full.

You affirm that Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Mary, was a true man and also the eternal Son of God. You are overcome with the fearful wonder that God Himself, the Lord of the Universe, supreme over every rule and authority, power and dominion, high in heaven and earth over every title that can be given-- that He, even He would come near to you on this earth to save you-- and you are jubilant, because He has declared you worthy to come close to Him in heaven.

And you believe, even if you can’t quite grasp it, that Jesus in His resurrected, physical, glorified human body even now is seated at the right hand of God in the heavenly realms. You are filled with humble awe that He would do such a thing for humanity-- for you; and you look forward in joy to your own bodily resurrection and perfect union with Him.

But what if-- what if you want to feel all the emotions you should about Jesus’ resurrection, but somehow you can’t? What if you do believe in Him; what if you are trusting Him to take away your sins; what if you do look forward to the day when you will be raised with a body like His; what if you do confess that Jesus’ death and resurrection are real events that make all the difference in the world to everyone who has ever lived in the world and ever will-- but your emotions aren’t equal to it all? What if Easter comes, and Easter goes, and you just can’t seem to feel all the fear and the joy you know the day should bring?

If that’s how it is, Jesus says to you, "Do not be afraid!" Trust in Him, not in your own emotions. Trust in His cross, not in the sensations of your heart. Trust in His empty tomb, not in the ups and downs of your feelings. Believe in the sure and faithful testimony given to you by His prophets, apostles, and evangelists, recorded for you in the Holy Scriptures and written in your heart by His Holy Spirit. Receive the grace of your Lord Jesus Christ extended to you in His Holy Sacraments. Even when you can’t sense His presence in this dark world, claim His salvation, rely on His kindness, and obediently do the good works God has prepared in advance for you to do. For your salvation will never depend on the power of your own feelings. It was won and assured to you by the grace and power of your risen Lord Jesus Christ.

In His good time God your heavenly Father will fill you with the holy fear and eternal joy of the resurrection of His Son. That day will not come perfectly for any of us until we ourselves are transformed into His image and our own bodies share in His glorious resurrection. On that day, our fear will be as blissful as our joy and our joy will be as terrible as our fear. On that day, Jesus Himself will say to us, "Do not be afraid!", all earthly fears will be over and past, and we will live with Him in joyful awe and awe-ful joy forever.

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Feast of the Resurrection, 2008

The Child Who Was Lost--and Found

Texts: Hosea 11:1-11 ; Matthew 2:13-23

YOU MAY REMEMBER A COUPLE weeks ago, hearing on the news about three teenaged children who went missing in the Northern California woods, on an expedition to look for a Christmas tree.

They and their dad were lost three days in the mountains, in a heavy snowfall, with no food supplies or special clothing. The reports say the search helicopter spotted them at the last possible time-- the weather conditions were getting so bad all the copters would have been grounded for the next few days. The children and their father could have all died of starvation and exposure.

But at just the right time, they were rescued safe and mostly sound. And the rejoicing was great from their friends and family, because the children who were lost have now been restored to them.

It's always an anxious thing to hear about lost children. It's worse than anxious when that child belongs to someone you know. And I can only imagine the agony when the lost child is your own. And it's a matter of great joy when the lost child again is found.

Our readings from Hosea and Matthew are a story about children lost-- and children found. And the way it turns out should make us rejoice greatly at this Christmastide and all the year through.

We don't think of the child Jesus having His picture on a milk carton with the headline, "Have You Seen Me?" But for around five years, Jesus was lost to His people Israel. Our infant Savior was born, the angels sang, the shepherds saw Him and told everyone the great good news, the Magi arrived and presented their worship and their gifts-- and then due to the murderous cruelty of King Herod, Jesus just disappeared! It was as if He had never come!

And to make things worse, while Jesus is making His escape, Herod slaughters all the infant boys in Bethlehem and all that region!

Whenever a child goes missing or turns up dead because of violence and abuse, it's only natural to ask, "God, what were You thinking? Lord, what could You have had in mind?"

It's hard to find a ready answer. But when it comes to our little Lord Jesus Christ, lost for five years with His parents in Egypt, Scripture does tell us why: Jesus went missing as part of God's plan to find and rescue--us.

Look at verse 15 of our Matthew passage. It says, "And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: ‘Out of Egypt I called my son.'" Jesus was God's Son, and it was essential for God's plan that Jesus go to Egypt and be found from there again. Why? Because of another child of God that went missing in Egypt a long, long time before. Another child, whom God rescued from Egypt, but who somehow, even after he was rescued, wanted to stay lost, and didn't want to be found.

"Out of Egypt I called my son," Matthew quotes the prophet, and that prophet is Hosea, speaking by the Holy Spirit in chapter 11 of his book. What is the story of that missing child?

That child was the whole nation of Israel. They first came to Egypt because of a missing child, Joseph son of the patriarch Israel, or Jacob. Joseph was kidnapped and sold into slavery by his brothers. Many years later, he is found there, prosperous and well, and Israel and all his sons and daughters move to Egypt because there they can get food for themselves and pasture for their cattle.

But you know the story. Years and centuries went by, and the Egyptian rulers began to oppress and abuse the Children of Israel. They enslaved them and forced them into bitter labor, building the storehouses of Pharaoh. God had promised the Land of Canaan to Israel His son, but there the Israelites were, missing in Egypt!

But the Lord God sought them and found them by the hand of His servant Moses. He called them out from their slavery and restored them to His heart by His covenant made with them at Sinai. God brought His son Israel into the Promised Land and lavished on that people every good thing, houses they did not build and cisterns they did not dig and lush hillsides for their sheep and fertile fields for their grain.

But what happened? Israel's body may have been with God in the Promised Land, but their hearts and minds were still lost to the gods of Egypt and to the idols of all the pagan nations around them. We read in Hosea how distressed the Lord is by this, distressed as a father whose child is missing in the cold deep woods with a blizzard coming on. He cries out, "The more I called Israel, the further they went from me! They sacrificed to the Baals, and burned incense to images!"

Why did Israel run away? Was the Lord a hard master or an abusive father? No! He showed every tender, loving fatherly kindness towards them. Verses 3 and 4 describe Him as a tender parent, patiently teaching his little child to walk, supporting it and kissing its skinned knees should it fall. But Israel rejected the Lord's care. They kept wandering off and getting themselves lost again, making alliances with Egypt and Assyria and all the pagan cultures and the pagan gods that could offer them nothing but lostness and slavery.

So the Lord in His loving anger says, "Is this what you really want, Israel, to return to Egypt? You will get your desire! But you won't like how it'll happen. I'll let you lose yourself again through war and famine, through destruction and danger and sword!"

But see the tenderness of our God! Even with all their rebellion, even with Israel's determination to turn from Him and be lost, their Father in heaven will not give them up. His compassion, His love, His faithful promises will stand. He swears by Himself that His wandering child will be found again. As the prophet says, "His children will come trembling from the west. They will come trembling like birds from Egypt, like doves from Assyria. "I will settle them in their homes," declares the Lord.

The Old Testament is one long report of how God's chosen people Israel kept getting themselves lost and how merciful God was in finding them every time they did. But know this: There's nothing particularly perverse or difficult about the Jews. They simply give us a picture of how all of us behave towards the Lord our God. It's human nature for us to get ourselves lost from the God who made us and loves us. And that includes me and you.

Some of us get lost from God because of the cruelty of others. If you were abused as a child, physically or psychologically, it can be hard to believe in a God who loves and cares for you. It's particularly hard if your abuser did his or her evil in the Lord's name, or in the name of the church. You want to run away and hide from anything that looks like religion or divine authority. Even if you believe that God is good, your abuser may have convinced you that you're so rotten and ugly and undeserving that the Lord of all would never love or welcome you. So you stay lost. You keep away.

Some of us get lost without thinking about it. We just get distracted by the activities and attractions of this world. We go to the next thing, and the next thing, and the next thing, and before we know it, we're far away from our Lord and we have no idea how to return. It's like the young girl in that lost family in California told her mother, "Mom, we just kept going from tree to tree, trying to find the perfect one, and by the time we found it, we were turned around and couldn't find our way back to the road!" We might want to be found, but we can't do a thing to make it happen.

But most of the time, we get ourselves lost from God by our own deliberate fault. We don't believe God when He says He has the best plans for us, when He says He's our only true source of life and happiness and peace. We think we know better than He does what's good for us. The way we naturally are, when the Lord brings us back and gives us another chance and another chance and another chance, we just take it and then go back to doing what we want in spite of Him.

In our hearts, we're all rebellious children. We all wander away from the God whose offspring we are, and we do it on purpose! How can any of us, Jew or Gentile, be found and stay found?

We can only be found and stay found if there should be a perfect Son of God, a new and faithful Child of Israel, who does what Israel should have done and obeys as Israel should obey and who has the power to apply the divine rewards and benefits of that obedience to the earthly, lost Israel. We can only be found and stay found if that perfect Son of God has the power to open up the promises made to Israel to us, who weren't born Jews and who have no natural right to the benefits of God's covenant love at all.

St. Matthew tells us that perfect Son of God, that new and faithful Child of Israel, is Jesus Christ our Lord, born in Bethlehem of the Virgin Mary. It was essential that Jesus suffer a period of being lost in Egypt, so that when the Lord called Him forth and restored Him to His own, everyone could see how the true Son of God, the Boy who was the new and faithful Israel, would grow and prosper and learn to do His heavenly Father's will.

Incidentally, I can't help but marvel at the trust God had in Mary and especially in Jesus' foster father Joseph. He called on these fallible human parents to be faithful in behalf of their divine infant Son. And through the Holy Spirit's guidance and provision, they carried out the task the Lord laid on them. Even now, if you have small children or grandchildren, the Lord gives you the responsibility to make wise and godly decisions on their behalf, until they're old enough to affirm the promises made in their baptisms for themselves.

What we read today from Matthew sets a pattern for Jesus' career as the new Israel, as He develops as the perfect human Son of God. All through His life Jesus had to lose Himself in order to be found in the glory promised Him by His heavenly Father. Every day He had to deny Himself, to lay down the perquisites and prerogatives of being God, so He could reveal the good news of God's kingdom to you and me. And finally, Jesus God's Child had to be lost-- lost in death-- so we could be rescued from the lostness of our sins and found in God's love and life and remain there always.

But how is our situation different from Israel's? They keep wandering away from God and His law. Aren't we just as likely to wander away from God and His Christ?

No, because when you belong to Jesus Christ, staying put is no longer up to you. You don't have to work and struggle to keep close to God by keeping His law. No, Jesus Christ Himself has bound you closely to Him, and He will never let you go. You might experience times of doubt, times of difficulty, times when your old human nature and the attractions of the world make it tempting to go off and give up this Christianity business altogether. But once Jesus the new and perfect Israel has claimed you for His own, you are a child of God and you can never truly be lost again.

But what of those poor little boys whom Herod killed, the Holy Innocents whose blood was shed while Jesus and His parents escaped to Egypt? Were they lost, never to be found? Will Rachel weeping for her children refuse comfort forever?

No, because the searching eye of the Lord can find and rescue even those innocent little martyrs. They lost their lives in testimony to what the evil ones of this world will try in order to prevent the goodness of God from destroying their power. The infants of Bethlehem died in the place of the Christ Child who would grow up and one day die for them. His death and resurrection are strong enough to give glory to their sacrifice and restore them to life eternal. And so they, too, will be found at home with God and share in His fatherly kindness.

This promise is not only for them, but for you and for me and for all whom our Father shall call. Jesus was lost to earthly Israel for awhile, until it was time for Him to be revealed. Jesus, God's new Israel, was lost for a time in death, until God brought Him forth glorious from the tomb. The Jesus who was forced to hide from Herod for a time has now triumphed over the powers of evil and death. He makes a joke of all earthly powers that would keep us lost in the darkness of sin-- whether that is the power of others, the power of our carelessness, or the rebellious power of our own selfish wills.

It's always a time for rejoicing when a lost child is found! So rejoice and be glad, for now we see Jesus, Lord and King over heaven and earth! Rejoice and be glad, for that same Jesus has rescued us out of lostness, misery, and sin! He has found us and made us the happy children of God.

Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us: unto Him be glory in the Church by Christ Jesus, throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.

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1st Sunday in Christmastide 2007