Jesus, Our Muckraking Savior

Texts:  Jeremiah 17:5-10; 12-14; Matthew 15:1-20   

      
        IN AMERICA ABOUT A HUNDRED years ago, there were people called muckrakers.  Not your ordinary farmhand who spread the manure on the field, but magazine and newspaper reporters, men and women both, who specialized in bringing to light the hidden evils of American society.  The title "muckraker" was a pejorative: it implied that these writers were so busy focussing on what was wrong with American politics, business, and manufacturing that they never looked up and saw what was good.

    But the muckrakers didn't care.  They believed that our country could only be truly great if someone had to guts to dig below the beautiful, glittering surface and reveal the disease and evil that was hidden below.  It wasn't nice, or pleasant, or socially-acceptable to talk about such things, but it had to be done for America to be healed.

    In our passage from St. Matthew, chapter 15, our Savior Jesus operates as a muckraker.  He goes beyond the religious leaders' obsession with the clean surface and reveals the uncleanness of the human heart.  And just like the crowds and His disciples, we have to understand the dire sickness of our own hearts, if we are to turn to Jesus and be cured.

    Our scene takes place in Galilee.  Some Pharisees and teachers of the law arrive from Jerusalem to investigate Jesus.  Now, the Pharisees started out well.  They were a reform movement after the Babylonian Exile, in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah.  It's thanks to them that the Jews of Jesus' day weren't still bowing down to pagan idols.  The scribes and Pharisees were very zealous for keeping the law of God: so zealous that their rabbis and elders kept adding interpretation upon interpretation, rule upon rule to the law, just in case anyone should violate the commands in the slightest way.  And the Pharisees of Jerusalem were the most zealous of all.

    Trouble was, they were like some 21st century Constitutional lawyers, who get so wound up in the latest case law that they forget what the Constitution actually says.  And now the Pharisees have heard disturbing things about Jesus.  They've been informed He isn't making His disciples keep the tradition of the elders.  As a Rabbi, He's responsible for their moral purity.  He needs to be challenged on this!

    So, Jesus, why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders?  Why, they don't wash their hands before they eat!

    Don't imagine that the Pharisees were concerned about keeping germs out of the food.  No, it was spiritual and ritual cleanliness they cared about.  Washing hands before eating had to be done in the right ritual way, with repeated pourings of water over first one hand, then the other.  Because if you didn't do all that, it made the food you ate ritually unclean and that food would make you spiritually and morally dirty inside, too.  But doing the ritual washing kept you clean and acceptable to God.  At least, that is what their tradition led them to believe.

    So what they were really saying is, "Jesus, you pretend to be a rabbi and teach the way of God, but your disciples are unclean in His sight and you encourage them to be that way.  You are a dangerous fraud."

    You or I might be tempted to get defensive and make excuses about the no-hand-washing charge.  But Jesus sees past it and turns their real accusation back on them.  Do they pretend to be rabbis themselves, true teachers of the law of God?  Then why do they break the true law of God, given through Moses, for the sake of the rules and interpretations added on by their not-God-inspired, johnny-come-lately predecessors? 

    Jesus ruthlessly exposes how they operate.  For instance, the real law of God, recorded in Exodus and Deuteronomy, commands us to honor our parents with our obedience, our words, and our financial support.  But the scribal tradition had come up with a concept called korban.  It means "sacrifice," and it originally meant the animals and so on that God commanded the people to offer to Him in worship.  But in the practice of the Pharisees, a man could declare anything to be "korban," that is, a sacrifice vowed to God, and since God takes precedence even over one's mother or father, why, you could declare anything to be korban and not have to use it to help your needy parents.  And so, Jesus says, the Pharisees "nullif[ied] the word of God for the sake of [their] tradition."

    Oh, yes, on the surface it looked as clean and holy and legal as can be.  But Jesus our Savior took the muckrake of His word and dug down and showed how selfish and wicked and unloving this practice of korban really was.  The religious leaders put on a great show of loving God's law, but it was all hypocrisy.  They claimed to be the only ones who were truly worshipping Him, but as Jesus quotes Isaiah, it was all for nothing.  They weren't teaching the people the word of God, just a lot of rules made up by themselves and other men.

    Jeremiah, in the seventeenth chapter of his prophecy, also condemns those who depend on what men say and do for their life and strength.  He says that those who trust in man are like bushes in a wasteland: stunted, dried up, bearing no fruit.  Do you think this habit of abandoning the real law of God and following manmade rules began and ended with the Pharisees?  Not at all!  It's the oldest human habit and sin-- it's as old as Adam and Eve-- and it'll continue until Christ returns. Every day of our lives we're swimming in manmade rules telling us what we're supposed to do and what we're not supposed to do, all promising that if we keep them we'll please God or at least be happy, healthy, well-adjusted human beings. These rules and promises come from our secular culture and from misguided leaders in the church.  You know how it goes: A preacher says you'll go to hell if you take one sip of beer, so you think, "OK, if I avoid all alcohol, I'll be all right with God."  Or some worldly pundit says you're an intolerant bigot if you tell an unbeliever about Jesus Christ and His death for their sins, and your response is, "OK, I'll keep quiet.  Don't want anybody to think I'm not kind and loving."  But following these manmade rules don't make us "clean," they just hide the real uncleanness we have deep down inside.

    Jesus will not allow that unhealthy uncleanness to be hidden.  It has to be brought to the light and be washed away and cured.  So that day in Galilee He called the crowd to Him and told them frankly, "Listen and understand.  What goes into a man's mouth does not make him ‘unclean,' but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him ‘unclean.'"

    The disciples are astonished.  Didn't Jesus realize He'd offended the Pharisees, the way He'd answered them?  They were the ones everybody thought were getting it right.  Their very name means "Separated Ones" or "Saints."  How could Jesus dare to get on the wrong side of the separated saints of God?

    But Jesus knows their corruption and He does not hesitate to reveal it.  These so-called saints haven't been planted by God, and they will be uprooted.  The disciples should ignore them; don't even think of following their lead.  The Pharisees claimed to be guides for the spiritually blind, but they were blind themselves.  Go after them, and you'd end up in a spiritual pit.

    In our day we, too, have people and parties who claim to be able to tell us what to do and how to live.  Whether they speak from the right or from the left, don't follow them until you've compared what they're saying with the word of God.  Jeremiah says that the one who trusts in the Lord is like a tree planted by a stream of water, never going dry and always green and fruitful.  Remember to follow God first, even when your own party or group is demanding you accept or reject something just because they say so.  Stay out of that pit.

    When Jesus had warned the crowd and the disciples against the corruption of the Pharisees, Peter said to Him, "Explain the parable to us."  The disciples took it for granted that you could be spiritually corrupted by something you ate.  It didn't dawn on them that there was a literal meaning to what Jesus had said. And it frustrates Him that the disciples don't get it.  Are they still so dull?  Hasn't He been teaching them ever since the Sermon on the Mount that the seat of sin and corruption is the human heart?  The Pharisees were wrong in thinking that spiritual uncleanness came from eating unclean food with unclean hands.  Our culture is wrong in thinking that people are basically good and human evil comes about due to bad parenting or economic deprivation or some other outside influence.  No, says Jesus, food is food, it's swallowed, it does its job in the body, and the waste ends up in the latrine.  But what comes out of the mouth, that comes from the heart, and that is what makes a human being unclean. 

    Brothers and sisters, every last one of us was born with a dirty heart.  As Jeremiah says, "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure."  We all have evil thoughts, we wish others were dead, we cast the eye of lust on those who are not joined to us in marriage, we steal or wish we could steal, we lie about ourselves and against others, we speak ill of God and our fellow man.  We act out these urges in continual thoughts and acts every day of our lives, and if we haven't done anything to get arrested for, it's because we haven't yet had the nerve or the motive.  Even our so-called good deeds are selfish and corrupt and unacceptable in the sight of our holy God.

    So what can we do?  Jeremiah says our hearts are beyond cure.  Are we condemned to the muck forever?

    We are not.  What is impossible with man is possible with God.  For in Jeremiah 17:14 the prophet cries, "Heal me, O Lord, and I will be healed; save me and I will be saved."  We can't clean up our own hearts, by keeping rituals or following rules.  But Jesus who reveals the muck of our hearts is also the Savior who makes them clean.  The blood He shed for us on Calvary is sufficient and effective to wash away every sin: not just the ones we commit, but the sinfulness of our hearts as well.  If you belong to Christ, He has put a new and clean heart within you.  It's at war with the old heart and its evil attitudes, but slowly, bit by bit, His Holy Spirit is shrinking that old heart and taking away its power over you.

    It's not pleasant to face up to the filthiness that's in our own hearts.  But it's the mercy of our Lord Jesus that reveals it to us and calls us to repentance.  It's His grace that keeps us clinging to His Holy Spirit and His word, so that we come to Him again and again to be made pure.  And it's His love that will bring us at last to stand with Him on Zion's holy hill with clean hands and pure hearts, united by faith with Him the holy Son of God, the only Man whose hands are truly clean, and whose heart is wholly pure.

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.

A Different Gospel-- No Gospel at All

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

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

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

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

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

Ultimately He

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

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

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

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

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

The clue is in verse 13:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

24-Karat Faith

Texts: 1 Peter 1:3-16; Mark 6:6b-7, 12-29 5:21-43

WHEN I WAS IN FIFTH GRADE I decided when I was grown up I’d go to Africa and be a missionary. I imagined myself suffering hardship in the jungle, facing down a fearsome witch doctor, maybe being taken captive by cannibals (I’d been watching too many cartoons) and being in danger for my life, all in defense of the faith. Oh, yes, it seemed really romantic and exciting, the idea of suffering and maybe even dying for the cause of Jesus Christ.

But one evening I was up in my bedroom contemplating this. And I got into one of those silly poses kids do, and slipped and knocked my nose with my knee. Hard. Good golly, that hurt! It hurt so bad I could hardly stand it.

And that was the end of my missionary ambitions. I figured, if I could hardly deal with the pain of my own knee hitting my nose, how could I remain faithful if those cannibals started poking me with their spears?

Now that I’m grown I can laugh at my childish ideas about foreign missions. But today’s Scriptures bring out my real error, and it wasn’t just my ignorance about Africa and its people. My real mistake was focussing on my potential sufferings and my potential glory, instead of on the suffering and glory of my Lord Jesus Christ. I was thinking how I would win the victory over evil forces in this world, instead of rejoicing over the great salvation my Savior and God had already won for me.

I doubt that I’m alone. That’s how a lot of us picture of facing persecution for the faith. We imagine how we’re going to successfully stand up against it-- or maybe we dread how we might fail. We see ourselves as heros in the war against the world and the devil-- or we hope Jesus will let us stay behind the lines and not get into the fighting at all. But as Mark and Peter both remind us, in the war of God vs. Satan and good vs. evil, the true focus isn’t on us and what we will do, it’s on Jesus Christ and what He has done for us. Yes, we will benefit from what He has done. We will receive praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. But our victory will be ours only because first it is His.

But perhaps you think this has nothing to do with you. Maybe you’re sure you’ll never face persecution for the sake of Jesus Christ at all. I suppose, compared to what our brothers and sisters in Muslim and Communist countries are going through, we have nothing to complain of. But Christian persecution isn’t only having somebody put a knife to your throat and yelling, "Deny Jesus Christ or I kill you!" The spiritual battle against us is much more subtle than that, and if we don’t recognize our little skirmishes and cling to Christ and His benefits in them, we’ll certainly fail when more severe tests come our way. If you belong to Jesus Christ you face persecution for His sake every day, and the battle isn’t merely against the world and the devil, it’s against our own fears and desires as well.

The Apostle Peter notes in verse 6 of our reading that now on this earth we may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. The implication is that if we haven’t already, we soon will. This word "all kinds" in the Greek literally means "many colored." Some griefs and troubles are screaming red like fire, some are pale gray like ash. They are all part of our warfare against this world, the Devil, and our own indwelling sin. We don’t like them, we aren’t called to go after them, but God in His sovereign will allows them as the means to test and purify our faith in Him, so it will come through like pure, 24-karat gold.

Persecution for Christ’s sake is inevitable, since we’ve been born again, we’re new creatures, and what we are will always be at war with what we used to be. Don’t imagine that your part in the battle will always be clear cut and dramatic. For then you won’t recognise a trial of faith when it comes.

We see how trivial, how pedestrian the battle can be in our reading from Mark’s gospel, where he tells us about the martyrdom of John the Baptist. This is the man Jesus Himself called the greatest of those born of woman, and the culmination of the Law and the prophets. If anybody, you’d think John would go to his death in some glorious spiritual last stand.

But no. John is beheaded and his head served up like some exotic dish because of the everyday earthly lust and spite of one woman, Herodias, an amateur dance performance by her daughter Salome, and the lust, pride, and political fear of Herodias’ brother-in-law and unlawful husband, King Herod. Herod had put John away in prison so he couldn’t go around the countryside reminding the people of how he, Herod, was violating God’s law in running off with his brother’s wife. But he had no desire to torture or execute John for his message. Mark tells us Herod feared John, he was puzzled at him, but he liked to listen to him. We have no reason to believe that John in prison did not keep on proclaiming that the kingdom of God was at hand, that the Messiah had arrived, and that people should repent and obey the law of God. Being in prison was a form of persecution, of course. But from Herod’s point of view, he wasn’t standing against the Jewish faith when he imprisoned John; no, it was simply the best thing he could do politically. And when it came time for John to die, there was no crisis, John did nothing specific to make Herod behead him, it was just one more of those everyday situations when human selfishness wanted its way and nothing was going to stop it.

It’s the same with us, disciples of Jesus Christ who bear His name. Your struggles and trials as a Christian will most likely not be spectacular. Those who oppose you may not have any idea they’re causing you to suffer for Christ’s sake at all. But you should be aware of it. Think of those times when you feel pressure to compromise what is right because your boss thinks it’s good for business. Think of situations where a little voice inside tells you to give God the glory for something good that had happened to you, but you hear your own voice taking credit for it yourself, because you don’t want to seem "too religious." Call to mind those times when popular opinion on certain political and moral issues goes against the will of God as revealed in the Scriptures, and you’re ridiculed or called a bigot when you stand up for what you know to be the truth. These are the trials of your faith in Christ, allowed so it will come out more pure than 24-karat gold.

Think, too, of those times when pressure from other people isn’t involved at all, when the grief is in your own situation. Some of you may be struggling with financial hardship at this time, even unemployment or impending bankruptcy. You may have learned that you or someone you love is facing a deadly or painful chronic disease. How is your faith in Jesus Christ? Does this trial make you rely on Him and His faithfulness all the more? Does it make you search out the depths of His love for you and move you to love and trust Him for all you are and all you will have? Or does your trouble cause you to doubt Christ and His benefits-- or even, sometimes, to forget Him altogether?

These kinds of grief seem so ordinary and earthbound, hardly anything to do with being a Christian at all! But these everyday trials are the beginning of the refinement process for your faith, and if your faith turns out to be only 2-karat gold or no gold at all, where will you be when the ultimate trials come?

And they will come. Already our Congress is contemplating legislation that would make it hate speech for Christians to stand up for Biblical moral principles. Already in countries like Great Britain and Canada Muslim sharia law is allowed to hold sway in some areas, and Muslim leaders declare it’s their goal that sharia be in force throughout the world.

What shall we do about it? Expect the government to rescue us? Certainly, whatever we can do as citizens we should do, just as St. Paul appealed to his Roman citizenship whenever the time was right. But we must never expect the United States government or any other human institution to stand between us and the persecutions that will come because we bear the name of Jesus Christ. They will come, they must come, "so that your faith-- of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire-- may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed."

It is Christ who brings us through the fire and Christ alone. His heavenly Father and ours has given us new birth into a living hope in Him, through Christ’s resurrection from the dead. This hope is not like the earthly wishing that says, "I hope it rains before my flowers die" or "I hope I get a new job before I start missing mortgage payments." This hope is in the person and work of the deathless Son of God. It teaches us to look beyond our earthly troubles to the sure and solid inheritance He has won and preserves in heaven for us.

Our brother Peter reminds us that no matter what happens, in this life we are shielded through God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. Individually we have already been saved and justified through the shed blood of Jesus Christ, and when our Lord comes in glory and takes us to Himself, His work of salvation will be perfected in us and in all creation and the total victory will be His.

Even now we see the evidence of that coming victory. We see it when the Spirit of Christ in us enables us to do things we thought we never could and certainly never could without His aid. We see it when we find ourselves coming to the assistance of someone we have feared, not through compulsion but out of Christian love. Maybe you’ve taken a stand for Christ and you were nervous about it, but then you found it wasn’t so hard after all, and you found yourself caring about the person you were speaking to and wanting them to know Jesus and receive His heavenly inheritance, too. Maybe you said No to that business compromise or refused to be depressed by the current economic situation, because the Holy Spirit had filled you with the inexpressible joy He gives in Jesus Christ. This is the power of Jesus Christ working in you.

Jesus’ apostles witnessed the first fruits of Christ’s victory over sin and Satan when Jesus sent them out in His name to preach repentance, to heal, and to drive out demons. His power in them was so great that King Herod thought John the Baptist had been raised from the dead. Herod thought that when John’s headless body was buried, the Baptist and the power that was in him were dead and gone. But the power of God manifest in Jesus Christ our Lord can never die. Our hope in Him is living and sure, and our inheritance in Him can never perish, spoil, or fade.

24-karat faith trusts totally in Jesus Christ and what He has done for us. God our loving heavenly Father permits griefs and trials and persecutions in our lives , to prove to us and the world that our faith is not in ourselves or our own boldness, not in human systems or governments, but in Christ alone. 24-karat faith maintains us in an attitude of obedience to God, focussed on Him and His will, confiding only in Him.

To this goal, Peter admonishes us to prepare our minds for action. Be sure that grief and trials will come to you, some because you belong to Jesus, some simply because of your human condition. Meet them as one who belongs to your faithful God and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Study God’s word; know what He has done for your ancestors in the faith, so you also may be ready to meet trouble honorably and courageously in the strength Jesus gives. Set your hope on the grace He gives you even now, grace that will be fulfilled when He is revealed in glory. Through Him you can renounce the ways of Herod, Herodias, and Salome-- through Him you can stop being impelled and hemmed in by your fears and desires and instead live free in the holiness of Almighty God.

It was easy for me to give up my grade-school dream of being a Christian missionary because it really wasn’t about Christ at all. The truth was that I’d recently started at a new school, some of the kids were picking on me, and I figured that if I was going to suffer persecution, I may as well do it in a good cause. But now I understand that my mission field back then wasn’t someday in Africa, it was right there, right then, on that school playground.

And now my mission field and yours is wherever we are and in whatever situation we might be. Our field of battle is wherever the world, the devil, and our own sin set themselves up against the Kingdom of God. Our faith will come through the fire like 24-karat gold, because Jesus who died and rose again empowers us, protects us, and keeps our heavenly inheritance secure for us. Trust in Him like Peter, believe in Him like John, for He is your risen Lord and your gracious, living Hope.

To Him be all glory, honor, and praise, with God the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit, now and forever, amen.

Firstborn of Mary, the Firstborn of God

Texts: Exodus 4:21-22, 13:1-2; 11-16; Luke 2:22-40

I’M IN A COMMUNITY CHOIR, THE Village Singers of the Tri-County Choir Institute, and a popular song in our Christmas repertory is "Mary, Did You Know?" by Mark Lowry. The first verse goes:

Mary, did you know
That your baby boy
Would someday walk on water?
Mary did you know
That your baby boy
Will save our sons and daughters?
Did you know
That your baby boy
Has come to make you new?
This child that you've delivered
Will soon deliver you.
Mary, did you know?

These are good questions for the mother of our Lord! If I could ask Mary anything, it’d be about that day in Jerusalem, forty days after Jesus was born. "Mary, did you know what was happening, when you and Joseph took the baby Jesus to the Temple to be presented to the Lord?"

The obvious answer would be, "Yes, we were obeying the Law of the Lord given through Moses: ‘Every firstborn male is to be consecrated to the Lord.’ We were obedient Jews; we did as the Law commands."

And that would have been true. It goes back 1,400 years before Mary’s day, when God set His people Israel free from slavery in Egypt. As it says in our reading from Exodus, on that dark night of the Tenth Plague, the Lord God Almighty punished Pharaoh by slaying all the firstborn of Egypt. Pharaoh thought he was a god, and he refused to let Israel, God’s firstborn son, go and worship the Lord. So the Lord brought judgement on Pharaoh and all the false gods of Egypt. He proved who the true God actually was.

But the plague on the firstborn was on all the firstborn sons dwelling in Egypt; as it says in Exodus 11, "from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne, to the firstborn son of the slave girl, who is at her hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle as well." But, said the Lord, He would "make a distinction between Egypt and Israel." Why? Because Israel was like that spoiled kid who gets away with everything because he’s his father’s favorite? Or because the Egyptians were such terrible sinners who deserved punishment and the Israelites were perfect children who always did everything right?

No, the Lord God caused the angel of death to pass over the Israelite homes that night because of the blood of the Passover lamb that was smeared on the doorposts. The Israelites were just as lost and deserving of death as the Egyptians were, but God in His sovereign grace chose to redeem them by the blood of the lamb. The firstborn of the Egyptians died; the firstborn of Israel were redeemed.

And so God consecrated to Himself all the firstborn in Israel. In Numbers 3:13 it says, "For all the firstborn are mine. When I struck down the firstborn in Egypt, I set apart for myself [or, "consecrated to Myself"] every firstborn in Israel. They are to be mine. I am the Lord." Ever since, the firstborn were set apart, consecrated, dedicated to the Lord.

It’s become fashionable in some denominations today for parents to "dedicate" infants to the Lord instead of having them baptised. But would they if they understood what biblical dedication meant? In the Old Testament, to "dedicate" or "devote" or "consecrate" something or someone to the Lord meant to totally give them over to God, often by totally destroying them. If you’ve dedicated something or someone to God, it or he belongs to God totally. You can no longer claim ownership of it, or enjoy any use of it.

This kind of dedication by death was absolutely the case with firstborn calves and lambs and young goats, all clean animals that could be sacrificed to the Lord. But it could not be so with an Israelite woman’s firstborn son. He was not to die. Firstborn sons had to be redeemed.

Mary and Joseph were good Jews. Jesus was Mary’s firstborn son and that day at the temple she was acknowledging He belonged totally to the Lord. She had to pay the designated price to redeem Him from the dedication of death.

But in the Books of Moses we also read that even though the firstborn sons of Israel were not to die, the Lord still had the right to claim their perpetual service as priests and servants in His sanctuary. This is how Hannah dedicated Samuel to the Lord in Samuel 1:24-28. But ordinarily, God substituted the men of the tribe of Levi for the firstborn Israelite males. The passage I quoted from Numbers 3 actually begins, "The Lord to Moses, ‘I have taken the Levites from among the Israelites in the place of the first male offspring of every Israelite woman. The Levites are mine, for all the firstborn are mine."

But Jewish parents couldn’t take this substitution lightly. When Mary and Joseph presented Jesus in the temple, they were confessing that God had the right to require His services there, all His life long. It was only because the Levites were dedicated to that work instead that Mary and Joseph could take Jesus home with them to raise Him as their own.

There’s something else Mary would have known as she dedicated Jesus, her firstborn son: The firstborn offspring of man or beast was like the firstfruits of the vineyard or field. The firstfruits were always given over to priests and Levites as the Lord’s representatives; as it says in Numbers 18:12, "I give to you all the finest olive oil and all the finest new wine and grain they give the Lord as the firstfruits of their harvest." And in verses 14 and 15, it says, "Everything in Israel that is devoted to the Lord is yours. But you must redeem every firstborn son and every firstborn male of unclean animals." The firstfruits were to be the finest and best of the crop so far. The firstfruits demonstrated the power of God working in Israel’s behalf, to bless and prosper them. The firstfruits and the firstborn represented all the richness and goodness that God would give His people thereafter, in crops and cattle and children as well.

So when Mary and Joseph presented Jesus that day in the temple, they knew that their firstborn Son represented the goodness and blessing of the Lord to them. They knew that Jesus stood for the children that would come after. That’s the way it was. That’s something every observant Jew would know.

But Mary, did you know the full extent of what you and Joseph did there in Jerusalem that day? Even after the announcing angels and adoring shepherds, did you realize you weren’t just fulfilling the Law as any new mother would? Mary, did you know that when you presented your Son, it was symbolic of the work of God that one day would change everything in heaven and on earth?

I’m sure Mary and Joseph got some idea of the magnitude of what was happening from the prophecies of Simeon and Anna. But Mary had to wait long years until Jesus had ascended into heaven to truly understand what she had done when she took Him to be presented to the Lord.

That day, Mary and Joseph dedicated her firstborn Son Jesus to the Lord, to acknowledge that God had first claim on Him, even unto death. That day, they paid the redemption price for Jesus and took Him home. But one day, thirty-three years later, Jesus, Mary’s firstborn Son and the only-begotten Son of God, hung on a cross to pay the redemption price for all God’s people. Our lives were forfeit because of sin. We stood under God’s wrath and condemnation, and we could never come up with a payment sufficient to escape it. But like the blood of the Passover lamb in Egypt long ago, the blood of Jesus Christ the Lamb of God interposes between us and the death we deserved. Jesus was and is the Firstborn Son of God, and "God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

This promise is for you! You have been redeemed by the precious blood of Jesus Christ. And so you belong no longer to yourself, but to Christ. In baptism you died to sin and rose to new life in Him, that you should offer your bodies to God in righteousness and thanksgiving. You are no longer your own: you were bought with a price. And lest you think that means nothing but tedium and toil-- I know how the old Adam in us can think!-- remember that Jesus’ blood paid for all of it. Jesus is our righteousness, our health, our hope, our strength. In Him we can do the perfect will of God, for by His death He has set us free.

That day, Mary and Joseph dedicated her firstborn Son Jesus to the Lord, to acknowledge that God had the right to claim His services continually in the temple. But the day came, thirty-three years later, when the Levitical priesthood was abolished. On that day, Jesus, Mary’s firstborn Son and the only-begotten Son of God, ascended into heaven and sat down at the right hand of the Father. He is there even now, serving God as our eternal and everlasting High Priest and mediator. As it says in the Letter to the Hebrews, "Because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood. Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to make intercession for them." One of the most important jobs of the Levites was to make sure that the common people did not approach the Holy of Holies. As it says in Numbers 3:10, "Appoint Aaron and his sons to serve as priests; anyone else who approaches the sanctuary must be put to death." But it is the joy and triumph of our Lord Jesus Christ to open the very presence of God to all who believe. Again as the writer to the Hebrews puts it, "Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God in full assurance, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water."

This promise is for us! Since Jesus the Firstborn Son has become our great high priest, cleansing us by the sprinkling of His own blood, we are consecrated to serve God as priests under Him. As the Apostle Peter says, "You also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ." We offer those spiritual sacrifices as we demonstrate the love and praise of Jesus Christ in all we do and are. We are Christ’s priests as we study His word so we can to tell others what He has done on the cross to rescue us and all sinners from the judgement to come. Not just how He’s made our lives better or happier or more fulfilling. No, how Jesus has dealt with our sin and made us fit to enter the very presence of God.

That day, Mary and Joseph dedicated her firstborn Son Jesus to the Lord, to acknowledge that Jesus was the beginning of God’s blessing of children to them, the finest they could offer. But the day would come thirty-three years later when God Almighty would raise Jesus, Mary’s firstborn Son and the only-begotten Son of God, from the dead; as St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, "Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came by a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ will all be made alive. But each in his own turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him." And in Colossians 1, "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation." And later in the same passage, "And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy." In Jesus Christ God has offered the first and the best to Himself, and Jesus stands as the representative and symbol of all those who belong to Him.

This promise is for us! Christ has died, Christ has risen, and Christ will come again. When He does, He will raise us to be like Him, holy and without blemish, because Christ the firstfruits is holy. As the firstborn of Mary, He shares and redeems our humanity; as the firstborn of God, He gives us eternal life and will transform our mortal bodies to be like His immortal body.

In the Christian life we speak of being "dedicated to the Lord." But friends, we can only speak that way because Jesus Christ, Mary’s firstborn and the Firstborn of God, first dedicated Himself to His Father and to us. He died for in our place, He perfectly serves God in our place, and He is our Elder Brother and Head, so that His life and obedience is credited to us and overflows to our eternal benefit. He dedicated us to Himself when we were called to faith by His Holy Spirit, He confirmed that dedication in our baptism, and by His Spirit Jesus day by day makes us more and more like Himself, a perfect Offering fit for presentation to our holy God and Father. God has not left us on our own, to try to be holy and acceptable by our own efforts! He has given us His Firstborn Son. It is in Christ that we are justified. In Christ we walk in holiness and faith. In Christ and Christ alone we will be exalted and glorified, to the praise of God the Father.

Accept God’s gift to you this Christmastide, and through Jesus the Firstborn may you present yourselves to the Lord, growing in holiness, goodness, and all spiritual blessings, as you give thanks to God for His love, mercy, and indescribable grace. Amen.

The Great Physician's Diagnosis

Texts: Ezekiel 36:22-32; Matthew 15:1-20

WE'RE A VERY HEALTH-CONSCIOUS nation. One way we raise health awareness is by dedicating certain weeks or months to some disease or other. Like, February is National Heart Month. So all through every February the Heart Association runs public service announcements urging us to take care of our hearts. You'll hear about the symptoms of heart attack and heart disease and congestive heart failure, and always you'll be urged to go see your physician to get checked out if you're experiencing any of these.

In the same spirit, how would it be if a nonprofit action group-- let's call it the Church-- would run a PSA something like this (cue the ominous music and the caring and serious announcer):

"Sluggishness in doing good. Rebelliousness against God. Evil thoughts. Evil deeds. Murder. Adultery. Sexual immorality. Theft. False testimony. Slander. These are all symptoms of Hard and Dirty Heart. Think you don't have any of these symptoms? That's a sure sign of Pride--the most dangerous symptom of all.

"100% of all people everywhere are infected with Hard and Dirty Heart, and without treatment, the condition is 100% fatal.

"But there is hope! Make an appointment with Jesus Christ the Great Physician at your local church this coming Sunday. He has the medicine to cure Hard and Dirty Heart and make your heart clean towards God and soft towards your fellow man. Don't delay! Remember, without Jesus Christ, the death rate is 100%. With His treatment, your cure is 100% guaranteed!

"This announcement has been brought to you by the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church."

Think that'd go over on KDKA or Froggy 104? Or would the listeners think it was over the top?
They shouldn't. And we shouldn't. Of all health awareness announcements, it's the one where we can be assured that the statistics are totally accurate and the advice is sure.

Jesus Christ is known as the Great Physician. That's largely because of His healing ministry when He walked this earth. But even more, Jesus is the Great Physician because He's the only one who can diagnose our basic human sickness-- without error or mistake. He's the only doctor who can deliver an absolutely effective cure.

And every last human being is or ought to submit to His care and be His patient.

When you're a patient, you're the one being acted upon. The physician is the agent. He's the one giving the medicine, running the tests, performing the surgery. Now today, we're urged to be "partners" in our medical care, and not just patients. And to a great extent that's a good thing. But there comes a time when you're a patient, pure and simple, and there's no arguing about "partnership." When you're under anesthesia, you're not cooperating with your surgeon, it's all up to him or her.

If that's so for our human physicians, how much more is it true for the Great Physician, Jesus Christ, the Son of God!

Our reading from Ezekiel should open our eyes to the truth of this. The Lord God of Israel, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is speaking to the exiles in Babylon. And by the power of the Holy Spirit, He's also speaking to us. Notice this: all through this passage it's all about the Lord and what He will do and why He will do it. He will show the holiness of His great name. He will take His people out from among the nations and bring them back into their own land. He will make them clean. He will put His Spirit in them. He will cause their land to be prosperous. And so on and on. The Lord God is the Great Physician of His people Israel, and the only role they have as His patients is to loathe themselves for their disease, for their sins and their detestable practices.
There's a joke that goes, "What's the difference between God and a surgeon?" Answer: "God doesn't think He's a surgeon." Well, here in Ezekiel 36, the Lord God begs to differ. He is Israel's surgeon, and He's taking on their case strictly for the sake of His holy Name. With a human physician that would be insufferable. For God, it is only just and right. He alone is worthy of all honor, glory, and praise. The universe will be healthy and whole only when every creature gives God the worship due His name. But here, God's own chosen people have caused Him to be blasphemed among the Gentiles. The pagan nations were saying, "Ha! The Lord God of Israel, He isn't much! He took on that miserable people, He gave them His laws and covenants and put them in that fine and fertile land. And all they've done is disobey Him and make Him look weak! Those people were so bad, He couldn't keep His promises to them and had to kick them out of their promised land! He must not be so holy as He claims!"

Do we think we're better than our ancient ancestors the Jews? We don't dare. How often do unbelievers say that kind of thing about Christians today? Is the Lord's name profaned in the world because of our hard and dirty hearts? I'm afraid too often, it is.

But the Lord our God is holy. He is able to cure Israel of their deadly disease, and He is able to cure us. And He will do it, not for our sake, but for the sake of His holy Name, so all the nations round about, so all the unbelievers who doubt His power will know that He and He alone is the great and Sovereign Lord.

The Great Physician diagnoses our problem and its cure in verses 25 and 26. He says, "I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols." The Pharisees in Jesus' day were concerned to the point of panic with ritual uncleanness: God Almighty is concerned with the dirtiness of our thoughts and deeds. Our hearts and minds are filthy with idols and their worship. True, we don't physically bow down to idols of wood and stone. But we're still idolaters. You know what idol every one of us worships every day? The idol of Self. It's the idol Satan set up in the hearts of Adam and Eve way back in the Garden of Eden, and we humans have been burning incense and making sacrifices to Ourselves as gods and goddesses ever since.

The Lord knows we need to be cured of the dread heart disease of Self and Sin, because it's 100% fatal. The Lord says in verse 26, "I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh."

Think what it means to have a heart of stone. Can a heart made of stone beat? Can it pump blood through the body to keep it alive? Can it feel compassion towards its neighbor? Can it swell with joy towards its Lord and Creator? Can a heart of stone even be alive? No, no, no, no, no, and no! A heart of stone is dead. A heart of stone can do nothing, simply nothing to change or soften or cure itself.

And a heart of stone is what every man, woman, and child ever born on this planet starts out with. We all are born hard-hearted and unclean, caring only about ourselves and what will make us happy and fulfilled. And if anyone else gets in the way, watch out!

Our only hope is the merciful intervention of the Great Physician. Our only help is the Lord God making us His patient and giving us a new hearts of flesh instead of our old hearts of stone.

And here is the good news! The operation doesn't depend on me or you! The Holy Spirit comes to us while we are still dead in our sins and makes us alive in Jesus Christ. God Himself takes all the initiative, He does all the work, God in Christ suffered all the pain. The Word of God is the Great Physician's scalpel that cuts away our disease. The shed blood of Christ is the medicine that washes out our impurities and makes us healthy and whole.

The new heart God promised the house of Israel in Ezekiel 36 is the same one He gives to us-- it is the new and clean heart of Jesus Christ Himself. His heart is the one that makes us alive. His heart is the one that now beats in us with compassion towards our neighbor. His heart is the heart in us that we lift up with joy, thanks, and praise towards our Father in heaven.

Some people might say, "I don't want the new heart of Jesus Christ in me. I'm offended because God says He's going to save me only to vindicate His own holiness. I'm insulted because He says there's nothing special or good or deserving in me that forces Him to come and cure me. I'm going to be saved on my own terms, or not at all!"

Oh, you silly human! Don't you realize that you can't be saved on your own terms? Don't you understand that when the Great Physician operates on you for the sake of His holy Name, that's the best and most wonderful thing He can ever do for you?

The benefits of God's surgery were wonderful enough under the Old Covenant: Plentiful crops, prosperous towns, plentiful livestock, and a burgeoning population. Under the New Covenant in the blood of Christ, it's even better! We have gained nothing less than eternal unity with the holy heart of God! For now for Jesus Christ Himself keeps God's laws and decrees within us. Jesus Himself, by His new and clean heart working within us, does in us what is pleasing towards God, and brings us every blessing of obedience.

But there is still one big problem, of course. Our new and true heart is the heart of Jesus Christ, yes. But our old dead, dirty, stoney hearts keep wanting to push Jesus aside and go back to running the show. They tell us all sorts of deadly lies about how things can be. And here's the deadliest lie of all: It's when our old sinful hearts whisper, "Hey, I've got it under control! Jesus has saved you, but now I can handle it by myself! I can keep God happy with you. I'll just use Jesus as a Good Example and make sure you keep all the rules about how to be good and acceptable to God, no sweat! Whaddya say?"

This is a lie from the pit of Hell. This was the false cure the Pharisees were perpetrating in Jesus' day. They thought they were the nation's spiritual physicians, but their prescription was all wrong. They thought people could be holy before God by following outward rules. Wash your hands a certain way before you eat! Set up a trust to send all your spare cash to the temple fund, even if it means Mom and Dad will starve! No, you can not haz cheezburger--that's milk and beef in the same meal! The Pharisees were pushing all these outward practices like magic pills to make the people pleasing to the Lord. They'd totally forgotten that the outward laws and ordinances given through Moses were always about what a person was like on the inside. It was always about having a clean and loving heart before God and man. The ceremonial laws were never supposed to be a substitute for true inward spiritual health. But that's what the Pharisees had made of them.

Jesus calls the Pharisees "blind guides." He could've called them "quack doctors," too. He told Peter and the other disciples not to follow them, and He tells us, His modern-day disciples, the same thing. We don't need rules and regimens for holy living, we need the radical heart surgery performed exclusively by the Great Physician, Jesus Christ.

Once Jesus has done His work in us, the only follow-up directive is for us to wholly rely on Him. He is in us, by His Spirit, living His pure life of obedience within us and through us. Always, continually, refer all your troubles, all your temptations, all your fears back to Him and His finished work on the Cross. He will make sure that the fruit of a clean heart, like pure thoughts, affirmation of life, faithfulness, sexual purity, respect for others' property, truthfulness, gracious speech, and every other virtue-- that all these will proceed out of you without your being able to stop them!

For Jesus did not save you then just walk away. No, He sustains His new life in you by the power of His Holy Spirit. He ministers to you by His means of grace; that is, by the preaching of His holy Word and by partaking in His Holy Sacraments. Maybe you'd never thought of Holy Communion as a health tonic. But it is. Here at the Lord's Table Jesus feeds us with His body and cleanses us with His blood. Here our hearts are lifted up to Him and we and all His saints are joined more closely to His eternal life. Here we are filled with a new sense of what our Lord did for us when He died for our sins on Calvary and what He keeps on doing for us, day after day after day.

Believe the Great Physician's diagnosis. Accept the new heart He died to give you. Live in the joy of His Holy Spirit. Jesus lived and died and rose again to make Hard and Dirty Heart a disease of the past. In humility and thanksgiving, for the sake of God's holy Name, come, receive the Cure He offers you, and be healthy and whole, alive and utterly, joyfully clean. ________________________

Image via http://wordle.net/

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.