The Secret Factor

Texts: Ezekiel 36:16-36; Mark 5:21-43

YOU KNOW HOW YOU’LL BE WATCHING a commercial on TV, and it claims that the product is "New and Improved!"? Yeah, right, they say that all the time; there’s probably nothing new about that cleaner or tool or whatever it is, at all. But then you try it, and what do you know? It really is better. It’s got some patented new ingredient or factor in it that makes it more effective than it was before. The manufacturer may give this ingredient a fancy name for advertising purposes, but what it actually is is a secret, and the secret ingredient makes all the difference.

Secret ingredients and secret factors can make all the difference in machines and laundry detergents. So how much more does it matter in God’s plan for our salvation! Nearly two thousand years ago in the land of occupied Israel comes a rabbi from Nazareth named Jesus preaching, teaching, and healing, and at first He struck the crowd as just another preaching, teaching, and healing rabbi-- a lot of them were around in those days. But as people encountered Him and experienced what He did, they came to realize there was something different about Jesus, some secret factor that set Him apart from the rest. The whole gospel according to St. Mark is about that secret factor, about who Jesus really is. It’s so important to Mark that he reveals from the start what it is. Turn if you will to the first verse of Mark’s Gospel, and let’s read what he says there. It says, "The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God."

Wow! Jesus of Nazareth not only is the Christ-- the Anointed One-- the Messiah, He is also the one and only Son of God! Jesus comes proclaiming the kingdom of God, and He’s not just a messenger or herald like John the Baptist, Jesus is the divine King Himself. Where Jesus is, there is God’s Kingdom, and bit by bit, miracle by miracle, Jesus reveals that all the promises of God are totally and gloriously fulfilled in Him.

In our reading from Ezekiel we have an example of some of those promises. The Lord says that the people of Israel and their land would be cleansed of its bloody defilement and healed in spirit and heart. The Lord would put His Spirit on them so they would not defile themselves with idols and disobedience again. These words of cleansing were for the Jewish exiles who would return from Babylon, yes. But they looked forward to an even greater salvation than the physical and political restoration promised then. The land, as it says in verse 35, will be like the Garden of Eden; paradise will be restored and all the nations will honor the name of the Lord.

This is ultimately a picture of the coming Kingdom of God. Jesus not only talks about the Kingdom; He makes it real in all He teaches and does. A few days before the events of our passage in Mark 5, Jesus showed His dominion over nature by calming a ferocious storm with a word. Then He showed His rulership over the demons by casting a legion of them out of a man whom no one could subdue. And now, in our passage, He shows that He is the Lord who cleanses His people from all their impurities.

On this particular day, Jesus and His disciples have barely landed on shore when Jairus, one of the synagogue rulers-- he’d be like an elder in the church, but with more social position and better perks-- comes running up to Jesus and begs Him to come heal his young daughter, who dying right now. But while life remains, there is hope, and if anyone can heal his child, Jesus can.

You can imagine the crowd. People were glad to see Jesus anyway, and now there was the chance to see Him do a spectacular miracle for a very prominent man. After all, people could understand that He might be the Messiah-- an inspired, holy, God-driven, strictly-human Messiah. And come the day King Jesus would free Israel and sit down on His throne in Jerusalem, they could say that they were there to see Him prove He was the Christ. Not an opportunity you’d want to miss.

Meanwhile, one woman in the crowd was making her own opportunity . . . A woman who had suffered for the past twelve years with a pathological flow of blood. The physical and financial toll had been drastic enough. The social and religious suffering she must have endured would have been even worse.

To understand her position, it would help for us to read Leviticus 15:25-31:

"‘When a woman has a discharge of blood for many days at a time other than her monthly period or has a discharge that continues beyond her period, she will be unclean as long as she has the discharge, just as in the days of her period. Any bed she lies on while her discharge continues will be unclean, as is her bed during her monthly period, and anything she sits on will be unclean, as during her period. Whoever touches them will be unclean; he must wash his clothes and bathe with water, and he will be unclean till evening. . . .

"‘You must keep the Israelites separate from things that make them unclean, so they will not die in their uncleanness for defiling my dwelling place, which is among them.’"

There were similar rules in the Law of Moses for anyone, male or female, who had any sort of running sore or bodily discharge, especially blood. Emissions violated the physical perfection of one’s body. They were signs of sin and disorder. They were incompatible with wholeness and therefore with holiness before God. The blood of the altar brought forth cleansing and acceptance with the Lord, but blood in the wrong place and from the wrong source was polluting. We see that in our Ezekiel passage, where the Lord says that Israel’s wicked conduct was like a woman’s monthly uncleanness before Him. Misplaced, uncontrolled blood and every other bodily discharge made not only the one who had it ritually unclean, but also everyone and everything that person touched.

We mustn’t impose our 21st century ideas on this woman. It’s doubtful she’d gone around the past twelve years resenting this law and feeling the injustice of it all. Even as she suffered, she would have accepted that this was how things were. She wanted to correct her condition; she’d spent every penny she had trying to be cured. She wanted to stand again in the synagogue and the Temple clean and whole before her neighbors and Almighty God. But now she no longer even had anyone she could send to ask Jesus to come to her to heal her. She takes advantage of the facelessness and crush of the crowd and exercises the last hope she has. Jesus was there, in the middle of the scrum, and "If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed."

And her faith was rewarded. Free, free at last! Free from the blood, free from the pain, free from the debilitation, free from the impurity! We have read what happens next, how Jesus in His compassion draws the woman out and gives her the time to tell Him the whole truth about why and how she did what she did. Poor Jairus Mark doesn’t mention, but we can imagine what terrible anxiety he must be in. Every second longer that this woman talks is one second closer to its being too late for his little girl! But Jesus has all the time in the world to give to the healed woman, because He is God incarnate, Lord of Eternity. He certifies and declares her healing and her cleansing from her impurity. "Daughter," He says, "your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering." Her physical suffering ended the moment she touched His clothes; now, with the blessing of the Son of God, the suffering of her heart and soul and relationships are also at an end. In her the prophecy of Ezekiel is fulfilled; for her in Jesus Christ the Kingdom of God has come.

But the crowd and the messengers from Jairus’ house don’t know that. They’re not in on the secret of who Jesus actually is. "Your daughter is dead," they tell the synagogue ruler. "Why bother the teacher any more?" In other words, "There’s nothing even Jesus can do now. Give it up and come home."

Jesus ignores them. "Jairus," He says, "Don’t be afraid; keep on believing." Jairus, you believed in Me a few minutes ago; you can still rely on Me now.

Jesus forbids the crowd to follow Him any farther, but it’s likely they’d lost interest anyway. Everyone knows the child is dead. She was practically dead when her father set out on his desperate mission. The professional mourners are already there doing their job. What a laugh that Jesus should say, "The child is not dead but asleep"!

Now, some commentators claim that this means Jesus knew she was only in a coma. But how could He know that? He had not seen her yet. And this was a culture that did its dying at home. They knew what death looked like. No, this twelve year old girl slept the sleep of death, the sleep of those who go to the grave awaiting the resurrection. Jesus was a mighty healer, but what could even He do in a case like this?

He went into the death chamber taking only her parents and Peter, James, and John. He reached out and took the hand of that cold corpse and spoke life into it. "Talitha koum!"-- "Little girl, I say to you, get up!" Jesus Christ the Lord of life gave life where there was none, so that she stood up perfectly well and healthy. And as with the woman healed of the flow of blood, Jesus is divinely compassionate and commands that she be fed. This child is not a mere test case, a demonstration of His kingly power. She was a human being, an adolescent girl who’d be hungry and needed something to eat.

Jesus strictly orders everyone present not to let anyone know what He had done for that little girl. For it was not yet time for Him to reveal who and what He was. His Messiahship was not to be founded on the death and resurrection of the daughter of Jairus, but on the death and resurrection of the Son of God.

But here’s something we might overlook. The bleeding woman touched Jesus. The Law said that anyone an unclean person touched would be contaminated, too. But Jesus does not withdraw and undergo the rituals for cleansing. Jesus touched the corpse of the dead girl. Here is what the Law says in the book of Numbers about that:

"Whoever touches the dead body of anyone will be unclean for seven days. He must purify himself with the water on the third day and on the seventh day; then he will be clean. But if he does not purify himself on the third and seventh days, he will not be clean. Whoever touches the dead body of anyone and fails to purify himself defiles the LORD’s tabernacle. That person must be cut off from Israel. Because the water of cleansing has not been sprinkled on him, he is unclean; his uncleanness remains on him."

But Jesus doesn’t observe this ordinance, either. In fact, He goes to Nazareth and teaches in the synagogue the very next Sabbath. Is Jesus guilty (as the scribes and Pharisees claimed) of flouting the Law of Moses? Or is the secret factor about Him at work here?

Of course it is. He is the Son of God. He is the Lord of holiness who as it says in Ezekiel 36 sprinkles the water of cleansing on us. He is the Lord of life who makes disease and uncleanness, sin and death as though they had never been. All our impurity can never contaminate Him.

Except . . . except on a dark dirty Friday on a hill called Calvary when He took all our uncleanness and corruption on Himself, that we might stand pure, whole, and acceptable before Almighty God. Your sin and mine was like a twelve-year issue of menstrual blood, but the blood of Jesus shed for us on the cross makes us pure and clean, fit to enter His Kingdom. In our trespasses and sins we were dead and rotting corpses, but faith in the dead body of our Lord Jesus Christ makes us whole and makes us deathless children of God. He purged away all our impurity on that cross and three days later rose again, revealed as our pure and holy Lord and King.

The people in Jesus’ day didn’t realize who He was. But now the secret is revealed and the promises of the Kingdom are for you and for all whom the Lord shall call. What a great miracle that is! In His divine compassion, Jesus put forth His power and did all this for us! The secret factor of Christ the Son of God is a secret no longer; no, Jesus commands us to spread the news throughout the world!

But maybe this means nothing to you as yet. Maybe you’re trying to clean yourself up before you come and fall at His feet. Can you be hygienic wallowing in a cesspool? Give it up. Maybe you’re still kidding yourself about how offensive your sins are to God and you’re hoping to earn your way to eternal life by your good deeds. Can a stinking corpse run a marathon? Give it up. Your situation is worse than you realize and the blood of Jesus Christ is your only hope.

But there is hope in Jesus, overwhelming, abundant hope. He will never fail you, never send you away, never let you down. His heart is moved with compassion for you, for He is your Great Physician. Nothing is impossible for Him, for He is the Son of God the Father Almighty. Like the woman in the crowd, reach out now in faith and Jesus will cleanse you from all your sin. Trust Him like Jairus, and Jesus will give you new life like the life He won when He came forth triumphant from the grave.

No other Messiah. No other healer. No other god. Jesus, in our helplessness, help us, we pray. Look with compassion upon us, cleanse us from all our sins, give us new life in your name, and fill us with Your peace. Amen.

The Lord, the God of Salvation

Texts: 2 Corinthians 6:1-13; 1 Samuel 17:1-54; Mark 4:35-41

"AS GOD’S FELLOW WORKERS WE URGE you not to receive God’s grace in vain. For he says,
‘In the time of my favor I heard you,
and in the day of salvation I helped you.’
"I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation."
______________________

"I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation."

These are the words of the Apostle Paul that begin our epistle reading for today. He wrote initially to the church in Corinth, in Greece, but by the power of the Holy Spirit, these words are for us as well. God’s grace and salvation is an urgent matter. We must not receive this gift of God in vain; that is, merely outwardly or to go along with what our friends and family are doing; no, the salvation of God must be received sincerely, humbly, with awe and holy love, that the grace of our Lord may have its effect in us.

All of our Scripture passages this morning have to do with the salvation of God, including the Psalm we recited for the Responsive Reading. It stands to reason: From start to finish the Bible is the story of God’s salvation. The saga of His work for humanity from the days of Adam to the days of the New Testament church is often called "salvation history." There is nothing in this life more essential for you to know. There is nothing in this world more disastrous if you ignore it or take it for granted.

We don’t use this word "salvation" much outside the Church. But we all know what it means to be rescued or saved from some terrible situation. Maybe you’re caught in a flash flood like the ones that hit the area last Wednesday, and the water picks up your car and rushes you into the nearest creek. But a brave policemen comes in a boat and fishes you out. Maybe your house catches fire and you’re trapped inside. Then a strong fireman comes and saves you. Or maybe you don’t have quite enough to pay your mortgage. But a generous relative or friend comes along in the nick of time and gives you the cash you need. In all these cases, you were in a desperate fix and somebody came along and rescued you from it. You received salvation.

But the word "salvation" these days seems reserved for use by the Christian Church, and really, that’s appropriate. Because as bad as it would be to be swept away by a flash flood or to be burnt up in a fire or to have your house sold out from under you, far, far worse is the situation all human beings are in that makes us all need the salvation of God. Financial loss, even utter destitution, could never be as devastating as the loss of fellowship with God forever. Physical danger, even physical death, is nothing compared with the agonies of eternal death and hell that await those who insist on continuing in their sin. The God of salvation rescues us from dangers that we cannot even imagine this side of eternity. His saving power is better and stronger and more effective than the most heroic earthly rescue could ever be.

And as wonderful as policemen and firemen and generous friends can be, far more glorious and worthy of praise is God Almighty, who rescues us from eternal death and everlasting loss. Jesus our Saviour knew it would cost Him everything to come to our rescue: Position, dignity, reputation, His very life-- even in that terrible moment of abandonment on the Cross, He suffered the loss of His relationship with His Father. Christ our God was not compelled to save us. We didn’t earn it; we didn’t put Him in our debt; when He saved us it was not because we were so cute and winsome, like kittens up a tree. Rather, out of His own free grace the Lord our God chose in love to grant us salvation through our His Son Jesus Christ. Such grace must never be taken for granted or received in vain!

I wonder, when we read the responsive Psalm, did you see yourself as one of those who knows the name of the Lord and trust in Him? Or did you recognise yourself as one of "the enemies," the wicked nations who dig pits to trap the righteous? When you heard the word of the Lord as written in the seventeenth chapter of 1 Samuel, whom did you identify with? Were you cheering for David and Israel, or for Goliath and the Philistines?

If I believed in betting, I’d lay money you were all identifying with Israel, with those who seek God. But why? On what basis? The Scripture teaches us in the Psalms and in Paul’s letter to the Romans that no one seeks God. We read in the Letter to the Ephesians that naturally-speaking, we non-Jews were separated from Christ and excluded from citizenship in Israel. We have no right to claim the salvation of God! And even if we can claim some Jewish blood, the Old Testament Scriptures teach us that Israel was not chosen by God because it as a nation was stronger or more numerous or more deserving than any other people. As human beings, the Jews of old were just as rebellious and disobedient as the pagans were. All of us start life as enemies of God; we deserve nothing from Him but defeat and destruction! So how can any of say that like David we’re soldiers in the army of the living God? How can we rank ourselves with the righteous and not only wait for God’s salvation, but also confidently expect it?

But we do, and we can, for by His grace God makes us part of His covenant people, with all the rights and privileges pertaining to our position with Him. The Lord long ago called our spiritual father Abraham and made a covenant with him, a covenant that was all about what God would do for Abraham and his seed; all Abraham had to do was humbly receive God’s favour through faith. That covenant was not set aside by the secondary covenant that God made with Israel through Moses at Mount Sinai; in truth, the covenant of Sinai was tributary to the earlier covenant, showing us more clearly His divine righteousness and our sin and driving us to depend on Him alone for salvation.

It was this covenant of grace that David the shepherd boy appealed to when he walked into that valley to answer the challenge of Goliath of Gath. More than once in this passage David refers to his opponent as "this uncircumcised Philistine." Is David just calling names? Absolutely not. Circumcision was the sign the Lord gave Abraham to signify that he and his descendants were the people of God. It identified Israel with Him and His salvation. But there stood Goliath, insulting the armies of Israel and thereby mocking and defying God Himself. Goliath cursed David by his false gods, who could not save. David relied on his covenant Lord, the God of Israel’s salvation, and through God he defeated the giant and won the victory.

We can claim God’s salvation in our day, for the covenant of grace that God made with our father Abraham is made perfect in His Messiah, Jesus our Saviour and Lord. We inherit His salvation through the new covenant made in His blood. David the son of Jesse took his stand in the Valley of Elah, but Jesus the Son of David took His stand on the hill of Calvary, and there He defeated the ultimate enemy, Death. Now through God’s favour we are included with His covenant people and rejoice in how He has saved us.

We can even rejoice in situations that might make the unsaved world think hadn’t received salvation at all; at least not the kind the world would understand. Paul writes in our reading from 2 Corinthians of troubles, hardships, distresses, beatings, imprisonments, and so on and on. There’s some good things listed in here, but mostly it’s one long tale of suffering and woe. They’re the kind of thing we’d beg to be rescued from, but for Paul they became credentials that proved that he and his fellow apostles were truly the servants of God. For if Paul and his fellow-workers were suffering, it was for the sake of Christ who first suffered for them and for us all, that we might receive the salvation of God.

Our passage follows on from Paul’s teaching in chapter 5. There Paul reminded the Corinthians that Jesus Christ died for us, that He has reconciled us to God through His blood. That is the salvation our God offers us! Everyone who proclaims this gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ, like Paul is an ambassador of God the King, and like every duly-appointed ambassador, each one must show his or her credentials.

All who bear the name of Christ, especially those who are ministers of the salvation of God, must be ready to commend themselves by their willingness to suffer for Jesus’ sake; they must show themselves genuine by their holiness and graciousness of life and by their kindness and love to all people, especially to the people of God; they must demonstrate their total dependence on the Holy Spirit and the power of God. They must be willing to suffer rejection, even rejection by the very churches whom they love.

How could any human being bear such a cross? Only through the power of the Lord, the God of our salvation, working in him.

Paul could bear all his hardships and even display them as proofs of God working in him, for Jesus Christ was and is the God of his salvation. Through Christ Paul was assured of life and joy and fellowship with Almighty God, in this life and in the world to come. And so we can be assured as well.

As we go through life, often we’re like the disciples on the boat with Jesus that night on the Sea of Galilee, tossed by the storm and thinking He doesn’t care if we drown. But we’re forgetting who this Man is. He is Jesus Christ, the Lord, the God of our salvation. His very name reminds us of that-- for it means "Jehovah saves." At His word giants fall, wind and waves are calmed, and our very sufferings for His sake become badges of honor, credentials that show we are ambassadors of our Lord the crucified and risen King.

Our God is the God who saves. Jesus the Son of David came down into the valley of this world and won for us the salvation we need, the rescue we could never manage for ourselves. Hear Him as He speaks to you in love through the words of His servant Paul. Do not receive God’s grace in vain. Don’t ignore the Good News for some pleasure or interest in this world you think is more important. Don’t allow the troubles of this life lead you to despise the salvation won for you by Christ on Calvary, to make you think He’s helpless in this fallen world. Rather, know that it is in the midst of battle and storm and difficulty that the Lord shows His saving power most clearly. It is when we face our helplessness, when we have given up any hope of saving ourselves, that He moves us to turn to Him and accept the salvation He brings.

This good news is for you if you’ve been a Christian for ninety years, or if you’ve just been going through the motions and aren’t yet a Christian at all. The Lord, the God of your salvation offers His grace to you through His Son, your Saviour Jesus Christ. In humility and trust, accept what He has done for you. For with Paul, I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Victory That Overcomes the World

Texts: Jeremiah 17:5-14; 1 John 5:1-6

THESE PAST FEW DAYS I'VE been digging in my garden, getting some things planted. You'd think it wouldn't be much of a project in the vegetable garden. I've been turning over the soil there the past five or six years; I live close to the river and the soil is very sandy; it should be nice and loose. But it takes hours of work every spring.

You see, I have a couple of big maple trees in my back yard, and their roots creep under the ground right into my garden beds. It takes a lot of labor with the hoe and the spade and the tree branch loppers to get them out of the way.

If my trees could talk, they'd likely say something like this: "Sure, you want us to stop our roots just at the border of your vegetable garden and flower beds and go somewhere else-- like under the neighbors' lawns. Not happening. Of course we're putting our roots where you plant things! That's where all the loose dirt and the fertilizer and the water is!"

Trees as trees are not dummies. They go where the water and nutrients are. It only makes sense.

So why, then, do we human beings not do the same? But our natural tendency is to seek out the very conditions that bring us death. Here's how the prophet Jeremiah puts it in the 17th chapter of his book:

This is what the LORD says:
"Cursed is the one who trusts in man,
who depends on flesh for his strength
and whose heart turns away from the LORD.
He will be like a bush in the wastelands;
he will not see prosperity when it comes.
He will dwell in the parched places of the desert,
in a salt land where no one lives.

Can any bush survive in conditions like that? But we're like that when we turn away from faith in the Lord. We trust instead in ourselves. We rely on what other people can do for us. We run after money or power or anything other than God. The Lord Almighty is a river that never runs dry, but we send out our roots into the wastelands of our own self-sufficiency and self-deification.

How different it is when we trust in the Lord! The Scripture says:

"But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD,
whose confidence is in him.
He will be like a tree planted by the water
that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
and never fails to bear fruit."

Even when external conditions aren't good, God causes those who trust Him to prosper and bear fruit. He nourishes us into becoming the kind of people He wants us to be, people who love Him and our brothers and sisters the way He created us to do.

So why do we turn away from Him?

We do it because as Jeremiah says, "The heart is deceitful above all things." We lie-- even to ourselves. We convince ourselves that we really are trusting God when we're really depending on ourselves. We claim to be doing what He commands, but we're doing what we want to do when we want to do it. It's the same with every person who has ever lived. We don't trust and obey God and if somebody points that out, we deny the problem in any number of ways.

Only the Lord can search our hearts and examine our minds, to reward us according to what our deeds deserve. A lot of people think that's good news. They say, "I'm not a particularly religious person, but God will look at my heart." But if your faith is in anything or anyone other than the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, you don't want Him examining your heart; you want to run and hide. For the human heart is not only deceitful above all things, as it says in verse 9, it is also "beyond cure."

So what are we to do? The glorious throne of God is our sanctuary and refuge, but how do we get there? The Lord Almighty is our spring of living water, but how can we drink from it? We keep on turning away; we keep forsaking the Lord, and it seems our names are written in the dust, to blow away with the next wind.

Anyway, how can a dry bush reach out its roots to the living God? The world has us in its dusty grip and gives us only defeat and death.

Jeremiah and the Jews of his time couldn't answer that question. They knew it was up to God-- if we go down to verse 14, we read, "Heal me, O Lord, and I will be healed; save me, and I will be saved, for you are the one I praise." But how could God heal a deceitful heart that was beyond cure? How could He revive a dead shrub in the desert, that was ready for the fire?

The good news is that God does accomplish all this, through His Son our Lord Jesus Christ. He cures us, He revives us, and better still, as the Apostle John tells us in the fifth chapter of his first letter, He makes us to be children of God.

God didn't have to do this. But He took what was dead and out of His own will and in His good pleasure He begat us as His spiritual children, giving us faith to believe that Jesus of Nazareth really was and is the Christ sent from God. Our trust in Christ is evidence that we have been born of God already, not something we did to make it happen.

When we believe that "Jesus is the Christ" we're agreeing with God about His mission on earth. We say, "Yes, Lord," to all the prophecies of Old Testament history that told what this unique prophet, priest, king, and suffering servant would someday do. We're saying, "I believe that Jesus of Nazareth fulfilled all that and is the one and only Messiah who was to come." He is the arm of the Lord who brings us salvation; He is the sinless Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

We could never make this confession on our own. God first had to give us new birth from above.
But in His love God did reach down and makes this happen in our lives. Through His Son Jesus Christ He takes dry bushes out of the wasteland and remakes us as tall, healthy, fruitful trees planted by a river that freely flows. He gives us the right to love Him and call Him "our Father," not as His creatures, but really and truly, as His born-again daughters and sons. At the same time, He opens our hearts to love all our brothers and sisters who, like us, have been born anew as members of His worldwide family, the Church.

Faith in God is linked inseparably with love for our brothers and sisters in Christ. God says, "Love Me, love My children." But it can be is so hard to love other people, especially other people in the church! Does St. John mean we have to go around feeling gooshy emotions towards each other all the time?

But John says nothing about feelings. He says, "This is how we know we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands." You want to love others? Love God first and obey His law, and that will put you in the right heart for loving your neighbor.

It's popular for people to say, "Jesus only gave one command, for us to love one another." That isn't quite true, but suppose it were. Would that mean we could do we want in life, provided we were nice to other people whenever we felt like it? Absolutely not! In the first place, what we call love is nothing close to the self-sacrificial, purifying, unquenchable love that the Holy Spirit calls us to in this letter. In the second place, all the Law of God: the Ten Commandments, all the ordinances, even the ceremonial law-- it's all a picture and prescription of what love for God and man looks like in practical terms. True, some the parts of it were destined to expire with the coming of Christ, things like animal sacrifices and the kosher laws. But even they told supremely of God's loving desire to preserve a people for Himself and through them to bring salvation to the world. The commands of God revealed in the Law teach us what it means to love Him and His children.

And, John says, His commands are not burdensome.

What a minute. Does he think it's easy to love other people? we ask. He must not have known characters like the ones we have to deal with!

That's our old sinful nature is still in us, getting in the way of who we are in Christ. The a problem is not with the commands, the problem is with that still-sinful part of ourselves.
No, when we are living by the river of water that is trust in our Lord Jesus Christ, God's commands become for us more and more a privilege and a joy.

This is true for you only if you've already been born of God and you already believe faithfully on our Lord Jesus Christ. If that's foreign to you, don't waste your time trying to obey God's commands. Rather, throw yourself immediately on the mercy of the God who made you and pray He will remake you as a child of His own.

As in the days of Jeremiah, the world is always at us. We're constantly bombarded with forces that stand opposed to Jesus Christ and to us as His younger brothers and sisters. But, John says, anyone who is born of God overcomes the world.

How do we do that? By our faith in the saving work of our Lord Jesus, who is the Christ. This is the victory that overcomes the world. This is the rolling stream we keep our roots in and so we live and thrive. Do you want to have confidence in this life and solid hope for the life of the world to come? Believe that Jesus is the Son of God. Trust that He was more than just another great teacher-- rely on Him as God from all eternity, come to earth in human flesh to die for you on a cross and to rise from the grave to give you new life with God.

John writes, "This is the one who came by water and blood-- Jesus Christ. He did not come by water only, but by water and blood." Theologians don't agree on exactly what this means. But John Calvin has a suggestion, which commends itself to my spirit, and I hope it does to yours. Jesus Christ came to us with the testimony of water and blood, and those elements speak to us of the Old Testament system of washings and animal sacrifices. Before Him those rites and rituals looked forward to what Jesus would do once for all to cleanse us from the filth of sin and to make blood atonement for it. When Jesus died on the Cross He fulfilled everything those old Covenant rites pointed towards. And in evidence, when He had died, His Father and ours allowed a Roman soldier to pierce His side so that blood and water poured out of it.

There's nothing miraculous in that of itself. That's what happens when the blood separates due to the kind of death Jesus died. But by the grace of God it serves as a sign to us who believe that Jesus is the one who washes and makes clean, and whose blood provides expiation for all our sins. John certainly took it that way; in his gospel at chapter 19, verses 34 and 35 he says, "One of the soldiers pierced Jesus' side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water. The man who saw it [that is, John himself] has given testimony, and his testimony is true. He knows he tells the truth, and he testifies so that you also may believe."

But we also have the testimony of the Holy Spirit, witnessing to our souls that Jesus Christ really is the Son of God, that He really did come in the flesh and that through faith in Him we really can overcome the world. The Spirit confirms in our souls that we truly have been born of God and that we can joyfully love Him and the brethren despite all the onslaughts of the world, the flesh, and the devil.

As Jeremiah said, a glorious throne, exalted from the beginning, is the place of our sanctuary. We have entered into that sanctuary by the blood of Jesus Christ, shed for us. His blood is a river deep and pure, flowing forever so you can put down your roots and thrive. Faith in Him is your victory; love for God and your brothers and sisters is your battle plan and the name of Jesus is your shout of triumphant praise.

Give God thanks that He has brought you out of the dry and waterless places of life without Him and planted you by His streams of living water. Rejoice that He is your Father and you are His child. Serve Him in reverence and love, in the name of Jesus Christ who died and rose again for you. Alleluia, amen.

Fear, Love, and the Salvation of God

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alleluia, amen!

Living the Life of Christ in a Death-Ridden World

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Love Looks Like

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

God's Ancient Promise, Ever New

Texts: Zechariah 8:12-23; Galatians 3:6-9, 15-22; Matthew 2:1-12

OUR GOSPEL READING FROM St. Matthew declares, "Magi [or wise men] from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, ‘Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him.'"

How many times have we heard them ask that question in this reading at this time of year? If we're long-time church-goers, probably every year of our lives. It's early January, it must be time for the Wise Men to show up looking for the infant King of the Jews! It doesn't surprise us, does it? I mean, we know who that King of the Jews was and is! He's Jesus the Christ, the Son of God! Of course any sensible person, any man-- or woman-- who claims to be wise would come to seek and worship Him!

But we've read the end of the story. We know Who the Babe of Bethlehem turned out to be. The Magi and Herod and the rest of them are still in the middle of Jesus' story; at its beginning, in fact. We can't assume they knew what we know about Him. They couldn't assume what we take for granted.

And maybe if we saw things from their point of view, we, too, would be filled with new wonder, eagerness, and fear, and come to worship our Lord Jesus with fresh hearts and open eyes.

So I ask you, why on earth would the Magi have come all that way, over a thousand miles, to seek and worship the newborn King of the Jews? Who were the Jews in the days of Caesar Augustus, anyway? They were a harried, scattered, barely-tolerated people. Their ancestral land was divided and occupied and ruled by Herod, a puppet king installed by Caesar in Rome. The last king of the royal line of David had died over 500 years before. The Hasmonean kings and queens, the ones descended from Judah the Maccabee and his brothers, that dynasty had lasted only a hundred years. And the last of them, Mariamne daughter of Alexandros, had married Herod himself and he'd had her executed twenty-five years before. Besides, the Maccabees were from the tribe of Levi, not the tribe of Judah like David. They really weren't qualified to sit on the throne of Israel according to God's promise to David. And Herod himself, he wasn't Jewish at all! His father was an Edomite and his mother was a Nabatean Arab. He professed the Jewish religion-- sort of-- but he was only "King of the Jews" because Caesar Augustus had declared him to be. He was king over the Jews, but he wasn't a king from or of the Jews! To talk of a true "king of the Jews" in those days was practically meaningless!

But there the Magi were in Jerusalem, asking after such a king. But they were supposed to be so wise! They were of the great tribe of the Magi! They were the hereditary priests and royal astrologers of the magnificent land of Persia! Actually, why would these Magi, these high officials, these esteemed advisors to kings and princes, bother with anything Jewish at all?

And why should they come now, for this birth? Some scholars believe that the Magi came according to the ordinary international custom of that time. They say that "to worship" only means "to do political homage." But that wouldn't make sense even from an earthly point of view! Kings and nobles paid worship only to rulers they acknowledged as their overlords. The Persians were a proud people who had repulsed the Roman army twice in the previous sixty years. Their nobles weren't about to bow down to the infant King of a miserable conquered people! And suppose they'd intended to do honor to an infant son of Herod, the "official" king of the Jews. Does that really make sense? Herod was always having children! History tells us he had many sons by many wives; yes, and he put many of them to death. If the Magi had wanted to come congratulate old Herod on his newborn offspring, they would've been travelling from Persia to Judea and back again over and over and over.

No, something else was happening here, something the Magi knew and that Herod refused to see. Clearly, back in Persia the wise men had come to know of a promised King of the Jews, who wouldn't be just another earthly king. This knowledge first came to their people when the Medes and the Persians conquered the Babylonian Empire in 538 BC. When they took over the Persians found this peculiar people the Jews living dispersed in the Babylonian lands. The Jews refused to assimilate and take up the gods and the practices of the peoples around them. They kept talking about how the Most High God, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, had personally called their ancestor Abraham and promised to make him the progenitor of the greatest nation on earth. They claimed to be God's chosen people and that His eternal purposes would be worked out through them. The Jews clung to their holy writings, where it said that the Most High had promised that a King would come to sit on the throne of his father David, and his reign would have no end. These writings said that God would be especially active and present with this Davidic king, not the way kings and emperors always claimed to be sons of the gods, but truly and actually. And these scriptures said that this promised king would come as a blessing and light to the non-Jewish nations, to share the blessings of the Most High with them all, if they would come in humility and worship and willingness to serve Him according to His will.

The Wise Men weren't wise merely by training or by tribe. They were wise because they believed what had been revealed to them of God's promises to His people Israel. They were looking forward to the birth of this one, particular, special, promised King of the Jews. As it says in the book of the prophet Zechariah, they were ready day by day to come up to Jerusalem to take firm hold of that One Jew by the hem of His swaddling bands and go with Him to entreat and seek the Lord Almighty, for they knew that God would be with Him indeed. So when they saw the star of our Lord Jesus Christ at its rising, they rejoiced, packed up their gifts, saddled their camels, and quickly as they could, they came.

They didn't expect to find Christ the newborn king in Herod's palace in Jerusalem-- you'll notice in the gospel text, Matthew doesn't say they asked Herod first off; no, it was Herod who called the Magi to come to him. They came to Jerusalem for information and directions only. If the Magi failed in wisdom at any one point, it's that plainly they thought that Herod and his court and all Jerusalem would be as glad as they were to hear that God's King of kings had been born! For if they as Gentiles were overjoyed, how much more should God's people Israel have rejoiced!

But they arrived, and nobody in Jerusalem had heard of the birth of the promised King. They weren't even expecting Him. Herod had to convene a special council of the chief priests and teachers of the law to tell him where the prophets said the Christ was to be born. And in the end, Herod didn't care about God's ancient promises. He only cared about his own present kingdom and power.

We know how the story unfolds. The Magi find the Christ child at the house in Bethlehem where He is now living with Mary His mother and Joseph His foster-father. They bow down to Him and give Him gifts, and receive the blessing of God's promises fulfilled. They are not fooled by Jesus' humble circumstances, for just as Simeon had told Mary in the temple, the Magi recognise that this Child is indeed the promised One, the One born to be "a light to lighten the Gentiles, and to be the glory of God's people Israel."

And we know how Herod tried to trick the Magi into operating as his spies to reveal exactly where the newborn King could be found. John Calvin suggests that the Holy Spirit darkened Herod's mind, so he wouldn't think of sending one of his own men to Bethlehem with the Magi to come back with the information he wanted. Perhaps. Or maybe Herod was afraid that anyone he sent would betray him and pledge loyalty to this newborn King! However it was, God warned the Magi in a dream not to return to Herod and they went back to their eastern land another way.

Matthew doesn't tell us what they said or did when they arrived back home. But by the Holy Spirit the Evangelist tells us what we need to know, that God keeps His ancient promises. Thousands of years before, God called Abraham and promised that all nations would be blessed through him. And in the visit and worship and joy of the Magi, we see the firstfruits of God's fulfilment of His promise. Jesus Christ the King of the Jews was born for them, as much as He was born for His people Israel.

And Jesus Christ was born for us, for you and me. He was and is the glorious fulfilment of all God's promises to father Abraham. The Apostle Paul wants us particularly to be aware of how that fulfillment comes. Many early Jewish Christians, many early Gentile Christians, even, like the members of the church in Galatia, thought the Gentiles laid hold of the promised blessings by becoming Jews. They thought that in order for Christ to be our King, we all had to bind ourselves first by the Law of Moses and keep it perfectly!

We're rather the opposite. Our culture tells us that God will bless us if we're pretty nice and think the baby Jesus in the manger is really, really, adorable.

But no! No to both those false ideas! As Paul writes in the letter to the Galatians, God gave the promise of universal blessing to Abraham, and Abraham "Believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness." Righteousness is necessary to please God. And that righteousness comes not by obedience to the Law of Moses or to the law of niceness, but by faith. And this faith is not a mere feeling, it is a God-given trust in our Lord Jesus Christ, the King of the Jews. This is how God always intended to justify everyone, Jew and Gentile alike: the Wise Men from the east and you and me besides.

God's promise to Abraham was, "All nations will be blessed through you." He gave it to "Abraham and his seed." St. Paul is urgent to make us understand the implications of that. In Galatians 3:16 he says, "The Scripture does not say, ‘and to seeds,' meaning many people, but ‘and to your seed,' meaning one person, who is Christ."

So ultimately, the promise of being a blessing to all nations is made to Jesus Christ. And the benefits of this promise come to us through Jesus Christ! He and He alone is the bringer of the blessing of God to all nations, including you and me and everyone who believes. Jesus has blessed us by His perfect obedient life and His faithful death on the cross. He fulfilled the Law of Moses for us, so that no longer are we prisoners of sin, locked away from the eternal life and love and acceptance of Almighty God. If through faith we have bowed before Jesus Christ, He is our Lord and King and He shares with us all the glorious inheritance that is His as the Son of God.

This was God's intention from of old. It was His intention when He made His promises to Abraham, it was His intention when He inspired the prophecies of Zechariah, it was His intention when by the rising of a star He drew the Wise Men from the east, to seek and worship the infant King of the Jews.

It was the wisest thing the Magi ever did, travelling all that way to worship the infant King of the Jews. And if we are wise we won't let anything stop us from bowing down and worshipping Him, too. That Child grew up to be our crucified and risen Savior Jesus Christ. He is our King, sitting in power at the right hand of the Father. And He calls you and me and all people of all nations to know Him by faith and receive the peace and eternal life with God that He alone can give. This is God's ancient promise of blessing. It is good even to this present day, it will be good forever. Accept it and be joyful, for the promise is for you.