Unalienable Rights

Texts:  Psalm 21; Galatians 3:26-4:7

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Verse 2 says,

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

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

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

    In verse 3 it is written,

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

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

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

    Verse 4 states,

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

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

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

    Verse 5 says,

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

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

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

    Verse 6 affirms,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finding Meaning Under the Sun

Texts:  Ecclesiastes 1:1-11; Romans 8:18-27

   DO YOU EVER FEEL YOU'RE drowning in a sea of futility?  That no matter how hard you try, nothing you do in life really matters?  That it's not just you and your life than's meaningless, but all of creation besides?

    If you've never felt that way, give God praise.  But if you're like most of us ordinary mortals, you know there's times when there seemed to be no point to anything in the world. Back in the 1940s, a whole philosophy was formulated around this idea.  It was called Absurdism, and it taught that if you wanted to be happy in this life, you'd better stop looking for meaning in it.  Just enjoy yourself the best you can, because you and  everything else living is headed for death anyway. 

    Intellectuals in the mid-20th century trumpeted Absurdism as if it were something new.  But it's not.  It goes back to the days of King Solomon and the book of Ecclesiastes.  There we read how a man could reach the summit of earthly wealth, pleasure, and accomplishment, and still cry out that everything was meaningless, utterly meaningless under the sun.

    The book of Ecclesiastes is Holy Scripture and we must take it seriously and apply it correctly.  Thank God, so is St. Paul's letter to the Romans.  Like Solomon, Paul has something to say about futility in the world, but his conclusion is very different from Solomon's.  Why?  What does Paul know that Solomon for all his wisdom overlooks?

    Some Biblical scholars dispute that King Solomon actually wrote Ecclesiastes.  But even if it turns out that he didn't, the whole book is written from Solomon's point of view and matches Solomon's life experience.  So we'll assume he is the author.  In verse 1 of Ecclesiastes 1 the he introduces himself as "the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem."

    There's an absurdity right there, in light of he says in the rest of the book.  Over the centuries, the title "son of David" became an expression of hope for Israel.  It's shorthand for the promise that God gave King David that a son in his line would always be king over God's people, and even if the Lord should have to punish him for his sins, ultimately the throne of David would be established before the Lord forever.  The Jews came to understand that some sort of immortal Son of David would sit forever on that throne, and His coming would mark the fulfilment of all God's purposes in heaven and on earth.  But here we have Solomon, a man actually begotten by King David, and he has no such hope. He looks forward to no promise, and he takes no joy in the present life God has given him under the sun.  "Meaningless! Meaningless!" he cries out.  "Everything is utterly meaningless!"

    From verse 3 he critiques human activity.  What good do we humans get out of all the work we do?  Sure, you can enjoy the fruits of your labor for awhile, you might even enjoy the work itself sometimes.  But then you die.  So what was the point?  In verses 9 and 10 he takes a shot at those who try to find purpose in invention and innovation.  Are you hoping to invent something new to astonish the world?  There's nothing new under the sun, the Teacher says, it's all been done before.  Are you striving for fame and glory after you're gone?  Well, good luck, he says in verse 11.  Not too many years from now and no one will remember you've even lived. What's the point in life?  Where's the fulfilment in it all?  There isn't any!  "‘Meaningless! Meaningless!' says the Teacher, ‘Everything is meaningless!'"

    We can dispute Solomon's take on these matters.  But the point isn't whether he's strictly accurate or not.  What we need to understand is that he's observing how things are "under the sun."  That is, how things are in this natural world where we humans are born and toil and finally die.  In the cosmos of "under the sun," God is present, but in a distant way.  He is not immanent in Ecclesiastes: that is, He's not God-with-us.  He's more like a landlord who collects the rent when it's due and watches to make sure you're not trashing the place.  But you'd never have Him in for a cup of coffee-- God is in heaven and you and all your meaningless fellow-creatures are on this earth, separated from Him in your mindless futility.
 
    And nature doesn't help.  In chapter 2 Solomon writes of planting vineyards and groves, gardens and parks.  But he found it was all a chasing after the wind.  He found no meaning in the order he'd imposed on nature.  With that being the case, spending time out in wild nature with all its danger and chaos wasn't going to bring him peace and fulfilment.  Solomon was not the kind of man who'd insist that one could worship God out in the woods better than in the temple in Jerusalem.   No, even without storms and floods and natural disasters, creation only served to mock human futility. "Generations come and generations go," writes the Teacher in verse 4, "but the earth remains forever."  That's no comfort to him.  It's like saying, "We mortal men and women all die-- grandparents, parents, and children-- but it doesn't affect the earth.  Creation doesn't care."  Regardless of what we humans do, the sun goes on rising and setting, the wind keeps on blowing, the rivers keep flowing down to the sea, and the sea is never full.  What's the point of it?  Everything is futile and absurd under the sun.

    St. Paul, like Solomon, admits that just now creation is the very image of futility.  In fact, you might say he begins with a situation that is even worse.  Solomon is physically comfortable, well-fed, and in control.  He's "king in Jerusalem."  But Paul and the Christians he writes to are too often poor, they're suffering for their faith, they're the oppressed in Rome.  Nevertheless, Paul begins verse 18 of chapter 8 with the words, "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that will be revealed in us."  What glory?  We'd best go back to verses 16 and 17 to answer that. 

    There it says,

        The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.

We are children of God, by grace through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ!  We do have a purpose and a goal in this life!  And not just us, the whole creation is included in this promise of glory and hope.

    We see from the text that by "creation" Paul means "nature" not including humanity or the angels.  For humanity is the sons of God who will be revealed, or those who remain sons of the devil, as we read in Ephesians chapter 2.  The creation is mentioned in contrast to the sons of God who will be revealed, and those people who aren't among the sons of God aren't anxiously waiting for this revelation, they don't care or they actively hate the idea that someday we will be glorified in Christ and Christ will be glorified in us.  And creation does not include the angels, for the fallen ones have no such longing, and the blessed hosts of heaven were never subjected to futility, as it says in verse 20 that creation was.

    But when was creation subjected to futility?  If we go back to Genesis chapter 3, we read how after our first parents sinned, God put a curse not only on them, but on all creation.  He decreed that it should be subverted from its original state, so that the ground brings forth thistles and weeds far more easily than edible crops and only with wearisome toil can we bring good out of it.

    I purposely read the Romans reading out of the New Revised Standard Version, because of this word "futility" in verse 20.  It translates the Greek word mataiotes, which means emptiness, futility, purposelessness, transitoriness, and frustration.  The NIV uses this last term, frustration, which is good.  But it leaves the impression that if nature tried a little harder, it could reach meaning and fulfilment as it now is.  But in the curse God blocked the creation from reaching its appointed goal.  No matter what happens in nature or how beautiful and well-designed it is, without our redemption it still is ineffective, it cannot fulfil the purpose God originally planned for it.

    And in God's inscrutable providence,  that curse will ultimately turn out to be a blessing for us, whom God is redeeming by the blood of Jesus Christ.  Remember, in the beginning God gave the man and the woman dominion and rule over all of nature.  We became the head of creation, its vice-regents and representative. Then we rebelled against God and fell.  God could have kept nature perfect and removed it from under us.  But instead He chose to maintain the spiritual and physical ecology we have with this earth and all its creatures.  Despite what Solomon believed, nature is not some alien entity disconnected from us.  No, it's very futility proves that it is still connected to us.

    In His mercy to us, God willed that like us, creation might look forward in hope to the day when all things find their fulfillment in Jesus Christ.  Right now nature, like us, is in bondage to decay.  On the last day, nature, like us, will be liberated and will enjoy the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

    Meanwhile, Paul says, the whole creation is groaning together in pains like that of a woman birthing a child.  Yes, nature struggles.  Yes, there are fires, floods, earthquakes, tornados, droughts, and other natural disasters.  Nature is not what it should be.  It's not what it was created to be.  But its travail does not prove its meaninglessness; rather, those very struggles point to the renewal and rebirth God promises when we are revealed as His adopted sons and heirs.  Even when nature seems most hostile against us, the Scripture teaches us to see it as our fellow-sufferer.  And like it in its brokenness we, too, groan with longing for day of the redemption of our bodies.

    Yes, our bodies.  We will be fully redeemed only when our physical bodies are made new and we share in the life-giving resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Not till then will our full adoption be in effect.  Nature is material and for it to share in our glorification, our new bodies must be material.  This bodily resurrection is the hope in which we were saved.  This is the promise the Holy Spirit testifies to even in the worst of our struggles with the seeming futility of this present age.

    This is why Christians in a tornado-ravaged city like Joplin, Missouri, could gather to praise and worship God a week after their lives seemed utterly ruined in last month's tornado.  That's why churches in Japan can joyfully share the gospel along with food and clothing in the wake of March's earthquake and tsunami.  Unbelievers don't understand how this can be.  They mock the people of God for being delusional, for not seeing how pointless and absurd life under the sun really is.  But they don't see that God is at work even in the midst of creation's futility. The groaning of nature is great, but our God is greater.  Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of David has come into the world.  On the cross He suffered what seemed to be the most senseless, meaningless death that a human being has ever known.

    But death, decay, and futility could not hold Him and He rose triumphant from the grave.  Death, decay, and futility cannot hold us, who are called by God to be revealed as His sons.  And death, decay, and futility will not hold God's creation, which will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.  The labor of creation will not be in vain.  God will see that nature finds its fulfilment in us, as we find our fulfilment in Him.

    Solomon failed to see this, because he was focussed only on life "under the sun."  True, in this world we are subject to frustration.  We do go through periods when everything seems so pointless we don't even know how to pray.  But with St. Paul we affirm that is not all there is.  God has brought heaven to us in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ.  He lived as one of us, He died our death, and He rose again that we might share the life of the only-begotten Son of God.  Even now God the Holy Spirit is here with us and in us, bringing meaning where we find no meaning and hope where we see no hope.  He intercedes for us, He prays in us and with us, He groans with us even when creation itself seems to be falling into chaos.  According to the will of God He intercedes for us, His saints.  And the will of God is this: That we, His children, and all creation shall be brought to glorious fulfilment, according to His gracious promises in Jesus Christ our Lord, to the honor and praise of His name, now and forever.  Amen.

Taking and Giving

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Christ's Resurrection and You: Where Is He Now?

Texts:    Hebrews 4:14 - 5:10; 7:23 - 8:2; Acts 1:1-11

    SHORTLY AFTER EASTER, I GOT a message on Facebook from my oldest niece.  She said she and some of her friends were discussing Jesus' resurrection, and they found that there was a question that stumped them all.  That is, where had Jesus gone after that? When did He die the second time?  Where was He really buried?  And where could she look in the Bible for answers about this?  She wanted to know for herself, and she wanted to tell her girlfriends, too.

    Immediately I shared with her the good news of our Lord's ascension that we are celebrating today, and pointed her to some verses that would assure her that Jesus had never died again.   I felt bad that I couldn't do more at the moment, since I was in the middle of something, but I hoped I'd given her even to start on.

    But I felt worse-- shocked and saddened, actually-- that my 40-year-old niece and her friends would have the need to questions like that at all.  She attends church regularly.  From what I know of him, her pastor seems to have his head screwed on straight when it comes to doctrine.  How could she even imagine that Jesus could have died a second time and not understand that He's in heaven even now in His glorified human body? How terrible for her to be thinking that Christ's victory over death wasn't final and absolute!

    But then I had to think: How much do any of us, even us Christians, think and know about the Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ?  This past Thursday was Ascension Day.  How many of us commemorated it then?  We have the big celebration of Easter, then next thing we know, it's Pentecost Sunday and the Holy Spirit's coming.  And sometime in between, Jesus just seems to have slipped away.  Where did He go?  Where is He now?  I had to be glad my niece was asking the question in any form at all.

    Our reading from Acts shows us that Jesus did not merely slip away: He departed, and He did it openly.  Remember how in the Upper Room before His crucifixion, Jesus told His disciples that it was needful that He go away, so He could send the Holy Spirit to them. But for forty days after He rose they'd been seeing Him in that very physical resurrection body of His-- physical, except that in it He could transcend physical limitations like distance and solid walls and locked doors.  And it seems that the disciples were getting used to that.  It was just like old times, almost, having Jesus around eating with them and teaching them.  The disciples had to be shown that that time was coming to an end, that now a new order was to begin when Jesus would send the gift His Father promised, even the Holy Spirit.

    Moreover, the disciples had to understand where Jesus had gone.  He couldn't just fail to show up one day, and never return.  St. Luke leaves no room for any theories about Jesus quietly retiring to the countryside like I heard somebody or other theorize recently, or going off to India to become a guru, like the New Agers believe.  Jesus made sure the disciples saw Him physically taken up before their very eyes.  A cloud enveloped Him until both He and it were no longer visible.  This was no ordinary cloud of water vapor.  The disciples were Jews and knew their history. They would certainly realize that this was the cloud of God's presence that led the children of Israel in the wilderness, the cloud of glory surrounded Jesus, Moses, and Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration. This cloud was a visible manifestation of the presence of God Himself, and in it Jesus stepped directly from the realm of this world into the heaven of God His Father.

    But you can't blame the disciples for standing there looking "intently into the sky as he was going."  Or for keeping on looking after He had disappeared.  We'd do the same.  It took two men in white--angels-- who suddenly stood there with them to tell them that Jesus had been taken from them into heaven.  The angels promised, too, that He would come back in the same way they'd seen Him go-- riding on the clouds of heaven.

    And between the time of His ascension, and the time of His return in glory, where is our Lord Jesus?  He indeed is in heaven, at the right hand of the Father in glory.

    So what is He doing now?  Has He finished with us, now that He is high and exalted?  Is He simply back to enjoying the rights and privileges of being the Son of God, with never a thought for His people here on earth?  Never think it!  There's a 19th century Welsh hymn whose chorus is a dialogue between the men and the women of the congregation.  It begins with the question, "Who saved us from eternal loss?" ("Who but God's Son upon the cross?") and it ends with the women asking, "Where is He now?" and both men and women sing together, "In heaven interceding."

    That's exactly where He is, and exactly what He's doing there.  This is the meaning of Christ's ascension, and the wonderful truth our verses from the Letter to the Hebrews reveal to us.  Jesus is indeed the One who intercedes for us before the Father.  He is our great High Priest who even now represents us to God, Who even now can point to His one, perfect, and everlasting sacrifice that forever will atone for our sins.

    In Hebrews 4:14 Jesus is described as our great high priest who has gone through the heavens.  The ancient Jews understood that there were ranks of angels and other heavenly beings, and ranks of the heavens in which they dwelt.  Paul speaks of this in 2 Corinthians 12, when he tells about a man in Christ-- himself, actually-- who was somehow caught up into the third heaven, the paradise of God.  By saying that Jesus had gone "through the heavens," the writer makes it clear that our Lord has gone all the way into the divine Holy of Holies, all the way into the presence chamber of almighty God.  Nothing stopped Him, nothing disqualified Him; Jesus is right there sharing His Father's throne.

    Therefore we have every reason to hold firmly to the faith we possess.  So we trust and believe that Jesus Christ died for our sins, and that His blood atones for all our unrighteousness, redeems us from death, and makes us holy before God.  We have faith in Jesus, our great High Priest.

    I think we Christians, especially we Protestants, have gotten so used to the idea of Jesus as our Intercessor that we forget it means He is our High Priest and that we need one just as much as ancient Israel did.   They needed a high because they were in themselves unholy in God's sight, under His wrath, and they needed sacrifice offered for them so they could be accepted by God.  So do we.  Not just anyone could make this offering. The high priest represented all the people, especially on the Day of Atonement when he took the blood of the sacrifices into the Holy of Holies.  He was one of them, a Jew like they were, but he had a special appointment from God.  The priest was to be God's chosen man, who could identify with the people and he with them.  That's what we need as well.

    The Jewish system found its fulfillment in Jesus Christ, incarnate by the Holy Spirit through the Virgin Mary.  He is definitely is a high priest who can sympathize with our weaknesses.  In Hebrews chapter 1 we read that Jesus the Son of God took on true flesh and blood and shared in our humanity. He wasn't an angel or a mere divine appearance, He was a man like us.  Like us, on this earth Jesus was tempted in every way we are.  But unlike Aaron and his descendants, Jesus did not fall into sin. Unlike them, He did not have to first sacrifice a bull for His own sin-offering before He could make atonement for the people.  Jesus our sympathetic High Priest  was holy and without sin.  Therefore, He can represent us in heaven as an Intercessor who is totally acceptable to our holy God.

    With Jesus as our high priest, we can approach the heavenly throne of grace with confidence, knowing we'll receive mercy there for His sake.  Verse 2 of chapter 5 says that the high priest "is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and going astray, since he himself is subject to weakness."  Jesus knows what it's like to be in this mortal flesh.  Again, He does not have to offer sacrifices for His own sins, but in verses 7 and 8 we can see how in His heart and in His flesh He suffered for us, how as a Man He truly had to go through the ache and agony of sorrow over our sins, how finally He had to submit to the torture and death of the cross.  Jesus the Son of God earned His high priesthood as the Son of Man, and so, even now, He is in heaven sympathizing with our weaknesses, dealing gently with us when we go astray, and representing us in matters relating to God.

     But we see in 4:4 that it wouldn't have been enough for Jesus to be our fellow-human, if God had not personally chosen Him.  God called Him to the honor of the high priesthood, just like He called Aaron in the early days of Israel, so long ago.  In the words of Psalm 22, the Lord God has said,

    "You are my Son;
        today I have become your Father."

And in Psalm 110 God says to Him,

    "You are a priest forever,
        in the order of Melchizedek." 

    Jesus Christ has been appointed by the Father to be our representative forever.  He's not like the priests of the line of Aaron of the house of Levi. The Aaronic priests could not continue in office forever; they were mortal and one after another, they all died. In contrast, God says that Christ is a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.  Melchizedek, king of Salem and priest of God Most High, is referred to in Hebrews 7:3 as being "without father or mother, without genealogy, without beginning of days or end of life."  Figuratively-speaking, he is deathless, and so he is a walking prophecy of the Son of God who lives forever and exercises the same kind of priesthood that never ends and never can be destroyed.

    We don't have to worry about Jesus our High Priest dying a second time and leaving us with some inadequate or unsympathetic successor.  No, because He lives forever He is able to save completely everyone who comes to God through Him, because He ever lives to make intercession for us.

    Let us take comfort in these words.  I know my sin, and I know I need a lot of interceding for.  And I think you realize the same thing about yourself.  There will never come a time when Jesus our ascended Lord stops pleading for us before the Father.  He always lives, and because of that, Jesus can keep on interceding for us.  At the same time, interceding for us is what Jesus always lives for!

    Jesus meets our every need.  He has ascended to the Father: as verse 7:26 puts it, He is exalted above the heavens.  So while He has experienced human weakness and can sympathize with us, at the same time He is holy, blameless, pure, and set apart from sinners.  That's the kind of high priest we need.  Jesus is acceptable in God's presence and so His prayers on our behalf are acceptable to God.

    Jesus is qualified to be our eternal high priest by His merciful humanity, by His divine appointment, by His suffering and intercession for us here on this earth, by His deathlessness, by His purity and holiness, and by His ascension to the throne of God.  All these qualities were required in the One who was to be our Intercessor and Advocate before God the Father.  As Hebrews 8:1 states, "We do have such a high priest, who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven." This is a sanctuary much holier than the Most Holy Place of the tabernacle or the Temple could ever be.  Jesus serves in our behalf in the very presence of God; this is what He ascended into heaven to do, and what He now lives and enjoys living to do.

    So now, whenever you are in trouble, whenever you are tempted, whenever you think the world, the universe, and God Himself are all turned against you, think.  Remember.  You have a great High Priest, Jesus the great High Priest, Who for you has gone through the heavens to the holy heart of God, and even now He sympathizes with your weakness and deals gently with you.  No sin that you can repent of  is beyond His power to forgive, for He sacrificed Himself for sins once for all when He offered Himself.   When you're convinced that you can never be good enough for God, think.  Remember.  Jesus is your holy and blameless High Priest, and He credits His perfect obedience to you.  When you don't know how or what to pray, think. Remember.  Jesus is there, even now, representing you to His Father and yours.  He is able to save you completely, for He always lives to intercede for you.

    So let us hold firmly to the faith we profess.  Christ our crucified and risen Lord has gone through the heavens and has sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.  "Where is He now?"

    "In heaven interceding!"

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.

Christ's Resurrection and You: A Building Not Made with Hands

Texts:  2 Corinthians 4:13 - 5:10; Luke 24:36-49

    ON THE WHOLE, I'M GLAD the rapture of the saints didn't happen last night at 6:00 PM.  There's  so much more on this earth I want to see and do and accomplish.  But if Harold Camping had been right, and even now we were standing in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ, I would possess something I so grievously lack right now.  And that's a full sense and knowledge of the splendour, the goodness, the graciousness, the beauty, the holiness, the indescribable greatness of what my great God and Saviour did for me when He died on the cross and rose again for my sake.

    To know Jesus Christ and the life-giving power of His resurrection is the most marvellous, desirable thing you and I can ever experience.  There is no end to the benefits we derive from Him!  We've seen these past weeks how Jesus' resurrection enabled us to be adopted as children of God.  How by it we are brought into His new covenant and brought into the nurture of our mother, the Church.  How Jesus rose again to strip off our old filthy sinful natures and clothe us instead in our new selves, which is the shining glorious garment of His righteousness and love.   How amazing is Jesus Christ our Lord, who was crucified for our sins and rose that we might live His life forever!  How glorious and splendid are all His gifts to us!  Just thinking about them, we should be in a continual state of rapture all day long!

    But you know how it is, and so do I.  The good things of this world, and its troubles as well, hang like a curtain between us and the jaw-dropping vision of Christ and His resurrection benefits.  It's not that we don't believe that Jesus rose again, it's just that other stuff is so present and so pressing, His resurrection and what it means to us isn't something that we consciously dwell on day after day.  It's for Easter Sunday, and maybe a week or two thereafter.  Good to know about, but not exactly relevant to what we're dealing with now.

    At least, that's how it seems.  It seems that way too with our own resurrection, the one St. Paul so eloquently writes about in 1 Corinthians 15.  That's for the future, sure, for the day when Jesus really comes back.  But that doesn't seem to be happening real soon. And in the meantime, I'll wager that none of us goes around with a secret smile and a little skip in our step because we, too, someday will have a glorious immortal body like the one Jesus Himself rose in.  I don't say this is the way we should be; it's just a fact of our human nature that it's woefully easy for us to get distracted from heavenly things and forget what we have and Whose we are.  It's especially easy when the distractions have to do with poor health, or poverty, or advancing old age, or the approach of death, for ourselves or those we love.  Who can think of their bodily resurrection when we have so much on our minds?

    But in the fourth and fifth chapters of his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul-- speaking by the Holy Spirit-- reveals that those very everyday difficulties and distractions should be signposts and reminders that point us ever and again back to our blessed hope of personal resurrection through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Not only that,  but our very weakness serves to show the great power of God in Christ.  As Paul says earlier in chapter 4, we carry the magnificent good news of Christ died and risen around in clay jars, "to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us."  And so, as our Epistle reading today begins, "‘I believed; therefore I have spoken.'" This is a quotation from Psalm 116:10, where the psalmist has been lamenting his neediness, his trouble, his nearness to death, and what he speaks of in this quoted verse is of his great affliction.   He brings his distress to God in faith that God is One who hears and heals and restores.  And so Paul evokes that same spirit of faith in us, but we have an even greater reason to hope in God than the psalmist did.  For we know that He who raised Jesus Christ from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and He'll present all of us together to Himself, in His very presence.

    This is our resurrection hope!  This is the gospel grace that even today is reaching more and more people, that thanksgiving may overflow to the glory of God!

    We hold this hope in light of-- perhaps I should say, in contrast to-- the very unhopeful situations we find ourselves in day after day.  Because we trust in the One who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead, because we trust that He will also raise us with Him, we do not lose heart.

    And it can be so easy in this world to lose heart.  We don't have to be suffering persecution for our faith; ordinary ageing and illness will do it.  We look in the mirror and see the wrinkles and we think, "Wait a minute, when did that happen?  I don't feel that old!"  Or worse, we gaze upon the pale form of a sick loved one languishing full of tubes in a hospital bed, and we know how true it is that our outer nature, our present physical bodies, are indeed wasting away.  But the resurrection life of Christ is even now working its revival in you and me, if indeed we are trusting in the One who raised Jesus Christ from the dead and who will also raise us.  Even now, He is renewing our inner nature, the new self in Christ, day by day.

    We might want to say to Paul, "Hey, you call what I'm going through a ‘light momentary affliction.'  What do you know about the cancer I'm suffering?  Paul, how can you minimize my parent's congestive heart failure?  Paul, people are calling me a hatemongering bigot for standing up for traditional gospel truth.  How can you call that kind of affliction ‘slight'?"

    Oops, scratch that one.  Paul knew a lot about being afflicted for the sake of Christ.  In fact, go back to verses 8-12 of chapter 4 of 2 Corinthians, or skip over to chapters 11 and 12, and you'll see that if any one had sufferings and afflictions, if anyone in Church history knew what it was like to have his outer nature wasted away, it was the Apostle Paul.  But he kept his eyes on the resurrection we're all promised in Christ Jesus.  And therefore he could say that if our present bodily troubles were put in a scale with the glory that will come to us in the resurrection, the glory that's coming to us will far outweigh them all.

    In fact, our present troubles go to contribute to the glory that is to be.  How can this happen?  Disease and trial and suffering aren't virtuous in themselves.  But as we set them in contrast to the resurrection that is to come; especially, as others see our resurrection hope in contrast to what we're going through here on this earth, we glorify our risen Lord, who has promised to share His glory with us.  So, as Paul says, our focus is no longer on how we see things to be in this troubled world; rather, we fix our eyes on what is unseen and eternal. 

    That is, what is unseen for now.  The unbelieving world may say, "Yes, you're looking at what's unseen, all right, because there's nothing there."  We reply, "No, there is something there, beyond the curtain of this failing earthly life.  There is Someone there, who walked this earth and lived and died and rose again for me, and one day I will see Him face to face and know that He is realer and solider and more weighty than anything that can be looked upon in this temporary world."

    Now, I need you to bear with me for a moment, because I'm going to inject something personal, and I don't want it to take away from the glory that belongs to the Scripture or to Jesus Christ, the Lord of Scripture.  It's just that I find it ironic-- or maybe appropriate-- that this passage speaks of looking and seeing.  You know about my eyesight, how I often have to wear two pairs of cheaters to read.  That's annoying, but I manage.  But in the past couple of days I've noticed some symptoms that may have serious implications for my eyesight, that may even require surgery.  I tell you this by way of confession, to admit that when I found this out I didn't feel too full of thanksgiving.  It can be really hard to keep your focus on things eternal when your imagination is telling you you might not be able to see things earthly for much longer.

    It's been said that the preacher can't preach to him or herself.  Maybe not, but the Apostle can preach to the preacher, and Paul has preached to me that whatever happens when I go in to see the eye doctor, the renewal of Jesus Christ is still taking place in me day by day, whether I feel like it or not.  And age-related things like this only go to remind us that this body we live in is like a tent.  Paul was thinking of the dwelling tents of the wandering Bedouins of the desert; we might think of a tent on a camping trip.  Either way, there comes a time when those things get wet and waterlogged and worn and full of holes.  There is no way they can be compared with our own solid house at home.  In the same way, our present bodies are wearing out.  But by the resurrection power of Jesus Christ, God Himself has prepared for us an eternal house in heaven, a building not made by human hands.  Of course it's not made by human hands!  For our eternal home, our resurrection bodies, are established on the foundation of Christ's resurrection itself, and no mortal had anything to do with that.

    The Scripture says that now we groan, longing to be clothed with our permanent heavenly dwelling.  We have to understand that that is truly our longing.  Some people, even Christians, think the goal is to get rid of this earthly tent, our physical bodies, and just fly away as a spirit, naked and free.  That may be great Greek philosophy, but it is not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.  No, we do not want to be found naked before God.  We must not stand before Him as bare unclothed spirits.  In fact, we can not.  We must be clothed with the heavenly dwelling that God has prepared for us for us, in order for us to know the eternal life that swallows up our mortality.

    Because, brothers and sisters, that is why God made you-- so you might be clothed, surrounded, protected, and made at home in the resurrection body He has prepared for you.  No matter what happens to you in this life, that new and heavenly body will be yours; you can believe that because God has given you the Holy Spirit as a guarantee on the purchase.  He witnesses to our hearts through the Word that Jesus Christ truly did die for us, that His resurrection was for us, and that we can take Him at His word when He promises that where He is, we will be also.

    And so, Paul says, things are actually switched around for us.  Our earthly natures say, "Give me as much time here on earth in this body as possible.  I'm in no hurry to go!"  But the Spirit keeps us looking towards what we don't yet see, and He makes us eager to see it.  He makes us long to move out of the temporary home of this tent and move permanently into our forever home with the Lord.  The Spirit of God makes us confident that we shall indeed some day be forever at home with the Lord, clothed in the glorious bodies He has prepared for us.

    Does this confidence give us the right to be so heavenly-minded we're no earthly good?  Not at all.  Here on this present earth or later on in eternity, our aim and pleasure should be to please Him who did not please Himself, but gave Himself up to save us all.

    Does our future hope lead us to conclude that this present life is meaningless, just a waiting room for heaven, as it were?  No, because we do have our future hope, we strive so that when we appear before the judgement seat of Christ, the things we have done in this present body will please Him and earn us His favor and reward.

    Jesus Christ is risen; He is risen indeed.  Not as a ghost, not as a disembodied spirit, but as a gloried Man of touchable flesh and bone.  And we will be like Him, on that day when He truly returns and gathers His saints to rejoice with Him around His throne. 

    That day is coming.  Someday we will be there, and we will at last feel the glorious weight of the splendor and majesty of our Lord Jesus and His finished work for us.  Whether the time is long or short, do not lose heart.  Make it your goal to please Him. And whatever you may be going through now, whatever now causes you to groan with longing or grief, keep your eyes focussed on Jesus Christ, the one who was dead, and see, He lives again.   He is your resurrection, He is your life, and in Him you will live and find shelter forever more.

Christ's Resurrection and You: Sunday Best, Every Day

Texts:  Colossians 3:1-17; Matthew 28:16-20

REMEMBER COMING TO CHURCH in your Sunday best?  Women and girls put on that suit or dress that rarely got worn any other day of the week.  Men and boys wore good slacks and jackets, white shirts, and ties.  Ladies, you'd never forget your hat, and everyone was clean and pressed with shoes shined and hair brushed, ready to come into the presence of the Lord.

    Maybe you still dress up to come to church.  But for the most part, the world has changed.  People wear whatever they feel like to church.  Some churches even advertise that with them, it's "casual dress" and people can "come as you are." And it's not just the lay people: in some denominations (and nondenominations), the pastors make a point of wearing T-shirts and jeans to preach in.  The idea is that casual dress sends the message that the love of God is open to all, whoever they are or whatever they've done.

    But it's one thing to reject "Sunday best" clothing from our bodies; it's quite another to exclude "Sunday best" from our hearts.  God probably doesn't care if we're casual in our clothing or if we dress up.  But He cares very much if we're casual about our obedience to Jesus Christ and our love for our neighbor in our daily lives.  When we are, it tells God and the world that we really haven't understood the power of Christ in His resurrection-- or that we don't really care.

    Up on that mountain in Galilee after He rose from the dead, Jesus commissioned His disciples to make disciples of all nations by baptising them and teaching them to obey everything that He had commanded them.  Because we have been saved by grace through faith in Christ's shed blood, we don't believe that we earn God's favor by our obedience.  But because we have been saved by grace through faith in Christ's shed blood, we strive to show our thanks and praise by doing what Jesus says.  We come as we are, but God doesn't leave us as we are.  Rather, we are to clothe ourselves with the Sunday best He Himself gives.

    One of my childhood pastors liked to say that the only command Jesus gave was for us to love God and one another.  I'd dispute him on that, now that I'm ordained myself and if he were still around.  But let's say he was right, that the only command of Christ is to love.  It's Scripture's job, not ours, to tell us what loving God and our neighbor means.  It includes holiness, righteousness, mutual consideration, self-denial, self-control, and a lot of other things that the unsaved world doesn't include in this word "love."  Jesus stated flatly that "all authority in heaven and on earth has been given" to Him.  That means He's Lord.  He and He alone has the right to set the dress code, so to speak, and define how we should look walking around clothed in His divine love.

    And if and since we have been raised with Christ, He wants to see our hearts and minds dressed in our Sunday best, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, all year round.  In Paul's Letter to the Colossians, the third chapter, he draws the design, you might say, of what our church clothes should look like and how they should be worn.

    Remember, you have been raised with Christ, so set your minds on things above.  Don't go on doing things the way the popular culture or the way your sinful nature wants to do them.  In Jesus' crucifixion, you died; in His resurrection, you were born anew; and now He keeps your real, eternal life safely hidden in the heart of God, in heaven where He reigns at the right hand of the Father in glory.

    So the first thing we have to do is take off the old, filthy, ugly clothing that belonged to our earthly natures.  Or as Paul puts it in verses 5 and following, "Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly."  First of all he mentions fornication, and the Greek word being translated means any kind of sexual immorality, inside or outside of marriage.  Take off, kill, reject any kind of impurity-- it's possible to have a dirty mind in a virgin body.  Reject passion or lust, which isn't just for things sexual; it also includes excessive desire for anything this world has to offer, such that we hurt our neighbor, corrupt ourselves, and dishonor God in the pursuit of it.  Cast off evil desires-- you know the ones you're tempted to, and I have mine-- and utterly stifle greed.  Because Paul is right: when we want some material object with that kind of passion, we're saying it's more important to us than God and it's the same thing as idolatry.  Now that we've been raised with Christ, the clothing of our minds should no longer be the casual, who-cares attire of this present world.  For God cares, and cares deeply, how we clothe ourselves in His presence, and those who insist on wrapping themselves in the rags of their sin will find themselves subject to the wrath of God, when Christ comes to judge the living and the dead.

    You used to be like that, before the Holy Spirit took hold of your life and caused you to be born again through the resurrection of Christ.  You used to do things like that.  And when now you still find yourself doing things like that, when you realize you're still thinking in these God-rejecting, deathly ways, call on the Spirit for help and get rid of that filthy attire right away.  It's the truth: you can be perfectly moral concerning what you do with your body, but if your mind is wearing attitudes like anger and malice, if you can't open your mouth without slandering someone or saying something abusive about them, you deny the resurrection of Christ and its power in you.

    Really, how can we church people, even pastors, elders, and deacons, be so cruel to one another as we often are?  What's our excuse?  Do we gossip about one another and distort the truth about one another because we think it's going to solve some problem?  Do we undermine one another's efforts with the excuse that we just want everything to be done right in the church?  Heaven forbid!  How can we be so foolish?

    These sins existed in the Colossian church, just as they do in our congregations today.  Let's stop going around with our hearts and minds and tongues dressed in such loathsome garments!  After all, we have taken off our old sinful self with its conniving and scheming and backstabbing and distortions.   Jesus' blood has taken that nasty outfit off of us and thrown it away; it's not even fit for the ragbag!  Jesus is risen, we are risen with Him and now we've put on our new selves.  It's our every day Sunday best, and it's a garment that Jesus renews in us day after day.  Our spiritual clothing is now cut in the image of God the creator Himself.  No longer do we dress to express ourselves: the clothing of our minds should now express the glory of Jesus Christ, who is all in all.

    But we have a problem in the church today.  Let's be frank about it: we have a big problem in our denomination. As you may have heard, a majority of our presbyteries has now approved a change to the ordination standards in our Book of Order.  The clause used to read

    Those who are called to office in the church are to lead a life of obedience to Scripture and in conformity to the history confessional standards of the church.  Among these standards is the requirement to live either in fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman (W-4.9001), or chastity in singleness.  Persons refusing to repent of any self-acknowledged practice which the confessions call sin shall not be ordained and/or installed as deacons, elders, or ministers of the Word and Sacrament.

From now it will say,

    Standards for ordained service reflect the church's desire to submit joyfully to the Lordship of Jesus Christ in all aspects of life (G-1.0000).  The governing body responsible for ordination and/or installation (G-14.0240; G-14.0450) shall examine each candidate's calling, gifts, preparation, and suitability for the responsibilities of office.  The examination shall include, but not be limited to, a determination of the candidate's ability and commitment to fulfill all requirements as expressed in the constitutional questions for ordination and installation (W-4.4003).  Governing bodies shall be guided by Scripture and the confessions in applying standards to individual candidates.

This wouldn't be so bad-- if the Presbyterian Church (USA) didn't have a long record of being extremely casual about Scripture and what it means by "the Lordship of Christ."  Colossians is clear: submitting to Jesus' authority means getting rid of sexual immorality of every kind.  But the majority of our presbyteries seem to think we could put on the new life in Christ right over the rags of the old life of this world.  Or worse than that, that the new life in Christ is all about celebrating and expressing what belongs to our old sinful style.

    The primary impact of this new Book of Order wording will be to allow the ordination of people who are indulging in extra-marital and non-marital sexual relations, whether homo- or heterosexual.  But our sexual lives aren't the only area where sinners deceive themselves about what Jesus' lordship requires.  How often have we known vengefulness redefined as justice, or cruel speech called honesty?  We all struggle with evil habits and ways that fit us like a second skin, and in every case   Jesus demands that we stop submitting ourselves to them.  Whatever your besetting sin was or is, you'll get nowhere in the eyes of God by arguing that you were "born this way."  He knows you were born that way.  You were born in sin and death, and so was I.  But now in Christ we have taken off the old self with its practices, and clothed ourselves with Christ and His perfect purity and righteousness.

    So how do we look in our ever-new Sunday best?  We look like Jesus Himself.  We look like the holy people God has chosen us to be.  We're compassionate to one another.  We're kind.  We're humble, gentle, and patient.  We bear with one another and we forgive the grievances we have against one another.  We forgive as the Lord forgave us-- for that is another way of expressing Jesus' great commandment, to love one another, as He has loved us.   It's true: every virtue that we're clothed in as Christians is an expression of Jesus' love, and His love perfectly harmonizes them all.

    There are difficult days ahead for our denomination.  We might be tempted to say that our Colossians passage just gives us a beautiful ideal of the Christian life, that can have no effect on the gritty realities we're facing.

    But this passage finds its true meaning as we live in it, walk in it, and wear it every day of the week.  Don't confuse casual dress for the body with carelessness for the heart and mind.  The resurrection life in Christ is not all about what's comfortable for me and you, and let the rest of the church look to itself.  No, we are members of one body.  God gives us our beautiful new selves to put on so we can live Jesus' resurrection life together, for the good of all.

    So as you put on your every day Sunday best, let the peace of Christ rule in your heart, the deep peace with God Jesus won for us on the cross.  Let that peace rule and regulate your spirit, so you can trust Him to bring good out of every situation and not lash out in anger and disappointment at what our denomination has done, even as you're called narrowminded or self-righteous for standing up for the truth of Scripture.  Be thankful, especially as you think how Jesus has saved you, even though you did not deserve it.  And minister to each other. Know the word of Christ and be ready to speak it to build one another up in comfort and hope.  Be filled with the wisdom of Christ so you know how to minister His love in the time of need. Be ready to admonish those who are falling into error, even as you maintain a spirit of patience and humility.  Fill your mind and your mouth with hymns and songs and spiritual songs that faithfully express what God has done for us-- you'll be amazed at how much sound teaching you can memorize that way.  And be grateful, for God Himself has laid out your suit, pressed your shirt, and shined your shoes.  All you have to do is put it all on and reflect the image of your creator.

    What should you look like in your spiritual Sunday best?  You should look like your risen Saviour, Jesus Christ.  So take off your old self and be clothed with His virtue, His wisdom, His peace.  "And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him."  Amen.