Living Water: Sermon for March 12th

John 4:4-26

And he had to pass through Samaria. So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.

A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”

Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”

Text transcribed by AI.

And the Christ crucified for us. Amen. Geography Matters. I don't know if you studied geography in high school and did as poorly as I did. But I'm here to tell you that geography matters. It matters for us from Concordia University of Chicago who have traveled about 3500 miles, just to be with you here at first Lutheran Church. Geography mattered to me. It was about 30 years ago, when I was a young seminarian. And I had a I heard a rumor that I was going to be traveling to California, to vicar, that is to be a student, Pastor, an interim pastor. So I heard this rumor that I was going to be going to California and that was really good news for because I was from Minnesota. Yeah, sure. You betcha. The Land of the frozen chosen. So geography was really important to me, I thought this is going to be great. And so I remember the evening at the vicarage placement service when they announced my placement. Jeffrey Lin injure, mispronouncing My name as they always have. And then they said, first Lutheran, El Cajon. Welcome, John, I thought this is great. Where is that? And so I got a map out and the district president came and he instructed me on how to say alcohol. And then he told me that alcohol is near San Diego, and I was thinking beach ministry, this is gonna be so great. If you don't know what to do with a youth, just go to the beach, it'll be fine. And so that bit of geography, alcohol on California, San Diego area, changed my life. Because I came here and I spent a year as a pastoral intern, met the most incredible people did the most incredible work in partnership with these people. And we did drama. And we went on youth trips, and we went camping and backpacking. And we did the Word of God together. And it changed my not my life. And this is the first time I've been back here preaching in nearly 30 years. So thank you for this invitation. So you got the point that geography matters. And geography, especially is important in the Bible. Never miss a chance to look at a biblical map. When you're reading the Bible. Geography mattered to our Lord Jesus. In John chapter four of the Gospel reading for today, Jesus had been ministering in the Judean countryside. And the scriptures say that when Jesus departed, in order to return to go back up to his home area at the area of Galilee, the scriptures are specific, and they say, it was necessary for him to pass through Samaria. It was necessary, the Scriptures say. Now, you have to understand that the most direct road between Judea and the south where Jesus is ministering, and Galilee in the north, ran through this place called Samaria, that was the most direct route. But that is not why the scriptures say that it was necessary for Jesus to go there. Because we see from the reading from John for today, that it was his mission for a particular woman, and indeed, for the whole Gentile world that brought him there. Samaritans and Jews, you might know a little bit of this history. Jews did not like that direct route, right through Samaria, if they were in Judea, they liked rather to go across the Jordan River, go all the way up, around and then up into Galilee because they didn't want to come anywhere near the Samaritan region. It was great hatred between Jews and Samaritan, it rivals a lot of the conflicts that we have in our own world a little bit of a history, Samaria was originally a Jewish area. And in the Babylonian captivity, the Babylonians came, and they took many Jews out of the holy land. But they also then imported other foreign nations back into the Holy Land, especially the area of Samaria. And there was a lot of interbreeding that happened between Jews and these foreign nations. And in fact, what happened at one point is that the Samaritans even had sold Jews into slavery. So if you're Jewish, and you hear the word Samaritan, you're thinking halfbreed heretic You're thinking, lowlife, you are thinking these are the people that have betrayed us. And so it is no wonder that the purest of Jews, the best rabbis would never go directly through Samaria, they would go all the way around to get back into Galilee. In fact, so important was this, that Jews would not even touch objects that Samaritans had touched. So now, you know, a little geography and a little history. How remarkable is it then, my friends, that it was necessary for Jesus to go there. Jesus, a great rabbi, and miracle worker, he enters into this unclean territory. And he speaks with this woman at the well. And he has contact with her. And he asks her for water. It was necessary for him. She is a halfbreed, traitor, Samaritan, and heretic. And she is a woman, and she is a sinful woman. And we might even guess that she is the harlot of the town, how many husbands does she have? Really. And yet here we find the Holy Son of God, who by speaking, created the entire universe, speaking again to this lowliest of sinners. And as we see him speaking to her, we see her him re creating her. And I tell you that there was no less power at work on that day, at that Samaritan, well, then when in the very beginning, the word of God forged heaven on earth, time and space, all that is seen, and unseen. There is so much we could talk about with this passage of Jesus and the woman at the well it is, in fact, one of the most detailed conversations we have recorded of our Lord in the entire New Testament. But we don't have to go any further than we already have this morning. Just the geography in order to understand the richness of the Gospel for us. And that is that Jesus. Jesus diverts into the lives of the lowliest of sinners. And he speaks to them. And he turns their lives upside down and he transforms them, and he recreates them, and it gives them abundantly more than they could seek desire or deserve. Jesus intervenes into the lives of the lowliest of sinners. As he did so many times in his ministry, the Lord speaks of earthly things, in order that their eyes of faith would be lifted up to heavenly things. Remember that the disciples are called fishers of men. And Nicodemus we heard about last week, he's, he's told to be born again. And then this woman here Jesus is talking about water, but he's not talking about earthly water. He's talking about for her the water that is so far beyond what she knows her expects, that her whole life, from that moment on would seem like old, stale, well, in comparison to the flowing, living springfed abundance of the Messiah who is speaking to her. geography matters. It matters this morning, too. For all of us, who have come here, to first Lutheran, to hear of this Messiah. This lesson from John for is, it's more than just a historical narrative about Jewish and Samaritan conflict. It's more than just a model of effective evangelists who Jesus is here. It's not even just a powerful story about a woman's encounter with Christ. In these words of Scripture today, Jesus Himself the Word of God, detours into our lost, lonely, longing, lifeless lives and he recreates them today.

Through This account from John for the word eternal intervenes into our lives and brings living water. Can you hear Him speaking today? Can you hear his words, recreating you this morning? Whatever sins you have committed, give them to me and they will drag them to the cross. However lonely are untouchable seems your life. I will sit with you and speak with you and restore you. Whatever you think your past has proven you to be. I am the one who makes all things new. Whatever sad divisions you have created in your world, your home or your hearts, I will heal them. Whatever pile of rock and dirt which you've been worshipping, I will gather you to Myself in spirit and in truth. Whatever old well you've been drinking from I will pour onto you and into you a living water that will well up for all eternity. The same Jesus, who detoured into a Samaritan woman's life detours today through her story into our lives. This is the one for whom it was necessary to travel not 3500 miles. But across all of eternity to be born in a barn in Bethlehem. This is the one who we worship, who set his face to Jerusalem knowing how much it would cost him. This is the one we worship who passed through death on Easter Sunday and ascended to the Father and now lives and reigns to all eternity. And my friends, he will return again one day to call us back to Himself to remake and restore all things in that place of eternal living water forever. Geography Matters, where you go, who you meet, where the journey of life takes you. It's sometimes difficult to see that and believe it, especially when you're young like I was when I came here 30 years ago,

to know what to believe. And to remember that there is one who not only travels with you, but who has traveled to you has come across the centuries and all of eternity and intervened on your behalf with life and forgiveness and salvation. This morning, he enters into our lives again through His Word and through his sacrament bringing springs of eternal life. Here, no other voice. Seek after no other water, worship at no other mountain. Whatever it takes, how much it costs, wherever He leads. Come soon, Lord Jesus. Amen.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Old Testament God; New Testament God: Sermon for March 5th

Romans 4:1-17

What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works:

“Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven,

and whose sins are covered;

blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.”

Is this blessing then only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised? For we say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness. How then was it counted to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after, but before he was circumcised. He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised, so that righteousness would be counted to them as well, and to make him the father of the circumcised who are not merely circumcised but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised.

For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith. For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression.

That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring—not only to the adherent of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”—in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.

The Book of Romans at this point is very concerned with trying to make sure we understand the faith of God, as it works in the Old Testament. And in the New Testament, St. Paul writes his letter to a church that would have been divided between Jews and Gentiles. And he wants them to know that the faith is the same for both. And especially in this section, Romans chapter four, Paul is concerned that the Jewish Christians know that the promise is the same promise, it's always been. That the God of the Old Testament does not work differently in the New Testament, that the grace given to them before Jesus came is the same as the grace given to them, after the only difference is not how God works. But the cross, that God has now given the Son Jesus to die for us. Now, many of us we believe, or have been told or thought, that God of the Old Testament is very different from the God of the New Testament. Sometimes you will hear it summarize that the Old Testament is the God of wrath. And the New Testament is a God of love. The Old Testament is a covenant of works. The New Testament is a covenant of grace. This is kind of a Sunday School version of the Old Testament, we do that because a lot of the stories from the Old Testament sound kind of aggressive, right? When you read the stories of Moses and Egypt, God is bringing a lot of judgment on the Egyptians. When God sends Joshua into the promised land, he tells them to go out and kill everyone. That does not sound like a God of love to me, does it? Yikes. And then, when we look at the New Testament, we get that that Sunday School version of Jesus, which I think can be summarized with the paintings of Jesus with the lamb on his shoulders, right? We've got that like, sort of, oh, it's Jesus thing. He's got the lamb, it's fluffy, it's clean, it's bright, maybe his face is glowing, and he's looking down on you in love. These are not total, the total picture of Jesus and God in the Old Testament and the New Testament, of course. These are Sunday School understanding. What Paul wants us to know is that God worked exactly the same way in the Old Testament, as he does in the New Testament, that Abraham was saved by grace, through faith on account of Christ, just like we are. The difference is that between the two, Jesus came and died on the cross. So Abraham could look forward to the promise, and we look back. And so that's what he says. He says, Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. Or, as David puts it, blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin. This is different from the way many people tell the Sunday School version of the story of Abraham. We read it God, God went to Abram. And he called him he said, Get up and go to land I will show you and Abram got up and he left. And very often this is shown as as a way and an example for us to follow right? We preach it like this. Abram was comfortable in her on and then God broke into his life and said, leave everything behind. Leave your comfortable life and go far away to a new land and follow me. The storybooks often picture Abram and Sarai and a camel right there on their own, walking through the wilderness the 1000 miles to the new place, aren't they Brave, faithful. But that's not what the story is actually like. The story actually tells us that it wasn't as big a deal is that first they were all nomadic people. They were moving all the time. Second, they weren't alone. They brought the people they had acquired in Iran. Abram was ahead of the tribe. He brought lots of people, he had enough people in his group to actually make war against the king. But most of all, Abram didn't obey God. He said, leave your father's family and who did he take with him? Lot, his brother's son. You read a little bit earlier to you can see that this wasn't a big deal, or a change in plans for Abram. When the family moved to Iran, they were already on their way to Canaan. They just stopped there for a little bit. How do you know these things? Instead of reading the story that you you have in your mind, you actually read the words, and they will tell you. Abram wasn't chosen by God because He was awesome. He wasn't chosen by God because he was faithful. He was chosen by God because God chose him. And that's it. It was by grace. In fact, if you look at the rest of Abram story, it does not play him very well. Once he gets to the promised land, the first thing he does is he goes to Egypt, and sells his wife to the Pharaoh. That is, I think, is the example we should take from Abram, right? The moment you get in trouble, sell your wife. Kristen says, Thank you. So many times after that, Abram complains to God and says, Hey, God, where's this son? You promised me. In fact, He does it so often, that he eventually decides to take matters into his own hands. And he impregnates his wife's servant, and they have a child named Ishmael. That creates all sorts of problems. When they he finally does have the son of the promise, his wife gets so upset about Ishmael that Abram kicks Ishmael out into the wilderness with his mom, a death sentence. The story of Abraham is not the story of God choosing a good, holy, wonderful man. The story of Abram is the story of God, proving himself over and over and over and over again to a man who doesn't really trust him the way he should. And that God's grace and His promise stay with Abram, despite all of that, until he gets to the point where he realizes he can't deny it anymore. Which is what we see when Abram brings his son Isaac to the top of the mountain to sacrifice him, that he finally has to trust to know that even if he killed Isaac, God would raise him from the dead, and bring him back. That's the story, a story of God's grace to a sinful man. It's the same story that God gives us, right? You were chosen, you weren't chosen because you were faithful. You were chosen because God chose you. Because he sent his son Jesus to die for you, so that you can have life. And the promise of grace is the promise of God proving himself over and over and over again to you that every time you leave this place, you go out and you screw up. And he welcomes you back with forgiveness and love. And he says your mind, there's nothing you can do about what about the other Old Testament figures? Weren't they saved by their faithfulness? Weren't they put out there and they righteous, amazing people? Let's take a look at Jacob, great hero of the Old Testament. Do you know how he starts out his story? He tricks his dad into thinking that he's Esau pretends to get to be that guy so that he can get the blessing and then he has to flee from his brother for his life for his deceit. Good examples from the Old Testament.

What about Moses, we should be like Moses, right? He was awesome. He was a murderer, who started his life out in the palace of the Pharaoh and then killed someone because he saw him beating a Hebrew and he had to flee for his life. When Moses was called by the burning bush at 80 years old, he went up to God and God said go to my people. And Moses said, no, no thanks. anybody but me. I'm not the right guy to someone else, anyone else? But God wouldn't let him go. What about Gideon? Gideon was a mighty warrior, a hero he killed with 1000s of Midianites. When God sent an angel to him, Gideon was so afraid of the Midianite army that he was hiding in a in a a cistern threshing wheat so that nobody can see him. The angel shows up to this guy cowering in a corner and says, hail, mighty warrior, the Lord is with you. I bet he looked around like, who are even David, the great paragon of the faith, the example we're all supposed to follow. He was such a bad father. He let one of his his sons rape his daughter, and he did nothing. Those aren't stories they tell you in Sunday School Oh.

God saved them all by grace. He saved them by giving them the promise. When they trusted in him, the faith given to them by grace through faith on account of Christ is what brought them through. God was faithful to unfaithful people. But what about the rest of the church? Isn't the law, the law of Moses, the covenant? Isn't that a covenant of works? weren't the people of Israel then saved by their actions? No. It wasn't like that either. You see the Old Testament church, they also had Grace just like us. See, the covenant wasn't given as a condition for salvation. It first came to the people after they were pulled out of Egypt. The story goes, Moses goes to Egypt, the 10 plagues happen, then the Passover, they take the blood of the Lamb and they mark it on the doors. And then God calls them out of Egypt. Then they go through the Red Sea, then they get fed in the wilderness with manna quail, and they get water from the rock. And then finally there at the foot of Mount Sinai. God has already called them his people. He's already gathered them together. He's already made them his own. They've already had the salvation event of the Old Testament in the Passover. And then he says, Now this is how you live, people I have already saved. Is that not how it works for us to Jesus came and He died on a cross. He rose from the dead, He ascended into heaven, and he called you in baptism. And once you have been saved, then he says, Now this is how you live. But even that, that wasn't just the law. The Old Testament had ways and Sacraments just like we do. In the Old Testament, the sacrament of baptism is just like circumcision. Every boy eight years old was or eight days old, was brought into the covenant through circumcision. And we too, are brought into God's covenant of grace, by the gift of baptism, when God gave you the Holy Spirit and planted faith in your heart and called you his own. They have communion to it was called a fellowship offering. You bring an animal to the temple, you offer it as a sacrifice there, they would kill the animal put the best parts on the altar, and then they would cook the rest and everybody else would eat it. It was a meal with God called a fellowship offering. And we to have that fellowship offering to don't we, the sacrifice that was offered for us Jesus Christ on the cross comes to us in bread and wine and we eat his body and drink his blood. And we gather together in fellowship in communion with Christ. We have confession and absolution they had it to what's called a sin offering. You bring an animal to the temple, you kill it, and then you put it on the altar and you confess your sins and through it, you receive forgiveness. God worked the same way in the Old Testament as he works now. And so when we look at these figures, guys like Abraham, Isaac Jacob, Moses, David, we shouldn't look at them as, as heroes that are so high up there that we're supposed to be perfect like them. They are great examples of wicked people, that God loved anyway. That God came to save and choose, because he wanted.

In fact, I bet they were far worse than you will ever be. And yet God still loved him. He sent His Son to die for you, to give you life.

So the story of Abraham is really the story of a wicked man who needed God's love, who learned over the decades to finally trust him. Much like the story of many Christians, wicked people who receive God's grace over and over again because they need it so much like me and you. The God of the Old Testament is no different from the God of the new test. The only difference is the cross. We look back. They looked forward. And yet we're all saved by the same grace. In Jesus name, Amen.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Death in Adam; Life in Christ- Sermon for February 26th

Romans 5:12-21

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned— for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.

But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the result of that one man's sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. For if, because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.

Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous. Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. You know, sometimes St. Paul can be a little confusing, especially when he is trying to be kind of literary. When you when you write, and you use a clever turn of phrase, it isn't always clear what someone is trying to say. And I think St. Paul's wording in Romans chapter five is kind of difficult. Sometimes. That's because he likes to toss around the one man phrase, referring to a bunch of different people, well, not a bunch two different people. There's the one man Adam, and the one man Jesus. And he says a lot of stuff about both of them, that is difficult to understand, especially if we just read through it quickly. So what I'd like to do today is take a look at our epistle, reading Romans chapter five, and go through it so that we can look at it slowly and understand what St. Paul is trying to say. Before we do that, we need to know what he has said up to this point. St. Paul, in the first five chapters of Romans builds an argument that leads up to Romans chapter eight. So here we are, in the beginning of Romans, he writes very simply, the Gentiles are sinners, which is something that the Romans would all have agreed about. Paul was writing to a group of Roman Christians that were looking at a country and a city that was kind of nuts, very sinful. And it would have been pretty easy for Paul to say, Do you believe these guys? They're really bad. Now, we, of course, have no idea. Since we're in such a very different situation right? Now, we're very much like that we can look out at a world and say, yeah, we can see the sin pretty clearly. But chapter two, is more difficult for the Romans. He says, it's not just the Gentiles that are sinners, but also the Jews. Even though they might not look as bad as those Romans, they still are judged maybe even more harshly, because they were given the law and have been unable to live up to it. When you get to Romans, chapter three, he comes to this conclusion for this first section. If Gentiles are sinners, even though they don't have the law, and Jews are sinners with the law, then no one is righteous. No one seeks God. Everyone is filled with sin, and cannot live up to God's expectations. And Paul ends chapter three, with a promise that the righteousness of God is not revealed through the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ, and that it's by Christ's death and resurrection, that sinners are saved. This would have been a challenge for the Jews who had been a long time in the faith. And so St. Paul in chapter four proves that this is always how God saved by going all the way back to Abraham. He says Abraham wasn't saved by obeying the law. He was saved by faith, just as we are. Then we finally get to the beginning of Chapter Five where Paul writes, therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. What he's saying is, even though you're all sinners, and you do terrible stuff, Jesus Christ has come to bring you peace, the By His death and resurrection, you have peace with God. And then in our section, Paul takes it a step further. He writes, therefore, just as sin came into the world, through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sin while is pointing us back to the the Old Testament reading, where the very two first people brought sin and death into the world. And we know that it happened. Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, committed that first sin by eating that forbidden fruit. And God brought about all of these curses. Paul continues, he says, and so death spread to all men, because all sin. So we can't just say, Adam, thanks a lot. It's all your fault. What a jerk. Right? Death is not just his fault. It is also ours. Because Adam isn't the only one to sin. You do it too. And so every person who participates in sin brings death on themselves because of that. Which is why he says that death reigned from Adam to Moses. And we know that it rains in our world, too. Why? Because you can feel it every day. Let's take a look at those curses that that God gave to the first man and the first woman. We know what they are. He says to the woman, having babies is gonna hurt. Thanks, Eve. Pretty awesome, right? That's a curse. Oh, yeah. And there will be conflict in marriage. Fortunately, all our marriages are perfect, and we never have to worry about that. To Adam, he gave something even more fun. He says work is going to be terrible. It's going to be hard. And when you work, it's not going to always turn out the way you want. That's the thorns and thistles that the ground will push for. So you're going to work a lot, it's going to be really hard. And then you're going to die. Sounds like life, doesn't it? A lot of work, and then you die. That's the curse of sin. Not only did Adam bring it into the world, but then we bring it on ourselves, every time we sin. And so we know that when we see that in action in our lives, whether it's in our bodies, or in our work, we know that it proves that we are sinners to that we need God's grace. It continues he says yet death reign from Adam to Moses, even over those who sinning was not like the transgression of Adam. What does he mean by that? What he's talking about is that there are sins that we don't know our sins until God explains it to us. Right? If someone grows up in a house with no rules, they won't know if they've broken some. Right? You have to teach people what the rules are. And when they know what the rules are, then it's more clear when they do something wrong. And that's one of the hardest things for kids in a house with no actual rules and routine is that they don't know the lines before they crossed them before they get in trouble. And so Paul is talking about that time between Adam and Moses, when God had not given his law to the world. There was still sin. But the law was not there to point it out. And so it was death that reigned over people who were sinning. Even though they didn't have that message from God to say, which sins are which. We continue. You had death rain from Adam to Moses, even over those who were sinning that was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who wants to come. This type points us to the two people that that St. Paul is trying to highlight here. In the world, there are two paths, two models two ways of life. There's the one that is the natural human that follows Adam, in his sin on the way to death. And then there is the one that follows Christ, the new creation, with the righteousness given to us from him that follows the path of life.

And St. Paul highlights that he says, but the free gift is not like the trespass, for if many died through one man's trespass. Much more have the grace of God and the free gift of grace of that one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the result of one's man sin for the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation. But the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. If because of one man's trespass, death, rain through that one man, much more will those who received the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. So St. Paul is setting up these two models in the natural man in Adam, death reigns is that death is their through sin, and that has been passed down to all of us and all of us sins, so we all die, and there are sins everywhere. In fact, so much sin in the world that it might as well be infinite. At the same time, there is a free gift. Following the new creation, Jesus Christ, he has followed the path of obedience, and that all who come to Him and through Him have His righteousness. And what this does is it points out something that we don't often talk about, we are used to talking about Jesus's death and resurrection for our forgiveness to wipe away the guilt of our sin. But we don't always talk about how how wonderful his life is for us, that Jesus came to be faithful for us. His obedience, his perfection, and everything that he did, becomes ours as a gift. That's why our gospel reading is paired. With the Old Testament reading today. Jesus is in the wilderness, being tempted by Satan, just like Adam and Eve. And yet he succeeds. And how different is this situation? Right? Adam and Eve are in perfection in the Garden of Eden, a wonderful place created to nurture them and be perfect for them. And Jesus is in the wilderness. He's hungry. 40 days no food. And Satan shows up and Tamsin and yet Adam and Eve cannot withstand this temptation, they fall right away. And Jesus, he steps in for us, and obeys God fully. Resist the temptation of the devil when we could not. And it isn't just that moment that Jesus is perfect for us. His perfection of resisting takes our becomes our obedience. And then when he goes out, and he heals people, and when he teaches people, and when he serves people, and when he loves people, and when he rejects in every single day of his life, that obedience, that perfection is for you. And it can be for you. Because the infinite God does it. A God who came to take our place to be perfect for us to fulfill God's law to never sin, and then take your place on the cross. And that is his gift to you. A gift given by faith and it is the answer to death. The abundance of grace Oh, those wonderful gift is easy to receive too. We're used to going to doctors to get our problems solved or at least our health problems. Sometimes it's really nice because they can solve it with just prescribing a few drugs. I remember the last time I had strep throat a while ago it was great. I mean, not the strep throat but solving it right. You go to the doctor they do the test a few minutes later they're like yep, strep. antibacterial drugs. You go you go to the pharmacy, you take them and after the course of drugs, it's gone. Like wouldn't wouldn't be great if all life's problems were like that. You go to the doctor, he's like, oh, yeah, you're feeling a little pain. Take a week of drugs. It'll be gone forever. Scared to death. Don't want to die. Okay, we got one for that. Here you go. Just take a few pills never die. Funny thing is that's actually what the church has. We can write a prescription for you to end the power of death over your life. fact we have it every day, every Sunday at least, that you can Get the medicine. That is Christ's life and righteousness given to you in Holy Communion. Because when you take in Christ in His Body and Blood, his life is given to you. His obedience is given to you, his righteousness is given to you, and death loses its power over. It's a simple prescription for everlasting life offered with the bread and the line. And how amazing is that that one man, Jesus Christ could come and live and die and rise and ascend into heaven, to give you exactly what you need to free you from death. St. Paul closes out. He says, Therefore is one trespass led to condemnation for all men. So one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. Whereas by the one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners. So by the one man's obedience, the many will be made righteous, righteous. That is the gift of Jesus Christ for all of us. We all are sinners following the model and pattern of Adam. But the curses of Adam are not our fate anymore. Jesus Christ has come to create a new Adam, a new human being. When we are in with him, his righteousness becomes ours, his perfection becomes ours, and all of those curses. We don't have to worry about them anymore. Jesus Christ has given us given us the medicine of life. All we need to do is take it in Jesus name, Amen.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

God Is In Charge

Acts 17:22-31

So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for

“‘In him we live and move and have our being’;

as even some of your own poets have said,

“‘For we are indeed his offspring.’

Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And tonight, we're starting a new series for the season of Lent all about a theology that is different from the way Christians often think I teased you all about it on Sunday morning, I said it's a religion that doesn't have any ordained priests. It has no buildings, and it is not a dot denomination. But it does have people who preach it from the pulpit every Sunday. It's called moralistic therapeutic deism. Now, when you put those words together, they are a bit of a challenge to run through. So you have to think about them a little bit less. So let's do that. Let's start with the first one, moralistic. What this means is that one of the chief aims of religion is to produce good people, people who do good things. And the idea is it's a moralistic approach to life. You've heard people talk about religion, giving their children or other people a good moral foundation. That's what that's talking about. The second word is therapeutic. And we know therapeutic therapeutic is all about helping us through problems. When you are having a mental health crisis, you go to a therapist. And so moral therapeutic deism is about helping you through your problems. One of the chief aims is to make your life better. Deist. Or deism is the idea that God created the world and let it run on its own. The classic example is the divine watchmaker, a watchmaker, takes all of the parts, puts the watch together, sets it down and watches it run. And a deistic. God is a faraway God, who created the world, set everything in order, and then just let it go on its own. And so a moralistic therapeutic deist is someone who believes that the moralistic approach to life being a good person, and that God is there to help you make your life better. But for the most part, he is pretty far off. Now, I didn't come up with this word, or this phrase, it comes from a book called soul searching the religious and spiritual lives of American teenagers, which came out in 2005. And it is a fascinating book, if you are interested in the spirituality of America, you should definitely read it. Some amazing findings that I think are important to talk about before we get into actual moralistic therapeutic, deism is just very simple. Teenagers will do what you tell them. They found that the vast majority of teenagers were more than happy to go and follow their parents religion. If the parents tell them to go to church, they'll go, and they'll generally be happy about it. Now you guys look at me, and you're like, what? You're crazy, right? Maybe they won't be happy about it in the moment. Maybe when it's early morning, and they're like, Ah, really. But otherwise, they're generally pretty happy about it. If you ask them to wait, no, not if their parents asked them. When the reacher researchers asked them. They were all basically happy just to follow along and live the life that their parents lead. And that's a fundamental thing about teenagers. It if you tell them what to do, they'll be happy about it. And that is actually what happens in our youth group. When we run into teenagers. They might complain Uh huh. I don't want to go. But when they get that they have fun, and they enjoy it. And that's just kind of how teenagers work. Now, you might think, Wait a second, I raised my children in the faith and they don't go to church. I think part of the problem is that we just assumed kids wouldn't be interested in the Orthodox faith that we would have to give them something else. And what we ended up giving them was moralistic therapeutic deism. One of the reasons is because Orthodox churches had been influenced by an American civil religion. That's the religion that politicians use when they say God Bless America, or there's a national tragedy and they read a psalm. They're not thinking about Jesus, they're thinking about their political ambitions. A god of America who loves guns, freedom, and cheeseburgers. Another reason, I think, is that we wanted to make sure that our children had something relevant and useful in their life. And so we tried to convince them that Jesus is worthwhile by giving them well, a religion that helps, that makes their life better, that has a reason in this world, rather than simply pointing them to eternal life and resurrection. Now, moralistic therapeutic deism has five different beliefs as summed up in that book. And what's amazing is that we have five Wednesdays in the season of Lent, and so it works out very well. Each Wednesday, we're going to cover a different one, the five beliefs are one, a god exists, who created and orders the world, and watches over human life on Earth, to God wants people to be good, nice and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible, and by most world religions. Three, the central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself. For God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life, except when God is needed to resolve a problem. And finally, five, good people go to heaven when they die. Tonight, we're going to be talking about the first one, a god exists, who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth. Now, this is the deistic part of moralistic therapeutic deism. Now, when you ask a young child about God, they will often reply using the same standard language, that God is a guy up in heaven, right? If you tell them draw God, they'll give you pretty standard image, right? It's an old man with a big, white fluffy beard, big, white poofy hair, and he's in a white robe standing on a cloud. And that's the image of God. That image matures a little bit as we grow up. And then until we get to Morgan Freeman, in a white suit, like he was in Bruce Almighty, you know, God is up in heaven, he comes down and he talks, but he's sort of not involved. And you know, in that movie, Bruce complains to God about, about how God is running things. And so God comes down to give him his almighty power. Well, God goes on vacation. The idea behind this is that a deistic God, who looks down on humanity, is someone who is rather uninvolved, and occasionally intervenes in our lives. He's sort of like the jolly old uncle who comes to visit bearing gifts every once in a while, or the divine watchmaker who only needs to repair a piece occasionally, is that what Paul and the Bible tell us about God? Just a little while ago, I read from Acts chapter 17, where it says, what you therefore worship unknown, do this, I proclaim to you, the God who made the world and everything in it being Lord of heaven, and earth does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands as though He needed anything since he himself gives to mankind, life and breath and everything. And he made from one man, every nation of mankind to live on the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward Him and find Him. Now all of that comports with with God being up and far away. But also St. Paul says this, yet he is actually not far from each one of us. For in Him we live and move and have our being, as even some of your own poets have said, quote, for we are indeed, his offspring. Now, what does that mean? So if if we are in Him, we live and move and have our being. That means the God is everywhere, and around and in everything, though he is not contained by anything. Right? God is the one who makes reality happen. You see, this God is a transcendent God, and all of reality is contained within him. Psalm 139, which I also read just a little while ago, talks about where God is the psalmist says,

Where shall I go from your spirit? Or where shall I free from your pret flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you're there. If I make my bed industrial, you're there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the most parts of this, even there, your hand shall lead me and your right hand shall hold. What it means is that God is not a far off God who looks down on creation. But he is intimately involved in everything. He is a God who is in charge of everything, in control of everything. If he is everywhere at all times, and all powerful and all knowing and almighty, nothing happens without his say. So instead of having a divine watchmaker, I think the best way to think about this is the analogy of computer hardware and software. If computer, if God is the hardware, creation is the software that he is running, everything is under his control. All that happens is according with God's plan. Now, what that means is that we have a bit of a challenge in our understanding of God. If everything is happening, according to God and His will, that means that the bad things are part of of his work, too. So what about the earthquake in Turkey? What about cancer? Car accidents, crazy politics? What about those things? Is God there behind it all, too. That's a tough pill to swallow. A lot of us think when we see bad things happen, we say, oh, no, God allows it to happen. But really, if God allows something, and he's all powerful, and all mighty means well, he's part of it to God is in everything around everything, sustaining everything as it happens. If God is truly all powerful, and all controlling, it means he is truly all powerful, and all controlling, which is actually kind of a good thing for us. Because it means God has the power to push everything towards the resurrection, that all things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to His purpose. It means that the all powerful Almighty God actually controls history and pushes it to toward the resurrection. Even Satan himself is God's servant. Got devil. Think about it this way. We know that it's God's plan to send His son Jesus Christ to die on the cross. And that is to say this was the plan from the very beginning after Adam and Eve sinned. But think about this. What would have happened if Satan hadn't actually brought about the temptation to put Jesus on the cross? The Bible tells us that Satan tempted Judas to betray him. And Satan was there to tempt the tempt the Pharisees, in fact, in the Gospel of Matthew, Satan, Satan's words are repeated by the Pharisees who stand at the foot of the cross and say, if you are the Son of God, come down from the cross repeating the words that Satan some something just like what Satan said, when he tempted Jesus in the wilderness. Now what would have happened if Satan hadn't tempted these people? If when Jesus went into Jerusalem, the crowds followed Him and cheered. The Pharisees had said, you go Jesus, we love it. This is great. He never would have been arrested. He never would have been tried, beaten, broken crown of thorns, no nailing to a cross and no death and resurrection, to save us. God used Satan to bring about our salvation. Isn't that nuts? But that's because he's God's devil. The real problem is that when you have a deistic God, a God who is far away and only looks down on creation, you have a God who isn't in control. Think about it this way. If God is in charge of everything, it means he's in charge of everything. If God isn't in charge of everything, it means he isn't in charge of everything. If God is in charge of everything, you can rely on him to make sure his promises are true, and will happen. If he isn't in charge of everything. It means that maybe we can escape his hand. Maybe the devil can snatch us from him. That's not the God of the Bible is it? So a deistic God, when you look at it, when you finally get down to what it really means, means that God is not in control of anything. He's got some power, some might, but the rest is up to the world. But if God is truly Almighty and all powerful, it means that he has the power to make salvation for you. And that all things are working towards our eternal life and resurrection on the last day. In Jesus name, amen.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Is Jesus Just A Nice Story? 2 Peter 1 on Transfiguration Sunday

2 Peter 1:16-21

For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain. And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Today is the celebration of the Transfiguration. And we read this story from the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus goes up the mountain with Peter, James, and John. And while he's on the top of the mountain, his face starts to glow, his clothes glow bright white, and Moses and Elijah appear there. Peter does his Peter thing where he says something silly. And all of a sudden, the cloud shows up. And a voice says, This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. And the most important words of the whole story, listen to him. Everything else is leading up to that moment in this story.

Everything else is to show who Jesus is and what's going on, and that we are to listen to him to his word, and to his teaching. And that is why our lectionary people chose shows the reading from Second Peter that I'm going to preach about today, where it says, For we did not follow cleverly devised myth when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. But we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honor and glory from the Father, and the voice was born to him by the majestic glory. This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. We ourselves heard this very voice from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain.

Peter is very concerned here, that his readers understand that this is not a story they made up. Not only that, but the church was always very concerned that this story was one that was seen by many, many witnesses.

Because Jesus did not do things privately. Sure, there are some stories where he meets with his disciples, or even this one on the top of the mountain where there's only a few witnesses. But most of Jesus's life, including his death, and resurrection, happened in public. And the church always wanted people to know that when he would preach when he would teach, he would go from town to town. And it would say that many people would come, be healed, and hear His voice. And the apostles themselves, follow Jesus through this whole ministry, from the day that Jesus was baptized in the Jordan River all the way up until the day he ascended into heaven in front of a crowd. And even in Scripture, they are certain to tell us that there were witnesses. St. Paul writes about this in first Corinthians chapter 15, when he says, For I delivered to you as a first importance, what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that He was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to surface, then to the 12. Then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some fallen asleep.

Now, St. Paul doesn't just tell us how many people were there just for the fun of it. What he's telling us is there were 500 people that saw Jesus alive after he died, and then ascend into heaven. And all you have to do is go ask them.

Most of them are still alive. They'll tell you the truth. Jesus did his thing, publicly. And there were plenty of witnesses. John says something similar. In John chapter 21. He writes about the gospel that he had just written in this book when he says, this is the disciple who is bearing witness about these things, and who has written these things. And we know that his testimony is true. What he's saying is,

I'm the character right here. I saw all this. Listen to me, I was there.

Similarly, in Acts chapter one, when Judas leaves the apostles, they know they need to have one more. So they say, so one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John Not until the day when he was taken up from us. One of these men must become with us a witness to his resurrection.

So what did they do when they needed a 12? Apostle? They said, let's choose someone who saw it all. And they had enough that there was more than one of them. So they did we even have a record of when one of the disciples of John Polycarp wrote a letter to the Virgin Mary, and it goes something like this. Hey, Mary, you're John is telling me a lot of crazy stuff about your son Jesus isn't really true. And she writes back and says, yep, listen to him.

The church was always concerned about because we know that Jesus is not a mythical character. He isn't some first century version of a dee dee comics, Superman.

It truly live. It truly died. And he truly rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. And the amazing thing about this is that he did it all in public witness.

This is different from the major religions of the world. One of the growing religions in the United States are Mormon. Do you know how that religion was founded?

Joseph Smith was by himself when the Prophet Moroni appeared to him in a vision and told him where to find a whole bunch of golden tablets, buried underground. Now, fortunately, this prophet told Joseph Smith that no one was allowed to see them until after he had translated them.

So he goes, and he piles them up and puts them in a box. And he translates them by using a seer stone that he looks into. It speaks the words to someone who then writes it down.

No one was allowed to touch them or see them.

Later, after it had been translated, he obtained testimony from 11 witnesses, before he was forced to give them back to the Prophet Moroni.

Basically, you have to trust Joseph Smith. Buddha Similarily, spread his philosophy, basically, because he reflected on life and thought he did a good job. And so he shared his private reflection with the rest of the world. And other people liked it too.

Basically, you had to trust him, that he was right.

Islam is similar. The Prophet Muhammad had a vision of the supposedly Angel Gabriel, who decided to share God's words directly to Muhammad. And then he would go to the scribes and repeat them. And those words became the Koran.

Basically, you had to trust that Muhammad was just as pure as could be. That he was right. It's the opposite in Christianity. You don't have to trust Peter that he was extra specially good. Because if Peter came out and said something that was wrong, there were 500 witnesses who could say No, Peter, that wasn't right. I was there.

And that's what makes Peters speech in Pentecost, so powerful. Jesus didn't do his thing in private. Because when Peter gets up, filled with the Holy Spirit, and he talks about everything that Jesus did, he tells them, he was established by miracles in front of you, you saw him, and then you killed him. And we saw him come back from the dead. And they knew it because they were there. They heard the news. They knew that this Prophet Jesus had died. And then they heard the story of the witnesses, and it caught them straight to the heart.

So they would turn and follow Jesus. And so receive the same promise that we received, that Jesus died and rose to give us eternal life. Now, one of the challenges facing the church today is not so much the claims of other religions, but also the things that we think about Jesus and often teach within our churches. It is pretty common among our churches. To say that the beliefs that you have are your own and personal and nobody really can tell you about them. I know this, because there's a book called soul searching that came out in 2005. That includes a number of interviews of Christians, and other various religious people who go to church all the time and say that their religion is very important. Who don't think there is anything true about God? There was a girl, they witnessed a Jehovah's Witness girl who had a friend who switched religions for time in the last year. And when the interviewers asked her about this, they said, she said, Well, it's whatever floats her boat. There was another person that they interviewed. They asked about people who had a different view of God than that person. And the interviewee said, I wouldn't say anything. It's their opinion, I have my own opinion. The interviewer goes, Are you right? I don't know. I have no idea. Is there a right or wrong answer when it comes to God?

There is no right answer. Why not? There isn't a wrong answer. Because it's God, you can't prove. It's just what you believe. Basically, for many people, the idea of God is up to you. It doesn't really matter what you believe. It just matters that you believe or that you're doing something.

These statements reminds me of an exercise that I did when I was young. In elementary school, maybe you had to do that, too. I got a worksheet that was filled with statements. And my job was to decide whether they were Fact or opinion. The idea was, that fact is something that we had shared knowledge, everybody could know it. Nobody, nobody could argue with it. And the other one is opinion, which means that everybody can have a different opinion and still be right. So it gets statements like this.

Broccoli tastes good. Opinion. Water is

made up of hydrogen and oxygen. That's a fact. It is good to help people opinion, water boils at 212 degrees.

The implication of this simple exercise is that the only things that are knowable. The only things that have a real truth claim are things that you can weigh, or measure, or take apart.

Things that you can sign

everything else is up to you. In fact, everything else doesn't matter. Which is why you can believe whatever you want about God.

But the Bible tells us something very different.

The Bible tells us that the truth claims that we make based on the witnesses are life and death. That Jesus truly came that he truly die, the truly rose, he ascended into heaven, and he is really and truly coming back on the last day. And when he does that, all who believe in Him will be raised to eternal life.

And all those who do not raise to eternal punishment.

And that's a big deal. Peter wants us to know that we are making real, true claims about reality. Not something that is made up or up to you that there is really something there that Jesus was truly here that he truly died for you. He truly rose for you. And he has given you the words to follow

as he says, and we have a prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention to as the lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises.

This true prophetic word began with Jesus. And the witnesses tell us that Jesus during His ministry told the disciples and He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed and after three days rise again.

Now it's easy to make that prediction. Lots of people have made lots of predictions that didn't come true.

But Jesus did. He went to Jerusalem, he was rejected by the chief priests, the scribes and the elders, he went to a cross and he died. And after three days, he rose from the dead. I don't know about you, but if someone does that, I'm gonna listen to him.

And that's what Peter did. Peter was so sure of this, this thing that happened of the story, he witnessed that he was a part of that he would offer up his own life, and supportive. Nobody dies for a cleverly devised myth. If Peter had come up with some nice story, to hopefully get everybody to follow him and give him money, do you think he would have been crucified upside down on a cross for it? I don't. But he went to Rome.

And he died. He died because he knows there is the truth that Jesus is coming, that he will raise you from the dead, and that it's real. If it's just up to us, then that matters. That means nothing. If it's just up to us, and whatever you believe nothing we do here makes any sense. When you come forward to the altar, you're not taking Christ's Body and Blood, you're just taken whatever. Just kind of right in line, you receive no forgiveness, you receive no salvation, but because trite Christ really and truly came. What we do here means everlasting life. That when you eat Christ's body and drink his blood, you get real forgiveness and eternal life delivered to you.

This is why we are so sure why we are so true and why people have suffered or even death to pay attention to this prophetic word.

In Jesus name

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Good People Go To Hell. Bad People Go To Heaven: A Sermon for Ash Wednesday

2 Corinthians 5:20-6:10

Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Working together with him, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain. For he says,

“In a favorable time I listened to you,

and in a day of salvation I have helped you.”

Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation. We put no obstacle in anyone's way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: by great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love; by truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; through honor and dishonor, through slander and praise. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Tonight, I chose somewhat of a shocking title, good people go to hell, bad people go to heaven. Many of you who came in we're noticing it, and we're talking about it today. Now, if you have been a Lutheran for very long, you might have seen through the shock of it, Lutherans, we know, only bad people can be saved to sinners, because that's who Jesus came to die for. And that is what St. Paul is helping us to see. When he tells us that what he is saying in second Corinthians chapter five, he says, We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. Be reconciled to God, he says. What he says is that there is a distance between God and humanity. That distance is caused by our sin. From the very beginning, human beings have separated ourselves by our own sinful nature, and the things that we do. But even more than that, we don't have to look just at our actions, we can see the ever encroaching power of death in our lives. Every year, we feel it just a little bit more in our bodies, and in our bones. And every year, that phrase that I tell you, when I put that ash on your forehead, from dust to have come to dust, you shall return. Well, it feels just a little more real. And that's because of sin. That's because of death. And the distance we have between God and us. Even an infant child born yesterday, has the same distance as someone 90 years old. We are all approaching death. But St. Paul gives us a reassurance, that through Christ, we have eternal life and righteousness, reconciliation with God. He says, For our sake, he made him to be sin, who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. St. Paul is telling us that for our sake, God sent Jesus Christ, the only perfect human being sinless from the moment he was conceived. He sent him to take on our sin and die in our place, so that we could have God's righteousness. Jesus Christ is a righteousness, the righteousness for sinners. So he says, We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. So the real question then is, how? How can we sinners be reconciled to God? That's the real question. The church isn't divided about our need to be reconciled. At least the Christian church isn't just about every Christian you ever talked to says yes, we do need a savior. We do need to be reconciled with God. We need someone to come and die for us. The question is always how if good people go to heaven, or bad people go to hell. For many people, that's the way we talk. We talk as if the Christian church is a place where good people go to work on their spiritual muscles. We gather together and we pick up our weights we do our leg presses, our squats, we make sure that we never skip leg day. We pull out the barbells we do our bicep curls. And if you're really excited about it, you don't do your just your exercises at church, you do them at home too. And the most buff of us the ones that can be most impressive. We make Instagram reels and show off a powerful spiritual weights that we can lift. Sometimes we say that the Christian church is a place for good people, to become better for Christians to turn to our own works and get comfort from the good things that we do. And I think it's because we Americans are a positive people. We like to think of ourselves as pick yourself up by your bootstraps and get going. And you can do it with Tim Robbins and Joel Osteen and people like that. Be reconciled to God then turns into looking at your own spiritual abilities, your prayers, your devotions, your life. Now, it might sound like I'm exaggerating just a little bit. And sometimes I do that for a fact. But I have an example of something that is supposed to be inspiring something that is supposed to tell us how great it can be to be a Christian who is a good person working on their Christianity. It's a song called Rise Up Lazarus by Kane. And the song is really great. I mean, it's it's peppy, it's exciting. It makes you feel good. And there's this chorus where it's like, rise up, rise up. It's really fun. Until you get to the words. Here they go. In the dark and all alone growing comfortable. Are you too scared to move and walk out of this tomb, buried underneath the lies that you believe safe and sound stuck in the ground to last to be found? You're just asleep. And it's time to leave? Come on, rise up, take a breath. You're alive now. Can't you hear the voice of Jesus calling us out of the grave like Lazarus, your blank, brand new. The power of death couldn't hold you? Can't you hear the voice of Jesus calling us out of the grave like Lazarus rise up, rise up, rise up out of the grave like Lazarus. You can hear it there can't you? It's this idea that we can hear the voice of Jesus and climb up. God is calling us to a brighter and better future we can be those Christians we want to be and it Jesus is just calling and you can do it. But can you? I look at those words. And if I'm honest about my life, I can't have I left behind all the lies I once believed Am I able to really pull out of the grave that I find my life in. In fact, when I look at my sin, when I look at the things that make me most frustrated, that make me most sad about my life. Sometimes the frustrating part is that I love it too much. I can't leave it behind behind. In fact, when temptation comes I don't even try to get away from it. I just dive in headfirst, I embrace it, I love it. I can't get enough of it until it's gone. And then I hit myself again. In a church where it's all about lifting our spiritual weights and showing off our spiritual muscles. Rising up is not good news. When you're frustrated like that, you say, Oh, come on. Can't you hear the voice of Jesus calling? You come out of the grave like Lazarus. You can do it Christian rise up, rise up. Can't you hear the voice of Jesus Jesus calling your brand new the power of death couldn't hold you can't you hear the voice of Jesus calling us out of the grave like Lazarus, rise up, rise up rise up. That's not good news is it? In fact, that's terrible news. You're just not good enough to come out of the grave. If only you truly heard Jesus's voice, if only truly you listened that's why we need a savior. Someone to be sin for us, so that we can have his righteousness. You see, to be reconciled to God means that you are a sinner who needs a Savior. And that's why I titled this sermon. Good people go to hell. Bad people go to heaven. It's the bad people who look at words like rise up Lazarus and think to themselves. There is no way I can do this. In fact, I have nothing that I can give God. I'm just a sinner. I don't leave behind my lies. I don't pull myself out of the grave. I've got nothing. All I can do is turn to Jesus and cry out. Save To me,

and just for people like that, that Jesus gives them, his righteousness. He came to give us his perfection. That's why his whole life was about perfectly following God for us in our place. Because we simply can't. And what St. Paul tells the Corinthians and us is that now is the time to receive that perfection, that reconciliation. God sent St. Paul to the Corinthians, as a pastor and an ambassador of Christ, telling them out saying, be reconciled to God. St. Paul says, working together with him, then we appeal to you not to receive the grace of Christ of God in vain for he says, in a favorable time I listened to you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you. Behold, now is the favorable time Behold, now is the day of salvation. And that message is the same for you today, now is the time to call out to Jesus, I am a sinner, I am a bad person, I need you to save me, now is the day of salvation to cry out to Him and say, Send someone to reconcile me with God. And that is why he sent Paul and why he sends pastors do you see, we don't turn people to their works, and say, Get up, you can do it. We tell people, I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit. We have a pastor who says, I forgive your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. And then we give out the medicine that leads to eternal life, Christ's Body and Blood in the bread and the wine. These are not things that you can claim in spiritual strength. They're not inspiring, they don't call you to be the great person that you want to be. They're just a simple gift of life, given from one center to another, with the power of God, for salvation. Jesus saves people through these things and he saves you through them. Bad people go to heaven. Now, that favorable time won't always be here. The day of salvation won't always be around. There will be a day when Jesus closes the door of grace. Maybe it'll be the day when when a person dies. Maybe it's the day when Jesus returns. On that day, good people will turn to Jesus and say, Jesus, look, I left behind the lies I left behind my sin. I heard your voice and I climbed out of my grave I trusted you. I served you I gave you I did everything right. They'll present their good works to Jesus. And He will turn to them and say, I never knew you. He will cast them out into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Because that's not how people get salvation. when good people turn to their their spiritual strength and say, Look what I did for you, Jesus. They don't get salvation. It's sinners, who are saved. Bad people who cry out to Jesus saved me. Give me life. Forgive my sin, give me your body and blood. And then Jesus welcomed them into his into His eternal life. Because Jesus didn't come to save good people. He came to save sinners like you. In his name, amen.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

You Have Heard It said, but I say to you: Matthew 5:21-37

Matthew 5:21-37

“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire. So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison. Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.

“It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

“Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.

Grace, mercy and peace are yours through Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen. The lesson for meditation is St. Matthew chapter five verses 21 through 37. The Gospel lesson which is already been read, why is your pastor gone today? Well, conventional pastor our wisdom is to get us up whenever thorny topics come up in the lectionary. Indeed, today one hardly feels like saying this is the gospel, the good news of our Lord after the gospel lesson. Here we read of anger, lust, divorce, and taking an oath in court. Again, I asked why is your pastor whisked away in the trunk of an unmarked car this week? Well, for good reasons at your service, but the strength of the law today prepares you for the full constellation of the gospel. Please be joined me then to see how these four topics anger, lust, divorce, in the oath, teach you to walk in the way of the Lord, and to seek Him with your whole heart. You have heard that it was said, but I say to you, with these words, Jesus interprets the law on the basis of his own authority. San Agustin said, The New Testament is in the old concealed, the old is in the new revealed. That is to say, the Old Testament you have heard gives you a shadow of the New Testament, and the new But I say to you gives us the fulfillment of the Old Jesus, then the New Testament in the flesh, amplifies the laws of old, he turns its volume all the way up. He moves from action to contrition, from outward compliance to inward attitude, by enlarge, to simplify from keeping the law with your hands, which is what the Jews of his day did to keeping the law with the penitent heart. And so Jesus preaches the law this way, again, turning the volume way up, to drive the religious Old Adam, yes, the sinner in you to despair, and to drop dead at the foot of the cross where there is life. And so you have heard it said, Do not murder, and whoever murderers will be liable to judgment. And now you're thinking to yourself, or you might be thinking, Well, I'm off the hook on that one, Jesus. I haven't strangled, stabbed, shot or any kicked anyone in the shins? Well, at least not since sixth grade recess back in grammar school. And I'm generally kind to people and I help the old ladies cross the street. And I would never purposefully harm anyone in his body. And then Jesus comes with his New Testament fulfillment. But I say to you, yes, I say to you that everyone who is angry, angry, yes, angry with his brother will be liable to judgment. And whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council. And whoever says you fool will be liable to the hell of fire. Yes, that little altercation that you had in the parking lot. That flash of road rage of the guy who cut you off on the eighth or the five, that simmering anger that you are harboring, overwhelmed, whatever, if Jesus had not become the murderer in your place, the hell of fire would be yours for yes, we have all been unrighteous really angry with our brother. Moreover, you have heard of old that it was said do not commit adultery. And again, you might be tempted to think well, I've got that one covered. You might be thinking I'm faithful in my marriage. I have never strayed, I've always come home on time and so forth. True story. A man once bragged to his pastor, I would never cheat on my wife. And the pastor actually said you just haven't met the right woman yet. And and he's absolutely write for no one is above temptation and the pride of saying I would never comes before the fall. Almost every man in the crowd who heard Jesus that day probably thought he was in the clear after all, they stoned adult urges they stoned adulterers to death. That is to say they set the penalty so high it made it unlikely anyone would ever be actually guilty of physical adultery. But again, I say to you Yes, I say to you, what about the heart? Everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. Yes, that's right. Even a look with a live or online at the beach at a club. It doesn't matter. Guilty as charged for the law has no loopholes, no mercy, no easy way out Guilty as charged. And more. You have heard that it was said, Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce. The Jews of Jesus day, placed the certificate of divorce into the hands of the wife in front of three rabbis who served in witnesses. And then the man would say three times, I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you. Okay, sounds a little bit crazy. And yet we have something just as crazy, namely, no fault, divorce. Thank you, California. It's a detour around repentance for nobody is without fault and a moral failing that is divorce. But I say to you, yes, I say to you, once again, cutting through the outward justification what I have done with my hands to the heart, everyone who divorces his wife, except on the grounds of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery. And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. Yes, in the thinking of the one who made us male and female and said, the two shall become one flesh. There is no divorce that can ever be legitimized much less sanctified by a piece of paper for divorce and adultery, go hand in hand and call us all to repent. You have heard that it was said, Do not swear falsely, but perform to the lord of what you have sworn? Well, once again, you might be thinking, Well, I do pretty well there Jesus, I tell the truth, nothing but the truth. So help me God. And when I pledge to give a certain amount of money, I do it. When I say I swear to God, I need it. And I do it. And I certainly would never ever cheat on my tax return. Thus the Old Testament, and its misunderstandings in Jesus day of thinking you could actually keep the law. But I say to you, yes. Jesus says to you, don't swear at all, by heaven, by the Earth, or by the hairs of your head. The very fact that you and I ever should place our left hand on the Bible and raise our right hand and say, so help me God reminds us that we are as senators, people of the line who could use a little legitimate fact checking now and then yes, that you have to put under oath, that sometimes we have to coerce the truth out of people says that we are by nature, liars, liars to the core and the half truth, the untruth, the big fish story and is called that comes out of the sinful mouth much more easily than the whole truth. And once again, it calls you not to say I've kept it but to read.

So there it is, anger, lust, divorce, and they taking an oath for tough topics. For guilty verdicts and date, I say not a confirmation verse to be found anywhere in today's Gospel lesson. And for good reasons for the coming 40 days of Lent. You have heard, but I say to you, so here you have a very deep diagnosis, don't you? The one that you probably don't want to hear, at least as a sinner. But sin is not superficial and topical, it is deep. And it is totally, totally an utterly corrupt. It's not just a matter of a bad word here, or a bad thought there a bad or sinful action now and then though that's part of the scheme. Sin is a deeply corrupted orientation of the heart since Adam's fall. And I dare say that no one left the sermon on the mount that day, at least this portion of it terribly happy feeling justified about himself. And anyone who left the Sermon on the Mount thinking, Well, I'm doing pretty well here. God must be pleased with me, was not listening very carefully. So Moses on Mount Sinai, about 1500 years before Jesus gave the Law in summary form, the 10 commandments that Jesus amplifies here, Jesus amplify them to make sure you understand their depth and you see the need for repentance. And let us add this morning that about 1500 years after Jesus, Martin Luther expanded on the 10 commandments, for the same reason, take a look at his explanations. In the Small Catechism, we should fear and love God so that we do not but we do again fear and love God and this is what you Do not to do. And this is what you are then equipped to do in Christ. And there's that little word, but again, we do not, but we do. So we do not hurt or harm our neighbor in his body in any way. Again, I dare say we've never murdered anyone, but you can hurt and harm your neighbor in various ways, but rather help and befriend him in every bodily need. So, for Moses in the 10 commandments, Jesus amplifying them on the Sermon on the Mount, and Luther explaining them in the Small Catechism, we see that not an iota, not a.we would say not a word or a continent would ever pass from the law until all was fulfilled. Why? Why do we Lutherans, best known for the fullness of the gospel also love the law. Because every loophole in the law, every erased Iota, or dot, every self justification takes away something from Jesus death on the cross, to chisel away at the law and say, well, this just doesn't apply to us in a modern culture or whatever the next excuse of the day may be to hate the law. Every one of those gradually chips away at the gospel as well, until the cross is no longer preached. In the fullness of the gospel then and for the sake of the fullness of the cross. Jesus came to fulfill the law completely, not just in the places where we need a little help even more. So. He came to save you from your unrighteous anger through his own righteous anger against all that is against God's word, especially in cleansing and clearing out the temple that would once again be a place where the Lord is worshipped. Jesus came to rescue you from pig and unholy lust, by making your salvation his greatest desire, the thing that he wanted the most was to save you for he does not want to live without you his own dear child, and divorce. Recall this language is used in the Epistles where we read that Jesus is faithful to you, his own bride, even when you are unfaithful to him, by your own sin, He loves you that much and he would never ever divorce you. And his work transcends any concept of taking an oath for JESUS IS TRUTH incarnate, and he simply cannot lie or deceive. I baptize you. He says, I forgive you all your sins. He says through your pastor, this is my body. This is my blood of the New Testament. Oh, this is no right hand on the Bible and take an oath but rather truthful words from the truth made flesh who stood before Pilate. And as you recall, Pilate asked, what is truth, unaware that the answer was standing right in front of him not so much in words, but in the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ, who is the truth made flesh. This, then, is the gospel in today's Gospel lesson. Jesus became sin for you dearly beloved, that you might become the righteousness of God. He died under the crushing weight of your sins which are many, and he rose from the dead triumphant over sin and death. And you in turn, live this out through daily repentance and faith for you, forgiven, lest and redeemed, live under Him in His kingdom, a kingdom where you are free to walk in his ways to seek Him with your whole heart. For His Word is your light and your salvation. God granted unto you this epiphany for Jesus sake, on the peace of God, which passeth all understanding keep your hearts and minds through faith in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The World's Wisdom Will Pass Away: 1 Corinthians 2

1 Corinthians 2

And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. 2 For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, 4 and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5 so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

6 Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. 7 But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. 8 None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 But, as it is written,

“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,

nor the heart of man imagined,

what God has prepared for those who love him”—

10 these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. 11 For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. 13 And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.

14 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. 15 The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. 16 “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.

Sermon transcribed by AI. Please forgive any errors.

We have been working our way through Paul's first letter to the Corinthians over the last few weeks, beginning right at the beginning. First Corinthians Chapter One. During this time we we saw a number of sermons the first one, in that opening sector was about how Jesus is enough that with all the things that people care about, the only thing you truly need is Jesus. When you have Christ, you have every gift that you ever need. The next section we talked about divisions in the church, whether divisions within our congregation, or divisions outside our congregation in denominations, and how the sad fact of it exists, even though Christ has made us one as a body, by baptism into him. Last time, we talked about what people expect from a Christian religion, how in America, we expect a religion that works. In other words, it makes our life better. And how that is not always the way the cross is right? Is the cross doesn't make life better. It just points us to Jesus. Today, St. Paul continues talking about the cross against the wisdom of the world, and how the wisdom of the cross is the only thing that remains when Christ returned. Let's take a look. And I when I came to you brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you, except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. And I was with you in weakness, and in fear and much trembling. And my speech and my message were not implausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit, and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. Here St. Paul begins to set up a distinction between the wisdom of the world and the wisdom of God in the cross, that He came proclaiming Christ crucified, and nothing else and he didn't want them following him, because he had a whole lot of worldly wisdom. That doesn't mean that that Paul was an anti intellectual. Paul was a learned man. And we know this because St. Paul quotes philosophers from the era in Acts chapter 17. He is speaking to the Athenians and equals two philosophers, one Epona, FM and IDEs, and a stoic philosopher auratus. You are all of course very familiar with their works. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Me to. St. Paul isn't saying that because he wants to get rid of all that book learning. No, he isn't an anti intellectual. He didn't come to Corinth, knowing Christ, and only him crucified. Because he was against learning. He became he came to them to preach Christ and Him crucified, because he wanted to make sure that their faith was not in the impressive, powerful looking worldly wisdom. But they had the message of the thing that lasted forever. Though he had an education, he didn't put that on display. Though he was wise in the ways of the world, he didn't show off. He just preached Christ, and Him crucified. And he says, that their faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. And to get there, he demonstrated it with the Spirit and of power. When we look at x, we can see that wherever St. Paul went, when he got there, for the very first time, he was always doing miracles. He would heal the sick, he would cast out demons who do amazing things, just like the apostles did everywhere they went for the very first time. I kind of liken it to what happened when the allies invaded in D Day. You know the story right? D Day the Allies invade the beach at Normandy. Now when most of us think about that, we think about that Saving Private Ryan scene, right? They've got the guys running up to machine gunfire, there's all sorts of casualties. It's very scary, very bad. That's not actually how most of it went. In many places, the the Allies just walked on with little or no resistance. Why was that? Because they had spent a really long time with their battleships, firing artillery, at the fortifications to destroy it. So when they got there, they didn't have to do a whole lot. That's kind of how I see these miracles in the book of Acts. When St. Paul invades a new area to take that territory from Satan for Christ, he shoots off the big guns, heals the sick, cast out demons does all of those things. But it's not the healing that saves are the casting out demons that makes that makes it powerful. What he leaves with them after that is simple. The preaching of Christ, and Him crucified. And it's the preaching of Christ that remains afterwards as they go on. Because that is the power of God. The power of God to give salvation for everyone who believes it's this cross and the resurrection that delivers eternal life, both to the Corinthians and to us as well. Now, if you've been following along over the past several weeks, you've been seeing that St. Paul talks only about the cross in these things right? Here has not said anything about the resurrection, which I think is kind of weird, don't you? Because the cross doesn't make a whole lot of sense, without a Savior who rises from the dead. And of course, you can't rise from the dead without a cross. What is going on here? Why is St. Paul doing this? He's doing this because the cross is what defines the church for the Corinthians. And for us today. As we as we look at what the Corinthians were like, they wanted to be powerful and impressive. And if the resurrection defined the church and our life, we would be powerful, and impressive. All our lives would be amazing. Everything would be going really well for us, God would come down with his power and might and make the church way better than everybody else.

But that's not the life of the church is it? The life of the church is often filled with sacrifice.

life of the church is looking at sadness, and suffering through the lens of the cross. And so we see in the cross the wisdom for the church so that we can see victory in death, power in the weakness of a Savior who died on a cross and wisdom in the foolishness of what the world thinks is foolish, at least wisdom in the suffering that we see in our lives. And so it's the cross then that he preaches and proclaims. Because we need to see that as defining our lives now. So that when Christ returns, the resurrection will define us as He calls us from our graves. Let's continue. Paul says yet among the mature, we do impart wisdom. Although it is not a wisdom of this age, or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. We impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this. For if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory. But as it is written, what no I have seen nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagine what God has prepared for those who love Him. These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. St. Paul is reminding us something that we probably already know is that there is a division between the wisdom of the world and the wisdom of the cross, and that the cross looks nuts to people who don't get it. That if you don't have an understanding of what it means, there is no way you can truly understand God's wisdom. Because the cross reveals to us the nature of reality, through Jesus Christ. And this should make sense to us, you can only see past the physical to the spiritual, if someone reveals it to us. Western philosophy has tried to figure out ways to explain the world around us. And we know many of the things that have been passed down through them. If you if you follow the traditions of Western philosophy, you basically get two different camps, there are the rationalists, the ones who believe that you can understand the nature of reality, by thinking about it really hard. These guys go back all the way to Plato. You may have heard of names like Descartes, they are a continental rationalists, who think if I think hard enough, if I work through the logic, I can understand creation. One of the other major schools were the empiricist, often coming out of out of England, and they passed down to us through science, that you can understand the nature of reality, by looking at things and measuring them. Your senses, your evidence, can give you all of reality. These have had a great deal of a measure of success, because you can actually understand reality by measuring it, right. That's what we call science. That's how we get computers and technology, and all of the things that have made our world what it is today. But at the same time, you still can't see beneath the stuff of creation, if you're trying to do that, despite their claims. When the Soviet Union sent Yuri Gagarin out into space, he was purported to have said when he came back, I looked everywhere, and I couldn't find God. And I go what? Who suggested that you would. But they were trying to make light of the Christian claims. Or the Guardian wrote an article where it says, quote, Russia had made it to the stars. And as the saying went, and there was no bearded old god, they're only science. Of course, not. Similarily evolution, Darwin's theory was simply a way to try to explain everything, by getting rid of God, rather than including him. So we got this wisdom of the world. And even now we have that we have this idea that spiritual truths are up to the person, because you actually can't be they can't be real. They say, whatever it is, as long as you believe or as long as it works for you. Which means nothing is true. This is the opposite of what St. Paul is saying. He is saying that there is a reality, a spiritual reality that God reveals to us through the cross. It is not speculation. It is the truth. That God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to reveal to us the nature of creation. What these other ways of explaining reality are is a little bit like what it would be like if I were to explain how a car works. Every once in a while my wife and I, we would our car would break down. It's happened a couple of times. And you know what you do when the car breaks down and you're a guy is you you get off to the side of the road, and then you go and you open the hood, because that's what you're supposed to do. Why did I do it? It wasn't because I could actually fix anything. I'd go out and I look and says you're still broken. I have no idea how a car works. If there was a cap off or something like that. I could be like, Yep, the caps off. Or a belt was broken. I'd be like, Oh, yep, there's a belt. And that's about it. be even worse, if I tried to write a manual about how a car works, just by looking at it. I could probably come up with some really fancy names for the different parts of the engine, the spinning thingy, the belty thingy, the thing that vibrates, write really good names. Even if I took it apart and examined everything piece by piece, I would not have enough knowledge to explain how it works. That's because I it hasn't been taught to me hasn't been revealed. Because these things are so complicated. No single individual knows all of it. I think that's what it's like with reality. The spiritual truths can only be revealed through Jesus Christ, that God is not floating somewhere in heaven. He is the essence of existence himself. And the only way to truly know Him is through a God who reveals Himself to us. God did that by sending His Son Jesus Christ, to teach, preach, and then sacrifice himself on the cross and rise from the dead. And it's only through this death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, that we can understand the narrative of all existence that begins with the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve and ends with Christ's return and raising us from the dead. And without the cross at the center, you know nothing about what God is doing. Nothing about his power in the church. And when Jesus comes back, all the speculation about reality will disappear. All of the things in the wisdom that that people think they know, will pass on. And all that will remain is Christ and His power for us. salvation that He gives us, when we are raised from the dead, to live forever with Him. We continue for who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person which is in him. So also, no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words, not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him. And he is not able to understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but as himself judge to be judged by no one, for who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him. But we have the mind of Christ. St. Paul is telling us, but the only way to have this revealed to you, as the wisdom and power of God is that the Holy Spirit come to you, and do it. This should be pretty standard for you by now, because it is a a Lutheran teaching is that only the Holy Spirit can reveal Christ to us. And without his power, we can know nothing. As Luther writes, in his explanation of the third article of the Apostles Creed, he

says, I believe that I cannot find my own reason or strength, believe in Jesus Christ, my lord, or come to him. But the Holy Spirit has called me by the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith. In the same way he calls gathers and lightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith. What this means is that that should be no surprise, when the world rejects the gospel of Jesus Christ. Because it doesn't make any sense. Without having the Holy Spirit. Without understanding the gifts that God gives us. It should make no sense to them. And so you need to have the spirit to be able to understand and to be able to believe it should it should make sense then, when even Christians struggle with the idea that the cross defines our reality. Because we're out there in a world that constantly tells us that it's wrong. That calls us that it's wisdom, it's truth claims, and everything it says, is better than what we have. But we need to cling to the wisdom of Christ, to the cross, because we know that it is the power of God. And we know that the only way to understand it is to get the spirit. So when we talk about it, we need to lead with Christ and Him crucified just as St. Paul did. Because that's how the spirit goes out. Not with powerful words or amazing wisdom, but the message of the cross it's what worked on us and what brought us here? That's what works on the world as well. Because it's the only wisdom that lasts all the way up through to the resurrection on the last day.

In Jesus name, amen.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Does It Work? What Americans Want From Christianity

1 Corinthians 1:18-31

18 For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written,

“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,

and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”

20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. 22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

26 For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, 29 so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. 30 And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, 31 so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. We have been working our way through the book of First Corinthians. Lately, we began looking at the opening section of St. Paul's letter to the church in Corinth. And he talked about how Jesus is enough for the congregation in Corinth, that when they received Jesus, they had everything, all gifts, all power, all spiritual gifts, everything they needed from God. The next section was about divisions in the church. And we talked about what it means that the church is currently divided as it is, and how Christians should approach thinking about denominations in this divided Christian world. Today, we're moving on to the next section, verses 18 through 31. And it looks at the the cross. And the question of how crazy is the cross? When the world looks at it? It looks like foolishness, like nothing worse than nothing, like the worst thing that could ever happen to anyone. But to us, it is the wisdom of God, and the power of God for our salvation. St. Paul gives us some words about what it would have looked like to the people who were there at the time to the Corinthians, their congregation would have been made up of Greeks, and Jews, right. And so he tells us the kinds of things that they saw as powerful. He says, For Jews demand signs, and Greeks seek wisdom. He asked about the debaters of the age describes the powerful and amazing people. We know enough about Greek society to know what St. Paul is talking about, at this time. And through much of Greek society, it is the the scholar, the wise person, the philosopher, who is the peak of society. You know, some of their names Plato, right? You've heard that one before. I'm sure. He is the one who said that the perfect King, the ruler was supposed to be the philosopher king. Right? The wise man who knows the truth about reality. Socrates, also, Aristotle, big names even now. You might not know people like dioxygenase, who started the school of the cynics, or Zeno, who began the school of the stoics. The stoics are making a comeback right now. Many people are recommending reading the journal of Marcus Aurelius, who was a Roman Emperor 100 years after Jesus ascended into heaven. Still following this school that would have existed at the time Paul is writing to big deal, what these these different schools of philosophy were doing, and they lasted for centuries past the founder, who made them. We know that this is a big deal in the Bible, because it talks about it. Actually, when Paul goes to Athens and acts 17, it says, now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time and nothing except telling or hearing something new. That's kind of the Palestinian way of coming to Athens and saying, What are they doing debating philosophy all day long. Jews also had expectations, the things that they thought were powerful. It wasn't the wisdom that the Greeks had, it was signs. We see that in the Gospel of Matthew when they come to Jesus, Matthew 16, verse one says, and the Pharisees and Sadducees came and to test him, they asked him to show them a sign from heaven. happens over and over again through the Bible. Show us a sign to sell what authority you have to do these things Jesus, and he almost always replies with no, you're not going to get a sign from me. I don't dance to your tune. But you can see why if you look at the Old Testament, why they would say that Deuteronomy points back to Egypt and says You saw the signs and wonders Deuteronomy 622. And the Lord showed signs and wonders great and grievous against Egypt and against Pharaoh and all his household before our eyes are Joel Chapter Two with this expectation, And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh. Your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions, and even on the male and female servants in those days, I will pour out my spirit. Wouldn't that be a sign? Wouldn't that be a wonder? That is what they were expecting. And so anything that is powerful, anything that is good, you would see Jews expecting the miraculous to accompany it, like it did with the prophets. That was their expectation from God. And with that, we read these words, for Jews demand signs, and Greek seeks wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to the Gentiles. But to those who are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God, for the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. And again, for the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing. but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. Sometimes I think we, we forget how strange the cross actually is, how horrifying. It is, stripped of all of our history and tradition. One of the ways that we see this is the way that Matthew chapter 20, is interpreted. This is the story where the the mother of James and John comes to Jesus and says, Jesus, I want you to give me a favor. And he's like, What do you want me to do? She says, When you come into the kingdom, put my sons one on your right and one on your left. When you come into your kingdom, Jesus says, You don't know what you're asking. He turns to them and says, Can you drink the cup that I drink? They say yes. And he says that, then he says, It is not my place to to, to give tell you, one of my right ammonia in the left, that is for those that it is prepared for. Now, most of the time, when we talk about that, and this is how I was taught when I was young, we think we don't know who will be sitting at Jesus when He comes in his glory when he's on his glorious throne, who will be in his right and his left. We have no idea it's prepared for someone. Probably someone that we don't expect. And that is absolutely wrong. And you want to know why? Because we don't read Matthew like a book, we read it Peric up right by Peric up. But if you actually read Matthew, you know, we know exactly who is that Jesus is right and left when he comes into his kingdom. It says in Matthew 27. And over his head, they put the charge against him which read, this is Jesus, the King of the Jews. Then two robbers were crucified with Him. one on his right, one on his left. When Jesus comes in glory, and enters into His kingdom, it's already happened. His glorious throne was across his amazing crown was thorns. And his wise counselors were robbers who died next to him. Kind of weird, right? That's not a glorious throne. An amazing crown. That doesn't sound like a kingdom I want to be in. Consider what it is that we have. Right up here. Look at that thing. We've added all sorts of beautiful stuff to it right. We made it nice and smooth. This cross in front of us we added some varnish, there's a little metal and it's pretty shiny. It's big and beautiful. It fits in our architectural style so it looks really amazing. I want you to strip it of that in your mind.

Get rid of the metal That is nice and shiny and beautiful. Take off the beautiful varnish. Make it instead rough wood, cut hastily, without any thoughts of beauty, not sanded, so there's plenty of splinters on it. Now add a body right up there. Not back in Palestine right in front of you. A man with nails through his wrist, a crown of thorns on his head and blood dripping down from the arms. flowing like a river, down the center. A head bowed because he is too weak, to lift it. Feet mangled by the nails. That's something you put up in front of a group of people. Is that beautiful?

That's the God of the Christian church. Paul says, We preach Christ crucified. You can see why it would be a stumbling block for Jews, foolishness to the Gentiles. And for us, as well. It is the same for every culture that has ever come to it. Because it looks like nothing worse than nothing. But for us, this horror, this torture and death is the power of God and the wisdom of God it is salvation itself. When we look on the pain and death of Jesus Christ, we see only glory. And it has to rework what glory actually means. In our mind, Jesus is true throne is torture. His true crown bites into his flesh. And from that cross, He reigns over his church. Until the day he returns. The church he won by this holy sacrifice the church, he marks with his holy body and blood and gathers us together to receive this death for our eternal life. And he came down to do it, so that he could enter into our life so much that even when we go down into our graves, he can be there with us in death. So we can bring us through that grave to the resurrection on the last day. And it's that cross that defines the church in the here and now until Jesus returns. I found myself in a strange confluence of events lately. All of my media consumption has randomly pointed me towards the Vikings, which is really weird. I've been playing god of war on my PlayStation. It's all about a guy who goes and fights the Norse gods pretty amazing. Lots of background about tear and Loki and Thor and all that stuff. I've been listening to podcasts, about the Viking Age, just sort of randomly came up in my normal podcast feed. And of course, the North man just came out on streaming services. I watched that too. That's interesting. Looking at their perspective on Christianity. In the north, man, they had a little scene where they had Christian slaves there. And one of the guys said, they have a corpse God. Isn't that right? We have a corpse. God don't wait. Jesus who died on a cross and when they want them to go somewhere, they say come on blood drinkers. That's what the world thinks of our craziness. Right? It's baffling because it doesn't make sense. They needed a God who would go and slay people. The high purpose of their life was to go and die in battle so they could go off to valley Halla. Foolishness is this cross where you would go and die for nothing? But what about us? What about in America? If Jews seek signs if Greeks want wisdom, if Vikings want valor, what do Americans want? We want our religion to work. I think that's it right? We're a very practical people. We don't care about highfalutin theories, and book learning, right? We want our religion to do what it's supposed to do, to function in our lives. And if it doesn't work, we jettison it, and we find something that does. Right. And I think many Christians see Christianity as an instrument, towards gaining something for life. We look at our religion as instrumental in making life better. And this isn't just me talking. This is what surveys have shown. There was a book called soul searching the religious and spiritual lives of American teenagers, it came out in 2005, which means that the people they surveyed and the interviews they did, they're no longer teenagers, their parents themselves. And one of the big findings in this was everybody they interviewed, except for a vanishingly small number of people saw that religion is there to get something done for us. A 14 year old from Massachusetts, said this. I think it's just important to have a belief system, because I think it helps you what you believe is how you live. Any belief system is good, as long as you have one. It's about fulfillment. A 16 year old Catholic from Florida said, quote, the important thing in a religion is connecting yourself to the spiritual side of yourself and fulfilling that. As long as you feel fulfilled, you have a spiritual experience, and you're good to go. Right. Another one said, talked about therapy, almost, quote, it's important that it's important. Religion is not like major important, but religion can help you get through a bad day. They summed it up with this, quote, what our interviews almost never uncovered among teens, was the view that religion summons people to embrace an obedience to truth, regardless of the personal consequences or rewards. Now, these are teenagers from 15 years ago, but where do you think they learned it? That they invent it? No, we taught it to them. The problem with this, is I want you to think about those quotations and throw it up next to a Savior who died on a cross. That horror that we saw before. To have a belief system, do you need a savior? who sacrifices his life? Now, to find spiritual fulfillment? Do you need a death on a cross? Absolutely not you can find that sitting around and meditating. To get therapy. Do you need torture and death? Of course not. You can go by that. We have to be sure that we don't have an instrumental view of our Savior Jesus Christ. Is he there to cope with your problems? Is that why Jesus came? Is Jesus here to make a better society to fight a culture war? And make sure America stays a Christian nation? Is he here to establish morality for your children? Is he here to make you feel good when you leave church on Sunday? But those thoughts next to the blood of Jesus dripping down that cross. Jesus did not come to make your life better. He did not come to give you therapy or to feel good. He did not come to bring you fulfillment. He came to die for you and raise you from the dead on the last day, and call you to the cross, like him. Bless it are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely, on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven. A while back, there was a series of shootings in churches, insurance companies emailed out all sorts of things that you could do lock your doors when the worship service darts, hire guards, develop a system with the police figure all these things out so you can stay safe. My Church discussed that. You know what they didn't discuss this, if only we could be found worthy of martyrdom, of proving to be true disciples who could die for his name, if only.

That's what the apostles said. When they were whipped for Jesus, they rejoice that they were counted worthy of suffering for the name. This is the foolishness of the cross. This is the craziness of a God who dies for us. And it's the power of God for your salvation, to follow someone who took up suffering, who died for you who went up onto a cross and was tortured to death so we could enter your life so you can live forever our life will look like the cross and it's the power of God for you. In Jesus name, Amen.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

I Follow Luther? Divisions In The Church

1 Corinthians 1:10-17

I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment. For it has been reported to me by Chloe's people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers. What I mean is that each one of you says, “I follow Paul,” or “I follow Apollos,” or “I follow Cephas,” or “I follow Christ.” Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name. (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.) For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

Sermon:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Last week, we started a walk through the beginning of Paul's letter to the Corinthians, the first letter he, in the order of our, of our Bible, we looked at his opening, where he talked about some of the problems that were going on in Corinth, to let them know that Jesus was enough for them, that they didn't need all of the extra things to fight over spiritual gifts, or power or status, that having Jesus was enough. Today, we're continuing to go through this letter, and see the problems that St. Paul is addressing in the church in Corinth, and looking at how they can apply to church life here. Because the letter to the Corinthians is about our life together as Christians, whether in a congregation or relating to each other around the world. And that's what St. Paul is talking about to them. Today, he talks to them about divisions. He says that he does not want them to be divided, but that you but, “That you be united in the same mind and the same judgment.”

He says that there has been a report by Chloe's people, whoever they are, that they are divided into factions. Now, this isn't just a debate within the church. This is real fighting going on, that they are divided into tribal groups. What it reminds me of is the old Greek schools of philosophy. You know, what they would do is they would have, like a founder, like Zeno was a founder, or Plato or Aristotle, and they would found these institutions where they would have this school of learning, and they would go on for centuries sometimes, and he would go, Well, I am a stoic, or I am an epicurean. Sounds a little bit like that in the church. I follow Paul, I follow a Paulus. I follow Sisyphus, or I follow Christ. It's a little bit like they all had joined up in a team. And then maybe the last one were those people who are sick of it all and say, I'm an independent. Right? Now, I just follow Jesus. Come on, guys. And the thing is, is that St. Paul is urging them that having these factions in the church, divisions in the Church of God undermines the unity that Christ wants his church to have. Unity is a big deal. In the letter to the Corinthians, it goes over and over and over again, we see this theme, whether it's unity in communion, unity in the body of Christ, unity in love. Paul wants to make sure that they know the church is supposed to be united. And he tells him You are to be united in the same mind and the same judgment. Chapter 12 gives us the best image of this, the one that we know pretty well, I'm sure where it says, For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit, we were all baptized into one body, Jews or Greeks, slaves are free. And all were made to drink of the one Spirit. So there's unity isn't just an organizational thing, but there is a spiritual unity being brought together in the body of Christ. Or as he puts it, in Ephesians four,

there is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is overall and through all and in all.

We also confess the unity of the church when we confess the apostles are the Nicene Creed, where it goes I believe in one holy we use the word Christian here, but the original word is Catholic, which means universal, I believe even one holy catholic or universal church, and the communion of saints, which means we are in a whole church bound together in this spiritual unity that we have with Christ. You and I, we are united in Jesus, because He has come to us and adopted us into His family and given us this one Spirit. We are bound together deeper than any other kind of bond. And we should be committed to that kind of unity inside our congregation and with Christians outside as well. On a congregational level, it means that we should always be committed to loving one another, and solving disputes between this doesn't mean we can't debate at all. In fact, sometimes we do quite vigorously. And that's a good thing. As we discuss our future or think about life, we should disagree sometimes. But always come back together as the Body of Christ and love each other, and serve God towards his mission. When that unity breaks, when we actually have real problems we need to solve, we actually should solve them. Not just cover them up, not hide them, not pretend like they're not there. Because the mystical unity of Christ demands that we actually solve our divisions. So that we have, as St. Paul says, that one mind, and one judgment. So we can come together as a congregation and take Christ's holy body and blood and say we are truly united in him.

But of course, I think when we read this, when we say, when we see what Paul's examples where he goes, I follow Paul a policy first, or I follow Christ, the first thing that we have to think about, at least I do in my head is what are we doing in a Lutheran church? Because if there is any place where we say I follow Luther, maybe it's in a Lutheran church, right? This almost seems like a direct challenge to us does? Well, first, what we have to say is, we didn't give ourselves that name. In fact, we never wanted to be kicked out of the Catholic Church to begin with. If you look back at the history of this, Martin Luther himself said, no, no, let's not do this. He says, quote, what is Luther? After all, the teaching is not mine. Neither was I crucified for anyone. How then Should I pour stinking maggot fodder than I am? Come to have men called the children of Christ by my wretched name. He had a way with words, right. When you look at the history of our church, you can see that the first document that the Lutherans put out, the Augsburg confession was a was presented to the Catholic Church as a way of saying, Don't kick us out. We are really good Catholics. And they did anyway.

Many people assume Luther wanted to go out and was like, I will be an entrepreneur and start my own church. And it was the opposite of what he wanted to do. What he wanted was to have a debate within the Catholic Church, call a council bring out God's word and have everybody talk about it so that we could get back to the way it's supposed to be. Even at the end of his life, when he's writing the small called articles, this is what he was hoping to do. That the church would gather together a council of everyone so that they could finally have the debate he always wanted. It never happened. How did we get the name Lutheran? Well, it was because other people called us that. That happens a lot, doesn't it? People looked at at the the evangelicals. That's what they called themselves, gospel centered people, and they call them Lutherans, and eventually, we took it up as well. instead.

Yet, we still know that there are problems in the division that there is right. But when we look around, we know that there is a lot of division within the church. In fact, there are all sorts of names. There are Baptists, and Methodists, and Lutheran there are divisions within the Lutherans. It's actually kind of kind of crazy. And one of the great big problems of the church, perhaps the most tragic thing that the church has happened is this division, that we have been divided ever since the Great Schism. And ever since then, we have been cracking and breaking until now, just about every church is its own denomination, with its own mini Pope. How do we deal with this unity? How do we come together with the same mind and the same judgment? I used to talk to people who've been in the Lutheran church their whole lives who grow grew up in the 50s and 60s, and they would tell me that many of the divisions that happened in between the different groups at the time, mostly seem tribal, you know, you would never go to a Catholic church because they were Catholics, and we were Lutheran. And that was pretty much the theological division, like they do. They do weird stuff, and we do our own thing. I remember as a young child, having someone explained to me that one of the big differences about why we have an empty cross and Catholics have a crucifix in the front of their church is because we believe Jesus is risen from the dead, and they believe he's still on the cross. Ridiculous, right? Of course, they don't believe that. But it was mostly about stereotype, and, and misunderstanding. And now that most of us have moved past some of those things, that things that divide us are actually real in our different denominations, and our different groups. Because these aren't just tribal stereotypes or different practices, but there's real theological division. We can't pretend they're not there. Just like in a congregation that is fighting, you can't pretend that those divisions don't exist. We have to approach these in a faithful way. Because Paul tells us, we should be of the same mind and the same judgment. How do we do that? Perhaps the history of the church can help us out with this. If you look at the early church, they did their best to make sure that the church was united and bound together in the same judgment. And all you have to do is go to Acts chapter 15. And find when the church was rocked by the circumstances cision scandal, when Jews were going around telling the Gentiles that they had to be circumcised to be saved, what did they do? They called a meeting. They got together, they talked about it. And one guy stood up James and said, Here's what we're going to do. Gentiles don't need to be circumcised or follow the law of Moses. They talked about God's word. They had a debate, they heard what was going on, and they made a decision and the church came together. The same thing happened a few 100 years later, in the Council of Nicaea. There was this guy named Arias who was going around and teaching that Jesus was not God. That he was a created being, maybe the most powerful and first of the created beings, but still just a created being. So what did they do? They called a meeting, the gathered in all of the bishops. They talk talked about God's word, they debated they figured out what it really had to say, and they came up with the Nicene Creed to show us what a unity is. And after that, the church said this is the same mind in the same judgment. Jesus is truly God, begotten of His Father before all worlds, god of God, Light of Light, very God, a very God and begotten not made. In 431 AD, the church College Council of Ephesus there was this bishop named Nestorius, who wanted to preserve the divinity and humanity of Jesus so much, he kind of separated the two and acted as if the that marry wasn't truly the Mother of God, but only the mother of the human nature. And that the two natures didn't really interact, which is a big problem, because if the two natures don't interact, then there's no body and blood right up there in communion. So what did they do? Cyril of Alexandria, he was the patriarch of that area, who was very aggressive about dealing with this. What he did was, he split communion until they could have a meeting, which they called in for 31 ad. They got together, they made some decisions, they debated God's word. And they came together around what the true interpretation of God's word is. They were dedicated to preserving that unity. They were dedicated to making sure they understood the truth, and came together around it to preserve the unity of the Body of Christ. But they did it by being united in the word in doctrine, and not just covering up these things. And I think that's the challenge for us, as we look at the different groups and churches around us, is that it's very tempting just to say, we want to be nice to each other. So we'll act as if we're all the same. But we can't. Because we are different. Lutherans have a different way of understanding the gospel from Baptists or Methodists were Catholics or the Eastern Orthodox. In fact, we're talking about those things in our Bible study in between services right now, helping us understand what are these differences. And they're important, we can't cover them up. The Paul was pretty, pretty aggressive. When people were doing things that weren't right. When they didn't understand the gospel correctly. Listen to what he says in Galatians chapter one, he opens up the letter he writes to them, he does his intro thing. And the first thing he says is, I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ, and are turning to a different gospel. pretty aggressive, right? Yikes. Or maybe Second Peter chapter three, where Peter talks about interpreting God's word.

“There are some things in them those scriptures that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction as they do the other scriptures. Therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people, and lose your own stability, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. To Him the glory now and to the day of eternity, amen.”

We want to be together and unite it with our brothers and sisters of Christ to understand God's word differently than we did.

And one of the great things is that we can know that on the last day when Jesus returns, and he raises us from the dead, all these labels will fall away, because we'll know face to face. And as we deal with the conflict, and the pain and the sadness of this, we can hold on to that hope. But until then, we have to use God's Word, to understand what God truly wants to help us come together. And it's the word of God. That word of the cross that St. Paul tells us is that it's supposed to bring us together, for it is the power of God for all of us. And so, that's what we do. As we deal with the differences. We use God's word to talk and debate and think and pray. But until these divisions are healed, we have to know that they're real and true. And as much as it pains me and makes me sad, as I'm sure it does. As you we can't overlook it in Jesus name amen

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Jesus Is Enough

Text transcribed from audio by AI. Please forgive any errors.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. We're now in the epiphany season, getting ready for this season where we find out who Jesus is. During this time, we'll look at stories like the one we saw today where John points out Jesus, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. And it will lead up to the miracles and the amazing things that Jesus does and then finally, culminate at the mountain of the Transfiguration, where we'll hear the voice from heaven say, This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him. Then we get to Ash Wednesday, and begin the march towards the cross. During this season, the lectionary assigns us the epistle readings from First Corinthians we began right at the beginning of the letter, and it's just sort of going to go section by section over the about the next month into the first couple of chapters until we get to Lent. So we're going to do that, walk through First Corinthians up until we get to this new season. So today, we're starting with the opening. It's interesting to get the beginning of a letter as a reading and church isn't it? It's like, dear James, as a reading, right. And that's interesting about what's going on that first line, it says Paul, calls by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and our brother, sauce, the knees. This should remind us that the letters of Paul are Letters, written by Paul, I have to say this, because very often, when we read the Bible, we think that the Bible is written to me, not to me, James unik. But to me, every individual Christian. This line remembers that there was a real man named Paul, who wrote a letter with a guy named SAS Denise. And he did it at a particular time, and place. And then he sent it to a group of people, to the Church of God that is in Corinth, not to the Church of God in alcohol, or Chicago, or New York, or any other place to call it a particular group of people that met in a particular place, probably in a house owned by a guy named Gaius, just in case you were wondering, you won't be able to find him, don't worry, he's long gone. He writes these things to them to help us understand life in the church as well. Now, it's important to know this because you have to understand that there is some background to the church in Corinth, to help us understand what Paul is writing about. They were a Greek church, in a place that spoke Greek and lived in Greek culture. in Corinth, there was a great deal of competition between people, they would compete over things like status, and wealth, and wisdom. schools that were very famous in the Greek world were filled with with teachers who proclaimed great wisdom. There were people who would go around and tell you that they could teach you how to speak and convince anyone of anything. This was a problem in the church in Corinth, because it was then imported into their own church law. Something we'll talk about a little bit later, St. Paul writes to a group of people and talks about some of their moral failings as well. Later on in the book he talks about, about getting rid of believers who refuse to follow the dictates of the faith. There are questions about idols. There are divisions in the congregation. And all of these things are part of why St. Paul is writing a letter to this particular church in this particular place. So he continues, he talks about being part of the Church of God, together with all of those believers in every time and place, which is important for a congregation that sees itself as special, like the Corinthians. We're gonna get a little bit later on that when we get into the further readings. Now one of the things that I think is most important about this particular passage that I'm speaking on today is the competition inside the church. That is one of the reasons St. Paul is writing. Later on, you will see passages about the body of Christ, and how the congregation is one in Christ, there are not greater members and lesser members, there are not greater gifts and lesser gifts. St. Paul also writes this, this wonderful First Corinthians chapter 13, about the love of Christ at work in the body. Love is patient. Love is kind, you know that passage. The introduces the concept here, but there is no distinction or division within the congregation. Very simply, he tells us that Jesus is enough. Jesus gives us everything, the whole package of salvation. I want you to think back, imagine what it might be like in a congregation that worked like the Corinthians did. in Corinth, there were some people there who thought that they were amazing, outstanding Christians way better than the rest of them. And they could prove it, because they could speak in tongues. They had amazing spiritual gifts, they had a gift of prophecy. Some of them were amazing, outstanding speakers, and they held themselves up in front of the congregation as being the best. Can you imagine what it would be like in a church like that? People looking down on you all the time. People saying they had more Jesus points than you do. Right. Then of course, there will be some people who felt like they didn't get any of that. They must not be as powerful or spiritual or as wonderful as the the super prophets who stood up in front. And I want you to think about what this message would be that I'm about to read from St. Paul, if you were in those shoes. St. Paul says, I give thanks to my God always for you, because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in Him in all speech and all knowledge, even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you, that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift. As you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. So this message is a message both to those super men who thought that they were the best Christians ever, spiritually powerful way better than the rest. And also for those who thought that they were a lower level of Christian. Jesus is enough, is what it says. You don't need anything more. You were in every way enriched in him and all speech and knowledge. You are not lacking any spiritual gifts, as you are waiting for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus is enough. That's because the salvation that every Christian receives by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the whole package. There are no greater or lesser spiritual gifts. There are no higher and lower status Christians. There is only Jesus and His salvation. St. Paul writes later in First Corinthians chapter two, that and I when I came to you brothers did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. That's because Jesus Christ is all you need. His death and resurrection on the cross. The gift of faith that He gives you is what leads you to the very thing that we're all waiting for. The resurrection on the last day when he returns and reveals himself shows up. And everything that we see now is changed into the perfection that is to come. At that moment, everything else fades away. Powerful wisdom, the smart people of the world, will that be a thing anymore? No one will care. Prophecy? Well, that'd be a big deal. No, because it's all leading up to that day. Ella eloquent speech, the guy who gets to stand up in front of everybody and looks really good when they're talking. Well, that'd be a thing anymore. No. Because we will all see Jesus face to face when he raises us from the dead forever. That's why at the end of First Corinthians 13, Jesus, though St. Paul writes, faith, hope and love, these things remain, but the greatest of them is love. Because faith will disappear. On the last day, you don't need faith, when you can see Jesus hope will be gone on the last day because you hope for something you don't yet have, the only thing that will remain is love. And we who love in all things on that day. So St. Paul is writing to a divided and broken church, a church that is fighting with each other competing over power and status. And he says, You don't need any of those things. All you need is Jesus. And Jesus is enough.

It's a good reminder for us today. We don't need anything. But Jesus, Jesus is enough. Last summer, we worked on a survey to do an assessment of our congregation and talk about our organizational health. We're working on trying to figure out what to do with that coming up with plans for our congregation, working on our programming, and all of those things. And all of these things are good things for us, as a congregation, trying to be figured out how to be more effective in connecting with our community and connecting with each other, and working on all those things to make ministry better. But one of the things that I've noticed in not just our church, but church generally, is that we tend to compare ourselves with other congregations. You've seen that it happens at every pastors conference I've ever been to. They go, where do you serve? And then the next question is always how many people do worship? Which is a great way to phrase that question because I want to say just one, Jesus, but they say how many people do worship because that's actually a really big deal to a lot of us. How many people show up on a Sunday. We sort of worship that. Sometimes, as we think of status in congregations, and we compare ourselves to the people around us, especially congregations in the midst of the land of the mega church, like us. You don't have to look very far to find the really big ones. Skyline foothills, the rock Shadow Mountain, you pretty much can't pick up a stone and throw it without hitting the rock somewhere right? There everywhere around here, especially compared to where I came from in Chicago. And often we compare ourselves to them. Interestingly, a new article came out from LifeWay Research and church answers.com that talks about the demographic statistics for churches around the country. And it divides churches up into four different groups, people who are have under 50 in attendance on Sunday, that's 31% of all the churches in America, you know that? Under 100, between 51 and 99 is 37% of all churches in America, meaning that attendance under 100 is 68% of all congregations. Between 102 149 is 24% of all congregations. Do you know how many churches have over 258% We who look from our place and we look around and we go there Are all these huge churches? What are we doing wrong? Those are the outliers. And yet, we look at ourselves and we say, we must not have the spiritual power. We must not be doing something right. We've got to fix it. But that's really doing the same thing the Corinthians we're doing, comparing ourselves and saying what we really measure our spirituality by is how powerful we look to the rest of the world. And St. Paul would reply, Jesus is enough. In fact, if a new person never walked in our doors, we would still be a successful congregation. If we kept on preaching and teaching and serving the sacraments and doing everything that we do now, and it was just slowly dwindling, until the last person out lock the doors. Jesus would still be here with everything. His law, his gospel, his grace, his sacraments, his words, giving you the full package of salvation. I hope that doesn't happen. Right? The locking the doors, the walking out and the dwindling, and we're going to do our best to not have that. But that's not the point of a congregation is. It's the gospel. It's Jesus, its salvation. It's not just in churches, where we worry if having Jesus is enough. It's in our lives as well. I can see it in the way we talk about work attendance versus church attendance. When I go to someone and say, hey, you know, we'd love to have you in church, and they say, Oh, I work on Sundays. And I think, Wait a second. Is that how it's supposed to be? Now I got people need to work. And sometimes there's a time in life where that happens. But if that is a an excuse in our lives, what we are saying is, money is more important than Jesus. Right? You have to ask the question, Is Jesus enough? Well, on the last day, will that job matter? When Jesus returns up in the clouds with power in Might, and he calls us up from our graves, and he judges the living in the dead, will He say, Well done, you earned a lot of money. He will not. What matters when we stand before our judge on the last day, is whether he saves us whether the gift of God has been delivered to you. And he provides you with this amazing food for that journey and rest until that day, by gathering here and hearing about him. But we accept that excuse. Because we think work is most important in our lives. That Jesus isn't enough that Jesus is a nice extra. The same thing works when we talk about school for our kids, and church. One of the things I often hear is, I want my kids to be happy coming to church. Like they're supposed to enjoy it the whole time. And I asked myself, What happens when they wake up on Monday morning? And they don't want to go to school? Do you say oh, I want my kid to be a lifelong learner and happy about it. So I'm going to let them stay home until they feel like going to school. Right? We don't do that. Nobody would do that. That's ridiculous. Because you need to learn how to read. You need to learn how to do math, right? Like basic stuff. You need to know how to do this. But then, on Sundays, we say You know what, if they're not happy, I want them to enjoy it. But I have to ask you on the last day when Jesus returns, will it matter if you can do math? Well done. You know how to do the square root of 23?

Of course not. It will matter if you can read. What will matter is that whether Christ will raise you on it from the dead to glory, or distraction. That's what we really need. No matter what you do with your life, Jesus is enough. Nothing else matters more than that. Whether it's the people who are fighting in Corinth, or what we do with our daily lives, we need to make sure that that is what we know. The most important thing you can ever do is be connected through Jesus through His Word and Sacraments. To hear from him, and be filled by the Holy Spirit. Nothing else matters next to that, because Jesus is enough. In his name, amen.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai