Whom Do You Obey? Sermon for June 25th

Romans 6:15-19

15 What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 16 Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17 But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, 18 and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. 19 I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. We are working through the book of Romans right now, over the course of the book, we have seen a number of points that St. Paul has made. The first three chapters were spent telling all of us that everyone is a sinner. Jews were sinners. Gentiles were sinners, which meant that all of us are sinners, religious and non religious people like none of us can live up to God's standard. And it closes with the explanation of the three gifts of grace that God delivers us through Jesus Christ, that despite our sin, He offers salvation by the death and resurrection of our Savior. Next, Paul pointed out that this has always been the way that God works, that he has done this since the very beginning, when he came to Abraham, who believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. We continued on through Romans, to the point where Paul continues to talk about this grace that God has given us until we get to a question which asks, now that we live in grace, how should we live? It's an important question, isn't it? Because the first thing you do is when you say, you can never follow the rules, and God forgives you anyway. People will say, then sweet. I don't have to follow the rules. Which of course, is not true. That is what Paul asks here. He says, What then? Are we to sin? Because we are not under law, but under grace? That's the Pauline version of that. Sweet, no rules, right? No, is of course, when he said St. Paul then sets up a two options for the human being. What he says is when human beings live, we either obey sin, He calls us slaves to sin, or we obey righteousness. He says, being slaves to righteousness. And the question was, who do you obey? Now I have to tell you, after I submitted this title, I thought to myself, am I being a good obedient? grammarian? Here? Isn't this supposed to be whom do you obey? I actually don't know. Maybe maybe the English teachers in the congregation can help me out afterwards. Right? But we all have to obey, right? At least something. And in the Christian church, we recognize that there are really only two sides. There is sin, death, and Satan, or there is God and righteousness. And you obey one or the other. Now, as Americans, when you hear the word obey, I bet you don't like it. I bet you react relatively negatively. We are in fact, the most individualistic nation and culture on the planet. We, our ancestors came here because they don't like obey. And yet, the pastor is up here saying, Who do you obey? You have to choose. And we know this is the case because even independent people follow in a pack. Have you ever noticed that the independence groups in the history of America have kind of a uniform? Right? You look back at all the different rebel groups, rebel cultures in the United States, and they all dress the same. Think about the beatniks remember the beatniks slam poetry, cafes. They'll dress the same right. Black black with the Baray. The rebels felt the need to have a uniform. What about the Greasers? You know what they look like? Because of Greece, right? They've got the hair the pompadour, the white t shirt, cigarettes in the sleeve. And you know, what about the hippies? They've got a look. They were the rebels have their day. Even the hipsters, the ones who are ironic about everything, somehow you can spot a hipster from a mile away, which I could do in my old neighborhood in Chicago, they always had the giant bushy beards, and they wore super tight pants. And yet they were supposed to be the rebel. Because human beings are not independent, it doesn't matter how much you wish you were, we always follow. We always need a tribe, a group, a story, a belonging. And in the spiritual world, no matter how independent you want to be, you are either following sin, death, and the devil or God leading towards righteous. And St. Paul asks, Which one do you want to present your your body to? Do you want to follow righteousness? Or sin? When you put it that way, Pastor, that sounds like an easy choice, right? But it's less so when we hit our day to day activity. Because sin often is the one that our bodies want to do. It's the choice that we want to make when we're tired, when our will is worn down. And well, it would just feel nice this one time. And so what St. Paul is suggesting to us is that a life, a disciplined Christian life, following righteousness is the aim that all of us should have. We should turn away from following sin, discipline ourselves, so that we can lead towards righteous. This is all because of the grace that God has given us. What St. Paul says is that God has set the Romans free from the sinful ways that they once walked in. You see, they were once trapped in sin, because they didn't know who God was. They didn't know anything about their savior, Jesus Christ, and couldn't possibly know the holiness that he gives them. And when the message of the gospel came to them, they were set free. And the same is true for all of us. Before the gospel came, no matter how young you were, you couldn't have followed righteousness, because you need the Holy Spirit, do it. You need to know about Jesus, but you have been set free from that. Which means it's time to keep going in that direction to live a disciplined Christian life. So St. Paul says, present yourselves as slaves to righteousness and not slaves to sin. Well, when you present yourselves as obedient slaves to God, you do things that are good for you. And holy. And isn't that a good thing? One of the things that is challenging for Christians is that when we face a decision that our we're tempted to do we often think wouldn't it be so much more fun to do the tempting thing? Right? I know I've been in that position. I often happens to me when I when I have food that I'm not supposed to eat. In fact, Kathleen's office is the source of most of my temptation with all the candy in it. And I break my will. But what I know is that if I continue to eat all of her candy, my running and my health will suffer. Right? If I don't live a disciplined life, I won't reach my goals

and it's Same in the Christian life. Every time we turn towards temptation, what we end up doing is marking a path and taking an extra step towards the things we don't want. And away from the holiness that we do. Every time we take a discipline life and focus on following God. We are in graining habits, and the good things that God wants for us in our life. St. Paul talks about this when he says, What were you getting when you were following this, this slavery to sin, things that you were ashamed of? Right. But when you follow righteousness, what do you get? Sanctification that leads to eternal life. And the worry here is the more we turn towards sin, the more we ingrain the habit of walking away from righteous. And you do it a couple of times. You know, there's always forgiveness. But the question is, for how long? How long can you walk away from God? before it begins to affect your faith. This is why we live a disciplined life. Why we keep saying, Turn to God ingrain these habits of receiving God's grace through his sacraments and hearing His word and coming to church, because it is all about developing the habits of being a faithful Christian. And habit. One good habit leads to another good habit. God wants us to have this so that instead of drifting into sin, we can march towards the holiness, the gift of God that He gives them. And it's all because of the great end, the Paul has in mind, both for the Romans and for us. He says, but now that you've been set free from sin and become slaves of God, the fruit to get leads to sanctification, and to its end, eternal life. And that's the goal. That's why we live a disciplined Christian life is because we want to stay focused on the free gift of God, so that we don't turn away from it. We want to stay focused on the amazing gift of Jesus Christ. And we know that on the last day, he will come back and raise us from the dead and this outstanding gift, the Christ one for us on the cross and rose from the grave to give us we'll be there for you. And so we keep our eyes focused on that. What we don't want is the other way. A saint paul says For the wages of sin is death. We don't want to take our steps down the path of sin to continue to follow that. Because we know that eventually that path and eternal death and damnation, eternity in hell. What is glorious about God's promised that is available for all who comes with the gift of the Holy Spirit that you get here is a gift that can sustain you in your disciplined life in. We just have to know that while the gift of God is free, following Him takes work. It takes discipline it takes gathering here to receive and turning away from sin so that the joy that we can have on the last day will be full in God's grace. In Jesus name, Amen.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Reconciled with God: Sermon for June 18th

Romans 5:6-11

6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. 11 More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

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

Today in our readings, we are back in the book of Romans. Now, if you think, a long time back, we went through the book of Romans for a little bit, had a sort of a mini series on it. And now that Easter and all of the holidays are over, we're back in it again, which means we need to look at what Paul has been up to talking in Romans to get to where we are.

So a reminder about what Romans is. Romans is kind of an introductory letter from the Apostle Paul to the church in Rome, he had not really been there, they didn't really know him all that much. And so he is, we think, getting ready to make a base out of Rome. So you can do more missionary journeys built out of there. And this is why Romans is sort of like a doctrinal letter. It's his introduction to the church to say, This is who I am, and this is what I teach.

Over the course of Romans, we get to see a number of things he builds slowly. In the first three chapters, St. Paul points out that everyone's a sinner. He starts out and says, those Gentiles, those Roman pagans, they're sinners. And you can tell because they do some crazy stuff.

But Jews in the church, you guys are sinners, too, because you had the law and you failed to do it.

And then finally, he gets to a place where he says, Guess what that makes everyone a thinner.

In fact, it's worse than that. We're not just people who make mistakes.

Maybe there's even nothing good in us at all. But nothing we can do lives up to God's standard of perfection. And he closes out that section by saying, but there's something amazing, a gift that God has revealed to us through Jesus Christ, that we are saved not by our actions, but by grace, the righteousness of faith given to the church.

In Romans four, and he points out that this is how God has always worked. The God saved Abraham by faith. When he said, Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness, a quote from Genesis.

Later on in Romans, chapter five, he points out this famous passage, that because we are saved, we can rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that these things do something for us. He says, Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that our suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, character produces hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

And so now we continue with a passage about being reconciled to God.

St. Paul writes things like this, For while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.

Later on, God shows His love for us in that, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

He also says, More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus through whom we have now received reconciliation.

And so what St. Paul does now is he points out that for all of us who are sinners, we now have reconciliation to God, through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Jesus's death and resurrection means that God offers the whole world reconciliation. We were sinners, and now we're part of the family of God. We used to be ungodly, and now we are God.

We have reconciliation.

Jesus Christ brings us in all of us who have failed to live up to the standard of our father and makes us one with Him.

This is a powerful message in a world that is filled with guilt. And our world is filled with guilt.

There is so much guilt out in our culture. We don't even know what to do with it.

People feel guilty about everything.

There's parent guilt, isn't there? If you've ever been a parent, you know what it's like, right?

Was I too harsh? Was I not strict enough? Did I not do the right thing here? Did I sign them up for the right activity? Are they ready for the right school? Did I do everything wrong?

No parents ever felt that way? Right?

There's environmental guilt. Right? We have that, don't we?

Am I putting out too much carbon in the world?

Am I recycling enough?

Have I done enough to save the world from the impending problem?

We live in a world that wants us to feel racial guilt.

That tells us that there are problems with everything that we do, and everything is problematic.

There's interpersonal guilt.

The more day to day stuff. You just when you screw up, and you hurt the people around you. And you go, wow, I didn't think that was that kind of a jerk.

There's guilt everywhere. And we know that because famous people are always apologizing for something that they didn't know was wrong until they did it. Right.

Every single day, it seems like someone is standing up and reading a an apology prepared by a PR consultant that reads something like mistakes were made. Right?

We live in a world that is so filled with guilt, because

the rules are not clear.

We're told

to follow our dreams, the rules and institutions that used to be there are no longer there. Which means that the rules are secretly scattered across our lives, like landmines hidden underground. And you only know when you need to be guilty when you step.

Sounds pretty terrible, right? That's because it is. And there is so much guilt out there.

And in here, right.

Which is why it is so wonderful, that God has sent someone to get rid of

Jesus Christ, who died on a cross to take all of your guilt on himself,

who paid the penalty for every sin, so that you can be reconciled to God.

And because of that, all of your guilt can go away.

Very simply, when you hear the words, I forgive your sin, in the name of the Father, and the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

It's easy, right?

God sends His messengers, like me to take away that guilt by forgiving.

And you might say to yourself, Wait a second Pastor, I can't be that easy. I have all of these things that I feel guilty for. They pile up and they're they're just building up in my life until they reach the top of my head. And all you have to do is say I forgive you.

Isn't that a little cheap? Shouldn't I have to go out and fix the problem? Shouldn't I have to strive or do something?

Nope.

Because the forgiveness that the church delivered, the reconciliation that we have for you is not cheap. In fact, it cost something very, very precious.

The holy precious blood of Jesus Christ and His innocent suffering and

the your sin is not a light thing.

Your guilt is there for a reason. You're a terrible person.

Right? And so am I.

All of that guilt that piles up in you is there because you deserve it? You are guilty

and the only way to get rid of it is to have something even greater. Come to you

and eliminate.

And that's Jesus.

He paid the ultimate penalty for you. The infinite God died, to give you forgiveness and reconcile you with our Father in heaven. So that guilt need not hang on you anymore.

The funny thing about me saying that though is that actually can be something that you feel guilty about, right?

That's because when I go online, and I search, how do I forgive myself, you get articles like 10 steps to forgive yourself.

Right?

And that means all you have to do is get really good at forgiving yourself.

Which doesn't work, right? Because you can say, Oh, I forgive me.

And then 30 seconds later, you feel guilty again?

Right?

Isn't that how it works?

In fact, we hold on to some things that we know are ridiculous.

When I was in high school, yeah, you're getting a high school story. When I was in high school, I was an umpire at a baseball game, I was the home plate umpire. And I made a mistake. And I got so upset at myself. When I made a mistake. I turned around and berated myself while someone was sliding into home and they were making a play.

Good umpire, right? Yep, I'm going to place here, I'm here and I go, I don't know safe.

Very mad at me, you can imagine right?

I still think about that. About once a week.

Really?

I still think about that. And how can you believe I have no idea why.

I have no idea why I still feel guilty about that.

And it's ridiculous, isn't it?

Stupid. And I know it, and I can't get rid of it.

Because self forgiveness is no forgiveness at all.

What you need is not your own forgiveness. But God.

You need someone to come to you and say, I forgive your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son of the Holy Spirit. Why do you need that? Because something that comes from outside of you is different from hearing a voice in your own head.

Someone who stands in front of you and says, Jesus died for you. He rose for you. And you are forgiven.

If is

and you can say it out loud. Say your sins me. Right? You can speak it and think, Well, Pastor would never leave. Let me be in the church. If I told him that one. Nope, that's not true.

So your shame and your guilt wants you to think that you're the only sinner who's really bad.

And when you come to me,

you sit in front of me to say this is what I did. And I just say very simply, I forgive your sins, in the name of the Father and of the Son of the Holy Spirit. You'll be amazed and how it works.

You can get rid of your guilt.

Because that's the gift that God gives to His church.

That any sin, no matter how big, or whether it's screwing up a baseball call,

is forgiven by the same death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, washed away by the waters of baptism, and forgiven with the forgiveness that God gives His Church to deliver to you.

This is a powerful message.

And I think this is really the key for us not just here in the church, but as a gift to the world.

We are all feel guilty here because everybody out there feels guilty too because we're all Americans in this crazy culture. That is all about guilt.

They need that freedom to

see the reason everything is so crazy and people are shouting so much and so hostile and angry is they are trying to prove to themselves that they're actually good that their guilt is not there and that the louder they shout the less they think about their own pain.

We can actually solve it.

We can take away that guilt and that pain.

All we have to

do is bring it to them.

Not shouts, not react in anger, but just say, there is a way to get rid of your gift.

There is a way to be reconciled to God

and it's through Jesus Christ.

This is a great gift that we have as an author,

not just for ourselves, but the reconciliation between humanity and God that we can speak to a world who needs it just as much as you do

is the most powerful thing we have in a world filled with guilt and pain,

that Jesus Christ came to die for sinners,

for the ungodly,

as he says,

But God shows His love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died.

In Jesus name, Amen.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The Importance of Relationship

Acts 11:19-30

Now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except Jews. But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists also, preaching the Lord Jesus. And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord. The report of this came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. When he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad, and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose, for he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And a great many people were added to the Lord. So Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, and when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they met with the church and taught a great many people. And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians.

Now in these days prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. And one of them named Agabus stood up and foretold by the Spirit that there would be a great famine over all the world (this took place in the days of Claudius). So the disciples determined, every one according to his ability, to send relief to the brothers living in Judea. And they did so, sending it to the elders by the hand of Barnabas and Saul.

Today we are celebrating St. Barnabas apostle. Now this might surprise you being called an apostle. Most of the time we reserve that to the names of the 12 or to St. Paul. But if you read closely, the Bible actually calls St. Barnabas an apostle. In Acts chapter 14, it says the apostles Paul and Barnabas. So I guess if x calls him an apostle, maybe we should, too, right? I'm thinking somewhere in there, there's a disagreement between the big A apostles, right, the 12 that Jesus had chosen, and the use of the word apostle in in the early church, it seems like we have made it a specialized office that just the 12 can hold, whereas in the early church, they use the word apostle for any number of different kinds of people. Even though there was still just the 12 as a separate group. St. Barnabas, the apostle, shows up in for the very first time in the book of Acts, in Acts chapter four. But he shows up as Joseph, a Levite, and native of Tsipras. It says, That's Joseph, who was also called by the apostles, Barnabas, which means son of encouragement, a Levite, a native of Tsipras, sold a field that belonged to him, and brought the money and laid it at the apostles feet. This was in those early days right after the great speech at Pentecost, when many, many people came into the church. Barnabas was one of them. And as the church gathered together to make sure that all of the people who are part of the body of Christ had everything they needed. Barnabas was one of those one of the first to sell his extra property and bring the money and give it to the church to make sure all of the people had enough food to eat. Barnabas shows up throughout the early story of the book of Acts. When Saul is first converted on his way to Damascus, he sees the vision of Jesus and he joins the church. Barnabas is the one who brings him to Jerusalem, who vouches for him who presents him to the apostles and says he is really converted. This is not a plan to infiltrate the church. Barnabas is also the guy who accompanies Paul on many of the other things we read in Acts chapter 11, that when the first people go to Antioch, and they preach to the Gentiles for the very first time, Barnabas decides that this would be a good job for Paul. And so he leaves, goes all the way over to Tarsus grabs Paul and says, Come on over with me, you've got a job to do. And there he and Paul work together for a year. After that, Paul and Barnabas are chosen by the Holy Spirit to go out on this missionary journey that begin Paul's missionary journeys as we see them in the book of Acts. Except Paul isn't the one who's leading it. Barnabas is he's the guy in charge. He's the senior pastor, and Paul is the assistant. It isn't until later that when Paul and Barnabas split up, that Paul becomes the head of that missionary journeys that he goes out on and becomes the apostle that we know today, the author of so much of the New Testament, and the leader of these amazing missionary journeys that happened. What I think is fascinating about this is the importance of Barnabas in the life of St. Paul, in raising up a leader in the church. Now this doesn't, doesn't end Barnabas his story. Part of the rest of his import for the church is that he is supposed to be the author of the letter of Barnabas a very important early church book. And then he goes out and is stoned to death according to the church histories somewhere in Syria. What we know about Barnabus from Holy Scripture, though, points out the importance of relationships within the Christian church. The Christian Church is not a collection of individuals who come together for a program who come here just to get what they need. and go home. The Christian Church is a community of believers. Barnabas whose name means son of encouragement is the perfect example of how this works, that when God gathers people together, he binds us together not just as, like I said, a collection of individuals, but as a series of relationships that are designed to support and nurture each other. In Acts chapter four, when we're introduced to Barnabas, were introduced to him in the context where he takes his money, and offers his up as a way to provide for those in the church who have any kind of need. Now, as this grows, this becomes an organized effort. And we see the very first deacons, the first officers of the church, who begin to do a organized distribution of food. But all of it comes out of the mutual love and care that the church has for each other, building on the individual relationships, and the unity that Christ bring. We see this unity chiefly, in the amazing gift that we get in Holy Communion. As you and I take in Christ's Body and Blood, we no longer are individuals separated from each other. We are no longer just me and you. We are bound together mystically in the body of Christ. As you eat Christ's body, as you eat, drink his blood, we all become one in him. We all are joined together, inseparably. And it makes us one people. This is why the unit of the church is not the individual, but the congregation is that we together are bound in Jesus Christ. And it's from this unity, that the individual relationships between people are designed to encourage, and help and love each other into further faithfulness in the church. We are here to help each other grow in the faith, to encourage each other to serve, and to guide each other in the faithfulness that Christ calls us to be. And we can see that in the beautiful relationship between Barnabas and St. Paul, and how Barnabas works within this, this relationship mentoring structure to help launch one of the greatest leaders of the Christian church. So Barnabas is a wonderful example of how a senior in the faith can pass on the faith to a new Christian. For many of us, I think it's difficult to imagine St. Paul the Apostle as a new Christian, right? It's kind of like, wait a second, Paul saw Jesus on the road to Damascus, like there was his vision, he had this amazing thing and he goes to to Damascus, and then He's baptized and then he's the apostle right? Magic. That's not how it works. If you if you read the actual text of Acts, St. Paul goes through a time of learning and growing and becoming the person that he is by the time he writes the letters of the New Testament. It begins with his time in Damascus. But we also see Barnabas doing it as well. Barnabas is the key for this brand new Christians entry into the wider church. You can imagine what it would have been like for all of the Christians who saw Stephen stone, when they looked at the people laying down their cloaks at the foot of this guy named Saul who was having Christians killed. They might not have accepted that Saul was becoming a Christian. They may have been just a little suspicious. For good reason, right? Barnabas, who took an interest in Saul brought him to the church and introduced him into the fellowship of the believers and said, you can trust this guy. He's one of us. Can you imagine what would have happened? If somebody hadn't done that? Could the Apostle Paul have broken into this organization this tight knit close knit group Or

maybe not. Is the church a little bit like that? Even the most open churches, everywhere across the country, the most welcoming groups of people is a tight knit community. We know each other, we're used to each other. We know the people who volunteer, we know the people who are involved on boards. And well, we're kind of happy with that, aren't we? I mean, we stand up in front, and we say, we would love to have volunteers. But we always go to the same group, the same people. It's tough to break into a church, to get to know the key players to understand the pulse of things. And we don't realize it. Why? Because we're in the middle of it. We know everybody we know what's going on. We know how things work. We always have to remember that to welcome someone into our congregation takes a Barnaba. Someone who can go and say, oh, yeah, we can trust this guy. Or, oh, yeah, come on with me to this event, it's gonna be great, you'll love it, I will go with you. That's what Barnabas did. And bringing someone into a community, it's great to have someone who can say, I will go with you. I'll bring you them. And it's a very simple way to draw someone further into this relationship where we can share God's Word with each other, and encourage each other. Barnabas also was the one who saw an opportunity for Paul to get involved and grow in his ability to be a preacher of the gospel. In Acts chapter 11, there's just this little bit that we that you might miss, right? Barnabas is sent to Antioch. And when he gets there, he's like, Oh, this is amazing. Isn't this great? But then he leaves. And he goes all the way to Tarsus. And he finds this guy saw the Apostle Paul and says, I've got a job for you come with, and they go together. And he brings up Paul in the church, about preaching the gospel. We in the church are always looking for people to do this sort of thing, aren't we? We're always looking for another volunteer to help out someone who can, oh, I don't know, help the kids at VBS. Kathleen knows me five bucks. We're always looking for people to do the sorts of things that we need to get done, right. And when we get together in meetings, we say to ourselves, why aren't we getting more volunteers, it's always the same people, isn't it? We stand up in front, we offer an announcement which you need to do. But the thing that always works way better than announcements, or things in the bulletin is walking up to someone and saying, I think you'd be good at this job. Come with me. And let's do. And that's the way to use the relationships that we have to help encourage people into the church, to help encourage people do the kinds of service and love and care that Christ has called us to do. And not only that, what happens then, is you build an individual relationship that you can use to show that kind of love to someone else. Isn't that the important thing about the church is not so much that we get an activity done, but that when someone needs you, you can be there for them. You can be the one who says Jesus died for you. He rose for you. He is here for you. Or when you need something that person can be there to you to encourage you by giving you the Word of God. That is what Barnabas did with Paul. He brought him into the church. Barnabas also helped Paul by equipping him to be a missionary and a leader on his own. When Barnabas said Hey, come on with me Paul Hebrews beginning to teach him so that he would grow and in their very first missionary journey Barnabas is the one who is leading the way and Paul is the one who goes with it's only after they return and Barnabas and Paul have a disagreement that Paul goes off and does his own thing. And that is part of the work that we are called to do as well. As as we gather people into our congregation, we're there to help equip them not to just be followers, but to be leaders in the next step. And what we need to do then, is helped help guide and learn and teach with God's word. So that we all can grow in our ability and our faithfulness, and eventually lead things on our own. So how does this work in a congregation? Well, one of the ways that this works is that each of us should be interested in investing in the lives of others. This is simply part of the love and care that a congregation has to each other. And try to find opportunities where we can show that kindness to each other. One of the examples that I I often come to is when someone needs a ride to church, every once in a while there will be a need for rides and people say, I know what we need is we need to get a bus, right? Then we can have a series of volunteers. And then we can get the bus and they'll go out and one person every week, and they'll rotate. What if we did it this way? Someone needs a ride to a church and we say, I know someone who lives on the way they drive past your house every single Sunday, maybe they can pick you up. And then there's a relationship. And then there's a connection. And when you need something, you call up your friend, who you've been riding with for the last three years, and you say, hey, I need some help, and they're there for you. Maybe they'll pray for you. Maybe they'll love you. That's how it works, right. That's how the love of God goes from person to person. And we connect in the congregation. Things happen Similarly, when we are trying to bring up youth in the church. Our relationships are designed to be person to person not program to person. youth, especially teenagers, they're becoming adults aren't you guys, right? They need to not have relationships with just a program. But with the congregation at a certain point. We need to address them as individuals and not the children of someone else. So when we need ushers, maybe we say to the youth, we say why don't you join our program. Rather than contacting their parents, we say you can be part of this and schedule them and make it regular. And all of a sudden they've got a responsibility, right? We're treating them like adults, giving them the capacity that they have. What a great way to grow in the church, to develop relationships with adults who will love them and care for them, and help them grow as Christians. We want the children. I think the key way to do that is to see them in church. Right? If you don't see children, can you have a relationship with them? If they don't see you, can you have a relationship with them? We want to love them, right? I know you guys I know you do. And the best way to do that is to see them in here on Sunday morning, to hear their screams and love it because it means our churches a lot to see them run around in the aisles and maybe Oh, it'll be a little distracting. But it means our church is aligned. And we can care for them and show them that they are not separate annoyances but part of God's people. And every Sunday, there's a little more connection, a little more love, and we can raise them up in the church. Barnabas helps us to see how important these relationships are. The people don't fall in love with programs. They don't fall in love and get raised up. By being connected to ideas. We connect with each other. And that's what the church is about. Using these relationships to point everyone to our Savior, Jesus Christ, so that the Holy Spirit can bind us together by His grace. In Jesus name, Amen.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The Power of the Holy Spirit: Confidence in God's Word May 28th

Acts 2:1-21

When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.

Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language.And they were amazed and astonished, saying, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.” And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others mocking said, “They are filled with new wine.”

Peter's Sermon at Pentecost

But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them: “Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and give ear to my words. For these people are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day. But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel:

“‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
    and your young men shall see visions,
    and your old men shall dream dreams;
even on my male servants and female servants
    in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy.
And I will show wonders in the heavens above
    and signs on the earth below,
    blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke;
the sun shall be turned to darkness
    and the moon to blood,
    before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day.
And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.’

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

What a day, the day of Pentecost must have been.

Can you imagine?

At this time the multitude of believers was at maximum of about 120. That's what the book of Acts tells us. They had been gathered in prayer,

hearing the apostles.

And then on this day, they are all together in one place.

And suddenly, the amazing happened.

There is that sound of rushing wind that filled the entire house where they were, and then tons of fire divide

and rest upon the disciples,

doesn't give us exactly where many artists will depict it, floating above their heads.

A theologian that I listened to said, maybe it would have been right in front of their mouths,

because of what would come next.

They were filled with the Holy Spirit, the wind, and the fire signified the amazing thing that was happening. And the Spirit empowers them to go out and speak.

Can you imagine being in that room?

And all of a sudden these things happen? And you're carried along by the Spirit? Most of us imagine it as an observer.

But can you imagine being one of the apostles?

Like what would that have been like? You're You're filled with the Spirit. And all of a sudden, the power of the Spirit pushes you out into the crowd.

And suddenly, you can speak Chinese.

I can't speak Chinese. But I think that would be pretty cool. I wonder if you're thinking like, they're like, What is going on? This is amazing. Right?

The people outside were just as amazed by the power of the experience. Some of them were confused. They thought the disciples were drunk. But Peter lets them know it was too early for that. Besides, I don't know of a single beer that can teach you a new language.

Wouldn't that be nice?

They go out, and they explain it's far too early. What is happening is what was predicted by the prophet Joel,

that on the last days, the Holy Spirit would be poured out upon God's people.

And you might be thinking, Oh, those are the last days, what are you talking about before the day of the Lord?

For them that might have been pretty clear, says, The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the day of the Lord comes that great and magnificent day.

When know that the sun was turned to darkness not too long ago, on the day that Jesus was crucified.

And I've heard that smart people say that right about that time there would have been illuminated a lunar eclipse,

which is what sometimes we call a blood moon.

Which meant all of these signs could have come to pass. Right before the Holy Spirit was placed on the apostles.

Meaning the great and glorious day of the Lord

was the day that Jesus was crucified.

And now we are in the last days, with the disciples filled by the Holy Spirit, sent out into the world to proclaim the Word of God, to all people.

This isn't the only time the Holy Spirit does his thing. In the book of Acts, the apostles are empowered by the Holy Spirit throughout.

It begins with Jesus, the book of Acts with Jesus saying you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.

And it's the Holy Spirit from this moment that empowers the disciples, to be those witnesses and carry the message of Jesus Christ out into the world.

After this amazing day of Pentecost,

Ask. Peter preaches a powerful sermon to all who are listening and they are cut to the heart by his words, and they cry, Oh, what should we do?

And he says, Believe in Jesus and be baptized, and you will be saved.

3000 people become Christians that day, and are baptized. Now, if you are doing the math in your head, if you take 12 apostles, baptizing 3000 people for eight hours, that is one baptism every two minutes, eight hours a day.

Can you imagine that service? Are you excited, be pretty great, right?

The message of the gospel was empowered by the Spirit to go out into the world,

to bring all of God's people together,

to gather together the people from every place on Earth, so that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

And it's the same today.

The Holy Spirit that filled the apostles, that put the fire above their heads, still fills the church today, and empowers us in mission.

And that power wasn't in the wind.

The power wasn't in the fire.

The power was in the Word of God.

Because that's what went out to the people and cut them to the heart. That's what went out and change them and gathered them together into the Christian church.

It would cause them to have faith so that he could be baptized.

And it works the same way. Today. Whenever you hear God's word, preached, spoken, told, whenever you hear the words, talking about Jesus, His death and resurrection for you, the Holy Spirit is at work in you.

He strengthens you.

He calls you, He changes your heart.

It is the promise that we have through the word of God. But the Spirit is at work every time the word is proclaimed.

Whether it happened back in the day of Pentecost,

or happens here,

or when you to go out and speak it to your neighbors, and your friends.

And I think that's a key promise that we need to hold on to

is that every time you speak the Word of God to people, they also received the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is at work. In your words, when you talk about Jesus, no matter what happens, no matter the outcome.

Every time you speak, the Spirit is at work.

Which means the power of God is there. When you talk about Jesus. When you share God's Word with someone else, the power of God is working through you

to gather people into the church.

And what we do is we trust the Holy Spirit to do what he sees is right.

One of the things that I think we in the church have done is lost confidence in the work of the Holy Spirit through the Word.

We've lost confidence that it's the Spirit's job, to change people's hearts

through the ways that he promises to do it. And instead we focus in on other things,

on the experience on everything around God's word, rather than sharing it.

This summer, this past year, I started looking through a our curriculum or VBS curriculum. We've gotten questions about why we weren't using group anymore. So I went up to our old VBS curricula. And I just grabbed a couple of random ones. And one of the ones that I found was this high seas curriculum, which was focused in on the Word of God and I thought Great, maybe this will be awesome. How can you screw

up the Word of God, right?

They did

say over the five days, they said that the word of God was true, comforting, surprising, life changing and for everyone. And those things are right.

Good descriptions of the Bible. But when you look at the lessons, something odd was missing.

When they said the Bible is surprising,

they focused in on things like Peter, escaping prison and surprising the people.

When it was comforting, they focused on just some words of comfort.

But what was missing through all of the lessons, was a very important person.

Jesus,

he wasn't there.

The Bible is not true because it's true. The Bible is true in that it shows us Jesus. Right? If you don't see Jesus in the Bible, you're not reading it correctly.

The Bible is not comforting, without Christ, comforting you by His death and resurrection. In fact, without Christ, the Bible is quite threatening,

even scary.

The Bible is not life changing. Without the Holy Spirit, delivering faith into your heart and showing you Jesus.

Without Jesus, the Bible, well, it's just a book.

What this curriculum wanted us to do was get really excited about a book,

but not excited about Jesus, and not focus in on the words and the promises. He tells us.

It focused on the emotions you're supposed to experience, and not on the promises of God, that give us the Holy Spirit.

It's not the experience that changes hearts,

or the emotions about a program.

It's the word of God that delivers the Holy Spirit.

That's the pattern throughout the book of Acts.

When you follow the disciples along through their preaching and teaching, there is always something amazing that going on, but it is there to point us to Christ,

and the Holy Spirit does his work.

We see that in the day of Pentecost, the wind and the fire and the languages and it all points to a sermon.

Or how about when Peter and John they go to the temple and they seem they see a beggar. And he asked for gold and instead of gold, he gives him healing. And the people gather around and they go this is amazing.

And Peter preaches about Jesus.

And it's not the healing that changes minds. But the word. The same thing happens when Philip goes to Samaria. He proclaims Jesus Christ and the people believe.

Or how about when Peter, for the first time goes and preaches to the Gentiles where Cornelius is, they are sent by a vision, he goes there. And he speaks about Jesus. And it's not the vision, but the word. And all of a sudden, the Holy Spirit descends on the Gentiles who are there, and they speak in tongues and praise God.

Or how about when Paul and Barnabas are sent out on their very first missionary journey, and they go to a town and they are preaching and teaching and a beggar comes up? Another man who is unable to walk?

He heals the man. And the Greeks there are like, Zeus and Hermes are here.

Paul and Barnabas had to say, whoa, whoa, ah,

the miracle actually distracted them.

And he had to say, No, this is all about Jesus.

And the Holy Spirit went out through their words.

And over and over and over again. The mission of God was not through the miracles.

But it was the word that the Holy Spirit gave to the people around them. That was the power that changed hearts.

Not the experience.

What does that mean for us?

It means that no matter what we do

No matter how great or poor, the experience is around us.

The power of God is only shared. When the Holy Spirit goes out through the means that he is prone.

It's the word of God that gathers people into the church, by the power of the Holy Spirit.

So whether it's here in this place, the Holy Spirit is at work with the word

or whether you share it with your neighbors.

The Holy Spirit only works through the Word. So have competence in that. It's the same thing that the apostle Peter used to convert 3000 people on the day of Pentecost. It's the same thing that St. Paul use when he went throughout the whole world to gather together people into the church, the exact same power is given to you and to me when we speak God's word to others.

It doesn't have to be amazing.

It doesn't have to be accompanied by miracles, or wisdom.

All it needs is God's promise.

Coming through the Holy Spirit,

which means that when you speak,

the Holy Spirit goes out to call by the power of the gospel. When you speak, the Holy Spirit goes out to strengthen people in their faith or turn them to Christ.

When you speak, the Holy Spirit makes people firm in God's promises.

We can trust

the God the Holy Spirit works every time the word is preached, every time the word is spoken.

In Jesus name, Amen.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Beware! A Sermon About The Devil

1 Peter 5:8-11

Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen.

Audio Block

Double-click here to upload or link to a .mp3. Learn more

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. We are coming to the end of our series on Peter's first epistle, we've been working through it through the whole Easter season. And we've we've sort of slowly seen what St. Peter had to say to the church in the ancient world, as well as to our church today. He began by telling us that how in baptism, we receive an inheritance from Jesus Christ that is imperishable, undefiled unfading and kept in heaven for you, given to you by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Next week found out that because we are made separate given this amazing inheritance, we are called to be holy, like God is holy, to obey our Savior, Jesus Christ and follow in his footsteps. After that, St. Peter tells us that as God's church we are gathered together into a holy priesthood. He uses also the image of a church building that is founded on the cornerstone that is Jesus Christ. We talked about how Christians suffer, and that very often we suffer not because we're doing evil, but because we do good. And that's not something to flee. Peter reframed that suffering as a participation in Jesus Christ's own suffering. Last week, we talked about what it means to share our faith and give a good defense of what we believe, and how that involves not not being angry, and shouting as far as being part of any kind of cultural battle, but to focus on our vocations, and love and serve others while we share the message of Jesus Christ. And today, St. Peter returns to a theme that he has hit over and over and over again, suffering. But this time, he hits the angle, where he warns us about what Satan tries to do with that suffering. How Satan comes after us, in an attempt to pull us away from Jesus Christ. He says, Be sober minded, be watchful, your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of sufferings are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. St. Peter is reminding the church of his day as well as us is that the devil, Satan, whoever you want to call him, he's got lots of names throughout history is real and active in the world. Satan does stuff. He's not a figment of the ancient imagination. He is not just a force that we sort of personify. He is a real, true spiritual being who is always on the hunt, to get you. St. Peter calls him a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. I kind of get that. I have cats, and they are always looking for a bug to devour. And you see them, They stalk and they move they think they're really sneaky, but I see it. And they leap and they get it. And unlike Satan, they don't know what to do once they finally catch it.

He was really there. He was really hunting. And he knows what to do if he catches you. And we need to be aware. Fortunately, if we are aware, as St. Peter tells us, we can be just like me with my cats. They don't surprise us. We can see his work if we truly are alert. How does Satan work in our world? He's constantly there, and constantly tempting. But before we dive into that, I think it's a good idea to remind ourselves that he actually has no power to really and truly get us. Satan works as a tempter. Because the only way he can get us is if we leave Jesus's power. Jesus Christ defeated him, by going to the cross, by dying there. And by rising from the dead and ascending into heaven, he has now seated at the right hand of God, and He rules over all powers that exist. He is more powerful than any government, more powerful than any angel or demon, more powerful than death itself, he reigns over all of creation. And he's in short, which means that the devil has been defeated. When I think of this image, I often go to Psalm 23, where it talks about the shepherd with the sheep. And I think of the passage where it says, Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me, an African once explained how this image works for them in Africa. He says that shepherds in Africa have a rod, which is a giant club, and a staff, which is used to guide the sheep. And one of them is for the lion, that when the lion comes, they take the giant club and they whack him. That's what Jesus did. As long as we're in the power of Jesus, Satan can't snatch us out of Christ's hands. He's got the big club, he knows how to use it, and he protects you. The only way Satan can get us is if we leave of our own accord. If we say no to Jesus, and we turn away. And so Satan uses temptation. He uses these things to try to trick us to leave behind Jesus. Peter knew this well. In the Gospels, Peter was constantly tempted by Satan. And we see a few moments where the key of it comes. There's a time where Jesus asked the disciples, Who do people say that I am, and they run through the list. And then Peter says, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. It's a big moment, an important moment in the Gospels. And then Jesus immediately goes to say, I am going to go and die on the cross. And after three days rise, and then Peter, fresh off the big moment to saying, You are the Christ, the Son of the living, God says, No, that will never happen to you. And Peter says, Get behind me Satan. He was tempted. Peter, fresh off this power of a confession of Jesus Christ had the wrong idea of who Jesus was. And Satan pulled him in that direction. We saw it again. When Jesus was with the disciples in the upper room, sharing the Last Supper, and he says, One of you will betray Me and and he tells them all that they're going to fall away. And Peter says, No way, Jesus, even if I have to die with you, I will never betray. Peter thought he was strong. But only a little while later, when the situation had changed. Someone asked him, Do you know that guy? Peter says, I don't even know what three times he was tempted when he faced a challenging situation. Moments after he proclaimed his confidence. Satan's tempt to temptations caused him to leave Jesus behind. And Satan is constantly at work around us trying to do the same thing with you trying to do the same thing with me. And the question is, how can we defend against him? What can we do as we watch for this Rory? A lion who is looking for someone to to devour. I think, for the church, there are two important aspects for defending against Satan. One is the spiritual battle that is being done with God's grace and His power to defend us and our faith. And the other is a mental battle, trying to understand and decide and interpret what is happening in the world. The spiritual battle is the easy one. That's the one that Jesus has already won. And God defends you by Jesus's almighty power through His Holy Sacrament. And this is where Christianity actually gets very, very simple. The grace of God defends you from Satan, through the Word and the sacraments. When you hear the proclaimed word of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit comes to you and strengthens your faith. When you receive Christ, body, and blood, he comes to you and fills you with Jesus Himself. And He strengthens you, in this fight against Satan. When Holy Baptism came to you, he united you with Jesus Christ, and gave you the amazing gift of grace. When you repent of your sins, and hear the words, I forgive your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit comes to you, and you're forgiven. And very often, these things seem really small. But there's a spiritual element to them that goes beyond what our minds can understand, deep down into that, that gift of faith that God has given you. And it is their strengthening buttressing making it firm. And when St. Peter says, Be firm in your faith, it is the faith that God gives you, that is the foundation of that through the gifts of the church that you receive. The other aspect of this is being firm in God's word. Because we can't just live as human beings on this mysterious grace. Our brains really like to make us run on one astray. Because we think a lot, you know, if we were unable to think it would actually be a whole lot easier to be faithful, right? Just let the Holy Spirit do the thing, and then your brain wouldn't get in the way. But very often, it's that that anxiety, our mind puzzling about things, that we have to rein under control, and understand the world through God's promises to make sure that we remain firm. And the key one that St. Peter hits over and over and over again, is the problem of suffering. Right? How many times in the last Easter season? Have I talked about suffering a lot? I'm kind of getting bored of it, or, you know, maybe not. And there's a reason why he puts this in so close to the Satan's temptations. Because every generation of the church has thought, Well, if God is on my side, my life should be better. Right? Our minds just do that. That's what the pagan Romans thought if you sacrifice the right sacrifices and do the right rituals, then you too, will have a good life. You can bribe God to love you. And St. Peter knows this, he says, You're going through the same thing as everyone else.

And he constantly has to reframe their sufferings not as a bad things are examples that Jesus has abandoned them, but his participation in the suffering of Christ. And we have to reframe, and understand our suffering as well. Sometime in the past, I don't know how many years the Christian church in America started saying things like if God is on your side, you're alive. If you get better, God's grace will solve your problems. And you've probably heard that right? That there is something about God that makes your life better. Satan loves that kind of thing. Because what St. Peter is actually helping us see that the devil doesn't go after non Christian. He's already got them. The world doesn't attack non Christians. They don't care. The world comes after us. We should expect our lives to be maybe a little worse. We should expect to face problems that other people don't face. I honestly don't understand how one can read the Bible and see what Jesus went through and see what St. Peter writes and think God's grace is going to make your life better. God's favor on Jesus meant suffering and dying. God's favor in the book of Acts meant being stoned and beaten and hurt and killed. God's favor with St. Peter here means that the Christian church was suffering everywhere. Being firm in understanding these things, means that when that happens to us, we don't say, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second. My life's not supposed to be like this. It means we can say, Oh, yeah. This is what Jesus promised. What a surprise. And when we understand God's promises, when we really focus in on what Jesus has to say, we can be ready for what Satan throws out. When he tries to tempt us, we can say no, no, this is what God says. When he tries to throw up contradictions, we can say, no, no, no. This is what God says. And we can rest firm and true in his promise.

This is why I'm so picky. You may have noticed about doctrine,

about our teaching, why I want to be so clear about what the actual Bible says about our actual law. Because what Satan really likes, is when a false idea creeps into the church, and it doesn't match reality. And then what he does is he goes, this doesn't match. And he lets it work in your mind. And not you and tug at you. Until you go, Oh, yeah. God's promises must not be true. It's why I focus so hard on making sure we understand exactly what the Bible says. And think about exactly what the teachings of the Church so that we can truly understand what God is telling us about our lives. We need to be able to interpret reality, the way God does, to be able to understand what happens and say, Yes, I was expecting. The joy of this is that even though we, we ended up suffering a little in the church, even though we ended up having to work hard to understand these teaching, is the promise that St. Peter tells the people of his day, right after this where he says, and after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, comfort, strengthen, and establish. You see, as we face down the devil and all his Wiles and temptations and all the problems. We know that God of grace has a problem. This restoration, conformation, strengthening and establishing. We know that he is coming and He will raise us on the last day and that there is nothing that we face now. Whether suffering or Satan, that can diminish and that is the piece that we cling to, with the hope of Jesus Christ. In his name amen

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Should Christians Fight The Culture War? Sermon for May 14th

Two antelope lock horns in battle

1 Peter 3:13-22

Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God's will, than for doing evil.

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.

Transcribed by AI. Please forgive any errors.

This Easter season, we've been working our way through First Peter Peters epistle to all sorts of Christians scattered throughout the Roman world at the time. It opened with a message about the inheritance that we have been given in baptism, that when you were baptized, you were united with Jesus Christ, and given an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled unfading kept in heaven for you. The next section in the first chapter was about how this inheritance makes us different from the world, that we are called to be holy in Christ, set apart from the rest of the world, to be different, to act as Christ would have us act. After that, we talked about how we are then gathered together in Christ into the holy Christian church, he used the metaphor of a building, built on the foundation of Christ, the cornerstone, that we all gathered to be one, the priesthood of all believers. Then we went on to talk about suffering for doing good, that maybe Christians should expect since we are different from the rest of the world, to suffer for being different, that when we do good, sometimes people will respond negatively. And we reframed that suffering from something we should flee from, instead to being something that shows our participation in Christ, that He suffered for us. And today, we're taking a look at this next passage. And I want to focus in on another a further response to what happens when we suffer for doing good. St. Peter says, when these things happen, and if you should suffer for righteousness sake, he says, but in your hearts regard Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you. Yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God's will than doing evil. When I read that, I thought, this is a perfect time to talk about the culture war. Because very often, the culture war in America is framed as at least amongst Christian circles, how should Christians respond to an evil world? Should we fight the culture war or not? And I think this addresses that question. So the question, Should Christians fight the culture war? To ask that question, we first need to talk about what the culture war is. It has been one said that puritanism puritanism was the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be having a good time. I think we can base a definition of the culture war as something similar. It is the haunting fear that someone somewhere may live differently than me.

When we look at the culture war, and we see signs of it everywhere, it is a battle between different people on different sides for how people should live their lives. It is not about the right level of taxation or laws like that. It is a question of what should our culture look like? And people use legal or cultural social pressure to try to force a particular worldview and way of living on someone else. And I think that is the culture war. Is that when we try to push and force people to believe or speak something and by I mean, everybody, not just we hear in this place. We see culture war battles happening about all sorts of things. There are issues about how we think about gender, or sexuality. There are problems about what how many people we think should be entering our country or not, and what they will do to our culture. There are questions about race and racism. But in the end, I think the culture war is what happens when we get really angry about something that doesn't affect us at all. Right? Isn't that the way it works? The culture war if you if you turn on the news, and there is something that is designed to generate outrage, about a decision that a school board made in Florida. And you think, Oh, I'm so mad. That's the culture war? Why would you care about what they're doing in Florida? Does that affect you? Or your children? Probably not. The culture war is designed to ramp up your anger, so that you choose a side in politics. It's designed to get you to make allies with people who don't care about Christianity in any way, who just want power. By now, you can probably guess what my answer to the question is, Should Christians fight the culture war? No. But I'm actually going to give you biblical reasons why, instead of just ranting from the pulpit. The first reason is very simple. When we fight the culture war, it shows that we don't actually trust in the hope of the victory of Jesus Christ. Why the culture war is almost always shown as an existential battle for the soul of America. We have to make sure that America is exactly the moral superior country, we want it to be. Whether you fighting for Red team, or blue team. The culture war is framed as a way that says if the bad guys win, everything is lost. And said St. Peters simply assumes that we have a hope that cannot be lost. As he says, We've been given an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled unfading, kept in heaven for you. He also describes this hope as a Jesus Christ, the resurrection of Jesus Christ who has gone into heaven, and is at the right hand of God with angels, authorities and powers having been subjected to him. Which means Jesus is in charge of everything. Governments, culture, spiritual forces, everything in the world is under his power. And our hope is that he will come back one day, and raise us from the dead. And on that day, it doesn't matter what victories and small little things the enemy has won. It only matters that he returns and he wins. Jesus has won. Why would we be afraid about what the future has in store? Why would we worry about what might happen in politics and culture? Beyond that? When we, when we give into this kind of existential fear about the culture war, it ends up forcing us to take sides with people who don't care about us. It ends up having us turn away from the love and care that Christ gives us to anger and fighting. And it betrays the hope that we have. If we truly trust in Jesus, if we truly know that he has won the Vic Three, there is no room for fear at all. We can enter every situation confident that our victory is assured in Jesus Christ. Sure, we may run into places where we suffer. Yeah. But it's no different than any other Christian who's ever gone before us, certainly no different from the Christians in Rome, or the Christians in Iran, or North Korea. Just like them, we can have confidence that Jesus has one. Finding the culture war also gives us ammunition to our enemies, to say, oh, yeah, you see, all of those things we said about those Christians. We were right. They are jerks. They're mean. Can you see what they say online? St. Peter tells us when we when we defend our faith, and we share the hope that is in us. He says, you do it with gentleness and respect having a good conscience. So that when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. The key to that is what he's saying is, when people accuse us of being evil, they're supposed to look at us and say, they're actually really nice people. They're not evil, you're an idiot. But if they accuse us for being evil, and we actually are evil, they're not going to be slandered. They're going to be telling the truth. And when we let our fear drive us to being angry, and hostile, and fight in the world, their slander no longer becomes slander. If we go out and attack people, for living differently than we think they should we actually become the people they accuse us of being. Now, one of the things that I think is, is interesting about the way the cultural war works from a Christian perspective, that we actually expect non Christians to live like Christians. And the key part of the culture war is to say, You people who don't believe in Jesus, who don't think he was raised from the dead, who don't believe that God created the earth and order it according to His good and gracious will, should believe and live the way I say you should, because I said, so. Now, if someone came to you, and did that, how would you react? You're supposed to live the way I believe, because I said, so. I bet you'd be pretty mad. And if they then they try to make the laws force you to do it. You'd get even matter. Right? The culture war is often like that, isn't it? When Christians go out to a world and we say you should live the way Christians live, because we said so. It's not just weird. Expecting non Christians to behave like Christians. And so when we go out, and we try to use the law, when we try to fight and hurt and, and force people to live, like what we're doing, all we do is give ammunition to our enemy. What we should do as Christians instead is love the people that we run into, right?

We should take care of the people who are near us. We should expect non Christians to act like I don't know non Christians. Because they're gonna No matter how much we shout and yell. But the key then, is for us to say, no matter how crazy you are, I love you. And when you're done being crazy, we're here to welcome you into the church. Pretty simple, right? We're here to love you and take care of you. And when you need Jesus, we will give him to you so that you can be saved. Does that mean we compromise our beliefs? No. Does that mean we change who we are? No. We just teach ourselves. We make sure we stand where we stand. And we share love with those who are near us. So that when people say, look at those Christians, they are jerks. They're always shouting about what other people should do. They'll say, Wait a second, they feed the hungry. They welcome people into their church. And they give love, just like Jesus did. Because that's what Jesus did, isn't it? He loved the people who should have been rejected the people who deserved to be punished, like you, and me. And that's our job. Finally, fighting the culture war, is not sharing our hope, with gentleness, and respect. And that should be relatively clear. When we look at the way the metaphor of the culture war. See, when you fight a war, you are not trying to convert the other side to your faith, right? In a war, you launch airstrikes at the other side to totally destroy them. That doesn't sound like gentleness, and respect. The St. Peter says, in your hearts regard Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for the reason to hope that is in you. Yet do it with gentleness and respect. Our job is not to destroy people, to make them humiliated or feel bad about themselves. But to love them, and tell them the faith, help them see Jesus. One of the challenges behind this is because we get upset, we often have a difficult time discussing with people who are different and believe differently than us in a calm and kind way. Our job is to help people who are struggling with things with temptation with with pain, with hurts with the all the problems that we see in our culture, and love them through it. Because if we don't, what they're going to do is they're going to see that the church hates me, and run off and find guidance somewhere else. One thing that I think is better than looking at the culture war, as a battle is actually more like a dance. In a dance, you're not trying to destroy the other person. But you work together here, one person might lead and another person might lead and then you learn from each other about each other's perspective. And you sort of walk away with a little bit changed. An example of that might be something that I did at a dinner conversation not too long ago, I eat dinner with the with the women of 2911. Every Tuesday night, so one house or the other. And most of the time, we just chat about whatever. But one night, we did, something happened. And we spent about an hour and a half, they just sort of went around the table asking me theological questions. It was pretty awesome. And most of the time, what I did was say, Lutheranism is so amazing, you should give it a shot. Like it was like, and this is why we do the sacraments because you don't have to worry about works righteousness, Jesus just gives it to you was basically the thing I said over and over and over again. And we got to a point where they said, Pastor, we expected you to be more like debating and correcting. And I said, well think about our conversation. I have just spent about an hour and a half telling you why all your churches are wrong, and why you shouldn't be a Lutheran instead. But it didn't feel like it. I listened to them. I heard what they said. And I said, Well, here's how we approach this. And instead of saying, This is why your pastor is wrong, why your way of thinking is wrong. I said, this is why what we do is beautiful. And true. St. Paul did that. In Athens. He took what they believed. And he said, I have something even better. Look, you've got all of these gods and you worship them in all of these ways. But here is a hook. Or I can say no, no. I have something even greater than what you have. more beautiful, more wonderful, more amazing. And that's how the church wins. Not by launching airstrikes at the enemy. But by helping to show the world that what we have is beautiful that the resurrection of Jesus Christ provides salvation and a way of being pure and holy, eternal life. And that the joy we can have in Christ doesn't depend on which color of person is in charge of the United States, red, or blue, or who is winning a culture war? What it depends on is the fact that we have a Savior, who died on a cross, rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. And we can show the world the beauty and power of our golf. If we have confidence in that, if we truly have confidence that Jesus is coming again, and we know that we are right. All we have to do is wait for the world to recognize it. Because eventually their insanity will make them insane. And we can be here saying, when you're done, we're ready. We will welcome you. We will love you, and we will give you Jesus in His name, amen.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Imperishable, Undefiled, Unfading Sermon for April 16th

1 Peter 1:3-9

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5 who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, 7 so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 8 Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, 9 obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Set Your Mind On Things Above. A Sermon for April 9th

Colossians 3:1-4

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. 3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

Hallelujah, Christ is risen, is risen indeed. It's a joy to have you here as we celebrate the wonderful promise of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This week has been a big week for us here. We have told lots of stories over the past seven days, Palm Sunday began with the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, riding a donkey that has never been written, with the crowds of people waving palm branches and shouting Hosanna. Maundy Thursday, we gathered with the disciples where Jesus washed the disciples feet, instituted Holy Communion, and gave them his body and his blood to drink, how he went to the Garden of Gethsemane and prayed there, where he was arrested. On Friday, we read the story of Jesus's trial, before the High Priest and before punches Pilate, before he was finally executed by being nailed to a cross, where they took him down and placed him in a borrowed tomb, simply because it was nearby. Saturday, we waited with Jesus in the grave for the vigil of the of the resurrection. Before Finally today, we shout for joy, because Christ is raised from the dead. What that means is death has no power over Jesus, he died once and is now back, he will never die again. And the power of death is defeated by him. What a joy that this is for us. And it's not just that Jesus Himself will never die again. His resurrection means that death has no power over us, the people of Christ, who believe in Him. St. Paul helps us to understand what that means for us in our daily life. When we look at Colossians chapter three, he says, if then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above not on things that are on earth. For if you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God, when Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory. Now, to understand what he's saying, you have to go back a little bit to the chapter ahead, where he talks about how we are united with Christ. Colossians chapter two says, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with Him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. What that means is, we were connected with Jesus Christ in baptism. And by baptism, he raised you from the dead, and gave you eternal life, not sometime in the future. But right now, by the amazing gift that he gave you. In that washing, a baptism. St. Paul continues, and you who were dead in your trespasses, and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him. And so Jesus's death and resurrection means that not only are we raised from the dead, but all the powers and forces of this world that might fight against us, have no power over us. They have been defeated by Jesus's death and resurrection. That means our greatest enemy death itself is no longer in charge. And all of the problems that come from it, no longer have a claim over our lives. Our life is safe in Christ, and nothing can stop that. Nothing can defeat us as long as we are in Him. And this is why St. Paul says to us seek the thing things that are above where Christ is, he is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things that are above and not on things that are on earth. Despite our best efforts, the world always wants us to pull us away from the promise that we have in Christ, the things that are above and faithfulness to him, by distracting us with the things that we worry about. So we know we have an amazing promise that we are safe in Christ, our life is kept secure in him. But our daily needs, our worries, or concerns. They keep pulling us our attention away from God, and faithfulness to him and pushing it back down to earth. Paul says, Set your minds on things that are above. Remember, the most important thing is this promise that Christ has been raised from the dead, and your life is safe in him. There are a number of Bible stories of people who received amazing promises but didn't follow through in trust. I'd like you to think about Abraham, the first one to receive a great promise in the Bible. When God came to Abraham, he gave him three big promises. He would make him the father of a great nation, he would give him a promised land, and all nations would be blessed through Him. Abraham saw most of those promises come to pass. But the one he was really most worried about was having a son. And when he got to the promised land, it took a while before God would come through on this. Abraham didn't trust. And so he and his wife Sarah decided to take matters into their own hands. Abraham impregnated a servant, Hagar, as a way to get make this promise happen. Instead of being faithful and waiting, instead of just trusting that God would come through, he decided he was going to take care of things and be unfaithful. And boy, did it create some problems. You can imagine what that would be like in the family. The servant girl has the kid with the husband and the wife, what did she do? She was not very happy. There was so much conflict in that family because of it. Eventually, Isaac did come, the promise child that would come from Sarah. And Abraham learned his lesson. He learned to trust God and keep His mind set on things above so much, that when God said to him, Take your son and sacrifice him on the mountain. Abraham doesn't hesitate. Why? Because he knew that God, even if God allowed Isaac to die on top of that mountain would bring him back. Because the Isaac was the son of this promise. And God said that Abraham would be the father of many nations who finally had the peace, to trust God and turn from taking matters into his own hands.

I don't know what problems you're facing. What daily concerns you deal with? I'm sure you have a list that you can run through your mind. They're never far from us are they? But what this promise of Jesus Christ gives us that he has raised from the dead is that none of these things are more important than him. None of these things can take you out of Christ's hand. And so we should set our minds on following Jesus, the one who holds our life, the one who returned and raise us to glory. Last night at the vigil, we read another story of people who couldn't accept the promise. It was Israel. Right after they had come out of Egypt and were brought to the Red Sea. God had sent Moses to go to Pharaoh and say Let my people go. And God sent plague after plague. He did amazing miracles that threatened the Egyptians but kept Israel safe. And finally, after the Passover, the people walked out of out of Pharaoh's Egypt and made their way to the Red Sea.

And when they got there, Pharaoh changed his mind and sent the army after them. srael had seen all of these amazing things heard promises from Moses. And when they saw the army coming, their minds left the promises of God. The things that are above and they turned to the things that are on earth. They said to Moses, are there no graves in Egypt? That you brought us out here? Didn't we tell you to leave us alone? It'd be so much better to be back in slavery in Egypt. But God had an answer. They just had to trust. He split the Red Sea. And the people walked through on dry ground. And when Pharaoh's army chased after them to kill them, the water came in on them and drown. They just needed to trust God would protect them. Instead, they took their things into their own hands and turned to unfaithfulness. What's amazing is right on the other side, the same thing happens. As soon as it looks like they might not have enough food, they turn to Moses, and they say, Why did you bring us out here to starve in the wilderness? It was so much better back in Egypt. Let's go back there and serve the Egyptians. God responded by coming through on his promises again. He gave them manna bread, right outside of their tents every morning. He dropped quail from the sky into their camp to give them meat every evening. It's way better than an Amazon delivery, I think. All they had to do was trust. And yet, in their fear, their minds left the things that were above and focused on the things that are below the things of earth. How much more peace would they have had if they simply focused on following God and hoping in his promises, and trusting in Him. Towards the end of the Old Testament, we have a story from the book of Daniel, that shows a group of people who were faithful. You probably know it the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the fiery furnace. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego are in the province of Babylon when King and Nebuchadnezzar builds a 60 cubit, tall, golden statue that's 90 feet. And he says, Every time you hear music, you have to bow down and worship this statue. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego have their mind set on the things that are above. And so they refuse. Nebuchadnezzar gets his soldiers and gathers them in and he says to them, now if you are ready, when you hear the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, Trigun, harp, bagpipe, and every kind of music, to fall down and worship the image that I have made, well and good. But if you do not worship, you shall immediately be cast into a burning fiery furnace. And who is the god who will deliver you out of my hands? Shadrach Meshach and Abednego know the answer to that question. They say, Oh, Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us out of your hand oh king, but if not, be it known to you, oh king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up. You imagine Nebuchadnezzar has the fiery furnace and it's going he is so mad at this point. He heats it up harder than it's ever been. And they say no. Their minds are set on things above. They know the promise of God is sure and through that even if God wouldn't save them from the fire, he would raise them from the dead on the last day, and give them glory forever. And yet, when King Nebuchadnezzar throws the three men into the fire, the fire is so hot that it kills the soldiers who throw them in. But not Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. He looks in and he sees four men there, the three that he has thrown in and one he says that looks like the son of the gods. We know who that is. Christ Himself who stays with us in danger, who is with us in the worst. who's with us even in death. He got Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego through the fiery furnace. And he will get us through the most dangerous thing we face through death itself. Because he led the way through the grave, by dying and rising from the dead, and death has no power over him anymore. Your life by baptism is safe in Christ. Nothing on this earth can threaten.

Set your minds on things above. Only Christ matters. Only following him matters. Everything else is a distraction. The promises that we have in Him will always come true. Because Christ is faith and he is risen. Hallelujah Christ is risen. In his name, amen.

He Rested

Genesis 2

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2 And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. 3 So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.

Easter Vigil

4/8/23

Genesis 2

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. Tonight is the Easter Vigil, the night where we wait to celebrate the joy of the resurrection. Looking forward to this wonderful celebration that we've just begun. The transition from the day of rest to the day of joy. Now, we have read a number of things that deal with rest tonight. The first one begins with creation, creating a day of rest the seventh day. That is Saturday. Today, many people don't know that. Many Christians assume that the Sabbath day, the day talked about so often in the Bible, the day of rest is actually Sunday. Right? I'm sure you've heard it before. You're supposed to go to church on the Sabbath. But that's not the way it worked. The Sabbath day was the seventh day Saturday. In our reading from creation, God created all of the different things on all of the different days days, one through six, culminating with humanity.

And then he rested on the Sabbath. Saturday, the day of rest. Did you ever wonder why he rested? On the seventh day?

I bet. Do you think it was because God was tired? That's what the kids think when I tell them that story. Like, six whole days of work, I would definitely rest. But you know, of course, when you read the story, all the work that God does is just speak a few sentences. If I got wiped out from speaking a few sentences, it would be rough being a pastor. Why did God rest? Why was the seventh day the day of rest? Well, the Old Testament answer was that it was a day to set the pattern for God's people that on the Sabbath day, they would rest beginning with night, Friday, what we will call Friday and ending on Saturday. It wasn't because they needed a break. We'd like to take a break, don't we? In fact, many Christians will call Sabbath that as well. They'll say I need a Sabbath rest, which means they need to go home and take a nap. But that's not what the rest for God's people were the Sabbath. Saturday. They rested because they were supposed to look for their life and salvation in God. Resting on one day a week was a way for them to rest in God's promises. They would take a whole day. They wouldn't go out into their fields. They wouldn't go work on anything. They wouldn't light a fire or repair their work equipment. They would rest because they knew that God would keep His promises and keep them safe. It was a day for them to wait and let God come through on his word. That pattern rings over and over again throughout the Old Testament. Wait for the Lord. Psalm 27 describes a situation where the evil doer attacks. That conclusion is very simple. Wait for the Lord. Be strong and let your heart take courage. Wait for the Lord. Same for Psalm 25 It says to you oh Lord, I lift up my soul Oh my God in you I trust let me not be put to shame. But not my enemies exalt over me. Indeed. Nan who wait for you shall be put to shame are Psalm 62 for God alone my soul waits in silence. From him comes my salvation. Psalm 105 I wait for the Lord. My soul waits, and in His word I hope my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning. Wait for the Lord. That was the message of each one of our readings after the creation story, wasn't it? Israel is terrified by the Egyptians and what does God say? Wait. You'll see the salvation. Abraham's promises challenged Isaac the son must die. God will provide Daniel, friends Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. They're commanded bow down to the idol, the mightiest King on earth will kill you throw you into the hottest furnace ever. And what do they say? Our God will protect us. We will not worship your God, oh king. They're thrown into the fire and who appears there. A man like the Son of God. They waited for the Lord, each and every one they waited for the Lord and he delivered them. And that's what the Sabbath day is about. Even the Sabbath of Christ you remember how we ended the readings? On at the end of John, Jesus sighs and says, It is finished. Then his work was done. They took down his body. They placed it in a tomb. And on the seventh day he rested. And what he did was trust for us. God Himself, Jesus Christ, waited for the Lord, to raise him from the dead. When evildoers assailed him when the host of people around him, all they wanted to do was destroyed Jesus Christ. He waited. And on the eighth day of the week, he rose. Because when Jesus rises from the dead, the pattern of creation is now over. There is a new day, it is not days one through seven anymore. Sunday morning is day eight, the beginning of the new creation, the beginning of a Savior who defeated death forever for you, and a new way of life. This is the joy of Christ's resurrection. But he waits on the Sabbath day. And when his father raises him from the dead, he brings a new pattern into being. And now you and I live in that reality. What it means is that when we to rest, like Christ in our tombs, we can wait for the Lord. We can wait like he did. Knowing that there is a Sabbath rest for all of us. That God will return and raise us and bring us into the new creation and the old pattern will be broken for ever because of our Savior in his name Amen.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

What is Good about Good Friday? A sermon for April 7th

Hebrews 4, 5

14 Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. 16 Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need….

7 In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. 8 Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. 9 And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, 10 being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Tonight we are celebrating Good Friday. We've just read through the stories of Jesus's passion, all the way up from his arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, through his many trials, to his crucifixion and execution, and then finally, his burial in a borough tomb near where they crucified Him. As we read through a story like this, and we see all the grisly details, you have to wonder what in the world is good? About Good Friday? Right? That seems like a weird name. This is this was really bad. It was insults. They slapped him up for no reason. Whipping. I mean, Pilate was just trying to make the man look miserable. So when the Jews saw him, they would go oh, that's fine. You punished him enough.

That wasn't enough. nailed Him to a cross. And He was already so tired and exhausted. He didn't take the normal amount of time to die. He actually did it pretty fast. So beaten and broken, was he? What is good about Good Friday. Here tonight, we've gathered with a very somber service. They call it the chief service, you had to enter quietly.

No announcements or greeting, shaking hands or smiling. We saying Oh, Sacred Head now wounded, over and over, over again. Kind of got a mournful to write more than full service. You could almost say that a time like this is a little bit like a funeral for Jesus, right? Sort of like Look what they did to the Savior. It was terrible beating and breaking and dying. That is the price of your sin. We should mourn and weep and cry. But that's not what Good Friday is for. That's misunderstanding what we're doing tonight. There's another way of telling the story of the crucifixion. This one is a little more of looking at from the father's perspective. I imagine God up in his office in heaven. He's sitting there reading the newspaper because he's old school like that. And an angel walks into the office and says, Did you hear the news? And he does one of those dad things like the news. What news? The news about your son? Oh about Jesus. He's been down there for like 33 years. They must love him by now. They're killing him God. Watch. And he runs out to the window and he looks down and he sees the cross. You know those videos on TV on the internet of like mom's like the most mild mannered mom turns into mama bear when her kids in danger, right? You know how that works. The nicest, kindest person is suddenly raging. Though I think I like the ones where the most unathletic dad today suddenly turns into a ninja to grab the kid out of danger.

This telling of the story, God is looking down and says, I sent you my son What have you done to him?

That's not what Good Friday is about. It's not about looking at the cross and crying. It's not about mourning, or grieving. Because the cross is the remarkable moment. When Jesus the Son of God in human flesh, tricks death into swallowing life. The cross, the amazing moment when darkness tries to engulf light. And the grave tries to grab hold of the Creator. The cross is not a time for mourning. It is the glory and triumph of Jesus. I want you to think back. There's a story in the Gospel of Matthew, and the Gospel of Mark, James and John, send their mom to Jesus and say, Jesus, we want you to do whatever we say. He goes, What do you want? Let my son's sit at your right and your left hand when you come into your kingdom. And Jesus goes, you don't know what you're asking? What is the people who will be at my right hand and my left is a position prepared for them. And then in both gospels, you get to the scene. They have Jesus with a crown of thorns on his head. And that says, And they crucified him, with two robbers, one on his right, and one on his left.

Because the cross is not a defeat, it is a victory. It is not shame. It is glory. It is the part of the work that Christ came to do. The death of Jesus Christ on the cross transforms that piece of wood that misshapen, rough cut splintery thing into the tree of life. It has no leaves, bears no fruit. You don't have to water it or figure out its root system.

But it still offers the fruit of salvation, through the water and blood that poured out of Jesus's side. It is still Jesus being lifted up and drawing all of humanity to him, to offer them a life that lasts forever. The death of Jesus Christ turns this instrument of torture into the most glorious throne. Better than gold, silver, jewels, better than anything we could look at the cross of Jesus Christ becomes the throne and power of God. It is no longer judgment. It is the grace and gift of God sent out into the whole world offered for me and for you. What is good about Good Friday. I'd say that sounds pretty good, doesn't it? And what Jesus does when he comes as our high priest who came in human flesh, who lived among us and was just like us, he comes to take our place in death, and guide us through to life that lasts forever. And that is what Hebrews tells us. And it says to us when we need it. Let us then with confidence, draw nearer to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. That is why the cross that is why God came as a human. To live with us. To suffer with us to feel our weakness and pain and know what it means to be human. And then to go to the cross and turn it into the throne of grace, the source of help that we need whenever we don't measure up whenever we needed from him. The throne of grace is a place that we can go with confidence knowing our Savior will give us love no matter what.

And don't we need it? Because God's word will call us sinners. We place ourselves up against the standard of what God demands. And we know we fall short. And when we hear those words, we can only do one thing. Go to the throne of grace confidently knowing our Savior will forgive us when our hearts convict us When we look at our actions, and our consciences cry out against us, when our memory brings up that same sin over and over every day, you know exactly what I mean. We place ourselves before the throne of grace, we ask for forgiveness. When your basket isn't good enough, when you've tried everything you could, when you pulled every trick, tried every pulled out every stop, looked up every top 10 suggestion list to get it done, and you still fall short, and you just can't do it. We can come to the throne of grace, and ask for forgiveness, with the promise that Jesus Christ always gives it because you went to the cross, to win it for you, to die for you. The cross is the throne of grace, the tree of life for the broken the sinner, the needy, for the terrible for you, and for me. And we have to be careful to make sure we remember it.

One of the challenges we Christians face is not seeing God as a place for the broken and the weak. But as someone for the strong, and it's everywhere. I remember listening to a psychologist and expert in addiction. If sin isn't an addiction, I don't know what is an expert in addiction, who was talking about people who are struggling with these things. And talking about how wonderful AAA treats people who fall off the wagon. You know what they do, they fall off the wagon, and they encourage you to come back. And it's like a big moment. It's a pro social time when they say Welcome back. You're here, we love you. And then the psychologist said, it's kind of the opposite of Christianity, where God is supposed to solve all your problems. You look a little surprised by that, right? That's what the world thinks of Christianity these days. That's why we see the cross. So many, not as the throne of grace, but a terror. Why the people who are broken leave the church instead of coming to for the grace of our Savior. Why when problems crop up, they don't cry out helped me they think God rejects me. Isn't that a good thing that that's not how the cross works. That the grace of God is there. No matter how many times you fall off the wagon, to try to get rid of your sin, then you can come confidently before the throne of grace to Jesus Christ, who forgives you, who loves you, who died for you and always welcomes sinners. Our service tonight actually gives us a little practice of that. If you don't know. If you look ahead to what we're doing. There's some kind of weird stuff going on. And I want to explain it. There is the after our prayer section, we're going to do as part where we adore the cross as it enters into our sanctuary. And then there's the reproaches. This is an ancient part of what the church has done. The first recording of it is in the eight hundreds ad. But many people think it goes earlier than that. And Martin Luther put together this version for Lutherans when he published his first Good Friday service. And what it does is it actually gives us practice, hearing God call you a sinner.

And then turning to God and saying, grant me grace. Three times it takes the words of scripture that God spoke to Israel and then asks us to turn to the cross and say, give me grace. We have the chance to boldly and confidently approach the throne of grace knowing that Jesus who died there is not a threat. Not someone who demands but a king who always gives us grace when we sin In his name amen.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Amazing Grace? Sermon for March 29th

John 6

35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. 36 But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. 37 All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. 38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. 39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. 40 For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. We've been talking over the last several weeks about moralistic therapeutic deism, you've heard that definition so many times you could probably repeat it back to me, it's moralistic is that it's mostly concerned about following the rules of leading a kind of good life. Therapeutic that it is about God's gift to you is about making you feel better about yourself. And deism is that God is far away, unless you need him to solve a problem. We said that there were five different teachings or tenants of this, we've covered them over the five weeks of this series. First, it was a god exists, who created an order to the world and watches over human life on Earth. And we looked at the Old Testament and the New and learned that God is not a distant God, but one who is intimately involved in everything. And that he leads all of creation towards the redemption when Jesus returned. Second, God wants people to be good, nice and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible, and by most world religions. And we realized that this is not what the Bible teaches. Instead, Christianity is all about not making bad people into good people, but making dead people alive. Three, the central goal of life is to be happy, and to feel good about oneself. We looked at that and said that feeling happy and feeling good about yourself as a main goal basically leaves you in a moral wasteland, unable to handle any kind of suffering, or deal with reality in any kind of way. Our mission is not to be happy, but to partner with God in creation, and to hold fast to our faith, until the day of Christ's return. For God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life, except when God is needed to resolve a problem. This kind of God is your your favorite uncle, combined with a divine Santa Claus. He is far away. But he's always willing to give you a little something if you need it. This, of course, is not the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible is not one to be far off, but nearby. He's not there to resolve our problems, but to give us eternal life. Finally, we're looking at this last one. Good people go to heaven when they die. Now, if you've been coming to church here, like most of you do, you would know that I did a sermon called good people go to hell, bad people go to heaven. Right? So I'm not going to do that sermon again for you tonight. But I thought, You know what, let's try an experiment. So I went to chat GPT, the newest AI tool and I said, Write a Christian message that refutes the idea that good people go to heaven when they die. This is what it says. I would like to address the common misconception that many people hold today, namely that good people go to heaven when they die. This idea is often called moralistic therapeutic deism. I didn't tell it to say that. And it's believed that it's not supported by the teachings of the Bible. Firstly, the Bible teaches that no one is truly good. In Romans 323, it says, All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Therefore, being a good person is not enough to earn us a place in heaven. Secondly, the Bible teaches that salvation does not based on our good works, or moral character, in Ephesians, two, eight and nine, it says, four It is by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God not by works so that no one can boast. Thirdly, Jesus himself says that no one comes to the Father except through Him. This means that salvation is only possible through Jesus Christ, being a good person is not enough to gain eternal life. Thank you, Chet GPT, you're a good theologian. Well, you know what it does, it did a pretty good job, didn't we? I mean, so I did skip the chapter where it has a mini altar call for everyone. But it does a pretty good job. So instead of doing that sermon for the next 10 minutes or so, I thought we would take a look at the way we talk about debt. Death in America, and the way we practice our funerals, so that we can examine what does our culture teach us about how we do this? To say, good people go to heaven when they die. The first thing I'd like you to do is pull out that hem thingy that I printed out for you to a couple of pieces of paper, we're going to go to the second page, and look at third page and look at Amazing Grace the hymn and now that you know that it's I've mentioned funerals, you know why it's in there, right? If you have watched a funeral on TV, on any TV in any show, do you know what him they play in the background music? It's amazing grace. This is America's national anthem of funerals. Every funeral on TV, movies, and if it's especially interesting, it's got bagpipes playing it has amazing grace. Have you ever wondered why? Why Amazing Grace? The music is nice, right? I mean, it's it's emotional and generates the right kind of emotions. But I'd like you to take a look at the words and ask yourself kind of moralistic therapeutic deist sing AmaZing Grace absolutely 100% who is doing the work in Amazing Grace Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me I once was lost but now I'm found was blind but now I see. Grace is there is there a God who dies on a cross? Does he call you to repentance? Let's try another one. The Lord has promised good to me his word my hope secures he will my shield and portion be as long as life indoors. Can a moralistic therapeutic deist saying that? Yep. Do this one. There are many dangers toils and snares I have already come his grace has brought me safe thus far. His grace will lead me home.

Where? What home?

What grace? God's kinda got your back on this one. That's about it right? Let's try number four. Yes, when this flashing heart shall fail and mortal life shall cease Amazing Grace shall then prevail in Heavens joy and peace. What prevails? Grace, Grace. What is grace? I don't know.

If you're reading the Bible, it is undeserved love of God. But if you're a moralistic therapeutic deist you don't know what it is. I mean, it's just the kind of grace that you like to sing when you're at a funeral. Number five, when we've been there, 10,000 years bright shining as the sun we have no less days to sing God's praise than when we first began. Sounds like a moralistic therapeutic to use could sing that one too, right? Now, don't get me wrong, amazing. Grace is not a bad hem when it's sung in a Lutheran funeral service. But when it's by itself, it is the perfect semi Christian song. Because you have to insert your knowledge of who God is and what he does into this song. So if if we're reading Bible readings, and you've got a sermon, and there's liturgy and prayers and you sing AmaZing Grace, everybody knows what that means. But when you when you sing it without those things you get everybody goes to heaven. Good people go to heaven when they die. I would like to compare this to a couple of other hands. Let's go to number 708. On the first page, Lord, the I love with all my heart. You know, I have to tell you this him I was introduced to this hymn at an English District Convention. And the first time I sang it, I hated it. hated it. It was the theme of our convention and then I sang it the next time I sang We sang it like six times over the course of three days and by the end I loved it because of this verse let's I'm coming to Lord the I love with all my heart the last verse number three yep Do you want to sing it together I just mean let's do it all together thank you

Lord, thee I love with all my heart;
I pray thee, ne'er from me depart,
with tender mercy cheer me.
Earth has no pleasure I would share;
yea, heav'n itself were void and bare
if thou, Lord, wert not near me.
And should my heart for sorrow break,
my trust in thee can nothing shake.
Thou art the portion I have sought;
thy precious blood my soul has bought.
Lord Jesus Christ, my God and Lord, my God and Lord,
forsake me not! I trust thy word.

Can't miss that one, can ya?

I had trouble with that last verse. Did you hear my voice? I was tearing up a little bit now if you want something maybe a little more emotional I mean that's that's kind of like a like an old Lutheran hymn melody right let's go to abide with me I know I know we're we're doing our best to make the pastor cry while we say this one gets me to verse six

Hold thou thy cross before my closing eyes.
Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies.
Heaven's morning breaks and earth's vain shadows flee;
in life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.

hold out I crossed before my closing eyes? right last one we're going to turn to the final song Jesus lives the victories won. now we could sing all of these and it would work out pretty well. But final verse again verse five

Jesus lives! And now is death
but the gate to life immortal;
this shall calm my trembling breath
when I pass its gloomy portal.
Faith shall cry, as fails each sense:
Jesus is my confidence!

Faith shall cry has failes each sense. This shall be my confidence.

You know what that saying?

As as your eyes shut down. As your ears are the last thing to work in your relatives are squeezing your hand. The faithful cry. Jesus is my confidence..

Let's compare the theology of those hymns to Amazing Grace.

These are specific. These are the kinds of things that tell you what you can hold on to how you are saved. And what you can do as us as you think about your death. Where is your confidence? Where is your hope? It's Jesus. The next step is to take a look at our funeral service. That's the packet right here. Now that we've looked at the National Anthem, of funerals, let's think about what the the funeral service looks like in American culture. And in churches, few of us actually realize I think how much of our church life is shaped by television. How many people when you think about a wedding, think, but um, dada.

Or dada, dada dot dot, dot, dot dot dot data,

right? You think those songs don't you? Pachabell is in there too, right? That's because they're on TV. We saw them on TV. They're from there. They're actually from an opera about a guy who leaves his wife after they get married. And then the other one is from A Midsummer Night's Dream, which is about everybody getting high and fooling around in the forest. It's not what Shakespeare says. It's really what it's about. And you go wait a second, is that what you really want it your wedding? Same thing is true for funerals, not the music, but how we do funerals. Think of the last funeral you saw on TV, what is in common in all of them? Giant photo of the dead person on an easel next to the pulpit. Right? There is a pastor sitting in the background. Usually not saying anything. And one or many, many people saying how great a person the deceased was. And it's just that is the thing. There might be a reading or a poem. The one that comes to mind is that one that I did not die. I'm not really here. You've heard that one right before I'm sure. What these are is these are moralistic, therapeutic deist funerals. There's no Jesus. And if Jesus is there, it's only in the background. It's mostly about remembering the person and talking about how good they were. And if the pastor gets a turn, he might give a sermon. Let's take a look at this. We're not going to read it all. We're going to take a look at what a Lutheran funeral service looks like. It begins with the remembrance of baptism where it quotes Romans chapter six. Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Right. And this is applied to the disease. Next we do an intro it which is a reading, we pray and a prayer about the deceased and the gift of grace given to them.

You move on.

Like a like any worship service three readings with a psalm. The verse for Lent. If we have died with Christ, we shall also live with Him. If we are faithful to the end, we shall reign with him. There's the Apostles Creed summarizes the faith. Of course, you choose hymns like the ones we just saying. And then a lengthy set of prayers that describe and give thanks for the salvation God gives us through Jesus Christ that talks about the being nourished by the holy body and blood of the sun so we can be raised immortality on the last day that gives courage and faith to the bereaved in the certain knowledge of the resurrection of the dead and the expectation of eternal life. And then finally gives thanks for the faith bestowed on the deceased. We pray the Lord's Prayer And then we do the Nook Dimittis, which is on either side with Christ's words, I am the resurrection and the life says the Lord, He who believes in me will live even though he dies, and whoever believes in me will never die. We continue. I also included one of the one of the prayers at the committal service, which is a separate service. I'll read it because it's awesome. Almighty God, by the death of your Son, Jesus Christ, you destroyed death, by His rest in the tomb, you sanctified the graves of your saints. And by his bodily resurrection, you brought life and immortality to light so that all who die in him abide in peace and hope, receive our thanks for the victory over death and the grave that he won for us. Keep us in everlasting communion with all who wait for him on Earth, and with all in heaven, who are with him, for he is the resurrection and the life, even Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. And then that is with the blessing. Notice what's missing. There's no eulogy. There's no people coming forward. It's just all about Jesus. Every step of the way, every single thing that happens in our in our Lutheran funeral service, points to Jesus and says, This is your salvation. And that's the point. We live in a world that wants to tell everyone that they're saved. Our job is to actually point them to salvation to Jesus Christ. And part of that means we have to say there are sinners who need eternal life, and the only way to get it is through him. And so we give we give this message this peace, this hope, through the joy that we can share, as we share this message not that good people go to heaven when they die. But Jesus saves sinners. In his name, amen. Amen.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

A Divine Santa Claus?

Sermon for March 22nd, 2023

John 3:16-21

16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. 20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. 21 But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Over the past several weeks, we've been talking about a belief system called moralistic therapeutic deism. It's a belief system that is often a part of the preaching of the church. But it's not the same as actual true Christianity. We define it every time moralistic means that it's all about being a good person. Therapeutic is that it's there to make you feel better about yourself. And deism is that it's about a God who is far away, and not into intimately involved in your life. There are five main doctrines. Each week we've looked at one. So the first one is, a god exists, who created an orders the world and washes over human life on Earth. Second, God wants people to be good, nice and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible, and by most world religions. Third, the central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself. Forth, the one we're talking about tonight, God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life, except when God is needed to resolve a problem. And finally, next week is good people go to heaven when they die. With the first one, we realized that God is directly involved in everything in the world, because He is all powerful, and all mighty. And if he is not involved in everything, if God is not in charge of everything, it means he's not in charge of everything. Which is kind of a bad thing, right? The second night, we realized that Christianity is not making about making bad people into good people, but making dead people alive. It's a big difference. Last week, we talked about how making happiness, the goal of your life leads you into a moral wasteland, with no purpose, and no hope. But living a life, partnering with God in creation, to serve His created beings around you, leads you to be able to understand suffering in your life, both in your service, and as being part of the suffering that Christ Himself experienced. And tonight, we're talking about why we worship God to begin with. Does he need to be involved in our lives, unless there's a problem. The idea behind that is that this is the deist God, God who is far away. I don't think about him too much. I don't worry about him too much. unless something goes wrong. And then I need him to help. This is the idea that when you come up with a problem in life, God is there to help you solve it. In the book that we've been looking at, I have a couple of quotes that illustrate this idea. There was one from a 15 year old, conservative Protestant girl who said, quote, religion is very important. Because when you have no one else to talk to about stuff, you can just get it off your chest. You just talk to God. It's good. A 14 year old Catholic girl when asked why does religion matter said quote, because God made us and if you ask him for something, I believe he gives it to you. Yeah. He hasn't let me down yet. The interviewer said, so what is God like? Quote, God is a spirit that grants you anything you want, but not anything bad. And quote. This isn't just this book, Robert Putnam, who wrote the famous bowling alone did a survey on American understanding of, of God. And what he came up with is that God is something like a cross between your favorite uncle and a heavenly Santa Claus, in the minds of most Americans. How did we get this way? Now? I hear I heard you laughing. Right. When I said that last quote, which means that you don't think of God as some sort of heavenly Santa Claus. How did we get here? I think it's because the church made a very active decision to talk about God This way, the church has a long history of looking at the next generation and saying, oh, whoa, this younger generation, they will just not like the theology that we grew up on. They need something else. They need something that will catch their attention and bring them into the church. And then we'll do that. And then we'll make them strong Christians. This is centuries of this. Do you go far enough back, you get to Jesus, the wise teacher, which is when Thomas Jefferson cut out all the miracles from the Bible. A German named Schleiermacher was a big part of a movement like this. He said, People just don't want all that theology, we need to get rid of all of these distinctions and just talk about your feelings. There was the new methods, the tent revivals, Moody was a big guy, when he did this. He said, all of that theology, stuff that doesn't work what we need, we need to get people use these new advertising methods, and make them Christians this way. And then Rick Warren came out and said, these young people, they don't care about eternal life. What they care about is their felt needs. What we need to do is give them preaching that's relevant. preaching that will help them in their everyday life, so that when they leave this place, they have stuff they can do. And that will get them into the church. And then we'll teach them. And every single time did it change the people? No, it changed the church. And so we have for the last four decades or so focused on relevant preaching. When people ask us about who God is, and why we follow him, Have you ever said something like, when I'm in trouble, I pray to God, and he helps me. Or, you know, when I'm ever I'm feeling down, I know, God is with me. And he makes me feel better. He's there to comfort me and keep me happy. I go to God when I have troubles, and he answers my prayers. We've been told to say this, because this is something that people want, right? They want comfort, they want happiness they want they want someone there who will help them with their problems. But this is like signing up for a gym, because you want to use towels. Right? You go to a gym to exercise. And it's nice that they have towels there too. But the real thing is exercise. And if the gym decides to take the towels away, are you going to stop exercising? Of course not. The comfort that we have from Christ, that He answers our prayers, the things that we get, these are side effects of the main thing, and not the main thing. Take a look at what Jesus says. For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. Once upon a time, we call that the gospel in the nutshell. This is the whole message. God sent His Son to give the world eternal life. What a great message that is. People put these things on signs at sporting events, right, John 316. Notice what He does not say. For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but feel better about their problems. should not perish but get the stuff they want. should not perish but receive guidance about their decisions tomorrow. The point is, Jesus came to give us eternal life. And when we focus on the side effects, some of the things that are good that God does do but are not always the promise. What we focus on are things that may disappear.

And I have to ask, if you think of God, as an instrument, something that you use to get the stuff you want And what happens when you don't get the stuff you want? Why would you go to God? In fact, people will say things like, I could never worship a God who does, as if God cares. Like, he's like, Oh, I'm sorry, I felt that non worshiper, my worship battery is now lower, because you are, are no longer worshiping. What they're doing is they're seeing God as an instrument, a tool, a method to get what they want. And that's what we've been preaching as a church, maybe not here. But generally. Let's ask what St. Paul did, in the book of Acts, when he would go to a new place and talk about Jesus, what would he say? Acts chapter 13, I cut I cut his very lengthy sermon down to just a few representative lines, just so you know. Let it be known to you, Therefore, brothers, that through this man's forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you. And by him, everyone who believes is freed from everything which you could not be freed by the law of Moses. He proclaimed forgiveness, and life with God. Acts chapter 17, when Paul was talking to the people of Athens, he says, 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. What does Paul say? For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. Right? God is coming back, Jesus Christ will return. And on the last day, he will judge all the earth. His promise is that the people who believe in Him will be able to stand on the day of judgment and receive him with joy. We will be raised from the dead, our pain and hurts will be gone. He will wipe away every tear from every eye. That says promise. And that's what the church focuses on in her preaching, is getting people ready for the day of Jesus's return. Now, the hope that we have in Christ, the promise of the resurrection, I have to say, when I face a problem, and I look at whatever's going on in my life, and I think Jesus is coming back. Maybe this isn't as big a deal as I thought it was. Oh, that makes me feel a little better about that problem. But that's because I have the promise. What should I do with my life? should I should I focus on being faithful and living as Christ would have me? Well, yes, because he's coming back. And he's gonna judge me on the last day, and I want to stand and receive him with joy. So I do get guidance about what I should do. When I pray to Him, and I asked her the things that I need, it's the promise that He gives me that I says, ah, Lord, whatever you give me I know will be good for me because it's leading me to the resurrection on the last day. And this is especially important because when God's wonderful plan for you, turns out to be the cross. You need something more, then God makes me feel better when I pray. If his plan for you, leads you through death and pain and torture like it did for his Son, Jesus Christ, you need something better than just, I feel better when I pray. What you need is resurrection. Well, you need as a Savior who died on a cross, went through the grave, rose from the dead and will call you out of the grave too. And that is what the church proclaims. So when you talk about who Jesus is, when you talk about why you follow him, do what Paul Hold us say he'll raise me from the dead on the last day. He forgives my sins and gives me eternal life. And because of these things, I follow him in his name, amen.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Is The Goal Of Life To Be Happy?

Sermon for March 15th, 2023

Genesis 2

When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground— then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil…

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Over the last several weeks, we have talked about a religious philosophy that often masquerades as Christianity. We call it moralistic therapeutic deism. You've heard the definition twice in a row now, but I'm not going to spare you a third one. That is moralistic means that the purpose of religion is to inculcate morals to make you a good person. Therapeutic means that it is there to make you feel better about your life. And deism is the idea that God is far off, looking down on creation from very far away. This philosophy that That Masquerades as Christianity has five core beliefs. First, a god exists to create it and orders the world and watches over human life on Earth. Second, God wants people to be good, nice and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions. Third, 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. You know, I did not make these up. These came from a survey in a book called soul searching spiritual and religious life of American teenagers that came out in 2005. Now, the first night in Lent, we tackled the first one. And we we learned that God is not far off, but here amongst us and in control of everything. Last time, we talked about how God is not here to build character, but to make dead people alive, which is what he does for us through Jesus Christ. And tonight, we're going to take a look at the third goal, or the third doctrine, the central goal of life is to be happy, and to feel good about oneself. Now, the big piece of this sermon series is that these doctrines are in the church, and very often a part of the way, either Lutheran churches talk about it, or the churches around us. And so we have to say, what Christians actually say that, right? Does any Christian go out and say, the whole goal is to be happy and feel good about yourself? No, usually not. Most people aren't quite that crass. But we do so say things like, God has a wonderful plan for your life. All you need to do is find it. Have you heard that one before? I bet you have. We use Bible verses to support things like that. Perhaps the most misused one comes from Jeremiah 29, verse 11. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Which of course is not written to Christians, but to exiles in Babylon. It's not for us. Similarly, we use Romans eight, where it goes all things work for the good of those who love God and are called according to His purpose, which most people simply shortened to all things work for the good, right. Or even I can do all things through God who gives me strength, right. congregations will also do sermons about how God is there to tear down the obstacles in your life, so that you can get to success. Perhaps the most famous one is the story of David and Goliath. You've heard it preached this way I know it. If you just trust like David did, God will take down the Giants in your life. Or, Joseph, the story of Joseph is often preached. If you are in a tough spot. You're just like Joseph, God is getting you ready for something amazing. Which is misusing the Bible. The promise to us is not the same as the promise to David The promise to us is not the same as God's promise to Abraham. The church is not here for happiness. God is not calling you to be happy and feel good about yourself. It's not just because that's not what the Bible says. It's also because it is really bad for us, as humans. When the goal of life is to be happy, you measure your morality, based on whether it reaches happiness. And that means your day to day life has no moral significance. What do I mean by that? No moral significance. What it means is your actions are not part of a larger story. God has not placed you in the midst of the narrative of creation. You are just an amoeba chasing pleasure, and fleeing pain. Doesn't that sound bleak? When you get to it? Doesn't that sound empty? A moral wasteland? With difficulty to walk through it? In that kind of life, you ask a question, should you stay in a difficult marriage? The answer is only if it makes you happy. Should you get up in the morning and feed your kids? Only if it makes you happy? Should you go to work on time? Only if it makes you happy. And then all of a sudden, the things of this world how you serve people, is only important if it gets you something and makes you happier. difficult work hard jobs, menial labor is no longer important. In fact, it's a problem. Does that sound terrible? Sounds like it to me. The movie that just won all of the Oscars is called everything everywhere all at once. Has anybody seen it? You need to see this movie. This is the reason why I love science fiction. Because what it does, is in an action movie, it tackles the question. How do you live in a meaningless world. And it's this meaningless world that America is living in? Because we all think the goal is to be happy. So they ask how do you live in a meaningless world and they do it by looking at the multiverse. The multiverse for them is that every decision you make is a branch in reality and creates another universe where the same you made a different decision. And so every choice is happening in every instance, in an infinite number of universes. Which essentially means if everything is happening everywhere, all at once, nothing matters. And the movie asks a question, how do you live in that world? There are two characters and I'm not spoiling this. Don't worry. One character represents. Do whatever you want. Because nothing matters, burn it down. And the other character represents nothing matters, but we should love each other. You'll guess which way the movie goes. Love each other, of course. But there's no reason why. If nothing matters, and nothing's important. If everything is meaningless, who cares? What you do? Neither answer is right or wrong. But even worse, if the goal of life is to be happy, suffering is failure. There is no reason to sacrifice for others. No reason to work, no reason to do good. Any kind of suffering is failure. Which is why I think we are in such a despairing world is because we don't have a way to process the pain of existence. And people are grasping for any kind of meaning they can whether it's conservatives who are outside trying to fight a culture war.

Or liberals who are fighting social justice, and eliminating our gas stoves. What they're grasping for is some sort of meaning in their life. And they the meaning for them cannot be in giving food to your family. Because that doesn't matter. It has to be a big deal thing. That's what happens when your happiness is at the center of the Christian life, you lose it all. But that is not the Christian universe. We do not live in a morally insignificant universe. We live in one that is significant. Our daily choices are part of God's cosmic narrative. The story of all creation is being played out in your life, every day. And we know that because of what God gave Adam to do. Very simple, I actually lengthened my first reading, because it would have been too short otherwise. Here it is. The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden, to work it and keep it small verse one sentence that wouldn't have made a very good reading, Right? but profound, because when God put Adam in the garden to work it, he was making Adam a partner in his creation. That means Adam was creating with God. His job was to do the god stuff on Earth. And that meant farming, taking care of the trees, doing the stuff. Unfortunately, it also means that since Adam and Eve fell into sin and the curse of sin came on creation. It means that doing the gods stuff hurts. That life is suffering, that going to work and doing the things that God has placed us in this creation to do is going to be no fun. So when you wake up early, on a Sunday morning, after daylight savings, time hits, and you say I don't want to go to church and your wife says to you, but they'll miss you, Pastor.

You still have to go, even if you're exhausted. Because it's not just you, you're a partner with God in creation, right? When you feed your kids, you're being a partner with God in his cosmic story. It's not a meaningless activity. It's part of God's central plot for all of reality. When a person goes and does a job that many people think is menial, and silly or boring. They are part of God's plan for all of creation, by serving the people that God has sent him to serve. We call that vocation, in the Lutheran church, the God has placed us in His creation, to be his creators, to partner with him in reality. The things that seems small and insignificant, have cosmic scale. And the promise that we have in Jesus Christ is that despite Adam's fall into sin, and how he ruined everything and made work hard, we have a Savior who will come back and turn it around. The death and suffering and pain came into our reality through Adam. Life comes to us through Jesus Christ. And He will come and wipe away every tear, defeat death forever when he raises us from our graves. As St. Paul says in Romans eight For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing to the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God, their creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope, that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption, and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in pains of childbirth until now. All of creation is waiting for that day when Jesus makes all things new, just like us. And the work that God has given us in creation will finally be a joy. I'll get to spring out of bed after daylight savings time, right? I'm ready for the day. Because the grace that Jesus gives us. And so our duty, it's gonna hurt. But we can process that suffering, the suffering of life, as part of God's cosmic plan. We do it because we're working with God, and it's worth the pain. But it's not just God's creation, that in which we have cosmic significance. It's also in redemption. Christians have something beyond just the work that God has given us to do every day. We're also united with the suffering of Jesus Christ. By being one with Him, we participate in the pain that he went through. It's not, it's not an accident that Luke puts Jesus is prediction that the Son of Man will be rejected. And then says, If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself take up his cross daily, and follow. It's the pattern of Jesus that God calls us to the walk to eternal life is to follow the footsteps of a Savior, who was rejected, who must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders, and chief priests and scribes and be killed, and on the third day be raised. following the footsteps of our Savior, he's following in the footsteps of his suffering. Or, as Jesus puts it, in John chapter 15. If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own. Because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world. therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, a servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. Jesus promises that life in Christ comes with suffering. We are not of the world, we are called out of the world destined for eternal life and resurrection with Jesus. And what that means right now is we become like him. Suffering, rejected, hurt, sometimes broken. But that's what Jesus went through right? For you, for me, and we've follow that path. Now, you may be saying to yourself, Well, Pastor, this is a big downer. What are you doing? This doesn't mean that every moment of every day has to be pain, or every moment, suffering. But what it does for us is it helps us see when we do face difficulty. We're now part of a cosmic scene, we have a way of processing it, of incorporating it into God's story. When we don't have that we get what happens everywhere right now. When something bad happens, people leave the church, you've seen it, right? It used to be when something bad happens, they come to the church seeking help. But now when suffering comes, they think to themselves, God has failed. He's not making me happy. We need to think through that and how we talk about Christ. How we talk about At our salvation the purpose of Christianity is not to become happy but to follow Jesus and he took a path to the cross in his name amen

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

God Makes The Dead Alive

Ephesians 2:1-10

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Transcribed by AI.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, amen. In this Lenten season, we are talking about moralistic therapeutic deism. We defined it as a as a doctrine that has been part of the church and incorporated into many Christian churches, but is different from the doctrine of Orthodox Christianity. Just a reminder about those words moralistic is a focus on morals as Christianity is all about good behavior. Therapeutic is a focus on the function of religion as being good for my mental health, it makes me feel better. And deism is the idea that deism is God who is far away, who looks down on humanity, but doesn't do a whole lot. This doctrine wasn't created by me this idea of moralistic therapeutic deism, it came from a book soul searching the religious and spiritual lives of American teenagers that came out in 2005. They did a study that talked about the the life of teenagers, and they did hundreds of interviews where they went out and created this idea, coined this term based on what those teenagers said, they came up with five core beliefs. The first one which we covered last week is a god exists to create it in 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, good people go to heaven when they die. Today, we're talking about that second one. God wants people to be good, nice and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible, and by most world religions. Now, there is a whole lot going on in this in this belief, I think good, nice and fair, is an interesting question. Is that really what the Bible says? Good, nice and fair? Or is it something else. But tonight, I'm not actually talking about that. I want to talk about two things. First, that the primary purpose of religion is to build character, to make a person good. And second, that this is true amongst all religions, that basically all religions are the same, because their final goal is to make people better, to make bad people good, and to make good people into better people. This is what it says when it says, as taught in the Bible, and by most world religions, basically, they're all the same. Now, the book soul searching, quoted some people in talking about this, there was a 17 year old Mormon who said, I believe in well, my whole religion is where you try to be good. And if you are not good, then you should try, just try to get better. That's all. And quote, another girl said, quote, morals play a large part in religion, morals are good if they're healthy for society, like Christianity, which is all I know, the values you get from, like the 10 commandments. I think every religion is important in its own respect. You know, if you're a Muslim, then Islam is the way for you. If you're Jewish, well, that's great, too. If you're a Christian, well, good for you. It's just whatever makes you feel good about you. Even this morality is actually rather nebulous, good, nice and fair to each other ends up being an open question, depending on what you think is good, what you think is nice and what you think is fair. What does it mean? Well, sometimes it's just simply don't hurt others. But the authors actually found that there were also questions about jeopardizing your success that one The worst things you can do is to really jeopardize your future consent success by making a problem in your life by making a mistake. Now, the idea that Christianity is there and other religions, to primarily build character or build a moral foundation has been around for a very long time. Parents have often talked about what it means to send children to Sunday schools so that they can have a good moral foundation. I always found the phenomenon that parents would send their kids to Sunday school, but not come to church themselves to be rather odd. And this was kind of the reason kids need to be raised right to have a good moral foundation and going to church will teach them right from wrong. You might recognize some of those thoughts. That the idea is that God's plan and power for us is to make us good people. I've seen Sunday school curriculum that focus fully on character lessons from the Bible, where Bible stories are there to teach us to be good, right are diligent. The same thing happened when you look at VeggieTales. Very popular in my life. VeggieTales pulled the Bible and turned it into life lessons. You're supposed to be honest, good, kind, moral. But that's not what the Bible is about. I also found a Children's Bible in my search, and it was it was fully doing this. I didn't buy it. But I did look at a sample. And it was amazing how this character Bible that's what they called it turned God's Word into lessons about good works. The opening story was about diligence. It was how God created the heavens and the earth. And it briefly retold the story of creation and said something like, Isn't it amazing how diligent God was doing every detail, making sure everything was just right. And the lesson was this, you can be diligent like God, even if the work is hard, make sure you do everything just right. Many people turn the Bible into character lessons. It's about being a better person being more moral being brave. We see this if you read books about leadership lessons from Jesus, how to be a good leader and take care of people 10 life lessons from the Bible that help us be the right kind of person. Many things, many Christians think that the main purpose of the Bible is to turn us into good people. And it's true then that even that this is true across other religions. The thing that is common across all of history, is that human beings have a similar morality. And if there is an instrumental version of religion, it's to say, God wants us to be good. But does that square with the Bible? does that square with the truth claims that God makes over our lives? Well, if you look at what Paul says in Romans, you can see that he isn't talking about people being good. In fact, he tells us that all people are evil. Romans chapter three, he says, no one is righteous. No, not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God. All have turned aside together they have become worthless. No one got does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive the venom of asps is under their lips, their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood in their pads are ruin and misery and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. This doesn't sound to me like the kind of person that can be reformed. Paul tells us that everyone, even the most religious people are like this. And he sums it up. Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law, no human being will be justified in His sight. Since through the law comes knowledge of sin. Because we're all sinners, there is nothing we can do that is good before God. If God wants us all to be good, nice and fair, St. Paul tell is a simply, we can't do it. Nothing that we do is good enough for God. In Ephesians chapter two, he tells us something very similar, that we were dead in the trespasses and sins that we once walked. Dead is not something that can be healed. You can't train your way out of being dead. You can't go to the gym and hope to make your spiritual muscles stronger.

Only the dead can be made alive. And he says this, But God being rich and mercy because of the great love which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, and raised us up with Him, and seeded us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages, he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us, in Christ Jesus. God didn't come to make good people better, or make bad people good. He came to make dead people alive. And that is what Jesus Christ did. He came down to earth, to become a human being to live among us and with us, and be the perfect person that we couldn't be. Because we couldn't do what God demands, because we couldn't live up to his rules. Jesus did it for us. And then he entered into our dead lives by becoming dead for us, and rising from the dead. He can give us eternal life. So that being united with Him, He raises us from death, and makes us one with Him. This gift is not about our goodness, he doesn't make us better people. In fact, I know a lot of non Christians who are very good, kind, generous, fair, wonderful people, maybe even better than me. What Jesus does is he doesn't make us good. He makes us alive. He takes dead people and gives us life. And it's a gift he gives to you. He gives it to you by hearing his word. He gives it to you by his sacraments, a grace that only comes from God. And it has nothing to do with your morality. It has nothing to do with your works. You can be as terrible a person or a good person, you can be horrible or wonderful. It's the grace of God that gives us life. So what do we need to do? When we talk about morality in the church? Well, we have to remember that it is an effect of God's grace, and not the goal. That the goal of God's grace given to us is to make us alive and give us a new life. And then when we live that new life, we naturally be more like Jesus. Our job isn't to become better, but to live the life that God has already given us. And so that means yes, sometimes we do talk about sin and morality. Sometimes we talk about what it means to be good and true, to love your neighbor as yourself. But it's not because that's the main goal of the church, is because this is part of our life as Christians living the life that God has given us. And we need to recognize our sin, repent from it and turn and live as God calls us to. So what should we do? I think we as Christians should stop talking about our faith is primarily about morality, that we're not here to be good. And Jesus doesn't make us good. We're here to be made alive, alive with Christ by His death and resurrection, and given eternal life. In his name, amen.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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