190428 Sermon on Ezekiel 37:1-14, John 20:19-31 (Easter 2), April 28, 2019

190428 Sermon on Ezekiel 37:1-14, John 20:19-31 (Easter 2), April 28, 2019

One of the teachings of the Bible that our flesh wishes would be different is the way that God only deals kindly with those who are in great need.  The Bible says almost countless times that God is near to those who fear him.  St. Mary in her Magnificat says that the Lord casts down the mighty from their thrones (because they don’t need God) and raises those who are of low degree (because they do).  He fills the hungry with good things, but the rich he sends empty away. 

Jesus also confirms this way of God’s gracious dealing with only those who are in great need when he says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God.  Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.  Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.”  All of this—and there are many more passages that could be referenced—shows that God is good to the poor, wretched, needy, outcast, and so on, but his eyes are on the proud, rich, haughty, and so on, to bring them down.

Our flesh does not like this.  Our flesh likes to be proud, rich, haughty and so on because it likes to be comfortable.  It does not want to be poor, or to mourn, or to be hungry.  It wants to be mighty, sitting on thrones.  It wants to be righteous and honorable and capable.  It wants to be self-sufficient.  How can I sum up all these things?  Maybe I can sum it all up by saying that our flesh wants to be god.  That is the primordial temptation from the Garden.  The reason why the fruit started to look attractive is that offered Adam and Eve power for themselves, all by themselves.  They would have the praise, honor, and glory.  They would mount up on eagles’ wings and everybody would be so impressed with their knowledge of good and evil.

If it were true that we were godlike, then maybe there would be little harm in believing this about ourselves.  But we don’t even need to wonder about that because it’s not true.  We are creatures.  Furthermore, we are fallen creatures.  We are sinners.  We are poor and needy.  We are subject to failure and death.  But part and parcel of our rebellion and sin against God is that we will never truly acknowledge this about ourselves unless God himself impress it upon us against our will.  If we could admit our sinfulness and humility and wretchedness, then we would be in a much better spot.  But as it is, we all only want to think the best about ourselves.  We only want other people to say the best things about ourselves.  If someone points out our faults—even when this is true (or perhaps especially when it is true)—we resent it terribly and even if they are our dear friend we find it very difficult not to count them as our enemy.  We’d all like to look in the mirror and tell ourselves what fine specimens we are.

And so it is necessary that God himself teach us otherwise.  He must impress upon us that we are not as good or as strong or as likeable or as moral as we’d like to think of ourselves.  Sometimes God must use very, very strong measures to break stubborn wills so that we are shown the truth about ourselves.  It’s like God wrestling with us until we cry “uncle.”  But this isn’t just a game.  And it is very, very bitter for us to cry uncle because we want to believe that we are something other than what we really are.  We don’t want to believe that we are sinners.  We want to believe that we are good and strong and capable and that we don’t really need God.  That doesn’t mean that we reject the idea of God, it only means that we want God to act only according to our own terms and conditions.  We only want him to act according to our thinking.  But if God only acts according to our thinking then we won’t allow God to show us our sins and show us how pathetic, poor, and needy we are, because we don’t want to admit that about ourselves.

Right at the heart of our existence with God, then, is the need for God to break us—to break our pride, to make us fearful, to make us lose hope in other things.  Really what is going on here is that God has to show us that we are not God.  He is.  Once we realize the truth about ourselves, then God will be gracious to us, but not before then.  But once God has broken our pride, then he is more gracious to us than we could imagine.  In fact, it’s a little over the top the way God deals with us creatures once we are made sad, poor, and needy.

Consider the dramatic turn of events in our Old Testament and Gospel readings today.  Our Old Testament reading is from Ezekiel.  Ezekiel was a prophet who lived while God’s people were at low tide.  The Babylonians had come and destroyed the Temple and carted away the best and the brightest of the Jewish people to Babylon.  God’s people were left in disarray.  There’s no going back to the good old days. 

This is why they are referred to as being bones.  And not only are they bones, they are exceedingly dry bones.  That means that they are bleached and brittle like bones that have been left out in the weather.  It is hard enough to make freshly killed bones live.  What are you going to do with old dry bones?  Surely, they can’t live.  God’s people were so bad off that this was their state.  They were dead and decomposed and nothing was left.  They used to be proud and powerful and think that they could manage anything, but now the Babylonians have made it impossible for them to be a nation, a church, anymore.

But God tells Ezekiel to preach to the bones.  When Ezekiel preaches to the bones they come together, bone to its bone.  Flesh and sinews are laid upon them and skin covered them.  They become corpses again instead of moldered bones, but there is still no breath in them.  And so God tells Ezekiel to preach to the wind, to gather the Holy Spirit, and send it into these corpses so that they will breathe again.  And that is what happens.  They get up and stand on their feet and lo and behold, there is an exceedingly great army.   Not only are they alive, but they are ready to fight and live vigorously.

This is a very encouraging word for these poor people who are either scattered like sheep without any shepherds in Judah or who are in captivity in Babylon.  They couldn’t see how on earth they were going to ever be a distinct people again.  They had no money, no power, no leadership.  There was no hope for them.  But by this picture that God gives to Ezekiel he shows that these outward things are not a hindrance to God.  They still had the Word of God and the Holy Spirit in that Word, and so they would still rise again and live.  The people of God had been taught to fear God and his wrath, for it was God who had brought about their downfall, but now they are also being comforted by God.

It is a mission of comfort that also motivates Jesus in our Gospel reading today too.  Our reading records what happens on the evening of that first Easter.  These poor, sad losers were huddled together behind locked doors.  They were miserable.  They had not met the challenge of the hour when Jesus was arrested.  Although they all promised that they would never leave him, they all did.  They had nothing to be proud of as far as courage was concerned.

Their faith also was in terrible shape.  Although the women told them what the angels had said to them and that Jesus’s body was nowhere to be found at the tomb and that Jesus had spoken with Mary Magdalene and all of this was already told to them beforehand by Jesus who said that he would suffer and die and three days later rise again—even though they had all these messages of truth, they still were unbelieving.  And so these disciples stink from one end to the other.  There is nothing good or noble about them.  They are a bunch of hard-hearted cowards who thought their dreams of Jesus being the Christ were over.  And so they all sit there feeling sorry for themselves.

The way that Jesus greets these miserable men shows us that God does not wait around for us to make the first move.  God does not wait for us to make a decision for him.  He does not wait for us to shape up or clean up our act.  In the midst of sin and unbelief and disgustingness Jesus comes and says—not “shape up!”—but, “Peace be with you.”  And it is very important that you understand that Jesus really means it when he says, “Peace be with you.”  There is not an asterisk or a condition that has to be met in order for the peace to be authentic.  Since the disciples are such losers I think it is natural for us to think that they have to somehow clean up their act in order to receive the peace or to keep the peace.  How can Jesus love them when they are unlovable?  Don’t they have to somehow become lovable?  But that is not how God works.  God does not scan the horizon, looking for somebody good enough to meet his approval.  He finds miserable wretches and loves them the way that they are.

This report of Jesus’s first encounter with these disciples is very important and we have to pay very close attention to it.  These are not throw-away words.  Jesus is not chatting about the weather.  These words are at the very heart of what Jesus is all about.  With all of Jesus’s words after his resurrection from the dead we have words that are dripping with importance.  They are the distillation of all that Jesus has done and what he desires with his disciples in the future.  So what is it that Jesus tells these disciples that is so important?

He breathes on them and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.  If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”  The thing that Jesus is sending out his disciples to do is to forgive sins.  That is the endpoint.  This is different from Jesus telling his disciples to make the world a better place, to teach good morals, to promote healthy living, to get rid of poverty, racism, and other social evils.  What the disciples are to do is exactly what Jesus had already done to them.  In the midst of their sadness, sin, failure, unbelief, they are to announce the forgiveness of sins in Jesus’s name.  The Christian life in this world is not getting rid of sins altogether, but to hold onto the forgiveness of sins in the midst of sin.  Christians do not quit being sinners.  So long as we have this maggot sack of a flesh of ours we are going to have sins crawling through it until it is dead in the grave.  Christians do not quit being sinners.  They are instead forgiven sinners.  The forgiveness of sins is to be urged upon God’s people to be grasped by faith while they pretty much remain desperate losers.

But Jesus also tells us Christians that sins are to be retained, that is, not forgiven.  Why or when?  Sin is not to be forgiven, but rather all the more vigorously imposed, when people are not afraid of God, when they are not needy, when they are doing very well on their own (thank you very much).  Supermen and superwomen have no place in the Kingdom of God.  They are liars.  They should be able to realize this about themselves because they are going to die, but we shouldn’t underestimate the foolishness and stubbornness of the flesh.  So long as they keep believing that they are little gods and goddesses they remain hitched to the devil’s wagon with all his lies.  The truth—that they are poor and needy—must be urged upon them with the greatest power and insistence that we can muster so that they become terrified of God and his wrath.  Then they can be comforted.  But if they are never brought into the fear of God they will have very little esteem for the forgiveness of sins.  It will be like casting pearls before swine. 

Have you ever tried to impress upon a hog how valuable and beautiful pearls are?  It takes a lot of talking, let me tell you.  And after all the talk you’re not very sure that they understand anything more than when you started.  So it is when you talk to people about the forgiveness of sins when they do not fear God. 

On the other hand, those who are soiled in their conscience and are afraid of going to hell gladly hear Jesus’s words, “Peace be with you,” and “I forgive you all your sins.”  This is what makes God’s people praise him even while they are feeling quite low about themselves.

190427 Funeral Sermon for Ann Olander (John 14:1-6)

190427 Funeral Sermon for Ann Olander (John 14:1-6)

You can tell that we are in the Easter season by looking around.  The decorations are up.  The spring flowers are in the sanctuary.  The cross is draped in white instead of black.  He who died on the cross and was placed into the tomb was no longer in the tomb on Easter morning.  The women were told by the angels that they should not look for the living among the dead.  The tomb was no longer where Jesus belonged.

The tomb therefore is also not the final resting place for those whom Jesus has redeemed by his holy precious blood and his innocent suffering and death.  The events of Holy Week were not for Jesus’s sake—as though he had any need of these things, but for all who have sinned and are therefore under God’s wrath.  That’s us.  Jesus’s suffering and death were done in our place.  But now because of what Jesus has done we do not belong here.  We should not look for the living among the dead.  This present world is full of sin and death.  Jesus has redeemed us so that we are fit for a different place where there is righteousness and life instead of what we know of here.

In our Gospel reading this morning Jesus says to his disciples that he will be going away in order to prepare a place for them.  Heaven is where all people would like to go, but nobody can get there on their own.  As we are, with our sins, we do not belong there.  That is why it is necessary that Jesus prepare things.  Without his preparation nobody would go to heaven, but rather to hell.  The way that Jesus prepares a place for the disciples is by his atoning death on the cross that silences the accusation of the Law against us.  He was bruised for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities.  Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and by his wounds we are healed.  Our place in heaven is prepared by Jesus’s death and resurrection.  He is the way, the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through him.  This is the message of Holy Week and of Easter.

And so it is nice that the circumstances are such where the Easter decorations are still up as we commemorate the life, death, and fast approaching resurrection of our Christian sister, Ann.  Death is where the rubber hits the road as far as being a Christian is concerned.  Without Christ, death is God’s punishment for sin and totally devoid of goodness or comfort.  In Christ, death is the door to everlasting life.  Jesus’s death on the cross was the death of death.  The sting of death is taken away.  God wrath is emptied out of the death of a Christian because that wrath has already been poured out upon Jesus in our place.  Therefore death has lost its hold on those who are in Christ and all that remains is the lightest possible sleep.  The casket and the grave are not the eternal resting place for Christians just as Jesus’s tomb was not his eternal resting place.  Just as Jesus rose from the dead, so also Ann will rise too, to go to the place that Jesus has prepared, so that where Jesus is, there she may be also.

This new life that is in Jesus is totally different from the life that we have already known.  The prophet Isaiah and the apostle Paul write, “No eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the imagination of the heart of man what God has prepared for those who love him.”  The new life in Jesus that comes with his resurrection from the dead is curative for all our ills.  Depression, sadness, despair, temptation, illness, violence, oppression, selfishness, worry, fear, and whatever else is so annoying about this present life are unknown in the life to come.  Sin, death, and hell are no more.  Instead there is only righteousness, life, and fellowship with God.

Because of what Jesus has done for us, and the sure promises of God that have been communicated to us, we have no need to fear death so long as we do not cast these treasures aside in unbelief.  We need not fear death whether we be 45 years old or 95 years old, so long as we remain Christians.  Remaining a Christian is more than anything else a matter of remaining in the Word of God.  God has taken care of Ann all these years with his holy Word and Sacraments.  As it turned out he even saw to it that she should receive the Lord’s Supper on Maundy Thursday, the day commemorating how Jesus instituted this saving meal, only a couple days before she entered her final illness.

There is nothing more important and nothing more necessary than that each of us continue to be blessed with the truth of God’s Word.  It doesn’t matter if you think you are strong or not.  It doesn’t matter if you are a charter member of a congregation.  We are all in need of that Word of God that tells us to turn away from every other source of comfort and hope and to look to Jesus who is risen from the dead as our only hope of eternal life.

Today, while the warmth of Easter can still be felt, we commit Ann’s body to the grave, dust to dust, ashes to ashes, in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection from the dead.  She has finished her course in this world, and now her real and true life together with her Savior has begun.

190421 Sermon for Easter, April 21, 2019

190421 Sermon for Easter, April 21, 2019

At some point around the time that the sun was rising on Easter morning Jesus Christ rose from the dead.  The coldness, stiffness, and paleness that had set into his body not long after dying on the cross on Friday afternoon was replaced by warmth, suppleness, and color.  He went from not breathing to breathing.  His heart started beating.  Here was new life.

This new state for Jesus, which continues to this present moment, is not just significant for him, but for the whole universe past, present, and future.  He is the door to eternal life.  Eternal life is something new and different from the present life—the only life that we have known.  The present life is a creation that is in bondage to sin and is at enmity with God.  The new and eternal life is just the opposite—it is the new creation where we are reconciled to God.

So what is this new life like?  That’s what I’d like to speak about today.  But before I begin we first must understand the limitation for our understanding of it.  The prophet Isaiah and the apostle Paul write: “No eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the imagination of the heart of man what God has prepared for those who love him.”  Over the course of our life we accumulate a great deal of experience.  The accumulation of experience is an important ingredient for knowledge and wisdom.  We can categorize and understand certain things by comparing them to other things that we have come across.  But if there is something that we have never seen or heard, how can we know anything about it?

Then we might make use of our imagination.  The word itself means that we make images in our heads.  None of us has seen a unicorn or a dragon, but we are able to formulate something about that in our heads.  But how?  It is only by comparing these imaginary things to something that we already know.  A unicorn kind of looks like a horse.  A dragon looks like some kind of reptile.

So here’s the problem with understanding the eternal life that begins with Jesus’s resurrection from the dead—there’s nothing to which we can compare it.  There are sights that have not been seen.  There are sounds that have not been heard.  And so we cannot describe them.  It is probably safe to say, though, that if there is any sight that we have enjoyed taking in with our eyes or any sound that has been thrilling to our soul, then we can look forward to something so much better and higher in this new, eternal life we have in Jesus that it does not compare to what we already treasure so much.

And so in trying to describe what this new life is like we have to realize at the outset that sights and sounds and experiences can’t be described.  That is a pretty severe limitation in a way.  The life that we know now consists of sights and sounds and experiences.  We start our day by doing this and by doing that.  We go here and there, seeing and hearing.  To the question of “How was your day?” we might go through some of these things that made up our day.  It’s not possible for us to know what makes up the eternal day of eternal life.

But life does not just consist of one activity after another.  There is also the life of the heart, soul, and mind.  These matters are probably more important than the stuff that we outwardly do.  How do we feel as we go about our day?  Do we feel good?  Do we feel bad?  The older words for this is do we feel blessed?  Do we feel cursed?  Do we have a clean conscience or is it soiled by guilt?  Are we content with the way that we are or do we wish that we were somebody better?  Do we wish that we were hotter, more cool, more popular, richer, smarter, more respected?  The older word for that is being envious.  There is some nasty stuff that takes place in the life of the heart, soul, and mind that we don’t tell anybody when they ask how our day was—if we did we’d lose the respect of family and friends.

The new, eternal life that we have in Jesus straightens all this out.  With this also, no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the imagination of the heart of man, and for the very same reason.  We’ve never experienced anything like it.  The main thing that exists in the natural heart of man in this life is selfishness.  That selfishness then spills over into covetousness, gossip, anger, hatred, lust, and a whole bunch of other things that are well known as being sins.  But there are other things that selfishness spills over into as well such as apathy, feeling sorry for yourself, laziness, being melancholy.  The evilness of the human heart is so boundless that we cannot understand it.

Whoever is honest, then, and takes up the question of God and what happens when I die and how will God judge me, cannot help but be worried—to say the least.  Most people, therefore, deliberately put such thoughts out of mind and they resent it when anybody else brings it up.  It seems as though everybody will be better off if we just don’t talk about how our day was—that is to say, how our day really was; not the white washed version—and everybody think positive thoughts and busy themselves with as many activities and distractions as possible.  This impulse is incredibly strong.  To do anything otherwise is breaking the rules for normal social behavior.

But this is just unbelief.  It is unbelief in the new life that happens when Jesus starts to breathe again.  People don’t think that anything can be done about the wickedness of the human heart and the disaster of death and so they play a whole bunch of mind games.  They pretend that there isn’t a God.  They pretend that this life is good enough.  They pretend that all the suffering and troubles of this world are slowly being rectified by human progress.  This way of going about your life is incompatible with the truth because they are all lies.

The truth—and God invites everybody to embrace this truth and make it their own—the truth is when we point to the dying and dead Jesus with all the ugliness of death hanging about him and say, “That is me.”  And then point to the resurrected, glorified Jesus and say, “That is what I am and what I will be.” 

This is being a Christian.  This is what the thief did on the cross next to Jesus.  He told the other thief who was mocking Jesus that they both belonged on the cross because of the awful way that they had lived their lives.  But he says to Jesus, “Remember me when you come into your kingdom.”  So when we consider Jesus upon the cross, crushed with our sins, panting with terror and asking God why he was forsaken by him, we have to understand that that is exactly where we belong, but Jesus has taken our place.  And just as that thief says “Remember me, Jesus,” we should believe that we also can say that to him.  Although that thief was a sinner and was in fact dying because of particular sins he had committed, Jesus says to this guilty man, “Today you will be with me in paradise.”

This brings us to the heart of what this new life in the resurrected Jesus is.  When we speak about this new life we cannot leave out how things are changed between us and God.  There is peace between us and God through our Lord Jesus Christ.  Peace is different from a ceasefire or an armistice.  Bad feelings are put away and replaced with good feelings.  There is reconciliation and friendliness. 

How different this is from how we act towards God otherwise!  Whenever sin raises its ugly head in us we want to be a million miles away from God.  It’s not that different from the way we used to hide from our parents when we did something naughty when we were children.  The person with a guilty conscience can’t bear to lift their eyes to God or to pray to him—that is, to speak with him.  It is blindness and hardness of heart that causes us to be this way.  Our desire to be far removed from God is a problem on our part, not on his part.

But through our Lord Jesus Christ we have peace with God and reconciliation.  So think of your friend.  Isn’t it the case that you like to be together with your friend?  You like each other’s company.  You think that what the other has to say is interesting.  The new life that is in Jesus opens up this friendship with God that Adam and Eve used to have before they fell into sin.  This friendship can and should be exercised already now in this life, but we find it very difficult.  Our faith is not nearly so strong as we would like it to be.  We should realize that this is only foolishness on our part and that God, for his part, is our friend for Jesus’s sake.  But this hesitancy and unwillingness to consider God as our friend will also go away when our sinful flesh dies.  When we are resurrected our friendship with God will be enjoyed the way that it already should be, but unbelief and sin get in the way of it.

I’d like to wrap up my examination of the new life that is present for us in Jesus’s resurrection from the dead by saying that it is going to be life with a capital “L.”  Again, this is something that we have not yet experienced in our fallen state.  From the day that we were born we have all been dying.  With each day that passes we are all one day closer to our deaths.  And we can even feel this and sense this in our flesh and bones.  We cease to be limber and strong and energetic.  Our skin dries out and becomes wrinkly.  Our hair starts to fall out and what is left turns white.  This is the only life that we have known.  We are all subject to death.  And so we don’t know what life with a capital “L” is like where there is no sin or death to get in the way of it.

With the resurrection from the dead we will awaken to a life that is fresh and new and we will be young, limber, strong, and full of energy.  To have the weight of sin and death lifted off our backs is something that no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor can we imagine it.  I think the best that we can say of it is that we have to think of those moments in our life when we have experienced real joy—those best times.  Have you noticed how exhilarating those times are, but also how rare they are?  We only get a few handfuls of them over the course of our entire life.  And have you also noticed how short lived the joy is?  It’s almost like it has a half life.  A minute after the good thing that has happened the joy is cut in half.  A minute later that joy is cut in half again.  That is not how it will be in heaven.  Joy will not be short-lived.  The heart will pound with excitement.  The best of life will be our whole life.

Now realize that all of this is here for you in the way that Jesus wakes up from the dead on Easter morning.  This new life is his doing.  The weight of sin, death, and the devil has been lifted by him.  There isn’t a single thing that you need to do in order to activate this new life.  There isn’t a single thing that you can do to contribute to this new life.  Jesus did it all, and he did it for every single sinner, the whole world over.

Furthermore, Jesus has brought it about that you should hear this promise and thereby receive the new life that he has worked.  Nothing is done by accident.  God has brought you here today so that you could know of the salvation he has worked in Jesus.  Some of you are visitors.  This word is for you.  Some of you have been coming here for decades.  It is still God, nevertheless, who has brought it about that you should hear of the new life in Jesus, that you should want it, and that you should look forward to it.

So if you hear the Word of God speaking to you today, do not harden your heart.  Set aside the vain thoughts that cannot save you from death and hell, and embrace the truth that does save.  If you haven’t been coming to Church, then start coming—not because I want your money or so that you can put in your time, but so that you can learn and grow in the good things Jesus has worked for you and the that Holy Spirit still works in you.  If you have rejoiced in the glad tidings of great joy that Jesus has caused you to hear today, I’m very thankful.  But then don’t neglect the other opportunities to hear God’s Word that this congregation works to provide for the good of those who cross our path.  Our faith lives from the Word of God.  Without nourishment faith will die and we will revert back to those thoughts and ways of living that are actually more natural and easy for us.

Now may the God of peace sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.  He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.

190420 Sermon on Matthew 27:57-66 (Holy Saturday), April 20, 2019

190420 Sermon on Matthew 27:57-66 (Holy Saturday), April 20, 2019

It seems that in Jerusalem almost everybody (or was it everybody?) thought that Jesus’s death on the cross was the end of the story for him.  This is true for his enemies as well as his friends and disciples.  The joke for the day on Good Friday was that this poor worm of a man had believed that he was the Christ, the Son of the living God.  Everybody thought it was funny that Jesus had such an exalted opinion of himself, when it was obvious that he couldn’t possibly be the Son of God.  If he were the Son of God, then he never would have let those kinds of things happen to him.  Certainly the Son of God couldn’t die—and in such an ignoble way too.  This is how his enemies thought of him.

The disciples might have had similar thoughts in their heads.  Most of them did not stick around to see Jesus crucified.  The Gospels don’t tell us what they were doing elsewhere.  They couldn’t stand to be in the same place as Jesus, either because they were so disappointed in him—they thought that he was the Christ—or they were scared.  Probably it was both.  There were a few who stayed by the cross and watched until the end, but they weren’t expecting Jesus to come back to life.  The women who came to Jesus’s tomb on Easter morning were carrying the things that were necessary to complete his burial in a proper way because there hadn’t been time on Friday afternoon.  These women and the rest of the disciples thought that Jesus’s death was the end of the story.

Our reading this evening from Matthew about what happened on Saturday of Holy Week shows that the Jewish authorities thought the same way.  There wasn’t a ghost of a chance that he could come back to life.  What they were concerned about was fraud.  They were worried that his disciples might steal his body and then tell everybody that Jesus rose from the dead.  This is the unexpected way that the tomb ended up being made secure.  It was guarded by Jesus’s enemies.  They had a vested interest to make sure the tomb was secure.  And yet, Jesus rose from the dead and there was no body to be found on Easter morning.  Unintentionally these guards became witnesses that Jesus left the tomb by himself and was not carried away by his disciples.

Death being the end of the story is what has given murderers the courage necessary to commit their crimes.  With the very first murder and ever after, death has been looked at as one of the options available to solve a problem. Cain killed Abel to get rid of him.  When Abel was dead he thought that his problem was solved.  But Abel’s blood cried to God from the ground.  What Cain thought was over and done with was not over and done with.

The same is true with the Jewish authorities who, more than anyone else, were responsible for Jesus’s death.  They thought that by killing Jesus, they could solve a problem.  Their problem was Jesus upsetting the status quo—flipping the money changer’s tables in the temple, exposing the wickedness of the church bureaucrats, creating believers with strong convictions instead of just going along with the church machinery and pay their dues.  The church leaders’ bread and butter were at stake.  Plus, they just hated this man who would not go along with their corruption and hypocrisy.  By killing Jesus they thought that life could go back to normal.

And so it was that on this Sabbath the Jewish leaders were quite content.  They won.  They had to work pretty hard to get the sentence of death imposed upon Jesus.  They had to twist Pilate’s arm.  But they managed to carry it off.  Now it was time to mop up what was left: make the tomb secure so that his disciples can’t perpetuate this problem that Jesus created.

The Scriptures don’t tell us how these leaders felt once the reports of people seeing and speaking with the resurrected Jesus started to roll in.  Up to that point no murder victim had ever come back to life.  That was supposed to be the end of the story.  Now it wasn’t?  The sinking feeling of dread must have gripped them.

The Scriptures don’t tell us about that, but they do seem to indicate that at least some of these officials were present on the day of Pentecost, about fifty days after Easter.  St. Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, preaches on that wonderful day and he tells this crowd of Jews that they had crucified the Lord of Glory.  They had murdered their God, and now he’s back.

The amazing thing, though, is that Jesus had loved his enemies.  Not only did he not desire the death of these wicked people, he was prepared to bless them.  He had already served them, by ransoming them on the cross while they had hated him so deeply.  When St. Peter showed them that they were guilty of murdering not just a man—which is bad enough—but even the Son of God, they were terrified.  But they are met with a kind word in response to their question, “What should we do?”  St. Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you for the forgiveness of your sins.”

Here we have another thing that is totally unexpected.  First they thought that all their problems would be solved with the death of the person that they hated.  That didn’t turn out.  Then what they and everyone else would expect to happen when they are called to account—namely, that they should be punished—doesn’t happen.  Instead, God opens his heart to them, big and wide, as though they are prodigal sons whom he had been waiting for for so long. God kills the fatted calf and celebrates, because these people who were murderers of his Son and his enemies, have been reconciled to himself through the blood of Jesus.

Good application of all of this can be made directly also to us today.  The reason why we sin is mysterious.  Sin has a power that is beyond our reason.  But one thing that we can’t help but think is that the sins we commit won’t come back to haunt us.  Here I am speaking of us Christians.  Subconsciously we think that the skeletons will stay in the closet.  If this is true of Christians, then how much more true is it of those who aren’t Christians?

The reason why we don’t think that these things will come back to haunt us is because we don’t believe that Jesus will come to judge the living and the dead.  Since we are Christians it seems like this shouldn’t happen.  But we are not very dissimilar to the disciples who had thought that Jesus’s story was over and that Jesus was not going to come back to life.  They thought this even though Jesus had explicitly told them what was going to happen.  Just as Jesus had told them, so also he has told us about his second coming.  Jesus says that when that time comes all will be resurrected and judged.  Those who have done good will enter into the resurrection of life and those who have done evil will enter into the resurrection of death.

The reason why the people on Holy Saturday did not think that Jesus was going to rise from the dead is because it had never happened before.  Since it had never happened before, and all murder victims had stayed dead, they thought that that was what was going to happen here too.  The final judgment has not happened yet and since a good deal of time has passed since Jesus ascended into heaven many people think that it will never happen.  But just as some of those Jewish leaders might have been disturbed by reports of Jesus’s rising, so also some are disturbed by the promise of Jesus’s coming.

But just as St. Peter was sent to preach to these murderers on Pentecost, so also I have been sent to you.  If you are afraid of God’s judgment for how you have lived your life, then I can tell you that Jesus suffered and died for you to earn the forgiveness of sins for you and to make you righteous. 

If you are not afraid, then I say that this message is not for you.  If you refuse Jesus’s mercy, then you are no different than those Jewish leaders who refused to repent and went on hating Jesus and his disciples.  I recommend that you continue to believe that death is the end of the story.  That way you will at least have some measure of peace now in this earthly life, because you will have no peace in the next.

But you who are not too proud to count yourself among sinners—you who are not too proud to count yourself as being a murderer, an adulterer, a thief, and a breaker of all the rest of the commandments—there is a good word for you.  It’s not my word, but God’s Word.  God has loved you.  He redeemed you in his Son Jesus.  He has sent Christians to you with the Word and the Holy Spirit, so that from them you can learn the knowledge that you otherwise couldn’t know and certainly wouldn’t expect—that you wil be judged, but you are forgiven in Jesus.

190419 Sermon for Good Friday, April 19, 2019

190419 Sermon for Good Friday, April 19, 2019

The question by which the whole world is judged is “What do you think of Jesus dying on the cross?”  A person’s answer to that question determines whether they are a Christian or not.  Tonight I’d like to consider some of the answers to the question, “What do you think of Jesus dying on the cross?”

First there are those who think that it is all ridiculous—a waste.  Jesus was surrounded by such people in the time of his suffering.  They all mocked him.  They had a very simple challenge whereby Jesus could have proven the validity of his claims.  They all said, “Just come down from the cross.  If you are really God’s Son, then prove it.  You did miracles before, just do one more, and then we’ll believe you.”  The fact that Jesus continued to be nailed to the cross and writhing with the pain of it all only made them all the more confident that Jesus was someone they need not take seriously.

These people are evil, and like the sons of thunder, it seems good to me that fire should be called down upon them so that their smirking grins would be wiped off their face.  But Jesus loved them.  That is why he didn’t do what they asked and come down from the cross.  He stayed on the cross in order to bring about their redemption.  And he prayed for them: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”  God’s kindness is meant to lead us to repentance.  Some of these hard-hearted people indeed are converted.  The thief on the cross next to Jesus is one of them.  He at first reviled Jesus together with everybody else.  But then he saw Jesus’s kindness and prayed that Jesus would remember him when Jesus came into his kingdom.

Not all people, though, are converted.  Some, even though they hear that what Jesus did was done for them, will spit on that grace from God just as the crowds spit upon Jesus when he was making his way to Golgotha.  The level of contempt for a person has to be pretty high before they will go to such lengths as to spit on someone.  But with brazen unbelief, this is what some do.

But most unbelievers are not so brazen in their unbelief.  Most unbelievers are plagued with a little bit of doubt.  They wonder whether Jesus just might be the Son of God.  The look and see how many Christians there are and they want to play it safe by saying nothing either for Jesus or against him.  They look on from afar to see how things will turn out.  Their hope for neutrality, however, is impossible.  Nobody’s neutral.  Jesus says, “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.”  The idea of spiritual neutrality—that we are somehow separate from both the devil and Jesus and are independent—is a very harmful idea.  Everybody, without exception, is under the power of either one or the other.

This neutrality and stand-offish-ness also overtakes us as believers.  We as Christians have very definite notions about who Jesus is.  We affirm that he is the Son of God.  But Good Friday is uncomfortable.  In our heart of hearts I don’t think we are very different from St. Peter, who, when Jesus told him about his upcoming suffering and death, said, “Far be it from you Lord, that such things should happen to you.”  Isn’t there a more cheerful way of being the Son of God and the Messiah?  Isn’t there a less bloody and appalling way for us to go to heaven?

Without our knowing it or intending it, therefore, we Christians create something of a cross-less Christianity for ourselves.  There is no denial of what happened or even the meaning of the cross, but we don’t want to look at it.  Does not that line from the prayer you sang to Jesus tonight strike you as odd, “Remind me of Thy passion when my last hour draws night”?  “O Jesus, remind me of your suffering and death when I am struggling to breathe and death is at my door.”  It’s easy for even those who consider themselves good Christians to secretly think, “No thank you!  This whole situation is stressful enough as it is.  Why should something so jarring be brought to mind at such a time?  Can’t you just say a nice psalm or something?”

What this shows is that we are not all that different from that great unbelieving horde of people who look on Jesus from afar and are afraid to commit one way or the other.  And it’s no surprise that we are quite like them because we are cut from the very same cloth.  A Christian’s flesh, a Christian’s old Adam is no different whatsoever from the flesh, from the old Adam of an unbeliever.  To Adam God said, “In the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.”  The cross is God’s wrath and death to the old Adam.  That is the reason why it is so uncomfortable to all people who still have their sinful flesh—and that includes everybody who is living.

Do you remember when you were a kid and you had done something wrong and Dad found out about it?  The offense was bad enough that the punishment called for a licking and that was the sentence imposed.  I remember that at least on one occasion I pleaded with my dad for there to be some other way that could be found so that I wouldn’t get spanked.  But my dad was a good dad and the sentence, once it was given, was not going to be repealed.  I was spanked because that is what the Law required.

This is how it is with our old Adam too.  Our old Adam says to our heavenly Father, “Please, please, please let me go.  I’ll promise to be good.  I’ll make it up you.  Isn’t there some way that I can avoid the punishment of death?”  Do you remember how terrifying it was as a child when you got caught and punishment was at your door?  That is a very disagreeable experience and so we did everything we could to avoid it.  We got better at concealing our crimes.  We got better at lying about stuff once we got caught.  The goal is to get away with it.  “You won’t get caught,” we tell ourselves over and over again.

And we would like to keep telling ourselves that all the way to the end.  “You won’t get caught,” is a very comforting word to our old Adam.  “Just put God and judgment out of mind.”  This is like spiritual morphine.  It deadens the pain and makes you sleepy.

And so the old Adam hates the cross of Christ because the cross shows us that God means it when he says that sin will be punished according to the sentence that was given to Adam.  The greatest hope of the old Adam is the same as that of the naughty child: that we won’t be judged.  The old Adam’s devotion to this hope is unbelievably strong.  The first element to this hope is that there is no such thing as judgment, that is to say, that we won’t get caught.  And if we do get caught, then we’ll somehow get off the hook.  The cross of Christ very rudely says that that aint gonna happen. 

I think it is very useful to know about the way that our old Adam thinks and what our flesh prefers as far as how we’d like things to go so that we know that it is not to be trusted.  It leads us astray into false hopes that will disappoint us in the future, but right now appear to be quite viable ways of living and believing.  Since we’d prefer it if we never got caught in the first place, it makes the true hope of Jesus’s cross seem distasteful to us and frightening.  This false teacher that resides even in our own heart must be silenced, so that we can listen to the truth.

This brings us to the last way of answering the question, “What do you think of Jesus dying on the cross?”  The truth is that the cross is your life, your hope’s foundation, your glory and salvation.  It is not something to be tucked away in a closet, perhaps pulled out once a year on Good Friday to look at.  God has revealed to you his plans and his heart.  In order that you could be spared the punishment that you deserve for your wickedness, he sent his dearest treasure whom he perfectly loves—his eternally begotten Son—to fulfill the Law on your behalf and to suffer in your place.  You are released from the Law and set free from its punishments, but not in the way that our flesh would like that to happen.  Our flesh would just like to ignore God’s Law like Adam and Eve did in the Garden when the serpent told them that they wouldn’t get caught, and that even if they did it wouldn’t be so bad.  The devil is a liar.  What came with sin was death and death under God’s wrath is the stuff that nightmares are made of.  To defeat death required a costly sacrifice—one that surpasses our understanding.

With the cross of Christ we deal with things that can make your heart race.  It is certainly different than the dreamy attitudes most people take towards death.  But we should not be afraid of the cross of Christ.  It is God’s gift of salvation for you and for me and for the whole world.  There isn’t a single sinner that Jesus did not atone for.  The offer of salvation is for all people, but it is an offer that is given according to the truth and it will not share the stage with lies.  The lies must be put aside so that we do not trust in them (which we are ever so prone to do), but trust in the truth of Jesus’s salvation by his atoning death. 

So if you are asked what you think of Jesus dying on the cross you should answer that that is your Savior whom you love and trust.  His cross is the best thing that has ever happened to us because we would be punished as we truly deserve without him.  That Jesus’s sacrifice is sufficient and well pleasing to God is proven by Jesus’s resurrection from the dead.  Jesus rose from the dead and now so will we because of him.

190418 Sermon on John 13:1-15 (Maundy Thursday), April 18, 2019

190418 Sermon on John 13:1-15 (Maundy Thursday), April 18, 2019

Most people do not consciously think about how they should live their lives.  Instead of asking about that and deliberately examining how one should live, examples are the more important guides for our lives.  The most important example anybody has is the example of their father and their mother.  We learn what we should do and how we should conduct ourselves from day to day by watching our parents.  That is what is normal for that person.

This is not something accidental.  It is by divine design.  Father and mother are the most important teachers.  For good or for ill, their example will direct the way their children’s lives will go.  Good examples will often carry over into the next generation.  Bad examples almost always carry over.  No parent realizes how important their actions are for their children.  Here Jesus’s frightful words apply: “Offenses must come, but woe to the one through whom the offense comes.  Whoever causes one of these little ones to stumble—it would be better that a millstone be tied around his neck and he be thrown into the sea.”

Besides the example of parents for how we should live our lives the example of friends is also very important.  Choose your friends carefully.  The way a person should live his or her life does not come up all that often when you are with your friends, but it is absolutely operating in the background.  What your friends like, what they want out of life, what they think is good or bad or important—all of these things and more are going to be expressed and will either strengthen you or weaken you as a Christian.  Christian friends are invaluable.  Unbelieving friends are dangerous, especially if you really like them.  You won’t want to disappoint them.  Normally it is not something dramatic and definite that friends do that influence you.  It’s like water dripping on a rock over a long period of time—it makes its mark.  Your time with your friends will have its effects for good or for ill.

Because of the power of examples for shaping the way that we live it has always been the case that God’s people rise together and fall together.  A little leaven leavens the whole lump.  We are all watching one another and listening to one another, and it shapes the way that we think and what we believe.  The possibility of there being a lone Christian who is good and faithful without anybody else around to help is about as likely as a child turning out to be good when the parents are scoundrels.  The tremendous power of examples makes it impossible for those who want to be Christian to remain by themselves and continue to be Christian.  We should also see here the powerful influence that we have on one another as members of a congregation.  The love for God’s Word is contagious and will spread.  But discontent and bitterness will spread too.  You have more of an impact on one another and on me than you realize.

As Christians, though, the example that is more important than father and mother or friends is the example of our Lord Jesus Christ.  The worst thing that can happen with parents or with friends is that they somehow diminish the example of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Good parents and good friends are going to be like John the Baptist, pointing to Jesus and saying, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”  Jesus is the most important for anybody and everybody, because he is the truth.

In our Gospel reading tonight, Jesus is quite explicit about an example.  He says, “I have left you an example to follow.”  What, then, is the example?

Some Christians have taken his words literally and they have foot washing ceremonies.  There’s nothing necessarily wrong with this kind of thing, but it is not the outward action of dribbling water on the foot and wiping it away that is Jesus’s example.  A total scoundrel and hypocrite can do those outward actions.  The example Jesus gives us is an inward thing, an attitude.  The inner attitude is best summarized with the word “love,” but it also can be further explained with humility, patience, service, kindness and with many other facets of this diamond we call love. 

I think another good way to understand the example Jesus gives us is the direction of our work and energy and concern.  By nature we are all self-interested and care about ourselves more than we do anybody or anything else.  We want what is best for me.  Jesus, though, has his sights set on others.  He does not act out of self-interest, but out of what is good for the other person.

This makes Jesus completely different from all other examples and from what we are used to.  Jesus is lord and master, the king of kings, and yet he does not sit on his throne waiting for his servants to serve him.  He is the one who serves, and there isn’t a single person whom he refuses to serve.  The worst wretch, the worst sinner, the total loser, Jesus dies for.  What more could you possibly ask for as far as service is concerned?  There is not a single drop that he reserves for himself as just his own.  He pours himself out completely even unto death.  That is the example that he leaves for us—this pouring out instead of taking in for one’s own self.

This is love.  Love is the most outstanding feature of heaven.  It is for this life of love that we have been redeemed.  When God’s work of sanctification with us is finished we will truly love—something that we can’t yet understand because we’ve never experienced anything like it.  In our fallen state with our original sin we are incapable of pure love.  Our love is always impure.  It is always mixed together with selfishness.  If you don’t believe me and you need proof of this, then I will ask you whether you have loved your enemy—you know, the one who hates you and is glad when you suffer and will do whatever is possible to make you hurt some more?  Have you loved the one who slaps you in the face?  You are not yet perfected in love.

When we are faced with the enormity of the transformation that has to take place in us we might think that that is impossible.  It’s not bad to think that.  What that shows is that you are beginning to understand the depths of our evil and fallenness and the goodness that is in Jesus.  It is true that it is impossible for us because of our flesh that has not yet completely died to love as we should.  It’s as impossible as threading a camel through the eye of a needle.  And yet, with God, all things are possible.

Seeing the enormity of what must take place in us also humbles us and makes us beggars.  By nature we are proud and we falsely believe that we can set out and do whatever we set our minds to.  St. Peter on this very night of Maundy Thursday learned this bitter lesson.  He was feeling pretty good about himself and his piety.  When Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper he told Jesus that he would never deny him.  Even if he had to die he wouldn’t deny him.  But only hours later at the questioning of a servant girl he totally collapsed and denied Jesus, even using God’s own name to do so.  When Jesus looked at him he wept bitterly.

But he was in a better position with his bitter weeping and despair than he was when he believed in himself.  He was made a beggar—dependent upon God to give him good things instead of relying upon himself.  It is God’s grace when he works this same painful conviction in us.  We’d all like to believe that we are pretty good people.  It feels awfully good to feel good about yourself.  But this is living a lie.  The truth is that we are poor and needy.

Do you know something that happens among beggars?  When beggars hear about something being given out for free they are Johnny-on-the-spot.  When they get there they open up their sack big and wide and tell the nice person to fill it up.

As Christians we should be shameless beggars for God’s grace.  Or what?  You don’t want to be a beggar?  You are too proud to beg?  Well it’s either that or hell, because you don’t have what it takes to get yourself out of hell.  There is only one thing that is precious enough for that ransom, and that is the blood of Jesus.  So humble yourself and open up your sack big and wide and tell kind Jesus to fill it up for you.

This is how we should look at Holy Communion.  It is God’s gift.  It is God’s grace.  You can tell that from the very words that Jesus speaks.  He says, “This is my body given for you.”  He says, “for you.”  It’s not for himself.  He means for you to have it.  And he himself says what it is for.  The cup is his blood shed for you for the forgiveness of all your sins.

Do you need to be forgiven?  Then eat his body and drink his blood.  It doesn’t matter that you can’t understand how these things can be.  Jesus has said it, and Jesus is not a liar.  I would trust Jesus a whole lot more than I would trust you.  If he says it, then that’s how it is.

The Lord’s Supper is beneficial to whoever receives it with faith in these words, “Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.”  It is the treasure that you don’t have that is necessary to escape hell.  It gives us grace to increase in faith towards God and fervent love towards one another.  It is therefore food that grants us entrance to heaven as well as preparing us for heaven with the new life of love.

On this Maundy Thursday Jesus leaves us an example that we should learn from.  This example is more important than anything we could learn from our parents or our friends.  Love one another in all sincerity and truth.  And so that you can actually do that, open up your sack big and wide, O beggar, and be filled with God’s grace according to his own word and promise.

190414 Sermon for Palm Sunday April 14, 2019

190414 Sermon for Palm Sunday April 14, 2019

The Scriptures show us over and over again that living as God’s people means that God is the one who acts while his people more or less look on.  When God liberated the people of Israel from the hand of Pharaoh, what did the Israelites do to gain their freedom?  They did not take up arms.  They did not even engage in civil disobedience or strikes.  They simply watched while God brought terror upon the land.  It got so bad that the Egyptians urged the Israelites to leave.  They would rather do without the slave labor than be crushed under God’s mighty hand.  They even paid their former slaves.  God told the Israelites to ask their Egyptian neighbors for their gold and other goods.  In this way the Egyptians were plundered as though they had been conquered by a great army—but God is the only one who did it all.

This pattern continues.  I’ll just mention a few more: When the Israelites had their backs against the wall at the Red Sea and there was no way to retreat, God made a safe passage for them by allowing them to pass through the bottom of the sea.  And then God killed Pharaoh and the most powerful army on earth by bringing the walls of water down upon them after all his people had safely gotten across.  Later, when the Israelites were entering into the land God had promised them, he conquered the city of Jericho even though its walls were impenetrable.  By walking around the city and shouting the massive walls behind which the people of Jericho felt so secure came crashing to the ground.  Later, when the Assyrians were camped outside of Jerusalem with their army that so greatly outnumbered the people of God, God sent his angel who killed 185,000 of their troops in one night.  There are a lot of other examples I could give.  They follow the same pattern.  God works wonders while his people look on.

Just as God gave his people of old his words, instructions, and promises, so he has also done for us today.  For what we should do in our day to day life he has given us our callings and the Ten Commandments.  This gives us more than enough to do.  We don’t need to look for any other works.  There isn’t a single person who fulfills their calling according to the Ten Commandments. 

He has also given us his promises.  He has baptized you, which makes you a child of God.  He promises you the victory over all your enemies.  Even if it should appear that other people or diseases or poverty has got you down, these are the most temporary of all troubles.  He has promised you victory over the last enemy to be destroyed—death.  He has promised you resurrection from the dead and a new heavens and a new earth.  He has promised you a glorified body which has been purged of sin.  He has promised you an eternal fellowship with God, filled with love, joy, and peace.

All of these promises are actions done solely by God while we look on and believe.  God said to the Israelites who were filled with terror at the shores of the Red Sea, “Be still.  The Lord will fight for you.”  This is the advice that we should take too.  It is always applicable and appropriate.  No matter what it is that is going on in your life or that might happen in the future: “Be still.  You are a child of God.  Wait and see what the Lord will do.”  There may be twists and turns and unexpected events.  In fact, there probably will be—that also is testified to in the Scriptures—but things will turn out alright in the end.

Decline among God’s people always sets in when they begin to believe that God’s promises are ineffectual or not enough or in some other way unsatisfactory.  In contrast to waiting and believing other schemes seem to hold out more promise.  For example, instead of being satisfied with being a father, mother, son, daughter, husband, wife, or worker, and living according to the Ten Commandments in those callings, being rich, famous, and powerful can become somebody’s goal.  In order to become rich, famous, and powerful, it doesn’t seem as though being generous, humble, and considering your neighbor as better than yourself is going to get you there, and so God’s instructions to us are set aside.  Waiting for God’s promises doesn’t seem like it will help one bit in fulfilling one’s dreams, and so those are set aside too.  Then a whole new way of living becomes the norm where the standard is not God’s Law and promises, but what seems to be best for the individual according to the individual.  Instead of bearing up under difficult circumstances and waiting for the Lord’s salvation according to his Word and promise, there is a very busy and active life of fixing all your problems all by yourself.

This is a false way of living life.  It is living according to lies instead of living according to the truth of God’s Word.  To believe that success is in your own hands instead of in God’s hands is nothing other than plain old idolatry.  God does not demand success of us, but rather faithfulness to his Word.  Whether you are rich or poor, sick or healthy must be left in God’s hands.  Taking it into your own hands cannot bring lasting blessing.  It doesn’t always seem that way.  In fact, it can very much seem the opposite.  I think the devil, the prince of this world, often loads up people who take this lie as their own with many riches, but it is all fleeting.  As Jesus says, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, but to lose his soul?”  Or as he says in our Gospel reading today, “Whoever loves his life will lose it, but whoever hates his life in this world will keep it to eternal life.”  Ignoring God, his instructions, and his promises never helps anyone in the end.  God is to be for us the driver of our life in this world.

But life is more than food and clothing.  It is more than the quality of life you have.  There is also the matter of your relationship with God.  This is already important in this life.  But we are so very easily distracted by the pleasures and riches of this life so that we don’t think about it.  It is easier to focus our mind on one’s relationship with God when these things are left behind and we are faced with the matter of heaven or hell.  Here we have a problem that is much greater than every other problem we ever have had or could have.  We have an enemy that is much worse than Pharaoh and his army with no possibility of retreat.

Our enemy here is the devil.  We’ve hitched our wagon to him.  You might wonder how this can be.  It started with the way that our first parents decided to live according to his lie rather than sticking with God’s truth.  That caused Adam and Eve to fall into sin and all their descendants are born that way.  But this is not just Adam and Eve’s fault.  Nobody forces you to sin.  You sin because you like it.  The shackles and chains, the compulsions and addictions, the attitudes and desires, the shackles and chains that we have as slaves who belong to Satan are put on and tightened by us.

The most powerful weapon that our enemy, the devil, has is the Law.  The Law says that sin must be punished.  Satan tricked Adam and Eve when he said, “Oh, you won’t surely die.  Sin doesn’t need to be punished.  In fact it will bring you blessing.”  He does the same thing to us today when he entices and allures us into sin by saying that it won’t hurt, that we can be forgiven of it later, and plus that’s what you want to do anyway.  But after we have taken the bait he sets the hook.  He changes tack.  He’s no longer soft and gentle.  After we are sinners he becomes a champion of the Law that calls out for punishment with the goal that we should be dragged into hell.  He wants us to be filled with such guilt and despair that we should even take our own life, like Judas did.  The reason why the weapon of the Law is so powerful in the devil’s hands is that it is the plain truth.  First he lies to us, then he comes at us with something that is actually true.

There are two natural ways to deal with this problem.  One way is to deny the content of the Law.  People will say that God punishing people for their sins is horrible, horrible, and should not be spoken of.  They say, “If God’s like that, then I don’t want to have anything to do with him.”  This, by far, is the most popular approach to dealing with the problem of what happens when we are judged by God as deserving heaven or hell.  People say that we won’t be judged, or that we won’t be judged according to the standards or with the punishments that the Scriptures speak about it.  This would be like the people at the Red Sea saying that there was no such thing as a Pharaoh or his army.  Or saying that Pharaoh and his army are nice people, and so there’s nothing to worry about.

The other way to deal with the problem is to try to live in such a way where the Law will no longer accuse us.  This certainly is the more manly way to deal with our enemy the devil.  We put up our dukes and try.  The problem, though, is what can your fists do when your enemy has chariots, spears, and bows and arrows?  What is your sword going to do when your enemy has a gun?  Try as you might, you are never going to get the Law on your side.  The Law will still pull you down into hell even if you have tried to keep it.  The Israelites could have tried to fight the most powerful army on earth at the shores of the Red Sea without any weapons or training or organization, but it would have been more hopeless than a baby fighting a lion.  Both of these natural ways of dealing with the problem aren’t going to cut it.

Moses told the people at the shores of the Red Sea, “Be still.  The Lord will fight for you,”—so it is also with us.  Our enemy is very real and he’s got the goods on us.  The Law is holy and good, but we are carnal, sold under sin.  If we are judged according to the Law, then we are going to hell because that is where we belong.  But as we enter into Holy Week today we become witnesses to the great acts of God in defeating this enemy who is above all other enemies.  What he does for us in Jesus Christ is unheard of, and it never would have entered into anybody’s head otherwise, just as it was unheard of to march hundreds of thousands of people through the bottom of the sea. 

What we witness on this Holy Week is the preparation of a righteousness before God—of a justification before God—that is no longer according to the Law.  Instead our justification before God is worked by the holy precious blood and the bitter sufferings and death of our Lord Jesus Christ.  The proof of this justification of all the sinners in the world is Jesus’s resurrection from the dead.  If Jesus is raised from the dead—and he is—then we are righteous before God and are going to heaven, because that is where we belong because of him.

The Bible bears witness to the great acts of God for his people in delivering them from all their enemies and troubles.  The greatest of all these acts is what we see play out during Holy Week.  The need was so great that God had to go to unprecedented lengths of fix the problem.  In none of the other acts of deliverance did God himself have to enter into the fray like he does in Jesus.  For us and for our salvation the Son came down from heaven and was incarnate in the womb of the Virgin Mary.  Instead of manipulating events from afar, like he does in other rescues, God receives the blow that justice demands for sin in the suffering and death of the God-man Jesus Christ.  Sin is thereby atoned for, and the devil no longer has any right to accuse of sin because we are in Jesus—baptized into his death.

The decline of God’s people always has been when they are no longer interested in hearing and believing and watching God with his actions towards us.  Conversely, the strength of God’s people is when they are patient and believing.  Our strength is not in our actions or in our morality.  These won’t cut it.  God must fight for us—and he does, because he loves us.

If you think it would be an amazing sight to see the Red Sea split apart and the people of God walking through the midst of it on dry ground, then realize that we witness something infinitely greater in our observance of this Holy Week.  And Jesus does it for you specifically and individually.  Instead of being saved from Pharaoh and an army, you are saved from the devil and all his demons (who are vastly more powerful).  Their goal is not just to cut you down in death, but also to drag you into hell.  What we see in Holy Week is the defeat of these, our worst enemies.  By his death and resurrection Jesus defeats them for you and by being lifted up on the cross draws you to himself.