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.
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