Now is the Moment

Luke 16:19-31
The basic story that Jesus tells in today’s Gospel lesson, Luke 16:19-31, had, scholars say, been around for centuries before Jesus told it. But as was true of everything Jesus said and did, He turned the old tale on its head in His telling of it. The twist Jesus gives it is designed to get our attention and to remind us of the urgent need each of us has to turn from sin and claim God’s grace now.

Jesus says: “There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day.” Purple was, in the ancient world, the color of royalty and of the wealthy. The “fine linen” referred to here is an expensive underwear imported from Egypt. Ordinary folks couldn’t afford it. This first character mentioned in the parable really is a rich guy then.

Read on, please. “At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.” The verb translated here as laid literally means thrown. This beggar has been tossed aside by a world that has no use for the poor, the powerless, the incapacitated, the racially different. For all of the indignities to which this man is subjected though, the beggar is the only fictional character in any of Jesus’ parables given a name: Lazarus, meaning God is my help. (He’s not to be confused with the real man Jesus raised from the dead in Bethany.) The fact that Jesus gives this character a name indicates that God has a high regard for every human being made in His image, no matter what their status among other people may be. The name is ironic though, because no one seems to help Lazarus.

In those days, there were no napkins. (Or silverware.) So the wealthy used scraps of bread to wipe the residue of food off of the fingers they’d just used to eat, then tossed the bread scraps to the floor. And since this was in an age before Hoovers or Dysons, often, dogs, which no one kept as pets and lived as scavengers, would come along and eat the scraps from the floor. In Jesus' parable, Lazarus, desperately hungry, wishes that, like a dog, he could get to the bread scraps the rich man and his guests tossed on the floor. He can’t even do that! He occupies a place lower than dogs.

No two people could be more different than Lazarus and the unnamed rich man in Jesus’ parable. But the difference between them is greater than what can be observed by the naked eye.

See what happens next. “The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’”

Don’t be misled here. Lazarus isn’t saved from hellish torment by his poverty and the rich man isn’t denied entrance into the heavenly banquet because of his wealth.

Abraham, the ancestor of all of God’s people, to whose side Lazarus is carried by the angels in Jesus' parable, was himself a wealthy man, wealthy enough to duke it out with kings and kingdoms. But his wealth didn’t keep him out of God’s kingdom.

There are poor people in God’s Kingdom. There are rich people in God’s Kingdom.

Entrance into God's Kingdom happens by a different route.

Genesis 15:6 says that Abraham (then Abram) “believed the Lord, and [God] credited it to [Abraham] as righteousness.” Abraham trusted the promises of God. He trusted God to cover his sins and give him a future. That’s what faith does. Its gifts are available today to all people who turn from sin and trust in the God we now know definitively in Jesus.

The rich man clearly had no faith in God. He lived in unrepentant disrespect for the God he knew about as a Jew, a descendant of Abraham, and as a consequence, with callous disregard for the poor man at his gate.

The rich man seems to feel no sense of irony about asking Abraham to send Lazarus to serve him by cooling his tongue, even though he had, in this life, passed on the opportunity to serve Lazarus in his need.

And it’s here that Jesus’ parable differs from the usual popular tale. Go to verse 25, please: “But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’”

In the common folk tale, Abraham granted the rich man’s wish and sent Lazarus to Hades to give the man relief. But not in Jesus’ parable! Abraham refuses the request.

Why?

Because the rich man had countless opportunities in this life to repent for sin and trust in God as Lord of his life, Lord of his pocketbook, Lord of his attitudes and actions. He had chosen instead to be his own lord, to live for the moment, for his own convenience and comfort.

But time was up. He was past the point of God’s consolation.

Listen: God never tires of forgiving, renewing, and helping those who repent and trust in Him. Even the woeful Old Testament book of Lamentations declares: “...Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” [Lamentations 3:22-23].

God loves to forgive us and give us new life! As long as we are on this earth, we human beings, like the thief of the cross, can turn to Him.

But because this life is so fragile, so unpredictable, and because life with God here and now is indescribably better than it is without Him, the best time to turn to the God we know in Christ is now, this moment, every moment.

As the apostle Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 6:2: “...now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation.”

The rich man had wasted the gift of now--the gift of this life. Now it was over and he was inconsolable. Beyond the gates of death, there is and will always be a great chasm between those who trust in the Lord and those who trust in other things.

But, for all his lack of faith or compassion, the rich man in Jesus’ parable does seem to have what we would call “family values.” He thinks of his brothers, all evidently as unrepentant and disbelieving as he had been.

Verse 27: “He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’ Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’”

For centuries, God had spoken to His people through “Moses [or the Law] and the Prophets,” what we call the Old Testament. That book, the record of God’s encounters with His people over centuries, had called God’s people--and even Gentiles who heard it--to repent and trust in God.

This Word, Abraham is telling the rich man, is sufficient to communicate God’s call to repent and believe...if people will only pay attention to it. This same Word should have been sufficient for Jesus’ fellow Jews to know that He was God in the flesh when they saw Him.

But people always seem to want one more thing for God to prove Himself and His authority to them.

Years ago, I got to know a Pentecostal pastor named Howard, a wonderful man. He and I had traveled to an event in downtown Cincinnati and, stuck in traffic, we talked about things that mattered to us. At one point, Howard said, "One of the things that bothers me about Pentecostals is that they're always looking for some new revelation from God, some fresh word of prophecy or direction. But the thing is, God has already told us everything we need to know on the pages of the Bible." I chuckled and said, "Howard, you sound like a Lutheran!"

What Howard was saying is exactly what Abraham tells the rich man in Jesus' parable: "God's Word is sufficient. You don't need to ask God to do something special to prove His Lordship or people's need to repent and believe. It's all there in black and white."

The rich man isn’t done, though. “‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’ He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”

‘No,’ Abraham says to the rich man in the parable, ‘if your brothers refuse to trust in God when they have the testimony of God’s faithfulness found in the Old Testament, they won’t believe a man risen from the dead.’

In our home church was a woman named Rosie. Rosie was older. She lived by herself and didn't say much. We were in an adult Sunday School class being taught by a seminarian, who asked us, "If you could add a commemoration or holiday to the church calendar, what would it be?" The question was met with silence until, of all people, Rosie spoke up. "Well, I always thought that we should have a day to thank God that we live now because if I'd been alive when Jesus walked the earth, I might not have believed in Him. Now, I know that He died and He rose and it makes it easier for me to believe."

You and I are especially blessed. We live on the other side of Easter: Jesus has died and He has risen from the dead. The Old Testament pointed forward to Jesus, God on earth. And we have the testimony of the New Testament about Jesus, how He died and rose to set free all people--Jews and Gentiles--from sin and death and to live in God’s kingdom now and for all eternity, if they will do what the rich man never saw the need to do until it was too late: To daily turn from sin and daily trust in Christ above all. Rosie was right!

“In the past,” Hebrews 1:1-2 in the New Testament tells us, “God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe.”

Jesus has spoken to us, not just or even primarily with His words, but with one eternity-changing action, the sacrifice of His earthly life on the cross, where He took our punishment for sin and gained life for all who trust in Him.

Today and every today is a good day to repent and follow Jesus.

But watch out! When we do that, God will enlarge our hearts and help us see the poor men at our gates and even learn from them more deeply what it means to be a disciple. Amen

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This was presented during both worship services this morning.]

God's Encouragement

Luke 9:28-36

We were talking with a young person this past week and the subject of this year’s presidential election came up. She was equally glum about all the presidential candidates in both parties. “It doesn’t matter who we vote for,” she told us. “Nothing will ever get better again.”

I have to say that I share that young person’s assessment of whether the election of any person would significantly change our world for the better. 

Only a spiritual renewal will cause us to act differently toward one another. 

Only massive numbers of people coming to be disciples and to live as disciples of the crucified and risen Jesus Christ, massive numbers of people daily repenting and daily believing in Christ, can move us out of what some are calling degenerative discouragement syndrome. 

It was discouragement to which that young person gave voice. 

And she isn’t alone, though some try, on their own, to make the best of it. Like people who say, “The world is going to hell. But I’m going to get what I can for me and my family.” 

Not, “The world is going to hell and I’m going to share Christ with whoever I can.” 

Not, “The world is bad, so I’m going to love my family and forgive those who sin against me.” 

Not, “I’m going to pray that God’s kingdom will come.” 

No, these people think, “Things are bad and I’m going to get as much good as I can, other people be hanged. Then I'll die."

The followers of Jesus Christ had observed many epiphanies--many manifestations of His power and Lordship--over the course of His ministry. 

Because of them, they were pinning their hopes for a better world on Jesus. 

For five hundred years, God’s people--the Jews--had suffered from a kind of degenerative discouragement syndrome. It had been that long since God had spoken through the prophets, through whom God had promised a Messiah, a Christ, an anointed King. 

Through those centuries, they endured injustice, foreign domination, and the enslavement of a grace-less religion. 

Many had given up hope that God would ever act. 

But now, as Jesus preached, taught, healed, raised the dead, and cast out demons, the veil of despair began to lift. Was God’s kingdom close at hand, after all? Was Jesus the Messiah, the Christ, God’s anointed king, come to make things right?

Eight days before the events recounted in this morning’s Gospel lesson, one disciple, the apostle Peter, was moved by the Holy Spirit to claim Jesus as “God’s Messiah.” [Luke 9:20] 

According to Luke, Jesus silently acceded to Peter’s confession, charged the disciples to say nothing to anyone because first, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.” [Luke 9:22]

At that, the disciples must have felt that the small embers of hope just being brought to flame by Jesus were being doused by His cold wet blanket. 

Popular thought said that the Messiah--the Christ--would conquer foreign foes and ensure an era of financial prosperity. (The very things we expect of presidents, by the way.) The Christ, they thought, would govern justly and everyone would live happily ever after.

But Jesus understood that the people of His homeland--the people of the world, including you and me--are oppressed by much more than foreign threats or economic challenges, more than poverty or terrorism. All of those ills and many more come from a deeper human problem, the problem that Jesus came to conquer. The problem is sin, humanity’s inborn alienation from God, and death, the common enemy of every human being, that springs from death.

Jesus was telling Peter: “You’re right. I am the Messiah. And this is what the Messiah does. He bears the weight of Your sin and death on the cross, taking the punishment you deserve, so that if you repent and believe in Me, you will have eternal life in the kingdom of God.” 

The kingdom of God exists for all eternity, starting here in the hearts and wills of people who follow Jesus. Being a member of this kingdom today won’t erase the sins or tragedies of this fallen world. It’s still poisoned by sin and death. 

But being a member of this kingdom today will give us the faith and courage to live the Christian life: to love God, to love neighbor, to serve others with no expectation of return payment, to call others to follow Jesus with no expectation that they will say yes, to pray in Jesus’ name for those we love and for those who hate us. 

When the risen Jesus lives in us by faith, we can take a world going to hell in our arms and love it with the love of Christ. 

When you know that the story ends beyond the gates of death with eternal life with God, it changes how you do today!

But when you’ve lived for five centuries with degenerative discouragement and you’re told that your favorite myth about the Messiah is false, that the Messiah is going to suffer rejection and execution, that He will conquer your enemies by death and not warfare before He rises from the dead, you need encouragement. 

And so, our lesson tells us that God the Father supplied it! 

Verse 28: “About eight days after Jesus said this, he took Peter, John and James with him and went up onto a mountain to pray. [God always shows up when we pray! Even if we’re discouraged, even if we can't sense Him coming close to us when we call Him. God will show up for us when we pray!] As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning. [Already, this should be reminding us of the time in Exodus 24, when, centuries before, Moses took Joshua up to a mountaintop with him as he received God’s Law. When people looked at Moses, they saw the bright light of God on his face. Now back on this mountain with Jesus,] Two men, Moses and Elijah, appeared in glorious splendor, talking with Jesus. They spoke about his departure which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem. [The word translated as departure here is literally exodus. Jesus is leading people who repent and believe in Him out of the wilderness of sin and death into the promised land of forgiven sin and new and eternal life.] Peter and his companions were very sleepy, but when they became fully awake, they saw his glory and the two men standing with him.”

What a sight it must have been for the discouraged eyes of Peter, John, and James! The holiness, grandeur, and light of God emanating from every pore of Jesus’ earthly body. The lawgiver Moses, centuries dead, and Elijah, Israel’s greatest prophet, carried away by a chariot of fire centuries earlier, there to affirm that Jesus was the Messiah to Whom the Law and the Prophets and the Writings of the Old Testament all pointed. 

God was assuring the three disciples (and us) that despite the cross that awaited Jesus--that awaits who follow Him, He was still God and that the Messiah, after claiming His throne, would reign eternally over all who endure in believing in Him.

Verse 33: “As the men were leaving Jesus, Peter said to him, ‘Master, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters (The word in the Greek in which Luke wrote his Gospel is skene, literally meaning tabernacle or tent, also resonating of the Old Testament's account of God's people during their exodus from Egypt through the wilderness to the Promised Land.)—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.’ (He did not know what he was saying.) While he was speaking, a cloud appeared and covered them, and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. A voice came from the cloud, saying, ‘This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to him.’ When the voice had spoken, they found that Jesus was alone.”

Peter wanted to capture the moment, as though you could possibly capture the majesty and mystery of God in a tent, a booth, a tabernacle, a church, a cathedral, or a universe. God, who Peter was looking at in Jesus, is bigger than all the boxes we try to put Him in. 

Besides that, Peter seems to think that Moses and Elijah were on an equal footing with Jesus. Just so Peter doesn’t misunderstand, God the Father envelops the whole group in a cloud, like the pillar of a cloud through which He led ancient Israel through the wilderness, and then says unequivocally: “This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to Him.” At that, the three disciples found themselves with Jesus alone. 

What was God telling Peter and the other two (and us)? Simply this: “This is all you have been looking for. This is the one to whom Moses and Elijah were pointing. This is your king, God in the flesh. This is your wandering hearts' true desire!” 

Jesus was and is the Messiah toward whom all of human history had been moving. 

As the book of Hebrews puts it in a passage I mentioned a few Sundays ago: “In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe.” [Hebrews 1:1-2]

For people discouraged by life, the events of the first Transfiguration Sunday give hope. 

They must have helped Peter, John, and James and the disciples they led through the pain of Good Friday and Holy Saturday. “Yes,” they could have said, “Jesus has died, but we saw Him on the mountaintop. We know that He is God. But hold on. Hold on!” 

And when they saw the risen Jesus, the Holy Spirit would help them to put the pieces of the mystery together. They would understand that the sinless Messiah had to die so that when He rose, He could claim us not for a kingdom that lasts for a few fleeting years, not a kingdom that may give us material prosperity and personal security before we die in our sins, but an everlasting kingdom filled with the righteousness and peace and presence and love of God. 

Take courage in the midst of this world’s darkness, hold on tightly to Jesus, because “the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.” [Matthew 24:13] That’s the promise of Jesus’ transfiguration!

[This was shared today during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]

Cana: More Than a Preview of Coming Attractions

[This was shared this morning, the inaugural Sunday for the new facility of Living Water Lutheran Church, during both worship services.]

John 2:1-11

On ATT Uverse, like every other cable and satellite service, I suppose, there's a channel devoted entirely to showing movie trailers, previews of things to come. This morning’s gospel lesson, in which Jesus turned water into wine at the beginning of His ministry, is a preview of things to come.

Jesus shows us what life in His kingdom will be like once He has been glorified. In other words, once He has died, risen, ascended to heaven, and returned to establish what Revelation calls “the new heaven and the new earth.”

He even hints at one of the most important ways He intends to come to us even today.

The lesson begins: “On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples.”

There are lots of theories offered by scholars, but “the third day” here seems to refer to the third day of Jesus’ public ministry, three days since He first began calling people to follow Him.

But, of course, no one can miss the symbolic importance of “the third day.” It was on the third day after Jesus’ crucifixion that Jesus rose, confirming His power over all that destroys us, demonstrating that He has the power to bring forgiveness and new life to those with faith.

The events on this third day will foreshadow Jesus’ authority over the world, life, and death.

Verse 3: “When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’ And Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.’”

Imagine a wedding reception at which the chicken that served as part of the main entree ran out. It was a crisis!

Jesus’ mother--never referred to by name in John’s gospel--apparently seeks to spare the hosts from a similar embarrassment. She runs to her son, who she knows is more than just a nice boy from Nazareth, to lay the crisis before Him.

Has it ever struck you as a little funny that the first of the seven signs that John reports Jesus performed in order to point to His deity, came not in response to some death-dealing cataclysm, the lives of hundreds of people at stake, but in order to spare a bridal family embarrassment at a wedding? It seems a little silly, even though it does serve to demonstrate that the God we meet in Jesus Christ cares about even the seemingly inconsequential things in our earthly lives.

But I think Jesus sees the silliness in all of this too, because He says to His mother, in what I believe were playful tones, “Woman, what does that have to do with Me? I came to save people from sin and death and you want me to save a party? Besides, my hour”--by which in John’s gospel, Jesus always means the hour of His crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension--”my hour hasn’t arrived yet.”

Sons can get away with that kind of thing with their moms often. My sisters still get a little irked when they tell me even now, “You could get away with anything with mom. She’d get mad at you and it wouldn’t be long before you’d have her laughing and telling you you could do the very thing she’d just said no to.” (I always ask then, "What's your point?")

Mary ignores Jesus’ teasing, turns to the servants, and says, “Oh. Do whatever He tells you.”  

Now, while the rest of this incident remains joyful, here’s where it really gets interesting. Verse 6: “Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to the servants, ‘Fill the jars with water.’ And they filled them up to the brim. And he said to them, ‘Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.’ So they took it.”

Water from stone jars was used in the Jewish rites of purification over which the Pharisees often made such a fuss with Jesus. In a sense, these jars represent the worst of Jewish religiosity. At its worst, Jesus’ fellow Jews had boiled their relationship with God down to rules: rituals observed, laws obeyed.

They used water to clean their hands, but inside they were corrupted by unrepented sin, selfishness, greed, and hatred for outsiders.

Their faith had become as empty as the stone jars at Cana.

In Matthew 23:27-28, Jesus scorned such false faith: “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! [Jesus said] You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.”

But Jesus isn’t one to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Jesus has come to salvage and make new that which has been corrupted by sin, decimated by death and the darkness of this world. Jesus has come to make all things new.

So, Jesus orders the jars to be filled, as they’d probably been filled many times before.

Yet this time, there’s a twist in the plot. This is no same old, same old.

Verse 9: “When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, ‘Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.’”

Truer words were never spoken. In Jesus, God saves the best for last.

He takes what is ugly and makes it beautiful.

He takes those who are empty and fills them with the very life of God!
He can even, as He is doing today, take a building that once was dedicated to evil, the promotion of sin, and the defiance of God’s will, and use it instead, to His glory, use it as His launching pad for His people to spread the good news--the gospel--of new and everlasting life for all who believe in Jesus Christ here in our neighborhoods and in all the world.

The New Testament book of Hebrews says: “In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe.” [Hebrews 1:1-2]

The turning of water into wine then, is more than just a neat trick. It is, as John tells us in verse 11, “the first of [Jesus’] signs,” an event  that “manifested [revealed, made plain] His glory.”

It's the beginning of what the scholars call the messianic feast, the banquet of love to which all who believe in the God we know in Christ will come.

In Isaiah 62:5, God promises a day in which, “as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.”

And John would later glimpse the feasr from the Island of Patmos decades after Jesus’ resurrection: “the wedding supper of the Lamb!” to which all who have endured in trusting in Christ are invited. [Revelation 19:9]

Even now, even today, Jesus invites you and me to enjoy more than a preview of the great heavenly banquet as heaven comes to earth and another miracle occurs: We receive Christ’s body and blood in, with, and under the bread and the wine and we receive His forgiveness and new life.

In it, Christ once again comes to us in the midst of our earthly lives to give us Himself, His strength, His peace, so that we can face anything!

Through this feast, allows us to enjoy more than a preview of when we will see God face to face, when we will be one with God and neighbor, when suffering, tears, and pain will be behind us.

Today, He will gift us with the privilege of partaking of the feast alongside all the saints of every time and every place.

As surely as at the wedding in Cana, in the bread and the wine, on this joyous day, Jesus comes to us and gives to us, as the old liturgies put it, “a foretaste of the feast to come.” Amen

The Only Shepherd, the Only Gate

[This was prepared to be shared during worship on Sunday, May 11, with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio.]

John 10:1-10
I once saw video clips of a TV talk show host holding forth on spiritual issues. She assured people, for example, that sin doesn’t exist. She also claimed, several times in several ways, that all religions and spiritual quests may lead people to God. These are widespread beliefs today. But are they true? Well, not according to Jesus. And in today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus uses two illustrations to point us to Who He is and to the relationship with God that you and I…and every person on the planet…can have through Him. But only through Him. Jesus calls Himself a shepherd and a gate. More on that in a moment.

First though, we must establish the context for these illustrations. How is it that Jesus came to speak the words we find in John 10:1-10? It all started when Jesus gave sight to a blind man in John 9. It aroused controversy because Jesus had the temerity to do the loving will of God on a Sabbath day. The Pharisees accused Jesus of doing work when He shouldn’t have. It made them so angry when the blind man declared that Jesus, in spite of this Sabbath violation, must be from God, that they excommunicated the guy.

Now, at one level, the Pharisees were nothing like the contemporary talk show host. Unlike that host, who seems to say that any religious belief will get you to God, the Pharisees believed that only by abiding by their extensive lists of religious rules could one be right with God. They differed in other ways as well. But, based on both the Old and New Testaments, both the host and the Pharisees have one big thing in common. They are equally wrong.

Over the centuries, starting with a desert people to whom God gave a land and a promise that they would become a light to all the nations, through the birth, life, death, and resurrection of a Man Who showed Himself to be God in the flesh, God has revealed Himself and His plan for the human race. From the beginning, the plan for a right relationship with God and for a life with Him that lasts forever has been the same. We are simply to believe in Him and only in Him. Genesis says that Abraham, the patriarch of Biblical faith, believed in God and God’s promises and that God “reckoned it to him as righteousness.” Abraham was right with God through belief in God.

Now, the New Testament shows us that God has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ. Hebrews 1:1-2 tells us, for example: “In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe.” All who turn from sin and believe in Jesus, God in the flesh, have the same blessings enjoyed by Abraham, rightness with God and life in His Name.

As we said when we were talking about the first building block of our discipleship, it isn’t because God is an egomaniac or because God wants to establish an exclusive club that the first commandment is, “You shall have no other gods.” It’s that God wants to give us life and only He can give it. All other roads are dead ends, literally. And we can only know God through Jesus Christ.

In today’s lesson, Jesus is trying to convey this truth to the Pharisees and others who may be listening to Him, the truth that salvation comes to those with faith in the God revealed to Israel and ultimately, in Him.

So, first He tells them that He is the shepherd. Only Jesus can lead us into God’s sheepfold. People who try to get into the kingdom of God by other means are, Jesus says, thieves and bandits. He says: “The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.”

Sheep are pretty dumb creatures. But if a stranger comes among them, they will en masse, move away, alarmed. Once a person familiar to them shows up, they relax, knowing that this person won’t lead them astray. They respond to the voice of the shepherd who takes care of them. We may be brighter than sheep. But that’s not very different from us. Have you ever noticed how you can hear the voice of someone with whom you’re close even in a crowded, noisy place? Both of our kids were in a 100-plus-voice choir in high school. I can remember when we accompanied the kids on a concert tour in England. I particularly remember listening to them during a performance in the Milennium Dome in London. If I perked my ear just right, I could hear both of the kids’ voices in the midst of the others. You can dial into the voices of those you love and those you know love you.

When you allow the God we know in Jesus Christ to communicate with you through His Word, the Bible, through prayer, through the fellowship of other believers, and through Holy Communion, you begin to know His voice. You go to Him when He calls you. And when other voices call you to walk away from God’s will, you ignore them.

Jesus, our Gospel lesson tells us, called Himself the shepherd of God’s sheep. But his listeners “did not understand what he was telling them.” So, like many a frustrated communicator, Jesus tried another illustration to make His point. Now, He wasn’t a shepherd. “Very truly,” He says, “I am the gate for the sheep. All who have come before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep have not listened to them. I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture. The thief [which can include perfectly nice people who follow some other path in life, like the misguided and misguiding talk show host] comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.“

Jesus is the gate to eternity. Years ago, we got locked out of our house. I went to every single first floor window and door and couldn’t find a way to break into our own place. Finally, I came to the last possible window. I stretched up and could tell that this one, leading into the dining room, which set more than six feet off the ground, was slightly ajar. If I could hoist myself up, I might be able to slide the window open, throw myself into the house, and then let Ann in. The previous occupants had left behind half of an old pickle barrel they'd used as a planter. It wasn’t very big. But by standing on it and letting Ann push me from behind, I was able to throw myself through the window. I was halfway into the house, my legs still hanging outside, Ann no longer able to help me, when a thought crossed my mind: How would I explain this to a passing cop? You see, if you belong somewhere, you don’t have to break in. You go through the front door.

Some people think that getting to God happens as the result of a long spiritual quest. The Christian life does have its challenges. And growing in faith and just holding onto Christ in this life, requires us to adopt spiritual disciplines like prayer, study of Scripture, involvement in Christian service, mutual accountability to other Christian. On top of that, even if we’re growing spiritually, we know that belonging to Jesus doesn’t insulate us from the difficulties of this life. And sometimes, as our second lesson for today points out, we face rejection precisely because we follow Jesus.

But we know too, that Jesus is the front door, the only door—the only gate—to life with God, to the abundant, everlasting life that God wants to give to all people. The real quest of the Christian life is to get to know God, which isn’t an onerous task, but a joy as wonderful as falling in love.

Jesus once told Philip and the other disciples, “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. If you know Me, you will know the Father also…”

After mouthing the famous words of John 3:16, He told Nicodemus, “…God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him. Those who believe in Him [that is, in Jesus] are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the Name of the only Son of God.”

And after Jesus became the only Savior in the history of the world to die and rise so that all who believe in Him will not suffer the consequences of our sin, eternal separation from God, His first followers proclaimed the same message about Jesus. When the religious authorities in Jerusalem arrested the apostles Peter and John for bringing healing to a man in Jesus’ Name, the two disciples told them, “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.”

Jesus is the good shepherd and He is the gate—the front door—to eternity. Let yourself get to know Him better. As you do, you’ll hear His voice over the din of an often confusing world and He will lead you to a life prepared for you, a life that never ends, a life filled with the presence of God.

The Only Way to God

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]

John 10:1-10
There’s a common belief held by many in our culture these days. You hear it all the time, whether in barber shops, on TV talk shows, or at church meetings. It’s the belief that all religious convictions are equal in their ability to lead people to God. You don’t need to give your sins or your life to Jesus exclusively, some people assert. They say, “All religions are headed to the same place.” Is that true?

Not according to Jesus! And in today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus uses two illustrations to point us to Who He is and to the relationship with God that you and I…and every person on the planet…can have only through Him.

But before considering what Jesus has to tell us today, we should set the scene. How is it that Jesus came to speak the words we find in John 10:1-10?

It all started when Jesus gave sight to a blind man in John 9. That caused a controversy because Jesus dared to do this loving deed on a Sabbath day. Jesus’ action made some of Jesus' fellow Jews--the Pharisees--so angry that when the blind man He healed said that Jesus must be from God, they threw the man out of the temple, no longer considering him a faithful Jew.

Of course, at one level, the Pharisees were nothing like people today who claim that all religious beliefs lead to God. The Pharisees believed that only by abiding by their extensive lists of religious rules could one be right with God. But, based on what God has revealed of Himself in both the Old and New Testaments, both the advocates of anything-goes spirituality in the twenty-first century and the Pharisees of the first century have one big thing in common: They are equally wrong. Accepting the assertions of either group will lead us away from God and the life God offers only in Jesus Christ.

Over the centuries, starting with a people to whom God gave a land and a promise, God has revealed Himself and His plan for the human race. From the beginning, the plan for a right relationship with God and for a life with Him that lasts forever has been the same. We are to give our lives back to the Giver of our lives and give our lives only to Him.

Genesis says that Abraham, the patriarch of Biblical faith, believed in God and God’s promises and that God “reckoned it to him as righteousness.” Abraham was right with God because he entrusted his life to God. He believed in God.

The New Testament book of Hebrews tells us that through the centuries, God revealed Himself through the prophets of Israel, but in these last days, God has revealed Himself definitively in Jesus. If we want to live with God, we need to listen Jesus.

All who turn from sin and believe in Jesus, God the Son, have the same blessings enjoyed by Abraham: rightness with God and life with God.

It isn’t because God is an egomaniac or because God wants to establish an exclusive club that the first commandment is, “You shall have no other gods” or that God commands exclusive fidelity to Jesus Christ.

It’s that God wants to give us life and only He can give it. Indeed, He will only give us life and, as Jesus puts it in today's Gospel lesson, life "abundantly," through Jesus Christ and our faith in Him.

All other roads are dead ends, literally dead ends.

So, in today's lesson, Jesus says that He is the shepherd of God’s sheep. Only Jesus can lead us into God’s sheepfold. People who try to get into the kingdom of God by other means are—whether through good works, other religious beliefs, or all manner of cosmic niceness—are, Jesus says, thieves and bandits. Look at verses 2 to 5 of the Gospel lesson printed on the Celebrate insert:

The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.

In this illustration, Jesus is the shepherd. God the Father is the gatekeeper.

For just a second, think of God’s kingdom as a show everybody (including you and me) wants to see. The problem is that the gatekeeper—God the Father—will issue tickets to only one kind of customer: People who are absolutely clean and clear of sin.

That would leave us all on the outside, pining for a relationship with God because, as the Bible says, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

Standing there in our sins, we would be without hope except for one thing: Jesus, the shepherd of the sheep, tells the gatekeeper, “It’s OK. She’s with me. He’s mine. You can let them in. I paid for their sins on the cross, the sacrifice of a sinless human being who didn’t deserve death on behalf of all other sinful human beings who deserved death.”

All who repent and believe in Christ are ushered into God’s eternal kingdom—long before their lives on this earth have ended, if they dare. Even now--even today--if you dare to trust in Him, you are living in Christ's eternal kingdom. As our second lesson from Peter reminds us, until we rise again, we live in a fallen world where suffering and challenges happen. But if suffering is a reality that can and does come to any of us, it's better to go through this life with Jesus leading us than to try to go it alone.

Those who heed Jesus’ voice live each day knowing that whatever our sins, deficiencies, and shortcomings, we belong to God forever! He is our ticket into eternity!

Like sheep attuned to the shepherd’s voice, when you dial into God through a relationship with Christ, you begin to know His voice. It brings incredible comfort, hope, and energy, straight from God, into your life!

Sometimes that voice will come with direction we'd rather not hear or will call us to do things we'd rather not do. I was the first person in my seminary class to interview for a call. It was for an associate pastor's position. There was another candidate who would be interviewing. Her candidacy made mine a long-shot because she had done her internship at that congregation. But my interview went well and, before Ann and I headed back to Columbus, the senior pastor told me he would be in touch in a few days. Days turned into weeks and weeks turned into a month, and still no word from the senior pastor or the congregation.

More than a month after the interview, I was scheduled to be at the district convention, where, along with all the recently graduated seminarians, I would be trotted onstage to be introduced. In the evening, a service of Holy Communion was held in a college auditorium. We had just finished confessing our sins when I looked to see that senior pastor. "Mark," he said, "God wouldn't let me take Holy Communion until I came to apologize to you. I'm so sorry I never contacted you to let you know that the other candidate received the call. I didn't want to tell you that, so I kept putting off contacting you. Would you please forgive me?"

You see, that senior pastor was known by the Shepherd of the sheep, Jesus. And he knew Jesus. So, when Jesus called on him to make things right, that's exactly what he did.

The Shepherd speaks to His children in other ways too.

A member of this congregation recently told me that after her husband died, she was sobbing in her bed one night, seeking comfort, when she sensed a hand on her shoulder. So real was the touch she felt, that she reached around to feel for the unseen hand. No hand was felt, but the touch was no less real. In that quiet exchange, one of Christ’s sheep heard His voice of comfort and healing. She was comforted because she is one of Jesus’ sheep. Jesus knows His own and His own know Him!

A friend of mine has pastored a Lutheran congregation for decades. In spite of his faithfulness and innovative leadership, the congregation hasn’t grown. It’s actually declined in membership, attendance, giving, and activity. Day after day, year after year, he has prayed and worked faithfully, sharing Christ, leading people to deeper levels of faithfulness. But things have only gotten worse.

Then one day last year, after a long time in prayer, he sensed God asking him, “You pray for this renewal to happen, for new people to come to faith in Christ. But have you prayed that all the evil in the world that conspires against that happening be kept from this church, kept from its people, kept from the places where worship and education and planning happen?” No, my friend told God, he hadn’t done that in prayer. “Do it now!” God seemed to tell him forcefully.

And so, my friend went all through the church facility, praying in every room, asking God to take control of all that happened there, to displace Satan and all evil from every inch, and to fill the building and the people of the church with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with the power and truth of the Word of God!

Things haven’t yet changed in that congregation. But my friend now knows they will change. That’s because after he had prayerfully surrendered himself and his congregation and prayed that God would prevail over all evil that assailed them, the good shepherd assured him that all he had prayed for would come to pass.

God gave him a vision of a sanctuary filled with joyful people excited to be in God’s presence, excited to give themselves in worship to God on Sunday morning in anticipation of using their whole lives to worship God through the week. The voice of the shepherd spoke to my friend and he was filled with comfort, renewed hope, and holy energy!

But Jesus uses another image in our lesson to describe Who He is; He says that He is also the gate to eternity.

Years ago, Ann and I went to a party and realized after we got back home that we’d locked ourselves out of the house. Long story short, with Ann’s help I was able to push myself through a first-floor window that we had left partially opened. I was halfway into the house by this route, my arms and torso inside, my legs still hanging outside, when a thought crossed my mind: How would I explain this to a policeman? After all, if you belong somewhere, you don’t have to break in. You go through the front door.

Jesus is the front door, the only door—the only gate—to life with God, to the abundant, everlasting life that God wants to give to all people. You can't get into God's kingdom in any other way! “No one comes to the Father except through Me,” Jesus says elsewhere. “If you know Me, you will know the Father also. From now on, you do know Him and have seen Him.”

The real quest of the Christian life is to get to know the God revealed in Jesus Christ. This “quest” isn’t an onerous task. It’s a joy like falling in love.

That’s why I hope that every member of Saint Matthew will not only regularly worship and receive the Body and Blood of our Lord, but also join us, even belatedly, in reading the Bible in a year.

I hope that every member will be in Sunday School. (Yes, every member.)

I hope that we’ll all make prayer a daily habit.

I hope that you’ll help us share Christ in a very practical way when we collect those filled grocery sacks next Saturday during our PPSST! Food Drive.

These are all ways to follow the voice of Jesus, ways to enter more deeply into a relationship with God that only comes through Jesus.

This past week, at the graveside of our friend Betty, we heard her confirmation verses. Betty chose them sixty years ago when she was confirmed at the age of 23. They're words of Jesus from Matthew 10:32-33:

"Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.” 

Freedom from sin comes only to those who turn away from the dead-end ways of the world and trust the only One Who can give us forgiveness and new life, Jesus, the good shepherd and the gate—the front door—to eternity.

Let yourself get to know Him better.

Trust in Him and in His Word alone.

As you do, you’ll hear His voice over the din of an often-confusing world and He will lead you to a life prepared for you, a life that here will sometimes bring inexplicable challenges, but also a life that never ends, a life filled with the presence of God, today and always.

The Shepherd is calling you today. Follow Him…and live!

Are You Ready?

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

Isaiah 2:1-5
Advent, which begins today, is a time for getting ready. Just as many are working themselves into frenzies preparing for Christmas, Advent asks us, “Are we ready, not for Christmas Day, but for the advent of Jesus, for the appearing of Jesus?”

Are we ready for Jesus to show up to bring an end to this world of sin and death and establish a new heaven and a new earth free of sin and death and grief?

Are we ready to meet Jesus face to face should our lives end before Jesus returns?

The last thing that any human being should want is to be ready for Christmas or for things like tomorrow’s special project, school assignment, or big game, yet not be ready to meet Jesus.

So, are you ready?

Each of our appointed lessons for this first day of the new Church Year can help us to be ready for Jesus’ return or, should we die before His return, for the moments we first see Jesus face to face. (1)

Please pull out the Celebrate inserts for this morning. Our first lesson is Isaiah 2:1-5. Verse 4 is probably the most famous passage here. It's a verse that promises that, beyond these days when sin drives human beings to warfare and factionalism, there will be a day when God will destroy war itself and turn our weapons into implements put to better and more productive use. That will happen on the day of the risen, ascended Jesus' return to this world!

This vision of a new creation at peace is one that would have especially appealed to Isaiah’s likely first listeners and readers.

Isaiah started his work as a prophet of God in about 740BC. At that moment, the Assyrian Empire threatened the destruction of first-century Judah.

(Judah, you’ll remember, was the southern portion of what had once been a larger nation, Israel. After King Solomon’s death, Israel split into two kingdoms, the northern one with its worship and national life centered in Samaria, the south remaining focused in Jerusalem. Seven-and-a-half centuries after Isaiah began prophesying, Jesus was born and raised in Judah, also called Judea.)

In Isaiah’s day, the people of Judah were terrified of the strong, menacing Assyrians. And their fear proved well founded: In 722BC, Israel would fall to the Assyrians, just as God had revealed through Isaiah would happen. God used the Assyrian army to chasten His people, calling them to repent for sin, especially their dalliances with false gods, and to trust, have faith, only in Him.

In our lesson, God declares a moment when people from around the world would acknowledge the God of the Jews as the one true God of the universe. They would stream to worship Him along with the Jews, He says. According to God’s words here, Mount Zion, the humble hill in Jerusalem where the Temple then stood, would be acknowledged as “the highest of mountains.” People would turn to the God Whose presence once lived in the Temple’s “Holy of Holies,” saying (look at their words in Isaiah 2:3 in our first lesson):

Come, let us go to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that He may teach us His ways and that we may walk in His paths. For out of Zion shall go forth instruction and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” 

The lesson ends at verse 5, with these words:

O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!

In these words, God wasn’t just telling the descendants of Jacob how to get ready for the restoration He wanted to bring to them once the Assyrians had conquered their land and, as a result, became desperate enough to once more realize their need of God.

God also is telling us how to prepare for the final scenes in human history, when, as Jesus puts it in our Gospel lesson, at a moment known only by the Father, the risen and ascended Jesus will return. It's then, that Jesus will, as we confess each week during worship, “judge the living and the dead.”

God's words here also tell us how to be prepared for the final scenes in our own lives, whether they come years from now or they happen this very day.

Now, it’s important to understand that what God says in Isaiah is, in a way, metaphorical. Let me explain.

Yesterday, as I was about to eat breakfast, already dressed in some of my Buckeye gear, I found Ann reading the newspaper, and said to her, like any good Ohio State alum anticipating the afternoon game must have said when first facing the day: “We must annihilate them!”

Now, I didn’t literally mean that. To annihilate something is to reduce it to nothing. If the team from up north were annihilated, who would the Buckeyes beat on certain Saturdays in November each year? I meant simply that I wanted the Buckeyes to soundly thump the Wolverines. I spoke metaphorically.

Some eight-hundred years after Isaiah shared the words of our first lesson with the people of Judah, Jesus sat by a well in the Samaritan village of Sychar. His disciples, in spite of their shared distaste for the citizens of the breakaway northern kingdom of Samaria, had gone into the village to get some food.

A Samaritan woman shows up at the well and among the things that Jesus tells her is this: “Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain (Mount Gerizim in Samaria) nor in Jerusalem (on Mount Zion). You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews (more accurately translated, “the Judeans”). But the hour is coming and is now here, when we true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship Him.”

The point is that while salvation has come to the world through the Jews, you don’t have to be a Jew to have God in your life. While God’s presence came to the temple at Jerusalem, now “in these last days,” as the New Testament book of Hebrews tells us, “[God] has spoken to us by a Son, Whom He appointed heir of all things, through Who He also created the worlds.”

Our lesson from Isaiah then, foretells a time when people throughout the world won’t necessarily book flights on El Al Airlines in order to stream to Jerusalem, but a time when people from throughout the world will turn to the God first revealed to the Jews and then definitively, to everybody, through Jesus Christ. “For God so loved the world,” Jesus famously told Nicodemus. People from throughout the world today stream to Mount Zion every time they...

• confess their sins in Jesus’ Name, 
• confess their faith in Jesus, and 
• strive, by the power of God's Holy Spirit living within them, to live as His redeemed and saved people in their every day moments.

So, how do we prepare for Jesus’ Advent, for His appearing?

First: We turn to the God made known in Christ. “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,” our lesson says.

In Isaiah’s time, God upbraided His people for failing to acknowledge Him as the only means of wholeness and hope in their lives. “I reared children and brought them up,” God says in Isaiah 1, “but they have rebelled against Me.” 

In these last days, God has shown that the only remedy for sin, death, and purposeless living is to turn in repentance and trust to Jesus Christ.

During His time on earth, Jesus denounced villages that refused to repent and believe in Him.

“Repent,” Jesus says elsewhere in Matthew's gospel, “for the kingdom of heaven is near.”

To repent and to believe (or trust) in Christ is nothing other than agreeing with God about our sin, on the one hand, and agreeing with God about His grace and forgiveness, on the other.

To be ready to meet Jesus, we can repent, that is, turn back to God, and trust in the grace of God to grant us forgiveness and the powerful Holy Spirit to help us live differently from day to day.

Second: We place ourselves under the authority of God’s Word. Out of Zion, where God revealed Himself to Israel and then to the world in Jesus, our lesson from Isaiah says, comes God’s “instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” Through His Word, the lesson says in verse 3, God will teach us His ways.

Jesus, of course, is the ultimate Word of God, of course, and the Bible is God’s Spirit-inspired, perfect witness to that Word. Many spurn the authority of Christ over their lives. Many reject the authority of God's Biblical Word over their lives. “But to all who [receive the Word of God],” the Gospel of John says, God gives the power to become children of God.

God’s Word is the truth against which everything we do, say, and are is to be measured. (2) To build our lives on anything else, whether it’s our own experiences or the latest scientific research, is to build on quicksand.

The Lutheran Confessions says that the Word of God in the Bible is to be treasured as a precious jewel. (3)

The psalmist said that God’s Word is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path.

And in today’s lesson from Isaiah, God invites us to walk in that light.

In God’s Word, we are enlightened to see God’s passionate love for each of us, God’s desire to set us free from our bondage to sin and death, and the lengths to which He goes—even to a cross—in order to make it possible for us to return to Him.

We also see that God will not force or coerce us to return to Him or stand under His life-giving Word. God woos us. God is wooing us still.

To take hold of the life that only comes through Jesus Christ, we must stand under the authority of Scripture even when we don't and never will fully understand it.

My two heroes of the faith are Martin Luther and Billy Graham. Early in his career, Billy Graham was an evangelist with an organization called Youth for Christ. He often traveled and became pals with another Youth for Christ evangelist, Chuck Templeton. Graham says that Templeton remains the best preacher he ever heard.

Templeton, a learned man, underwent a crisis of faith in the late 1940s. He came to reject the Bible's teachings about miracles, the virgin birth of Jesus, the resurrection, and so on. (Ultimately, he became an atheist.) Because he had been so close to Graham and because Graham was impressed by Templeton's mind, personality, and preaching, Billy Graham was shaken by Templeton's rejection of the authority of the Bible. As a consequence, Graham himself began to question the reliability of the Bible. Templeton's challenge to Billy Graham--"People no longer accept the Bible as being inspired the way you do"--taunted Graham.

One evening, during a retreat in southern California, Graham took a walk into a nearby woods. He dropped to his knees by a tree stump, where he set his Bible. In the gathering darkness, he couldn't read his Bible, but he could cry out to God. Though he can't recall the exact words he used as he prayed that night, Graham does say he told God honestly that the Bible was filled with many things he couldn't comprehend or explain. But he told God, "I am going to accept this as Thy Word--by faith! I'm going to allow faith to go beyond my intellectual questions and doubts, and I will believe this to be Your inspired Word."

As Graham explains in his autobiography, not all his questions were answered, but "a major bridge had been crossed." He knew that a great spiritual battle in his heart and mind had been fought and won. It is the same battle you and I need to fight, and, by the power of God's Spirit, can win, when we place ourselves under the authority of God's Word.

This past week, I had an appointment with the cardiologist who performed my heart stent procedure five months ago. He checked me over and asked lots of questions. "I feel optimistic about your recovery," he told me. Then, he fell into a long silence as he clicked through and considered my case history on his laptop computer. I wondered what he was thinking. Finally, he broke his silence: "I still don't know why you had a heart attack."

Folks, everyone in this sanctuary knows that, as happened to me five months ago, inexplicable things happen in life. And they can happen in a hurry. You have to be ready for anything!

But above all, you have to be ready for the advent of Jesus, for the moment when you come into His presence. If you will turn to God in repentance and faith in Jesus and if you will stand under the authority of God's Word, you will be ready for Christ's return. You will be ready for anything!

(1) The appointed lessons for this First Sunday in Advent are: Isaiah 2:1-5, Romans 13:11-14, and Matthew 24:36-44. The psalm is Psalm 122.


(2) The Formula of Concord, a basic confessional statement promulgated by Lutherans in 1577, expresses a Lutheran understanding of the Bible and its authority:

We believe, teach, and confess that the prophetic and apostolic writings of the Old and New Testaments are the only rule and norm according to which all doctrines and teachers alike must be appraised and judged, as it is written in Psalm 119:105, "Thy word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path." And Saint Paul says in Galatians 1:8: "Even if an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we preached to you, let him be accursed."
Other writings of ancient and modern teachers, whatever their names, should not be put on a par with Holy Scripture. Every single one of them should be subordinated to the Scriptures and should be received in no other way and no further than as witnesses to the fashion in which the doctrine of the prophets and apostles was preserved in post-apostolic times...


...the Holy Scripture remains as the only judge, rule, and norm according to which as the only touchstone of all doctrines should and must be understood and judged as good or evil, right or wrong...

(3) Martin Luther writes this in The Large Catechism, another of the core confessional documents which every Lutheran congregation and pastor claims as true confessions of faith:

The Word of God is the true holy thing above all holy things. Indeed, it is the only one we Christians acknowledge and have. Though we had the bones of all the saints or all the holy and consecrated vestments together in one heap, they could not help us in the slightest degree, for they are all dead things that can sanctify no one. But God's Word is the treasure that sanctifies all things. By it all the saints themselves have been sanctified. At whatever time God's Word is taught, preached, heard, read, or pondered, there the person, the day, and the work are sanctified by it...Accordingly, I constantly repeat that all our life and work must be guided by God's Word if they are to be God-pleasing or holy...


Conversely, any conduct or work done apart from God's Word  is unholy in the sight of God, no matter how splendid and brilliant it may appear...