The Call to Reach Out (Part 5, Reach Up, Reach In, Reach Out Lenten Series)

[This was shared during Wednesday night's midweek Lenten devotional worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]



Matthew 28:19-20

We come this evening to the last installment of our Lenten series, “Reach up. Reach in. Reach out.”

We consider what some see as the most difficult and distasteful aspect of the Christian life: reaching out to others with the gospel–the good news–that, in Jesus Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection, God has broken human imprisonment to sin and death and opened eternity to all people.

As people who have been gifted with saving faith in Jesus through the Word and the Sacraments, our call is to give away that gift to all people.

In doing so, we echo Jesus’ words at the beginning of His ministry: “Repent [that is, turn away from sin and death] and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:15) 

Of course, the call to reach out is in Jesus’ great commission. As mentioned during our first midweek gathering this year, Jesus is cited as giving the great commission in five different places in the New Testament.

One of those places, Matthew 28:19-20, is the mission statement of Living Water Lutheran Church: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:19-20)

We can see both God’s Law and God’s Gospel in Jesus’ words here. 

The Law here in the great commission is: “Church, I command you to make disciples of all peoples.”

As is always true of God’s Law, what Jesus commands here is impossible for us.

Reaching out to others to give them the free gift of God’s grace in Christ is foreign to our sinful natures. The first thing we want to do when we get a gift is hoard it, keeping it to ourselves. This was why God had to warn the ancient Israelites to not take more manna than they needed from day to day because the excess would simply rot and be worthless to them.

Besides, as we’ll see, Jesus doesn’t expect us to reach out or make disciples in our power, as though we could say, “We’re going to do it” and actually do it. Jesus, after all, says, “I will build My Church.” (Matthew 16:18)

We can’t make disciples, bring people to faith in Jesus Christ. Only God can do that.

It is only the Holy Spirit, working through the Word of God–heard, read, or received in the Sacraments–Who creates faith in Jesus and “the communion of saints.”

But God has always used His people to bring His saving Word to others. In fact, when God Himself brought the good news into our world, He did so as a sinless Man Who died on a cross for us and rose from the dead for us. God likes using human beings to touch other human beings.

And so, as is His penchant, there is also a Gospel Word–a word of undeserved promise, undeserved grace–in the great commission. After telling us to make disciples and knowing that we couldn’t possibly do that on our own, Jesus graces us by saying, “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20)

Think of what Jesus is saying here!

We don’t have to wait until we die to know that He is by our sides. That in itself is a great comfort when we face the challenges of this life.

I can’t tell you how many times in the past forty-plus years of being involved in ministry how often people have told me of being comforted by the fact that there in the hospital, there in the intensive care unit, there in the funeral home, Jesus was beside them!

What have we done to deserve such a promise from the Lord of heaven and earth?

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

Jesus has done it all for us!

And He's' promised us life beyond the grave besides!

Our call is simply to daily turn from sin–repent–and trust in Him for the forgiveness of our sins and everlasting life with God. And when turning to Jesus gets too hard, we need to soak up the Word, because it is the Word that will turn us to Him.

So, how does the great commission get accomplished? I mean it seems like a monumental thing.

It must have felt that way to the first apostles when Jesus gave them the great commission. Imagine it! Jesus tells these eleven men, who don’t have exactly a stellar track record in the first place, that they’re going to carry His Gospel Word to the whole world. They were to make disciples of all nations.

So how does this impossible mission get accomplished?

The Savior Who gives us eternity and promises to be with us always works through us. That’s the plan and there’s no plan  B.

He speaks through us.

He serves through us.

He does this in the lives of imperfect people who heed His call, given in Luke 9:23: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.”

The God we know in Jesus saves, sanctifies, and sends those who daily turn to Him in repentance and faith and are then assured by His Word, “For Jesus’ sake, all your sins are forgiven and you belong to Me forever! And for Jesus’ sake, you belong to God now and forever!”

Many Christians refuse to even consider reaching out to others, even when it comes things like inviting them to “pre-evangelism” events like Toddler Time or pickleball. They’re also wary about engaging in kindness outreaches or asking their friends and acquaintances to join them for Bible studies or even worship.

Why? They fear rejection.

But God’s Word says: “The Lord is my light and my salvation—whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life—of whom shall I be afraid?” (Psalm 27:1)

Rejection hurts; but nothing is eternally fatal to the person who trusts in Jesus Christ!

You may remember the story I’ve shared before about South African bishop Desmond Tutu. He won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work against apartheid in his country. That work also won him constant death threats. He was asked why, in light of those threats, he continued to work against injustice. He said he couldn’t help it: as a Christian, his blood boiled against injustice. “Besides,” he said, “death isn’t the worst thing that can happen to a Christian.” We need not fear rejection.

Some Christians think they don’t know enough to share Christ and the Gospel with others.

But did you notice the story of the Samaritan woman who met Jesus at Jacob’s well that we read a few Sundays ago?

The woman thought maybe Jesus could be the Messiah and went back into the village to invite others to meet Jesus. There is no indication that between the time she left the well and went into the village that she’d gotten a Master of Divinity degree. She didn’t receive any evangelistic training.

After encountering Jesus and His Word, the townspeople later told the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.” (John 4:42)

All it took was a woman who only knew what she knew, giving her tentative conclusions about Jesus to the people of Sychar, inviting them to hear the Word for themselves.

To reach out to others with the Gospel, you don’t need to know everything; you only need to point others to Jesus.

There is no such thing as failure or embarrassment for the Christian who shares Christ and His Gospel with people they know or care about.

Reaching out, evangelizing, is, as someone has said, nothing more than, “One beggar telling another beggar where to find food.”

Jesus is the bread of life none of us can earn but all of us can freely receive.

Every person here tonight knows how important Christ is for them in their daily lives.

How He has helped them in hard times.

How His promises to sustain us through grief always come through.

How He fills us with peace through His gracious love.

We don’t want anyone we know to go through this life or to face eternity without Jesus by their sides!

That’s why, even though I pray every day that Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine will be brought to an end and that Putin will be brought to justice, I also pray that he will come to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. Christ even died for him. Christ even wants him in the fold.

The New Testament book of Acts tells the history of the first Christians, almost all of them Jews, and how the risen and ascended Jesus used them to spread the Gospel and build His Church among both Jews and Gentiles.

Not long after the first Christian Pentecost, Peter and John were hauled before the religious authorities at the temple and told to never again speak or teach in the name of Jesus.

This was not just advice. It was these same authorities who had, not long before, lobbied Pilate to have Jesus crucified.

But Peter, who once denied knowing Jesus three times, is now filled with the Holy Spirit Who had come to believers as Jesus promised, joins John in telling the authorities: “We cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.” (Acts 4:20) Peter and John knew that nothing could separate them from the God Who had justified them, saved them, by His grace through faith in Christ Jesus.

That’s why, after the authorities released them and they returned to the fellowship of the Church, the whole Church prayed together, “Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness.” (Acts 4:29) They prayed for boldness to speak the name of Jesus in the face of threats.

Friends, at your Baptism, you received the same Holy Spirit Who gave Peter and the first disciples boldness to share Jesus and His Gospel.

May we pray for boldness to tell others about Jesus too, knowing the Holy Spirit can do that through us as certainly as He helped the first Christians to be Christ’s witnesses!

One prayer you might offer to God each day is, “Father, in Jesus’ name, push my fear and insecurities aside and unleash the Spirit to speak the good news of Jesus to someone today.”

Jesus has already saved you from sin and death and condemnation. It is an accomplished fact. May you live in the peace and assurance that gives, and so, as Peter says elsewhere, “always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” (1 Peter 3:15)

As long as you live on this earth, the Holy Spirit will empower you to reach out with the good news of Jesus whenever and wherever God leads you. Jesus has promised that and you can believe it. Amen

Bearing Fruit (Part 1, Reach Up, Reach In, Reach Out Lenten Series)

[Below is this past Wednesday's first midweek Lenten service for 2023 from Living Water Lutheran Church, along with the text of the message. God bless you.]



John 15:1-8

A few years ago, we rewrote the constitution and bylaws of the congregation. After prayerful consideration, we decided we didn’t need to create a new mission statement for Living Water.

Jesus’ mission for His Church, His great commission, appears explicitly in all four gospels and in the book of Acts. The most famous of these appearances occurs in Matthew 28:19-20. There, the crucified and risen Jesus, just before ascending into heaven, tells the Church: “...go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” (Matthew 28:19-20)

We adopted these verses as the mission statement of Living Water Lutheran Church.

Distilling Jesus’ commission even further, we can say that the mission of this congregation and every Christian is to be and to make disciples of Jesus Christ. 

Anything we do as a church that doesn’t reflect or advance this single mission is a waste of time and a waste of life on this earth.

As a church and as individual members of this church, our call–our mission–is to be disciples and to make disciples. Period.

Over time, we’ve identified a pathway, which we believe to be Biblical by which this happens. While and after God reaches down to us in Jesus Christ through His Word and His Sacraments, disciples reach up in worship and prayer, reach in to worship together as a church body and to live in relationships of mutual support and accountability, and reach out to our neighbors with the love and good news of Jesus. Later in this series, we’ll talk about each of these components in detail.

But tonight, I want to talk with you about two questions.

The first is what is a disciple?

The second is what does the life of a disciple look like?

A disciple, quite simply, is a sinner who has been found by God and saved by the grace God gives through the crucified and risen Jesus Christ.

It is God’s Word about Jesus, whether proclaimed to us in Word or through the visible Word of the Sacraments–Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, that make us disciples. Those are the three methods God uses to make disciples.

Nobody ever really decides to follow Jesus.

Jesus tells His disciples, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you…” (John 15:16)

This means that Jesus’ choice is to save anyone who will turn to Him in repentance and faith at the prompting of God’s Word.

John the Baptizer had evidently heard the Word about Jesus while still in his mother’s womb and so, leapt for joy inside his mother when he heard the greeting of Mary, then bearing Jesus in her womb. (Luke 1:41)

Others may not come to faith as quickly as that. They’re more resistant to Christ’s Gospel. The thief on the cross, for example, finally received the gift faith, of discipleship, as he and Christ were being executed. He prayed, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:42-43)

God’s Word assures us that we become Christ’s disciples when we are baptized. Even though John and the thief believed without being baptized, in Baptism, God’s Word connected with the water comes to us and we are crucified and raised with Christ. We are saved, made Christ’s disciples.

The apostle Peter said that the worldwide flood that happened during the time of Noah was a bitty symbol of the big thing that happens in Christian baptism: “baptism…now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ…” (1 Peter 3:21)

The disciple then is that person who, because God’s Word has been given to them, is able to confess Jesus as Lord.

“Faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ,” Romans 10:17 tells us.

And we’re told elsewhere in the Bible, “no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’  except by the Holy Spirit.” (1 Corinthians 12:3)

Discipleship, everlasting life with God through Jesus, is a gift for which we can take no credit.

Now, to address the second question I mentioned earlier–What does the life of a disciple look like?--I want to go back to why Jesus chooses to make those who believe in Him His disciples.

You see, Jesus doesn’t just save us from sin and death for our own sakes. He has bigger plans than that for His disciples. God doesn’t bring us into some exclusive club to ignore the world around us!

In that passage from John’s gospel I mentioned a moment ago, Jesus says, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you [and then Jesus says] so that you might go and bear fruit” (John 15:16) 

Not only did Jesus die on the cross and rise from the dead to save us from sin, death, condemnation, and hell, He also did that so that our lives, transformed by His love, forgiveness, and grace, would bear fruit, would tell the world about Jesus, God the Son!

Now, some Christians hear this and think it means they need to get busy. People like this second-guess their salvation, wondering whether they’re good enough for God and whether by their perceived failure to bear fruit, they ever had Jesus’ salvation or not. They’ll ask, “If I’m a Christian, why am I tempted? Why do I sin? Why do I have doubts? Why do I forget about the needs of others? Why don’t I witness to others about Jesus?” These thoughts come to us because though we are saints, we’re also still sinners. But the more important question for us is to Whom do we turn when assailed by doubt or temptation, when we have sinned, when we fail bear fruit? We turn to the One Who gives new life to us in the first place: Jesus Christ!

When he was dying, Fred Rogers, famously known as Misterrogers and an ordained Presbyterian minister, asked his wife whether she thought he was one of God’s lambs. Rogers questioned his eternal salvation because he thought he maybe hadn’t borne enough good fruit as a Christian. He worried about his good works.

But, friends, hear me on this: The same Savior who saves and justifies you by grace through faith in Christ also produces the fruit of holiness and growth in Christ within you. That’s not your job.

Your call is to turn to Jesus in repentance and faith each day, remaining open to where Christ leads you both within the Church and beyond the Church, and to know that God–and God alone–will cause you to bear fruit, even–and I might say, especially–when you don’t know about it! If you’re doing a thing and wondering, “Am I bearing good fruit for Christ?” you probably aren’t completely. According to Ephesians 2, whatever good works we do as disciples won’t be what we’ve planned, but “which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Ephesians 2:10)

When I was a child, I couldn’t feel my body growing, my voice changing, or the zits growing. My growth and change were beyond my capacity to decide on, control, or influence. I just kept coming to the dinner table where mom and dad prepared dinners to fuel my growth and the growth happened.

Your growth as a disciple of Jesus is all about what God does in you as you show up each day to receive His Word, worship with God’s people, receive the Sacraments. You just “come and get it” and the growth will happen.

You won’t sense growth happening.

You won’t see the fruit you’re bearing.

But it will be happening.

God uses people who gladly hear and receive His Word to be and make disciples.

A few years ago, we identified the process by which God makes and then uses people to be and to make disciples. We said discipleship begins with knowing Jesus Christ as our God, Savior, and Friend. It continues with growing in Christ. This is what God does to us and in us as we turn to Him through Jesus in daily repentance and faith. Then comes showing Christ. Knowing Jesus as Lord and Savior, being daily fortified by His Word, gives us the comfort and the courage to tell others to “Come and see our Savior Jesus. Come and see the One Who knows all about me and loves me anyway.”

Knowing Christ.

Growing in Christ.

Showing Christ.

This is what God does in us so that we can be and make disciples. This is foundational for our journey this Lenten season.

The seed of God’s Word is planted in us. And it is that Word that makes us disciples and in turn, causes us to grow in faith that we might, in turn, make others Christ’s disciples. Amen

Ruth and Jonah (Midweek Lenten Worship, Part 5)

[Below are the live stream of this Wednesday's midweek Lenten worship from Living Water Lutheran Church and the text of the message presented at that time.]



Jonah 3:10-4:11

When we began our midweek Lenten journey with the Old Testament books of Ruth and Jonah, we said that they present us with at least five important questions for our lives as disciples of Jesus Christ today. The fifth and most important of those questions is this: “How do we see Jesus in these two books?”

Explicitly, we’ve mentioned that when Boaz redeemed the inheritance of Ruth’s husband, he foreshadowed Jesus redeeming us from our slavery to sin and death. 

And Jesus Himself compared Himself to Jonah: Like Jonah bearing condemnation for his own sins in the belly of a great fish for three days, Jesus was in the heart of the earth from Good Friday to Easter Sunday bearing the full weight of our sin. 

The God we meet in both the books of Ruth and Jonah–Yahweh, I AM–is the same God we see in Jesus, unwilling to see any die condemned by their sin without giving them the opportunity to receive the saving Word of God. More on that in a moment.

The last verse of Jonah, chapter 3, tells us: “When God saw…how [the Ninevites] turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.” 

This is a moment of triumph for God’s powerful Word, both the Law that condemns we sinners for our sin and the Promise or the Gospel that frees sinners from condemnation as it enables us to repent and believe in God. 

Nearly nine centuries after the events in tonight’s lesson, Jesus said that “there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.” (Luke 15:7) As Nineveh turned from its evil and turned in faith to God, there must have been a party in heaven. Nineveh had been dead in its sin and was alive again. Nineveh had been lost to God and now was found. (Luke 15:32; Ephesians 2:1; Colossians 2:13)

But Jonah wasn’t interested in joining heaven’s party. Jonah 4:1: “But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry.” (Jonah 4:1) 

In the original Hebrew in which this verse was written, you see that Jonah accuses God of doing evil. He prays to God: “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.” (Jonah 4:2) 

Jonah had hopped on a boat for Tarshish when God called him to prophesy in Nineveh at the beginning of this book because he was afraid that if he preached God’s Word to the Ninevites, God would accept the city’s repentant faith!

We were at a party one night years ago and I ended up talking with a woman whose husband had left her for another woman several years before. It had been a sinful violation of the ex-husband’s marriage vows. During this party, the woman wanted my assurance that God would never forgive her ex-husband. I told her I couldn’t do that, that I was counting on the God revealed to us all in Jesus, Who died for our sins on the cross, to forgive my sins and to restore me to fellowship with God as I daily turned to Him. If her ex-husband repented and turned to Christ, he would be forgiven by God, I told her. The woman simply could not accept that.

How gracious and forgiving are we willing for God to be? 

In Jonah 2, the prophet, who had turned away from God, was saved from death when God sent a fish to swallow him up. There, Jonah had declared, “you, Lord my God, brought my life up from the pit…”  (Jonah 2:6) Jonah was more than willing for God to be gracious to him, but not to the Ninevites. 

Jonah tells God that if God is going to forgive the Ninevites, Jonah would prefer that God take his life. God ignores Jonah’s impudence and asks him: “Is it right for you to be angry?” (Jonah 4:5) 

Jonah doesn’t seem to answer this question and instead, goes east of the city, builds a shelter, and waits to see what will happen to Nineveh.

God tries to teach Jonah a lesson. He sends a plant that provides shade for Jonah. Jonah loves it. But then God sends a worm to eat and destroy the plant, the way Jonah wanted God to destroy Nineveh. When the plant dies, Jonah is distraught. He’s even more upset when a fierce scirocco and a blazing sun come his way and Jonah once more says he’d rather be dead. God asks, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?” Jonah insists that he has every right to be angry and that he’s so angry he still wants to be dead. (Jonah 4:9)

Three times, Jonah tells God that he wants God to take his life. It’s a measure of God’s patient grace for rebellious believers that He doesn’t comply with Jonah’s demand. 

Instead, He comes back at Jonah with His Word. God tells Jonah: “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?” (Jonah 4:10-11)

And that, friends, is how the book of Jonah ends. We don’t know whether Jonah repents and turns back to God or not. But God’s words to Jonah confront us with a question: Will we gladly share the good news of life with God through faith in Jesus with the Ninevites of our time?

Ruth and Jonah have given us clear indications as to how we should answer this question, as well as the five questions with which we began this Lenten season. We’ve seen that, 

1. God’s reign is to extend over every part of our lives. 

2. God cares about all people. 

3. God patiently woos and tracks down believers like Jonah who rebel against Him sending His Word to convict them of their sin and convince Him of the grace He offers to all sinners. 

4. He welcomes former unbelievers like Ruth, the sailors headed for Tarshish, and the people of Nineveh when they repent and believe in Him.

And, as to question #5, about how we see Jesus in Ruth and Jonah, it turns out, as we mentioned earlier, that the God we meet in the Old Testament is the same God we meet in the New Testament in Jesus Christ. 

He is, as Jonah himself describes Him, “gracious and compassionate…slow to anger and abounding in love.” (Jonah 4:2) 

Although God forces Himself on no one, there’s never been anything that God has wanted more than to see all people come to a saving, repentant faith in Him. 

The God of the Old Testament told His own rebellious people through the prophet Ezekiel, “As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, people of Israel?” (Ezekiel 33:11) 

And God the Son, Jesus, tells all the world that, “...God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” (John 3:17)

This is why God sends you and me into the world today, as He sent Jonah to Nineveh long ago. People may and do spurn Him and His forgiving love, but God wants to save all people!

After visiting Phyllis at Bethany this past Sunday, I swung by Kroger. I went to the deli. I found one of the employees having a tough day. While another employee took care of my order, he wrote a note on the back of a party platter form and handed it to me. It said, “Please! Please! Pray for…my son…” 

There are people in our daily lives hungry for the God we know in Jesus. These are the people to whom Jesus has sent us. He commissions us to “...go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you…” (Matthew 28:19-20) 

At the end of tonight’s lesson from Jonah, we find a sullen prophet, resentful of God’s grace for others. May we, by contrast, be disciples so grateful for what Jesus has done for us at the cross and the empty tomb that we can’t keep from telling all the world this sacred truth: “...there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus…” (Romans 8:1) There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Amen!