The Word That Changes Everything

[Below you'll find live stream video of both Easter worship services from Living Water Lutheran Church as well as the text of the message shared at both services. Jesus Christ is risen from the dead!]

Matthew 28:1-10

Easter is the most important event in the history of the world.

Easter works differently from the way things work in this cosmos, though. Here, everything starts with life and ends in death. This is why the novelist Ernest Hemingway said that every true story ends in death. In this though, as in most other things, Hemingway was wrong. We know this because the true story of Easter begins in death and ends in life…and not just for Jesus! This is what makes Easter so important.

God’s Word says, “[Jesus] was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.” (Romans 4:25)

We are born sinners mired in sin and self-absorption, turned away from God, thinking first of ourselves and acting accordingly. For this, we deserve death, condemnation, and everlasting separation from God and others.

On the cross, Christ, truly God and truly human, Who was sinless, bore the sins of the whole world, including yours and mine: all the ways we fail to love God and others, all our idolatry, murderous thoughts and actions, all our contempt for parents and others in authority, all our theft and greed, all our gossiping and injustice. Jesus took all this sin into Himself.

He was delivered to death at the prompting of God the Father, taking the punishment of damnation and everlasting isolation from God that you and I deserve.

But after Jesus died on Friday, the first day, laying lifeless in the tomb on Saturday, the second day, God the Father raised Jesus on the third day, Sunday, Easter day.

He did so for our “justification.”

To be justified means to be declared innocent, righteous, verified, able to leave the solitary confinement of hell, acceptable to enter into life with God and His people, now and forever.

To be justified by God is to be declared innocent despite all the evidence to the contrary.

A person who has been justified by God’s charity–that is, by God’s grace–through God-given faith in Jesus can say, “I’ve been made right with God, forgiven, brimming with new life from God, just if I’d never been a sinner, never had a sinful thought, never done a sinful thing!”

Jesus has taken our old dead bodies into His own and gives us His new, sinless body!

And so the Word tells us: “[Jesus] was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.”

This Word also tells us that Christ is the end of the Law’s condemnation for us, because Christ has already borne that condemnation. Christ fulfills God’s promise given through the prophet Micah, centuries before Jesus’ birth, to hurl our sins into the depths, never to be seen or heard of by God again.

God has called you to be here this morning, whether through family expectations or traditions, a nagging family member, or through heartfelt desire on your part.

He called you here not to deliver information like, “Jesus died and rose” to you. Even Satan knows that Jesus died and rose. Mere information won’t save you and me from condemnation and hell.

No, God has called us together on this Easter Sunday for the same reason God calls His Church to regular worship Sunday after Sunday.

God calls us to worship so that we can be immersed in His Word–read, spoken, sung, or given in, with, and under water, bread, or wine–and so that we may here and now be crucified, convicted of our sins, and be raised again to face another day, week, month, year, a lifetime, and eternity itself with the certain hope that nothing can separate those who trust in Him from the love of God given to us in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ.

The Gospel Word that Jesus was delivered to death for you and raised to give you everlasting life comes to you not as data to be filed away and forgotten, but as your deliverance from the grave, your gift of joy and certainty in a lost and uncertain world.

Matthew’s account of the first Easter Sunday is well known to you.

According to Matthew, Mary Magdalene and another Mary, presumably the sister of Lazarus, go to “look at the tomb.” (Matthew 28:1)

They have no expectations. They just want to look at the tomb.

They live in a dark and fallen world. Even the One they once hailed as the Messiah, God’s own Son, has died.

But Matthew tells us that an angel, a messenger from God, is sent to the tomb and creates an earthquake. He rolls away the stone that has covered the tomb from which Jesus has already risen, then sits on the stone.

The angel’s appearance indicates that he’s just come from the presence of God in His bright glory.

Just like all the hard-hearted and closed-minded of the world–people like I used to be when I was an atheist, the Roman guards placed at the tomb by Pilate are not happy to see this ambassador from God.

They’re terrified, becoming like what they are–like what we all are without the forgiveness and new life God gives through faith in Christ–dead men.

The angel tells the women that Jesus isn’t dead anymore. “He has risen from the dead,” the angel says, “and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.”

The women run back to Jerusalem to tell the other disciples. This is good news to be shared!

“Suddenly,” Matthew says, the risen Jesus meets them.

In part, Jesus is going to give them the same message the angel gave them. “​​Do not be afraid,” He says. “Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.” (Matthew 28:10)

But before saying that and before the women fall down, grasping the feet of Jesus’ now-living body, and worshiping Jesus, Jesus says something else.

He says one Word.

It’s a single Word that changes human history.

A single Word that transforms those who, by the power of God’s Spirit to work faith in us, receive it.

It’s a Word that changes us from God’s enemies to God’s friends, from the damned and dead to the favored and living, from the guilty to the justified.

Jesus’ first Word, His Easter Word, to the women and to you is this: “Greetings.” (Mattthew 28:9)

Disappointed?

You have a right to be.

The translations in all of our English version Bibles of this Word are anemic. None of our common English translations do this Word justice. None of the translations are bad, per se, it’s just that none of them really deliver the good news–the Gospel–that Jesus wants to give us here this morning!

According to Matthew, who wrote his gospel in Greek, the Word Jesus spoke to the women, that He speaks to you and me today, is Χαίρετε.

That was a word that in common usage had come to mean little more than hello, just like a word that once meant God bless you in English has become nothing more than goodbye.

But what this word Χαίρετε, from the word for  God’s grace, His charity, for sinners, means coming from Jesus at this moment is this. Listen: “All My grace, all My favor, the blessings of Resurrection and of new and everlasting life, the reality of the forgiveness of your sins, all the joy of heaven belongs to you who turn from sin and turn to Me.”

All of that is what Jesus means when He greets the women!

In other words, Jesus is telling the women and you, “Resurrection to you! My victory over sin and death to you! You thought that death and darkness were all that were left to you. You thought all you could do was look at a tomb. But I’m going to raise all who believe in Me from their tombs to live with Me forever!”

And, friends, that is Jesus’ message for you this morning!

He is no longer in the tomb.

He sits on the right hand of God the Father and through God the Holy Spirit, His grace and power have been set loose in this dying, tomb-pocked world.

Wherever Jesus isn’t received, there is death, condemnation, uncertainty, fear, furtiveness, and fatalism.

Wherever and whenever He comes to us in Word and Sacrament, there is forgiveness, grace, joy, peace, and resurrection.

These are the gifts of the risen Jesus.

His Word gives these to you once again today and they belong to all who receive Him and His gospel with the faith His Spirit and His Word give to those who hear it openly.

“[Jesus] was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.”

He died for your sins and rose for your justification. You can trust in Christ for this.

A blessed Easter to you, friends. Amen!

What About Healing?

[A heavy snowfall hit our area shortly before today's worship services of Living Water Lutheran Church happened. A few folks were able to make the drive. Below you'll find both the message prepared for our two services and the live stream video. Have a blessed week, friends!]

Matthew 4:12-25

A member of the first church I served as pastor–we’ll call him John–had a machine shop. There he fabricated farm equipment.

One day, two neighbor boys brought John a big barrel they wanted to have cut in two. John said that wouldn’t be a problem.

He cleaned out the barrel, which had previously contained some kind of chemicals, then took a torch to the barrel to cut it.

When the flame of the torch made contact with some of the chemical residue, the barrel exploded, crashing into John’s skull. He was life-flighted to a hospital forty miles away.

On arriving at the ER, I was ushered in to see and pray for John. He looked like someone from a war zone. The doctors said there was a 90% chance John would die that night; if he survived the night, he likely wouldn’t live long; and if he did survive, he likely would be severely damaged, mentally and physically.

I’m sure that because of Jesus, Who was invited to heal John by hundreds of praying people, John experienced miraculous healing. He thrives today.

John stands for dozens of people I’ve encountered through the years who have been given healing by Jesus, each of those healings a testimony to the power and grace of God given in Christ.

But through the years, I’ve been baffled and driven to ask God why some of the people for whom I and others have prayed through the years didn’t receive their miracles.

Why did six year old Isaac, who delighted the entire congregation during children’s sermons, die from a brain tumor within months of being diagnosed?

Why did Karen, a true disciple of Jesus, who had been a Peace Corps volunteer, worked as an environmental engineer, played guitar in the praise band, and gave every evidence of living in daily repentance and renewal, die at the age of thirty-seven after a painful fight with cancer, leaving behind a husband and two children?

Why did Sarah, after being diagnosed with leukemia at the age of fourteen and surviving two bone marrow transplants and five setbacks and remissions, whose faith in Jesus compelled her following one long hospitalization, to preach the Easter sermon at my former parish, die at the age of 21?

I have asked God about these and other deaths and tragedies I’ve seen Christians endure. Maybe you’ve done the same thing.

There’s a reason I mention all these people from my life and ministry.

Our gospel lesson for this morning is Matthew 4:12-25. It recounts early moments in Jesus’ earthly ministry.

Because it’s not yet time for Him to go to the cross, when He hears that John the Baptizer has been arrested, Jesus heads to the area in which He grew up, Galilee.

He begins His ministry there, fulfilling the prophecy given by God to Isaiah, that the Light of God’s new life and salvation would appear in Galilee, where people lived in darkness and the shadow of death.

After that, Matthew says that Jesus called four fishermen–Simon Peter, Andrew, James, and John–to follow Him and they do.

With these four in tow, Jesus begins to go all around Galilee, where He does three things. He preaches, teaches, and heals.

Jesus’ message, conveyed through His preaching, teaching, and healing, was: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” (Matthew 4:17)

Jesus, the Messiah promised by God, came into our world and our lives to bring the Kingdom of heaven to us.

Now, the term translated as kingdom is, in the Greek in which the New Testament was written, basileia. Literally, it means reign, R-E-I-G-N. But unlike worldly kingdoms or empires, the kingdom or reign of God isn’t confined to an ethnic group or to a geographic spot on a map. People live under the reign of God when the good news, the gospel, of Jesus comes to us and, despite the sin, death, and darkness of the world, we find ourselves believing in Jesus. The kingdom of heaven comes to us when we trust Jesus for everlasting forgiveness, life, help, and hope from God!

Now, no human being can decide to follow Jesus: Trusting God instead of ourselves is foreign to our nature. In our gospel lesson, for example, the four fishermen didn’t decide to follow Jesus; Jesus came to them and called them, giving them enough faith to set aside their nets and trust Him.

This is how God’s kingdom comes to us: Jesus and His Gospel Word envelop us in grace and, despite ourselves, we trust and follow.

The Small Catechism reminds us: “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit [the One the risen and ascended Jesus has sent into the world] has called me through the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, and sanctified and preserved me in the true faith.”

When the Gospel of new life through faith in Jesus comes to us, causing us to turn from sin–to repent–and to believe in Jesus, we become citizens of a new, non-geographic kingdom. The passport, as Pastor Brian Wolfmueller notes, that allows us to emigrate from the kingdoms of sin, death, and hopelessness into God’s kingdom, is repentance and faith in Jesus that God gives us through His Word and through water, bread, and wine.

The kingdom of heaven is eternal. And yet those who believe in Jesus, live in it right now! This is the Kingdom Jesus proclaimed when He preached, taught, and healed.

But, you might say, “Pastor, I hear and read God’s Word. The miracle of repentance and faith are being worked in me. But what about healing? Are all those TV preachers right who say that if you’re not in perfect health or experiencing perfect happiness, you’re not a Christian?”

No, friends, they’re not right!

You’ll know that just by considering today’s gospel lesson. John the Baptizer, who faithfully proclaimed God’s good news and pointed to Jesus as “the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world,” is in prison and will soon be executed.

And Jesus, God the Son, will soon go to a cross and receive the death sentence for our sins.

Life in this fallen old creation will bring suffering and death to everyone!

But the Kingdom of heaven has a strange quality. It’s both already and not yet.

Jesus has already come into our world.

He has already claimed you in Holy Baptism, won you to faith in Him by the power of His Word.

But until His second advent when He will call all the dead from the ashes and judge both the living and the dead, sin, death, and the devil still attack the human race, working to drive us away from God’s reign in which all who believe in Jesus will one day, live in perfect wholeness and health.

In His Kingdom, God will bring us everlasting healing, freedom from the afflictions of our sin-bound nature. When Jesus healed and when Jesus heals today, He points to, He gives a sign of, the final consummation of His kingdom in which there will be no more death or crying or mourning or pain. (Revelation 21:4)

The apostle Paul wrestled with the reality of suffering and death that comes even to those who, by faith, are part of Jesus’ kingdom. But, in the face of suffering and death, he also proclaims Jesus’ resurrection victory, a part of which belongs to all who live in the kingdom of heaven. Paul writes, “as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” (1 Corinthians 15:22-26)

The point is that, through His death and resurrection, Christ has already conquered sin and death. He already has given everlasting citizenship in His Kingdom to all who believe, even to those like Isaac, Karen, and Sarah, whose suffering and death despite Jesus’ power over these things and prayers for their healing in Jesus’ name, so hurts those who grieve for them.

While, thank God, Jesus has already brought His kingdom to us by the Word, Baptism, and Communion, that kingdom has not yet come in its fullness.

God’s ultimate healing will, at a day and hour none of us know, come to all who repent and believe in Jesus.

Until the return of Jesus, our call is to trust and follow Him…and pray, as He has taught us, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Amen

Tonight's Weeknight Bible Study of the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 28

Tonight's Weeknight Bible Study of the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 22

The Hour Is Getting Late

Today is the Sixth Sunday of Easter. Below, join the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, for worship. Beneath the video, find the written text of today's message. God bless you!



Acts 17:29-31
The Bob Dylan song, All Along the Watchtower, famously covered by Jimi Hendrix, contains an apocalyptic vision that plays out in the dialog of a joker and a thief. In the second verse, we hear,

“‘No reason to get excited,’ the thief, he kindly spoke 'There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke But you and I, we’ve been through that, and this is not our fate So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.’”

“The time for having a false view of reality is through,” Dylan’s thief tells the joker. Life isn’t, to paraphrase Jesus, about eating, drinking, and being merry. It’s not about acquiring the most toys before the hearse takes our bodies to the cemetery. Like the thief crucified on the cross next to Jesus, who repented and turned to Jesus in faith, Dylan’s thief insists, “It’s time to get real. The hour is getting late.” That truth has a special urgency for me today. Maybe it does for you too. We all know that the conditions Jesus said were necessary for His return had already been met during His time on the earth: That’s why He said that His return to bring an end to the life of this old, dying universe could come at any time. But these days of the most lethal pandemic to visit the planet in one-hundred years remind us that we are mortal, that this life is fragile, that, whether for us as individuals or as the human race, “the hour is getting late.” And that’s true whether every one of us gathered for worship today survive this dangerous moment and this world continues for another million years or if Jesus returns tomorrow. The promise of God’s Word is, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Acts 2:21, Romans 10:13, Joel 2:32). God’s Word tells us that faith comes when we hear the gospel Word of Jesus, the Christ and, through our hearing of this good news and the faith in Christ this Word from the Holy Spirit creates within us, we are saved from sin, death, and eternal separation from God. But, are we listening? Are we paying heed to this Word from God, the Word about Christ, that can save us? Or are we speaking falsely? Are we among those who treat all talk about God, Jesus, life, death, judgment,  salvation, or the lateness of the hour, like a joke?

Our second lesson for today, Acts 17:16-31, presses these questions on us. Acts, you know, is the New Testament book of the Bible that tells what the Holy Spirit did in the lives of the first believers in Jesus through the first three decades or so after Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. In today’s lesson, the apostle Paul enters the city of Athens. Athens was a major center of thought and debate. It was also, as Paul noticed while walking through the city, a place in which people worshiped all sorts of gods, a bit like today, when people have “pick and choose” religion, even when their religion is atheism in which they worship human brains, will power, or cunning. Paul, who believed in God and had encountered the risen Jesus, may have been tempted to lash out at the Athenians for their idolatries. But Paul had bigger fish to fry. He needed to share the good news of new and everlasting life for all who repent--turn from sin and trust in Jesus Christ as their God and Savior--with these people.

All of which brings us to the last three verses of Paul’s message for the Athenians, a message for you and me and for the whole world this morning. Take a look, please, at verse 29. After quoting one of the Greeks’ poets who said that human beings were the offspring of a Deity the Greeks themselves didn’t know, Paul says: “Therefore since we are God’s offspring [as we are, since Genesis assures us that you and I are made in the image of God], we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill.”

“Let us not speak falsely now,” Paul is saying. Human beings worship false idols like money, security, power, and status. Why? For some, it’s because it’s easier to worship a god you can see--whether it’s a statue erected in the town square or Ben Franklins in our wallets--than to worship the God you can’t see. But the bigger reason that human beings worship idols is our love of control. All of our favorite godlets are things that, if we can acquire them, we think we can control to our own benefit. We’re prone to idolatry because we worship ourselves: our comfort, our freedom, our power. But, Paul says, this is a lie we tell ourselves. We are not in control and the quicker we realize that, the better off we’ll be.

Then Paul says in verse 30 of our lesson: “In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.” God is compassionate. God is patient with us. But Paul tells the Athenians (and us), “Now that you’ve heard the truth that you’re born in bondage to sin and can only be freed from God the Son Jesus, Who has overcome sin and death, you can’t go on living like you’ve been living.” Paul says it’s time to repent. To repent is to turn to God in sorrow for sin and in recognition of our need of God. When we repent in Jesus’ name, God not only forgives us for our sin, He gives us new and ever-renewing life with Him that never ends. Because of the power of sin and death, The Small Catechism reminds us that we need to live in “daily repentance and sorrow for sin” so that “the new person should come forth every day and rise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.”

Finally, in verse 31 of our lesson, Paul tells us, “For [God] has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.” The phrase translated as with justice is more literally, with righteousness. When Jesus returns, an event which His resurrection from the dead assures is going to happen, He will see two kinds of people. He will judge each person according to the version of righteousness they cling to in this life.

• To those who have clung to the notions of righteousness or right living favored by this world--whether it’s salvation by good works or material wealth or influence or ease, God will give this world and the eternal destruction for which it’s ticketed.
• To those who, like the thief on the cross at the last moment, cling to Christ alone for righteousness, God will give everlasting life in His kingdom.

The times for speaking falsely, for treating life as a joke, for putting Jesus off until some other time, for unrepentant sin, or for keeping Jesus at arm’s length have ended. In the next months--and likely in the next two years, if Jesus still hasn’t returned to judge the living and the dead, our lives, our worship, our church gatherings will look and feel different from what they have. Masks, social distancing, online worship and online small groups: Love for God expressed in love for neighbor and an unwillingness, like Jesus, Who refused to jump off the pinnacle of the temple, to put God to the test, will make precautions like these necessary.

But all of this only makes the call that Paul issued to the Athenians and that he issues to us today all the more urgent. First, we must understand that the God we know in Jesus is a living God not to be ignored. Second, we need each day to turn from sin and turn to the God we meet in Jesus. He alone gives life to those who trust in Him. And third, we need to cling in faith to Jesus. As a gracious gift, He covers us with the perfect righteousness of God so that when it comes our time to be judged, God won’t see us in our sin but will only see the Savior Jesus to Whom we cling. Dear friends, the hour is getting late; today and everyday, cling to Jesus Christ alone. Amen