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Watch and Pray

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

    Most everyone loves a comeback story–somebody really messed up their life, or lost badly in sports, or made a terrible decision, or failed at something.  But then instead of that being the end of the story, they change, they turn things around, they humbly learn from their faults and things are made right and good in the end.  Deep down we believe everyone deserves a second chance–for we know how many times we ourselves have needed second chances.

    And in many ways, that’s very much a Scriptural notion.  We heard in last week’s epistle about how the Lord’s delay in His return is because of His longsuffering patience and His desire that all come to repentance.  He doesn’t want anyone to perish eternally, but for all to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.  We know that parable where even the workers hired at the 11th hour receive the denarius of salvation.  Our God is indeed the God of the second chance, and the third and the fourth and the 490th chance.  He is a God of patience and forgiveness and grace.

    However, there will come a time when 2nd chances will finally run out.  Jesus’ parable of the 10 virgins is an example of that.  They only had one opportunity to get it right.  And when the bridegroom comes late, the oil of the foolish has run out, the storekeepers’ shops are closed, and the door to the marriage feast is shut–and there are no do-overs or turning back the clock.null

    This, then, is one of the messages of today’s Gospel.  We dare never presume upon the grace of the Lord.  What a foolish thing it is to say, “I’ll take the things of God more seriously in a few years, later on.  Right now I’ve got to focus on other things.”  Tell me: how do you know you’ve got a few years to work with?  Do you know the day of the Lord’s return or the day of your death?  How can you give so much attention to your worldly loves and assume that the things of the Lord can be taken care of at some point in the future?  It is a foolish notion to think that you can schedule your repentance and put it off for later.  That is perhaps the most silly and dangerous thing of all.  If you are willfully clinging to your sin now, willfully putting off repentance until some nebulous future point, what makes you think your heart will suddenly be repentant later?  Resisting the work of the Holy Spirit is a dangerous game.  It numbs the conscience and deadens faith until finally you no longer feel your need for repentance or forgiveness or Jesus at all.

    Now is the time; now is the day of salvation.  Now is the moment for repentance and  watching and receiving the Lord’s gifts.  Now is the time to be wise in this foolish generation.  

    In the Scriptures, wisdom is not equated with a high IQ or great learning. One may be wise without being academically smart.  Many of you have seen this in folks from generations past, who may not have even finished gradeschool, but who had a humble and insightful wisdom that some with doctorates don’t possess today.  In the Bible real wisdom is seeing things–seeing all of life–from God's perspective, having the mind of Christ as St. Paul puts it.  Our Lord tells the story in Matthew 7 of the wise man who builds his house on the rock. Jesus says, “Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: and the rain descended and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock.”  In other words, the wise man knows that only a life built on the words of Jesus will endure, for even though the heavens and the earth pass away, His words will never pass away.  It is no wonder, then, that Moses prays in Psalm 90 saying, “So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”  Moses’ prayer is not simply that we might be smart, but that we might see our fleeting days from God’s perspective.

    Five of the virgins are wise.  They do not merely live for the moment; they live with their hearts set on this most important wedding event.  They do not know at what hour the bridegroom will come and lead them into the wedding hall.  They do not know when the party would begin.  But they know that the bridegroom is on His way and that they are his invited guests.  So their lives are lived toward that wedding.  Nothing else is as important as that event.  So they are prepared for the wait. They check their lamps. They buy extra oil. Their flasks are full.

    No doubt they seemed a bit foolish carrying around those extra jars of oil.  Perhaps they were told stop burdening themselves, to loosen up and have a good time and not to be so extreme or obsessive.  Nevertheless, these wise women paid attention to the oil; they were prepared for the delay. And when the bridegroom finally arrived, they were ready to take part in the marriage feast.

    For the five foolish virgins it was too late. There was no more opportunity to purchase oil. They were unprepared for the feast and unable to enter into the joy of the celebration. The door was shut, and they were excluded.

    What does this mean for you? Jesus' own explanation of the parable says it all, “Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man is coming.”  Watching does not mean that you should be speculating about the day or the hour.  History is full of failed predictions about the end.  All you are given to know is that Jesus’ return will come suddenly and unexpectedly, like a thief in the night, like the flood in Noah’s day, like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.  All you are given to do is to watch, to be ready, to devote yourselves to the worship of Christ and the receiving of His gifts.  

    To watch is to believe and to hope in His promises.  The Word of God is the lamp to our feet and the light to our path.  It is filled with the oil of the Holy Spirit, who makes us wise unto salvation and keeps the flame of faith in Christ burning brightly. To watch is to be vigilant about the things of Christ, the life-giving gifts which He purchased for us with His holy and precious blood.

    A church that ceases to watch will lose the Gospel. A church that becomes lazy or complacent regarding God’s doctrine is in danger of losing the teaching of Christ, falling from faith.  Therefore, the Apostle Paul writes to Pastor Timothy and all pastors: “Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers” (I Tim. 4:16). Our watching is not a gazing up into the heavens, but attentiveness to the voice of our Good Shepherd as He speaks to us in His Word.  We are now living in that evil age which Paul spoke about when he said, “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from the truth to wander into myths” (II Tim. 4:3). We are to watch by holding fast God’s Word, hearing it, learning it, and taking it to heart.

    Right now is the evening of the wedding feast. Right now is the time when you still have access to the oil.  It is available to you in overflowing abundance. For the forgiveness of sins purchased by our Savior through His atoning death on the cross is enough for the whole world, for all of you; it covers every single one of your sins–none left out. There is no shortage of supply in His grace and mercy. This oil of the Holy Spirit is distributed now in the preaching of the Gospel and the giving out of Jesus’ body and blood in the Holy Supper. The wise cannot get enough of these.  They never say, “Oh, I can skip a couple or three weeks of church.”  For they always desire more of Jesus.  And the more we get of Him, the more ready and eager we are to receive Him when He comes again in glory.  Remember that the One who is coming is your Redeemer.  He is the One who in His first coming willingly suffered for you in weakness to break the power of the curse over you. He is the One who loves you and forgives you.  He is the One who comes not in wrath and judgment for you who believe but to bring you the fullness of joy.

    When all is said and done, when we have properly been shaken down to our souls with the urgency of the call to watch and the finality of what will happen on the Day of Christ’s return, we also then need to take a deep breath and let it out with a joyous laugh.  Because what we are watching for is a celebration.  The unknown day and hour is not a dreadful time for the faithful; it is the ultimate day of happiness that we eagerly seek and look forward to.  It is the ultimate holiday, the holy Day when the Lord, whom we love and trust in, is revealed, and when we get to be with Him and revel in His presence.  If being reunited with loved ones for the holidays and just spending time together can bring great happiness, how much more will that be true of the return of our Savior?  The Lord who is coming is not like that snooty relative who walks around finding all the flaws in your house and who is eager to give advice on how you should do things better.  Rather He is like the uncle who always brings the funniest gifts and tells the best stories and who you just like hanging around with.  Make no mistake, the One who is coming is your God and your Lord to whom you owe the greatest reverence.  But He has also made Himself to be your flesh and blood.  And so we do indeed need to watch for His coming; not as a burden, though, but as a joyful thing.  For we eagerly are looking forward to the merriment of the wedding feast.

    Your Bridegroom says to you, “Assuredly, I do know you in your baptism.  More than you have watched for me, I have watched out for you.  My eyes are on you to save you.  I have redeemed you and claimed you as my own.  You are holy and righteous.  What awaits you is a new heaven and a new earth. No more tears. No more sorrow. No more crying. No more pain. All things made new.  Perfect delight.  The fulfillment of your salvation.”

    This divine service is the Last Day in miniature.  I cry out to you, we all cry out to each other, “Wake, awake!  The Bridegroom is here!  Jesus is coming to you in the Holy Sacrament.  Go out to meet Him at His holy altar.  He comes to you in mercy.  Enter into the joy of the wedding feast.”

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

Created Male and Female

Genesis 1:26-27
Trinity 21

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In the name of the Father and of the ✠ Son and of the Holy Spirit

    The way that Satan attacks God is by attacking those who are made in the image of God.  We need to recognize, especially in today’s cultural context, that the devil’s #1 goal is to corrupt and pollute and ultimately destroy our humanity.  The way Satan lashes out at the Creator is by assaulting the crown of God’s creation, human beings.

    In particular, the devil is now attacking the most basic reality of our humanity, namely, that we are created male and female.  And here’s the way he does it: it starts with a lie that has actually been around for millennia.  The lie goes like this: material things are bad, or at least unimportant, and spiritual things are good.  The body is supposedly just a shell that you eventually cast aside; the soul is what counts.  It’s not outward things like maleness or femaleness but inward things that matter.  But do you see how that philosophy is a rejection of the Creator?  For what did God declare about His creation?  He said that it was good, even very good!  This is the way we should think of physical, bodily, material things; for they are created by God.  They’re not lower level stuff; they are good just as much as our souls are.  To be sure this fallen creation now groans under the curse of decay and death because of sin.  But the problem is sin, not the material creation.  Besides, if you think about it, sin is as much a matter of the soul as it is of the body; for all sin begins in the heart.

    Body and soul are one; they go together.  Too often we try to separate them into different categories, body over here, soul over there, and the soul just sort of rattles around in this bodily container for a while till death when it is set free.  But that’s not how it is.  Remember how Adam was created?  God formed him from the dust of the ground and breathed life into him.  That life is the soul.  It’s not as if there are some pre-existing souls floating around up in heaven somewhere, and when a woman gets pregnant, God sends a soul down to the little unborn baby.  Sadly, in fact, that’s how many people try to justify abortion.  They say the baby doesn’t have a soul until later in the pregnancy or until they’re born; so killing the unborn child is OK.  But of course that’s wrong.  At the moment of conception, God creates a new human person, including a new human soul.  The soul is the life of the body, the unique person that God creates.  null

    This means that the soul is not just a generic spirit.  If you’re a man, you have a male soul.  If you are a woman, you have a female soul.  None of this silliness that a man can be trapped in a woman’s body, or vice versa.  The soul is the life of that particular male or female body.  It is a demonic lie which tries to separate soul and body as if they’re two separate things, or as if they could be mismatched.  To say so is to rebel against the Creator and reject His creation of the body.  Now it’s true that under the curse, all sorts of things can go wrong with our bodies, as well as our minds, and so sometimes people will struggle with various feelings.  But since that’s a consequence of sin, it’s not something a person should embrace but something they should fight against with God’s help.  The way of faith is not to trust our feelings or the deceitfulness of our sinful hearts, but to trust God’s creative Word and His creating work.  That is what is for sure and certain, unlike our feelings which are always shifting.

    So let me put this in practical terms: when it comes to the current transgender fad–dare I call it the transgender contagion–we should never call someone by a designation of sex other than the one God gave them.  We don’t choose our own identity, it is given to us by God.  So if a man has supposedly transitioned to being a woman, it is not for us to deny reality, to deny the Creator, and call that man a “she.”  It’s Bruce, not Caitlyn, despite the game of pretend that’s being played.  If we call a person by their preferred pronoun which is contrary to their creation, we are joining in on a lie and giving support to the devil’s attempt to corrupt our humanity.  It’s pure hypocrisy to say transgender ideology is wrong, and then when confronted with an actual example of it to join in on the make-believe.  Christians refer to reality as God defines it, not as man defines it.  

    Now, I should hasten to add here, that in all things we should act with compassion and not behave like jerks.  In many of these cases there are serious spiritual and bodily and mental issues in play.  We want to help the people involved if at all possible and work to bring them back to the way of faith in God’s creative and redeeming work.  Since the people involved are created in the image of God, we’re not there to put them down but to help lift them up to fullness of life in Christ.  But that simply can’t be accomplished by affirming the mutilation of the body with surgeries and the pollution of the body with opposite sex hormones, especially when this is tragically being perpetrated on children.  Faith in the Creator means embracing our bodily creation by Him.

    “Male and female He created them.”  Two sexes, two genders, complementary to one another and created for one another for the one flesh union of holy marriage.  Which brings us to another way in which the devil seeks to degrade our humanity, namely through same sex unions and so-called same sex marriages.  Again, the only way this can be embraced and accepted is if you deny the way in which God created our bodies.  Only male and female form the wholeness and the fulness of what our humanity is.  And only male and female can be God’s instrument in creating new life.  Same sex unions are by definition contrary to the Creator, for they are sterile and non-creating–not for reasons of health or age which couples sometimes face–but by their very nature.  God’s Word says that one of the primary purposes of marriage is that man and woman be fruitful and multiply.  Same sex unions do not reflect the image of God, the Holy Trinity, for they cannot create that triad of life.

    So again, let me put this in practical terms: you may well believe correctly that homosexual unions are sinful, just as any sexual union outside of God-given marriage is sinful.  But how do you deal with this when you are confronted with it in your day to day life?  If a man refers to his “husband” or a woman to her “wife,” do you join in with using that terminology?  The language and the words we use are important–for they either express the truth of the living words of God in Holy Scripture or the lying words of the evil one.  It’s one thing to have to live under the ungodly laws of the land–and we do obey the civil laws insofar as we aren’t caused to sin.  As Scripture says, our default position is to “live peaceably with all” (Romans 12:18).  But above all, as Scripture also says, we must obey God rather than men (Acts 5:29).  You should never talk as if these so-called marriages are actually real in anything more than a purely legal sense.  Before God, they are nothing but a rebellious illusion.  And we want no part in that.

    In particular, here’s a situation that some of you may have had to face, and I’m sure it will be happening with greater frequency in the future: what do you do if you’re invited to a same-sex wedding?  This isn’t easy, because it may well be a family member or relative, a co-worker or client or friend who’s doing the inviting.  There’s a lot at stake in how you handle this.  As Christians we want to be clear that we don’t hate anyone or wish ill on anyone; there are no “phobias” at work.  “Phobia” means “fear”; this isn’t about fear for Christians but truth.  And if we really love the people involved as we should, we want to speak the truth for their eternal good.  You’re not loving someone if you’re “supporting” them in their sin and false belief.  It’s not kindness to show up and smile politely at actions that threaten to cut them off from God forever.  (E.g., 1 Cor. 6:9-10)

    So let me put the matter as clearly as I can.  There is simply no way in good conscience that a Christian can attend and be a part of the celebration of a so-called same sex wedding.  To do so is wrong and against God’s will.  First of all, examine what your motives have to be for taking part if you know that the whole thing is forbidden by God.  If it’s that you fear harming a relationship, doesn’t that mean that you fear people more than God, or put another way, that you love people and care about what they think more than God?  We like to fool ourselves into believing that if we can just maintain the relationship, that eventually we’ll be able to bring people around to the truth of God’s Word.  But in reality we just keep putting things off, and that time is always at some unspecified point in the future.  Meanwhile, our actions speak volumes to the contrary.  Jesus said, “He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me, and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.”  Or perhaps you fear some job-related, financial consequence.  There might be some blowback from a co-worker or client.  And so you try to play both sides and serve two masters.  But again Jesus clearly says, “You cannot serve God and money” (Matthew 6:24).  “One who is faithful in very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in very little is also dishonest in much” (Luke 16:10).

    Some might say, “But didn’t Jesus eat with sinners?”  And the answer is, of course He did!  There is no sinner that Jesus would not engage with, including sexual sinners, and the same should be true for us.  But what was Jesus doing when He sat at table with them?  What was his message when He spoke to them?  It was this: “Repent, and believe the Gospel” (Mark 1:15).  Jesus came calling sinners to repentance.  He came to seek and to save the lost.  He never condoned sin; He forgave sin.  But a same sex wedding is by its very nature an unrepentant approval of sin.  Now, if you can go to a same sex wedding ceremony and call the couple involved to repentance (not to mention everyone else who is approving of this rejection of the Creator), then that would be an exception to the rule.  But of course, that’s not going to happen.  When you go to a wedding, you’re obliged to be pleasant and nice, to laugh at the jokes, to congratulate the couple and the rest of the family, to give them a gift celebrating their union, to act as if everything is just fine and wonderful.  But the flowers and the fancy clothes are only covering rebellion against God.  And this is made all the worse if it takes place in a church, a blasphemy of God’s name.  It’s not angels that are rejoicing in these events, it’s demons.  And we should never join in with the worship of demons.

    We need to wake up to what’s happening.  These things are some of the defining issues of our times.  They are a test that you may well soon be faced with.  It’s easy to justify our actions and take the broad easy road rather than the narrow way.  But let us take the early Christian church as our example.  All they had to do to save their lives and their means of making a living was to offer a pinch of incense to Caesar and acknowledge him as Lord instead of Jesus.  They easily could have rationalized such actions by saying that they were doing those things insincerely, just going through the motions of idolatry, merely mouthing a curse against Christ to save their skins.  But they didn’t.  They would rather lose their lives than to do that.  And that’s how the church grew.  It didn’t grow based on the lukewarm compromise of those who loved their lives in this world, but because of the passionate faith of those who believed in a Creator who could and would raise their bodies from the dead to glory, even if they were mauled by lions or burned at the stake.  That sincere faith and love of God inspired others and eventually won over an empire.

    So let us, then, commit ourselves never to offer the modern pinch of incense to the gods of this world but steadfastly to hold to our confession of faith in the God of creation, the blessed Holy Trinity.  For we have a God who not only created us and our physical natures, but when we had fallen into sin and under the curse of death, He reaffirmed the goodness of His creation by entering into it Himself!  The Son of God, Jesus Christ, took up our human nature in order to restore our humanity again.  What does Scripture say?  “The Word became flesh.”  Notice the Gospel writer uses the most blatantly earthy word possible there–not just “body” but “flesh.”  And when Jesus shared in our flesh, He made it holy.  Through Him all things were made in the beginning, and through Him all things are recreated by the power of His death and resurrection.  Jesus died in the flesh to purge our human nature of its sin, and He rose again in the flesh so that we might also share in His bodily resurrection to glory in the new creation to come.  In the midst of our earthly groaning, we eagerly wait for the redemption of our bodies through our blood brother in the flesh, Jesus (Romans 8:23).

    The devil may do His worst to try to turn God’s creation upside down and corrupt and pollute it.  But Satan has been defeated.  For Jesus has cleansed your humanity forever by joining it to His own divine nature.  Your human nature is now holy and pure in Christ.  Even if you have polluted yourself in the past through various sins, your sins are forgiven and washed away from you forever through faith in His holy, precious blood.  Our maleness and femaleness is an image of how God is a husband to His chosen people, how Christ the holy Groom gives Himself and lays down His life for His elect Lady.  The Church is the baptized Bride of Christ, chosen and precious to Him.  

    So whatever you were before, you are now set apart and sanctified as God’s holy people, His beloved.  And His Word is still powerful to accomplish what it says.  Jesus said to the man in the Gospel “Your son lives,” and he did.  So also He says to you, “Your sins are forgiven.  Fear not.  I have called you by name; you are Mine.”  And it is so.

    Therefore, fellow believers in Jesus, in the midst of the spiritual warfare that we are in on every front, put on the breastplate of His righteousness and the helmet of His freely given salvation.  Take up the sword of the Spirit for the battle, which is the Word of God.  And in all circumstances raise the shield of faith in Christ, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one.  

In the name of the Father and of the ✠ Son and of the Holy Spirit

Beware of False Preachers

Matthew 7:13-23
Trinity 8

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✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

    Everybody expects the pastor to tell people that it’s important for them to come to church.  But do you know why it is that you need to be here every week to hear the preaching of the Gospel?  It’s not to make me happy (although it does); it’s not even to make God happy with you (He already is with those who are in Christ).  In large part it’s because the world is preaching to you a counter-Gospel every single day of the week, and you need to be strengthened and built up and defended against that.  Even if you don’t go to church, you’re still going to hear preaching–just not the preaching of the Gospel.  Worldly philosophies and theologies are being directed at your ears wherever you are–work, home, school, recreation.  And if all you’re hearing are the pop-culture sermons of the world, pretty soon you’re going to start to be led astray from the truth of Christ.  

    Don’t be naive about this.  Every time you watch a TV show or movie, you’re being preached to–there will be some morality, some worldview that is being pushed on you with disarming humor or compelling visual imagery.  Just as a small example, think how many movies have employed the idea of a person’s soul or consciousness moving from one body to another.  Of course it’s just fiction and entertainment, but over time there is a false theology and a false way of understanding soul and body that is being taught.  Or on another subject, a pastor friend recently remarked that on a popular TV sitcom, the unmarried characters are the ones having sex, and the married ones aren’t.  There’s a subtle and subversive message being delivered there.  So also, when you listen to music or go to some concert or entertainment venue, you’re being preached to and marketed to and spun with all sorts of emotional hooks–not only in political ways, but in lifestyle ways.  And lifestyle is always about theology, what you believe about yourself, God, others, how you should spend your money, and so on.  And even in the workplace or at school or college, especially in today’s politically correct, social justice warrior environment, theology and ethics are bound up in the policies about your speech and conduct, in the school or the company's “vision” that you’re asked to buy into, or in all the buzzwords that keep getting repeated.  You see, there’s a way of understanding life and spirituality and what’s good and bad that’s inherent in all of these things–and that understanding is often laced with ideas that don’t align with God’s Word.  So don’t be deceived.  In this present darkness, hearing the preaching of God’s Word once a week is pretty much a bare minimum.null

    Jesus makes it very clear that we should take the danger of the world’s false preaching very seriously when He says, “Beware of false prophets.”  That word “Beware” is the equivalent of a road sign with flashing red lights.  “Danger!” “Watch out!”  He wouldn’t warn us so seriously like that unless the threat were real and important to be alert for.  

    That road sign Jesus gives us is a reminder that there are two paths that you can take in this world, and only one leads to life.  The road that leads to destruction is wide and broad and feels right.  It is the path that most everyone is taking.  It is the way of pleasing people rather than pleasing God, loving yourself more than Him.  You’ve heard the preachers of this path.  They tell you to do what brings you self-fulfillment.  They tell you that you have an inner light within that you must connect with, that you must follow your heart and your dreams and your passions.  Just believe in yourself.  As the Oprah once said, you should speak your truth and live your truth–as if there were more than one truth, no Truth that is higher than us regardless of what we think or feel, just the truth that supposedly flows from our hearts.  But then there’s God’s Word which says, “The heart is deceitful and desperately sick” (Jeremiah 17:9).  Jesus Himself said, “From within, out of the heart...come wickedness and deceit” (Mark 7:21-22).  That’s no place to be looking for truth.  Still, like drivers ignoring a “Bridge Out” sign, people take this broad road and are led over a cliff to their destruction.

    The path of life, on the other hand, is narrow and difficult and is often contrary to what feels right.  It involves going against the flow, following the Word of God and not the crowd or your heart.  The way of life is narrow because it is found exclusively in Christ who said, “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life.  No one comes to the Father except through Me.”  This path is difficult because it is the way of the cross.  It’s not about self-fulfillment, but self-denial. as Jesus said, "Deny yourself and take up your cross and follow Me."  It’s not about loving yourself above all but loving others and esteeming others better than yourself.  It is the way of repentance and sacrifice.  It is the Way of Jesus who bore the cross for you so that you may follow Him through suffering to share with Him in the resurrection of the body.  Jesus walked that narrow way of sorrows for you to Calvary.  He died to take away your sins; He cleared the path and opened the narrow gate of faith in Him so that you may have eternal life purely by His grace.

    Beware, then, of being lured off the narrow way of Jesus.  You know you’re being tempted by the spirit of false prophecy when your biggest fear is being accused of being judgmental; when you tell yourself that it’s not your place to speak up, to speak the truth in love, even to a close friend or family member who needs to be called to repentance and faith in Christ.  No, better just to keep the peace and not rock the boat and hope that they’ll magically return to Christ apart from His spoken Word.  But all you’re doing by that is showing that you love God less than you love your relationships with those people.  And in fact it’s not really showing love to those people, anyway, to ignore unrepentant sin which invites God’s judgment on them.

    Beware of false prophets.  They may look like fine, pious, upstanding people you should be paying attention to.  But inwardly, Jesus says, they are ravenous wolves in sheep’s clothing.  The devil comes as an angel of light, as something good, and so do false preachers.  The thing that makes the lie powerful is that it masquerades as the truth.  Jeremiah said that false prophets, be they men or women, speak a vision of their own heart, not from the mouth of the Lord.  They don’t preach the truth God has given them in His Word, but what the people want to hear; they preach their own dreams and their own wisdom.  They are without the true teaching of Christ, in which alone there is salvation.

    That’s ultimately how you can tell false prophets from true ones, not by the wonders they can do or how successful they are, not even by how loving they are, but by what they teach, whether it is the pure Law and Gospel of Scripture or something else.  I’ve had people comment to me about how packed this Lutheran megachurch is or that non-denominational or Assembly of God church is.  The implication usually is that they must be doing something good and blessed by God to have those numbers.  But do you remember the faithful prophet Elijah?  He thought he was the only one left who worshiped the Lord in his day.  The Baal worshipers had all the numbers.  God reminded Elijah that still He reserved 7000 faithful among the hundreds and hundreds of thousands in Israel who worshiped the spirit of the age.  Remember what Jesus says, “By their fruit you will know them.”  The fruit refers not to their deeds (which can deceive) but to their doctrine.  What spiritual food do they offer?  What do they hold forth for your souls to feast upon?  I John 4 says, “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world.”  It is written in 2 John, “Whoever does not abide in the doctrine of Christ does not have God.”  “By their fruits you will know them.”

    So in the midst of all the religion talk and God-talk that you hear, ask yourself, is the focus on me and my praising of God, or is it on Christ and what He has done for me and given to me?  Is it about how I can have a better life in this world and find self-fulfillment and happiness through my own spirituality, or is it about how I can have a new life in Jesus solely through His suffering and death and resurrection?

    And if you want to know whether a teacher is true or false, just consider: Does he direct you to the shifting sands of your own decisions and commitments (like an altar call where you come down to give your heart to Jesus or some such thing), or does he direct you to the solid rock of Christ’s commitment to you and His sure baptismal promise which He gives you?  Does he direct you to your own efforts and works as a way of gaining eternal life or saving you from purgatory, or does he direct you always to the all-sufficient sacrifice of Christ on the cross?  Does he only speak of things in mystical, inward, spiritual terms, or does he emphasize the concrete realities of the faith, that Christ took on your flesh and blood as a true man, that He was raised from the dead in the body, that He comes to you now with His true, real body and blood for your forgiveness in the Sacrament, that you will be raised bodily on the Last Day?

    Jesus said, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.”  You'll note that the false prophets in today's Gospel were focused on their own works.  "Lord did we not prophesy and cast out demons and do many wonders in your name?"  They were talking about what they did!  But the will of the Father is all wrapped up and centered not in what we have done but in Christ and what He has done.  He is the one who does the will of the Father perfectly for you.  He is the One who prayed to the Father in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Not my will but Yours be done.”  The will of the Father was that Jesus go to the cross to suffer and die as the ransom price to redeem you and save you.  And so the will of the Father for you is that you be saved, that you trust in Christ and cling to Him alone for redemption and follow Him day by day in the callings He has placed you into.   It is written in John 6, “This is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”  That’s what it means to do the will of the Father: to cling to Christ as the way of life, to believe in Him and stake your life on Him.  He alone is the way into the kingdom of heaven, He who is fully God and fully man, made flesh, who was crucified, resurrected, and ascended for the salvation of sinners.  The will of God is fulfilled in Jesus for you.

    So beware of preachers who teach something different than the faithful pattern of Scriptural words that you’ve been given in the catechism and the creeds.  Learn to know these things by heart; carry them with you as a defense against the world’s false preaching and the world’s allurements.  Beware of those who cast aside the liturgy for something supposedly better and more contemporary, whose teaching doesn’t square with the words of divine service and the preaching that you hear in this place.  Even if you can’t quite put your finger on what’s wrong, just flee from them.  And flee to Christ.  Take refuge in Him, give attention to His words.  Living in the gift of your baptism, follow that narrow way of Him who is Way, the Truth, and the Life.  In Him you are safe.

    The good tree in the Gospel that bears good fruit is the cross on which Christ hung.  As it is written, “Christ Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we having died to sins, might live for righteousness.  By His stripes we are healed.”  So you could say, Jesus is not a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He is the reverse; He subverts the devil's ways. He is a sheep in wolves’ clothing.  He is the pure Lamb of God who allowed Himself to be cloaked in darkness and sin at Golgotha in order to put them to death in His body, so that you would be delivered from all evil.  The wolf has been conquered.  Sin, death, and the devil have been undone for you.  Believing in Christ, taking refuge in Him, you are saved and safe forever from all the lying anti-Gospels that are out there.  As St. Paul said, you are the church of God which He has purchased with His own blood.  Even when your heart and your feelings say otherwise, you belong to Him still; He will never leave you or forsake you.  Nothing in all creation can separate you from His love.

    Come, then, to the holy tree and receive the holy fruit of His blood and His body, which cleanses you of your sin and gives you everlasting life.  Jesus is your true Prophet and the fulfillment of all prophecy.  By His fruits you will know Him.

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

Merciful as Your Heavenly Father

Luke 6:36-42

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✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

    One thing I’ve noticed about our fallen human nature is that we have a strong desire to want to place blame and to point out people’s shortcomings when something isn’t quite how we think it should be.  Isn’t that true?  For some reason, when something has gone wrong–at home, at work, wherever–we feel compelled to make clear that it was so-and-so who messed up.  We want to be sure they don’t just get away with their mistake.  We often care more about fixing blame than fixing the problem.  It’s much easier to find fault than it is to show mercy.

    Not very many people measure up to our standards, do they?  They fall short in this area or that area.  They’ve got this annoying habit or that character flaw.  It’s easy for us to see such things in others.  Now, if everybody were like me, we say, then maybe things would be better.  But think about it.  What if everyone were just like you?   That sounds to me like a good formula for a horror movie, where everybody walking around is an exact replica of your personality.  

    And even more importantly, what if God were like you?  Would that be good news or bad news?  What if God judged you in the same way you judge others?  What if God exposed all the thoughts of your heart toward others and all of the gossip you’ve spoken about them?  What if He were in the business of finding fault and making sure you null experience the full consequences of what you deserve?

    Jesus warns us that if we insist on living without mercy toward others, we are inviting God to be without mercy toward us.  If we’re all about pointing out specks of sawdust in other people’s eyes, the 2 x 4 in our own eye is going to end up bludgeoning us in the head.  “Judge not, and you shall not be judged.  Condemn not and you shall not be condemned.  Forgive, and you will be forgiven.  Give, and it will be given to you: good measure pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom.  For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you.”

    The way you’ve treated others is how you’re going to be treated.  If that doesn’t scare you a bit, listen to these verses just before today’s Gospel, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who spitefully use you. . .  If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?  For even sinners love those who love them.  And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you?  For even sinners do the same.  And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive back, what credit is that to you?  For even sinners lend to sinners to receive as much back. But love your enemies, do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High.”

    Such words, while good and true, must also terrify us and crush us.  For we have no power of ourselves to do what God asks, not truly and fully, not from the heart with the right motivations.  We don’t want to give away our money and do good to those who hate us and pray for those who use us.  We want payback!  We are not sons of the Most High by nature, we are children of the evil one.  Realizing this, all we can do is to cry out to the Lord, “Help me!  Save me from myself!  Have mercy on me!”

    And the good news in today’s Gospel is that our Father in heaven is merciful.  He is abounding in steadfast love.  In mercy He causes His sun to rise on the evil as well as the good.  And He sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.  He provides daily bread to all people, even those who hate Him and reject Him, even those who through false religion want to use Him for their own purposes.  

    But God’s mercy does not stop there.  His mercy extends even to the point of sending His Son into our very flesh to save us from the curse of death.  Though Jesus was blameless, He allowed all of our blame and our blaming to be put on Him.  Jesus made all of our faults and sins His own, and He set us free from their condemnation by dying for us and shedding His blood in our place on the plank of the cross.  Now, because of that, the Father in heaven finds no fault with you.  For you who believe wear the holiness of Christ.  You are forgiven and cleansed and righteous in Jesus’ name.  

    Remember, that’s how God sees you.  The Scriptures say, “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”  God’s not watching you just waiting for you to mess up so that He can nail you.  For He already nailed His Son on your behalf.  God’s not in the blame business.  He already took care of all of that at Calvary.  He’s in the mercy business, mercy that is limitless and overflowing.

    Jesus is Himself pure mercy in the flesh.  Just consider how His words are embodied and fulfilled in His own life.  He is the One who gave freely and did good to all, healing and helping, asking for nothing in return.  He is the One who, when He was struck on one cheek during His trial did not retaliate but turned the other cheek.  He loved His enemies, blessed those who cursed Him, and prayed for those who spitefully used Him.  Remember what He said on the cross of those who crucified Him, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”  

    The Father continues even now to answer that prayer for you.  He perpetually pours out His forgiveness and mercy to you through Christ from the cross.  In fact so great and generous is His love that He even gives you the right to call Him your Father.  Jesus says here, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”  Only Christ can rightly claim God as Father.  And yet He invites you to step into His place and call God your Father.  When the angel Gabriel came to the Blessed Virgin Mary, he said that her child would be called the Son of the Most High.  Now that you have been baptized into Christ, you are also counted as sons of the Most High.  That is rich mercy, that God the Father gives you the same status as Jesus.  You have become as little Christs before the Father.

    And if that is true, then you are also given to become little Christs to your neighbor.  Jesus has given you to stand in His place before the Father by faith.  And now you are called to invite your neighbor to stand in your place, that is, to love your neighbor as if He were your own self, to “be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful.”  You live in Christ, trusting in the Father’s mercy, and Christ lives in you, being merciful toward your neighbor.  It’s all about Jesus.  For there is no mercy apart from Him.

    Your old Adam can show no real mercy; he’s always in the “I’ll do a favor for you if you can do a favor for me” business.  And so your sinful nature must die through repentance, that Christ may arise in you to be merciful.  By His preaching and the sacraments Jesus dwells in you to love even your enemies and to pray for your antagonists and adversaries.  He lives in you so that you may walk by faith in the Father, letting go of your desire for vengeance, trusting in God to take care of that. Through Christ you know that your life is safely in the hands of the Lord and Judge of all.  Jesus already suffered and paid for your enemies’ sins.  And He says of those enemies who reject His mercy, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay.”  You don’t have to worry about payback, because God will take care of that.  He’s better at vengeance than you are anyway.  It’s in the Lord’s hands, hands once nailed to the cross.  Perhaps your enemy will repent and be saved by the same mercy that saved you.  And if not, vengeance is the Lord’s.

    Confident of that, you are now free to feed your adversary and give Him drink and to overcome evil with good.  Living in Christ you get to forgive those who have used you, as Joseph did his brothers.  You get to put the best construction on other people’s words and actions and to cover over and ignore their failings and shortcomings.  You get to do good to all, whether or not the recipients are worthy.  You get to lend your money, whether or not you’ll ever get as much in return.  For you know that you have the greatest good in Christ and treasure in heaven.

    This is the way of life in Christ, the life of mercy.  It’s not a way that ignores or doesn’t care about what’s right and wrong.  That’s not what “judge not” means.  The world abuses and misuses this verse to mean that immorality and false doctrine should be tolerated.  But “Judge not” doesn’t mean “Condone sin.”  We’re not loving our neighbors by approving of things that cut them off from eternal life.  Rather, “judge not” is the way which acknowledges that God’s mercy in Christ is greater than the faults and sins of our neighbor and of ourselves.  Only by His mercy do we live.  It is as Jesus said to the woman caught in adultery–and note both parts of this statement.  He said, “Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.” By God’s mercy the plank is taken out of our eye.  By God’s mercy we forgive and remove the speck in our brother’s eye.  

    That mercy comes to you again this day in His supper; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom as you receive Christ’s holy body and the cup that runs over with abounding love, His holy blood poured out for you for the forgiveness of sins.

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

No Excuses for the Great Feast

Luke 14:15-24

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✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

    When people make excuses, it’s often because they don’t really want to take part in the thing they’re being asked to.  You’re invited to a party, but it’s people you don’t really know or don’t like being with, and so you come up with an excuse for why you can’t come.  Or a guy asks a girl out on a date.  But she comes up with all these reasons why this evening or that evening won’t work.  If she really wanted to spend time with him, she’d rearrange her schedule or offer a time that would work.  But the excuses are a sure sign to him that she’s not interested.  So also with church, people come up with all sorts of excuses and rationalizations.  If a famous celebrity or athlete were going to be here, or a beloved friend or a family member that they hadn’t seen for a long time, they’d rearrange the schedule and be sure to be here early.  But simply Jesus and His words and supper?  Boy, I’m really busy right now.  Maybe next week.

    In today’s Gospel Jesus speaks about some folks who were making excuses.  He begins, “A certain man gave a great supper and invited many.”  This man is God the Father.  His supper is the banquet of salvation, the heavenly meal of forgiveness and life.  This meal was purchased by Jesus through His death for sin and His victory over the grave on Easter.  In fact Jesus is Himself the meal, the Bread of Life given in the Scriptures and in the holy supper of His body and blood.  God has sent out His Holy Spirit to invite many through the preaching of the Gospel to come to the feast.  All things have been prepared by God; there is no cost or strings attached.  null

    But it is written, “They all with one accord began to make excuses.”  They all were looking for ways to get out of this Gospel invitation.  They had other things they thought were more important to do.  Honoring the Giver of the feast, being with Him and sharing in the joy of His meal just wasn’t something they were all that interested in.  It’s the old brush off, “God, you’re really sweet and all, but maybe some other time.”

    The first said, “I have bought a piece of ground, and I must go and see it.  I ask you to have me excused.”  This man is caught up in his property and does not believe that in Christ the meek shall inherit the earth.  He seeks to gain the world and in the process forfeits his soul.  He sees the value of land but does not desire the priceless land of the new creation.  He elects to go and see his piece of ground, almost like a burial plot, showing his destiny to return to the ground in death.  Property and possessions often lure us away from the Gospel feast.  But we dare never treasure what we have paid for above that which God has freely given in Christ.

    The second said, “I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to test them.  I ask you to have me excused.”  This man prefers his work to the work of Christ, who said, “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”  This man is like those who want to produce their own righteousness before God, walking under the yoke of the five books of Moses’ Law, rather than trusting in the righteousness of Christ, walking in the freedom of the Gospel.  But in the end they will find no rest.  Their labor and struggle will be in vain.  The temptation for us is to value our own efforts at good living over and above the grace of Christ.  Whenever we think we can do without the banquet of Jesus serving us His Word and Sacraments, we are by definition trusting in our own service and works.

    The third said, “I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.”  This man prized his earthly marriage over the heavenly wedding of Christ and His Churchly Bride.  He loved union with his wife more than communion with his Creator.  When death parts him from his wife, there will be nothing to restore him to life.  So also, we must guard against turning the good blessings of marriage and sexuality against the God who created them, or putting our spouse or family before the Lord.  For He said, “Whoever loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of Me.”

    Jesus spoke this parable against the unbelieving Jews of His day.  They had Him in their midst.  They heard Him preach and teach.  But most of Israel rejected Jesus as the Messiah and the Savior.  They felt no need for the salvation He came to bring.  They didn’t think of themselves as poor, miserable sinners, just people with a few minor imperfections.  Often it was only the lowly and the outcast of society who believed in Jesus and trusted His words of life.  This is what Jesus is referring to in the parable, “Then the master of the house, being angry [at those who rejected the invitation], said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in here the poor and the maimed and the lame and the blind.’” “If you people are too good to come to My feast, fine.  Then I’ll fill my house with those whom you self-righteous look down upon, those who hunger and thirst for My righteousness.  And they shall be filled with eternally satisfying food.”

    God will have a full house on the Last Day for His feast.  And if those who should come don’t, then many whom you might not expect will–not only the poor and the lame and the blind, but also even many from among the heathen nations will be brought to believe and be saved.  In the parable the servant said, “‘Master  it is done as you commanded, and still there is room.’  Then the master said to the servant, ‘Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.’”  For this meal is given not on the credentials of the invitees but on the graciousness of the Host.

    This parable is given by Jesus, then, as a warning to us against being complacent and ho-hum about the Gospel and losing our hunger for the feast.  You’ll often notice this when people start saying that they need something more than what divine service offers–something more entertaining or uplifting.  They’ll say things like, “I’m just not being fed; this just isn’t doing it for me”–as if Christ’s preaching and His Sacraments are of little value.  We always want the attention to be on what fulfills our desires and on what we do.  But to the Jews who thought they had heaven wrapped up by virtue of their genealogy and good deeds, Jesus said, “None of those who were invited shall taste my supper.”  That should put a little of the fear of God in us.  Let us also be on guard against putting our faith in our religious pedigree or our good living.  For when we do that, we’ll lose our hunger for the things of God and turn away from the Spirit’s invitation.

    Notice that in the end the only ones taking part in the feast are beggars and foreigners.  For only they  were given to see their need for what the Master had to give.  This is what you also must become before God: a hungry beggar, a needy foreigner, like a starving man in a third world country with flies landing on your face that you don’t even have the strength to brush away.  You must be brought by God to see that of yourself you are spiritually empty, with nowhere else to turn but to Him.  The divine Law must expose your desperate need so that you will crave the Bread of Life.  Only then will the great supper be not just one of many other more important things to do.  It will be the one thing that you cannot do without, the very source of your life.  For the meal is Christ, and He said, “Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. . . He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in Him.”  And if Christ dwells in you, then the sin and death which trouble you ultimately cannot harm you.  His presence gives you real life that even conquers the grave. 

    So take to heart what our Lord’s invitation is saying to you: Do not be afraid.  Do not be sad.  Do not think yourself unworthy or dwell upon your past sins.  They are gone.  They are forgiven.  If you are weary, heartbroken, lonely, wracked with guilt or uncertainty, hear the words of the Lord when he says to you, “Come to the feast!”  It has been made ready for you to heal and restore you. The greatest and the least, the popular and the outcasts, the cool and the uncool, the wealthy and the poor–everyone is invited!  Leave behind the love of temporary things.  Dwell upon the love of Christ who has loved you beyond all telling.  The highways and hedges of this world are not your true home.  He has brought you here this day to His House and to His Feast.  Come, taste of His Supper.

    Our Savior desires that you call upon Him and rest in Him.  He wants you here.  You are clean and worthy to be with the Bridegroom.  He is faithful to you.  He wants you to feast, to be reunited with Him, to be full and satisfied, to be without fear and at peace.  You are reconciled with God and righteous in Christ. The banquet table is laid before you, His flesh and blood which give you life and the resurrection of the body.  Partake of this holy, life-giving food.  Fear the Lord, which is to say, love and trust in the Lord with all due reverence.  Believe in Christ and be put right with the Father.  Receive the foretaste of the feast to come.  For blessed is He who shall eat bread in the kingdom of God.  And the kingdom of God is here.

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

The Fire of Tongues

Audio Player Audio PlayerActs 2:1-21

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

    Fire can cleanse, and fire can destroy.  Fire can serve good purposes, like keeping us warm or cooking our food; or it can do great harm, as we saw so dramatically in the burning of Trinity Lutheran Church downtown.  God appears to Moses in the burning bush, which is aflame but is not consumed; hell is described as a lake of fire and unspeakable torment.  So we must learn to distinguish between the fire that is from God, and the fire that seeks to work against Him.  

    On the 50th day after Easter, tongues of fire came to rest on the apostles as they were gathered together in the upper room.  Then they began to speak with other tongues as the Holy Spirit gave them utterance.  Simple Galileans, recognizable by their northern accents, spoke with fiery boldness in the mother tongues of all those who were gathered there in Jerusalem from all over the world, proclaiming the wonderful works of God in Christ in dozens of different languages.

    However, we also hear in the Scriptures of another fire of tongues.  James writes this, “The tongue is a little member and boasts great things.  See how great a forest a little fire kindles!  And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity.  The tongue is so set among our members that it defiles the whole body, and sets on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire by hell!” (James 3:5-6)

    So there are two kinds of tongues and two kinds of fire here.  First, there is the tongue of the Word of God, whose fire is the Spirit of God.  Second, there is the tongue that is set within our bodily members, whose fire is hell.  The devil always tries to copy and mimic God, but in an upside down and destructive way.  Though both of these are fiery tongues, they stand in diametrical opposition to one another.null

    We know all too well how our tongues and our speech can be used in ways that are contrary to God and that manipulate things to our advantage.  We know the perverse pleasure of sharing in gossip that helps rumors to spread like wildfire.  We know what it’s like to deceive by not quite telling the whole truth, how to say things a certain way to make ourselves look better or cover up our sin.  And we know what it’s like to use our tongues to cut others down rather than to build others up.  Again James writes, “The tongue is full of deadly poison.  With it we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the similitude of God.  Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing.  My brethren, these things ought not to be so” (James 3:8-10).  Rather, St. Paul says, “Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers” (Ephesians 4:29).  

    That’s what the problem was with the people at Babel.  They didn’t use their tongues to impart the grace of God or glorify Him, but to glorify and exalt themselves.  They said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves.”  Not wanting to receive the identity that God had given them, they engaged in the religion of following their dreams and believing in themselves to get them to the heavens.  But that is a doctrine of the devil.  It is a hellish tongue which teaches you to trust in yourself and to pride yourself in your own choices and achievements.  Still today God confuses and scatters us in our rebellion and tears down our towers, that we might learn humility and be brought to repentance before Him.

    But, of course, our Lord doesn’t stop there.  Then God undoes the destructive, fiery tongue of man with His own constructive, fiery tongue of life.  Pentecost is the undoing of Babel.  At Babel God said in judgment, “Come, let us go down and confuse their language.”  At Pentecost God the Father said in mercy to His only begotten Son, “Come, let us go down and pour out our Spirit on them, so that the words of the Gospel might be clearly proclaimed to them in their own language.  Let their ears be opened so that they may not be confused but may understand and receive the forgiveness and salvation which you, my beloved Son, won for them on the cross.”

    And so it was that there was a sound of a rushing, mighty wind and tongues of fire on those gathered together for worship on that Sunday morning.  God was blowing the breath of His Spirit across the embers of His little band of disciples to stir up the flame of the Church.  Martin Luther said that the artists who have depicted Pentecost missed the point when they drew the tongues of fire on the top of everyone’s heads.  The tongues of fire should be resting over their mouths, he suggested, because the mouth is where the action is with the Holy Spirit.  The church is a mouth house, where the Holy Spirit proclaims the Gospel from the mouth of a preacher, and believers confess that Gospel and sing and pray and extol the Lord and Savior with their mouths.

    Our tongues must be purified with the Spirit’s refining fire to do that.  Recall the prophet Isaiah, who saw the Lord lifted high and exalted upon His throne.  Isaiah said, “Woe is me!  For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.”  Isaiah knew that his lips were soiled by sin and needed to be cleansed.  Then one of the fiery seraphim swooped down to the incense altar and took a fiery coal and touched it to Isaiah’s lips, and he absolved him.  “Your guilt is taken away, your sin is purged,” the angel said.  Isaiah’s mouth was purified by fire.

    That burning coal is a picture for us of the Word and fiery Spirit of our God.  To those who cry out in penitence with Isaiah saying, “Woe is me; for I am lost!”  “Lord, deliver me from my sin,” the Holy Spirit comes with the live coal of Christ’s Word and purifies our lips and cleanses us of our sin.  The same Jesus who purified our human nature by becoming man, the same Jesus who felt the fires of hell for us on the cross and suffered the inferno of God’s judgment to redeem us and save us, the same Jesus who rose from the dead on the third day to give us victory over the grave and everlasting life–He now pours out His Holy Spirit to deliver those gifts of salvation to you through His Word and through the Sacraments.  John the Baptist preached that “Jesus will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”  And truly the Holy Spirit is a cleansing fire, who purges you of all iniquity through the precious blood of Christ.

    That’s what the Holy Spirit was all about at the first Pentecost; and that’s He’s still about today.  We sometimes forget that the main thing that happened on Pentecost was not the signs of the rushing wind and the fire, but the preaching and the baptizing that the Holy Spirit did through the apostles.  Most of Acts chapter 2 is the sermon which Peter spoke that day.  By the Spirit’s power, He condemned the people for their unbelief in Christ and their wickedness in putting Jesus to death.  Yet Peter also proclaimed how God accomplished His saving purposes through Christ's death, and how the Father raised Jesus from the dead as Lord of all and the only Savior.  When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart in sorrow for their sin, and they said to the apostles, “What shall we do?”  Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.  And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.  The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off–for all whom the Lord our God will call.”  About 3,000 people were baptized that day from all different lands and languages, who carried that Spirit-filled Gospel home with them, spreading it like a prairie brush fire.  And of those who remained in Jerusalem, it is written that they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread in the Lord’s Supper, and to the prayers.

    So we may not have the sound of the rushing of the wind and the tongues of fire any longer–those were one-time signs marking the first outpouring.  But the Spirit is still at work fanning the flame of faith and love to glow brightly among God’s people.  The Holy Spirit continues to be poured out in baptism, which is the new birth of water and the Spirit.  The Holy Spirit continues His ministry of calling people to true repentance and of preaching the life-giving Word of Christ.  And the Holy Spirit continues to place the fiery Word on your tongue by giving into your mouth the body and blood of Christ, the Word made flesh, for the forgiveness of your sins.  In these ways the Holy Spirit opens your lips, that you may pray to God, praise Him, and give Him thanks in true faith.  As it is written, “Whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

    Pentecost is still continuing.  Not in the ecstatic babbling that goes on in so-called “Pentecostal” churches.  Rather, it goes on whenever the Bible is translated into a new language or whenever a missionary carries the Gospel to people in their own mother tongue.  Just the fact that we can even hear the Gospel in English right now is a sign of the working of the Holy Spirit.  The forgiveness of your sins, purchased for you by a man who spoke Aramaic and Hebrew, preached by apostles who spoke Greek, confessed by much of the early church which spoke Latin, has come to you in your own language, English, a Gentile tongue.  That’s God’s gift to you. There’s no more personal way of saying that Jesus is your Savior from sin and death than to say it in your own language.  Jesus is for you.  You can be sure of it because you are hearing it in your own native tongue.

    Let us then, today and always, speak that language which the Holy Spirit has taught you, the language of faith.  For it is written, “No one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.”  Let us use our tongues to sing and proclaim the wonderful deeds of our Savior, who has called us out of darkness into His marvelous light.  May our prayer ever be, “Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of the faithful, and kindle in the them the fire of your love.”

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

(With thanks to the Rev. Dr. Burnell Eckardt for some of the above)

Whatever You Ask in My Name

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✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

    Jesus declares in today’s Gospel, “Most assuredly, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in My name He will give you.”  That’s a pretty amazing promise, isn’t it.  And it’s true.  But let’s be sure and listen carefully to what Jesus says.  For there are some who misunderstand those words to mean that you can ask for literally anything you want, and as long as you pray it sincerely in faith and add the tag line “in Jesus’ name,” God will grant it to you.  I’m sure you’ve heard this referred to before as the prosperity gospel, health and wealth teaching, “name it and claim it.”  If you pray for something by name and claim it as your own and truly believe God will give it to you, then you’ll receive it–be it a better paying job or healing from some disease or a new car or any number of things. And if you don’t receive it, well, then it’s because you didn’t pray hard enough or have strong enough faith.

    But that’s certainly not what it means to pray in Jesus’ name.  It is written in James 4, “You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures.  Adulterers and adulteresses!  Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?” (James 4:3-4) So prayer in Jesus’ name is certainly not a blank check to fulfill all your worldly dreams and desires.  We must confess that too often that’s how we utilize prayer, to try to get God to follow our will rather than asking Him to conform us to His will, to get Him to make our dreams and plans come to fulfillment rather than seeking our place in the fulfillment of His plan of salvation.null

    To pray in Jesus’ name means, first of all, that you pray as one who is baptized.  For it is in the water that He put His name on you and gave His name to you so that you may come to the Father in prayer.  In Baptism the Son of God joined you to Himself and made you members of God’s family so that you now have access to the Father as His children.  When someone is baptized, during the ceremony the pastor lays his hands upon their head while the Lord’s Prayer is prayed.  That is meant to be a visual declaration that the gift of calling God “Father” is being given to the one baptized.  Now they, too, are given permission to pray the Lord’s Prayer.  It’s as if Jesus is giving you His username and password at the font.  It’s not identity theft, it’s an identity gift.  In Jesus you are counted as sons of God with all the benefits that entails.  You are given the privilege of coming before the Father with the same status and standing as Jesus Himself!  God hears you just like He hears Jesus.  The name of Jesus opens heaven to you.  It unlocks the door to the Father’s heart.  

    This is so important to remember, because apart from Christ, heaven is closed to you, locked tight.  Your sin is like an impenetrable barrier that separates you from your Creator.  And you can’t break through from this side.  But by coming to you from the Father and taking on your human nature, Jesus broke through the sin-barrier from the other side.  Through His cross and resurrection and ascension back to the Father, He has given you an opening and a portal to heaven.  There is only one way to access God, to come to Him in prayer, and that is through Jesus.  

    Non-Christian religions, therefore, do not lead to the true God, even if they teach that there’s only one God–not Judaism, not Islam, not Buddhism, not the nature religion of Native Americans.  For they all reject Jesus as being the incarnate Son of God and the Savior from sin.  And He is the only way to God, as He said, “No one comes to the Father except through Me.”  Jesus also said in Luke 10, “He who rejects Me rejects Him who sent Me.”  These other religions don’t even have God the Father, for they’ve rejected His Son who reveals Him.  

    So listen to today’s Epistle reading and take it to heart: “There is One Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus.”  You can’t come to God the Father directly; you need an intermediary, a go-between.  It is sheer foolishness and arrogance to think that you can just waltz into God’s presence and that He has to listen to you based on your own merits.  That wouldn’t be true even with an earthly authority.  You can’t just presume that because you want to talk to the governor or the president that they’re required to make an appointment with you and listen to you.  You have to have an in, something or someone that gets you into their presence.  How much more so, then, with the King of kings!  There has to be a reason for you to be given an audience with Him.  And don’t ever think that your own merits and good living will do the trick, like some cash bribe to a politician.  God doesn’t do quid pro quo and bargaining; he can’t be bought by anything that you do.

    No, to pray in Jesus’ name means to pray with faith in what He has done to save you, to know that it is only because of His merits that you can come before the heavenly throne with your petitions and prayers.  It is to pray knowing that Christ is your sole passageway to the Father.  Like Moses was for the people of Israel in the wilderness, so Jesus is our intermediary, our go-between, our eternal  peacemaker with God.  As the bronze serpent was lifted up, our Lord Jesus was lifted up on the cross for us, so that everyone who looks to Him in faith may be saved from the venom of sin and be restored to fellowship with the Father.

    Prayer in Jesus’ name, then, is prayer that begins with Jesus and His coming to us–not only in His ministry 2000 years ago, but also as He comes to us now through His words and Spirit.  Christ is still the Mediator between us and the Father.  Christian prayer begins with listening to the Gospel of Christ, listening to and meditating on the words of the Scriptures read and proclaimed, and then on the basis of that Word, speaking back to Him in faith, making requests based on what He has said and promised, praising Him for what He has done.  

    That is the Trinitarian shape of Christian prayer: The Father speaks to us through His Son by the Holy Spirit.  And we speak by the Holy Spirit through the Son to the Father.  First the Father comes to us through Christ with His words of life; and then, having been filled with His life, we are enabled through faith in Christ to pray those words back to the Father and bring our needs and requests before Him.  True prayer is based not on the poverty of our sinful hearts, but on the richness of God’s faithful Word.

    This is our response, then, to those espousing a “name it and claim it” theology.  Godly prayer is shaped by God’s words.  Prayer in Jesus’ name is prayer that proceeds from faith in Him.  And faith never prays “My will be done,” but, “Thy will be done.”  Faith trusts that God’s will in Jesus is good and gracious.  For the name “Jesus” literally means “The Lord saves.” When we pray in Jesus’ name, therefore, we are asking the Father for all of the saving gifts that have been put into that name which is above every name.  All of this and more is the meaning of Jesus’ words, “Most assuredly, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in My name He will give you.”  

    So, with this right understanding of Jesus’ words, the question must be asked: Do we take Jesus at His Word?  Does this tremendous promise and privilege move us to pray and to seek Him?  All too often, we must confess that we are lazy in our prayer, or we want to pray but are easily distracted from it by other priorities.  The devil, the world, and our own flesh are always seeking to divert us from prayer.  You must therefore prepare yourselves to oppose them.  When they prompt you to think that there’s something else you must do first, then you must say, “No; as soon as the need arises, I will pray.  For when I have need to call upon God, that is the right time to do it.  As God says, ‘Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you will glorify Me.’  And if I do not feel ready or worthy to pray, God will make me ready and worthy.  For I know that He loves me, not because I am so good and righteous, but because of Christ, whom I love and in whom I believe.”

    And when you are tempted to think that your prayer won’t do any good, be reminded of Jesus’ promise.  He said, “Ask and you will receive, that your joy may be full.”  He urgently invites you to come to Him as dear children to a loving Father.  If earthly fathers, who are sinners, generally know how to give good things to their children, how much more will our Father in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!  If I told you that there was a rich man or a king sitting on a pile of gold saying, “Ask and you will receive,” you wouldn’t say, “Oh, I’ll get around to it later.”  You’d go right to him and make your request.  How much more should you do so with the King of heaven!  God will never turn away a heart that trusts in Him.  And even if your prayers in Jesus’ name aren’t answered immediately or precisely the way you’d like, they will all be answered for your good.  Sometimes the best thing God can do for you is not to give you what you want, at least not right away.  In the end though all your faithful prayers will be answered “yes” in the resurrection, when Jesus comes again to bring us the richness of heaven and the restoration of our bodies and the fullness of joy and peace.  For it is written in 2 Corinthians, “No matter how many promises God has made, they are all ‘Yes’ in Christ.”

    Therefore, the Apostle Paul exhorts us, “Pray without ceasing.”  Pray silently; pray out loud. Use the morning and evening prayers and the meal prayers given you in the Catechism.  Pray the Psalms and the Lord’s Prayer given you in the Scriptures.  If nothing else, simply pray, “Lord, have mercy.”  You will never have a shortage of things to pray for in this fallen world.  Jesus said it plainly, “In the world you will have tribulation”–both as a result of the curse of sin and death, and because you are seeking to live faithfully as a Christian.  Both of those things are bound to bring you trouble, sooner or later.  However, Jesus goes on, “But be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”  In Him, by His cross and resurrection, the victory is won; all that troubles you has been overcome and defeated.  So pray with boldness and confidence in Him who is the risen Conqueror, who has given you His triumph, who has opened the door of heaven to you.  And believe Him when He says, “Ask and you will receive, that your joy may be full.”

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

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