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Sorry Sinners Bonded Together By The Cross
Ash Wednesday, 2012
Joel 2: 12 - 19
1 Yet even now,” declares the Lord, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
13 and rend your hearts and not your garments.”
Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love;
and he relents over disaster.
15 Blow the trumpet in Zion; consecrate a fast;
call a solemn assembly;
16 gather the people.
Consecrate the congregation;
assemble the elders;
gather the children,
even nursing infants.
Let the bridegroom leave his room,
and the bride her chamber.
17 Between the vestibule and the altar
let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep
and say, “Spare your people, O Lord…
Dear Friends in Christ,
There are two kinds of sinners – those who are sorry for their sins and those who aren’t so sorry. Or to say it another way – those who are penitent and those who are impenitent. Or to say it still another way – sinners who are bonded together by the cross and those who are not. Those who remember that they came from dust and will be returning to dust and then there are those who live it up today with little or no thought for tomorrow, much less the day of death.
The lessons appointed for Ash Wednesday invite us to remember who we are and who God is. To help us remember who we are, we offer ashes – and to help us remember who God is we offer them in the shape of a cross.
Ash Wednesday is an easy day to remember the words of the committal part of the funeral service which say, “Therefore we commit this body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” A form of those words were spoken for the very first time in the garden of Eden, after Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden tree, “Dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return.”
There’s not much value in dust and ashes, is there? I suppose gardeners could use it to help grow their plants, but for the most part, dust and ashes are worthless. In, it is worse than worthless, it is a hinderance and a liability. You can’t make it pretty by painting it and you can’t make dust and ashes smell good by spraying perfume on it. Dust is dust, ashes are ashes, and the plain fact is they are both largely to be avoided.
So also it is with us. If left to ourselves, all of our righteousness is like filthy rags. Apart from Christ, our virtues when added to our sinful thoughts and feelings and actions are like adding sweet smelling perfume to a body that is terrible dirty and smelly without washing first.
Two lessons we want tonight about what it means to be sorry sinners bonded together by the cross. The first is that along with all of the good news in our lives every day, there is plenty of bad news. The good news according to the First Article of our Creed is that we have been created marvelously and wonderfully every one of us, with no exceptions. Whether people are Christians or not, they are blessed with every sunrise. The Bible says that the rain falls on the just and the unjust. Believers and unbelievers alike are shaped and molded and given life with all kinds of talents and abilities and purposes.
Especially in this great land of ours, most of us have been born with incredible privileges and opportunities. Relatively speaking, most of us are rich and well to do and unless we are deliberately fasting, we don’t even know what it’s like to be truly hungry or destitute. But the bad news is that we sin daily and we sin seriously and we sin in a big way and we sin with the bad that we do and we sin with the good that we fail to do and what we all deserve without exception is to die and to be laid into the ground and return to the dust. Worse than that, if left to ourselves, we deserve the eternal wrath and punishment of God. That’s the bad news, and it’s not pretty and it doesn’t make us feel good about ourselves, and it never will. That’s why on Ash Wednesday, once a year, we put ashes on our foreheads or on our hands and we say it to sinners in a personal and straightforward way, “Remember that you came from dust and to dust you shall return.” In other words, as good as your life might be here and now, never forget that the wages of sin is death and never forget that if left to yourselves you are in a heap of trouble and you have every reason to fast and to pray and to weep and to mourn and to dress yourselves in sackcloth and ashes and to cry out for mercy.
Praise be to God that we have not been left to ourselves. The second lesson we want to learn is that for God’s people, there is good news that comes along with the bad news every day, to every sorry sinner that cries out for mercy, without exception and with no strings attached.
I saw a little cartoon today that had a picture of a dog on a leash talking to a cat not on a leash. The dog said to the cat, “The reason you’re not on a leash is that they want you to run away!”
It is exactly the opposite with our God. The greatest desire in God’s heart is that we would return to Him, not that we would run away into the far country as did the prodigal son. The greatest desire of our gracious and compassionate God is that we repent. That day after day, you and I would drown the old sinful adam that a new man, a new woman would rise up on the inside and rule.
Broken and contrite hearts, our God will not despise. That’s the good news meant to rule in our hearts on Ash Wednesday and every Wednesday, and not just on Wednesdays. The Lord’s mercies are new every morning, and this is what binds us sorry sinners together – the cross. The cross is where Jesus Christ suffered all that He was asked to suffer, and in response to that cross we are invited to spend our days not only enduring that which we are asked to suffer for His sake, but in fact to rejoice in it.
The kingdom of God is like two sinners who were both speeding down the highway one day. One sinner was stopped by the highway patrolman and he was scolded for speeding and in fact issued a ticket. It cost him over $200 for that sin of speeding, and he was very sorry. He was sorry that he got caught and he was sorry that he had to pay the fine and he was sorry enough to be more careful about his speeding. In other words, he was not sorry enough to stop speeding and in the eyes of God, not really sorry.
The other sinner was speeding down the highway and was not stopped by the highway patrolman. He actually crashed into another car and caused the death of a mother and her small child. He walked away relatively unharmed in his body but broken in his spirit. He never forgot the damage he had caused and he cried many tears of sorrow. He was so very sorry and he vowed never to speed again. His grief was in fact a Godly sorrow in contrast to the worldly sorrow of the other sinner who was speeding.
Paul writes in II Corinthians 7, yet now I am happy, not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance. For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us. 10 Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death. 11 See what this godly sorrow has produced in you: what earnestness, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what alarm, what longing, what concern, what readiness to see justice done.
Martin Luther wrote, “If you’re going to be honest to God about your sin, the devil will be close by.” God grant that we rejoice in the Real Presence of our Lord Jesus Christ in Holy Communion tonight, even as we keep an eye out for the devil who just keeps hanging out close by. Amen.
God bless!
Pastor Griffin
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You Shall Be Clean
February 15, 2012
II Kings 5:1-14
Dear Friends in Christ,
From 2000- 2003, our local Mission Society traveled to a remote village in the mountains of Mexico, named Sicachique. There the Taramuhara Indians lived in tremendous poverty and without very many of the conveniences we Americans take for granted every day. Running water, for example, was pretty much unheard of – and if we wanted to take a shower or a bath there in the mountains, we could choose between a little stream that trickled through the village or a well that produced ice cold water. For us Minnesotans who are used to a shower or two a day, it was a choice that humbled us. If we wanted to be clean, we would need to submit to that stream that trickled through or douse ourselves with ice cold water in full view of the entire village. Some chose to stay dirty; others of us did what we could to get cleaned up. In tonight’s sermon we meet up with Naaman who wanted to be cleansed from his leprosy but wasn’t so sure he wanted to dip himself 7 times in the lowly and unimpressive Jordan River. Our sermon theme is “You Shall Be Clean” – the words of the messenger of the prophet Elisha to Naaman the leper.
1 Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Syria, was a great man with his master and in high favor, because by him the LORD had given victory to Syria. He was a mighty man of valor, but he was a leper.
Who was Naaman? The name Naaman means ”delightful, pleasant, beautiful.”His name suggests that he was a gracious and delightful and probably handsome man before he came down with leprosy. No doubt the disease of leprosy had ruined his life. He found himself to be the opposite of delightful and pleasant and beautiful. Even his attitude had turned bitter as we shall find out as we read further tonight. In this man we have a picture of every sinner according to our old sinful nature. Unpleasant, unattractive, and unpleasing in the sight of a holy and Triune God.
Naaman was the captain of the army of the King of Syria. Second in command to the king. A man of great authority, position, popularity, and prestige. His problem was leprosy. In Scripture, leprosy is a portrait of sin and man’s true spiritual condition without the cleansing grace of God’s salvation in Jesus Christ.
Now the Syrians on one of their raids had carried off a little girl from the land of Israel, and she worked in the service of Naaman's wife. 3 She said to her mistress, “Would that my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.”
The Little Maid in a Foreign Land was used by God to deliver a message of cleansing and hope. Here we see how the Lord always has His messengers of the Word. Notice how God works through even the most evil of circumstances in life to bring his message of how to be clean in the sight of God and people. God was working through the unrighteous deeds of Naaman’s own army to bring this little slave girl into his own home to be the instrument of God’s love.
What kind of messenger does God use? He uses those who are available. In this case it was a small girl who was humble and obedient. She seemed insignificant to society and was living under terrible conditions, but she had a Romans 8:28 attitude (And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”) Refer to Mr. Schifflett, who died this morning and who often worshipped with us on Wednesday nights – sitting in the back out of the limelight but always with a cheerful spirit.)
4 So Naaman went in and told his lord, “Thus and so spoke the girl from the land of Israel.” 5 And the king of Syria said, “Go now, and I will send a letter to the king of Israel.”
So he went, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels[b] of gold, and ten changes of clothing. 6 And he brought the letter to the king of Israel, which read, “When this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you Naaman my servant, that you may cure him of his leprosy.” 7 And when the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, “Am I God, to kill and to make alive, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Only consider, and see how he is seeking a quarrel with me.”
Naaman’s Journey to Israel. Naaman wanted so badly to be cleansed of his leprosy that he was willing to do anything. He and his king thought that if they could send enough silver and gold and stuff that money could buy, they could obtain healing. They thought they could buy the favors of God from the prophet of Yahweh through the king of Israel. We are reminded of ourselves, anytime we imagine that we can in some way earn the favor and the forgiveness of our God.
The king of Israel also had a wrong first reaction. Like we do so often, he read things into the situation that weren’t there. He was blinded by a love for himself and threw a little tantrum.So far in this story the main characters, except for the little slave girl, are all coming up short, as do you and I come up short of the glory of God every day with no exceptions.
8 But when Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent to the king, saying, “Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come now to me, that he may know that there is a prophet in Israel.” Here we find once again God’s great concern for sinners. God has his messengers, and His willingness to stick with us and keep on inviting is awesome. There is no other word for it. Examples of God’s patience include 1) Noah taking 120 years to build the ark, 2)40 years of wilderness wandering, 3)Waiting Father parable, 4)Jesus who keeps on saying, “Come unto me, all ye that labor….”, 5) We’re in the year 2012 after Jesus was born, and the Church is still inviting, and the time is still short and the desire to have mercy is still powerful and every day it’s on the table.
9 So Naaman came with his horses and chariots and stood at the door of Elisha's house. 10 And Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, “Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean.” 11 But Naaman was angry and went away, saying, “Behold, I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call upon the name of the LORD his God, and wave his hand over the place and cure the leper. 12 Are not Abana[c] and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be clean?” So he turned and went away in a rage.
In these verses we have a picture of how simple it is to be made clean and the necessity of walking humbly before the Lord. Naaman had to be knocked off his high horse before he could be made clean. As my dad used to say, he was too big for his britches. As Proverbs 6 says, “God hates haughty eyes, or the proud look.” Proverbs 11- When pride comes, there comes dishonor. Proverbs 16 – Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before stumbling. Proverbs 29:23- “A man’s pride will bring him low.”
While still on his high horse, the arrogant Naaman just sort of reacted and stomped off, in response to Elisha’s command. Note that Elisha didn’t run after him; it appears he simply turned it over to the Almighty God and let him work it out. Again tonight, we learn from Elisha the value of being still and being faithful and then letting God be God. From Naaman’s servants we learn the importance of being courteous and speaking whatever truth we know and to do so with kindness and persuasion. The invitation from God and His messengers has always been gentle and full of confidence that God will work it out in His time. As a farmer sows seed in the ground and then waits for God to bless, so are we to invite fellow sinners again and again to the foot of the cross, and then wait for God to bring the harvest in His time.
13 But his servants came near and said to him, “My father, it is a great word the prophet has spoken to you; will you not do it? Has he actually said to you, ‘Wash, and be clean’?” 14 So he went down and dipped himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God, and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.
In closing tonight, we learn again to believe in miracles. Do you believe in miracles, or have you stumbled into that mindset that says pretty much things are the way they’re going to be and that’s the way life is?
We learn that when life is so very full of uncertainty, we should just take the next step. Live one day at a time and do what you know to be right and trust that God will bless and He will heal and He will get things done in just the right time and in just the right way.
Finally we learn again that God’s greatest desire is for the blood of His Son Jesus Christ to cleanse us from every sin. The greatest joy in heaven above and on earth below comes when a single sinner confesses his faults before God and other people. As often as we cry out for mercy, that often the river is here. The river of life that may look unimpressive and ineffective at times, but in fact it is all about the waters of Baptism and it comes our way as often as we use our ears to hear God’s Word, both the Law and the Gospel. It changes every heart that it touches. It has a way of setting our feet to dancing and our hands to clapping and once in awhile it may even bring a smile to our faces. (picture of Oliver) God grant that in the words of Psalm 1 we be like a tree planted by the streams of water, that yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither. Amen.
God bless!
Pastor Griffin
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On Eagles’ Wings
February 8, 2012
Isaiah 40:21 – 31
Dear Friends in Christ,
Author Chuck Swindoll told about a time when he was way too busy in life. He was over committed and he writes that it wasn’t long before he was snapping at his wife and children. He was choking down food at mealtimes, and feeling irritated at those unexpected interruptions through the day. Before long the whole family was suffering from Chuck’s hurry-up style, and it was becoming unbearable. He recalls that one night after supper the Swindolls’ younger daughter, Colleen blurted out these words as quickly as she could: “Daddy-I-wanna-tell-you-something-and I’ll tell you really fast.” Her dad realized her frustration and answered, “Honey, you can tell me…and you don’t have to tell me really fast. Say it slowly.” He writes that he will never forget her answer, which was, “Then listen slowly.”
Have you ever been so busy and running in life so fast that people around you were certain you didn’t have time for them. I have been, and I don’t feel good about it. I’m guessing many of you would feel the same. It’s at times like those when we need to hear the Bible passages like the following which have the potential to get us to slow down and to recognize the greatness and the awesomeness of God. The God who created us in the first place and redeemed us in the second place. The God Who is busier than we can begin to imagine and yet He always has time for us. The God who invites us to be strong and to fly as on the wings of an eagle and yet understands when we’re not even close to flying or running. Some days we are so faint we have a hard time walking a straight line.
21 Do you not know? Do you not hear?
Has it not been told you from the beginning?
Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
22 It is he who sits above the circle of the earth,
and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers;
who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,
and spreads them like a tent to dwell in;
23 who brings princes to nothing,
and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness.
24 Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown,
scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth,
when he blows on them, and they wither,
and the tempest carries them off like stubble.
25 To whom then will you compare me,
that I should be like him? says the Holy One.
26 Lift up your eyes on high and see:
who created these?
He who brings out their host by number,
calling them all by name,
by the greatness of his might,
and because he is strong in power
not one is missing.
27 Why do you say, O Jacob,
and speak, O Israel,
“My way is hidden from the LORD,
and my right is disregarded by my God”?
28 Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
Our sermon theme tonight is “On Eagles’ Wings” and the first lesson we want to learn is what to do when we don’t feel like flying. The thing to do is to study a bit of God’s history or to remember what you have already learned. Remember that He’s the one Who created heaven and the earth in the first place and therefore He can be trusted to see you through your bad times and keep you humble in the good times. Remember that we are like little grasshoppers in comparison to His greatness, but even though we are so tiny and insignificant by definition, he treasures us and has spread out the heavens like a veil and stretched them out like a tent for us to dwell in. Remember that He can bring the high and the mighty down just like that and therefore you and I don’t have to get so worked up when wicked people seem to be prospering and righteous people seem to be suffering. Remember what you have learned from your mothers’ and fathers’ knees and remember what you have learned in Sunday School and in Christian Day School and remember what you have learned in Confirmation Class about the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost.
Remember that the Father has created you wonderfully and marvelously and that He has promised to provide and sustain and preserve and work things out in your life. Remember that the Son is Jesus Christ and that He was conceived and born and He lived and suffered and died and rose up again all for you and for me. So that our sins could be washed away as a shower washes away all our sweat and grime. So that our slate could be clean each day and so that His mercies could be fresh every morning and so that His forgiveness could be ours as we lay our heads down to sleep every night. Remember that the Holy Spirit is and has always been and always will be your counselor, your teacher, your guide. As often as you read and hear and remember and study His Word, that often He teaches and guides and encourages. As often as you eat and drink at the Holy Supper, that often He forgives and strengthens. Again, our first lesson tonight, when you don’t feel like flying as on the wings of an eagle, just spend some time remembering and celebrating what you have learned and believed about the Triune God and who He is and what He has done and all that He promises.
Which brings us to our second lesson we want to learn tonight, based on these familiar and beloved words of the prophet Isaiah:
He does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable.
29 He gives power to the faint,
and to him who has no might he increases strength.
30 Even youths shall faint and be weary,
and young men shall fall exhausted;
31 but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint.
Our second lesson tonight is to know that it is possible to fly as on the wings of an eagle as often as we wait on the Lord. I read a story recently about a man in India who lived in a village where the villagers had to take a 4.3 mile journey around a mountain every time they wanted to access nearby fields for food and work. He became a man on a mission. With just a hammer and a chisel, he cut a 33 foot long, 13 foot wide tunnel through a narrow area of the mountain. It took him 14 years. He was actually inspired by another villager who cut a much longer tunnel through a different mountain so that villagers could reach a local hospital. That man landed on his mission when his wife died because he was unable to get her to the hospital.
Imagine if you were a fellow villager to either one of these two men and if you had to wait 14 or more years to be able to use the tunnel. Imagine your gratitude and your sense of joy at being able to benefit from that other man’s passion and dedication.
So also are we able to benefit from the passion of Jesus Christ, true man and true God who was on a mission as He gave up the riches of heaven and accepted the poverty of this earth. Oh how tired and weary Jesus must have been so very often as He went the way of the cross, but He didn’t give up and because He didn’t give up He invites us to come to Him with all of our tiredness and weariness and He will give us rest.
Dear friends in Christ, the next time your emotions bottom out and your laughter is forced, the next time the events of your day seem to be surrounded in a damp heavy fog and lead weights seem tied to your feet, the next time you don’t feel like getting out of bed and your weariness is physical and emotional and spiritual all at the same time, go to the Word of God and come to the Supper of your Lord and find rest for your souls. As often as you wait on the Lord in repentance and in prayer, as often as you wait on the Lord by admitting that you just can’t get it done by yourself, as often as you wait on the Lord by crying our for mercy and strength just one day at a time, that often – that often you will be able to mount up with wings like eagles; you shall run and not be weary; you shall walk and not be faint.
In closing today, just one more thing. It’s not enough to mount up with wings like eagles all by ourselves; we have an obligation to help one another do the same. It’s not enough to be able to run and not be weary, to walk and not be faint all by ourselves. We’re in this together. We are the Holy Christian Church, the communion of saints, the fellowship of believers. No matter why your fellow saints have ended up in a broken heap on the floor, they need for you to pray, to visit, to have a listening ear, to hold that hand, to mow that lawn, to wash the car, to cook that meal, to give that ride, to care for their energetic and maybe even bratty children, to wash those feet, to clean those toilets, to you fill in the blank.
So very often the way we help others to fly as on the wings of an eagle is to help each other hold onto their sense of humor. Bill Cosby once said that if you can find humor in anything, you can survive it. A famous psychoanalyst and author named Martin Grotjahn noted that “to have a sense of humor is to have an understanding of human suffering.” I close with this memory of going to Sicachique, Mexico years ago on a mission trip, along with our son Noah and about 30 others. For 5 days or so we lived among the Tarahumara Indians who were absolutely poor and much of the time without enough food to eat, no shoes for their feet, and very little in the way of hope for the future. One noon, my privileged son Noah and I were playing basketball with some of the kids who were having the time of their life seeing us big white Americans playing their brand of basketball with their rules. As the game came towards the end, Noah and I who were captains of the two opposing teams started to argue about what was the score. The little Tarahumara Indians just stopped and watched us argue until I whispered to Noah that maybe it wasn’t very important what the score was, even though I was right, and that we should probably just have fun. We laughed and went on our way. Our prayer was that as we played a little basketball with those youngsters and later on in the day as we told them about Jesus and sang some little songs about Jesus, that we helped them fly as on the wings of an eagle. Perhaps they have a memory of a few white people who loved Jesus and were willing to spend some time with them and give them some tennis shoes. May God help all of us all the days of life to run and not be weary, to walk and not be faint, and once in awhile that we would even fly as on the wings of an eagle.
God bless!
Pastor Griffin
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Running Your Race With Purpose
February 4 and 5, 2012
Fifth Sunday After The Epiphany
I Corinthians 9:16 – 27
Dear Friends in Christ,
A mother was trying to wake her son for church one Sunday morning. When she knocked on his door, he said, “I’m not going!” “why not?” asked his mother. “I’ll give you two good reasons,” he said. “One, they don’t like me. Two, I don’t like them.” His mother replied, “I’ll give you two good reasons why YOU WILL go to church. One, you’re 47 years old. Two, you’re the pastor!”
In contrast to that pastor who wasn’t so sure he wanted to preach anymore, listen in as the apostle Paul talks about preaching the Gospel not only because it was his assignment to do so but mainly because he had this burning desire in his heart for souls to be saved.
Read verses 16 - 23
16 For if I preach the gospel, that gives me no ground for boasting. For necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel! 17 For if I do this of my own will, I have a reward, but if not of my own will, I am still entrusted with a stewardship. 18 What then is my reward? That in my preaching I may present the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my right in the gospel.
19 For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. 20 To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. 21 To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. 22 To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. 23 I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.
Our sermon theme today is “Running Your Race With Purpose. First, we ask the question- what race and for what purpose? Those who train for races or run in a regular sort of a way do so for a variety of purposes, but as far as I know pretty much everybody who runs runs for some kind of a reason. Some run in order to improve their health, others to lose weight, and some run for a specific cause or charity. Some run to meet new people, some run to do something new or different, and still others have specific goals in mind. Some run to improve energy levels, or it helps them to feel better about themselves, and still others run because it reduces stress and it doesn’t cost very much to do so. Most of us who run these days do so for very personal reasons and it has little or nothing to do with making the world a better place to be.
In Paul’s day, those who trained for the Olympian or other government sponsored games trained for a grand purpose. These games originated in the policy of government, for the purpose of waging war. Before the invention of gunpowder, success in war depended much more than it now does upon the physical power and dexterity of an army. Armies then met hand to hand with swords, spears, and war-clubs, bows and arrows, etc. All those weapons required great physical energy and strength. Schools were established for training men to run foot races, to handle the spear, the sword and the shield, and to engage in all those exercises which served to develop the muscular system to the utmost. Games were established and sustained by the authorities to give great popularity to this system of exercises. Some of these games were foot races. It mattered greatly that men could run long and hard and fast and that anything which hindered them would be avoided. Hebrews 12:1 says it this way, “Therefore since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of God.
Jesus of course ran the perfect race and resisted every temptation in a perfect way. He ran with endurance and steadiness and would not be distracted. He ran all the way to Jerusalem, where He was cheered and then jeered by the mobs, where He suffered all that He was asked to suffer, where He was crucified and buried at the finish line, and after resurrection and 40 days of appearances He ascended into heaven and crowned the victory.
In His strong Name Paul ran His race and was determined to preach Christ Jesus crucified and risen again and Him alone. In the Name and in the footsteps of Jesus, preachers and lay people alike have run their races ever since. All to often we have run without a strong sense of purpose and even worse, we have frequently run our races / lived out our vocations and lives without any sense of purpose. In so many ways we run aimlessly and our main goals, if we have any, seem to be to have fun or to make money or to be popular or to be powerful or to simply survive or a combination of any or all of the above. This morning, we learn from the apostle Paul who when he was with the Jews lived like the Jews and when he was with the Gentiles he lived like the Gentiles. To the weak he became weak and to the strong he stayed strong, but the purpose was always to save some. To point sinners to their Savior and to do whatever He could do to help and encourage fellow sinners along the way to heaven. Since he wasn’t a married man, he could practice the celibate life and devote himself to the preaching of the Gospel to the end (in the words of the prophet Isaiah) that faint and weary sinners could be taught to wait on the Lord, to renew their strength, to mount up with wings like eagles, to run and not be weary, to walk and not be faint! The Holy Spirit would teach anyone of us who is listening today the importance of running our races / living our lives with this grand purpose in mind.
Secondly, we ask the question, how does one train for this race with such a grand purpose?
24 Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. 25 Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. 26 So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. 27 But I discipline my body and keep it under control,[b] lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.
Here Paul observes that there are at least three principles common to both athletes and Christians. First there is the need for motivation, second the need for self-control, and third the need for exercise.
First of all there is the need for motivation. In the life of the athlete, proper motivation is necessary to win. Some run to win and others really don’t care if they win or not – they just run for their personal health. The winning athletes are usually motivated by the gold medal or by finishing in one of the top positions. These are perishable crowns, to be sure, but they do motivate, don’t they? Just this past week our grandson Steven proudly announced to Debi and me that he had wrestled in a little tournament and had finished in first place. It remains to be seen if this six year old will be motivated enough as the years go on to train and to train hard in order to win at the higher levels, but for now he seems at least motivated enough to wrestle hard when he is wrestling.
Christians wrestle, of course, not against flesh and blood but against spiritual powers and the forces of darkness. We wrestle against the devil himself and all of his nasty demons. Against our old sinful adam who wakes up with us every day and will not give us a moment’s rest. We wrestle against this sinful world, which is constantly coming up with new and creative ways to throw us off track and tempt us into misbelieve, despair, and all kinds of ugly attitudes, nasty habits, and pathetic attempts at training. It’s not at all easy to stay spiritually motivated, but absolutely necessary to run the straight race and fight the good fight.
Secondly, there is the matter of self control. Successful athletes eat right and drink in moderation. They get their sleep and they follow their training schedules. They often forgo social activities and stay away from one half pound burgers covered with cheddar cheese, chili and surrounded by French fries covered with salt and ketchup. Self control means doing it even when one doesn’t feel like it. As one who has dabbled in training for and running in long races, I most often don’t feel like running when I start to run and I don’t really feel like running as I run, but I am always delighted that I have run when I am finished running.
And so in the life of the Christian, self control and self denial will never come easy. Overcoming the works of the flesh is possible with the help of the Spirit on a day to day basis, but the sense of struggle will always be there. Running the Christian race will never be easy and will always include doing things that we don’t want to do.
First we talked about motivation, second about self control, and finally, there is this matter of exercise. Long distance runners run between 3 and 20 miles a day 4 to 7 days a week. Swimmers swim ten miles a day to be competitive. Gymnasts will work out for 5-10 hours a day. Football players have their two a day practices and wrestlers and bb and vb players can be found in the gymnasiums and weight rooms early in the morning and late at night / 24 hour fitness centers are as popular as ever. All of that is essential to be competitive, to endure the hardships of the competition, and to gain the victory.
So also in the life of the Christian, there is the need for spiritual exercise. Thinking that you can grow in Christian faith without using your ears to hear God’s Word in regular sort of a way is like wanting to be a championship marathon runner by running a few miles in training here and there. Ridiculous. Thinking that you can pray just once in a while when big trouble is headed your way and still be strong in faith is like the college student who studies for the final exam only the night before the final exam and then wonders why it doesn’t go so well. The kingdom of God is like a man who gets up each day and makes the sign of the cross and rejoices that He has been baptized into the name of the Triune God and His sins have been washed away in the blood of the Lamb. His strength is renewed as often as he counts his blessings instead of his troubles, He is motivated to run his race with purpose as often as he fixes his eyes on the author and finisher of his faith instead of all these other things in life which mean so little and last hardly any length of time at all. Life isn’t all that easy, but it gets easier as often as he stays close to Jesus. Amen.
God bless!
Pastor Griffin
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Choose Life
January 22, 2012
Deuteronomy 30: 15 – 20: 15 “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. 16 If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God[a] that I command you today, by loving the LORD your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules,[b] then you shall live and multiply, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. 17 But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, 18 I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess. 19 I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, 20 loving the LORD your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.”
Dear Friends in Christ,
Mary and Jake were in love and planning to get married. In two weeks Jake would graduate from college and had already secured a position with a company in London. Mary, with a nursing degree in hand, flew across the pond and hired on with a company in London hospital. She rented an apartment, set up housekeeping, and was within 24 hours of starting work when Jake called. He had changed his mind. He wasn’t moving to London and had decided to accept a better job in New York City.
The phone call turned ugly, and Mary ended it by saying she needed an ocean between herself and jerks like him and decided to become a Brit. Later that day it turned even uglier – or maybe not. She felt queasy and before you knew it she had taken a pregnancy test and was in fact pregnant with Jake’s baby. The story goes on to talk about her decision to get an abortion and then she began to second guess herself, and quite honestly I don’t know how the story ended. The author doesn’t say.
But we do know three thousand stories end every day in the USA. They end in abortion. That would be 1.2 million bad endings a year since 1973. Do the math and you will find the bad story endings totaling up to53 million in this land that is supposed to be the land of the free and home of the brave. I don’t know about you but I don’t like unhappy endings. Ask Debi and she will tell you that before I watch a movie with her I make her promise that it has a happy ending. Why would you choose to spend time and energy watching a movie where all your dreams and hopes will be dashed in the end?
The first request I have of you today is that on this Sanctity of Life Weekend you would at least take the time to care about all these unhappy endings. To care about the young and frightened pregnant girls who are reluctantly choosing to terminate their little ones and to care about depressed and lonely teenagers who are seriously thinking about ending their lives and to care about millions of moms and dads who so regret decisions in the past and to care about families who have to make gut-wrenching end of life decisions. At least we can care as we remember what we have learned in so many ways in the past and what we want to learn again today that as often as we choose life we get blessed beyond measure and as often as we choose death we get cursed in ways we could only imagine.
In our text for today, God is speaking through Moses to the people of Israel as they are about to cross over into the Promised Land. No doubt Moses is preaching with a sad heart as he realizes that he and so many of his contemporaries would not be able to enter the Promised Land – only Joshua and Caleb. When God declares that He is calling heaven and earth to witness against them that day, He means that all of creation is being summoned to testify that He was telling them in advance what the results of their choices would be. It was a matter of life and death. Choose life by obeying God’s commandments and walking in His ways and the promise was that they would live and multiply and possess and enjoy the land. If they were to choose death by turning away from God and not hearing His Word and following other gods and they would not live long in the Promised Land but perish.
The second lesson we want to learn today is that our choices become ever so clear and dare I say easier whenever we make them in the light of the fact that God has chosen to give us life in body and in soul and that He keeps on choosing to give life day after day, one day at a time.
I often ask our little granddaughter Hope how come she is so pretty and she wrinkles up her little nose and says “because God made me” and I often ask little almost 3 Morgan why she is so pretty and she looks me in the eyes and says “because God made me” and when I see our other little granddaughters Grace and Mercy and Glory and Payton I ask them the same question and time and time again they give me a version of that same answer. God chose life when He created the heavens and the earth in 6 24 hour days and when all was said and done He looked and behold everything was good. God chose life when He led the people of Israel out of slavery and He chose life when He brought them through the Red Sea and delivered them from the Pharoh and His armies and God chose life when He led Israel through the wilderness and gave them bread and meat and water in miraculous fashion day after day and God chose life when He sent His only and beloved Son to be born in a manger of all places and Jesus chose life as He lived the perfect life and willingly went the way of the cross and God chose life when He raised His Son back up on that Easter Sunday morning and God chose life in the moments of conception for little Ayden Joseph Roeker and Johnathan David Balzotti and Kaeleigh Jo Balzotti and then there was Lofton Leroy Robert Johnson and God chose life when He knit these four little ones together in their mother’s wombs and God is choosing them as His very own sons and daughters in the waters of Baptism and God is choosing to give spiritual life every time preachers preach God’s Word and every time teachers and parents teach that same Word and every time sinners use their ears to hear that Word and every time broken hearted people eat and drink at the Holy Supper and God is choosing life and giving life every time every time He tells the sun it’s time to rise in the east and God is choosing life every morning as we cry out for mercy and oh how He loves to show mercy and every evening as we ask one more time for forgiveness and oh how He loves to send our sins as far as the east is from the west and God is choosing life because that’s the kind of God He is and because of all He has already done and because of all that He is promised! And yes, that may be the longest sentence I have ever preached!
Now go ahead and make your choices in the light of all God’s choices already announced and carried through. Go ahead and make your choices knowing that, as Deuteronomy 7 declares, you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth…” Or as I Peter 2:9 says it, “you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” Or as Jesus said it in John 15: You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go bear fruit and that your fruit should abide.” Or as God declared in Deuteronomy 13: Choose life, that you and your offspring may live.
Our choices get easier as we remember with thankful hearts the choices God and others have made on our behalf in days gone by. Parents with small children will find the challenges of parenting to get a bit easier as they remember the past sacrifices their parents and grandparents have made on their behalf. Adult children will find the challenges of caring for their elderly parents to get a bit easier as they count their own blessings in life and anticipate getting old themselves. Christians who have been insulted and harmed by others will find it a bit easier to forgive the little debts as they remember the huge debt they have been forgiven due to the once and for all sacrifice of the Great High Priest Jesus Christ at the cross.
Today is a day to admit that in so many ways we have contributed to the culture of death in this great land of ours with our sins of indifference . To be indifferent is to not care and there has been plenty of that around here. I read this week that the German word kara is the origin of our English word “care” and that the word “care” actually means to be sad. To be sad with those who are sad is to care for them. In closing today, I invite you to at least be sad with and for all those who have traveled through the valley of the shadow of death we call abortion. In years gone by I would have asked you to be absolutely angry, and there is a time and place for righteous anger. But for now, I invite you to take your sadness and your own stories of mistakes and regrets to the cross where your Savior is always there to hold you close and to say that He still loves you and will be with you always. It’s at the cross where our unhappy endings actually turn into new beginnings and where our lousy decisions are washed away in the blood of the Lamb. No matter what you are bringing to the cross this day and every day, one day at a time, so long as you bring it there in the Name of Jesus Christ, God’s decision will be to bless and not to curse, to have mercy instead of condemn. And as the days go forward near and far we pray that the words of Moses in his farewell sermon would ring loud and true, “Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live…Amen.
God bless!
Pastor Griffin
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Are You Listening?
January 18, 2012
I Samuel 3: 1 Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the LORD in the presence of Eli. And the word of the LORD was rare in those days; there was no frequent vision.
The first lesson we want to learn tonight is that when people don’t appreciate the Word of God, He may just take it away from them.
· One of the funniest commercials I have seen recently is an advertisement for one of the phone companies where a young lady is on the phone calling her boy friend and telling him that she is giving him the silent treatment…………
· The silent treatment is one of the favorite, if not the most favorite ways of punishing each other, wouldn’t you agree? I have given the silent treatment a few times, in a nice way, of course – and dare I say that Debi has as well?
· Our first verse tonight brings us this surprising truth that God was giving Israel the silent treatment in the days of Eli and Samuel. People had little interest in hearing what God had to say. The five books of Moses were kept in the tabernacle, but even the priests neglected them Not since the death of Moses had there been a great prophet in Israel. There were few visions, few words from the prophets. No greater judgment can fall upon a nation than when it suffers the loss of God’s Word. When people do not hear the Word of God and keep it, God often takes it from them. In Amos 8:11 – 13, we read of just such an example, Behold the days are coming, declares the Lord God, when I will send a famine on the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. They shall wander from sea, to sea, and from north to east, they shall run to and fro, to seek the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it.
· Have you been listening in a careful way to the Word of the Lord in recent days? Are you listening carefully tonight? What about tomorrow and the next day and the next? Are you listening?
2 At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his own place. 3 The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the LORD, where the ark of God was.
· Samuel was the custodian in the temple for his boss, the priest Eli. He would open the doors of the house of the Lord when it was time to open them. He would trim the wicks on the lamp just outside of the Most Holy Place and fill them with enough oil to last the hours of darkness. A member of one of the first Altar Guilds, if you will.
4 Then the LORD called Samuel, and he said, “Here I am!” 5 and ran to Eli and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call; lie down again.” So he went and lay down.
6 And the LORD called again, “Samuel!” and Samuel arose and went to Eli and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call, my son; lie down again.” 7 Now Samuel did not yet know the LORD, and the word of the LORD had not yet been revealed to him.
· It makes sense that Samuel thought Eli was calling his name – who else could it be? When the Bible says that Samuel did not yet know the Lord, it means that he had never heard the voice of God directly, even though from childhood his mother Hannah had taught him about God and the promised Savior.
8 And the LORD called Samuel again the third time. And he arose and went to Eli and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” Then Eli perceived that the LORD was calling the boy. 9 Therefore Eli said to Samuel, “Go, lie down, and if he calls you, you shall say, ‘Speak, LORD, for your servant hears.’” So Samuel went and lay down in his place. 10 And the LORD came and stood, calling as at other times, “Samuel! Samuel!” And Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant hears.”
The second lesson we want to learn is that the #1 qualification for God being able to use you in life is that you are using your ears to hear.
· Isn’t it interesting that when the Lord looks for someone to speak for him, the very first qualification is that the person be willing to listen when God speaks? In fact one could say that the only qualification for service to God and His Church is a willingness to hear God’s Word. “Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. Perhaps you have heard this before – that God doesn’t call the qualified. He qualifies the called.”
· The secret to Samuel’s success as a prophet was not that he excelled in speaking, but in listening. And isn’t that the secret to success in marriage and in family and in friendship – the skill of listening well? Isn’t it true that to do a good job at loving your spouse or your other family members or your co-workers? You husbands out there – just try convincing your wife that you love her by trying to listen to her and watch ESPN and read the newspaper at the same time? You wives out there, just try and convince your husbands that you love him by scolding him for a good ten minutes and then when he tries to respond you wave him off and say, “I’ve heard it all before and I don’t want to hear it again!”
· A You Tube video that has been going viral lately is titled, “Why I Love Jesus But Hate Religion”. It’s a fellow ranting against religious traditions and the organized church even as he insists that He loves Jesus. As I watched it, I thought he had a few good points and I certainly learned from him how the organized church has let down the multitudes of people and how we church leaders need to do a way better job of listening to people and caring about them where they are at in life. But I also wanted to take him the hand and suggest to him that what He really seems to hate is the law and rules and traditions that don’t really make sense and the inclination folks have to judge and to be hypocritical. And I would urge him and so many others to see that the church is a hospital for broken and hurting sinners and not so much a country club where the good and the wealthy go. The Church really is the body of Christ and the very place where the voice of the Good Shepherd can be heard through the preaching and teaching of God’s Word and through the waters of Baptism and through the bread and the wine of the Sacrament inviting the weary and the worn out and the guilty to come on in and listen. Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. Are you listening?
If we were to keep reading in I Samuel 3 and 4, we would see that Samuel’s first assignment as a prophet was to deliver bad news to his boss, the priest. He had the unenviable task of telling Eli that because he had failed to restrain and properly discipline his sons that his family would be judged forever. To be sure Eli could be forgiven, but the consequences of his failure could not be reversed. As time went on, it didn’t go well for Israel, nor for Eli and his sons. The Philistines would crush Israel at war, the ark of the Lord would be captured, Eli’s two sons would did in battle, and when the message of all that had happened came to 98 years old and blind Eli, he would fall backwards off his chair, his neck would be broken and he would die, as I Samuel4:18, for he was an old man and heavy. That part of the story had an unhappy ending, as some stories do –are you listening?
19 And Samuel grew, and the LORD was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground. 20 And all Israel from Dan to Beersheba knew that Samuel was established as a prophet of the LORD. 21 And the LORD appeared again at Shiloh, for the LORD revealed himself to Samuel at Shiloh by the word of the LORD.
The final lesson we want to learn tonight is that as often as we hear God’s Word and grow up into our Lord Jesus Christ, our stories have happy endings. I don’t mean to say that every bit of cancer will be cured and that every marriage will be total bliss and that every one of us will become rich and famous. I’m saying that the Lord will be with us and that the peace that goes beyond human circumstances will be ours. In Samuel’s case, the Lord was with him and none of his words would fall to the ground. In other words, all of Israel came to have respect and confidence in this young prophet. Samuel was the first in a long line of prophets and preachers who said what they were told to say and God blessed their ministry as He said He would bless.
In closing, may I urge every one of you in every one of your days to listen as attentively as you can possibly listen to your family members and get ready for that attentiveness to bless everybody involved in a huge way. Listen attentively to God in heaven above not just because you will be blessed as life goes forward but in response to the great blessings that have already come your way, by virtue of your Savior’s birth and life, by His death and resurrection.
Go forward with confidence that God has promised you a safe landing and not so much a calm passage. That the will of God will never take you to where the grace of God will not protect you. That as you listen to God’s Word and then pray on the basis of that word that the best prayers do not give God instructions, they simply report for duty. And as one author wrote, “Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning to dance in the rain.
God bless!
Pastor Griffin
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Come and See!
January 14 and 15, 2012
Second Sunday After The Epiphany
John 1: 43 - 51
Dear Friends in Christ,
One of my earliest memories in life is my mom’s one hour of quiet time every day with the Lord. Since I am the youngest of four children, thus the baby in the family, I spent three of my pre-school years home alone with mom while the other three were off to school and dad was out working. I didn’t give it much thought until years later, but that hour of time she spend with her Bible and big green prayer book was time she spent in the presence of Jesus. I’m guessing she watched her mom do the same each day and to this very day in a majority of my pre-marriage and other counseling sessions, I strongly suggest to people that they establish a strong devotional time each day. That is, if you really want to have a peace that surpasses human understanding and if you really want to have a sense of quiet contentment and inner joy that only the one true God can give, then the best advice there is for you is to spend your days using your ears to hear the Word of God. Spend time each day in the privacy of your home being still and knowing that God is God and at least once a week in the house of God hearing the preaching of sermons based on God’s Word that have been prepared with real people, real sinners like you and me in mind. In this way you will be able to find Jesus Christ, or is it the other way around? Does He find us? Or is it true both that we find Him and He finds us.
43 The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” 44 Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. 45 Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”
The first lesson we want to learn this morning that we have in fact been found by Jesus and that in turn we are to spend our days finding Him and holding on to Him and keeping Him close. Philip’s account of this incident is that he found Christ, but the Holy Spirit’s record of it is that Christ found Philip. They are both true, but first things first. Jesus Christ first of all to seek and to save the lost and in turn He invites us to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and to know that all these other things shall be added unto us as necessary. On the one hand, it is true that by nature we do not seek out God. No one can say that Jesus is Lord but by the Holy Spirit. And on the other hand the Bible makes it clear that we should seek God while He may be found and as Daniel writes – to seek the Lord God by prayer and supplications, with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes.
John chapter 1 is a record of Jesus finding His first disciples and inviting them to follow Him. To be a disciple is to be a follower, a learner. In the verses preceding our text, John the Baptist is urging his disciples to behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. One of John the Baptist’s followers was Andrew, and he did just that – he and another man (perhaps John) began to follow Jesus. When Jesus saw them following He said to them, “What are you seeking? They answered a question with a question of their own, “Teacher, where are you staying?” To which Jesus replied, “Come and you will see.” After spending the day with Jesus Andrew went and found his brother Simon and said to him the same language Philip used on Nathanael, “We have found the Messiah” Then Andrew did to Peter what Philip did to Nathanael – he brought his friend into the presence of Jesus, and life was never the same for any of them. Which bring us to our second point this morning – we want to learn again the importance of inviting other friends and family and neighbors into the presence of Jesus Christ – saying as Jesus said to Andrew and then as Philip said to Nathanael, “Come and See!”
46 Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” 47 Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!” 48 Nathanael said to him, “How do you know me?” Jesus answered him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” 49 Nathanael answered him, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” 50 Jesus answered him, “Because I said to you, ‘I saw you under the fig tree,’ do you believe? You will see greater things than these.” 51 And he said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you,[k] you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”
Nathanael, also called Bartholomew, had his doubts. He doubted whether anything good could come out of Nazareth. Nathanael seemed to think Nazareth was sort of a hick town, a city where nothing important ever happened. It was in Galilee which was despised and disrespected by many Jews, and so he expressed his skepticism. Philip didn’t argue with his friend; he simply invited him to come and see. He didn’t try to persuade Nathanael into the presence of the Messiah; He just urged him to come into the presence of Jesus and see what happened.
So also do our family members and neighbors and co-workers and friends have their doubts about God and especially the Church. I have been doing a lot of pre-marriage counseling in recent days. I counted no few than 21 weddings already on the calendar for this year. Many of these folks have been baptized in the Church, have grown up in the Church but have drifted away for one reason or the other. They have their doubts. Some have been disappointed in a serious way by a pastor; others have been insulted or felt judged by other people in the church; still others have found life itself to be so full of trouble and brokenness that they have their doubts about God Himself. Still others have had church shoved down their throat and really don’t want any part of it.
Recently I met with a couple who want to join our church and they want to get married and they want to step it up in terms of attendance and involvement in church and when I asked them why they came to Trinity they mentioned the name of one of our members who works alongside of this woman and she invited them to check us out. The same night I met with a couple who is joining this church and getting married at this church after 15 years of drifting away from the church and when I asked them why they came here they mentioned the names of friends of theirs who belong to this church and suggested they check us out. Time after time, it holds true that a simple invitation to come into the presence of Jesus Christ when issued at just the right time can be used by the Holy Spirit to get ahold of people who have been drifting and doubting and staying away from the very place where God’s Word is preached and the Holy Supper is celebrated.
The Spirit of God hasn’t asked us to persuade anyone into the Church but simply to invite folks to come into the presence of Jesus. We’re inviting folks not so much to join a church but to come and see what a friend we have in Jesus. We are inviting them to know a Person, not a program. Church programs may be good, but they do not change lives.
When Jesus saw Nathanael coming towards Him, he said “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit! When Nathaniel asked Jesus how he knew him, Jesus answered “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.” Jesus knew that because He is the Son of God and He knew and knows everything. This would be the first example in John’s Gospel of Jesus showing His omniscience. Not too long after that Jesus would do His first recorded miracle in Cana, the home town of Nathanael.
Nathanael came to know and believe what we want never to forget about God – that He knows everything about us and even more importantly than that – He cares. He cared enough to go all the way to the cross for us and so the argument goes from the greater to the lesser – if God was willing to spare not His only and beloved Son for us, will He not also graciously give us all that is good for us?
Jesus argued from the lesser to the greater when He told Nathaniel that if you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree, you ain’t seen nothing yet! You will see greater things than these. Follow me and you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man. Gradually, Nathaniel would come to discover the full identify of Jesus.
In closing, the kingdom of God is like a large church in a small town where hundreds and hundreds of redeemed sinners spend their days confessing their faults one to another and to God, that the forgiveness of sins might sweep over their souls and that grace might rule in their hearts. They sit in their favorite chairs and when weather permits on their patios reading God’s Word and praying that they could have opportunities to listen to the stories of broken hearted people and inviting them to come into the presence of their Savior. Over here there is a mother tucking her children into bed at night and teaching them how to pray and not too far away from that is a father inviting his family into the van and it’s time to go to church now and not too far away from him is one friend with a broken heart inviting another friend going through days of trouble to have coffee and tell her all about it. Not too far from that is a small group leader making a few phone calls inviting some people into a marriage class or to a support group of one kind or another, and so it goes- one sorry sinner inviting another sorry sinner into the presence of grace,mercy, and peace………one beggar telling another beggar where he can find food………….one messed up person after another telling another messed up person where she can find direction in life. These folks have been found in the waters of Baptism and they spend their days seeking out the very One Who has claimed them as His own in the first place. They celebrate their Lord’s Supper here and now even as they look forward to the great heavenly banquet that is yet to come. They plant and they water and they fertilize knowing that God will grant the growth when He so chooses. As difficult and as confusing as life can be, these folks are growing more and more to realize that as often as they spend time in the presence of Jesus Christ, their guilt disappears and their important questions get answered and their troubles and their struggles actually become their best teachers. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.
God bless!
Pastor Griffin
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Lord, Let It Be To Me According To Your Word
December 17 and 18, 2011
Fourth Sunday in Advent
Luke 1: 18And Zechariah said to the angel,(AO) "How shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years." 19And the angel answered him, "I am(AP) Gabriel.(AQ) I stand in the presence of God, and I was sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. 20And behold,(AR) you will be silent and unable to speak until the day that these things take place, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time."
26In the sixth month the angel(AY) Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named(AZ) Nazareth, 27(BA) to a virgin betrothed[b] to a man whose name was Joseph,(BB) of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary. 28And he came to her and said, "Greetings,(BC) O favored one,(BD) the Lord is with you!"[c] 29But(BE) she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. 30And the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for(BF) you have found favor with God. 31And behold,(BG) you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and(BH) you shall call his name Jesus. 32He will be great and will be called the Son of(BI) the Most High. And the Lord God(BJ) will give to him the throne of(BK) his father David, 33and he will reign over the house of Jacob(BL) forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end."
34And Mary said to the angel, "How will this be, since I am a virgin?"[d] 35And the angel answered her,(BM) "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of(BN) the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born[e] will be called(BO) holy—(BP) the Son of God. 36And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her(BQ) who was called barren. 37For(BR) nothing will be impossible with God." 38And Mary said, "Behold, I am the servant[f] of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word." And(BS) the angel departed from her.
Dear Friends,
Our grandchildren really love their Grandma Debi. Oh I guess Grandpa Larry is ok too, but they really get excited when their grandma is there. The other night I sat down next to two year old Morgan and she screeched and made it clear that Grandma Debi was going to sit by her and in short order almost five year old Hope made it clear that Grandma Debi would be sitting by here – and as soon as we got the seating chart correct, there was peace in the room. You can learn a lot from the little ones, and that’s the main reason so many of you have come here tonight – to hear the Christmas story from the mouths of the children. What I learned from the supper table is that children can be brutally honest, but if you think about it that’s kind of refreshing isn’t it? They are simply responding to the wonderful love and affection their grandma shows them every time she spends time with them, and that’s kind of powerful, if you think about it that way.
What a privilege we have in our Sunday School and in our Trinity Lutheran School to help children understand that Jesus Christ has loved them with a wonderful love and oh how powerful it is when the little ones get grounded in that love and respond to that love and live in that love! Two simple points I want to make tonight, first about older people and then about younger people, in terms of how we respond to God’s Word. Specifically we will learn from the older man, the priest Zechariah and then from the teenage girl Mary, as they met up with the angel Gabriel, listened, and then responded.
Before we focus on Zechariah’s conversation with the angel Gabriel, we want to review what the Bible says about angels. We know that there are two kinds of angels – the good and the bad. We know that the good angels are amazingly powerful and that they spend their days delivering and protecting and defending God’s people with special emphasis on watching over and guarding the children. We also know that angels provide comfort and encouragement, that they often serve as God’s agents of judgment. Their main assignment in Scripture seems to be to be messengers of God’s Word, to do God’s bidding. Psalm 103:20, Praise the Lord, you His angels, you might ones who do His bidding, who obey His Word.
In the Christmas story, the angel Gabriel told Zechariah that his barren wife would bear him a son and then told Mary that she had found favor with God and that she would conceive a child in her womb and would in fact bear a son and his name would be Jesus. About the same time an angel appeared in a dream to Joseph and announced what was about to take place and gave him specific instructions on what to do. Later on one angel and then a heavenly host delivered the message to the lowly shepherds that in fact a Savior had been born and that they could find this baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.
The Christmas story has so much to teach us about the very nature of God and how He always keeps His promises and how His angels help Him to do so. We also learn from Zechariah tonight, and then from Mary, in terms of how we respond to the Word of God. Zechariah and Elizabeth were righteous people, but they had a huge hole in their hearts. They were old and without children. When the angel Gabriel appeared to him, he was performing a once- in a lifetime duty as priest in the temple. He was burning incense in the holy place, even as a huge crowd of people were praying outside.
Even though the angel urged Zechariah not to be afraid and to rejoice that his prayer for a child had been answered, Zechariah asked a question in such a way that got him disciplined by Almighty God? Even though he had been praying for a miracle his first reaction was to not believe it when the angel announced the good news. Even though the angel laid out the entire life of their son John and how many would rejoice at his birth and he would be great before the Lord and he would be filled with the Holy Spirit already in his mother’s womb and he would turn many Israelites to the one true, this old priest who knew full well that there had to be a prophet preparing the way for the Messiah could only ask, “How shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years.” In other words, could you give me some kind of proof? His discipline was that he would be speechless until the day that his son John was circumcised and named.
Zechariah reminds us older people of ourselves, doesn’t he? We are so used to going to work and earning our way in life that we forget that God is the giver and we are the receivers day in and day out. As children we were in awe of the Christmas event, but as older people not so much. We pray for miracles but have a dickens of a time believing in them so much of the time. We believe that God will provide but then we go ahead and worry anyway. One moment we are still and know that God is God but in the next our knees are shaking and our minds are racing and we’re not sure if we can keep on going. Along with Zechariah we get disciplined day after day, in a thousand different ways. We get disciplined with life that is short and full of trouble. Some trouble we bring on ourselves; some trouble others put on our plate, and some trouble comes our way simply because we life in a sinful world alongside of sinful people, and the devil and his nasty angels are always eager to tempt and traumatize us. Through it all, of course, we know that God disciplines those He loves – and even though some chapters of life are ever so unpleasant, our God is with us in the conception / birth / life / suffering / death / resurrection of Jesus Christ. Immanuel, which means God with us.
Mary is similar to Zechariah in that she also asks a question of the angel Gabriel, but her question is different. Zechariah asked with a skeptical heart, while Mary asked with a heart that wanted to believe, “How will this be since I am a virgin?” Zechariah walked away unable to speak, but Mary burst forth into a holy song which we sing to this very day. It’s called the Magnificat. Mary was like Zechariah in that both no doubt grew up in the Church and in a family that used their ears to hear God’s Word and believed. But Zechariah was old enough that he apparently got to the point in life where he had to see before he could believe. He reminds us of the doubting disciple Thomas in the Easter story.
Mary was still young enough that she believed what she was told. No doubt her parents and her church told her that the day was coming when a virgin would conceive and bear a son and his name would be Immanuel, and she believed. No doubt she had been told that the Savior would be born in the little town of Bethlehem and she believed. No doubt she had been told that nothing would be impossible with God and she believed. No doubt she had heard the stories of angels doing the bidding of Almighty God, and when she saw and listened to the angel Gabriel, she was quick to say, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”
Let it be to me according to your word. These are the words of the young virgin Mary I invite you to take home with you tonight. Let it be to me according to your word. Later on in life Jesus would say it this way, “If you love me keep my Words.” At one point Jesus noticed the disciples trying to keep children away from him, but he rebuked them and said, “Let the little children come to me, for of such is the kingdom of God.” Little children are famous for a lot of things, like being expensive and making messes and telling grandpas that grandma has to sit next to them, but never mind all of that! What really matters is that they tend to believe what their parents and what their grandparents and what their Sunday School and Christian Day school teachers and pastors tell them. Tell them that Christmas is all about Jesus Christ being born in a manger and they will believe you. Tell them that Jesus died on the cross and that their sins have been washed away and they will believe you. Tell them that God is with them always and that His angels are watching over them and they will believe you. Tell them to take God at His Word and they will. Tell them that God has a plan for their lives and that miracles do happen, and they may look like it goes in one ear and out the other, but chances are it has gone in and stays in. Perhaps that’s why God used a young girl in her teens instead of a young woman in her 20’s or 30’s. The troubles and disappointments of life had not yet beaten her down. She was ready to listen, to ask a simple question full of faith and then to say, “Let it be to me according to your Word.” May God’s Spirit move in the hearts of our children, our teenagers, and even us older folks this very night a willingness to listen, to ask simple questions of God full of faith, and then to say in a thousand different ways, “Lord, let it be to me, according to your Word.” In Jesus’ Name. Amen.
God bless!
Pastor Griffin
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“Waiting with Comfort”
Advent Midweek Service II
Isaiah 40: 1 – 11 (page )
1(A) Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. 2(B) Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and cry to her
that(C) her warfare[a] is ended,
that her iniquity is pardoned,
that she has received from the LORD’s hand
double for all her sins.
Dear Friends in Christ,
Story of teenager, when reminded that the Christmas train was going to be here tonight – his reaction was to say “Oh crap!” This is a busy teen who is in the midst of wrestling season and studying hard and the Christmas train was one more event where he is scheduled to sing. One more thing to do!
Contrast that with a story from Robert Louis Stevenson, who tells of a storm that caught a vessel off a rocky coast and threatened to drive it and its passengers to destruction. In the midst of the terror, one daring man, contrary to orders, went to the deck, made a dangerous passage to the pilot house and saw the pilot, at his post holding the wheel unwaveringly, and inch by inch, turning the ship out, once more, to sea. The pilot saw the watcher and smiled. Then, the daring passenger went below and gave out a note of cheer: "I have seen the face of the pilot, and he smiled. All is well."
In the Christmas story, we see the face of Jesus and we know that God has smiled down at us, and all is well. In this midweek Advent series, we are focusing on what it means to wait. Last week we talked about waiting in prayer. Next week we talk about waiting with joy. Tonight we talk about waiting with comfort.
In verse 1 of Isaiah 40 the Lord says “comfort” not just once but twice. He repeat his command for his messengers of all time to comfort his people. Whether it was the prophets of the Old Testament or the apostles and pastors and teachers of the New Testament, the command is the same – to announce the good news of God’s love. Our drama tonight helped us to focus on the Love Candle. In spite of all of our unfaithfulness, all of our rebellion, all of our self centered and nasty ways, take a look at that second candle and know that God loves you. He is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness…
Verse 2 tells us of the method by which God’s comfort was to be shared. Speak it. The human language is the means by which God helps us to have strength, as if we were inside of a fort. Comfort. Speak it tenderly. Speak to the heart and use your voice to say these three truths:
· The hard service of God’s people is completed
· Their sins have been paid for
· God’s people have received abundant blessing from the Lord (It’s done, even though all these things lie in the future. Babylon had not yet become a powerful nation and Judah had not yet been carried away captive. Cyrus had not yet been born, much less issued the edict that allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem. What God will do in the future is so certain that His messengers may speak as if they have already been completed. That’s what it means to wait with comfort and even joy.
3(D) A voice cries:[b](E) "In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD;
(F) make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
4(G) Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
and the rough places a plain.
5(H) And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed,
and all flesh shall see it together,
(I) for the mouth of the LORD has spoken."
A voice of one calling. 700 years after Isaiah wrote these words, John the Baptist appeared. John appears ina long line of voices who preach repentance. In preparation for Christ to come, all believers are to prepare his way by removing all obstacles to his coming. The mountains and the rough ground and the rugged places represent the natural condition of the hearts of the people. By nature our hearts are as hard as rock. We wake up every morning with a fair amount of orneriness, selfishness, and a desire to hit the snooze button once or twice or even more! In my case, I have a three part strategy to get rid of the rough edges in the morning – 1)to do some walking or running or excercising,2)to make sure I get plenty of caffeine, and 3)spend quiet time with God in prayer and study. Whatever your strategies are, be sure to include that third one- quiet time with your Lord that He might do two things in your heart – a)frighten you with His Law and b)comfort you with good news.
6A voice says, "Cry!"
And I said,[c] "What shall I cry?"
(J) All flesh is grass,
and all its beauty[d] is like the flower of the field.
7The grass withers, the flower fades
when the breath of the LORD blows on it;
surely the people are grass.
8(K) The grass withers, the flower fades,
but the word of our God will stand forever.
There’s that voice again commanding Isaiah to cry. To which Isaiah said, “What shall I cry?” To which God answers by commanding his messengers in all generations to cry out to sinners that all flesh is grass and all its beauty is like the flowers of the field. In others words, tell them the law. The law comes first and destroys all human pride. Every one of us is like grass, and our achievements are nothing more than the blossom of a flower, which blooms beautifully but soon drops its petals and dies. As we approach the dead of winter, it is easy to get the connection isn’t it? No matter who we are and what we may accomplish, death will still stalk every last one of us and will eventually pounce on us all and devour us. I saw Brian, one of our funeral directors, last night, and he was exhausted. People have been dying virtually every day in this area, and his business is all about taking care of folks whose loved ones have died.
Every illness and every disappointment and every bit of trouble and every death and every cemetery and every casket are reminders that our bodies are like grass or like a mist which is here today and gone tomorrow and that all our accomplishments are ever so temporary and insignificant when compared to the glory of the Lord, but the Word of the Lord stands forever. How comforting it is to come into this beautiful sanctuary week after week and to meet up with the very body and blood of our Savior and to hear the voice of the King of Kings speaking tenderly that our sins have been paid for, our days of slavery are over, and that our Lord’s great desire is to bless us with abundant life full of comfort and even joy.
9Get you up to a high mountain,
O Zion,(L) herald of good news;[e]
lift up your voice with strength,
O Jerusalem, herald of good news;[f]
lift it up, fear not;
say to the cities of Judah,
"Behold your God!"
10(M) Behold, the Lord GOD comes with might,
and his arm rules for him;
(N) behold, his reward is with him,
and his recompense before him.
11(O) He will tend his flock like a shepherd;
(P) he will gather the lambs in his arms;
(Q) he will carry them in his bosom,
and gently lead those that are with young.
The good news is that we don’t have to be afraid of life any more. We are not required to worry about tomorrow since tomorrow is in the hands of God. Dale Meyer had this to say about worry getting replaced by comfort and even confidence in God. “Worry is fear, fear that you've been abandoned, fear that everything is unraveling, fear that God's throne is empty and his angels are gone.
God's stars shine with confident light in their world. And you know what? The brightest light comes from the testimony of Christians who have suffered, but who still exude confidence. The Lord Jesus himself was sorely tempted at times to feel abandoned and alone, and yet he comforted his disciples with these promises: "Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear... Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life" (Matthew 6:25-27)?
Trusting God means that I am convinced that God's heart loves me, that his mind has good plans and a good outcome set up for me, and that his hands can reach right into my life to make good things happen for me. I'll be okay. You will be, too.
In closing tonight, we have this picture of a shepherd gathering the lambs in his arms and carrying them close to his heart. Notice that the good shepherd doesn’t just carry one lamb at a time; he carries those who need special care. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. Whatever we need and so much more, that God will provide. The Father who spared not His only Son, will He not also graciously give us all good gifts in due time.
We do well in Advent to quietly wait on the Lord for Him to work out everything in our lives for our good. If we have committed to doing too many things and going too many places and seeing too many people, we will do well to practice the line, “No that’s not going to work for me today!” As often as we spend time in God’s Word and prayer, that often the voice of the Good Shepherd will speak tenderly to us that our sins have been washed away and that we’re going to be ok, in fact better than ok! Amen.
God bless!
Pastor Griffin
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Patience With A Purpose
December 3 and 4, 2011
II Peter 3: 8 – 14 (p. 1300 in Bibles)
8 But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. 9 The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
Dear Friends in Christ,
The purposes of God often develop slowly because His grand designs are never hurried. The great New England preacher Phillips Brooks was noted for his poise and quiet manner. At times, however, even he suffered moments of frustration and irritability. One day a friend saw him feverishly pacing the floor like a caged lion. "What's the trouble, Mr. Brooks?" he asked.
"The trouble is that I'm in a hurry, but God isn't!" Perhaps you have been losing patience with certain people and certain circumstances in your life. Perhaps you are wondering why God and others don’t just come to the same conclusions you have come to.
Some of the greatest missionaries of history devotedly spread the seed of God's Word and yet had to wait long periods before seeing the fruit of their efforts. William Carey, for example, labored 7 years before the first Hindu convert was brought to Christ in Burma, and Adoniram Judson toiled 7 years before his faithful preaching was rewarded. In western Africa, it was 14 years before one convert was received into the Christian church. In New Zealand, it took 9 years; and in Tahiti, it was 16 years before the first harvest of souls began.
The theme of our sermon today is “Patience With A Purpose.” Two parts to our sermon today. The first is that the purpose of God’s patience is simply that all should reach repentance. All three lessons for today speak about repentance, which is to feel sorry for our sins and to believe in Jesus Christ as the forgiver of those sins. In today’s Old Testament lesson, Isaiah was privileged to comfort the people of God with news of that forgiveness. John the Baptist was sent to prepare the way of the Messiah with a powerful and a singular message – that broken and contrite hearts God would not despise. That valleys should be lifted up and mountains and hills should be made low and that the uneven ground should become level and the rough places a plain. Or as my old bus driver Slug Springer used to say as he glared at us in the mirror with his penetrating eyes, “Shape up or I’ll throw you out.” Those were the days when bus drivers did occasionally carry through with their warnings to make bad little boys (not girls) walk home Slug had a little bit of patience, and we all knew there was a limit to it. In today’s text, we find that although Christ has already waited over 2000 years to come back a second time, we should not assume that He’s just being slow.
For Him a thousand years is as a day and vice versa. God is above time. His relationship to time is different than ours. He delays the Day of Judgment so that the Gospel could be preached to the far corners of the world. That messed up sinners could be stopped in their tracks by the Law and turned around by the Gospel. As we all know, that takes some longer than others. Just this week I spoke with one young man who told me he had struggled with a particular addiction for ten years before God found a way to get his attention and turn him around. A second young person told me it took15 years before life’s circumstances combined to get her to listen to God’s Word. No doubt many of you like me had an uncle or two who wasted a lot of years drinking and messing up in life before sobering up and wising up as death approached. For many, of course, death approaches rather slowly, but for some it comes like a thief in the night.
10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.[a] 11 Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives 12 as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming.[b] That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. 13 But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells. 14 So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him.
The first lesson we wanted to learn today was that the purpose of God’s patience is that sinners would repent, and the second lesson is to remember what true repentance looks like. The necessary fruit of true repentance is a truly Christian life. As Peter put it, “you ought to live holy and godly lives….make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him.”
This is our assignment each day –to make the effort to be holy even as our Father in heaven is holy, even though we know full well we will fall short and not just a little bit short. To be patient and kind and gentle with others as God has been patient and kind and gentle with us. To let our lights shine before others for this purpose – that others might see our good works and glorify our Father is in heaven.
I recently read a little story about a little girl who was late coming home for supper
one evening. When she got home her parents were understandably upset.
Her dad questioned her about why she had been so late, and made it clear they were worried.
The little girl said, "I stopped to help Marcie, she had a wreck on her
bicycle and it was broken." Her father said, "But you don't know
anything about fixing bicycles!" To which the little girls replied, "I
know, but I stopped to help her cry."
Now you may or may not know anything about fixing bicycles, or cars, or
washing machines, or refrigerators or much of anything else. But when
friends have broken things in their lives and are in despair, we can
help them with that! The truth is that you are rarely in the position
of being able to fix the brokenness of someone's life, but you can help
them cry about it. You can encourage them and help them through the
hard times in life! The apostle Paul wrote: Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.
And so it is that we show up for baptisms and graduations and weddings and funerals and everything in between – to feast with those who are feasting and to laugh with those who are laughing and to weep with those who are weeping and to hope and pray with those who are hoping and praying.
By nature we like to have our cake and eat it too. We like to hang on to our bad habits and be seen as good people at the same time. We want to be members of the Church but aren’t so keen on actually attending Church. We listen to God’s Word and agree with God’s Word but then like to live in a way that denies that Word. Our young folks enjoy all the privileges of marriage even as they plan out their wedding details for that day which is yet to come. We admit that sex outside of marriage is wrong even as we tolerate and perhaps even engage in sex outside of marriage. We say to the pastor, “I know I should come to church more often” and then continue not to come to church very often. We start our conversations with “I probably shouldn’t say this, but…..” Or “I know I should forgive but I just can’t”. Our lives are filled with what the prophet Isaiah calls a shallow repentance.
One preacher John McArthur had this to say about shallow repentance, “people have always been and still are prone to shallow repentance, they are prone to a false repentance. The message, the modern message of cheap grace, as it's often called, just believe in Jesus, that's all you need to do, the modern message that's… at once 180 degrees from the message of John the Baptist. There was nothing about John's message that was easy. There was nothing about John's message that was warm and fuzzy. It was harsh, it was strong, it was confrontational, it was devastating because John understood how prone the sinner is to a shallow, superficial repentance that does not save."
The Holy Spirit has come knocking today. Through the prophet Isaiah and the apostle Peter and John the Baptist, the Holy Spirit would teach us once again that the purpose of all of this divine love and all of this patience and all of this mercy is to wake us up. It is to get our attention and drive us to our knees and make us cry out over and over again, Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy.
The great theologian Phyllis Diller once said that “cleaning your house while your kids are still growing is like clearing the drive before it has stopped snowing.” And while she may have a point on the silliness of shoveling while it continues to snow, we will do well to keep our houses clean even as the kids or grandkids create their messes. Even more to the point every day is that we cry out for God to create in us a clean heart, that we confess our faults to Him and to one another with full assurance that even though are sins are as scarlet, they shall be white as snow. Even though lose patience with God, He hasn’t lost it with us yet. We celebrate God’s patience today, even as we are given fair warning – the day is coming when (read it with me in v. 10 please) the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.” Patience not just for the sake of patience, but patience with a purpose – that’s what we celebrate on this Second Sunday in Advent, even as we are given fair warning that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.
God bless!
Pastor Griffin
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Funeral Sermon for Edna Arndt
November 28, 20111
“Let Your Good Spirit Lead Me on Level Ground”
Psalm 143: 7-10
7(M) Answer me quickly, O LORD!
(N) My spirit fails!
(O) Hide not your face from me,
(P) lest I be like those who go down to the pit.
8(Q) Let me hear in the morning of your steadfast love,
for in you I(R) trust.
(S) Make me know the way I should go,
(T) for to you I lift up my soul.
9(U) Deliver me from my enemies, O LORD!
I have fled to you for refuge![a]
10(V) Teach me to do your will,
for you are my God!
(W) Let your good Spirit(X) lead me
on(Y) level ground!
Dear Friends in Christ,
There’s something good about coming home after traveling for the holidays and there’s something not so good. This Thanksgiving we traveled a couple of hours away to be with family and we had lots of preparation and a wonderful meal and terrific fellowship and then the long ride home. It’s always good to get home to where you belong, but it’s also not so easy to say goodbye to family, especially the grandchildren. But as we all know – that’s life. We look forward to special family events and holidays. We prepare for them. We enjoy them, and then there’s both relief and sadness when it’s all over. Relief and sadness at the same time.
So it is with all of you here today – relief that Edna is now in the presence of Jesus in paradise according to her soul and sadness that she isn’t with you anymore. Relief that her days of trouble here and now are completed and sadness that she isn’t sitting next to Willie anymore, sadness that you can’t go and see Mom anymore, sadness that grandchildren and great grandchildren won’t have Grandma watching over them and loving them anymore. That’s what it means for a Christian to go home. We anticipate that heavenly feast, and we prepare for it by hearing the Word of God and keeping that Word of God, and then it happens. For God’s people, the relief outweighs the sadness. The joy of the Lord instead of the pain of separation is to have the final word here today.
The joy of the Lord has the final word here today because Jesus Christ suffered and died for her on a Friday and He rose up again for her on a Sunday and because He lives so also does she live. Edna was baptized into the Name of the Triune God and by God’s grace she remained in that Baptismal grace. Her parents saw to it that she was instructed in the Christian faith and when she confirmed her faith over 80years ago at Immanuel Lutheran in Courtland, her pastor gave her this Bible verse from Psalm 143, 10(V) Teach me to do your will, for you are my God!
(W) Let your good Spirit(X) lead me on(Y) level ground!
Two lessons we want to learn from that verse today. The first is the importance of asking God every day to teach us His will, and the second is to rejoice in what it means to have the Holy Spirit of God lead us on level ground. In Psalm 143, we find David repenting of His sins and pleading with God to deliver him from his enemies. David is at the point in life where we all want to be – he was teachable. He based his requests for help not on his own good behavior but on God’s faithfulness. In verses 1-6 of this Psalm he describes his situation in life, and in verses 7-12 he presents his petitions. David makes it clear in this Psalm that his trust was in God Almighty, come hell or high water. In v.1 he declared that God was faithful and righteous and therefore he cried out for mercy and for relief. In v. 2 he admits that no one living is righteous before god and he begged God not to give him what he deserved. In verses 4 and 5 he admitted that his spirit was faint and his heart was dismayed, but that as he considered all the works of god in the days gone by he was led to spread his hands to God. He compared his thirsty soul to a piece of parched land looking for rain. He was so distressed with his situation in life that he cried out for an immediate answer. David struggled every day to function and to keep on trusting in God and to keep on fighting the battles God asked him to fight.
You all have your stories to tell about Edna as wife, mom, grandma, and great grandma. As I have listened to some of you tell those stories, I’ve noticed that every time you tell them, your eyes start to get misty and you have a hard time getting the words out. That tells me that Edna loved you in response to God loving her and that you received that love, which is the way families are supposed to work. My favorite story about Edna has to do with her using her ears to hear the Word of God. When she and Willie were able, they were in church. You couldn’t keep them away. They sat right back there on Saturday nights, and they listened. In recent years, they sat in their chairs and pastors and vicars would bring God’s Word and His Holy Supper to Edna and Willie. Whenever we would offer to read God’s Word, they would say yes (or ya, ya, ya). Whenever we would ask them if they were sorry for their sins and if they believed in Jesus Christ and if they promised to amend their sinful lives, they said, yes (translated ya, ya, ya). Whenever we offered our Lord’s Supper, they reached out their hands and said yes, (again translated, ya, ya, ya).
The good news about Edna was that she was teachable. Every time that she sat still and listened to God’s Word in private devotions or in God’s house, she was asking God to teach her His will and secondly, for His Spirit to lead her on level ground. When we ask the Spirit of God to lead us, we are asking for Him to help us not to stumble or go astray. Just as a horseman guides his horse, so do we want God’s Spirit to guide us into all truth and to keep us on the straight and narrow way. Just as a shepherd guides his sheep with both the staff and the rod, so do we listen to the voice of our Good Shepherd with every confidence that He will comfort us with His Gospel and rebuke us with His Law, as needed.
Level ground is so much easier and so much more pleasant than hills and valleys and mountainous terrain, is it not? In this Advent season, we will be reminded by the prophet Isaiah and by John the Baptism that the way to level ground is the way of repentance. In Proverbs 3:6 we read, Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. In Psalm 5:8, we read, Lead me O Lord in your righteousness because of my enemies; make your way straight before me. In Isaiah 40, we read, 1(A) Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. 2(B) Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that(C) her warfare[a] is ended,
that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the LORD’s hand
double for all her sins. 3(D) A voice cries:[b](E) "In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD; (F) make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
4(G) Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.5(H) And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, (I) for the mouth of the LORD has spoken."
This is the Good News meant to have the final word today. As often as Edna confessed her sins to God and lived in His forgiveness, that often her ground was level. That often her pathway was straight and pleasant. As often as she ate and drank at her Lord’s Holy Supper, that often she proclaimed to anybody paying attention that her sins had been pardoned, that her Savior was Beautiful, that God’s grace was amazing, that her God was great, that her soul was comforted, that her strength was in the Lord, and that her future was in the hands of God.
The death of a loved one is a terrific time to remember that our days are numbered and to ask God to give us wisdom from on high. This past Wednesday was the day by God for her to depart and be with Christ in paradise, which is far better. Today is the day appointed for every one of us to learn again the importance of crying out every day for God to teach us His will and to lead us on level ground. So often we make life so complicated and we spend our days trying to figure out solutions to our problems on our own. So often we are too busy to hear God’s Word and pray for guidance. Dear friends in Christ, for a Christian to be too busy to hear God’s Word is as foolish as an athlete being too busy to go to practice and listen to his coach. It is as dangerous a soldier being too busy to listen to the commands of his superior. As foolish as a traveler refusing to consult the map to see where he should go.
May God’s Spirit speak to every one of our hearts today with both a stern warning and a beautiful promise. Woe to that Christian who refuses to use his ears to hear what God is wanting to say, and blessed is the one who hears the Word of God and keeps it. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.
God bless!
Pastor Griffin
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Clay in the Hand of the Potter
November 26 and 27, 2011
First Sunday in Advent:
Isaiah 64: 8- But now, O LORD, you are our Father;
(K) we are the clay, and you are our potter;
(L) we are all the work of your hand.
Jeremiah 18: 1The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: 2"Arise, and go down to(A) the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words." 3So I went down to(B) the potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel. 4And the vessel he was making of clay was(C) spoiled in the potter’s hand, and(D) he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do.
5Then the word of the LORD came to me: 6"O house of Israel,(E) can I not do with you as this potter has done? declares the LORD.(F) Behold, like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.
Dear Friends in Christ,
In the summer of 1986, two ships collided in the Black Sea off the coast of Russia. Hundreds of passengers died as they were hurled into the icy waters below. News of the disaster was further darkened when an investigation revealed the cause of the accident. It wasn't a technology problem like radar malfunction--or even thick fog. The cause was human stubbornness. Each captain was aware of the other ship's presence nearby. Both could have steered clear, but according to news reports, neither captain wanted to give way to the other. Each was too proud to yield first. By the time they came to their senses, it was too late.
You can go through life stubborn and proud or you can go through life understanding that you are clay in the hands of the potter. You can go through life full of yourself or you can understand that you inherited a sinful condition from your parents and say with St. Paul that you are chief of sinners and the very least of all the saints. You can go through life proud of yourself and your accomplishments, or you can spend your days humbling yourself before the mighty hand of God trusting that He will exalt you in due time. You can be thankful to God like the Pharisee was thankful – that you are a cut above the rest of the sinners, or you can understand as the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah came to understand – that you are clay in the hands of the potter.
Two truths we want to learn again today about what it means to be clay in the hands of the potter. The first truth is that God is watching our attitudes very carefully and He will do whatever He needs to do and permit whatever He needs to permit to grow us up into Jesus Christ. In our Old Testament lesson for today, King Hezekiah and Isaiah could see that the Assyrian army had surrounded Jerusalem and that all appeared to be lost. No nation had been able to resist the military power of Assyria. Even though God seemed to be silent in those days, Isaiah cries out for the Lord to come and assert His power. He recited the many good things the Lord had done for the house of Israel; He acknowledged that no mere mortals could really perceive or comprehend how God might deliver His people; He admitted that the entire nation had sinned and rebelled, that their righteous acts were as filthy as a women’s menstrual rags, and that they were no better than shriveled up leaves ready to be blown away by the wind.
Which is exactly what God was waiting to hear from them. You see God is always watching our attitudes. He watches how we treat one another and He deals with us accordingly. In I Peter 5:5 we read that God resists the proud but exalts those who humble themselves. In the prophet Jeremiah’s case, God had decided before he was ever born that He was going to use him for a great purpose. He sent Jeremiah to go watch a potter do his work so that He could teach him. A skilled potter can detect the slightest defect, a wobble, something wrong somewhere, and when he does that, when he detects that, he smashes it down and starts all over again so that it’s made properly. Potters have to have a very sensitive touch, be very astute as to what is taking place, but very concerned that the object is being formed properly.
The second truth we learn about what it means to be clay in the hands of the potter is that He is very patient and full of mercy. Have you ever noticed that just when you get one bad habit under control, another one or two seem to pop up and take its place. So many of us have taken so many New Year’s resolutions and then failed to carry through that we don’t even bother to make them anymore. We have seen so many good intentions go awry that we don’t even set goals for ourselves. Thanks be to God in the first place that He took lifeless clay and formed it into a human body with facial features and body parts and then breathed into it the breath of life and Adam came alive! Thanks be to God in the second place that as flawed and as sinful as every one of us is every day that He doesn’t just throw us away and get a new lump of clay, but He continues to work with that same lump of clay, over and over, until finally it’s one that He’s happy with. Such relief there is I knowing that God works with us and He doesn’t give up on us; He continues until we’re to that place where He is content. Until we are that vessel He can use.
As often as we cry out for help, as Isaiah did in today’s text, that often God can not only help us, but use us. Perhaps you have noticed that if we do not humble ourselves, God will do it for us. I remember the occasional time when my sisters or brother and I were having a bit of a fight and if one of us dared to say that the other person had started it, my dad would usually respond, “I don’t care you started it; I’m going to finish it!” Dad was always interested in helping us to stay humble, or as he liked to say, “don’t get too big for your britches!’
Andrew Murray said it this way, “Humility is perfect quietness of heart. It is for me to have no trouble; never to be fretted or vexed or irritated or sore or disappointed. It is to expect nothing, to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing done against me. It is to be at rest when nobody praises me and when I am blamed or despised. It is to have a blessed home in the Lord where I can go in and shut the door and kneel to my Father in secret and be at peace as in a deep sea of calmness when all around is trouble. It is the fruit of the Lord Jesus Christ's redemptive work on Calvary's cross, manifested in those of His own who are definitely subject to the Holy Spirit.
M.R. De Haan used to say, "Humility is something we should constantly pray for, yet never thank God that we have." Humility isn’t just a personal quality; it’s a quality God wants to see in entire groups of people, in entire families, in entire congregations, even in entire nations. Listen to what God tells Jeremiah in chapter 18 about entire nations, 7If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will(G) pluck up and break down and destroy it, 8and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken,(H) turns from its evil,(I) I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it. 9And if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will(J) build and plant it, 10and if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will relent of the good that I had intended to do to it.
Statistics show that the United States of America is in spiritual decline. In fact this nation is doing more and more evil in God’s sight and is listening less and less to the voice of the Good Shepherd. Dave Olson, the director of church planting for the Evangelical Covenant Church, has published a research study with a ton of bad news. While Americans report to pollsters that over 40% of them attend church on a regular basis, Olson’s research found that the percentage of Americans regularly attending church is only 18.7 percent. How sad is that? It’s bad enough to not enter into the gates of thanksgiving but even worse to lie about it and say that you did when you didn’t! This research study suggested that if present trends continue, church attendance in 2050 will be half of what it is today.
Could anyone blame God is He changed His mind about blessing America with such abundance as we have become accustomed to enjoying? In our Thanksgiving Day sermon, Pastor Dahl preached on the story of ten lepers getting cleansed but only one returning to give Jesus thanks. Could it be that we are moving towards that same percentage in terms of bringing an offering and coming into the house of the Lord to hear His Word and respond with praise and thanksgiving? I have been using Facebook in recent months to connect with some of our inactive members and to engage in a bit of conversation. If you’re familiar with Facebook, you know there is an information page where people can list, among other information, their religious views. In response to that question, one person wrote, “Like God, Church Stinks.” Actually he used a different word for “stinks” but I refuse to use that word.
Our reaction to that kind of comment might be to give up on that person and maybe even to defriend him. But that’s not at all the kind of God we have. Our God is the waiting Father Who is so very patiently waiting and watching down the road for his prodigal sons and rebellious daughters to return. Our God is the Potter Who so carefully watches our attitudes and does what He needs to do to get our attention. He permits what He needs to permit to get us to listen up. He throws us as individuals or as a congregation or as a nation back up against the wheel. He skillfully applies pressure here and there. He pulls and pushes and tugs and stretches and prods and scolds and encourages until our suffering produces endurance and our endurance produces character and our character produces hope, a hope that will never disappoint us because it is rooted in a Savior Who will never leave us nor forsake us.
If God is willing to be patient with us, why should we lose patience with each other? If our Father in heaven knows exactly what He is doing and what we need to grow us up into His Son Jesus Christ, why should we be so very anxious and worried about life circumstances? If we are in fact clay in the hands of an expert potter, why wouldn’t we want to relax and look forward with great joy to see what He has in mind for us. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.
God bless!
Pastor Griffin
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Leona Strunk’s Funeral Sermon
November 11, 2011 at 11 a.m.
Clothed in White Robes
Revelation 7:9-17: 9After this I looked, and behold,(H) a great multitude that no one could number,(I) from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb,(J) clothed in white robes, with(K) palm branches in their hands, 10and crying out with a loud voice,(L) "Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!" 11And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and(M) the four living creatures, and they(N) fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, 12(O) saying, "Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen."
13Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, "Who are these,(P) clothed in white robes, and from where have they come?" 14I said to him, "Sir, you know." And he said to me, "These are the ones coming out of(Q) the great tribulation.(R) They have washed their robes and(S) made them white(T) in the blood of the Lamb.
15"Therefore they are before the throne of God,
and(U) serve him day and night in his temple;
and he who sits on the throne(V) will shelter them with his presence.
16(W) They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore;
(X) the sun shall not strike them,
nor any scorching heat.
17For the Lamb in the midst of the throne(Y) will be their shepherd,
and he will guide them to springs of(Z) living water,
and(AA) God will wipe away every tear from their eyes."
Dear Friends in Christ,
Three friends were asked what they would like their friends and family to say as they were walking by their caskets at their funeral. Artie said “I would like them to say I was a wonderful husband, a fine spiritual leader, and a great family man.” Eugene said, “I would like them to say I was a wonderful teacher and servant of God who made a huge difference in people’s lives.” Glen said, “I’d like them to say, “Look, he’s moving!”
What do you suppose Leona would want us to say? My guess is that if I had asked Leona what I should say at her funeral is that she would have said, “Oh Reverend, I don’t know – whatever you say will be just fine with me.” The Strunk family stands out in my mind because they have a habit of calling me Reverend instead of Pastor or Larry or hey you knucklehead. There was a reverence in the heart of this Christian woman for the Office of Pastor, which was really a reverence in her heart for the holiness of the Triune God, a reverence for the holiness of His Word, a reverence for the holiness of His Supper.
Our sermon theme today is “Clothed in White Robes” and is based on the appointed lesson for this past Sunday, All Saints’ Sunday. In Revelation 7, John is giving us a picture of Judgment Day when a great multitude of believers from every generation in human history will stand before the Lamb dressed in white robes and waving palm branches and giving all credit for salvation to God! Their robes are white because they have been washed in the blood of the Lamb of God. They have been baptized into the Name of the Triune God and they have remained in that Baptism faith by the grace of God through faith alone in Jesus Christ. They have stayed close to the Lamb of God who has paid for and taken away and sent away as far as the east is from the west every sinful condition, every sinful thought, every sinful word, every sinful deed, every sinful habit, every sin of omission and every sin of commission. Though their sins are as scarlet, they shall be white as snow.
In conversation with our daughter Michelle, who has three little daughters named Grace, Mercy, and Glory, she told us that a couple of days ago it snowed for a bit at their farm near Lewiston, MN. She said that little two year old Glory sat on her chair near the window holding onto her teddy bear and looking out at the snow and was mesmerized by that snow and several times all she could say was “wow!”
As we reflect for a few minutes this morning on how the grace of God was planted into the heart and mind of Leona Strunk at an early age and how her faith grew and stayed constant and bore so very much fruit for 103 years plus, we might want to say what Glory said, “wow!” Or we could just fall down on our faces before the throne and cry out what we will be crying out on the Last Day and into eternity, "Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen."
All credit and glory goes to God for clothing His saints in white robes. Already in Genesis 3, right after God declared His curse upon the serpent and then Eve and then Adam, we find it recorded that the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.” When Job was crying out for help and for relief He took the time to acknowledge that God was His creator, that God had clothed him with skin and flesh and knit him together in his mother’s womb with bones and sinews, that God had granted him life and steadfast love…In Psalm 132 the Psalmist prays that “let your priests be clothed with righteousness and let your saints shout for joy.” In I Peter 5 we are taught to clothe ourselves with humility towards one another and to never forget that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. God is always finding ways to humble those who are getting too big for their britches and to raise up those who are bent low in repentance and brokenness.
We could spend a lot of time talking about Leona’s virtues, and they were many. We could talk about she loved to read and hear God’s Word and recited Psalm 23 and her Lord’s Prayer on a daily basis and how she had a terrific work ethic and had that kind and gentle and uncomplaining spirit – and oh how God blessed so many of us with those Christian virtues. Christian virtues of course are not really our accomplishments but rather gifts provided by God. They are the virtues of Jesus Christ and are worked in our hearts and minds as often as we hear the Word of God and keep it.
Paul writes to the Colossian Christians about putting on this clothing every day, these white robes provided by Jesus Christ by living a perfect life we could never begin to live, by suffering all that He was asked to suffer, by dying the death we needed Him to die, by rising up again in glorious fashion on the Third Day, by appearing for 40 days and by ascending into heaven where He sits at the right hand of His Father and rules with all authority in heaven and earth. Paul urges Christians to put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts to which indeed you were called in one body….
We praise God today that in the waters of Holy Baptism, the Triune God claimed Leona Roemhildt as His own and clothed her with that white robe of righteousness. We praise God that as often as Leona used her ears to hear His Word, as often as she confessed her faults, as often as she ate and drank at her Lord’s Table, as often as she let the Word of Christ dwell in her richly, that often she was wearing the clothing God had appointed her to wear. And if you spent any time at all with her, she helped you to wear the clothing God has appointed for you to wear.
Most mornings, I ask Debi to help me know which clothing to wear, which colors go together and which don’t, which ties go with which shirts, and even though I think that blue socks and black pants are just fine, I do submit to her judgment. It’s part of loving Debi and being loved by her. So also do we want to keep on learning from Leona Strunk as continue on without her for a time. We will do that as often as we wear our white robes. We do that by refusing to hold grudges, by forgiving as we have been forgiven instead of forgiving only those who are apologizing. We wear our white robes by putting up with each other’s annoying qualities as we realize how badly we annoy God every day and yet He keeps on putting up with us. We wear our white robes as we treat with kindness those folks who really really really irritate us more often than not, in response to the everlasting patience our God has had with us.
I read recently that “we never really grow up. We only learn how to act in public.” I might add that in fact growing up into Jesus Christ is in fact learning how to act in public and in private. It is to live with the Holy Spirit instead of our old sinful nature in charge. May God’s Spirit work within each one of us a spirit of thankfulness and generosity as we look forward to that paradise which Leona already enjoys according to her soul and spirit, that paradise where there are no more hungry and thirsty people, no more scorching California heat, no more brutal Minnesota winters and where the Lamb will be our Shepherd and will wipe away every tear from our eyes. May God’s Spirit help every one of us in every one of our days to wear the white robes God has purchased and prepared and laid out and appointed for us to wear and may Leona Verna Roemhildt Strunk rest in peace. In the Name of Jesus. Amen.
God bless!
Pastor Griffin
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Blessed!
All Saints’ Sunday, 2011
Matthew 5:1-12
1Seeing the crowds,(A) he went up on the mountain, and when he(B) sat down, his disciples came to him. 2And(C) he opened his mouth and taught them, saying: 3(D) "Blessed are(E) the poor in spirit, for(F) theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Dear Friends in Christ,
As I began to type this sermon I left out the letter “r” in friends and so typed in “fiends in Christ.” I wondered about the definition of fiend and when I looked it up, I found the first four meanings of fiend to be “ 1) An evil spirit, a demon, 2) The Devil, Satan 3) A diabolically evil or wicked person, one who is addicted to something. In this case, one letter makes all the difference in the world – the difference between fiend and friend.
On this All Saints’ Sunday, we learn again that Jesus Christ makes all the difference in the world. Apart from Christ we are lost and condemned sinners, but in Jesus Christ we are redeemed and precious saints. Apart from Christ, we are on a collision course for the fires of hell, but in the waters of Baptism, we have been set on a pathway to paradise. Apart from Christ, our sinful nature takes charge and causes serious damage on a daily basis, but in Christ our sins have been washed and sent away as far as heaven is from hell. Apart from Christ we are cursed and in Him we are absolutely blessed! Our sermon theme today is BLESSED.
3(D) "Blessed are(E) the poor in spirit, for(F) theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Apart from Christ, we are cursed and tempted. Cursed by our own sinful nature and tempted to be self-centered, self sufficient, selfish, and the opposite of poor in spirit which is to be full of ourselves. Already here and now we are blessed in Christ, as we recognize our utter helplessness and cry out for mercy. According to Wikopedia the most frequently quoted Bible verse that isn’t in the Bible is “God helps those who help themselves.” The real and true teaching of Scripture is that a broken and contrite heart, God will not despise. Already now by faith we are blessed as cry out for and receive mercy day after day, and in heaven there will be final and complete blessedness, no more tears, no more crying out, no more brokenness.
4"Blessed are(G) those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Apart from Christ we raise our voices in defending our sinfulness and in excusing our nastiness and in justifying our foolishness. Apart from Christ, husbands and wives rarely if ever say they are sorry and apologies are far and few between, and arguments seem to go on and on world without end. Our marriages and families and relationships are cursed in a thousand different ways and life just gets worse and worse. In Christ, we are moved by the Holy Spirit to raise our voices in mourning and in weeping over the evil that we have done and the good we have failed to do. The life of a Christian is blessed with continuous contrition and repentance. In absolution and in the Holy Supper Christ comes to us with true and lasting comfort and joy. Already here and now we are blessed as often as we confess our unworthiness and in heaven we will be blessed as we wear our white robes and wave our palm branches and cry out with the angels and the archangels and the saints that worthy is the lamb who was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!
5"Blessed are the(H) meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Apart from Christ we are boisterous and demanding. We insist on our rights and we draw lines in the sand and we put up with only so much unfairness and if there’s anything we can’t stand it is not to be properly appreciated. In Christ, we love as we have been loved and we forgive as we have been forgiven and we are patient with each other as we realize how patient God has been with us and we have a sense of humor about other people’s annoying qualities as we realize how awesome is God’s sense of humor with us. As Israel looked forward to the promised land, so do we look forward to paradise and even get to the point in life that we agree with Paul that “I desire to depart and be with Christ which if far better.”
6"Blessed are those who hunger and(I) thirst(J) for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. By nature and apart from Christ we are hungry to make lots of money and possess lots of stuff and get ahead of our neighbors who we see as competitors. We are thirsty to have fun and to be entertained and eat and drink and be merry believing that you only go around once in life. In Christ, we know that we are merely pilgrims and foreigners here and now and that heaven is our home. The more we grow up into Jesus Christ, we find ourselves hungry and thirsty for the forgiveness of sin and for all the fruits of the Holy Spirit that come along with that forgiveness. We are satisfied here and now in knowing our crucified and risen Lord and we actually come to the same conclusion Paul came to – for me to live is Christ and to die is gain.
7"Blessed are(K) the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. By nature and apart from Christ we forgive people who are apologizing and shaping up, but God calls us to a higher level of mercy than that. We tend to forgive those who are easy to forgive but the Bible teaches us to be merciful in response to that mercy we have already received. What a terrifying warning our Lord gives when He says that if we will not forgive our brother his sins, neither will our Father in heaven forgive ours!
8"Blessed are(L) the pure in heart, for(M) they shall see God. 9"Blessed are(N) the peacemakers, for(O) they shall be called(P) sons[a] of God. Apart from Christ we live with our own agendas; today we are invited to celebrate God’s agenda. God’s thoughts are not our thoughts—we aren’t even in the same neighborhood. When we’re thinking, Preserve the body; God’s thinking, Save the soul. We dream of pay raises. He dreams of raising the dead. We avoid pain and seek peace. God uses pain to bring peace. In Christ we pray again and again for Him to create in us clean hearts and to renew a right spirit within us. By faith we see what unbelievers have no way of seeing. We spend our days knowing that we are so very blessed and blessing others with listening ears and words of encouragement becomes as natural as breathing in and out. resolve. “Die, so you can live,” he instructs. We love what rusts. He loves what endures. We rejoice at our successes. He rejoices at our confessions. We show our children the Nike star with the million-dollar smile and say, “Be like him.” God points to the crucified carpenter with bloody lips and a torn side and says, “Be like Christ.”
Thinking God’s thoughts.
12(U) Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for(V) so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. An unknown author once said, "As a boy, I thought of heaven as a city with domes, spires, and beautiful streets, inhabited by angels. By and by my little brother died, and I thought of heaven much as before, but with one inhabitant that I knew. Then another died, and then some of my acquaintances, so in time I began to think of heaven as containing several people that I knew. But it was not until one of my own little children died that I began to think I had treasure in heaven myself. Afterward another went, and yet another. By that time I had so many acquaintances and children in heaven that I no more thought of it as a city merely with streets of gold but as a place full of inhabitants. Now there are so many loved ones there I sometimes think I know more people in heaven than I do on earth."
You know you’re getting older when you start to say more and more to yourself and others that dying and going to heaven wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world; actually it would be the best day of my life! You know you’re getting wiser when you realize that here and now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we shall see face to face, now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
Apart from Christ and according to our old sinful nature we are cursed and tempted in every which way. But in Holy Baptism, we have been claimed as the very sons and daughters of our Father in heaven. Our names have been written in the book of life, and our mansions in paradise on reserve. We are blessed with an acceptance that can never be questioned, blessed with an inheritance that can never be lost, a deliverance that can never be excelled, blessed with grace that can never be limited, blessed with a hope that can never be disappointed, blessed with a bounty that can never be withdrawn, blessed with a joy that need never be diminished, blessed with a nearness to God that can never be reversed, blessed with a peace that can never be disturbed, blessed with a righteousness that can never be tarnished, blessed with a salvation that can never be canceled. Blessed! Amen.
God bless!
Pastor Griffin
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Learning To Rejoice in the Lord Always
October 12, 2011
4(G) Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. 5Let your reasonableness be known to everyone.
Dear Friends in Christ,
The first lesson we want to learn tonight about rejoicing in the Lord always is to remember what we have been taught. On Facebook today I saw a picture and read a story about a little baby named Caleb Hope. Caleb was thrown in the rubbish bin for ants to eat. He was a newborn baby boy found wrapped in a blanket at a rubbish dump near an informal settlement in Bloemfontein and is doing well in hospital. The Clinic spokeswoman Amanda Appelgryn said the child, named Caleb Hope, was in good condition and breathing on his own. “He was on antibiotics due to the environment he was found in.” Workers at an informal rubbish dump near the settlement discovered the baby on Saturday afternoon and phoned emergency services.ER paramedics found the baby boy with the umbilical cord still attached to the placenta. He was hypothermic and struggled to breathe. Appelgryn said the baby had bite marks on his skin from ants while he was lying at the dump.
Now how on earth could one rejoice in the Lord after hearing of that or similar examples of evil and brokenness? We should remember that as Paul wrote this command to the Philippian Christians, he was sitting in prison on death row. He had already been severely persecuted for his Christian faith and preaching in the past, and his future was ever so uncertain. In addition to that he was writing to a congregation where two prominent women were involved in a dispute. Paul handles this delicate situation with a marvelous combination of tact and Christian love. He doesn’t get into the motives of the women nor does he open the old wounds by going into a lengthy rehashing of the problem. He doesn’t scold or fix blame. He simply pleads with them to agree with one another in the Lord and to rejoice in the unity they have in Jesus Christ.
When he urges their sweet reasonableness to be evident to all, he is urging them and us to learn that outward circumstances do not and should not determine the condition of a believer’s heart. What the Lord has done and is doing and promises to do is to rule in our hearts and minds in every one of our days, with no exceptions.
The Lord is at hand; 6(I) do not be anxious about anything,(J) but in everything by prayer and supplication(K) with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7And(LM) which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. ) the peace of God,(
The second lesson we learn tonight about rejoicing in the Lord always is to keep on chasing away anxiety by praying to our Father in heaven with thankful and confident hearts. How is it possible to stay calm and gentle and reasonable even when our troubles are mounting and our conflicts are escalating and our blood pressure is rising? By knowing that our Lord is soon coming back, that’s how. How is it possible to “not be anxious about anything?” By remembering that in Christ our sins have been forgiven and our names have been written in the book of life and that our mansions in heaven are secure, that’s how. The best way to deal with nervous anxiety and sinful worry is to pray. It’s that simple. Go ahead and take your guilt and your griefs to God in prayer in any and every circumstance. Do so with thanksgiving to God for all that is right and blessed in your life and then let God hear about it. Pray in the Name of Jesus Christ Who suffered all that needed to be suffered and died the death we needed Him to die and rose up again on the third day to seal the deal. Pray with the confidence that God will answer every proper prayer in the way that is absolutely best for each of us as individuals and for each of our families and for this church and school. Pray with the total assurance that God will work out everything for the good of those who love him and are called according to His purposes. And so we pray as dear children ask their dear fathers. As a dear child would ask her mom to read a story at bedtime, as beloved grandchildren would ask their grandpa to take them to Dairy Queen, as a husband would ask his wife for forgiveness and a chance to make it up to her, as a wife would ask her husband to do a list of chores around the house, as a friend would ask another friend to come help in a day of trouble, so may we pray with the trust of a much loved child or grandchild or spouse or good friend. That’s how to chase away the distractions and the anxiety in the Name of Jesus Christ, that the joy of the Lord might surface and have its way. That’s how we learn through trial and error, through prayer and waiting and believing, to rejoice in the Lord always.
8Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. 9What you have learned and(N) received and heard and seen(O) in me—practice these things, and(P) the God of peace will be with you.
The third lesson we learn about rejoicing in the Lord always is to pay attention to the way we think. There once was a bunch of tiny frogs ... who arranged a running competition. The goal was to reach the top of a very high tower. A big crowd had gathered around the tower to see the race and cheer on the contestants...
The race began... No one in the crowd really believed that the tiny frogs would reach the top of the tower. You heard statements such as: "Oh, WAY too difficult!!" "They will NEVER make it to the top." The tiny frogs began collapsing. The crowd continued to yell, "It is too difficult!!! No one will make it!" More tiny frogs got tired and gave up... ...But ONE continued higher and higher and higher... This one wouldn't give up! He was the only one who reached the top! All of the other tiny frogs naturally wanted to know how this one frog managed to do it? A contestant asked the tiny frog how he had found the strength to succeed and reach the goal?
It turned out that the winner was DEAF!!!! This story teaches us to be deaf to other people’s tendencies to be negative or pessimistic, to know that negative folks have their own issues and have a way of taking away your important dreams, to never forget that you are richly blessed in both body and soul and that you can in fact do all things that Jesus Christ is asking you to do in life.
Rather than telling yourself that nobody really appreciates you, tell yourself again and again that truth that God loves you and is with you always. Rather than telling yourself that you’re lonely and without purpose, spend time counting you what is true and honorable and just and pure in your life. Rather than cursing the darkness in your world, go ahead and light a candle. Rather than whining about what you don’t have, praise God for what you do have. Rather than complaining about people who aren’t doing their jobs to your satisfaction, write a thank you note to someone in your life who has been blessing you lately. Rather than fixing your thoughts on what is shabby or foolish or wrong with this world, go ahead and think about all that is excellent and praiseworthy. Rather than telling yourself that you have messed up and there is no hope for you and leaving it at that, tell yourself that your hope and your strength and your reason for living is Jesus Christ Who has purchased you with His very blood and wants nothing more than to have mercy on you. Bad thinking starts with the lies of the devil and good and Godly thinking starts at the cross of Jesus Christ and His empty tomb!
10I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that now at length(Q) you have revived your concern for me. You were indeed concerned for me, but you had no opportunity. 11Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be(R) content. 12I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and(S) hunger, abundance and(TU) through him who strengthens me.) need. 13I can do all things(
Finally tonight, we learn that rejoicing in the Lord always is a way of thinking and speaking and living worked inside of us as we go through the ups and the downs of life and understand what it means to be content. To be contented isn’t to be lazy but is rather to be satisfied with your lot in life, even if you would like to make it better. Contentedness isn’t just giving up and not trying but is in fact to know that you can do all good works that God has prepared for you to do and ordained for you to do. Perhaps your lot in life is to be married to a sinner who keeps on disappointing you or perhaps your lot in life is to raise up 2 or 3or 4 kids that have a way of driving you crazy some days or perhaps your lot in life is to be a teacher who feels unappreciated more often than not or perhaps your lot in life is to work on an assembly line that isn’t terribly exciting most of the time or perhaps your circumstance in is that you are disabled or retired or unable to do what you used to do. No matter what, you may be contented in the Lord.
The Spirit of God will help you to be contented and even full of joy as often as you 1)remember all that you have been taught about the Lord has done, is doing and promises to do. 2)chase away the anxieties of life by praying to God with a confident and thankful heart, 3)as often as you pay close attention to how you are thinking, and 4)as often as you remember the necessity of going through the ups and downs of life so that the Lord has a chance to teach you what matter a lot and what matters so very little in life. In closing, please say it with me, “Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice!”
God bless!
Pastor Griffin
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The Invitation You Do Not Want To Refuse
October 8 and 9, 2011
1And again Jesus(A) spoke to them in parables, saying, 2(B) "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave(C) a wedding feast for his son, 3and(D) sent his servants[a] to call those who were invited to the wedding feast, but they would not come. 4(E) Again he sent other servants, saying, 'Tell those who are invited, See, I have prepared my(F) dinner,(G) my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding feast.' 5But(H) they paid no attention and went off, one to his farm, another to his business, 6while the rest seized his servants,(I) treated them shamefully, and(J) killed them. 7The king was angry, and he sent his troops and(K) destroyed those murderers and burned their city. 8Then he said to his servants, 'The wedding feast is ready, but those invited were not(L) worthy. 9Go therefore to the main roads and invite to the wedding feast as many as you find.' 10And those servants went out into the roads and(M) gathered all whom they found, both bad and good. So the wedding hall was filled with guests.
11"But when the king came in to look at the guests, he saw there(N) a man who had no wedding garment. 12And he said to him,(O) 'Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?' And he was speechless. 13Then the king said to the attendants, 'Bind him hand and foot and(P) cast him into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.' 14For many are(Q) called, but few are chosen."
Dear Friends in Christ,
These days wedding invitations are almost always printed, nicely done, and to the point. The bride and the groom and their parents are anxious for the guests to come and perhaps even more anxious for them to rsvp. You can rsvp by mail or in some cases by calling a toll free number or even in some cases by going on-line, but you really should rsvp. Either say yes or no. Those doing the invitations and the planning, for the most part, do not appreciate maybe and ifs, ands, or buts. I remember one rsvp for our son’s wedding that say “yes, unless the hay is down ad needs to be baled.” I am guessing I have frustrated a few families by putting down 1 or 2 guests and occasionally I add a qualifier “probably”. In my defense, since I usually lead Divine Service at 6:30 on Saturday nights, my attendance at the receptions has a lot to do with what time the meal begins.
In Jesus’ day there was a custom that was widely practiced and can still be found in some near Eastern societies today. A person decides to put on a dinner. Through a messenger he sends invitations to the guests he’d like to honor. But when first given, that invitation does not yet mention day and hour. That comes later. Those invited take note that some time soon they have a banquet to attend. Then, when the banquet is ready, the servant quickly goes around again and tells them, ‘Come, now, for everything is ready.” Then the guests drop what they are doing, wash up, put on their dressy clothes and come to the feast.
The theme of our sermon today is “The Invitation You Do Not Want To Refuse”. First of all we want to learn about that Old Testament invitation which went to the Jewish nation, and secondly the New Testament invitation which goes out also to the Gentiles.
In this parable, the King who prepared the marriage feast is our heavenly Father. The bridegroom is His Son our Lord Jesus. Even though the son was killed in the previous parable, here he is alive again. As Jesus tells these parables on Tuesday of Holy Week, he is saying that Good Friday will most certainly be followed by Easter Sunday. That point might have gone right over their heads at the time, but after Jesus’ resurrection, when his disciples had the benefit of hindsight, they were able to see things they had missed before. Yet another reason to read the Bible over and over again. Nobody gets it all the first time.
Not only is the son alive again he is getting married. The bride, of course, is the Christian Church, and the wedding feast is ultimately paradise where the baptized believers will live face to face with Jesus Christ in all of His glory. In Revelation 21, John “saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.”
In Ephesians 5, Paul urges husbands to love their wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing[b] her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. Here we learn that God intends our marriages to be a preparation for and a foretaste of the wedding feast in heaven. The Bible teaches that husbands and wives will no longer be married to each other and that we will all be married to Christ.The invitation to believe in the one true God came in the Old Testament to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob, and to the entire Jewishnation. God sentout his servants, the prophets, to invite guests to th wedding by preaching His Word, by bidding their to come through faith in the promise of the Messiah. But so many invited did not come. They were the Jews who would not hear nor receive those sent to them. Some refused the invitation by going off to the farm and others to their business, and still others actively mistreated and killed the messengers. Luther suggests that this parable teaches three barriers that prevent us from coming to the marriage feast. He says that those who go off to the farm are afraid of suffering shame and dishonor by following Christ and that those who goof to their business are those whose hearts goof to their own worldly affairs, and that the third class are the worst. They are the high, wise, and mighty Pharisees and scribes who want to hold onto their own positions and power and would not humble themselves before the mighty hand of God.
In this parable, the King was angry with those folks who refused the invitation and sent his troops and destroyed them all. In fact this happened to the Jews through the Romans under Titus and Vespasian, who burned Jerusalem to the ground in 70 A.D. to its very foundation.
Secondly, the invitation goes out to the Gentiles. Starting with Good Friday and continuing to this very day, the apostles and the evangelists and the pastors and the New Testament Church is commissioned to go out into the highways and into the alleys and far corners of the world and invite both the bad and the good. That is to say, the invitation should go to those who have good reputations and bad reputations in the eyes of people. The invitation is to go out in all the seasons of the church year and in all of the homes and the schools and the work places and the market places near and far.
To those who are spiritually thirsty, we say come to the waters and drink without cost and never be thirsty again. To the spiritually hungry we say come without cost and eat bread that gives life and satisfies like you’ve never been satisfied before. To the burdened and weary, we say come to Jesus Christ and find rest for your souls and calmness for your spirits and strengths for your hearts and wisdom for your minds. To the hurting and the dying we recite from memory the Psalm 23 invitation to never forget that “You prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies, you anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows.” To anybody who will pay attention, we point out the final invitation of the Bible, "And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely"
Why would people refuse this invitation? Perhaps the closest we can get to answering that question is to ask another question, “Why don’t people go to church? One research study listed the top five reasons people don’t go to church. Reason #1, 26% said they had no time, scheduling conflicts, and they were busy working. Reason #2, 16% said they were not interested and that the church had nothing to offer, or had no reason to give. Reason #3, 15% said they didn’t know why they didn’t go to church. Reason #4, 14% said their beliefs were different than the church’s, and reason #5, 12% said they don’t believe in organized religion and don’t need to worship at a church to be a Christian. For a variety of reasons, these folks are apparently or in fact refusing the invitation issued by the New Testament Church. Do we care about all that rejecting and refusing going on in this place, or not so much?
The Holy Spirit would teach us today, if we are listening, that the church worldwide and our congregation here and now are in the inviting business. If God would persist in inviting sinners to come into His Kingdom even after those sinners killed His prophets and His one and only begotten Son, who are we to give up on people in our lives who have drifted away from the church or have pretty much told us to mind our own business? This is our Father’s business, and we haven’t been commissioned to persuade people or to convince people or to charm people with our dazzling eloquence of words or to drag them into the wedding feast. Our Father has simply commissioned us to keep on inviting hurting and broken hearted and messed up people to come to that place where their stories can be heard and their hearts can be healed and their messed up lives can get a fresh start.
It’s not as if we have to produce a wedding garment for ourselves or others to wear to the Feast. The King already provided that garment by sacrificing His own beloved Son. The Lamb has been slaughtered and the blood has already been shed and the body has already been broken. Our robes have already been washed and made white in the blood of the Lamb, and in the waters of Baptism we have been clothed with Jesus Christ crucified, risen, and coming back again. Daily we stay dressed in that clothing God has provided as we confess our faults and iniquities to God and one another, that the forgiveness of sins might wash over our souls and rule our hearts and minds.
One pastor said it this way, “If you’re going to throw a party there are three things you need. You need a place, you need people, and you need some preparation. If you have a bunch of people with no place to go you have a riot. If you have a place with no people, then you’re just alone, If you’re prepared with no place or people you just have obsessive compulsion disorder.” That same pastor said in a sermon on this very text that “God has no grandchildren and your faith will not carry your children into heaven. Because you are a child of God you may enter God’s grace, but your descendents won’t get a buy-in because of your faith.
Many are called but few are chosen. That’s another way of saying that all are invited, but few say yes to what God has provided through the perfect life, the sacrificial death, and the glorious resurrection of His Son. May God move hearts and minds of dozens and dozens and even hundreds and hundreds of the forgiven and redeemed saints here at Trinity Lutheran Church and School to move into a higher gear on this matter of inviting others to come and to see, to taste and to enjoy the grace, the mercy, and the life changing truths of the Triune God. To those who are drifting and wandering aimlessly through life, we do well to say, “Iknow of a place where there is an anchor that holds and a sense of belonging that will never be taken away from you. To those who feel unworthy we do well to say, “yes, this forgiveness and this abundant life are for you!” To those who have been disappointed and ignored or treated badly by the Church, we do well to say, “give us another chance” , and to those who seem to be sort of and kind of interested but maybe not, we want to warn them in a kind and patient way that this is one invitation they do not want to refuse! In Jesus’ Name. Amen.
God bless!
Pastor Griffin
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“I’ll Ask The Questions Around Here!”
September 24 and 25, 2011
Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost
Ezekiel 18: "Yet you say, 'The way of the Lord is not just.' Hear now, O house of Israel: Is my way not just? Is it not your ways that are not just?
23 And when he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came up to him as he was teaching, and said, "By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?" 24Jesus answered them, "I also will ask you one question, and if you tell me the answer, then I also will tell you by what authority I do these things. 25The baptism of John, from where did it come? From heaven or from man?" And they discussed it among themselves, saying, "If we say, 'From heaven,' he will say to us, 'Why then did you not believe him?' 26But if we say, 'From man,' we are afraid of the crowd, for they all hold that John was( a prophet." 27So they answered Jesus, "We do not know." And he said to them, "Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.
Dear Friends in Christ,
Two of our Lord’s favorite methods of teaching were telling stories and asking questions. Today we focus on the questions God asked Israel according to the prophet Ezekiel and questions Jesus asked the chief priests and the elders of the people on the Tuesday before He was betrayed.
Imagine a highway patrolman who stops a speeding woman and before he can even ask for her license she asks in rapid succession, “Why did you stop me? How fast was I going? Why don’t you go after that person who just passed me going even faster than I? What’s the matter with you anyway?” When she finally stops to take a breath, he declares, “Ma’am, I’ll ask the questions around her!”
Or imagine a father whose children have been misbehaving and mom says “just wait till you dad gets home and he’s going to hear about this.” When dad does get home, little Johnny comes running and asks in quick fashion, “Why is mom always so crabby and why does she always pick on me and why doesn’t my sister get in trouble and can’t you see she’s the one who started it and why can’t you believe when I say I didn’t do anything…..” When he finally stops to breathe, Dad calmly announces, “I’ll ask the questions around here.”
So also in both Old and New Testament lessons for today, sinners dare to question God and in both cases God answers their questions with another question and in so doing affirms the pattern that it’s far better to hear the questions God is asking than to babble on and on with our own. “I’ll Ask The Questions Around Here” is our theme today. First we learn how God would rebuke us with His questions of Law, and secondly we learn how the ultimate purpose of all our Lord’s questions is to lead us to repentance and faith.
First, God often rebukes us with His questions of Law. Job 38-40 are one of the more memorable portions of Scripture where God listens to Job and his three friends go on and on and on and finally God answers out of a whirlwind with a question, “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Dress for action like a man; I will question you, and you make it known to me.” I counted no few than 45 questions which followed. Questions of rebuke like “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” and “have the gates of death been revealed to you?...Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty? He who argues with God, let him answer it.”
In our Old Testament lesson for today, the people of God were defending their shallow attempts to deny their own guilt by quoting certain proverb, and God sets them straight, “Yet you say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just.’ Hear now, O house of Israel: Is not my way just? Is it not your ways that are not just?”
And finally in our Gospel lesson for today, we find Jesus on Tuesday of Holy Week teaching and confronting the leaders of the Jews. When they demanded to know by what authority Jesus was doing “these things” they were evidently referring to the cleansing of the temple, which had happened the day before. This was basically the same question these unbelievers had asked John the Baptist three years earlier. When John the Baptist was asked by what authority he baptized, he pointed them forward to the Messiah, the thongs of whose sandals John would be unworthy to untie.
When Jesus answered their question with a question, he put them in a box they had no idea how to escape. He asked them whether John’s baptism came from heaven or from man, proving once again that one or two good questions is often better than one or two hours of lecture time. If they answered “from heaven” they would be acknowledging that Jesus was who He said He was, and if they answered “from man” they would be going against popular opinion of the crowds, and no way they were willing to take that stand. In reality, Jesus’ question is a call to repentance. It is an eleventh-hour invitation to believe in him as Savior, which should remind you of last week’s parable in which the workers who started working at the eleventh hour of a twelve hour day were paid the same as those who worked all twelve hours.
All of which leads us to our second lesson today, which is that the ultimate purpose of all or our Lord’s questions is sincere repentance and a growing faith. Our God is ultimately like the father in one of our opening stories instead of the highway patrolman. Good fathers ask good questions for the purpose of helping their children to repent and to learn and to grow in Christian faith, in contrast to law enforcement whose main purpose is to maintain law and order.
When God read Job the riot act up one side and down the other, His ultimate purpose was that Job would say what he did say in chapter 41, “I know that you can do all things; and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted…I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know….now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” There you have it, a sincere repentance and growing faith in His Redeemer.
In our Old Testament lesson for today, God follows up His tough line of questioning with a command to “repent and turn from all your transgressions, lest iniquity be your ruin. Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed and make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. This is at the very heart of Christianity, the message of the Holy Christian Church in all the ages,that sinners repent and do not die, but live.
In Matthew 21, Jesus follows up His refusal to answer their question with a parable of two sons. In that parable the father asked the first son to go and work in his vineyard and the son said he would not but later changed his mind and went. The second son first of all said he would work and then did not go. The first son represents the tax collectors and prostitutes who at first refused to work in the kingdom but later cried out for mercy, and the second son represents the Pharisees and chief priests and elders and teacher of the law who said they would serve God but refused listen to the preaching of John the Baptist.
We learn again today that the Law of God should be preached to everyone but especially to those sinners like the Pharisees who are not repenting and the Gospel should be preached to everyone and especially to sinners like the prostitutes and tax collectors who were broken hearted and pleading for forgiveness.
In closing, hear just a few more questions to remind us of the ultimate purpose of good and Godly questions. In the sermon on the mount, Jesus asks, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him! In Romans 8, Paul asks, “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect?...Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
The kingdom of God is like a father who concludes a stern scolding with his son with questions like these, “Do you realize how much your mom and I have done for you and how much we love you and how we only want the best for you? Don’t you know that our love for you will never end and that only God could love you more than we do? In Jesus’ Name. Amen.
God bless!
Pastor Griffin
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Welcoming the Weak
September 14, 2011
Romans 12: 1As for(A) the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions. 2(B) One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables. 3Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and(C) let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him. 4(D) Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master[a] that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand.
Dear Friends in Christ,
Question #1 – Who are the weak in faith?
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West Virginia FARM KID in Marine - Dear Ma and Pa,
I am well. Hope you are. Tell Brother Walt and Brother Elmer the Marine Corps beats working for old man Minch by a mile. Tell them to join up quick before all of the places are filled.I was restless at first because you get to stay in bed till nearly 6 a.m. But I am getting so I like to sleep late. Tell Walt and Elmer all you do before breakfast is smooth your cot, and shine some things. No hogs to slop, feed to pitch, mash to mix, wood to split, fire to lay. Practically nothing. Men got to shave but it is not so bad, there's warm water. Breakfast is strong on trimmings like fruit juice, cereal, eggs, bacon, etc., but kind of weak on chops, potatoes, ham, steak, fried eggplant, pie and other regular food, but tell Walt and Elmer you can always sit by the two city boys that live on coffee. Their food, plus yours, holds you until noon when you get fed again. It's no wonder these city boys can't walk much. We go on 'route marches,' which the platoon sergeant says are long walks to harden us. If he thinks so, it's not my place to tell him different. A 'route march' is about as far as to our mailbox at home. Then the city guys get sore feet and we all ride back in trucks. The sergeant is like a school teacher. He nags a lot. The Captain is like the school board. Majors and colonels just ride around and frown. They don't bother you none.
This next will kill Walt and Elmer with laughing.. I keep getting medals for shooting. I don't know why. The bulls-eye is near as big as a chipmunk head and don't move, and it ain't shooting at you like the Higgett boys at home. All you got to do is lie there all comfortable and hit it. You don't even load your own cartridges They come in boxes. Then we have what they call hand-to-hand combat training. You get to wrestle with them city boys. I have to be real careful though, they break real easy. It ain't like fighting with that ole bull at home. I'm about the best they got in this except for that Tug Jordan from over in Silver Lake . I only beat him once.. He joined up the same time as me, but I'm only 5'6' and 130 pounds and he's 6'8' and near 300 pounds dry. Be sure to tell Walt and Elmer to hurry and join before other fellers get onto this setup and come stampeding in. Your loving daughter, Alice
In Alice’s mind those city boys were pretty weak. Nothing new about that. We country kids from the hills of North Dakota thought the town kids were spoiled brats who didn’t know what work was. They thought we were country hicks without manners. At certain ages boys and girls want nothing to do with each other and as we grow up men still think women are irrational and women think men are clueless. Folks from out east think we Midwestern people are unsophisticated and behind the times and we suspect they are elitist and intellectual snobs. Even in the church we have members who prefer traditional worship and think contemporary is weak and vice versa. The elderly look down on the baby boomers for their wild credit card spending and the baby boomers look down on the teenagers for acting like teenagers and the teenagers are pretty sure their parents don’t have a clue about what it feels like to be a teenager.
Nothing new about differences in the church. In Romans 14, the Jewish Christians and the Gentile Christians were struggling with a host of cultural and ethnic differences. Jews who had grown up under Old Testament ceremonial laws were forbidden to eat certain foods which were ceremonially unclean, like pork. In this case they were the weak in faith, since Jesus Christ had fulfilled and ended ceremonial regulation. Gentiles had never been under the ceremonial laws and had been eating pork all along, but for them now to do that in the presence of Jewish Christians or to put pressure on Jews to join them in a meal including “unclean foods” would have strained congregational ties. The Gentiles in this case were the stronger and more mature Christians, at least on this topic, and they tended to look down on the hesitant Jew as being something of a spiritual wimp. Paul cautions against that, “The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not.”
The other problem was that the Jews could look down on the Gentiles for cheerfully eating what they considered forbidden foods and become critical and judgmental. Paul would remind them and us that there is one holy and Christian Church, not two or more. We have one faith, one Lord, one Baptism, one Holy Supper, not two or more. We have been accepted by our Father in heaven because of what Jesus Christ has done for us on the cross, and nothing is to get in the way of that unity. In Baptism we are united into one church and no cultural or ethnic or political or financial or other differences are to interrupt that unity we celebrate in our Lord’s Supper.
Question #2 – How shall we treat one another when we have differences?
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One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike.(F) Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. 6The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since(G) he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God. 7For(H) none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. 8For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then,(I) whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. 9For to this end Christ(J) died and lived again, that he might be Lord both(K) of the dead and of the living.
10Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For(L) we will all stand before(M) the judgment seat of God; 11for it is written,
(N) "As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me,
and every tongue shall confess[b] to God."
12So then(O) each of us will give an account of himself to God.
The question is how shall we treat each other when we have differences? The simple answer is to welcome each other and not to quarrel. The Jews grew up keeping the Sabbath day of rest, on Saturday, and Gentiles chose to worship on Sunday, the day of resurrection. Choose a day and live that day as onto the Lord. To look down on others who make different choices in non-essentials is to improperly judge. Our relationships are to be based on Christ who is the solid foundation and not on cultural preferences which are like shifting sands. Our kindness towards and patience with each other is to have everything to do with what happened at Calvary and nothing to do with Jewish/Gentile differences or boy/girl differences or worship style differences or shall we build or not build differences or you fill in the blank.
Three reasons, in closing, why we should welcome and love and forgive one another whether we happen to be strong or weak on a particular issue. Reason #1 is that God has accepted us in Jesus Christ. Welcome one another, as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God (Romans 15:7). Reason #2 is that God will be our judge and in so many situations in life, we’re not authorized or appointed to judge. In so many situations, we do well to keep in mind what many of our parents taught us, “Mind your own business.” Reason #3 is that God will make us stand on the last day. On the last day every believer will stand glorious and vindicated and loved and forgiven and righteous and accepted, even as he or she bends the knee in humble adoration.
Keep in mind that on some issues you could be right and I could be wrong and on other issues I could be right and you could be wrong and on still other issues, there is neither right nor wrong. Some days we think clearly and other days we get stupid. Some days we make good decisions and other days we step in it, or to say it another way some days you’re the bug and other days you’re the windshield. May God help us to move forward in this place, even as we are still at the foot of the cross and know that God is God. God help us to know which battles to fight and when to let it be, when to speak and when to be silent, to know when we are in a position to judge and when we are not, when to confront and when to retreat, when to persuade others to change their minds and when to let them have their own opinions. All of this we would do for the glory of God and for the benefit of each other, in the strong Name of Jesus Christ who lived and suffered and died and was buried and lives again for us. Amen.
God bless!
Pastor Griffin
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Forgiven!
September 10 and 11, 2011
Matthew 18:21- 3521Then Peter came up and said to him, "Lord, how often(AI) will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?(AJ) As many as seven times?" 22Jesus said to him, "I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.[g]
Dear Friends in Christ,
A man and woman were married for many years, even though they hated each other. Whenever there was a confrontation, yelling could be heard deep into the night. The old man would shout, 'When I die, I will dig my way up and out of the grave and come back and haunt you for the rest of your life!' Neighbors feared him. They believed he practiced magic, because of the many strange occurrences that took place in their neighborhood. The old man liked the fact that he was feared. ---To everyone's relief, he died of a heart attack when he was 88.
His wife had a closed casket at the wake. After the burial, she went straight to the local bar and began to party, as if there was no tomorrow.
Her neighbors, concerned for her safety, asked, 'Aren't you afraid that he may indeed be able to dig his way out of the grave and haunt you for the rest of your life?' The wife put down her drink and said, 'Let him dig. I had him buried upside down.' And you know men won't ask for directions...
This story illustrates for us how ugly life can get in marriage and in family and in all of our relationships when we are slow to confess and quick to hold grudges. How bitter and how brutal our lives get when we will not receive from God that gift of forgiveness He is so anxious for us to receive. To make matters worse, it’s impossible to give away a gift we have not received. Our sermon theme today is “Forgiven!” The first lesson we want to learn about the forgiveness of sins is to receive it, and the second is to give it away.
Step #1 each day is to receive the forgiveness of sins. We do so with the sober realization that the wages of sin is death and that we have absolutely no ability to pay our debt before Almighty God. In this parable, the servant owed10, 000 which according to scholars could be as much as 12- 20 million dollars in today’s currency. Let’s call it $15,000 to keep it simple. According Roman law the debtor and members of his family could be sold into bondage since they were considered the king’s property, and that’s exactly what was ordered to happen.
When the verdict goes against him, this servant totally breaks down and cries out for more time to pay. He doesn’t deny his debt but admits it. Luther wrote about these verses that “before the king drew him to account, he had no conscience, did not feel the debt, and would have gone right along, made more debt, and cared nothing about it. But now that the king reckons with him, he begins to feel the debt. So also with us – in so many ways so many of us so much of the time are not all that concerned with out sin. We live with a false security and really do not fear the wrath of God. We imagine that God is this Minnesota Nice kind of God Who says I’m ok and you’re ok and let’s just try to get along.
In fact, God is both just and loving. He loved the world so very much and His sense of justice was so very perfect that He insisted that payment in full be made and He Himself made payment in full. When Good Friday was done, it was finished. The wrath of an Almighty Judge had been satisfied, and the sins of all were washed away in the blood of the Lamb. Even though all sins have been paid for and in fact forgiven, few sinners actually receive that forgiveness. A gift that is given isn’t necessarily received. There is no forgiveness received without repentance. There is a huge difference between grace that has been purchased at a great price and then offered free of charge and what some have referred to as cheap grace. A German theologian named Bonhoeffer said it this way, “"Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession.... Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate."
Lesson #1 today is to cry out for mercy every day that God might have mercy. To cry out every today for forgiveness knowing that Jesus Christ was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us pace, and with his stripes we are healed.
Lesson #2 is to give away what we have received. That’s easier said than done, of course. It was Elizabeth O’Connor who said, “Forgiveness is a whole lot harder than any sermon makes it out to be. One pastor named Scate said this about forgiveness, “…if you and I don’t get this forgiveness thing down, then we miss the gospel. Grace, the gospel, the very heart of God; they are all wrapped up in forgiveness…”
Ernest Hemingway tells about a young man who wrongs his father and he runs away from home to the city of Madrid. Out of great love for his son, the father takes out an ad in the Madrid newspaper, “Paco, meet me Hotel Montana,12 noon Tuesday. All is forgiven. Papa.” Now Paco is a rather common name in Spain, and so when the father gets to the hotel, he finds 800 young men named Paco waiting for their fathers. We long for forgiveness: to be able to forgive and to be forgiven. And yet we live in a dog eat dog world instead of a dog forgive dog world.
Forgiveness is not at all easily defined or described, and no doubt that’s why Jesus told this magnificent story about the servant who received mercy but would not give it away. His master had released him from paying back a 15 million loan but could not find it in his heart to forgive 100 denarii, or about 100 days of wages. A substantial sum, but not when compared to his loan that had been cancelled.
We all know how beautiful life can be when we are able to let go of oru grudges and let the past be in the past. And how on the other hand, all hell breaks loose in our lives when we choose to remember each other’s faults and forget their good works. The unmerciful servant in our text did what comes naturally for all of us sinners whose sins have been washed away in the blood of the Lamb. He still wanted to draw blood from his fellow servant. We know that God has loved us unconditionally, but oh how we prefer to put conditions on our love for each other. We know that God refuses to keep score against us because of what Jesus has perfectly done and yet how we love to keep score. We know what a relief it is when the garbage man takes away our garbage and never brings it back at us, and yet how we choose to dig around in the garbage and the hurt and the brokenness of the past. We may be able to overlook a fault or two when our husbands keep on being insensitive and our wives keep on being irrational and our parents keep on making mistakes and our children keep on disrespecting us, but like Peter we like to ask, “Lord how many times shall I forgive, up to seven times?”
To which our Lord Jesus answers, “Forgive up to seventy times seven”, that is to say without limit.” Forgive your brother from the heart not because he is apologizing and shaping up, but because Jesus Christ lived the life which required no apologies. Forgive your sister not because she is changing her ways but because the Holy Spirit has changed your heart. Forgive your friend not because he is such a likeable uy but because Jesus Christ suffered and suffered and suffered some more and was crucified until he was dead and buried and then up and at it again all for you. Forgive each other not only because it just might change your future but mainly because of has already happened courtesy of the Triune God.
One way of talking about forgiveness is that it means to make a decision not to pay back, not to get revenge for what someone else has said or done against you. In theory the decision should be easy. If my boss has forgiven me $15 million, it should be easy to forgive my friend a few hundred or even a few thousand dollars. If God has been absolutely patient with me through thick and thin, good days and stupid days, should I really have to think twice about being patient with my wife, my family, and my friends? In one sense, patience is in fact a synonym of forgiveness.
The mistake we make so much of the time is that we look at who the person is who has wronged us, and we look at what they have done to us. This parable reminds us that this is a mistake. When we have been wronged, we do well to look at who God is, and what God has done for us. How often should you forgive the people who have hurt you in life? Well how far has God gone with you?
In closing there are two basic ways we can spend our days. We can spend them forgiving only those who are apologizing or forgive all in full view of the mercies of God. When people kick up mud and sand in our faces we can pick up some mud and sand and keep the fight going, or we can choose to go home and take a nice refreshing shower. E can drink a little bit of poison called bitterness each day or we can remember how bad that poison tastes and not drink it. You can walk around with a chip on your shoulder and looking for a fight or you can rest easy in knowing that Jesus Christ fought the perfect fight and live with grateful and generous hearts. You can go through life hating and stewing and snarling and hurting and wounding and gossiping and digging your holes deeper and deeper, or when you find yourself in a hole you can stop digging and ask a friend to help you out of that hole. You can spend your days giving people what you think they deserve or giving away what you have received from your Father in heaven. Another way of saying, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who have trespassed against us.
God bless!
Pastor Griffin
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In The Name of Jesus
September 7, 2011
Matthew 18:15-21
"If your brother sins against you,(X) go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have(Y) gained your brother. 16But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established(Z) by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 17If he refuses to listen to them,(AA) tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church,(AB) let him be to you as(AC) a Gentile and a tax collector. 18Truly, I say to you,(AD) whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed[f] in heaven. 19Again I say to you, if two of you(AE) agree on earth about anything they ask,(AF) it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. 20For where two or three are(AG) gathered in my name,(AH) there am I among them."
Dear Friends in Christ,
A couple of days ago I spoke with a good friend of ours named Greg whose daughter had just given birth to a boy in LaCrosse. There had been some complications and he now called to say that the baby had been delivered and that it seemed as though mother and child would be fine. When I got off the phone and reported that to Debi she asked me what was the baby’s name and I said I didn’t ask and Greg didn’t tell. She asked me how much the baby weighed and I again said I didn’t ask and Greg didn’t tell.
I did get a bit of a look which reminded me that I really should have asked for the name. Names matter. When we were little, one of the first things we learned was our names. When we meet, the first thingwe exchange and try to remember is our names. We say, “Hi, my name is _____; what is your name?” I often tell my vicars and elders that it’s really hard to convince people that you care about them if you don’t even bother to learn and memorize and use peoples’ names.
In our text for tonight, Jesus teaches us the importance and the power of His Name. He is in the midst of teaching how Christians need to help each other shake off the bonds of sin. If your brother sins against you go and talk to him. Help him, in a nice way, to see the error of his ways. Urge him to confess his faults and to throw himself on God’s mercy. Assure him that God loves to have mercy. That’s the great desire of God because of what Jesus Christ has done. If he won’t listen to you and tells you to get lost, don’t give up. In a prayerful and straightforward and tender and kind and patient way, take one or two more and repeat the process. If he still won’t listen, tell it to the church and ask the church to speak truth to him again in a prayerful and straightforward and tender and kind and patient manner……….and here is the promise as we do so – that Jesus Christ is with us and will honor whatever we do in His Name. Whenever we forgive the sins of repentant sinners here on earth, we do so in the strong Name of Jesus and they are forgiven in heaven. Whenever we do not forgive the sins of unrepentant sinners here on earth, we do so in the strong Name of Jesus, and they are not forgiven. Whenever we prayerfully talk it over in the Church and seek God’s will and then agree on moving forward with that particular decision, we are doing so in the Name of Jesus, and He will honor and bless that decision.
When parents like Justin and Jessica make the decision to baptize their little girl Maggie Jane in the Name of the Triune God, they can be sure that God will honor and bless that decision. In I Corinthians 6:11,we read But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. This very evening the Name of Jesus has been placed into this little girl. She has been marked with the sign of the cross both upon her forehead and on her heart, signifying that she is bound together with all of us by the cross and that her sins have been washed away in the blood of the Lamb!
In a few minutes, many of us will be eating the bread and drinking the wine and as we do so will be receiving the very body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ in, with, and under that bread and wine. Jesus is not just sort present or kind of present or maybe present or symbolically present but really present. Really, in a mysterious and miraculous and wonderful way, our Lord Jesus Christ comes to us tonight in the words of holy absolution and in the preaching of His Holy Word and in the waters of Holy Baptism and in the bread and wine of the Holy Supper.
He comes again and again to us bearing the gift of forgiveness of sins. And wherever there is forgiveness of sins, there is life and salvation. And not just a little bit of life and salvation but life abundant and forever and absolutely awesome and amazing.
The question tonight is not whether Jesus Christ is with us and in us and for us. He is all of the above. In Colossians 3, we are reminded that the real question is whether we will let the Word of Christ dwell in us richly or not. Will we teach and admonish one another in all wisdom or not? Will we spend our days singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in our hearts or not? Will we do everything in word or deed in the name of the Lord Jesus or will we just go through life doing our own thing and pretty much living for ourselves? Will we see that every time we help and befreiend our neighbors in need that we are in fact helping and befriending Jesus? Will we pretty much keep the Name of Jesus Christ to ourselves or represent Him in our thoughts and words and actions and habits to one another? In closing tonight, consider the following story.
A few years ago a group of salesmen went to a regional sales convention in Chicago. They had assured their wives that they would be home in plenty of time for Friday night's dinner. In their rush to catch the plane home, with tickets and briefcases, one of these salesmen inadvertently kicked over a table which held a display of apples.
Apples flew everywhere. Without stopping or looking back, they almost
all managed to reach the plane in time for their nearly missed boarding.
ALL BUT ONE! He paused, took a deep breath, got in touch with his
feelings, and experienced a twinge of compassion for the girl whose
apple stand had been overturned. He told his buddies to go on without him, waved good-bye, told one of them to call his wife when they arrived at their home destination and explain his taking a later flight. Then he returned to the terminal where the apples were all over the terminal floor. He was glad he did. The 16-year-old girl was totally blind! She was softly crying, tears running down her cheeks in frustration, and at the same time helplessly groping for her spilled produce as the crowd swirled about her, no one stopping and no one to care for her plight. The salesman knelt on the floor with her, gathered up the apples, put them back on the table and helped organize her display. As he did this, he noticed that many of them had become battered and bruised; these he set aside in another basket. When he had finished, he pulled out his wallet and said to the girl, "Here, please take this $40 for the damage we did.""Are you okay?" She nodded through her tears. He continued on with, "I hope we didn't spoil your day too badly." As the salesman started to walk away, the bewildered blind girl called out to him, "Mister....." He paused and turned to look back into those blind eyes. She continued, "Are you Jesus?" He stopped in mid-stride, and he wondered. Then slowly he made his way to catch the later flight with that question burning and bouncing about in his soul: "Are you Jesus?" "Do people mistake you for Jesus?
I invite you to go home with that question tonight……did anybody mistake me for Jesus today? Will anybody mistake me for Jesus tomorrow? Did I have time for hurting people today and will I have time for broken people tomorrow? Did I help my neighbors shake off the bondage of sin today and will I do so tomorrow? Did I serve my King with humility and gladness today and will I do so tomorrow? Did I prayerfully and in the Name of Jesus approach my list of things to do today, and how about tomorrow?
Again I say to you, if two of you(AE) agree on earth about anything they ask,(AF) it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. 20For where two or three are(AG) gathered in my name,(AH) there am I among them."
God bless!
Pastor Griffin
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August 24, 2011
Living In View of God’s Mercy
Romans 12: 1-8
I appeal to you therefore, brothers,[a] by the mercies of God,(B) to present your bodies(C) as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. bDDo not be conformed to this world,[c] but be transformed by(E) the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may(F) discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.[d]
First, remember your priorities. Actress Whoopi Goldberg co-hosts a comedy show every year called Comic Relief. The purpose of that show is to raise money for the nation’s homeless. According to a recent Readers Digest column, it is only one of the many such charitable causes in which she is involved. When asked why she donated her talent for such causes, she said, “I fear waking up in the morning and finding out my life was all for nothing.
I suppose she could be commended for wanting to do something significant with her blessings, but in today’s Bible reading, we have a far better motivation for living a life that would be helpful to others. Rather than being motivated by a fear of living life for no good purpose, we learn again tonight to live in view of God’s mercy.
To live in view of God’s mercies is to remember that we do not belong to ourselves and that life isn’t just about us and doing what we jolly well want to do. If left to ourselves we are lost and condemned creatures, but we have not been left to ourselves. God had mercy on us by rescuing us with His own Son’s precious blood. We have been bought and paid for, and we belong to the one true God not just so that we can belong, but to live in His Kingdom in a way that gives Him glory and helps and befriends our neighbors in every bodily and especially their spiritual needs.
The world around us is obsessed with image. What will people say? What will people think? But the Christian thinks differently. His mind and heart have been changed by the grace and mercy of God. What God thinks matters most to the new heart and the new mind that has been touched and converted by the Holy Spirit. Priorities are never the same again. It becomes a priority to be kind and patient with one another because God has been kind and patient towards us and not just because somebody else might seem to deserve it. It becomes a priority to confess our faults to God and one another instead of explaining them because of what happened on a little hill outside of Jerusalem. It becomes a priority to serve each other not just because other people need our help or because we feel like being nice people but in view of the person and ministry of Jesus Christ. We live in view of God’s mercies by first of all remembering our priorities.
3For(G) by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you(H) not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment,(I) each according to(J) the measure of faith that God has assigned.
Secondly, realistically evaluate your gifts. Time Magazine once reported on a math test given to 13 year olds from six different countries. The South Koreans received the best scores and the Americans received the worst. Those taking the tests were also asked to respond to this statement, “I am good at mathematics.” Only 23% of the Koreans said they were good at mathematics, the lowest percentage of the yes responses. But the American students came in first with the most yes answers, even though they were in fact last in mathematics skills! We proud Americans especially need to hear the warning from Paul not to think too highly of ourselves. Also a caution from Proverbs 16 that pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.
Some people of course go to the other extreme and think too poorly of themselves. They forget that they have been created wonderfully and marvelously by God in the first place and redeemed with the blood of the Lamb of God in the second place. Moses would be an example of a man who took humility a bit too far as he gave one reason after another why he couldn’t do what God was telling Him in direct fashion that he could in fact do!
Three practical tips on realistically evaluating your gifts would be 1)Take a test or an inventory to see what kind of personality or skills you might have. Here at Trinity Kris Born is our SHAPE coordinator and helps people to take a spiritual inventory and see what their passions and gifts might be. 2) Try it out. Jesus once criticized the one talent man because he buried his gift in the ground and never used it. He commended the two talent and five talent people because they experimented. They tried it out and ended up doubling their investment. How would you know if you could teach a Sunday School class or sing in the choir or give good counsel or work with teenagers if you never try? 3) Third, ask a friend or two what might be your strengths and weaknesses. Make sure you find that friend or family member who will be honest in a nice way with you.
4For(K) as in one body we have many members,[e] and the members do not all have the same function, 5so we,(L) though many,(M) are one body in Christ, and individually(N) members one of another.
Third, never forget who you are. You are a wonderfully created and redeemed son or daughter of your Father in heaven, and God has a plan not only to help you survive life but to use you to bless others. As surely as each of your body parts have specific functions, so does each individual Christian have different functions. The ear was designed to hear and the eyes were obviously created to see and hands were obviously created to perform so many tasks and the appendix was created for – well actually I’m not sure about that one! Perhaps to keep humble by bursting and needing to be removed as happened with one of our young ladies this past week.
Most of us were designed to be married to one other person and many of us were created to be parents but just a few of us have been designed to be teachers of children and even fewer of us have been designed to be preachers of God’s Word. Some of us have been designed by God to be terrific listeners and others to be talkers. Some of us are quiet and reserved (like my mom) and others the life of the party (like my aunt Linny). Some of us are designed to serve in the medical field and others to shingle roofs and others to lead and still others to follow, but all of us are members of the body of Christ, equally significant but gifted in a unique fashion.
As often as we compare ourselves to others and wish we could be somebody else, we set ourselves up for failure and forget the very simple truth that God created us to be who we are and to bloom where we have been planted. Be who you are, not in terms of your sinful nature, but in terms of the new nature worked inside of you by the Spirit of the living God.
6(O) Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if(P) prophecy,(Q) in proportion to our faith; 7if(R) service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; 8the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity;(S) the one who leads,[f] with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with(T) cheerfulness.
Finally, stay focused in the area of your God-given strength. This isn’t rocket science, but sanctified common sense. Preachers do well to make sure they have faithful each week to the main aspects of ministry, namely study of God’s Word and prayer and preaching and teaching and faithful pastoral care. Teachers do well to avoid the same old same old routines but to stay in tune with technology and pay attention to how Jesus Christ taught. Those who serve do well to do so with gladness. Those who exhort and admonish do well to do so with humility and the mind of Christ. Those who give should stay focused on the generosity of God in sending His only begotten and much loved Son. Those who lead should do so with zeal and those who follow should be attentive and those who do acts of mercy do well to stay cheerful instead of permitting the spirit of complaint and bitterness to survive within.
Whatever God has gifted you to do and whatever is your passion in life, you focus on that and develop that to the best of your God-given ability. Do so in full view of the mercies of God and then let the chips fall where they may. A man named Jim Fox said “My father always told me, find the job you love and then you will never have to work the rest of your life.” That may be an oversimplification, but the point is well taken.
We may be doing our children a dis-service when we tell children they can be anything they want to be and do anything they want to do. That’s not true. They might not be gifted enough to be a doctor or a professional athlete or a farmer or a shingle of roofs or a teacher of pre-school children or a Marine. We can’t be just anything we want to be, but we must be what God has gifted us and ordained us to do. (Ephesians 2:10).
Two of my Sunday School teachers have died in recent weeks, first my aunt Linny and then my friend Craig’s mom, Dorothy Mindeman. Both were blessings to me and dozens of others here and now and all the way into eternity. They were able and willing to teach us little rascals, or maybe we were angels some of the time! God gave us gifts not for our own benefit but for each others’s. If we don’t use our gifts, we cheat one another and disappoint our God in heaven above. By using our gifts fully for the glory of God, we begin to light little torches along the way to show people through the darkness to the light of Jesus Christ.
God bless!
Pastor Griffin
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My House of Prayer
August 16, 2011
Isaiah 56: 1-8: Thus says the LORD:"Keep justice, and do righteousness,(A) for soon my salvation will come, and my deliverance be revealed. Blessed is the man who does this,and the son of man who holds it fast, Bwho keeps the Sabbath, not profaning it and keeps his hand from doing any evil." Let not(C) the foreigner who has joined himself to the LORD say, "The LORD will surely separate me from his people"; and let not the eunuch say, "Behold, I am(D) a dry tree. 4For thus says the LORD:"To the eunuchs(E) who keep my Sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, F I will give in my house and within my wall a(G) monument and a name better than sons and daughters;H I will give them everlasting name that shall not be cut off. 6"And(I) the foreigners who join themselves to the LORD, to minister to him, to love the name of the LORD, and to be his servants everyone(J) who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it, and holds fast my covenant—Kthese I will bring to(L) my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer;M their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar for(N) my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples." The Lord GOD,O who gathers the outcasts of Israel, declares, PI will gather yet others to him besides those already gathered."
Dear Friends in Christ,
Found in the pocket of a Civil War soldier: "I prayed for strength so that I might accomplish something. I prayed for health so that I could do greater things. I prayed for wealth so that I could use it to prosper myself and others. I prayed for authority and esteem that I might be worthily respected among men. I prayed for all these things so that I might have joy in my life. I received nothing I prayed for but received much more than I had hoped."
There are at least two ways to pray and to think through life. You can pray as a beggar crying out for mercy or you can pray as if you are a respectable and decent person worthy of God’s attention. On his deathbed Martin Luther wrote, "We are all beggars." If you really get that you are a beggar, spiritually speaking, then you will understand what God promised in Isaiah 56 to “bring His people to His holy mountain and to make people joyful in My House of Prayer. MY HOUSE OF PRAYER is our sermon theme today and is based on this past Sunday’s Old Testament Lesson.
The first lesson we want to learn again tonight is that God’s House of Prayer is for everyone. Isaiah made it clear that the Suffering Servant would be pierced for everyone’s transgressions and that He would be crushed for everyone’s iniquities. In Isaiah 55, the invitation into the Kingdom was for everyone who was thirsty and that everyone, both Jews and Gentiles could come and buy without money and without cost.
The redeemed people of God are marked throughout Scripture and in our text for tonight as people with joy. Joy that comes in receiving the forgiveness of sins. Joy that is hard to keep to oneself. Joy that doesn’t mumble but sings with gratitude and makes a joyful noise. Christian joy goes beyond being grateful and singing up a storm. Isaiah teaches us tonight that true Christian joy found in the House of Prayer will spend its days maintaining justice and doing what is right. John the Baptist made it clear that true repentance will produce fruit in keeping with repentance. We are saved by faith in Jesus Christ alone, but faith never comes alone. Good behavior never earns God’s gifts, but it necessarily follows in response to those good gifts.
One function of the Old Testament law was to keep God’s people separate from the nations that surrounded them. Jews were to avoid contact with Gentiles. They were not to eat pork or other unclean foods. They were circumcised as a sign of their connection with Abraham and the promises God made to them. The uncircumcised and those who had been emasculated and were now eunuchs were forbidden to enter the assembly of the righteous. But in our text for tonight, God is describing a new thing that the Lord was doing. He was describing the New Testament Church where Jews and foreigners alike would be welcome to join themselves by faith to the one true God.
Old Testament faith was described in two ways – by keeping the Lord’s Sabbaths and by choosing what pleased God. Everyone who listened to God’s Word and kept it would be blessed. To this very day, Christian faith is evidenced in two ways – by loving God with all of our heart and soul and mind and by loving one another as ourselves. Blessed are they who hear the Word of God and keep it. And what are those blessings? God will give us everlasting names. He will bring us to His holy mountain, in other words He will call, gather, enlightened and sanctify us in the one true faith as often as we use our ears to hear, as often as we receive the very body and blood of our Savior in His Holy Supper. He gives us joy in His House of Prayer even tonight, as we come to Him just as we are, without one plea. We come as spiritual beggars hungry for the bread of life and thirsty for that water which will quench our thirst once and for all.
The second lesson we want to learn tonight about God’s House of Prayer is that the things of God are to have an aroma and an atmosphere of prayer.
Mark 11: 15-17: And they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of(B) the money-changers and the seats of those who sold(C) pigeons. 16And he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. 17And he was teaching them and saying to them, "Is it not written,(D) 'My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations'? But(E) you have made it a den of robbers."
Jesus cleansed the temple in Jerusalem not just once but at least twice. Three years earlier He had done so with a whip that He made. It was a premeditated act and now He was doing it again without a whip. This time He was using His authority and presence to drive them out as the disciples watched with their mouths wide open. Why did He drive them out?
They were not in sync with the atmosphere of the temple, that’s why. They didn’t fit with the spirit of sacred worship. We’ll all answer some day to God for what we’ve done with what is sacred. Jesus said His Father’s house was to be a house of prayer. This Church is to be a church of prayer. In so many ways the church these days is not so much a place of prayer as it is a place of working hard and building bigger, better, faster, and more clever. When Paul wrote to the church at Philippi, he told them to not be anxious about anything but in everything by prayer and petition. Paul wrote to Timothy that first of all requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone and that he wanted holy men everywhere to lift up holy hands in prayer without anger or disputing. In Revelation prayer is likened unto incense, which is kept in bowls before God and gives off a pleasant odor.
So often in the Church and in life today we emphasize everything but prayer. It’s so often when and only when life gets really really stressful that we turn to prayer instead of turning to God in prayer without ceasing, in good times and in bad, for better for worse, in good health and in bad.
My mom is 86 years old and has been a prayer warrior as long as I can remember. Every day she is famous in our family for reading her Bible and saying and writing and saying again prayer after prayer. In recent days she has been getting more and more confused about what to wear and what to do and where is everybody. This morning she called me crying and wondered where was my sister Gail and where was my sister Judy and where was I. At one point she wasn’t even sure where she was and what she was supposed to be doing. Finally I said, “Mom it’s almost 8 o’clock, why don’t you sit down and read your Bible and do your prayers. She thought that was a good idea, and so we prayed together on the phone and she proceeded to say goodbye and say her prayers.
Friends in Christ, when you are in trouble, pray. When challenged, pray. When successful, pray. When you’re at the end of your rope or flying high, pray. Prayer is not some little mental thing. It is to be in the presence of Almighty God who created you wonderfully and marvelously in the first place and redeemed you with his own Son’s precious blood in the second place. Prayer is first of all listening to God and then talking to Him and then listening again. It is one good work the devil absolutely detests. Satan knows the power of God and He trembles. We know the power and the grace and the mercy of God and we calm down. We are comforted. We find the strength to carry on. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.
God bless!
Pastor Griffin
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Ransomed!
August 3, 2011
I Peter 1: 13Therefore,(AG) preparing your minds for action,[a] and(AH) being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 14As obedient children,(AI) do not be conformed to the passions(AJ) of your former ignorance, 15but(AK) as he who called you is holy, you also be holy(AL) in all your conduct, 16since it is written,(AM) "You shall be holy, for I am holy." 17And if you(AN) call on him as Father who(AO) judges(AP) impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves(AQ) with fear throughout the time of your exile, 18knowing that you(AR) were ransomed from(AS) the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, 19but(AT) with the precious blood of Christ, like that of(AU) a lamb(AV) without blemish or spot. 20He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but(AW) was made manifest(AX) in the last times for the sake of you 21(AY) who through him are believers in God,(AZ) who raised him from the dead and(BA) gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.
Dear Friends in Christ,
A news headline caught my attention today. It read “Ransom Note Found By Police” and went on to ell of a teenager in Australia who had been kidnapped and then had a live bomb strapped to her in a 10-hour ordeal. Bomb specialists were able to release Madeleine Pulver, 18, from the collar bomb after getting expert advice from the Australian Federal Police bomb centre and the British military. The device, which police were unsure was explosive, was still intact and will be closely examined by forensic experts. Assistant Commissioner Mark Murdoch said Madeleine's parents William and Belinda Pulver - one of Sydney's wealthiest families - were "immensely relieved" that their daughter was safe. Mr Murdoch described it as a "very elaborate device". He would not reveal details of the threat or demands for ransom price. During the ordeal at the family's mansion in Madeleine was fed, given water, kept warm and was in the company of specialist police officers while her parents were kept away. Mr Murdoch said she was in a "uncomfortable position" during the "unusual incident" and was taken to hospital for checks afterwards. Police have not had contact with who is responsible but "want to get our hands on them pretty smartly".
Experts from the NSW Bomb Squad spent several hours examining the device while it remained secured around the terrified teenager's neck. In her case she was rescued and the ransom price was not paid. In the case of sinful humanity, we have been rescued and the ransom price has been paid. The theme at Camp Omega this summer and in our VBS this week is Ransomed. Two truths we learn again tonight about being ransomed.
First, we have been Ransomed with the precious blood of Christ in order to be declared holy before God. We have been ransomed not with gold or silver but with the holy precious blood of Jesus Christ. Not with the blood of animals which could hardly be called precious. Ransom prices are by definition high. A cheap ransom is out of the question when it comes time to satisfy the wrath of a righteous and holy God. Peter no doubt had Matthew in mind who recorded that the Son of Man came to give his life as a ransom for many. Jesus Himself declared that “my life I lay down in behalf of the sheep.” Peter doesn’t say the death of Christ since death would not necessarily include shedding blood. The shedding of blood teaches both the sacrificial and the substitution aspects of blood. John the Baptist pleaded with His listeners to behold the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world.
Those of you who use FaceBook know that one of the boxes always available to you is “status.” Here people often indicate what they are doing or did or will be doing that day, or how they are feeling or thinking about the day’s events. Christians could well put into that box “holy” or “justified” or “not guilty” or “innocent” or declared righteous. We declared holy not because of our own holy behaviors but by way of the holy Jesus Christ, true God and true man, who lived an absolutely perfect life, died a horrible death, and rose up again in glorious fashion. As many children live in big and beautiful homes from birth on by virtue of what their parents have earned or inherited in the past, so do you and I sit here tonight declared holy in the sight of God because of the person and work of Jesus Christ. Lesson #1 tonight is to know who we are and travel through life no longer according to our inherited and sinful nature but according to our status as the ransomed and rescued and saved people of God. No longer according to the old passions and ignorance, but transformed by the Spirit of the living God.
22Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for(BB) a sincere brotherly love,(BC) love one another earnestly from a pure heart, 23(BD) since you have been born again,(BE) not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through(BF) the living and abiding word of God…
First we were urged to remember who we are and now to remember for what purpose we are. We have been ransomed in order to love as we have been loved. All too often we just sort of wander through life enjoying our status but not really doing those good works God has ordained for us to do. The price has been paid, but we so often live as if that great price was no big deal. A story is told about a man who rescued a boy from a dire and then said to the boy, “Just make sure your life was worth saving.” A second story was sent to me yesterday by a blonde friend of ours who happens to be a4th grade teacher at our school, not to mention names. Louise Lund.
A blonde lady motorist was about two hours from San Diego when she was flagged down by a man whose truck had broken down. The man walked up to the car and asked, "Are you going to San Diego ?" "Sure," answered the blonde, "do you need a lift?" "Not for me. I'll be spending the next three hours fixing my truck.. My problem is I've got two chimpanzees in the back which have to be taken to the San Diego Zoo. They're a bit stressed already so I don't want to keep them on the road all day. Could you possibly take them to the zoo for me? I'll give you $100 for your trouble." "I'd be happy to," said the blonde. So the two chimpanzees were ushered into the back seat of the blonde's car and carefully strapped into their seat belts, and off they went. Five hours later, the truck driver was driving through the heart of San Diego when suddenly he was horrified! There was the blonde walking down the street and holding hands with the two chimps, much to the amusement of a big crowd. With a screech of brakes he pulled off the road and ran over to the blond. What the hell are you doing here?" he demanded, "I gave you $100 to take these chimpanzees to the zoo." "Yes, I know you did," said the blonde," but we had money left over so now we're going to Sea World."
The price had been paid but the expectations had not been clearly communicated! Tonight we are reminded what our Savior expects of us as we live under Him in His Kingdom. He expects us to serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence and blessedness. He expects that we live and teach in such a way that His Name is hallowed and His Kingdom come, in other words that His will be done on earth as it is done in heaven. He invites us to fear, love and trust in Him above all things. Or to say it another way to love God with all of our hearts and souls and minds and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Or as Peter says it tonight – to loves one another sincerely instead of insincerely, earnestly instead of half heartedly.
Our Camp Omega counselors have spent all week here and all summer at Omega helping children of all ages to know what it means to be the ransomed people of God. We learn again tonight the important difference between serving God with a crabby spirit and serving Him with gladness…….a huge difference between doing what we are supposed to do in life because we have to or because we get to………a huge difference between wandering through life as pilgrims and traveling through life as pilgrims with particular purpose. A huge difference between helping and befriending each other with a huge chip on our shoulder or doing so with a heart absolutely grateful for all that our God has done, is doing, and promises to do. We have been ransomed 1)so that we can live life remembering who we are – the holy and precious and forgiven people of God and 2)that we might spend our days with purpose – loving as we have been loved, forgiving as we have been forgiven, serving as we have been served. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.
God bless!
Pastor Griffin
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There Isn’t Much Here
July 30 and 31, 2011
Matthew 14: 13-21: Now when Jesus heard this,(K) he withdrew from there in a boat to a desolate place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. 14When he went ashore he(L) saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick. 15Now when it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, "This is a desolate place, and the day is now over;(M) send the crowds away to go into the villages and buy food for themselves." 16But Jesus said, "They need not go away;(N) you give them something to eat." 17They said to him, "We have only five loaves here and two fish." 18And he said, "Bring them here to me." 19Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass, and taking the five loaves and the two fish,(O) he looked up to heaven and(P) said a blessing. Then he broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. 20And they all ate and were satisfied. And they took up twelve baskets full of the broken pieces left over. 21And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.
Dear Friends in Christ,
At my aunt Linny’s funeral this past Tuesday about half of my parents 22 great grandchildren stood near her casket and sang Jesus Loves Me. In talking with my mom later, she mentioned how satisfying that was for her to see her great grandchildren sing in the very sanctuary where she has worshipped God for 86 plus years. There must have been times when she and dad were scratching out a living and raising four children back on the farm in the 50’s and 60’s when they said to themselves, “There isn’t much here.” There were times when there wasn’t all that much money, wasn’t all that much to write home about.” But God has a way of taking just a little bit and multiplying it into something very impressive! That truth comes our way in our Gospel lesson for today when Jesus takes five loaves and two fish and multiplies it into a feast that satisfied 5000 hungry men along with their hungry women and children. The disciples took a look at the crowds of people and then they took a look at the five loaves of bread and two fish and said to themselves and perhaps out loud, “There isn’t much here!”
That’s the sermon theme today, “There Isn’t Much Here!” The Holy Spirit would teach us first of all today to notice the compassion of Jesus and secondly to rejoice in our Lord’s desire and ability to satisfy our most basic needs in life.
First of all, notice the compassion of Jesus in this story of the Feeding of the Five Thousand, a story recorded by all four Gospel writers.
To have compassion is to have a willingness to suffer with another hurting person. It goes beyond empathy which is more of a feeling in the heart. Compassion is to have an active desire to alleviate that suffering. The word is related to the word “patient” as in a patient in the hospital. To be a patient is to be one who suffers. Jesus. The context of the Feeding of the Five Thousand is that Herod had recently beheaded John the Baptist and when he heard reports of what Jesus was doing, Herod had concluded that Jesus must be the resurrected John. Jesus was trying to get away from it all and meet with his disciples in private, but privacy was not to be. When Jesus saw the big crowds of people, many of them sick, the Bible says he had compassion on them and healed their sick. Mark records that Jesus was deeply moved at seeing the crowd and that they seemed to Him to be sheep without a shepherd, and so He taught them. This combination of teaching and healing is one that we see throughout the public ministry of Jesus.
The compassion of Jesus may start with the physical needs of people, but it by no means ends there. So also does missionary work happen in this way to this very day. We send preachers of the Gospel right alongside of medical teams. Acts of mercy precede, accompany, and follow words of grace, mercy, and truth. Jesus had First Article as well as Second Article compassion,as does His Church to this very day. Concern for not just the body, but the soul as well.
Jesus didn’t just heal every sick person He met. That wasn’t His main work. His main work was getting to the cross where He could have compassion on every soul that ever lived. That’s where He could pay the price none of us could begin to pay. The cross is where He offered up what didn’t look like much, but His broken and bleeding and battered body turned out to be exactly what would satisfy the wrath of a righteous God and settle human debt once and for all.
Perhaps you have had the experience where somebody asked you how you were doing and when you began to tell him a little bit about the kind of troubles and problems you were having, he really didn’t seem all that interested. Maybe he topped your tale of suffering with his own. Maybe he switched to a conversation about the weather in midstream. Life can get very lonely if we get the feeling that few if anybody really is having compassion on us and as if we have to just suck it up and deal with our troubles on our own. Today we want to not just notice but celebrate our Savior’s compassion on our bodies, yes, but most importantly our souls. He’s never too busy to listen and He has not only the willingness but the ability to meet our needs in His own time and in perfect fashion.
And so we rejoice today that our Savior not only has the desire but also the ability to satisfy our most basic needs in life. No doubt you have found yourselves saying what I have often said to people who are broken and hurting in the midst of their days of trouble. “I wish I could help” or “I wish I could wave my magic wand and make things better.” God never has to say that He wishes He could help. He actually does have a magic wand that can make things better. He really can and did walk on water. He really can and did tell crippled beggars to get up and walk and he really can give the blind their sight and the deaf their hearing. He really can and did walk on water and tell the winds to quit blowing and the storms to quit storming and the waves to quit crashing and they did. He really can and did raise dead men and women to life and He really can and did rise up Himself on the Third Day and because all of that is historically true, we may live our lives with absolute confidence that our basic needs will be met in both body and soul, unto life everlasting. He has proven His compassion for us in the past and He promises it for the future and therefore we may live today with hearts that are content and consciences that are clean. Our consciences are clean not because we have lived such decent lives but because our sins have been washed away by virtue of the body that was broken and the blood that was shed on a little hill outside of Jerusalem.
Five loaves of bread and two fish didn’t look like much to the disciples and oh how confused and perhaps nervous they were when Jesus told them to tell everybody to sit down and get ready to eat. Oh how Jesus taught those disciples and that crowd on that day a lesson on multiplication! It was the same lesson on multiplication God taught Abraham and Sarah when He took an elderly couple unable to have children and He gave them not only a child but descendents as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. The same lesson on multiplication the Holy Spirit taught on the Day of Pentecost when He poured Himself out on a few dozen disciples and before the day was over 3000 souls were added to the church. The same lesson on mulitiplicaton Jesus taught the early Church when He met the chief of sinners Saul on a road to Damascus and before the first century had turned, the apostle Paul had become the greatest Christian missionary the world has ever known.
Those five loaves and two fish didn’t look like much. They were not banquet food but rather they were survival foods, but Jesus looked to heaven for a blessing and before you knew it thousands of people enjoyed what must have seemed like a banquet to them in that wilderness. We can’t help but think of that manna in the wilderness which would look very unimpressive if you had just eaten a full meal but ever so impressive when your stomach was so hungry you were ready to eat whatever. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be filled.
As the disciples looked out at those thousands of hungry people, they knew it would cost a lot of money to feed so many. So many hungry sinners who apparently didn’t plan ahead enough to bring provisions into the deserted area. But sometimes it’s only as ill prepared sinners that we become feedable. Like the exiles to whom Isaiah prophesies in the first reading. It is those who have no money for the feast to whom God spreads a banquet of rich food and aged wine. It is to those who have no ability to pull themselves up by their spiritual bootstraps to whom God provides quail and manna, bread and wine. Always it is to us the now-feedable beggars to whom God says “bring me your nothing, come all who thirst and hunger for you will be fed”
The disciples main mistake is that they have no idea what they have. Namely that they have a God who can feed many on nothing. A God who created the universe out of nothing, that can put flesh on the nothing of dry bones, that can put life in the nothingness of a dry womb, NOTHING is God’s favorite material to work with. Perhaps God looks upon that which we dismiss as “nothing” “Insignificant” “worthless” and says “Ha! Now that I can do something with”. In Isaiah it is not “you who have enough money, who have sufficient money, have the right denomination of money come and eat.” No. it is “You who have No money come and eat” God says “Bring me your nothing”
It is our poverty which God asks to be brought to Him, not our treasure, because whether we think we have it all or we think we have nothing, we are all beggars fed at the table of God’s mercy. Christianity is one beggar telling another beggar where to find food. Because what do we have to bring to our Savior? Nothing in our hands we bring, simply to the cross we cling.
We Lutherans have our own nothing don’t we? Word and Sacrament ministry can seem so like 5 loaves and a couple fish, especially in the face of mega churches who offer a dizzying array of services and products. So many of our churches have so many empty pews, and our Divine Services aren’t always the most glamorous and crowd pleasing, are they? But Word and Sacrament, our 5 loaves and a couple fish, is what we have been given as provision for being the body of Christ.
On our way out of church today, we maybe won’t look any more impressive than when we entered. We won’t look like much. Some of you wives will walk out of here still disgusted with your husbands and some of you husbands still thinking there’s no pleasing this woman. Some of you parents will still lose your tempers with your children this week, and you sons and daughters will still be inclined towards disrespect and driving your moms and dads crazy in this heat. Some of will still be famous for our selfishness or stubbornness or for not having admitted we were wrong in the past 30 years, but the seeds have been sown. Seeds of Law and Gospel. Seeds of nurture and admonition. Seeds that have the potential to take root and grow and produce. But if Jesus can take food that doesn’t look like much and feed thousands and thousands of people and if God can make heaven and earth out of absolutely nothing and if a dead and buried Jesus can come out of a grave in glorious fashion, then what is there He cannot get done in your life and in mine? In Jesus Name. Amen.
God bless!
Pastor Griffin
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Hidden Treasure, Fine Pearls, and Fish
July 27, 2011
Dear Friends in Christ,
Matthew 13: 44 "The kingdom of heaven(BM) is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy(BN) he goes and sells all that he has and(BO) buys that field.
Never forget that true Treasure is found in Holy Scripture.
In ancient days, men of great wealth often divided their wealth into three parts: one for doing business, another part converted into precious stones with which to flee if necessary, and a third part to be buried in a safe place. Thus it could happen that a rich man could die and nobody knew where the third part was buried. Itcould very well happen that another person could stumble upon that treasure and very much want to cover it back up and then go and buy that field.
The traditional interpretation of this parable is that the field represents Holy Scripture and that Jesus Christ is the true treasure. Where Jesus Christ is present of course, there is forgiveness of sins. And wherever there is forgiveness of sins there is life and salvation.
When we stumble upon a penny in the street, we tend to shrug it off, thinking that it’s pointless to stop and pick it up. After all, we tell ourselves, how much is a penny worth, anyway? But imagine if that penny were a nickel, and not just any nickel, but an extremely rare one that had been sought after by numismatics for years and was valued at $2.5 million. Ryan Givens’s uncle, the famed collector George Walton, possessed such a coin, but when his estate left the nickel to Givens’s mother, it ended up sitting in her closet gathering dust for nearly four decades until Givens was prodded to take a second look.
This evening the Holy Spirit would prod us to take a second look at God’s Word. Every day the Word of God is so very much available to us in church services, in large and small group Bible classes, in daily devotions on the internet or in print. Lesson #1 tonight: Never forget that true treasure is found in Scriptures and specifically in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
Matthew 13: 45"Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, 46who, on finding(BP) one pearl of great value,(BQ) went and sold all that he had and(BR) bought it.
Do not confuse the pearl of great value with other fine pearls.
In the first parable, the man came upon hidden treasure by accident. In this parable a wealthy merchant is out looking for excellent pearls. Pearls were held in high esteem by the ancients. Incredible sums were paid for single pearls when it was a perfect specimen of its kind. Great skill was required to gauge the value of a pearl, noting its defects in shape, tint, smoothness, etc. The excellent pearls in this parable represent all the higher things of this earthly life which are prized so very highly by people: works of charity, humanitarian work, peace, power and position, moral living, justice, better social conditions, science, art, etc.
Jesus Christ is the pearl of greatest value among other fine pearls. In Christ we have everything we need in life and apart from Him we have nothing of lasting value. In Christ, we have forgiveness even though we have ranked with the chief of sinners. In Christ we have peace even though our days are stormy and so very unsettled. In Christ, we have a right standing with our Father in heaven even though we have said or done absolutely nothing to deserve it. With holy precious blood and with innocent suffering and death and not gold or silver we have been purchased. Although the world tells us to seek after money and all these other things that money can buy, the Spirit of God invites us again tonight to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and trust that all these other things will fall into place in due time.
Just yesterday my family laid to rest my aunt Linny at the age of 93 years plus. In the end it mattered not one bit how much money or land or possessions she had accumulated, only that she had been baptized into and remained in the Christian faith. It mattered not how many of all these other things she still had, only that she feared and loved and trusted in the God Who had loved her before she was ever born and chosen her to be in His family for now and for eternity. Lesson #2 today - Do not confuse the pearl of great value with other fine pearls.
Matthew 13: 47: "Again, the kingdom of heaven is(BS) like a net that was thrown into the sea and(BT) gathered fish of every kind. 48When it was full,(BU) men drew it ashore and sat down and sorted the good into containers but threw away the bad. 49So it will be at(BV) the close of the age. The angels will come out and(BW) separate the evil from the righteous 50(BX) and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
These days are the days appointed for the grand sweeping of the net. The first two parables taught us that Jesus Christ is the hidden treasure or to say it another way the pearl of greatest value. We seek out Jesus Christ as often as we hear the Word of God and eat and drink at His Holy Supper. This parable teaches us that the Kingdom of God works like a dragnet that catches all kinds of fish. Many people are attracted to the Christian Church or are drawn into his church or remain within the visible church for the wrong reasons. The bad fish in this parable are like church members who just go through the motions because they have been brought up that way. Some are in the church because they are trying to please a spouse or parents and others are in the church expecting to gain a degree of respectability or even personal advantage or profit.
Bad fish in this parable represent those who are not repenting of their sins but instead spend their days explaining their mistakes and defending their faults. The person who is truly repenting will confess his sins and throw himself on the mercy of God without any thought of deserving that mercy. One of the temptations we church going people have is that we start to think we are a little bit better than other people and that our sins aren’t quite as bad as others and that we are better than average instead of chief of sinners.
The kingdom of God is like a person who loves to fish and it’s the last day of his fishing vacation. Today is the day to fish.
It’s like a farmer who has a hundred more acres to plant, and heavy rains are predicted for the next day.
It’s like a baseball team down by a run and batting in the last of the ninth inning.
The good news in this last parable is that as the Church continues the sweeping of this net by preaching the Gospel, we do so with the confidence that the Word of God is effective. As surely as the rain and snow fall and water the earth causing the seeds to sprout and take root and grow and bear fruit, so does the Word of God not return void. And so we learn in closing tonight to keep on inviting people to come to church, to keep on inviting them to hear the Word of God, to keep on inviting them to be a part of the fellowship. They may or may not accept the Gospel invitation today or next week, but we invite them with clear knowledge that these are the days to keep on inviting and that the day will soon come when there is no more time and there are no more opportunities to do so. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.
God bless!
Pastor Griffin
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The Tree That Prospers
July 13, 2011
Psalm 1
Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers,
2 but whose delight is in the law of the LORD, and who meditates on his law day and night.
3 That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither— whatever they do prospers. Not so the wicked!
They are like chaff that the wind blows away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to destruction.
Dear Friends in Christ,
A young man applied for a job as a farmhand. When the farmer asked for his qualifications, he said, "I can sleep when the wind blows." This puzzled the farmer. But he liked the young man, and hired him. A few days later, the farmer and his wife were awakened in the night by a violent storm. They quickly began to check things out to see if all was secure. They found that the shutters of the farmhouse had been securely fastened. A good supply of logs had been set next to the fireplace. The young man slept soundly. The farmer and his wife then inspected their property. They found that the farm tools had been placed in the storage shed, safe from the elements. The barn was properly locked. Even the animals were calm. All was well. The farmer then understood the meaning of the young man’s words, "I can sleep when the wind blows." Because the farmhand did his work loyally and faithfully when the skies were clear, he was prepared for the storm when it broke. So when the wind blew, he was not afraid. He could sleep in peace. There was nothing dramatic or sensational in the young boy’s preparations and life; he just faithfully did what was needed each day. Consequently, peace was his, even in a storm.
This story helps us to remember that one of the characteristics of leading the Christian life is that we can lay our heads down at nights in peace. We may sleep soundly not because we have led such a great life but because Jesus Christ led the perfect life. We can sleep when the wind blows not because we have taken care of business but because Jesus Christ has taken care of His Father’s business. He offered up that perfect life as the once and for all sacrifice, and as a result we can sleep at night. Our sins have been paid for, our guilt has been washed away in the blood of the Lamb. Martin Luther wrote that “the two devils who plague us are sin and conscience, the power of the Law and the sting of sin. But Christ has conquered these two monsters and trodden them underfoot, both in this age and in the age to come.
This past Sunday through Tuesday, 4 year old Hope and I traveled up north to spend time with my family at a lake cabin. Can you believe that they trusted this grandpa with making sure that Hope was safe and happy, that her hair didn’t get all tangled and that the sun screen was applied, and that she ate good and nutritious food? One image I have is at night time Hope sleeping soundly on a futon with me right next to her on a cot. And again in the car, she slept soundly trusting that grandpa would stay awake and drive her safely home. There is peace in the heart of a child who sleeps well knowing that her parents or grandparents will provide and protect, just as surely as there is peace in the hearts of Christians who know that our God provides and protects day after day.
In last Sunday’s sermon, we studied the parable of the sower sowing the seed into four different kinds of soil. The fourth soil was fertile, where the seeds took root, grew, and produced a crop – as much as a hundred times what was sown, sixty times, or 30 times. In that parable the Christian life was illustrated by soil that produced a rich harvest. In tonight’s Psalm, we find the Christian life compared to a tree that is planted by streams of water which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. In this Psalm, the Holy Spirit is the river, and Christians are like trees that prosper. That is our sermon theme tonight, ‘TREES THAT PROSPER.” Psalm 1 sets forth three characteristics of the godly; they resist sin, they love God’s Word, and the produce the fruits of faith.
First of all, they resist sin. Resisting sin is the opposite of going with the flow. The Psalmist describes this “going with the flow of sin” in terms of walking in the counsel of the wicked or standing in the way of sinners or sitting in the seat of mockers. The three fold danger is walking, standing, and sitting.
To walk in the counsel of the ungodly is to listen to their advice. Their advice may be in the form of popular slogans, such as “I’m ok, you’re ok.” Their advice may be in the print or radio or television media, as in “Dear Abbey” or talk show. The counsel of the ungodly may be in the form of advertising, as in “this bud’s for you – drink this” or “you deserve a break today – eat this.” Walking in the counsel of the ungodly may be in the form of entertainment or movies, where violent and immoral men and women are advocating revenge, materialism, or “if it feels good do it” theology. Every day we do well to resist all of that advice by recognizing it for what it is and confessing the many ways in which we have fallen short. James writes to the early Christians and to us, “Resist the devil and he will flee from you.”
To stand in the way of sinners takes it a step further and implies that not only have we listened to the advice of unbelievers, but we have agreed with them. We do well to speak the truth in love whenever we have the opportunity instead of simply remaining silent and suggesting that we are fine with what is happening and prevailing in society. I Peter 5, Be sober minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith.
To sit in the seat of the mockers takes it a step farther. Now we are not only listening to bad advice and not only have we agreed with this bad advice; we have adopted the bad attitude as our very own. The way to resist all of this on a daily basis of course is the second mark of leading the Christian life.
"But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on His law he meditates day and night." The Christian has learned to make God's Word his delight. To many the Word of God is boring but to a few of us it is interesting. To many it is dull but to a few of us it is life changing. To many the Word of God is fantasy, but to a few of us it is inspired by God and without error. To many the Word of God is informational at best, but to a few of us it is inspirational.
Trees that prosper are planted by the rivers of water; they don’t just visit the river once in awhile. Christians who delight in the Word of God invite that Word to dwell in them richly, not in a haphazard and occasional sort of a way. David wrote in Psalm 119, "For I delight in your commands because I love them" And again in that same chapter, "Let your compassion come to me that I may live, for your law is my delight" Jesus said that He came that we may have life and have it abundantly. The abundance of which He speaks here is not money and the stuff money can buy but the fruits of the Holy Spirit and plenty of them.
The third mark of a Christian is fruitfulness. "He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers." What a beautiful illustration we have of a tree reaching down its roots into the stream drawing life from the water. The river again represents the Holy Spirit. The fruits of the Holy Spirit are listed in Galatians 5. "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law
When Christians are motivated by the gospel and guided by God’s law, they will produce the fruits of faith, that is, works pleasing to God. The good works of love and joy and peace are called fruits because of their similarities between a Christian and a branch of a fruit tree. A branch of a tree can produce fruit only if it remains attached to the main trunk of the tree. A Christian can produce good works only if he is connected to Christ by a living faith. A tree can produce fruit only if it is well watered. A Christian can produce good works like patience and kindness and goodness only if his faith is watered by God’s Word. It is the nature of a healthy apple tree to produce apples, of a grape vine to produce grapes, and it is the new nature of a believer in Christ to be marked by faithfulness, gentleness, and self control.
The kingdom of God is like a man who stumbled into sin day after day. Some days he stumbled just a little and other days he stumbled in a serious way. As time went on he noticed that on the days he stumbled just a little he started to think highly of himself and was less likely to read and study God’s Word. On the days he stumbled in a serious way, he noticed that he was much more likely to get on his knees and cry out for help, much more likely to be hungry for God’s Word, and much more likely to ask for forgiveness, much more likely to sleep that night, even when the winds blew strong and the rains came down. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.
God bless!
Pastor Griffin
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Birds, Rocks, and Thorns
July 9 and 10, 2011
Matthew 13: 1-9, 18-23
1That same day Jesus went out of the house(A) and sat beside the sea. 2And great crowds gathered about him,(B) so that he got into a boat and sat down. And the whole crowd stood on the beach. 3And( |
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