Love -- The Truth and the Myth

 Romans 13:8-10

Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law.  For this, "YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT ADULTERY, YOU SHALL NOT MURDER, YOU SHALL NOT STEAL, YOU SHALL NOT COVET," and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying, "YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF."  Love does no wrong to a neighbor; love therefore is the fulfillment of the law.

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany                                      02/02/25

Love -- The Truth and the Myth

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

There is a myth that is common in our time.  It is the myth called "love."  It is one of our most popular and enduring myths.  We sing about it.  We have poems about it.  We have little morality plays about it, and big movies about it.  We talk about it all of the time, and everybody wants to have it, or be in it, or have someone else have it for them.  And it seems that almost no one has any idea what it really is.

Well, our text this morning speaks about love.  It is not everything that can be said about love -- the Bible has a great deal more to say on the topic.  But since our text opens the topic up, this seems to be a good time to talk about it.  So, this morning we will look at the truth and the myth about love.

The first myth is that love is an emotion.   The truth is that love is an action, a behavior.  Country music singer Clint Black captured the sense of it well in his son, "It's Something that You Do."  He talks about how love isn't somewhere we fall, or something that we have, or something that we are in, it is something that we do.  Our text takes that approach when it talks about the Law, and how we fulfill it by love.

Love is fulfilled by how we deal with our neighbor.  Paul defines it negatively – "Love does no wrong to a neighbor," but it can be defined positively as well.  Love is doing for the neighbor what the neighbor needs, and (when it is also to their good) what the neighbor desires be done.  Love can be cleaning a room, or it can be doing your chores.  Love can be scratching someone's back or speaking a kind word when a person is down.  An emotion stays locked up inside of you.  Love shows and love acts.  I would be a fool if I did not acknowledge that there is often an emotional component to love, but love is so much more than mere emotion.

Another myth is that love is how you feel.  What horrible things have been done by someone who felt something they called "love."  It is almost too large a topic to consider.  People will treat others with disrespect, with hostility, with violence and then call it love – they will say, "I love . . ."  It is certain that they are feeling something, but the behaviors do not reflect love because they are not for the well-being of the beloved.  The Mills Brothers sang about this kind of "love" in their song, "You Always Hurt the One You Love, the One You Wouldn't Hurt At All."  The truth is, however, that you would not normally hurt the one you love.  You would rather suffer loss or pain for yourself, and protect the one you love.  That is what love is about.

The other side of this perversion of love is the person who cannot correct or discipline the one they claim to love.  They cannot bear to see their beloved suffer the discomforts of discipline.  The problem with such love is that it is self-absorbed.  It only cares about what the one who claims to love feels.  There are disquieting and uncomfortable experiences that are good for us, and which we sometimes need to endure to remain healthy or holy.  Whatever the feeling may be that shields someone from such important experiences, it is not love.

Everyone recognizes, for example, that the undisciplined child has not been helped by the parent's lack of discipline.  Neither is it love that permits someone to not do the things that will strengthen them simply because the beloved doesn't wish it.  Exercise is painful and difficult, at times, but without it, you cannot be healthy.  Memory work is never popular with children, but without it, the child is poorly equipped – and fails to learn a skill – the skill of memorizing – which is so important in so many places in our lives.  Love is not how you feel, or feeling good.  Sometimes the Everly Brothers were right – love hurts.

The third myth is that love is communicated with words.  Again, there is some truth here – words of love are a component of the process of communicating love – but not a necessary component.  You can communicate love by simple, silent acceptance.  My parents did not talk a great deal about loving us.  They simply spent time with us.  They demanded the best from us and praised us when we gave it our best.  They expended that little bit of extra effort freely for us at times so that we could see or do things they felt were important for us.  We didn't need a lot of love talk – we had love at work – and I never was confused about my parent's love for me, even when I didn't like their particular actions or attitudes now and then.

On the other hand I have seen people say "I love you," and then humiliate their "beloved", or deliberately fail to take them into account in their time or their decision-making.  Movies have been made about the rich kid who lives at the boarding school and has every luxury and privilege one could dream of, but has none of the time or attention of the parents.  The clear message is that simply saying the words of love is not enough.  A husband or a wife that simply says it, but doesn't take time to act out love, will say one thing, and communicate something else entirely.  Love is not communicated with words alone – it is communicated by actions – consistent, regular action.

Yet another myth is that love makes all things permissible.  People commit adultery for the sake of love.  They steal and lie for the sake of love.  As long as it is done for love, it is okay, or so the myth says.  But our text reminds us that love is doing what is right, not simply what is desirable or pleasant.  Love is the fulfilling of the Law.  In the Old Testament, the love of the people for their God was measured by how well and faithfully they adhered to His Law.  They did the things of the Law as a way of showing God their trust in Him.  It is not so much different today.  We discipline our flesh for Christ's sake because we are His people, and in thanksgiving for what He has given to us and won for us.  We don't do it to become holy, we do it because He has made us holy already and adopted us into His family and called us by name and made us His own.

Our love for God, and His love for us, makes many things impermissible.  We cannot ignore Him.  We cannot worship another God.  We cannot do what He has taught us is contrary to His will.  We cannot believe whatever we wish, but His love compels us to listen to His Word and believe what He teaches us.

The final myth for this morning is that love is overpowering.  It is a popular idea that love puts one out of control.  "I couldn't help myself," is what they say.  "I just had to do it . . .".  But true love is completely within our control.  True love is intelligent and thinking.  It is self-possessed and self-disciplined.  True love has the beloved in mind and the welfare of the beloved at heart.  True love sees clearly and understands.  And true love gives of itself, risking itself, not taking but giving and enriching the beloved.

How do I know?  I study the greatest example of love that I can find.  Jesus said that "A greater love has no man, than he lay down his life for a friend."  He demonstrated His love for us by dying for us and in our place, on the cross.  His love was intelligent.  He saw what we have done to ourselves in sin.  The wages of sin is death, and we all sinned.  There is not a righteous man on earth who does only good and who never sins.  We Christians have a further Law – that we love one another.  Jesus said, "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.  By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another."

But even in the church, we don't always see that love, do we?  There are cliques.  Some people hold grudges against others and avoid certain others.  We take our shots at one another, and hurt one another.  We politic in our assemblies, and grumble and gossip against and about one another.  We often care more about what we prefer than about the welfare of the brother or sister in Christ.  And in such lack of love, we make ourselves all the more sinful, all that much less lovable, all that much more worthy of death.

And hell.  But Jesus died for us.  He saw our need, and our helplessness, and so He planned how He might save us.  The plan was to do the impossible.  He would carry out His judgment of death and destruction on the sinner, and yet save the sinner alive.  To do that He came to earth as one of us, born human and responsible to be holy before God just as we are.  He kept the whole Law of God for us.  He kept it perfectly and earned eternal life.  Then He died.

He died for us.  He deserved no death of His own, he had to take our death to die.  He carried the guilt of our sins and endured the wrath of God against us, so that He could forgive us, and give us the eternal life He earned.  He not only planned this rescue, but His love drove Him to do it, to put the plan into action, even at great personal cost and suffering.  His love was not just a word, it was how He dealt with us and still deals with us.  He created us.  He feeds us.  He cares for our well-being day by day.  He died so that we might escape the wrath which we have earned, because we simply could not bear it, it would destroy us.  Then He declared His love so that he that believes and is baptized shall be saved.

He did love, and He does love.  He loves by maintaining His church among you, that you might believe and be saved.  He does love by laying this Holy Supper before us so often, for you to eat and to drink and to find strength and comfort in it.  He loves by forgiving you your sins, sins you have committed even though you have seen His love and tasted His goodness.  He still forgives, and He still loves, and He still feeds, and He still clothes, and He still blesses, and He still preaches, and He still places you and your life and your salvation and your blessing first.  He causes all things to work together for good for you – for those who love God.  That is His love.

Is it an emotion?  Surely, but not as we conceive of them.  Is His love a feeling?  No.  God doesn't have feelings like we have feelings – He has not revealed any such anyhow.  Is His love communicated by words?  Yes, as surely as I preach.  But we know His love in what He does and has done, not merely what He says.  Does the love of God make all things permissible?   No, It makes all things possible.  God doesn't have love for us, He is love, perfect love.  It is in considering God and His dealings with us and on our behalf that we find the meaning of love itself.

There are many myths about love – and just one profound truth.  God is love.  And if we love Him, He instructs us to love one another.  That is the sign that we are His disciples.  And when we want to know what love looks like, from one to another, we look to God's law,   For this, "YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT ADULTERY, YOU SHALL NOT MURDER, YOU SHALL NOT STEAL, YOU SHALL NOT COVET," and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying, "YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF."  Love does no wrong to a neighbor; love therefore is the fulfillment of the law.  And that is the truth, as opposed to the many myths, about love.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

(Let the people say Amen)

 These Thy Gifts

The Newsletter Thoughts of Pastor Fish

Vol. 10   No. 2

What are you all about?

Jack LaLanne died on January 23, 2011.  He was ninety-six.  The article announcing his death described his eighty year obsession with physical fitness.  I remember seeing Jack on television when I was a grade-school-er.   He was all about exercise, even before it was cool.  He celebrated his sixtieth birthday by swimming from  Alcatraz Island to Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco — handcuffed, shackled and towing a boat.  The last couple decades of his life, he sold power juicers and promoted the health benefits of fresh fruit and vegetable juices.  He was quite a remarkable figure.

I never knew anything about Jack LaLanne's spiritual life or religion.  He never addressed the topic publicly, that I am aware of, and the article about his life said nothing about it.  His life-long advocacy of fitness apparently won him a relatively long life on this earth.  He got what he paid for.  But now that is all over.  It is suddenly as if he never existed, or lived only a short time.  If he had a secret spiritual faith-life, it is not public knowledge, but he is with his Maker.  If he did not have such a secret life of faith, all of his life is gone, it is like a dream from which he has now awakened, and he faces the greater realities of eternity with the one who was, in truth, his lord.  I cannot judge the man, and have no desire to do so.  That is God's job, and He does it reliably, justly, and for every man and woman.  I am just mentioning Mr. LaLanne as an illustration.

He had a long life, and he seemed to be a decent human being, outwardly and in a social sense.  He had all that one could reasonably expect or hope for out of this world, but in an instant, it was all over.  If his public witness as I have seen it is an accurate representation of the man's spiritual condition, he is lost for all eternity, and the ninety-six years of his life were but a brief whisper, and now he faces eternal darkness and misery without end.  His legacy is exercise equipment, power-juicers, and a commitment to being in shape for as long as this life endures.  He stands as the symbol of a brief life of good health and physical well-being leading to an eternity of shame and sorrow.  The thought is truly sad.

It raises the question for each of us, though, "What are you all about?".  If you are reading this on paper, the chances are good that you are known to me as a Christian, but how would your notice to the public read?  What would you be remembered for by the people around you who observe your life, or parts of it?

More to the point, I suspect, is what would you want to be remembered for?

It is okay to hope to be remembered for the work you do, the things you create, or the passions in your life.  It would be strange if you did not want to be remembered for the things you spent your life working at, even if they were not of earth-shaking significance.  I would just hope that while someone is remembering you, your faith in Jesus Christ and the importance of eternal salvation in your life was also something that someone would remember and point to as one of the things that impressed them about you.  Such a hope sort of echoes the idea Jesus expressed when He said, "And I say to you, everyone who confesses Me before men, the Son of Man shall confess him also before the angels of God; but he who denies Me before men shall be denied before the angels of God."

I choose to write about this as I approach the famous February 3rd surgery. I have no idea how it's going to turn out, although I anticipate a good result. Nonetheless, it would be foolish of me not to prepare for any result that might come, and this might be the last newsletter article I ever write. What I want to be known for is being the faithful pastor, a faithful confessor, a faithful Christian, And a good example of how to do the Christian life.  

I have, throughout my ministry, been accused of showing off, presenting myself as the perfect Christian, and trying to make myself look better than I really am. My goal, assigned to me by my call, is to set the example of a Christian life and a Christian faith. I confess that I am not perfect. I fall far short of that mark. I am not trying to put on a show, but what you see is what you get. If you think that I'm trying to be perfect, thank God. You have not seen all of my faults which lay before you. Should I be able to come back as pastor to this congregation, I hope to continue to try to show you how to do it, how to be a Christian in this world of pain and suffering and challenges. If the results of the surgery deprive me of office, I want you to remember me as a pastor, a Christian, one who tried hard to do it right and failed as all of us sinners do, but finding my comfort in the grace and forgiveness of Jesus Christ.

In the wisdom of God, it was made clear that there is nothing any man or woman can do to save themselves.  We are, by nature, spiritually blind, dead, and enemies of God.  We cannot sense our need, and if we were by some means able to sense it, we are unable to do anything to answer our need.  According to Scriptures, even if we were finally able to summon the ability to do something about our need at the extreme of life as we know it in this world, we would not, because we are, finally, hostile to God and enemies, even against our own self-interest.  God knew this and so He took matters into His own hands.  He saved us.  That is what the Bible says, in Titus 3:5, "Not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit."

Because of human nature in sin, God knows that He cannot depend on us to choose life and decide we will believe or follow Him.  He has placed the power of conversion and believing into His Word, which He causes to be proclaimed from countless pulpits and by numerous servants of His throughout the world, so that all men can hear the good news and believe it and be saved.  He that believes and is baptized shall be saved.

The second half of that verse, as you probably know, is "but he that does not believe shall be condemned."   That is why the question is so urgent for each one of us, "What are you all about?".

Yours in the Lord,

Pastor Fish

Totally Other

 Romans 12:16-21

Be of the same mind toward one another; do not be haughty in mind, but associate with the lowly.  Do not be wise in your own estimation.  Never pay back evil for evil to anyone.  Respect what is right in the sight of all men.  If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men.  Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, "VENGEANCE IS MINE, I WILL REPAY," says the Lord.  "BUT IF YOUR ENEMY IS HUNGRY, FEED HIM, AND IF HE IS THIRSTY, GIVE HIM A DRINK; FOR IN SO DOING YOU WILL HEAP BURNING COALS UPON HIS HEAD."  Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Sermon for the Third Sunday after Epiphany                                01/26/25

Totally Other

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

Many people think that Christians are supposed to be better than others.  We are supposed to behave better, be more caring, understand more.  The difference is a difference in degree.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  Christians are claimed by God when they are just as bad as anyone else.  God does not make us His own because we are better, or to make us better, but to save us.  God's aim in creating the Church was not to improve the world, but to rescue us out of it.  As His children, we are not expected to be better – God expects us to be totally other – totally different than the world.  That "otherness" is illustrated for us in our Epistle lesson, and so I invite you to look at the Epistle for the Third Sunday after Epiphany, with me, and consider how God expects His children to be – in the words of the sermon title, Totally Other.

There is nothing natural about being a Christian.  We do not have the power or ability naturally to become a Christian.  We cannot decide to be one, and we cannot keep ourselves in the faith once we are.  We depend on God.  Now the truth is that we human beings depend on God every day.  We count on Him to keep the air breathable, and we daily expect food and liveable weather.  And God is so good and so dependable that we can actually mislead ourselves into thinking that this is just how it is, that nature is this giant machine working on our behalf, that life just goes on this way and it is all natural.  God is consistent and consistently good and supporting and blessing us.  He is so consistent that most people have forgotten Him and cannot even see a need for Him.

But every day He is here, keeping the chemical reactions going that make life happen.  He is here protecting us from the thousand dangers that surround us.  He is here stopping the arrows of Satan that he shoots at us to destroy us.  He is opening doors of opportunity before us and blessing what we do so that we have success and satisfaction and joy in this world.  We depend on God, whether we acknowledge it, or even understand it, or not.  In matters of faith, however, God has so arranged things that we who believe cannot escape knowing that we depend on Him.  He tells us that we cannot choose faith – the best passage to make that point, in case you were wondering, is 1 Corinthians 2:14:  But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.  If we are to believe it depends on Him, Romans 9:16:  So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy.

God then tells us that His choices do not depend on us, but totally on Him and what He calls "Grace."  For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast.  He even tells us in that verse that one of His reasons for doing things the way He does is that we know it is Him, and so not one of us boasts about ourselves in this regard.  That doesn't stop people from boasting, of course, it just stops those who believe and possess salvation (as His gift to them through faith) from boasting.  They know better.  They know they depend of God.

Depending on God is not natural, not since Adam and Eve fell into sin.  Their first sin was failure to trust God.  While we all people depend on God, not very many are conscious of it, or are willing to admit it, even to themselves.  Just Christians.  So when God tells us how He expects us to live, it isn't just different by degree – it is totally other.

I mean, if someone hits you, the natural response is to strike back.  That natural tendency surfaces in children – "I'm rubber, you're glue, everything bounces off of me and sticks on you!"  It sounds childish, because it is the way a powerless child tries to hit back verbally.  If I can't think fast enough to be clever, I can dump back on you!  Revenge.  It is the most natural impulse in the world.  So, God tells us never to pay back evil for evil, or take our own revenge, but to leave it in His hands.

Instead of evil for evil, we are to be good.  We are to love one another, and do good even to those who make themselves our enemies.  Isn't that just totally other?  Isn't that radically different from what ever seems to suggest itself to us?  Good is one thing, but this is something else.  With our fellow-believers, we are called on even to forget who we are in our own minds and associate with the lowly – the humble, with those we think are below us.  We are called on to make everyone else our equal in our own minds and thinking – or our better, essentially.  It is so unnatural.

Kind of like Jesus.  He is God.  He rules the world and created everything.  He could destroy us with a word, or choose to will it so and we would all behave like robots and do just anything He said.  But that isn't how He does things.  He gave us our freedom in the Garden of Eden, and when we got it wrong and chose death instead of life, He planned our salvation.  He didn't just wipe the slate clean, although He could have.  Who could correct God?  Who was watching that could upbraid Him?

But God didn't just pretend we didn't sin, or simply excuse our sins.  He kept His own counsel and followed His own sense of right and justice and worked out our salvation.  He planned to be both just and punish sin, and yet preserve us, who earned death and destruction by our sins, from the death and destruction we have earned.  To do that, He had to take our sins on Himself and suffer and die in our place so that the penalty was paid out for our sin, and yet we are preserved alive.  He associated with the lowly – US!  He became one of us, human in every respect, except sin.  He kept His own Law and earned what none of us has or could, everlasting life.  Then He exchanged what He had earned for what we have earned, and died on the cross in our place.

Then He rose from the grave.  The resurrection declared the completeness of our forgiveness and the sufficiency of the payment for our sins.  The resurrection demonstrated what is in store for us in Jesus Christ, and showed us clearly that God has the power to accomplish all that He has promised to do.  Then Jesus sent out His Apostles to declare this all to us and to hold out the free gift of resurrection, life and salvation.  It is a gift that is grasped and received by faith.  He who believes and is baptized shall be saved.  Our salvation is totally other – nothing one would calculate or expect – and human reason chafes against the free gift and the grace of God even today.  It just isn't the way we would have done it.

So God lays before us His own conduct as our example and invites us to be like Him, totally other.  This isn't a new thought.  It is the way it has been from the beginning.  You shall be holy, for I, the Lord Your God, am holy.  The only difference here is that St. Paul is describing what holy looks like.  It looks like humility – considering everyone else – at least every other Christian – to be our equal and worthy of our time and attention.  Be of the same mind toward one another; do not be haughty in mind, but associate with the lowly.  God did it for us, we can do it for each other.  It is often important that we do.

Then, we are to be like Jesus in forgiveness and compassion, showing love and goodness to those who never have any for us.  Never pay back evil for evil to anyone.  But even more than simply not paying back evil for evil, God wants us to be positively good toward those who are not good towards us – just as God was good toward us while we were yet enemies and hated Him.  "BUT IF YOUR ENEMY IS HUNGRY, FEED HIM, AND IF HE IS THIRSTY, GIVE HIM A DRINK; FOR IN SO DOING YOU WILL HEAP BURNING COALS UPON HIS HEAD."  

We don't do good to others just to cause them trouble, of course, but God says that our goodness in the face of their wickedness will work an even greater judgment on them, if they are not shamed by our holiness and brought to repent.  We never have to worry about them "getting away with" anything.  We don't need to seek revenge, but God will repay – Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, "VENGEANCE IS MINE, I WILL REPAY," says the Lord.  There is no such thing as getting away with it.  Either you repent, and it is forgiven because Jesus has been punished in your place already, or you do not repent, and God exacts eternal retribution.  Which one finally happens is not our concern.  God alone is Judge.  WE have been rescued, forgiven, and set apart for eternal life, and that is our joy, and our motivation to be God's holy people in this way.

The rest of our Epistle lesson is simply good advice, divine instruction – the basic principles of living as God's child.  Do not be wise in your own estimation.  Never think you know better than God.  Simply follow His Word, and be faithful.  It works.    Respect what is right in the sight of all men.  We cannot be holy if we are not doing right.  Of course, God doesn't want us to accept their twisted ideas of what is right, as in abortion or euthanasia or homosexuality, but when something is generally and clearly seen as right, we should honor it.  That is why we would oppose those who kill abortion providers and bomb abortion clinics.  It is simply not right, even in the face of so great an evil as abortion.  Killing babies is wrong, but so is killing adults.  God will settle accounts, in the end.  We do not need to.

If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men.  Peace with everyone is unrealistic.  Some people will hate you for being good, some will hate you for being faithful, many will hate you for being a Christian.  But that hatred is their problem.  As far as it depends on you, be at peace.  Don't look for trouble, and don't create it without a good cause.  Be at peace, peace with God because of forgiveness.  Peace with world events because God is with you.  Peace with sickness because God is with you.  Be at peace

Be humble.  God took on humility for you.  Be willing to go that extra mile.  God did.  He still does, in order to save us.

All of these rules are detailed instances of one overriding principle,   Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.  And that principle is not just pie in the sky, or unrealistic – it is how God has dealt with us.  He forgives and He blesses.  He has rescued us from sin and death and given us the example that He invites us to emulate.  Don't just do what comes naturally, and don't just be different from the world around you by degree, but be totally other.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

(Let the people say Amen)

The Purpose Behind Grace

 1 Corinthians 1:26-31

For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised, God has chosen, the things that are not, that He might nullify the things that are, that no man should boast before God.  But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, that, just as it is written, "LET HIM WHO BOASTS, BOAST IN THE LORD."

Sermon for the Sunday after Epiphany                              1/12/25

 

The Purpose Behind Grace

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

In some ways Epiphany is a big thing - and in others, it is just another day, and really nothing special, except that we mark it as special.  We gather here for worship, so that we may thank God for the revelation of His grace and glory in Jesus Christ. So, really nothing other than what we do every Sunday. Epiphany also known as "Theophany" in the Eastern Churches and is a Christian feast day commemorating the visit of the Magi, the baptism of Jesus, and the wedding at Cana.

In Western Christianity, the feast commemorates the visit of the Magi to the Christ Child, and thus Jesus Christ's manifestation [or epiphany] to the Gentiles.  It is often referred to as "the Gentile Christmas."  Our text for our mediation today explains something that will be useful for those who seek to serve God - the purpose behind Grace.  And that is our theme.

Grace is one of those mysteries of God.  He tells us about it, but He doesn't explain it in great detail.  Why has God chosen me?  Why has God chosen You?  We cannot unravel that.  It is the nature of God's grace that He chooses us for His reasons, and not for any that we can identify.  He did not choose us for our rank in this world.  He did not choose us for our talents or our gifts.  They are all, in point of fact, gifts from Him.  Paul points this truth out in our opening verse of our text tonight, "there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble".  There was nothing in us that caused God to choose us in particular.  It was all in Him.  That is part of what we mean by "Grace".

In fact, God chose us because we are nothing special.  "but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised."  Far from deserving something, or being the best of humanity, we are the losers - sort of.  God chose us for what we are not.  We are not the great, the wise, the trusted, the clever ones, the ones with superior talents.  He chose us to be His own at least in part so that no one would boast before God.  The reason that we cannot name the cause of our being chosen is so that we must humbly recognize that our faith and our rank as His chosen people would clearly be on account of nothing special in us or about us.

God want us to know that He chose us, and not the other way around.  He wants us to be seen as incapable of accomplishing what God works through us, so that on some level, men would have to recognize that the Church is the work of God and not the result of the talents of those who make up its membership.  All of this was to nullify the pride of man, and teach us true humility.

Now that doesn't mean that there are no talented people in the church.  God gifts each of us with the talents we need to accomplish our part in His great work.  Some of us He gives wisdom.  Some of us He gives courage.  Some of us He gives worldly success – although you will note that they are few in number, and even they are generally not seen as the truly wise or courageous, or successful of this world.  In part, our lack of recognition is tied to the fact that we are part of something so un-appreciated and un-respectable as the Christian Church.  The other part is that God chose those as His own who have no identifiable reason to be chosen by God.

Haven't you ever heard the challenge, "Why should you be right and the rest of the world be wrong?"  Why should you know what is true when the wise men of the ages, and of different nations and religions, are all false?  The concept that there is an absolute truth has always challenged man's ego.  Each man always wants to think he has captured the truth, and that he is right.  Just listen to call-in shows on Radio or T.V. and you will hear that tone of expectation that others will finally see that they are right!  It is particularly hard for man today.  One of the foundational ideas of post-modern, post-Christian thought is that there is no absolute truth which is true for everyone.  The only heresy in our culture is to claim to have hold of that which is undeniably and universally true.

And why you?  And why me?  We aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer.  We aren't the clearest thinkers.  We are not recognized as experts in truth or morality or how anything ought to be.  Why should our little congregation stand?  How dare we be so brazen and bold as to think we can be something – or do anything – when those who know everything clearly do not agree with us?

It is that sort of question which underlines the purpose of God's grace.  Of course, His purpose is our salvation, but He tells us that His purpose is also that we don't get a big head about being ‘the chosen ones', as ancient Israel did, and that no one will look at us and say, "Why, of course God chose them.  It's obvious that they would be the ones chosen."  No, the world will look at us and say, "If their God is true and wise, He would have chosen me - He would have chosen us!"

The problem of grace – "Why some and not others?" – has plagued both believer and unbeliever alike since the time of Christ.  Many false starts at answering the question have given rise to various denominations and theologies that seek to answer the question on the basis of something in us.  —  God chose us because we are good people.  God chose us because He saw that we were the ones that would ultimately believe.  Or, God didn't choose any of us, He opened the way for everyone and left the decision up to us - decision theology.  Or, God saves those who are wise enough to find Him, or decent enough to do good works.

But He chose me when I was two months and five days old.  He named me His child and claimed me for salvation at my baptism.  Many of you were also chosen as infants.  Some of you came to faith through God's holy Word later in life, but it was still by His choosing and His work in calling you by the Gospel and enlightening you with His gifts.

Don't tell me it was because I grew up in a Christian home.  I have brothers and sisters - and they all grew up in the same home, went to the same churches, were instructed by the same pastors as I was.  But they are not all believers.  Not every child I have trained to confirmation has kept their promise and stood steadfast in the faith and resisted all temptations to turn away, even to the point of dying for the faith.  Some didn't last the summer after their confirmation.  Some have turned away and become enemies of the faith.  No, I made it up to today, and you have come this far, by the grace of God and nothing more.

Paul writes, "But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption."  It is by His doing - so that it cannot be denied that it is by His doing, and NOT because of who we are, or what we are capable of, or what we have done to remain steadfast and faithful.

You did not die on the cross.  Nor would it have served anything but your demise to have done so.  You did not earn eternal life.  Jesus did.  He came, and He lived with utter purity so that even those of dubious worth, such as me, could be rescued from our sins, forgiven, "purchased and won from all sins, from death and from the power of the devil.  Not with gold or silver, but with His holy precious blood and His innocent suffering and death."

"For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast."  God chose you to save you, and He chose you to show the world that it was His grace and not your worth, or your effort, or your talent, so that men could see Him behind the scenes - so to speak.

He pulled you all together to be a congregation.  He called me from Missouri to be your pastor.  He brought you to this congregation at different times and through different methods, and by different routes.  He prepared some of us for this, and others He just invited in.  But it is His doing, as we are His people.

Now Jesus is our wisdom.  He makes sense to us, while the wise men of the world call our faith "myth" or "superstition" and our redemption - the Vicarious Atonement - "barbaric".  Jesus is our righteousness.  He took our sin.  He left us with His perfect righteousness as our own, so that we stand as "beloved," and "well-pleasing" before God in Him.  He is our sanctification.  We don't get better and better - leastwise so as you might notice.  We continue to sin, but Christ is working in us that which is pleasing to God and that which builds His church, just as Paul once wrote, "For me to live is Christ".  And, just as Paul says in our text, Jesus is our redemption.  He bought us back from sin and death at the price of His own suffering, and "His innocent suffering and death", as the Catechism says it.

So that when we boast of being Christian, and when we boast of being Lutheran, and when we take pride in being confessional and faithful, we can only praise God and boast of His goodness, grace, and love.  ". . . just as it is written, ‘Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord.'" His glory is saving us, those who don't deserve it, because of His goodness and grace.  His purpose in saving us, is particularly to make that glory - His grace - abundantly clear and evident - to us, and to the world around us.

So let us celebrate Epiphany with thanksgiving for His grace, and pray that God will continue to bless us and hold us in His grace and love.  Let us pray for His blessing on our congregation, that it may shine brightly with His grace, and let us live this coming year in such as way, as much as it depends on us, that we live deliberately and knowingly in His grace and fulfill the purpose behind grace! 

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

(Let the people say Amen)

Do Not Be Surprised

 1 Peter 4:12-19

Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal among you, which comes upon you for your testing, as though some strange thing were happening to you; but to the degree that you share the sufferings of Christ, keep on rejoicing; so that also at the revelation of His glory, you may rejoice with exultation.  If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.  By no means let any of you suffer as a murderer, or thief, or evildoer, or a troublesome meddler; but if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not feel ashamed, but in that name let him glorify God.  For it is time for judgment to begin with the household of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God?  AND IF IT IS WITH DIFFICULTY THAT THE RIGHTEOUS IS SAVED, WHAT WILL BECOME OF THE GODLESS MAN AND THE SINNER?  Therefore, let those also who suffer according to the will of God entrust their souls to a faithful Creator in doing what is right.

Sermon for the 2nd Sunday after Christmas                       1/05/25

Do Not Be Surprised

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

Many people think that their religion ought to be insulated from the attacks of others.  That is part of the American dream.  We dreamed, as a nation, of the freedom of religion, where you could be any religion you wanted and practice any faith freely, and no one could or would do anything about it.  You are free!

That is a dream.  It has never been quite true.  Sadly, there are also many who would use precisely that freedom to destroy that freedom for others – such as those who practice Islam - although they are not unique in this regard.  The right to practice whatever religion you wish is a goal, but it is not one we are likely to actually achieve, because some people will use that liberty as a tool to attack others and to undermine our liberties.  Besides, the devil does not want us to practice our religion, freely or otherwise, and his agents, which is pretty much the whole world, will work to make sure that it cannot happen.  Jesus promised us that while He walked among us, so we should not be surprised.  And that is the theme of our sermon this morning: Do Not Be Surprised.

Jesus promised that if we faithfully followed Him, the world would hate us and we would be persecuted.  World history has demonstrated the accuracy of that prophecy.  Christians in every age, and in every corner of the world have been hated and persecuted, even to the point of their deaths, for their faith. Even here, in America, it is considered narrow-minded and rude, not to mention hopelessly backward, to stand firmly on one's faith and not go along with the socially approved ecumenical spirit of our times.  Anything may be Christian, in the opinion of our culture, and anything is okay, except, of course, standing firm on the faith once delivered to the saints, and refusing to recognize the validity and worth of the random thoughts of others on the topic of religion.  If you stand firm in the true Christian faith you are ridiculed, mocked, verbally assaulted now and again, and sometimes physically assaulted even here in the United States.  In other places in the world, people are dying for simply calling themselves "Christian".  One may assume, with an anti-Christian progressivism dominating our culture, that things will only get worse for those who faithfully confess Christ.

Peter says, do not be surprised!  He was talking about "the fiery ordeal among you, which comes upon you for your testing."  That was the persecution of the earliest Christians.  They, too, had thought that if they were God's chosen and favorites, that life ought to be good, and the pains and troubles of life ought to flee from them, and blessings should be the order of the day.  That is how the human mind works – patronage and favoritism and that sort of thing, which we see so commonly in politics.  After all, what good is position and favor if it doesn't work out to feather your bed, so to speak?

Well, things didn't work out the way they thought that they should.  They had persecution, and poverty, and pains.  They could not make sense of it, just like you cannot make sense of some of the things that happen in your life.  Peter was reminding them that being the child of God in the devil's kingdom was not going to be easy, or fun, necessarily.

Our nation has a different way of persecuting the truth, and the faithful of God.  We don't face physical violence so much as we face ridicule and disapproval and dismissal, and the sort of attack that says you should not be so narrow-minded and you should not hold yourself and your religion up as something special.  We face the disdain of others, and the dismissal of our values and our confidence and our truths.  Everyone knows that you cannot be right and all those others wrong.  Everyone knows that to hold too tightly to your truths and your values is radical, and fundamentalistic, and terroristic and, well, just wrong!  Our culture is prepared to embrace a deliberate and, well, a publicly identified lie as true, but if you stand on your religion as true and theirs as in error, well, that is judgmental and discriminatory and unacceptable - and can be legally actionable.

Our persecution is peer pressure, to which we are all trained to be sensitive.  And we all hate pain.  So, we just naturally tend to bend away from suffering.  I know that I do!  But when it comes to suffering on account of your faith, you should not be surprised.  You should rather expect it.

That doesn't mean that you will enjoy it.  You won't.  Pain hurts.  Ridicule is difficult to bear.  The unexpected attack for nothing in particular that seems worthy of attack is hard to handle.  But when it happens, we are to learn to say, "Ahhh!  Here it is.  I knew this was going to happen at some point."

There are things you can do, of course, to make people attack you.  Doing bad things, for example.  That is why Peter writes, "By no means let any of you suffer as a murderer, or thief, or evildoer, or a troublesome meddler; but if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not feel ashamed, but in that name let him glorify God."  Christians are not always above crimes, or bad behavior.  They should be, but they are not.  There is no glory and no benefit in suffering that you bring on yourself by evil conduct or stupidity.  But if you are hated, spoken evil of, attacked, or dealt with poorly on account of being a Christian or making a faithful and clear confession, there is no shame in that, only glory - and you should give the glory to God!

There were times in the history of the church where people deliberately sought out pain and trouble, believing it was a mark of blessing and a good thing to be a Christian who suffers.  The monks in the monasteries would deny themselves food, beat themselves, torture themselves, believing it was a holy thing to do.  That was wrong.  It is not a good thing to suffer.  Suffering is only a good thing if the suffering is occasioned by your clear and faithful identification with Christ and with the Gospel.  Early in the history of the church, some believers would attack Roman Soldiers in order to be martyred.  They were thinking that suffering and death as a Christian was blessed - without any notice of its cause.  Peter says, don't let it happen to you on account of your bad behavior.  It is only filled with glory if it comes as an attack on Christ in you.

And it will, if you stand firm in your faith, and confess Christ.  Family members will tell you to get off your high horse.  Friends will tell you to keep your religion to yourself - and will distance themselves from you if you don't.  Employers may tell you that your faith - and it symbols - are not welcome around the work-place.  People will find things to criticize and nit-pick on you because you are supposed to be something special, they say, better, without any flaws, real or imagined.  It may be that bigger things will happen among us as persecution in time – we cannot tell.  One thing we do know, our faith is not welcome out in the world, and not really even among many others who style themselves as "Christian."

But when this sort of thing happens, even though it hurts and irritates, count yourself blessed.  First, it means that someone can see that you are really a Christian.  That is a good thing.

Second, imagine how it will be for those who do not believe, when they face the wrath of God, if being a faithful child of God, and one of His favorite people, can be so irritating and painful here and now.  Peter wrote: "For it is time for judgment to begin with the household of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God?  AND IF IT IS WITH DIFFICULTY THAT THE RIGHTEOUS IS SAVED, WHAT WILL BECOME OF THE GODLESS MAN AND THE SINNER?" Imagine how disquieting and uncomfortable it will be to have never stood up for Christ, and have never confessed Him.  If this suffering in this present age is part of heaven, what must the agony of hell really be?

"Therefore, let those also who suffer according to the will of God entrust their souls to a faithful Creator in doing what is right."  The answer in any suffering is prayer, and entrusting yourself to God.  He has promised to keep you and not permit you to have to endure more than you are able.  So you do what is right.  You do what God lays before you to do. If it brings pain or persecution, what of it?

How can you do that?  By remembering what Jesus did and endured for you.  You do it by keeping the love of God for you before your eyes.  You do it by constant prayer, faithful attention to His Word, regular participation in the fellowship of the saints, by eating and drinking of this holy meal, set before you for your forgiveness and strengthening.

Jesus died for you, and your sins have been forgiven.  We remember as life becomes difficult, particularly when it becomes difficult on account of your faith, that God loves you, and nothing is for nothing.  God will bless you for your troubles, and He will return the pain and difficulty given to you upon the heads of those who cause such trouble.  They may not be able to connect the dots right away, but their troubles are part and parcel of the troubles they cause the children of God, and if we suffer as God's elect now, what will it be for them on that great and terrible day?

So, let us be clear.  When your faith and your confession brings ridicule or any other pain on you from the world around you, do not be surprised.  It is likely to happen, and Jesus predicted it.  Don't do anything to bring it on yourself.  It will find you of its own accord.  Remember that this is part of the plan of God, and remember that they will ultimately bear the fruits of their evil, unless they repent.  Remembering the pain of ridicule and persecution, we should be eager to spare our attackers the pains they are bringing on themselves by bringing them the good news of Christ and forgiveness.  And finally, when trouble and pain does come, pray, and entrust your soul to God, and just keep on doing what you know you should, what God has given you to do.  He will tell you when it is time to stop.

And do not be surprised – it is to be expected when you are God's child living in the devil's kingdom.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

(Let the people say Amen)

In the Fullness of Time

 Galatians 4:1-7

Now I say, as long as the heir is a child, he does not differ at all from a slave although he is owner of everything, but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by the father.  So also we, while we were children, were held in bondage under the elemental things of the world.  But when the fulness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, in order that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.  And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!"  Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God.

Sermon for the Sunday after Christmas                                              12/29/25

In the Fullness of Time

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

Have you ever tried to explain something and found that you couldn't because the words just didn't seem adequate?   Usually, the words are adequate, we simply don't know how to use them effectively, or we want to describe something worth a short story in a sentence or two.  Frankly, that is the temptation this morning.  Our theme is "In the Fulness of Time."  I am tempted to give you part of the meaning of that phrase in brief, so we can get on to other parts of the sermon.  It is a temptation I will try to resist, because in the phrase, "in the fulness of time", lies so many wonderful details.

‘The "fulness" of time' is one of those antique sayings we just don't use any more.  I think the devil keeps mankind marching forward linguistically, so that we lose the wonder of the Gospel in the confusion of language and words.  After all, what does it mean that time was full?  How do you fill time?  Well, I guess we talk about time being filled, "She filled her time with knitting and sewing and other hand-work."  We also talk about empty time - those empty hours that fill the lyrics of so many broken-hearted ballads, for example.  But that isn't what ‘the fulness of time' refers to yet.

The fulness of time suggests that things happened at just the right time.  God had prepared the world and constrained conditions so that it was just right - a world ready to hear the message of Jesus, the Gospel of forgiveness and salvation and resurrection to everlasting life.  Culturally, it appears that all of the major themes of the Christian faith were echoed in some way in another religion - except the theme of grace.  Resurrection was part of one, the Greeks and Romans were accustomed to god taking on human form – and having children.  The redemption theme played out in some religions, although in significantly different ways - no other religion had a god dying for their redemption.  The closest to that idea was Prometheus, who brought fire to man from the gods, and was tortured at length for his misdeed, according to Greek mythology.

The time was just right, as well, because men struggled with the meaninglessness of life.  The old religions, with many deities, were falling out of favor with most people.  They believed that there was a God, maybe many of them, but they did not believe the old stories of Zeus, or Jupiter, and company.  Many had begun to see life as pointless suffering with no purpose, and death was the bitter end.  The people wore shame and regret – and a sense of doom – like an overcoat.  The time was right to hear the message of hope, of life, of divine favor, or God-given purpose for their existence.  God had primed the world by means of man's own evil, short-sightedness and spiritual emptiness.  It was just the right time.

It was the right time – everything was ready – even geo-politically.  The Roman Empire had brought relative peace, of a rough sort, to the world, the Pax Romana.  The whole inhabited earth - well, at least the majority of men, spoke one language – Greek, Koine Greek, to be precise.  It was the language of the government, and it was the language of commerce, much like English is today.  Travel was fairly safe and relatively easy.   There were good roads most everywhere, and shipping was more or less relieved of piracy for a time.  The stage was set for the spread of the Gospel as we know it spread in the early church.  God even used the most powerful man in the world - Caesar Augustus, to compel His chosen Virgin Mary to travel to Bethlehem so that the prophecy of the place of the birth of His Messiah would be fulfilled.  It was just the right time.  But that isn't exactly what the fulness of time means either, exactly.

What it means, precisely, is that the time had come appointed by God for all these things.  It wasn't that conditions were right, although they were, and God had guided events to that end.  It wasn't the spiritual poverty of man at that particular point in time, although it was truly deep.  It was that God had appointed a specific day and time for the Incarnation and the birth of His Son, and that day had come.  The day of the crucifixion was specifically appointed too, as was the day of the Ascension - and is the day of the return of Christ to judge the world and bring us home, and destroy this creation and create a new heaven and a new earth.  The fulness of time simply means that the day had come that God had chosen before the foundation of the world.

We look at things from a peculiar perspective.  We often think of prophecy as something that has to be done, and then the prophecy is fulfilled.  But what if it is that God looked at the future, which is future for man, but all of time is present before God, and simply described what had happened in prophetic language, and revealed it to those living before the evens occurred.  Then fulfilling prophecy would be like fulfilling history.  Before God, it has already happened.  Our perspective is like watch a movie.  Nothing can happen, and nothing will happen in the movie that wasn't recorded and prepared before we picked up the DVD.  We view it as unfolding, but we know that it is unfolded and complete from the perspective of the studio that produced it.  Our view of time is like watching a movie that we have never seen before, but the Maker of the movie of time has released certain details of the movie in advance, like a movie trailer.

So, in the fulness of time, that is, when the day had come which God had chosen from before creation, God sent forth His Son.  The analogy of a movie breaks down, of course, because God did not compel every detail, nor script all human conduct.  He exercised divine influence and guided events and nations so that everything was just right when the appointed day arrived, but man freely walked through history.  God only reported on what He had witnessed in the unfolding of time - all of which is equally present to Him in eternity.  Your life is not entirely determined - you have to live it to make it happen - but God knows.

Anyhow, God sent His Son, Jesus.  He was born of a woman in order to be human.  He had to be born of a woman to be born under the burden of the Law - a burden you and I and all humanity has refused to carry faithfully.  Jesus had to be responsible to keep the law or else, just like us, so that when He did, He could earn rightfully the reward of righteousness and pure holiness.  He kept the Law without sin and earned eternal life.  It is His by right.  Then He could trade and take what we have earned, and what is our by right and divine justice: death and hell.  He could trade with us because He is human, and He could take the place of the whole lot of us because He is true God.  By His death, He redeemed us - those who were under the law.

"To Redeem" means to buy back.  His death purchased us from sin by fulfilling God's law and eternal decree against sin for us, in our favor, and on our behalf.  Now He owns us.  That is part of the source of the "slave" language of the Bible.  We are wholly owned, and therefore "bond-slaves".  Jesus can do with us what He wishes - after all, we are now property.  And Jesus wishes to set us free from sin and death.  He has determined that everyone who hears about what He has done and trusts Him to forgive them their sins, and raise them from the dead, and bring them to eternal life with Him shall receive exactly that.  If they take Him at His Word, He makes them part of the family – which Paul describes in the phrase, "that we might receive the adoption as sons".

Unbelief simply continues the offense of sin - it calls God a liar, and chooses something less that the wonders that God would pour out on them.  Consequently, the one that rejects God in unbelief also refuses the redemption of Christ and demands that God deal with him or her according to their own righteousness and reward them according to their just desserts.  And so He does.  He that believes and is baptized shall be saved, but he that does not believe shall be condemned.

But for us, the ones who believe, we possess as a gift all that Jesus won for us - forgiveness, life, and salvation.  We share in that adoption, sealed to us in our Baptism, and so, now we are Sons of God.  Among the many blessings that come with this adoption is to have within us the Spirit of His Son.  We call that "the Holy Spirit", of course.  Because Jesus had redeemed us, and God has claimed us as His sons by adopting us, He sends His Holy Spirit to us, to dwell within us, and teach us to call God "Father".  He has to teach us, because we would not dare to call God "our Father" on our own, if we took it seriously.  I mean, look at the trouble it caused Jesus.

The Spirit cries, "Abba, Father".   "Abba" is Aramaic for the child's familiar and affectionate name for his or her Father - like "Papa", or "Daddy".  The Spirit teaches us to call God "Dad", and to rest our hopes and confidence in Him and His love for us and His good will toward us, just like a child will toward a patient and loving father.  Some people do not have fathers like this, and so their ability to treasure this relationship is injured in some way, but it is the way things ought to be - loving, affectionate, safe, warm, and good.  It is this relationship with the heavenly Father that gives us confidence in every situation, even the darkest hours.  No matter what it may seem, we are in His arms, and under His protection for everlasting life and peace and health.

Remember Jesus bought us, and so we are wholly owned, and should be called slaves, and servants.  But Paul tells us that because of the love of God, you are no longer a slave, but a son.  It has not always been so.  Before Jesus, God gave the Law to keep men and guide them, but now, since Jesus, we have the Gospel.  We are no longer to allow ourselves to be ruled by the elemental things of this world.  We serve God freely and willingly, not according to some set of rules.  We do not allow men - whomever they may pretend to be - to put us into boxes and limit our freedom in Christ.  We do not allow them to cause us to fear.  We are God's own sons.  He has claimed us and adopted us, and this world, which is His, belongs also to us.

And we are heirs of God.  We stand to inherit everything.  Now, the world and everything in it belongs to us - but is not given to our direct control.  We have not yet inherited.  We are not free to do anything we wish with our inheritance, yet.  But it is still ours, and we can do anything that our heavenly Father would have us do with it.  And one day, called the Day of the Lord, we shall receive the inheritance.  We shall rise from our graves, if we have died, and shall receive everlasting life and health and peace and joy - and we shall finally be free of the infection of sin in our flesh, and our desires and thoughts will be completely holy and righteous, and we shall be pleased to be so.

Today, we are heirs.  We know its is ours, but only at the appointed time - in the fulness of time, if you will.  The fact that everything has gone according to plan so far should comfort us when life tries to frighten us.  God has it planned.  The day may seem to be delaying - "tarrying" is the King James word for it, but it coming.  It is set for a specific and special day, and it will not fail.  And knowing that Christmas came at the fulness of time - on just the right day - the day appointed - shores up our confidence that the Day of the Lord, our day of inheritance, will not be late.  It is coming, as Christ came, in the fulness of time.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

(Let the people say Amen)

God Has Spoken to us

 Hebrews 1:1-6

God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world.  And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power.  When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high; having become as much better than the angels, as He has inherited a more excellent name than they.  For to which of the angels did He ever say, "THOU ART MY SON, TODAY I HAVE BEGOTTEN THEE"?  And again, "I WILL BE A FATHER TO HIM AND HE SHALL BE A SON TO ME"?  And when He again brings the first-born into the world, He says, "AND LET ALL THE ANGELS OF GOD WORSHIP HIM."

Sermon for Christmas                                                              12/25/25

God Has Spoken to Us

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

Talk to me.  You've heard people say that before.  Talk to me.  And if you do, how would you do it?  Silly question, right?  You would use words.  That is how we talk.  Well, Jesus is the Word of God.  That is from the Gospel of John.  "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things came into being by Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being."  And then verse 14: "And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth."

This Christmas morning our epistle lesson tells us that God has spoken to us – and He has spoken to us in the person of His Word – His Son Jesus Christ.  Our Christmas message – the one that give us such joy on this morning is that God has spoken to us!

Hebrews is the most intellectual of the epistles.  There are parts of Hebrews that, frankly, baffle us.  Even the simplest parts require careful reading and careful thought.  But this epistle, of the opening verses of the entire epistle to the Hebrews is pretty simple.  It tells us that Jesus is God's communication to us.

God has always been talking to man.  He walked personally and talked with Adam and Eve in the garden.  After they had sinned, they could not bear His presence.  They were too frightened.  So God began dealing through intermediaries with us.  He sent prophets.  He spoke to them in visions, usually, or dreams.  He communicated with them without actually talking out loud.  Moses seems to be the last one that God talked out loud to.  After that, it was in visions and dreams and such – or he sent an angel.  He always stayed in touch, giving guidance and revealing more about Himself through His prophets.

In Jesus, we have God returning to direct communication.  That is what we celebrate in our Christmas celebration.  God was in Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ is God, the Second Person of the Trinity.  Christmas is the festival of the Incarnation.  Isaiah 7:14, which prophesies the Virgin Birth, also prophesies that the name of the child will be Immanuel.  The meaning of the prophecy is not that He will have that name, but that He will be God, with us – among us.  Jesus fulfilled that Word of God by putting on human nature and human flesh and blood in the womb of the Virgin Mary, and being born at just the right time – Scripture calls it "the fulness of time," and Luke says "the days were accomplished that she should be delivered."

The manger in Bethlehem is precious to us because God was born there.  He was not born according to His divinity, but according to His human nature – but God was born as a man there.  And having taken on human flesh and blood, God spoke directly to us.  There was no "middle man".  There is no mediator, except the man God chose to be, Jesus Christ.  So, at Christmas, we celebrate the truth that God has spoken to us!

Jesus often said that the words He spoke were not His, but that they had been given to Him by His heavenly Father.  Jesus wanted us to know that God was speaking to us in Him.  He always pointed back to God as He taught.  God was speaking to us and teaching us in Jesus, and He took great care to let us know precisely what it was that He was doing.  He knew that men would disbelieve and deny Him and His Word in time, but He wanted to be as clear as possible so that those who would believe would have utter certainty and clear evidence that God has spoken to us in Jesus Christ.  That is why every sermon I preach has a text, and often quotes Scripture.  When the Word is spoken faithfully, God is still speaking to us through Jesus.

But that isn't all that the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews meant to say.  He meant that Jesus was God's communication.  Who Jesus was, and what Jesus did, and the fact that He was here to do it, is as significant as the Words He spoke – and it says as much or more than Jesus did with His mouth.  God spoke to us by sending His Son.

Jesus spoke of the love of God for us.  Of course He preached about it, but just the fact of the Incarnation spoke to us about how far God would go – how deep His love is for us.  Think of the manger scene.  Could you imagine having your child in a barn, and using a hayrack for a crib?  Would you send your daughter or daughter-in-Law to give birth in filthy conditions on a cold night in an open-air stable like that?  Yet God chose to be born there for us.  He chose a teen-aged girl and a humble and poor carpenter as parents.  He chose to be born on a trip, in a stable where the young parents were housed for the night because the town was so crowded.  We celebrate Christmas every year without pausing very often to consider the absurdity of it, or what fantastic love it was that required God to humble Himself to become human, and then a poor human in a poor nation at a time and place in history so crude and violent and backwards.  The simple fact that Jesus is who He is reveals God speaking of His great love for us.  God has spoken to us!

And why did God do this?  It was our sins.  Because of our sin, we deserve to die.  We come from polluted stock and we behave as though we never knew God.  We hate, we covet, we lust, we gossip.  Many times we act as though God will not take care of us.  We behave as though God were less important than our next outing, our next purchase.  Even we, who know God and His goodness many times will behave as though we did not, or that we simply do not believe or care.

God did the Bethlehem thing for us.  He did it to save us from our own sins.  He was born in a stable so that He could die on a cross in our place, and redeem us from His own justice.  He had to keep His own bargains – He had to punish sin with death.  He had to be just and fair and righteous.  And yet He desired to save us.  Jesus coming, and His attention to fulfilling every prophecy – right down to the virgin mother and the place of His birth – speaks to us of the desire of God to save us.  There was no way to rescue us from the just consequences of sin, except to take them on Himself.  So Jesus was born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those that were under the law.  He, who had no sin of His own, became sin for us – took our sin upon Himself – that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him and through Him and on account of Him.  That is how much God wanted to save us – God has spoken to us!

Jesus Christ –  the fact of His birth and life and death and resurrection and ascension – spoke of God's plans for us beyond the grave.  Now I know that all of what we are looking at is not Christmas.  But we cannot celebrate Christmas two thousand years after Christ's life and pretend that the manger and the shepherds are all that there is about the holiday.  Jesus demonstrated what God has in store for us.  He told us plainly that He would come again for us.  He told us that because He lives, we too shall live, and because He rose from the grave, we too shall rise from our graves.

And we celebrate that truth as much as any, in Christmas celebrations.  The birth and life and death of Jesus speak to us about God's plans for us which go far beyond the short time we spend here in this world. But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who indwells you.  And when the time comes, and God raises us from the grave, then death will be defeated, and we will cry out with all the children of God, Death is swallowed up in victory!  O death where is your sting?  O Grave where is your victory!  And we will share in and delight in that reunion with all those who have gone before us, whom we miss so today – parents, grandparents, children, and spouses.  We will be there and we will do that and we will delight in God with all of our being – and Jesus, His existence and His life is God telling us all of these things.   God has spoken to us!

  And that is what we celebrate today.    God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world.  And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power.  When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high

Jesus tells us many things – but He reveals even more.  He is God, and He reveals God to us – His love, His nature, His compassion, His power, and His will.  And what is the will of God for us?

And you know that because God has spoken to us through the person of His Son.  And that is what we celebrate in Christmas – and it is truly merry!  So let us sing and laugh and feast and celebrate with all our might.  God has spoken to us and the first word He said was a little baby, born in Bethlehem, sung about by angels, and worshiped by shepherds.  

A merry and a blessed Christmas to you all!

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

(Let the people say Amen)

According to His Mercy

 Titus 3:4-7

But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that being justified by His grace we might be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. 

Sermon for the Christmas Eve                                                           12/24/25

According to His Mercy

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

Let me begin by wishing you all a very merry and blessed Christmas!  We celebrate Peace on earth, goodwill to men.  We celebrate "For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior which is Christ the Lord."  We celebrate Immanuel.  Which means "God with us": God come among men as a man, to live with us and for us, and to die in our place to redeem us.  Our text looks at the celebration without staring into the manger tonight.  It is the Epistle lesson appointed for the Second Christmas day, December 26th, actually.  I chose it because we almost never hear it, and it is one of my favorite Bible passages, and we don't usually celebrate the Second Christmas Day in the modern Church.  I took our  sermon theme from the passage, which reminds us that our Christmas - as well as our Easter and our salvation, is according to His mercy.

Paul writes, "when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us".  The first thing Paul mentions here, in this letter to Titus, his student whom he left behind in Crete to pastor the congregation there, is the kindness of God.  God is not often viewed by man as kind.  He is usually viewed with fear and suspicion.  But God had planned our salvation, and when Jesus came, the goodwill of God towards us, His desire to save us became evident in Jesus.  The "love for mankind" mentioned here is the Greek word "philanthropy".  The love for mankind shown here is greater than our modern understanding of "philanthropy", simply sharing some wealth with those in need - although that is one way to look at the Gospel.  This Philanthropy is true love of friendship from God toward man.  Nothing shows that love of friendship better than what Jesus did: for,  "A greater love has no man than this, that He lay down His life for His friends."

When that kindness and friendship made itself evident, God our Savior saved us.  He didn't send a servant, or a stand-in.  He loved us so much He came to do the job Himself.  After all, they say if you want the job done right, do it yourself.  So God saved us, which raises the question: what is He saving us from?  The answer:  Ourselves – and our sins and the justice due to us for rejecting Him and life and choosing death and pleasure or personal agendas of the moment over all the good He would give to us.

That is what Adam and Eve did in the garden.  They chose themselves, their will and their agendas and their moment of pleasure over the will of God and the plans for blessings and life from God.  Of course, they did not fully recognize that this was what they were doing.  They were deceived.  They were rebellious, and they were willing to be deceived, and they were not of a mind to allow God to make their choices for them, and so they sinned.

We are the same.  Our culture is a huge demonstration that we individually serve ourselves first, and everything and anything else second.  As we cast personal liberty aside for womb to the tomb government providing for us, we show that same haste to do what seems advantageous without ever considering the reality of it or the cost - those unintended consequences.  It demonstrates that we choose without considering the cost - and yet the cost must be paid, even if we do not know what the price is which we have accepted by our decisions.  Crime in the streets, welfare abuse run amok, Islamic terrorism, inflation, HIV and STD's epidemic in our nation, child abuse and sexual deviancy becoming mainstream – these problems are not the fault of the Republicans, or the Democrats - the Liberals or the conservatives.  They are our fault.  We - the whole nation of us - have made bad decisions, permitted the impermissible, and allowed ourselves to be deceived by those with other agendas because we want to promote, pamper, or pleasure ourselves first, and we do not always weigh the cost of those values, and the decisions we make pursuing them, honestly.  We do not read the price-tags.   And in our personal lives, we have each reflected this thing called "sin" in various ways to one degree or another by equally short-sighted and self-serving choices.  That is what He saved us from - Ourselves, and our sin.

He saved us.  That is the hard part to keep clear.  Paul emphasizes that fundamental part of the Gospel by stressing that it was, quote, "Not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness."  Somehow men and women - even in the Church - can look at the Manger in Bethlehem, the Incarnation, the entire Passion of our Lord, the Cross and everything Christ has done, and still try to make our salvation about us and our behavior, or our decisions, or our prayers.  But it is not us - He saved us.  Salvation began to rain down upon us in real time when Mary laid the infant Jesus in the Manger.

It was, "according to His mercy".  It is that "kindness of God" thing again.  The word we usually use is "grace", you know, God's choices for God's own reasons, with no particular factor being found in us at all.  He saved us because He wanted to - theologians say it is because of who He is, and that may be true, but the Bible says it is because He wanted to - because of His great love for us - a love which we clearly do not deserve and have not earned.  So, He saved us.

"[B]y the washing of regeneration".  Notice how the entire work of Christ is simply rolled up into the words, "He saved us".  The cross is not explicitly mentioned, nor the tomb, or the resurrection - not even the manger scene.  It all folds up into the one thing - God's great love which caused Him to save us.  But, while the work was accomplished back then, it is attached to individuals one by one.  It is there and purchased and won and free, and yet we cannot grasp it or choose it.  We must be chosen and it must be applied to us - poured out on us and stuck to us somehow - that is how He saved each of us, once He had purchased that salvation for us.  He poured it out on us, "by the washing of regeneration".

We were born again - regenerated - by Baptism - by the washing of regeneration.  That is the purpose and power of Baptism.  It is the washing that puts us to death with Jesus on the cross and raises us to new life in His resurrection on Easter.  That is precisely what Paul describes in Romans, chapter 6. And every bit of it is according to His mercy.

Of course, as Luther said in the Catechism, "It is not the water indeed that does this, but the Word of God which is in and with the water, and faith, which trusts such Word of God in the water."  We were born again by the power of the Word, which is the power of the Holy Spirit - which Paul tells us in our text is the power at work here in our salvation.  He calls Baptism a "washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit."  We are renewed - made new again - by the Holy Spirit by this ‘sacramental' washing.

And this Holy Spirit is poured out on us richly - abundantly - through Jesus Christ, our Savior.  Our Lord pours out His Holy Spirit in this Baptism.  We don't receive just the bare minimum, either.  We receive richly - I like that word - we receive the Holy Spirit in abundance.  We have all that we need, and more, to be the people of God and to accomplish the things God has planned for us to accomplish.

He does have things for us to accomplish you know.  He told us that they were there - although He doesn't tell us specifically what they are for each one of us.  Ephesians 2, verses 8 and 9 are favorites to quote: "By grace you have been saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not on the basis of works, so that no one should boast."  But verse 10 is just as true, just as much the Word of God, and just as important, "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God has prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them."  God has planned things for us to accomplish, and placed the specific things in the paths of each of us to discover in life - and then do.  This is also part of the work of the Holy Spirit who is poured out on us - that we find and accomplish the works of God's choosing, set in our paths by His planning.

But these works do not save us.  They are the works that we do as the children of God and because we are the children of God.  They are according to His mercy, as well.  Our Christmas Epistle reminds us that  we are justified by grace - which means it is a gift.  Our works, even as Christians, are often impure and done for sinful motives, but we are justified - declared holy and righteous and deserving of God's love and of eternal life - because of Jesus Christ: His holiness, His suffering and death on our behalf, and His resurrection, which proclaims the sufficiency of the payment to satisfy the justice of God on our behalf.  Because of Him, we are declared righteous and holy and fit for glory with Him.  It is the gift, given for no other reason than the grace of God - His choice for His reasons.  Because we do not deserve it, and cannot explain why us and not another, we simply rejoice and thank God.  That is part of the celebration of Christmas - Peace on earth, goodwill to men!

By this grace, we are made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.  That is how Paul put it, by inspiration.  Heirs inherit.  We stand to inherit the hope of eternal life.  It is called a hope because we do not experience it fully today, and so we look eagerly forward to the full possession and realization of the hope - but it is ours.  We are the heirs.  Our names are in the will.  Your sins are forgiven, and you have the promise of resurrection from your graves and eternal life.

And that all began, at least as far as men and women could observe it on earth, at Bethlehem.  There, on the night we celebrate tonight, the impossible actually happened - robbing the word "impossible" of its meaning.  A virgin girl gave birth.  She gave birth to a son - scientifically impossible.  She gave birth to a child that was fully human, and yet fully divine, impossible by human logic.  God was busy breaking the rules - but they are only the rules of human reason and understanding.  They were not the laws of God, and so breaking them was not sin, but according to His mercy.

So, Mary gave birth and angels sang.  She gave birth and shepherds gathered to worship.  She gave birth to Jesus and changed the world forever, because when she gave birth, the kindness of God our Savior, and His love for mankind appeared – and when it did, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that being justified by His grace we might be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.  This is a trustworthy statement.

Merry Christmas.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

(Let the people say Amen)

Caretakers of Revelations

 1 Corinthians 4:1-5

Let a man regard us in this manner, as servants of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God.  In this case, moreover, it is required of stewards that one be found trustworthy.  But to me it is a very small thing that I should be examined by you, or by any human court; in fact, I do not even examine myself.  For I am conscious of nothing against myself, yet I am not by this acquitted; but the one who examines me is the Lord.  Therefore do not go on passing judgment before the time, but wait until the Lord comes who will both bring to light the things hidden in the darkness and disclose the motives of men's hearts; and then each man's praise will come to him from God.

Sermon for 3rd Sunday in Advent                                                       12/15/24

Caretakers of Revelations

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

This Sunday is Messenger Sunday.  Liturgically, it is the pink candle Sunday in Advent, known officially as Gaudete or "Joy" Sunday, because the Introit begins "Rejoice in the Lord always", and Latin for "rejoice" is "gaudete".  I called it Messenger Sunday because all of our Scriptures address the idea of the Messenger.  The Old Testament lesson is the prophecy of Isaiah about the message of comfort, peace, and forgiveness.  The Gospel is Jesus speaking about John, and telling everyone that John was the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy - and how he was more than a mere prophet.  He was the forerunner of the Messiah, the Voice spoken of by Isaiah.

Our Epistle lesson is also about the messenger, but this time it is about the messenger that God sends to you, your pastor – and it speaks about judging, too.  Our sermon theme, this morning, is "Caretakers of Revelations".

Let me read you my own translation of the text, which, I hope, is a little clearer than the standard reading:  Let a man look upon us like this: as servants of Christ and caretakers of the mysteries of God, what is more, caretakers who are expected to be found faithful.  Now, it is absolutely insignificant, in my opinion, that I should be evaluated by you, or by any human standard.  I do not even evaluate myself.  Mind you, I am conscious of nothing against myself, but that does not vindicate me; the One who evaluates me is the Lord.  Therefore, don't you go judging things before the right time, that is, before the Lord comes, who also will shine light on the things hidden in the darkness, and will reveal intentions of the heart; and then, the commendation of each will come to him from God.

The first thing I would alert you to, is that there are parts of this passage which are easy to misunderstand.  You need to be careful and focused when you read the Bible to make sure you don't miss a transition or a segue into a new topic.   It is easy to miss a change in direction in this lesson, for example.  The text begins by talking about the Apostles and teachers – which by extension would be about pastors.  Near the end of these few short verses, however, the focus of the passage shifts to you, the ones who hear the message, and to your conduct with the instruction not to judge.  If you aren't paying attention, though, it could be mistakenly thought that St. Paul was telling the Corinthians not to judge him or his preaching.  But that is not the message.

The message about judging is about judging, period.  Therefore, don't you go judging things before the right time, that is, before the Lord comes, who also will shine light on the things hidden in the darkness, and will reveal intentions of the heart; and then, the commendation of each will come to him from God.  Paul would never tell them not to judge doctrine.  They are to be careful, listen only to the truth, reject the false and fractious, and test the spirits.  He is not even telling them not to call sin a ‘sin'.  Of course, they are to judge sin as sinful, and correct and encourage one another.  The kind of judging that Paul is opposing here is the sort that relies on human intuition, rumor, or personal preference.
Such judging is the sort of thing we do when we judge the motives of another person's heart.  "You did that just to irritate me!"  Or, "you intended to hurt me."  Sometimes it seems that people behave in one way or another just to get our goat, but the truth be known, they probably were totally self-absorbed, and did not consider anyone else at all.  Even though their conduct was obnoxious, it had no real evil intent behind it.  People engaging in unpleasant behavior often may have had no awareness that it was – or could be – obnoxious.  Declaring the intentions of another person to be evil, unless they actually told you they had evil intentions, is the sort judging forbidden here.

Paul simply used the discussion of God as judge to launch off into a brief exhortation against usurping God's prerogatives, and presuming to judge another.  We tend to do that.  You do it when you allow the actions of another to irritate you toward them.  Inconvenience is frustrating, but the person being "inconvenient" toward us is not necessarily our enemy or adversary – at least not deliberately.  St. Paul encourages us to wait, and let God reveal the truth and the hidden agendas and the secret motives of the heart – and then He will judge, and we won't need to, and His judgment will resolve the problem.  Until then, Christian love demands that we bear up with the failings and weaknesses of others, and forgive one another, and put the best construction on everything.

Open and public sins we can point at and say, "That is sin!"  We can condemn it and call for repentance from the perpetrator.  False doctrine must be identified, and we must call it what it is, and avoid it.  Behavior we don't appreciate, but about which there is no Biblical command, we cannot judge or condemn.  We can chafe, and we can wish it were different, but we cannot judge what God has not judged.  We cannot rightly condemn someone just because they irritate us.  We need to be patient, long-suffering, and forgiving, and wait until the right time, the time when the Lord comes in judgment.  This is particularly true when dealing with the actions of the members of the family of God, fellow-believers, the Church.

The part of the text I want to focus on, is the part about the messengers - the caretakers of revelations.  The pastor is to be the caretaker.  The message - the "mysteries of God" - is not his.  He is the manager, the steward, the caretaker of these things.  He is responsible to God, because the mysteries he is the care-taker for are God's mysteries.  The faithful pastor is not permitted to adjust the message, or do with the Sacraments whatever he pleases.  He must speak what he is given to speak, and faithfully administer the Sacraments he is given to administer in accord with their institution.

Admittedly, that is not what we always see happening.  Some decide that administering the Sacraments in accord with their institution is too limiting or too unfriendly to visitors.  Sometimes the Scriptures say things that are not politically correct by the world's standards today, and some pastors simply don't want to offend anyone, or don't want to look old-fashioned and overly religious (they, of course, call it "being superstitious").  In such cases, since the message is God's, the messenger ought to be faithful to the message he was given and to the Giver of the message, and allow the audience of the message to hear what God's Word actually says and deal with it as they will.

The requirement which is chief and most important for the pastor is that he be found faithful.  Your opinion of the character of the man or the message is not the one that counts.  His opinion of himself is not all that important.  Only God's judgment is truly significant.

That doesn't mean that you cannot or should not judge his doctrine.  You are responsible for yourself.  You need to make sure that you do not sit and listen to that which is not faithful.  But the pastor is responsible to teach the truth, even when those listening don't want to hear it.  He is not responsible to you, he is responsible for you.  He is responsible to God.

The Old Testament prophets were good examples of faithful caretakers of revelations.  They often died as a consequence of being faithful, and saying what it was that God gave them to say rather than adjusting the message for the pleasure of their audience.  Paul himself gave us an example of the same spirit of faithfulness.  He was stoned, beaten, arrested, tried, and finally executed for preaching Christ and the Gospel.

One could comprehend the reaction to Paul, and to the others who faithfully served their stewardship of the mysteries of God, if they had been doing something violent, or threatening, or even insulting.  But they weren't.  They were preaching the Gospel.  You may think that it was the Law part that people objected to, but it is not.  You can tell people how evil they are all day long.  They will agree, and sometimes even find the experience pleasurable.  It is the Gospel that fires them up.

Tell someone that their sins are forgiven.  Explain the love of God for them, that He died in their place, for them, that He freely gives them forgiveness and eternal life and salvation, and they get angry.  Go figure.

The natural tendency of man is to take the good news of the Gospel and twist it into something else.  People change who God is – not His reality, of course, but in their thoughts about Him.  They want a God who is less than the true God, easier to understand, or easier to manipulate.  They change how the gospel works – which means that they invariably end up with something that is no Gospel at all, according to St. Paul.  Some want to earn heaven by their works, some want universalism – where everyone gets to go to heaven, some want no limits set on human behavior and some want heaven to be incredibly difficult to enter, except, of course, for them.  I guess that is part of human nature, which is sinful.

But the Gospel is what it is, just as God is who He is.  You have to take God as He is for who He is, or leave Him behind.  You must believe the Gospel, and receive forgiveness and eternal life as a gift, or forget about it.  You need to acknowledge who you are, a sinner, and that you deserve none of it, or you will get what you deserve, and not what Jesus has purchased and won for you on the cross, and in the grave, and by rising again from the dead.

It is that Gospel, along with the wonderful gifts of Baptism and the Lord's Supper, which are the mysteries of God.  They are mysteries only because we could not know them unless they were revealed.  That is why a caretaker must be faithful.  Human reason will not figure it out or reason its way to the truth.  Our reason will always miss.  Our sinful reasoning prefers the error to the truth even, many times, when we are told the truth.  If we had to start from the position of knowing only the lie, and figure it out from there on our own, we would be lost - so it is required in this case that the caretakers be found faithful.

"Stewards of the Mysteries of God" is the ordinary way to hear this described - but stewards are caretakers - and revelations are what these mysteries are - - thing revealed to us by God.  So I thought that it might help you keep this message in mind if we called these messengers Caretakers of Revelations.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
(Let the people say Amen)