The On-Going Celebration

1 John 5:4-12

For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world-- our faith.  And who is the one who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

This is the one who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ; not with the water only, but with the water and with the blood.  And it is the Spirit who bears witness, because the Spirit is the truth.  For there are three that bear witness, the Spirit and the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement.

If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater; for the witness of God is this, that He has borne witness concerning His Son.  The one who believes in the Son of God has the witness in himself; the one who does not believe God has made Him a liar, because he has not believed in the witness that God has borne concerning His Son.  And the witness is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.  

He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life.

Sermon for Quasimodogeniti Sunday                                             04/27/25

The On-Going Celebration

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

Last Sunday was Easter.  Today is Quasimodogeniti Sunday – the Sunday following Easter, the Introit of which begins, "Like newborn babies, long for the pure spiritual milk of the Word."  "Like newborn babies" in Latin is Quasimodogeniti.  You probably think of Easter and all of that as old hat.  We have been there many times before.  But the name of this day in the church-year challenges us to think about it as something new – or of ourselves as something new: like newborn babies!  It is like someone new to the whole joy of the Gospel that we want to celebrate our salvation.

Since it is the Sunday after Easter, it makes sense to ask what we celebrate on Quasimodogeniti?  The answer may surprise you, and maybe not. On the Sunday after Easter we celebrate  .  .  .  Easter.  And next Sunday, do you know what we will celebrate?  Easter!  And every Sunday, we celebrate Easter.  In fact, we worship on Sundays because Jesus rose from the grave on a Sunday.  Each Sunday morning is an Easter celebration!  Since Easter is the heart of the Gospel, and the Gospel is the heart of the Christian faith, we shouldn't even allow ourselves to limit our Easter joy to Sundays, but should be like newborn babies, and celebrating about the Gospel and Jesus Christ all of the time.  Our celebration should be, as our sermon theme says, The On-Going Celebration.

And so, what is it that we celebrate at Easter?  Is it that Jesus rose from the dead?  Yes  -  -  -  and no.  We celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but not the simple fact that someone came to life again after being dead.  We celebrate the meaning of that resurrection.  We celebrate the victory of that resurrection, in which we share.  John writes in our epistle lesson this morning, For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world -- our faith.  And who is the one who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

He is writing about the victory, but not in the way we usually hear it – or think about it.  Whatever is born of God overcomes the world.  We would think he was speaking of Jesus – and he is, but more than just Jesus, he is writing about us.  We are born of God by the Word and our faith is born of God through the Word.  So John writes,  and this is the victory that has overcome the world -- our faith.  Our victory is over sin and death and hell, .  .  .  And the world of unbelief around us.  Our victory is over the prince of this world and all of his evil schemes.  And it is a victory that was won on the cross.

That is why John says that the victory has overcome the world – not can or will or does, but has.  Jesus has already won the victory, and we share in it by grace through faith.  That is our victory, and it is given to us.  Jesus won it on the cross and we have it as a gift through faith.  It is not faith that wins, but Christ, and He has chosen to share His victory through faith, giving forgiveness, life, and salvation to all those who believe.  That is the meaning of the words of our text, And who is the one who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

It is a total victory.  It is the victory of forgiveness.  Our sins are no longer held to our account, and the justice of God has been satisfied for us by Jesus Christ.  It is, therefore, the victory over the devil, whose plot against us began in the garden of Eden.  His work, aimed at our destruction, has been thwarted.

It is also the victory over the ways and the works of the world.  Luther wrote about this victory in his triumphant reformation hymn, A Mighty Fortress: "and take they our life, Goods, fame, child, and wife; Let these all be gone, they yet have nothing won!  The Kingdom our remaineth!"  Ours in the victory.  This world and its pains and sorrows are but for time, then is eternal rejoicing.  That is our victory.  And it is that victory that is heralded and proclaimed by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And it is a victory grounded in the truth.  In this portion of this epistle, John is refuting the heretics who tried to say that Jesus the man was not Christ, the Son of God.  He who overcomes is the one grounded in the truth – in the sound doctrine that Jesus the man is also the Son of God.

The heretics tried to say that Jesus was adopted by God at His baptism, and that the "divine Christ" departed from Jesus before the sufferings and the cross.  They believed, as many do today, that God could not have been in Jesus.  The finite is not capable of containing or even touching the infinite.   They also believed that God could not suffer, so they removed God from Jesus in their teachings.  That is what this next section of our text is about – the three witnesses to the truth of the deity of Jesus Christ – that He is true man and true God.  This is the one who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ; not with the water only, but with the water and with the blood.  And it is the Spirit who bears witness, because the Spirit is the truth.  For there are three that bear witness, the Spirit and the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement.

The witness of the water is the baptism of Jesus, where the Father spoke from heaven and the Holy Spirit came in the form of a dove and rested upon Him.  The witness of the blood is the cross, where Jesus bled and died for our sins.  These two bear witness at both ends of the ministry of Jesus that He is the Son of God – as does the Holy Spirit, God Himself bearing witness – both in the baptism of Jesus and now, through the Word by bringing faith into our hearts.  Here is the truth of our victory, witnessed by these witnesses appointed by the Father.

These words speak about the importance of sound doctrine, for it is the truth of God.  If we lack the truth, we are without God and we do not have the victory.  If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater; for the witness of God is this, that He has borne witness concerning His Son.  The one who believes in the Son of God has the witness in himself; the one who does not believe God has made Him a liar, because he has not believed in the witness that God has borne concerning His Son.  And the witness is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. 

And here John tells us that to deny the truth which He has revealed is to call God a liar.  You call God a liar by unbelief, and you call God a liar by false belief.  The truth is this Gospel, and any unbelief or false teaching about or in connection with this Gospel is to reject God, reject His truth, and call God a liar.  We believe men – we ought to believe God.  If our neighbor tells us that it is good for us to take vitamin C, we take vitamin C.  If our doctor says we need a medicine or some therapy, we pursue it.  We accept their witness.  Similarly, When God tells us that He has taken our sins away, punished them completely in Jesus and is giving us resurrection to life and everlasting salvation, we should accept His witness.

We should be eager to believe this witness, because the message is that God has given us eternal life through Jesus Christ.  The message is not rules or condemnation, but forgiveness, and an end to death, . . . and life and peace and joy!  He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life. 

 

And what does John mean when he speaks about having the Son?  He means faith.  He means to point us to knowing about Jesus and to knowing who He is and to believing it and to trusting in Him.  The Adoptionists of the time of the Apostle John – the followers of a man named Cerinthus – denied that Jesus was the Son of God, and therefore they did not have the Son.  They believed in a Jesus of some sort.  And they believed in something like the Gospel, but it wasn't the Gospel.  They had turned the truth into a lie and demanded that God have them on their terms, rather than they having or knowing God on His terms.  But to know the truth of God about Jesus and the cross and life is to have the Son, and to have the Son is to possess everlasting life.  

To deny the truth is to not have the Son.  Men deny that truth today by denying that it is a gift -- suggesting or saying outright that we must earn it or be worthy of it before we can have it.  Or they make Jesus just part of the story, and tell you to shape up and measure up before you take comfort in God.  Or some want to deny that it is true or all real and makes any sense or any difference today.  They claim that the Bible was about those people back then – a book of superstitions and fables not unlike the Harry Potter books, or the Koran, or the I Ching.  They say that it does not speak to us in today's modern world.  We have grown up and no longer need that kind of faerie-tale nonsense, they say.

But we still have the same old troubles.   We still sin and know it is sin.   We still die.  We still need the salvation that Jesus has provided.  We still need to be redeemed, rescued and forgiven.  And we still need to know the truth, and the truth of our text this morning is that to trust God's promises in connection with Jesus is to have the Son.  And to have to have the Son is to have life eternal.  And it is that eternal life that we celebrate on Easter, and on this Sunday, and on every Sunday.  It is the sum and substance of the Christian hope.  

The everlasting life is the result of forgiveness of sins.  And the forgiveness of sins is the proclamation of the resurrection, and the result of the crucifixion and the resurrection.  

Forgiveness is wonderful.  That it is already purchased and won and does not need our merit or activation is good news.  That it means that death is not the last word, and that we will live in a world much better than this in unending bliss and glory is our Easter joy – which should be the joy of the Christian faith at all times – not just Sundays.  So we share in the On-Going Celebration.  It isn't just for one day of the year, or one day of the week, but for every day and every moment.  It is our strength in the face of every temptation and the source of our steadfastness and endurance in the rigors of every hardship and our peace and our patience in the grip of every anxiety and our comfort and our cheer in the teeth of every sorrow.

The On-going Celebration is not just for once a year, and not even just for Sundays.  Easter is our joy and our hope – and our certainty moment by moment as the children of God; for we have the witness, and we have the Son, and we have been born of God – so we have the victory over sin and death and hell.  

So, who cares if it is the week after Easter?  We are still celebrating the good news of salvation and life and peace with God.  

Today can't be just the Sunday after Easter because the celebration is not limited to that day, or even to Sundays, for the Christian, it is the on-going celebration of faith and hope and life and love in Jesus Christ.  Like the energizer bunny, it just keeps on going.

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

(Let the people say Amen)

The New Celebration

1 Corinthians 5:6-8

Your boasting is not good.  Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough?  Clean out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened.  For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed.  Let us therefore celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

Sermon for Easter Sunday                                                                                                                    4/11/04

The New Celebration

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

He is Risen! He is Risen Indeed! Hallelujah!

Although the celebration of Easter as a special holiday is ancient to us, if the Apostle Paul were to have encountered it, it would have been a new celebration.  The earliest Christians did not have a special Easter holiday.  They did celebrate Easter, but it was not a holiday.  It was every day.  They worshiped on Sundays, instead of the Jewish Sabbath, on Saturday, because Jesus rose from the dead on a Sunday.  Every Sunday worship service was, to them, an Easter celebration.

Easter was much more than a holiday to the earliest believers.  It was their entire faith.  They lived in the afterglow of Easter.  They had no battles between Lutherans and Catholics to consider.  They had no family traditions, at least not at first.  They worshiped in the heart of the excitement of the resurrection.  Death was close and intimate in their world.  Life was hard and often dull.  The gods of their society were capricious and silly, and all authority tended to be dictatorial -- at home, in their temples, and from their government.  The sudden reality of love and freedom from God and of the resurrection and glory to come was worth dying for, and so it was worth living for.  So Easter was their entire faith.

We celebrate Easter as a holiday because it is not our entire faith.  It should be, but we have grown content and complacent.  We keep death at arm's reach with hospitals, nursing homes, and funeral parlors.  We only occasionally stare into its face, and usually it is wearing make-up.

Our faith too often is about feeling good.  Our faith is about nervous tension and relative (not real) economic changes.  Only occasionally do we think much about dying, and only now and then do we ponder the resurrection.  Forgiveness is a self-esteem thing, not a spiritual power.  So naturally, Easter is a holiday -- a ‘set aside' for once a year.

But our comfort with this life and our satisfaction with ourselves and how we live is what St. Paul refers to in our text as boasting.  Just prior to our text, Paul was writing about immorality that existed among the Corinthians.  A man had taken his father's wife.  We don't know if his father had died, but it seems unlikely, or she would be called his father's widow.  She was not the man's mother, but probably a second wife - perhaps one of many, or perhaps the second wife after his father had been widowed.

What that man did is called "incest".  If his father and his wife were divorced, such a thing was still totally out of bounds, even among the pagans.  The Corinthian Christians, however, had tolerated this immorality without excommunicating the evildoer.  Paul accused them of arrogance, in their patience with sin, and commanded them to reject such a man.

Then He said, "Your boasting is not good."  Our comfort with our lives, and our contentment with our own immorality is such boasting.  Patience with divorce and adultery and fornication and homosexuality and such is pagan and worldly, not godly or Christian.  Open-mindedness with the rampant immorality of our television shows and movies is ‘boasting'.  Approval of false teaching in the church, and in our society -- like praising the show Touched by an Angel, even though it contradicts Scripture at almost every single turn -- is such boasting.  The boast is that we are so strong, that we can endure such evil among us and not be turned.  We are so righteous that what God vehemently condemns, we can patiently approve.

"Your boasting is not good".  The reality is that "just a little leaven leavens the whole lump".  Proverbs said it too, "bad company corrupts good morals."  If we wink at sin and tolerate sin and patiently endure sin, we will become twisted by sin again and lost.  "Clean out the old leaven", Paul says.  Don't give sin a foothold among you.

But then Paul says something strange -- he says that we are unleavened already!  We are unleavened because Christ is our Passover -- the feast of the unleavened bread -- and He is not just the feast, He is the lamb, sacrificed to remove our guilt and shame.  We have been unleavened by the forgiveness of sins, purchased and won for us by the sacrifice of the Lamb of God on the cross.  That is what we celebrated on Good Friday.

Let us therefore celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.  Paul is inviting us to a new celebration.  He is inviting us to celebrate not just a holiday, but life set free from sin.  And we don't just celebrate it by having a special service once a year, or with the traditional ham dinner at home.  We celebrate this feast with a life of purity and truth!

The feast he is talking about is not a meal, it is life itself in the presence of God for the sake of Jesus Christ.  Jesus referred to eternal salvation and heaven as the wedding feast, but life here in this world, lived by faith in Jesus Christ, is also part of that feast.

Paul says, "Let us therefore celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth."  The old leaven is the old evils of life without Christ.  They have been set aside by God on the cross.  The resurrection of Jesus from the grave is God's unmistakable method of telling us that our sins have truly been forgiven.  The leaven of malice and wickedness and deceit has been purged from us.  Now we are invited to the new celebration without malice or any evil intentions.  We are invited to the new celebration without wickedness of any sort.  We are invited to celebrate with sincerity and truth.

We are invited to celebrate the new celebration of living a new life in Christ.  That life is a life of honest worship.  Not just singing hymns in a church, but living our lives in the knowledge of the resurrection and the sincere expectation that we shall rise too.  Such worship is lived in the light of forgiveness.  That means that we set aside sin, for we have been unleavened.  Just as the Jews cleaned out all the leaven in their homes for the Passover, we must clean out all of the dishonesty and evil from our lives so that we may remain unleavened, unpolluted as best we are able by the pollution of sin.

It means humbling yourself.  Boasting is living in sin as though you can handle it, as though you are master over sin.  But if we do what is not right, if we lie and gossip and entertain ourselves with the lives and sins of others, that little bit of leaven gets in us and works in us to produce sinful desires and sinful thoughts, which lead inevitably to sinful actions.

Every day is to be a celebration that we have been set free from our guilt.  We celebrate with thanksgiving.  We celebrate by choosing to see the hand of God in all our blessings and opportunities, and trusting in and expecting the hand of God even in those things which trouble us and tempt us.  Like those actors on Television who shout and leap for joy that they have kicked the habit of smoking, or lost all that weight, we should celebrate our forgiveness and salvation.

                                          

Jesus' resurrection means that we, too, shall rise from the grave.  Our resurrection will be just like His, because it is tied to His and, in a sense, is His resurrection.  We will rise because He paid for our sins, and death has no claim on us.  We will rise suddenly and with the same sort of glory and excitement as we witness in the Biblical accounts of the first Easter.

We celebrate that resurrection now with faith and with a life which does not participate in the fear and frantic pursuit of hollow, sinful pleasures of this world.  There are enough good and sincere and wholesome pleasures.  We have no need for the private sins, the secret lusts, the sleazy, sinful passions.  We don't need to do them, and we do not need to wink at them in our entertainments, or among our families and friends.  Rather we need to hold up the love of God toward us.  We need to remind one another of God's grace and forgiveness.  We need to encourage one another in prayer and faith.

Jesus said, "I am the Bread of life."  He is the unleavened bread with which we shall satisfy ourselves in the new celebration of the feast.  His resurrection means that the promises made to us are true.  There is life, even beyond death.  There is so much that is so good, so much that it is well worth waiting for, and for which it is well worth disciplining ourselves.

Our boasting is not good, so let us set aside the boast, and humbly repent, knowing our forgiveness is as certain as the resurrection of Christ.  And let us not presume that we have wisdom to righteously live our life as it seems good to us, but let us resolve to humbly seek His guidance and wisdom.  Then we will celebrate the new celebration, where Easter is every day, because we look back at Jesus on the first Easter, and because we see what He has done and we hear what He has promised us if we live in Him, we can confidently look forward to our personal Easters.

He is risen! He is risen, indeed! Hallelujah!

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

(Let the people say Amen)

True Humility / True Glory

 Philippians 2:5-11

Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in
Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but
emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and
being made in the likeness of men.  And being found in
appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming
obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Therefore also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on
Him the name which is above every name, that at the name
of Jesus EVERY KNEE SHOULD BOW, of those who are in
heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and that every
tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of
God the Father.

Sermon for Palm Sunday                                                       4/13/25

                                    True Humility / True Glory
                                                 
My Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

There are a number of ways to
approach this text.  One could talk about
suffering.  This is the Sunday of the
Passion in the modern church-year
calendar, and that would follow the theme
of the day.  I could talk about obedience,
which is certainly well-modeled by Jesus.  I
could focus particularly on the love of
Jesus.  Or I could talk about all of them.
What I would like you to focus your
attention on, this morning, is the nature of
Glory - and its connection to humility.  We
consider these in Paul's message to the
Philippian Christians this morning, with
the theme, "True Humility/True Glory."

Paul writes:  Have this attitude in
yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who,
although He existed in the form of God, did not
regard equality with God a thing to be grasped,
but emptied Himself.  That is humility.   Jesus
Christ was God   is God.  Whatever it is to
be God, with all the power and glory and
whatever, Jesus had it.  He could do
anything, anywhere, anytime.  There is no
way for us to appreciate what Jesus had or
what He gave up.  What we can appreciate
is that He did not count whatever that is as
too precious or too important to let go of.
He did not hold His own glory such as we
cannot actually even imagine and power
beyond our comprehension and
prerogatives of divinity as more significant
or desirable than our salvation.  He
counted obedience to the Father and
redeeming us as more importance than the
enjoyment of His own participation is the
glories of the Holy Trinity for a time.   That
is true Humility.

Jesus didn't give up being God, or all
of the powers and glory of God forever.  He
merely (as though that word could actually
apply to God and His power) merely set
them aside for a time.  He laid aside the
use of His power and took on human
frailty.  He laid aside His knowledge and
became an infant in the womb.  He laid
aside His glory and became not merely
human, but a helpless child, in an
insignificant and desperately poor family,
in a backwards region of a poor nation
under military occupation.  That is what
Paul means when he says that Jesus
"emptied Himself."  That is humility,
humbling Himself beyond all reason and
setting aside His own comfort, glory and
prerogatives for the well-being and
salvation of His enemies   us   sinful man.
He set aside what He deserved from us on
our behalf and He counted nothing as "too
much" to give in order to accomplish His
purpose which is our redemption from sin
and death and hell.

That is the attitude that we are
challenged to imitate and emulate and
make our own.  If you want to think like
Jesus   and believe me, if you are a
Christian YOU DO   then this is what you
are called to imitate, humility.  Nothing
should be too much to lose for the sake of
Christ, or for the sake of His Gospel, or for
the sake of His people.  No indignity should
be more than you can bear.  No insult
should be too much to take.  No embarrass
ment should be enough to stop you, and no
loss, even to the point of your life, should
be beyond what you are willing to give.

You do not "have the attitude of Jesus in
yourselves" by merely permitting injustices
and declining to exercise your right to
escape.  The attitude of Jesus was more
than just enduring torment for the
advantage of others because it was what
was expected of Him.  You can force
yourself to endure the unpleasant and
embarrassing, but that is not the attitude,
that is merely the behavior of Jesus.

The attitude of Jesus is love.  He loved
His Father, and He loved us so much that
He faced shame and ridicule, suffering,
torture, and finally death on our behalf and
in our place so that we might never have to
face them as a consequence of our sins.  He
faced them particularly so that we might be
spared eternal death and torment in Hell.
When He had the power to do something
else, He did this.

That was the "mind of Christ"   humility
which permitted Him to become one of us,
and to die so violently and shamefully for
us.  We are to partake of that humility too.
We are to humble ourselves in our own
minds so that our interests and our
comfort can take second place to the
welfare and spiritual health of others!  This
is not about allowing someone to make you
do something, it is about doing it yourself,
because it is right, setting others and their
needs first before our comforts, our
preferences, our personal pride, and even
our own needs simply because it is the will
of God that we do so.

Of course, that means that we have to
stop the silly talk that often happens in
American churches about "rights".  Jesus
set aside not only what He had a right to,
but what He flat out deserved, and what
was already His.  He set aside what He
already possessed and counted His natural
equality with God as something He could
do without to accomplish His purpose of
salvation for you, and for you, and for me.
So, if you want to follow Jesus, you must
seek and learn and follow His humility.
You have the right to do what you want to  
politically, as an American  but not as a
Christian and not as a member of the
Church and not as a slave of God in
Jesus Christ.  At the door of the house of
God, talk about rights and what we deserve
and what we can do if we want to stops,
and humility must rule.  This life is not
lived in a democracy   it is lived in a
monarchy, and Jesus Christ is the King.

Of course, this humility toward others
is all aimed first at "one another."  This is not
about society in general.  There are other
places in Scripture where that issue is
addressed, but here it is not about the
world around us, it is about one another  
fellow believers   members of the body of
Christ, particularly those we are connected
to, fellow members of the congregation.
And then, just as in our outreach missions,
this circle of care and agape love grows
wider and wider by steps.  Our fellow
members here, then fellow believers in the
area, who may not be members of our
congregation, then the Church in the larger
area - circuit, district, nation, world.

Is all of this Law?  Yes, but not in the
sense that you must do it or you cannot be
saved.  This is the response of the heart to
the truth of the Gospel.  This is what
happens when you have been saved, and
you believe the goodness of God and you
witness for yourself what Jesus did to
redeem and save you.  This is the fruit of
faith.  This is how we are encouraged to
respond to the knowledge of Christ and His
humility on our behalf.

Jesus did not just give up glory and
power.  He gave up His life. [He] emptied
Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and
being made in the likeness of men.  And being
found in appearance as a man, He humbled
Himself by becoming obedient to the point of
death, even death on a cross.  He became one
of us.  He took on the form and nature of
those He had created to be His servants -
His slaves.  He became everything you are,
except for sin.  He carried the aches and
pains.  He carried the troubles of life.  He
carried emotions and joys and griefs.  He
endured not being able to have it His way
at every moment, of having others decide
for Him.  He was a normal guy, except that
He was also God, enduring this normalcy
and humbling Himself to submerge His
power and glory in this human nature.

Tacitus, a Roman writer and
philosopher, who hated Christians and
strongly encouraged their persecution,
wrote in abject wonder in the second
century of the Christian Church, "See how
those Christians love one another."  How
long has it been since anyone, friend of foe,
said something like that about us?  But
that kind of care for one another is what
the humility of Christ is all about.  When
you look at the task, it seems too big.  Who
could care for others like that?  How could
you take care of yourself and do this?
Doing this would consume all of our time
and energy and our resources!  We would
be left with nothing!

And the answer of God would be -
"Precisely!"  The mind of Christ is the
attitude of humility marked by love.  He
loved us so much that He endured the loss
of all things.  He was willing to even set
aside the glory of being God to take on our
human flesh and blood and human nature.
He loved us so much that He was willing to
endure the assault of human sinfulness
while He lived a perfect and sinless life.  His
love was so deep that He was willing to take
our sin on Himself and endure the wrath of
God against us, so that we will never need
to.  The passion and the cross were truly
terrible, and the wrath of God which
caused Him to abandon His only-begotten
Son to bleed and die on the cross alone is
beyond our comprehension, and the
humility of Jesus Christ led Him to do all of
that so that we might be forgiven, justified,
and brought into the love of God by grace,
and adopted into His family as not merely
slaves, but as brothers!  His resurrection
and eternal life are also ours.  It is won for
all men, and poured out on all and truly
possessed by those that trust God and
believe His Word and love.  "He that believes
and is baptized, shall be saved!

And Paul exhorts us to have the same
attitude   the True Humility of Jesus.  Paul
is inspired to remind us of the reward for
Jesus, for His humility and obedience to
the will and plan of the Father;  Therefore
also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him
the name which is above every name, that at the
name of Jesus EVERY KNEE SHOULD BOW, of
those who are in heaven, and on earth, and under
the earth, and that every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the
Father.

His glory was increased, and His joy,
by enduring the things God set before Him
on the path of the will of God.  And what is
the will of God?

Just as it was for Jesus, it will be for
us as well.  We will not lose by imitating
His humility.  It is true, you may well be
left with nothing, but that would be nothing
of this world, not nothing at all   and you
will be leaving behind everything of this
world one day soon, anyhow.  Imitating the
attitude of Jesus receives the same good
pleasure of God.  The blessings are not the
same, of course, just as the tasks we will
perform are not the same.  But God will
also reward our true humility with a true
glory of our own and bless us each with life
eternal   and that in glory beyond our
comprehension.  Whatever we may have is
what God has given us to use in His
service.  The truth is that He may not
require every blessing and every treasure be
given up and poured out for Him upon our
neighbor.  But even if He did, it would be
well worth it.  Jesus said so, in Matthew
19, and in Mark 10, "Truly I say to you, there
is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters
or mother or father or children or farms, for My
sake and for the gospel's sake,  but that he shall
receive a hundred times as much now in the
present age, houses and brothers and sisters and
mothers and children and farms, along with
persecutions; and in the age to come, eternal life."

We will not lose treasures, we will not
lose joys, we will not lose our lives, but gain
them, and far more.  Any loss we may
suffer now is but for a time, and the reward
and the joys will be forever.  God has
promised to return and repay all of our
losses.  We will not lose a thing, only,
perhaps, delay the enjoyment for a time.
And it is all so that God may work through
us just as He did through Jesus   that His
will might be fully accomplished for us and
those to whom God would have us bring
the good news.

But this attitude is not something you
or I can do on our own.  I am not telling
you to grit your teeth and work it up in
yourself and do the unpleasant.  I am
encouraging you to live in the light of the
truth of the Gospel.  God loves you, and He
will provide.  He knows everything you
need, and everything you do.  And to
strengthen us and encourage us and
enable us to possess the mind of Christ, He
has left us this meal.  Here we receive the
very body and the true blood of our Lord
Jesus.  We take Him into us and are
cleansed and forgiven and strengthened
and renewed so that we might walk before
Him as faithful children and diligent
servants.  Here, in this Holy Supper, is the
will and the ability to think like Jesus.  The
power and the humility are here too.  Here
God would feed us with this precious and
life-giving food and strengthen our faith,
and increase our love, and enable us to do
His will from the heart.

So, come, eat and drink and be
strengthened and cleansed and prepared.
Let God feed your souls as He does your
bodies, and make you able to change your
mind, by the power of the Holy Spirit, so
that you will be able to think like Jesus.
You cannot outrun God's goodness or out-
give His generosity or overestimate the care
and concern which God has for you.  What
God is saying through Paul, and through
me this morning, is walk in the light of the
love of God, and live true Humility.  Trust
God to be your supply, and take care of one
another.  Live as though God has given you
everything you need, and He has placed
you here to love and take care of one
another, and to share His love with those
who have not yet believed.  Then you will
also find true Glory, for the glory of God is
that He did all that He accomplished in
Jesus Christ -  for sinners - for you and for
me.   Have this attitude in yourselves which was
also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in
the form of God, did not regard equality with God
a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking
the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the
likeness of men.  And being found in appearance
as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming
obedient to the point of death, even death on a
cross.

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

                                                                           (Let the people say Amen)