Why Pomp Now?

Palm Sunday

March 24, 2013

Why Pomp Now?

Luke 20:9-19

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Why did Jesus go through the trouble of Palm Sunday? For years Jesus had kept a low profile. Every time one of His miracles threatened to cause thousands to follow Him, He pulls away and tells the healed to keep quiet. Most of His travels kept Him far from the hustle and bustle of big city Jerusalem. He preferred the desolate places and the little villages.

So why does He change-up now? Why the pomp now? Why the pageantry and the crowds now?

Because He wanted this parade into Jerusalem to highlight His coming disgrace. It would only serve to cause folks to shake their heads in contempt and pity, that this rabbi from Nazareth who had entered Jerusalem to great acclaim, left a few days later under a cross. What a fall from grace that would only attenuate the ridicule as He stood in front of the priests and Pilate and as He walked past the same crowd with a cross and as He hung from it. In short, it was royal parade leading, not to a crown of jewels, but to a crown of thorns.

And why the disgrace? Why the humiliation? So that He would stand alone, and walk alone, and hang alone. Separated from all mankind and from God Himself, God died.

Just as Jesus was anointed before He died and not after, so too He enjoyed His victory parade before His place of ultimate victory on the cross. And this is our God always doing the unexpected and always doing it for us.

And so we join the hosannas and with the palms to our victorious King who died alone and saved us all by Himself.

In the name of the Father 

and of the + Son and

of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Bad for Business Is Good for Sinners

Fifth Sunday in Lent

March 17, 2013

Bad for Business Is Good for Sinners

Luke 20:9-19

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. (1 Corinthians 2:14)

Honestly, what was he thinking? A man buys a new farm. Then he hires a bunch of strangers to run it and then he goes away on a long trip. This owner wasn't much a businessman.

He sounds more like the guy known for his famous home dinner parties and gets lots of compliments on his homemade pasta and is told repeatedly that he should open a restaurant. He finally decides to go for it and buys a restaurant and within 3 months, runs out of money and goes out of business. Why? Because he ran the place with his heart, instead of his head, and ended up way over his head.

This owner in this story clearly wasn't running his business with his head. He was all heart. After that first slave was bushwhacked by the renters, he should have destroyed them immediately. But instead he's a soft touch—he sends another servant to get his share. This guy and a third are both beat up by the renters.

And here's where it gets surreal. The owner decides to send his son—presumably without protection—to collect the rent. He thinks that they might respect him, even though all the evidence says that his son is going to be attacked, if not worse. But he is sent. Why? Because he's thinking with his heart, not his head.

This story is clearly about God the Father in heaven and His holy Son Jesus. He is the only God in the universe whose love seems bad for business—all heart, no head.

The Devil offers us gods who are truly using their heads—or so it would seem. Money is a fantastic god, very dependable if you can get. The renters of that field certainly thought so. Get as much as you can and keep it for as long as you can. But when you take a step back, you can see how pointless their money schemes were. In the end they were destroyed.

Now they should have been destroyed in the beginning! Instead our dear Father in heaven keeps on giving the renters chance after chance to come to their senses and turn away from their self-centered love of money. Jesus preached this parable directly against the Jewish scribes (who were a combination between lawyers and theologians) and priests. And here's the thing. Jesus wasn't charging them with greed, but with smugness against other and pride in their own goodness. It's sensible way to conduct your life, but it's deadly. And the same head-strong pride lives in us.

We run our lives with our heads. This means that we do what's in our own self-interest. We forgive people who won't be likely hurt us more than once. We love anyone who seems to share our way of looking at the world. We actively hate those who mock us and put us down. These are all very sensible policies. It's just good business to love those who love us back. It's bad for business to forgive anyone who has hurt you deeply and repeatedly.

So what was our Father thinking? Why this way? Why His Son, unprotected and all alone? Because His plan of salvation comes from His heart of infinite love. To our way of thinking His way is foolish and bad for business. Real gods demand sacrifice and blood from us. Real gods are sensible. Real gods also get you killed.

But not our divine Savior. He gets Himself killed. Jesus sheds His own blood to save us. He is the only God in the universe who has done this for us. He is the only God who gives from the heart, instead of the gods in our lives who calculate with their heads. He is only God who has given Himself into the hands of those who are His enemies, the whole human race. He is the only God who has become sin and become one of us, so that His sacrifice of His innocent life at the hands of His enemies would result in the salvation of so many former enemies and make them His beloved friends.

We are those renters, who rebel against our seemingly foolish Father and attack His Son. But in this foolish plan that makes no sense is our greatest victory, is our full forgiveness, is our hope and our future, all for the sake of Christ alone for us.

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written:

“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;

the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.” (1 Corinthians 1:18-19)

In the name of the Father

and of the + Son and

of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Prodigal Father Loves His Lost Sons

Fourth Sunday in Lent

March 10, 2013

The Prodigal Father Loves His Lost Sons

Luke 15:11-32

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

The word “prodigal” isn't found anywhere in Luke 15. Yet it is so closely tied to this parable of Jesus that we need to understand what it means.

The basic idea behind prodigal is spending everything. But as we'll see, it all depends on whom everything is spent—yourself or someone else.

The younger son spent everything on himself, so we could call him prodigal. But the most prodigal person in Jesus' story is the father. And the son who seems to be hopelessly lost is the son who never left home.

The younger son fits the popular profile of a prodigal. He recklessly wasted his entire inheritance soon after running away from home. He wasted himself on women who loved him as long as the money lasted—but that wasn't love. He wasted himself on the best booze and food that money could buy—but it didn't stop him for nearly starving to death. He wasted his father's generosity. But he wasn't the worst of the bunch.

His brother was worse. He stayed home to make sure he got every last penny that was coming to him. He believed in keeping his friends close and his enemies closer. And he had no worse enemy than his own father. His father has wasted a huge chunk of his money on his worthless brother. In those days the oldest son got an extra share of the inheritance—he would have gotten 2/3 and his younger brother 1/3. But when the younger brother cashed out his father's stock, you don't hear the older brother complaining. He knew what his brother was going to do. Young men with handfuls of cash almost always make the same choices.

But when that no-good brother returned, the older brother howled when he was welcomed back by their father. This was a huge problem because it had legal implications. By demanding his father's money early, the younger son legally had become a non-person to the family. But by putting a ring on his son's finger, the father was raising him back to legal life. He was dead and now was alive again. And now the shares of the re-divided inheritance would be substantially smaller.

From the older brother's point-of-view, his brother had ripped him off and their father allowed it. This is why the older brother was in a fierce rage at his father's kindness. It wasn't his moral outrage at his brother's lifestyle; it had cost him money.

You can see this kind of anger in another of Jesus' parables (Matthew 20). There's a man who owns a field and needs workers for the day. Early in the morning he hires some folks in the marketplace. But he wants more help. So he heads back to the market and hires more workers. He does this several times through the day. Jesus continues:

About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’

“‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered.

“He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’

“When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’

“The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’

“But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ (Matthew 20:6-15)

That poor prodigal father. He had spent everything he had on his sons. He spend it all on a son who went on a journey of self-discovery and squandered his father's gift. He spent it all on a son who was a self-righteous miser who only cared about himself.

The world and my sinful flesh see the Father in heaven, who sent His only-begotten Son to die on the cross, and we say, "Prodigal! What a waste! We don't need to be saved! We don't need Your forgiveness. We don't need You and Your death and resurrection!”

This parable exposes the heart of God: He is a prodigal God who for you spends everything—His only Son, Jesus Christ.

But His spending was not reckless or wasteful. It is spending that saves. The spending of His Son's blood saves you. The reckless splashing of Holy Baptism saves you. The countless Holy Suppers He prepared for you to eat and to drink saves you. The many times He ran to you and hugged you and made you His son through the Holy Words of His pastor saves you.

We are His lost sons. We try and find our own ways to happiness. Sometimes we try self-indulgence and self-discovery; other times we try self-righteousness and self-improvement. But our ways always end with ourselves miserable and alone.

But for the sake of His only Son our prodigal Father runs to us before we can say a word and He forgives us and He gives us His Son, His Way, His Truth, and His Life. We were dead; He's given us life.

In the name of the Father

and of the + Son and

of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Jesus, Our Faithful Rock and Korah, Rock-Hearted Rebel

Third Sunday in Lent

March 3, 2013

Jesus, Our Faithful Rock and

Korah, Rock-Hearted Rebel

Numbers 16:1-3

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

For the last two months we've been discussing Moses and Egypt and the Ten Plagues during our Sunday Bible study. Today we see how the hearts of Hebrews were stubborn—they didn't trust God's promises. And we wonder how they cannot grasp what's so obvious, that you should trust God's promises because He always keeps them.

The answer to this puzzle is that miracles and glory don't create trust in God. This is the key truth that you heard last Wednesday night. Miracles, great and small, can create awe and wonder for a short time, but they can't create faith.

Korah had seen all the miracles the Lord had done to set them free from Egypt. But his words reveal his unbelief; he did not trust God. He showed his unbelief by rejecting Moses as his shepherd and spiritual leader. He showed his unbelief by wanting to go back to Egypt and reject life in the Promised Land. God had made it clear time and again that Moses was His man and that He would protect them in the Promised Land. But Korah wasn't having it. He didn't want Moses as his shepherd and pastor and prophet—he wanted to be in charge.

Now Korah … and Dathan and Abiram … [and] On … took men. And they rose up before Moses, with a number of the people of Israel, 250 chiefs of the congregation, chosen from the assembly, well-known men. They assembled themselves together against Moses and against Aaron and said to them, “You have gone too far! For all in the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the Lord is among them. Why then do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the Lord?” (Numbers 16:1-3 ESV)

They falsely accused Moses and Aaron of abusing their power, power that Korah claimed didn't belong to them. If Korah were rebelling against God today, he'd probably say, “The Church is a democracy. Everyone of us is important and we all deserve a vote as to what we believe and what we do. We'll decide together which of God's promises we'll take seriously.”

As all good liars do, the Devil got Korah to blend truth with fiction. Everyone of us is precious to Jesus, our Good Shepherd, every last sheep and little lamb. But the Church is not a democracy when it comes to the promises of Jesus. We don't get to vote on which parts of Scripture we can get excited about and which parts to ignore.

A few cases to this point. Like the rebel Korah, I find it offensive that God had the earth swallow up his kids. I find it offensive that little Matthew Smith was born with a bad heart and died. I find it offensive that moms and dads suffer the loss of little ones in the womb. Sometimes God seems like the enemy.

[T]he ground that was under them split open; and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, and their households, and all the men who belonged to Korah with their possessions. So they and all that belonged to them went down alive to Sheol; and the earth closed over them, and they perished from the midst of the assembly. All Israel who were around them fled at their outcry, for they said, “The earth may swallow us up!” Fire also came forth from the Lord and consumed the two hundred and fifty men who were offering the incense. (Numbers 16:31-35 NASB)

To the people of Israel who witnessed whole families going down together into the earth, to see 250 outwardly good men burned alive, the Lord must have seemed like their enemy.

But He is not our enemy! We've seen what Korah brought on himself with his rejection of God by rejecting His called shepherd. Korah's destruction was Korah's fault entirely. Moses begged him to repent, but Korah said in effect, “I'm doing it my way,” and this attitude destroyed him.

On the other hand, Jesus said, “I'm doing it My way,” when Peter tried to get Jesus to stop marching toward His death.

And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. And he said this plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.” And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” (Mark 8:31-34 ESV)

Jesus is not our enemy! He endured hell to conquer our true enemies: selfish Me, the lying Devil, and the Death itself. And this is the essence of bearing our crosses. When the evidence screams that He is our enemy, we trust Jesus' promises that He is our friend. And the best way to bear this cross is to keep on listening to Jesus' prophets preach the good news that He is your friend on the cross.

Korah wanted a democratic church were everyone is singing Sinatra: “I'll do it my way!” My selfish Me agrees! But when you go it alone and do it your way, you're doomed just like Korah.

Jesus' Church isn't democratic. He did it God's way and used Himself as the Way to pay for our constant sin and rebellion. And His way worked!

St. Paul proclaimed Jesus' victory.

For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers, that our forefathers were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ. (1 Corinthians 10:1-4 NIV 1984)

In the name of the Father

and of the + Son and

of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Jeremiah: Just Doing His Job

Second Sunday in Lent

February 24, 2013

Just Doing His Job

Jeremiah 26:8-15

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

The Book of Jeremiah is known to modern Christians not because we know anything about Jeremiah the prophet, but because of a verse in the middle of his prophecy. In chapter 29 we read:

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. (Jeremiah 29:11)

In the past I've wrongly latched onto that popular passage as a promise that everything will always work out the way I want them to. But nothing worked out for Jeremiah. The Lord's plan for Jeremiah seemed to be suffering for just doing his job.

You see, nobody liked Jeremiah. His job was to be a shepherd to his flock. His flock was the whole population of Judah (the southern part of the Promised Land). But his congregation didn't come to hear his sermons; he had to go to them. And when he preached, they got angry.

His job was to give sermon after sermon that proclaimed that his country and its people were doomed. His specific message was that the armies of the Empire of Babylon would destroy Judah and its capital Jerusalem. His message also included the fact that the coming destruction was their own fault. He told them that their only hope was to surrender.

“This is what the Lord says: ‘Whoever stays in this city will die by the sword, famine or plague, but whoever goes over to the Babylonians will live. He will escape with his life; he will live.’ And this is what the Lord says: ‘This city will certainly be handed over to the army of the king of Babylon, who will capture it.’” Then the officials said to the king, “This man should be put to death. He is discouraging the soldiers who are left in this city, as well as all the people, by the things he is saying to them. This man is not seeking the good of these people but their ruin.” (Jeremiah 38:2-4)

The congregation of his countrymen was furious. They hated his message and—quite reasonably from their point of view—called him a traitor. They wanted him to preach that they would be saved from Babylon just like the Lord had saved them during the days of Hezekiah. (Sennacherib the Assyrian king had Jerusalem surrounded with 185,000 soldiers [Scott County has 165,000 people]. God saved them by destroying the whole army in one night. See 2 Kings 19.) Now they wanted Jeremiah to predict salvation for Jerusalem as Isaiah had done against the Assyrians. They misused God's past act of mercy as an excuse to believe whatever they wanted and to do whatever they wished in the present and in the future.

They wanted a one-size-fits-all message of happy days and no blame. And anything short of preaching glory, glory, glory, hallelujah was to them betrayal. You might say that before there was Judas, there was Jeremiah.

They got so angry at Jeremiah the traitor that they burned his writings and then they threw him into a water pit. The only reason Jeremiah didn't die there was because a foreigner—an Ethiopian eunuch who worked for the king—asked permission to pull him out.

I can't prove this, but I'm fairly certain that nobody asked Jeremiah to any parties. No one asked him to host a Christian TV show or to be a seminary professor. No one wanted him to be their pastor. All because Jeremiah was just doing his job.

But Jeremiah was in good company, the best, actually—Jesus. Jesus warned His congregation that it was facing doom because they rejected Him and His promises. Jesus even told them a story about how cruel God's church is to His preachers.

And he began to tell the people this parable: “A man planted a vineyard and let it out to tenants and went into another country for a long while. When the time came, he sent a servant to the tenants, so that they would give him some of the fruit of the vineyard. But the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed. And he sent another servant. But they also beat and treated him shamefully, and sent him away empty-handed. And he sent yet a third. This one also they wounded and cast out. Then the owner of the vineyard said, ‘What shall I do? I will send my beloved son; perhaps they will respect him.’ But when the tenants saw him, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir. Let us kill him, so that the inheritance may be ours.’ And they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him … The scribes and the chief priests sought to lay hands on him at that very hour, for they perceived that he had told this parable against them (Luke 20:9-16,19)

These are just some of the enemies of the cross of Christ of whom St. Paul talked about in Philippians 3:18. They walk and talk like Christians, but when the preacher of His cross correctly rebukes the hard-hearted and correctly comforts the broken-hearted, these enemies of the cross get angry or are offended. They know that the preacher is talking about them and they don't like it. And they firmly believe that it is their right as Americans to rid themselves of any source of discomfort. A caring pastor who talks plainly about their sin and grace must be Jeremiah-ed.

When we were younger, we believed that pastors never stopped being pastors until they died. If they moved, it was to go and be a pastor somewhere else. But sadly in our own little church body it happens that pastors are rebuked by their congregations for caring enough to be honest with Jesus' promises.

For three years you have allowed me to ask if you are staying for Bible study after the service. Will you come? I hope today you will come and be refreshed with the promises of Jesus. The Lord blesses the one who delights in His words and studies them. And a tree near good water is never alone.

He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he does shall prosper. (Psalm 1:3)

Imagine if Jeremiah's fellow pastors and congregation took this beautiful promise to heart! They didn't, but today you do! Today you enjoy the blessings of the Word preached and the Word made flesh. Enjoy also the communion and fellowship of being refreshed by the Word taught and discussed.

Jeremiah was just doing his job. Jesus was just doing His job that He had appointed Himself to do. And Jesus continues to do His job through His preachers today. So today I myself call on Him and pray with you,

Let me despise the cowardly comfort of silence and instead let me do my job as I and all of us boldly embrace our crosses. In the name of our Savior, who washes us clean from all sin. Amen.

In the name of the Father

and of the + Son

and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Achan Tempted by So Little; Jesus Tempted by So Much

First Sunday in Lent

February 17, 2013

Achan Tempted by So Little;

Jesus Tempted by So Much

Joshua 7:16-26

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Jericho had just been destroyed. The tribes of Israel had marched around the city walls of Jericho for seven days. On that seventh day the Lord had instructed their leader Joshua to have their trumpets blast and all the Israelites shout the war cry. Just before the walls came tumbling down, Joshua commanded the people,

“Shout! For the Lord has given you the city! The city and all that is in it are to be devoted to the Lord … keep away from the devoted things, so that you will not bring about your own destruction by taking any of them. Otherwise you will make the camp of Israel liable to destruction and bring trouble on it. All the silver and gold and the articles of bronze and iron are sacred to the Lord and must go into his treasury.” (Joshua 6:16-19)

Then God miracled the walls to crumble and the Hebrews went on to easily destroy the city. But soon we're told that

the Israelites acted unfaithfully in regard to the devoted things; Achan son of Carmi, the son of Zimri, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took some of them. So the Lord’s anger burned against Israel. (Joshua 7:1)

This anger of the Lord became obvious when very soon a powerful force of 3,000 Israelites lost a battle to a tiny group of men at the city of Ai. The contrast terrified the Israelites—just a little while ago they (but of course God had done it) had destroyed the powerful fortress city of Jericho and now they had lost 36 men against tiny Ai with nothing to show for it. God was angry.

Joshua was scared along with all the people. He knew that word of this defeat would quickly spread and soon every heathen nation of the Promised Land would attack. Then God told Joshua to get up and told him what he needed to do.

“‘In the morning, present yourselves tribe by tribe. The tribe that the Lord takes shall come forward clan by clan; the clan that the Lord takes shall come forward family by family; and the family that the Lord takes shall come forward man by man. He who is caught with the devoted things shall be destroyed by fire, along with all that belongs to him. He has violated the covenant of the Lord and has done a disgraceful thing in Israel!’” (Joshua 7:14-15)

Slowly the list of possible offenders was whittled down. These were chances for Achan to repent. Each time the Lord was urging Achan to confess his evil as Achan saw Joshua getting closer and closer. But he refused.

Only when he was completely caught out, did he speak the truth.

“It is true! I have sinned against the Lord, the God of Israel. This is what I have done: When I saw in the plunder a beautiful robe from Babylonia, two hundred shekels of silver and a wedge of gold weighing fifty shekels, I coveted them and took them. They are hidden in the ground inside my tent, with the silver underneath.” (Joshua 7:20-21)

He stole five pounds of silver and just over a pound of gold and a beautiful robe. The fact that he risked everything for so little shows the depth of the evil in his heart. We don't know if Achan died in faith or in unbelief, but his bad end is a powerful warning of how little successfully tempts us.

On the other hand, Jesus was tempted by so much. Above all the Devil was tempting Him with the promise that He could save the world without pain or suffering. The Devil promised to give the world to Jesus, if He bowed down and worshiped. But He said no … for us.

A delicious cake of bread might seems small, but after fasting for forty days, it'll become your whole world. Stop eating today and don't eat again until the end of next month. Then imagine the power of a nice piece of warm bread. But Jesus said no … for us. He perfectly resisted temptations we face daily so that by faith He could give us the credit for His perfect obedience to the will of the heavenly Father.

Jesus was tempted by so much. Achan stole some silver and gold. The Devil tempted Jesus with all the silver and gold of the entire world. And Jesus said no … for us.

Achan stole because he didn't trust the Lord's promise. Instead he allowed reason to guide his actions. Achan must have convinced himself that he wasn't stealing because the previous owners of the robe, gold, and silver where all dead. And we see this rationale in his confession, for when he says that he sinned, the Hebrew word used means goofed up, slipped up, made a mistake. Achan, when the whole nation was staring at him and even God Himself, refused to admit that he deliberately sinned and had made a choice to steal from God.

We steal, too. We do it because we don't think it'll hurt anybody or we think we deserve to have it. Some of us are actual thieves, but we all steal in the ways that are available to us. You never had a chance to steal one pound of gold, but still find ways to steal from others and from God.

Again and again we treat the things we have and the things of others and of God as though they belong to us. So again and again we turn to our Savior's forgiveness in Word, Water, Body, and Blood, the very Savior Jesus who again and again said no to the Devil's plan of painless salvation and said yes to His Father's plan of suffering and death for the forgiveness of our sin. Jesus didn't resist temptation to show you how; He resisted temptation to forgive you now.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Moses' Veil in the Face of Christ's Glory

Festival of the Transfiguration

February 10, 2013

Moses' Veil in the Face of Christ's Glory

Exodus 34:29-35

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Once a long time ago someone actually had to say this to Moses: “Excuse me, Moses. Your face is glowing.” Finally Moses understood why everyone, including his own brother Aaron, had kept their distance from him ever since he had come down the mountain of Sinai.

They had been at Mt. Sinai for a few months already. During this time Moses had been up on the mountain with God for 40 days and nights and had brought down two tablets of stone with God's commandments written upon them. But during his absence his own brother Aaron had passed the collection plate for gold from the people (gold they had gotten from the Egyptians as they exited Egypt), and had made a golden calf.

At this point, the Lord said to Moses:

“I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people. Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.” (Exodus 32:9-10)

But Moses pleaded with God not to go through with His plan. Moses pleaded with God not based on Moses' opinion, but on God's promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

“Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people. Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.’” (Exodus 32:12-13)

Then God relented and did not destroy Israel. But as soon as Moses went back down the mountain, his anger burned and he threw the stone tablets down and they were broken to pieces.

Now you need to know all of that so that you understand what had gone on before Moses' face started glowing. Since he destroyed the original stone tablets, God graciously set Moses to the task of replacing them with a duplicate set. And then for another 40 days and nights, the Lord was with Moses up on the mountain. And this is when Moses' face started to shine.

The radiance of God's glory was reflected in Moses' face. (Think of those glow-in-the-dark stars you can stick on your bedroom ceiling.) But instead of a light that draws people closer, like children gathering around a lighted candle, Moses' face scared everyone away at first.

Then once he realized what he looked like (maybe someone told him or maybe he looked down at the stone tablets at night and could read them), he called them back to him and spoke to them. What did he say? He preached. He proclaimed as a glowing messenger, like an angel, the Word of God for His people.

[Moses] spoke to them … and he gave them all the commands the Lord had given him on Mount Sinai. (Exodus 34:31-32)

And after he preached, he put on a veil over his face. Why? St. Paul tells us exactly why: to keep the Israelites from gazing at it while the radiance was fading away (2 Corinthians 3:13). While at first the Jews had been terrified by the glory of the God's Law, they soon found ways to tame God's Commandments. They lusted for the fading glory of their own righteousness of their own law. Moses didn't want them to stare and stare at God's commands—Do this! Live like that! Love in this way!—and start to think that they could perfectly do, live, and love as God desires.

No. Moses wanted them to look ahead to the Savior who would do, live, and love perfectly. The radiance of His promises, His Gospel, will never fade away.

Look at glorious little Ethan. Jesus' Gospel promises belong to him because the Holy Spirit has washed away the shame and guilt of his sinfulness. And this forgiveness will never fade away from Ethan. It will always belong to him, a gift from his Savior, Jesus Christ.

Granted, no one will ever walk up to him and awkwardly have to tell him, “Uh, excuse me, Ethan. Your face is glowing.” But whenever Jesus calls him, He'll notice and tell him, “Ethan, your face is glowing because I forgave you. I can see My radiance in you because I'm God and can see things that humans, like you, can't see. So come and eat with Me in My heavenly banquet prepared just for you.”

For now, our radiance in Christ is hidden as by a veil, but soon for each of us and then all together with Moses and Elijah and all the saints, we will shine in the everlasting light of our radiant Jesus.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

God's Bread until the Famine Is Over

Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany

February 3, 2013

God's Bread until the Famine Is Over

1 Kings 17

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

In dealing with evil stubborn men, our Lord often uses miracles to get His point across. He told Moses to turn the Nile into blood to get the attention of Pharaoh. Today we've heard how He told Elijah to declare that Israel would be dry for years to get evil King Ahab's attention.

Let me tell you a little about Ahab. He was the son of an evil king named Omri. He grew up and chose to disobey God's command not to marry with the neighboring peoples. He married an evil woman from Sidon named Jezebel. With her, he began to worship false gods.

He set up an altar for Baal in the temple of Baal that he built in Samaria. Ahab also made an Asherah pole and did more to provoke the Lord, the God of Israel, to anger than did all the kings of Israel before him. (1 Kings 16:32-33)

He was the king who saw all his false gods and prophets fail to light an altar on fire on Mt. Carmel; shortly after their failure Elijah called on the Lord to perform that same miracle and He did—He sent fire from heaven to totally consume a drenched altar of stone. Later Ahab would allow his queen to murder a man named Naboth so that he could have his vineyard for himself.

Ahab was a man committed to being evil. And from time to time, God sent evil men like Ahab wake-up calls. This is the reason for the famine we read about today.

So here we are. It hasn't rained. God's prophet Elijah has been drinking out of a dirty creek and living off of the kindness of birds, somewhat like the days of manna and quail during the Exodus.

Then the word of the Lord came to Elijah: “Leave here, turn eastward and hide in the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan. You will drink from the brook, and I have ordered the ravens to feed you there.”

So he did what the Lord had told him. He went to the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan, and stayed there. The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook. (1 Kings 17:2-6)

But after a while the brook dried up because there had been no rain. And the Lord sent him to the land of Sidon, coincidentally the the homeland of evil Queen Jezebel. Elijah heads up the Mediterranean coast and goes to Zarephath. This is a town of non-Jews. They were not part of God's special plan to deliver over His only-begotten Son into the world for the sin of the world.

But the word of the Lord had come to this town. When Elijah asks a widow of the town for bread and water, she promises using the special name of the one true God that she has nothing to spare,

“As surely as the Lord your God lives… I don’t have any bread—only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son, that we may eat it—and die.” (1 Kings 17:12)

I can't help but wonder if her words were an accusation. Word of Elijah's promise of famine to Ahab seems like it would have gotten around. Did she know right away that she was talking to the man who was the mouthpiece of judgment from God on the land? Did she know she was talking to the man who, from a certain point of view, had brought death to her son? Wouldn't she have wondered why she and her son were suffering because of the wickedness of someone else? And now here the very prophet who had brought famine to her town had the nerve to ask her for bread.

We see her trust in the Lord, the God of Israel, in that she doesn't raise these legitmate questions and complaints to Elijah. She simply does what he says. And in His mercy the Lord gave her what she needed without her asking—bread.

Jesus comforts all non-Jews (and Jews, too!) that salvation is not through your associations (your family or nation), but by His grace.

So too, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace. (Romans 11:5)

This widow of Zarephath was not given bread because she had given bread to Elijah; she gave bread to Elijah because she had been forgiven by the Bread of Life.

Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty… I am the bread of life. Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” (John 6:35, 48-51)

Jesus Himself pointed out how His “bread” goes out into the whole world, not just to the Jews.

“I tell you the truth,” he continued, “no prophet is accepted in his hometown. I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon.” (Luke 4:42-25)

To that widow He gives her miraculous daily bread and Himself, the Bread of Life for the forgiveness of her sin through His word of promise. He kept His promise of bread to her until the famine was over—and He kept the promise of forgiveness until the end of her life.

He gives us our daily bread and Himself in the blessed Sacrament and Word for the forgiveness of our sin until our famine is over. Our land has much food, but when it comes to wisdom and trust in Christ, we are living in a drought that is only going to get worse. Until it's over, we'll wonder why He's left us to suffer in this famine. And until it's over, He'll keep on sending us the bread we need for our bodies and our souls. And then one day the famine will finally be over.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Eat, Drink, and Be Merry for Tomorrow You Live

Third Sunday after the Epiphany

January 27, 2013

Eat, Drink, and Be Merry for Tomorrow You Live

Nehemiah 8:9-12

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Roughly 500 years before Christ was born in Bethlehem, the King of Babylon (modern-day Iraq) destroyed the city of Jerusalem and the Temple that Solomon had built. He carried off many Hebrews into exile, men like Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Then several generations later, a new king allowed the Jews to return to their homeland. This little remnant of the tribe of Judah returned home and built a new Temple in Jerusalem and built new walls around the city. Leaders like Zerubbabel, Ezra, and Nehemiah were instrumental in this difficult work of rebuilding the physical city of Jerusalem and the spiritual rebuilding of her people.

When the modern-day Israel was restarted in the late 1940s, perhaps many Israelis pointed back to Nehemiah's time as an example of starting over in their own country. But to modern Jews rebuilding was the end goal. This contrasts with Nehemiah and his generation. For them rebuilding was merely a means to an end.

Nehemiah and his fellow Judeans were reminded of the true goal on one remarkable day. After years of rebuilding their country, the people heard the Word of God proclaimed to them. Their reaction at first to this preaching was sorrow.

Tears of joy would soon follow, but their natural reaction to the Word of God was fear, shame, and sadness. They heard the Books of the Law of Moses preached and read and translated so that they could understand how deep their sin went.

Something that must have been hard on their minds was their low esteem of marriage and of God's Word. When the Jewish people had returned to the Promised Land, many of them married foreign men and women. The Lord had explicitly told them not to do this.

When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations… and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you… Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, for they will turn your sons away from following me to serve other gods, and the Lord’s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you. (Deuteronomy 7:1-4)

Instead of honoring the Lord's command that He had given them to keep them safe, they intermarried with the local people because it made them happy. Instead of respecting God's command to only marry other Jews, they followed their hearts and married those who would lead them away from the promise of the coming Savior.

By your sinful DNA and then reinforced constantly by your own mind and by your environment you firmly believe that all people, and most of all you, deserve to be happy. This is a lie from Satan. I repeat, this is a lie directly from the Devil himself. The right to be happy has destroyed more souls than Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and this accursed slaughter of babies in our land. Refute it. Reject it. More wedding vows are broken by it, more families are destroyed by it, more children estranged from their parents by it, more churches torn apart by it than by any other lie of our generation.

But it's not unique to our time. The reason the people wept in Jerusalem was that they were guilty of the same deception. Be happy. And so they cried. They saw themselves clearly for the first time in a long time on that special day. It was a day of sorrow. But not just sorrow.

But the Book of the Law of Moses—the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy—is not simply a list of judgments and threats. It is also filled with promises and hope. The people would also have heard Ezra reading about the true goal and the reason they had returned to Promised Land.

The Lord had said to Abram… “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” (Genesis 12:1-3)

And this,

Then Jacob prayed, “O God of my father Abraham, God of my father Isaac, O Lord, who said to me, ‘Go back to your country and your relatives, and I will make you prosper,’ I am unworthy of all the kindness and faithfulness you have shown your servant. I had only my staff when I crossed this Jordan, but now I have become two groups… you have said, ‘I will surely make you prosper and will make your descendants like the sand of the sea, which cannot be counted.’” (Genesis 32:9-10,12)

And they would have heard this promise made to their ancestor Judah about Jesus, the coming Savior.

“Judah, your brothers will praise you;

your hand will be on the neck of your enemies;

your father’s sons will bow down to you…

The scepter will not depart from Judah,

nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet,

until he comes to whom it belongs

and the obedience of the nations is his.

He will tether his donkey to a vine,

his colt to the choicest branch;

he will wash his garments in wine,

his robes in the blood of grapes.

His eyes will be darker than wine,

his teeth whiter than milk. (Genesis 49:8,10-12)

Judah's father was saying that a descendant, a son of Judah would be born who would be no ordinary man. He would be the Savior. So therefore, rebuilding the nation of Israel wasn't an end in and of itself. They returned as part of Jesus' special plan, so that Judah's son would be born in His own land, not in far away Babylon or Persia or Egypt.

But just as God's threats make Nehemiah and us weep, His promises fill Nehemiah and us with joy! And we see that our families, our marriages, our churches, and our children are not end goals in and of themselves. By faith we see that they are blessings that bring us comfort, but sometimes sorrow and disappointment. But we also know that we are here to serve them by confessing Jesus.

One of the ways we confess Jesus means eating, drinking, and being merry. We can enjoy this life and its blessings because we know that tomorrow we will live, whether we live or die. So that instead celebrating birthdays as countdowns until death (have you ever got black balloons for a 50^th birthday?), we celebrate birthdays with joy that this person whom Jesus has created, has also been forgiven and looks forward to an endless string of birthdays both here on earth and forever in heaven.

So do not grieve. Do not mourn. Build up your family and spouse and children and church, knowing that we belong to the Lord. And be still in the presence of Christ and rejoice in Him and His sacred promises!

Then Nehemiah the governor, Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who were instructing the people said to them all, “This day is sacred to the Lord your God. Do not mourn or weep.” For all the people had been weeping as they listened to the words of the Law. Nehemiah said, “Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is sacred to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”

The Levites calmed all the people, saying, “Be still, for this is a sacred day. Do not grieve.” Then all the people went away to eat and drink, to send portions of food and to celebrate with great joy, because they now understood the words that had been made known to them. (Nehemiah 8:9-12)

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.