The Conversion of Saint Paul (Matthew 19:27-30)

“But many who are first will be last and the last first.” Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and our Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. The text for our sermon this evening, as we commemorate the conversion of Saint Paul, is the Gospel lesson read a few moments ago from the nineteenth chapter of the Gospel according to Saint Matthew. Dear friends in Christ, Saul was dead. Dead in his trespasses and sins, dead in unbelief, dead in the delusion that by attacking Christians he was serving the true God. He was a zombie, the walking dead, perversely unaware that while his lungs took in breath and his heart beat with vigor, he was completely and utterly dead. Death was his share, death was what he deserved; his life of death must surely lead to an eternity of death. But our God delights in raising the dead. “Now as he went on his way, he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven shone around him. And falling to the ground he heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ And he said, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ And he said, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.’” The zombie is struck down by a light from heaven; the walking dead is summoned to life by the very voice of Christ, who triumphed over death. And with the hands and voice of Ananias, the water and the Word administered by Jesus’ faithful servant, Saul is Paul, the dead one is alive.

To be alive to God is to be dead to the world; the zombie must be killed, the walking dead must be put into a watery grave, Jesus must put Saul to death and raise up Paul in his place. Ananias is afraid of Saul, Saul the zombie, Saul the killer, but Jesus assures him that in the waters of baptism that man will be drowned. “Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my Name.” Jesus is going to take everything from Saul; his comfort, his status, his safety; even his life will be demanded for the sake of Christ’s Name. Nothing will remain to Saul; all will belong to Christ, even his sin, his guilt, his condemnation, his death. Jesus takes them all, for He has already borne them all to the cross. He who would write, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us,” personally knew what these words meant. While Saul was yet a sinner, the walking dead, a zombie, the enemy of Jesus, this same Jesus died for him.

Jesus died for Saul to put him to death; the death that takes everything in this world from him, the death that makes him nothing so that Christ can give him everything. Jesus declared, “Many who are first will be last and the last first,” and He will begin with Saul. Saul was the Pharisee of Pharisees, a Jew of Jews, the prize student of a respected rabbi; if anyone was first among his people, it was Saul. He was the bulldog of the Sanhedrin, the number one persecutor of the Church, who supervised the first Christian martyrdom. But in the watery grave of the font, he loses everything, and when he steps out of the font and begins to preach, the prize pupil has become public enemy number one, and only one verse after our text, the Jews are already plotting His death.

They would not stop plotting; the man made alive in Christ would find his life threatened at every turn, and eventually, his time would run out, and the words of Christ would be fulfilled: “I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.” When you die to the world and are made alive in Christ, the world foolishly rages against your body, thinking that your life in this world is something worth taking, that it can destroy you by putting you in the grave. The world doesn’t know, it cannot understand, that you have already died and have been raised again to life, that those who are dead to the world are immune from its attacks, that it cannot win, no matter how much it tries. And it certainly does try. The world will take everything from you, your influence, your power, your prestige, your health, your wealth, your friends, your family. In the end, Paul had no power, no prestige, no wealth; nothing was left to him but cold steel on his bare neck. But the world cannot kill those whom Christ has made alive; the world cannot take away what Christ has given. Paul himself declared as his contemplated his coming death: “Whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ.”

Peter’s cry is one of exasperation, of desperation; he is searching for a word of hope. “See, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?” His cry is tinged with more than a little self-justification, an attempt to see if following Jesus has truly been ‘worth it,’ but Jesus does not chastise him. Following Christ has meant the loss of all things; Jesus has demanded everything from them, and they have only begun to see how much they must suffer for the sake of His Name. They will have nothing left, and neither will you. You have died to the world in the watery grave of the font; even if you retain house and home, spouse and children, family and friends, in following Christ you place Him above them all. In fact, you deny your own self, you crucify your flesh and put it into submission. Following Christ has made you last, and you, with the disciples, with Saint Paul, have learned (or you will learn) the truth of these words: “I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.”

But Jesus only humbles in order to exalt; He only brings down in order to raise up; He is the God who delights in raising the dead. Those dead to God and alive to the world must be made dead to the world and alive to God; death and resurrection is needed. He kills you with the Law so that He can resurrect you with the Gospel; He makes you nothing in order to give you everything. In the face of the loss of all things, as we suffer in this world for the sake of Christ, we cry out, “See, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?” And Jesus, in comfort, in compassion, understanding our plea better than we do, promises us everything. “Everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands for my Name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life.”  

Dear friends in Christ, you were dead. Dead in you trespasses and sins, dead in unbelief, dead in the delusion that you were the only god that mattered. You were a zombie, the walking dead, perversely unaware that while your lungs took in breath and your heart beat with vigor, you were completely and utterly dead. Death was your share, death was what you deserved; your life of death must surely lead to an eternity of death. But our God delights in raising the dead, and He says, “I baptize you in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” The zombie is struck down by a light from heaven; the walking dead is summoned to life by the very voice of Christ, the victor over death. And with the hands and voice of a pastor, water and Word administered by Jesus’ faithful servant, you belong to Christ, the dead one is alive.

Now you have a life that the world cannot take away; now you have a treasure, an inheritance, that will never fade. Though you lose all things in this world, though they even take from you your life and all that you hold dear, Jesus promises you everything. “Many who are first will be last and the last first.” It is the disciples, all martyred but one, who will judge the nations upon twelve heavenly thrones; it is you and I, who have suffered the loss of all things, who have crucified our flesh with its desires, who will dwell in glory forevermore. For your Lord is the crucified and risen Jesus; with man salvation is impossible, with God all things are possible, and He sent His Son to win salvation for all people, to bear the sin of the world to the cross. You have lost everything for the sake of Christ; your sin, your death, your hell. It’s all gone, taken from you by the crucified One, and so you too can proclaim these words of another who passed from death to life, Saul who was made Paul: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” In the Name of Jesus, Amen.

Transfiguration (2 Peter 1:16-21)

“We did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty.” Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and our Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. The text for our sermon this Transfiguration of our Lord comes from the epistle lesson read a few moments ago from the first chapter of Saint Peter’s second letter. Dear friends in Christ, the Bible is no mere story. The Bible is no myth. The Bible is truth, it doesn’t just contain truth; the Bible tells us about the only true God and how He has interacted with His people in history, in time and space. Genesis one doesn’t give us a parable about God’s creation, it is the authoritative account of God’s creation. Jonah isn’t simply a story to teach us not to run away from God, it is a true account of how God actually saved a man with a whale, then used him to drive the people of Nineveh to repentance. Three men in a furnace, Daniel in the lion’s den, the crossing of the Red Sea, the fire from heaven consuming Elijah’s sacrifice, water from the rock—these are not simply stories to illustrate a point, they are the true accounts of how God intervened in history for the good of His people. The so-called ‘experts’ call them myths, even Christian authors and pastors explain them away in embarrassment, but they are not stories, they are not myths. What the Bible gives us is the truth, the only truth that can set you free: God has intervened in history for your eternal salvation.

Peter saw; Peter heard. He didn’t concoct a good story, he didn’t follow one created by others. He heard the whisperings, the accusations: ‘Virgins don’t have children.’ ‘People don’t rise from the dead.’ ‘No one could ever feed five thousand people with a few loaves.’ The world thought the disciples were crazy, following some insane ramblings by a dirt-poor rabbi, then making up a story of resurrection when their leader was foolish enough to get himself killed. But Peter knew better. He was on the mountain, the mountain of Transfiguration, the mountain where the Creator of the universe made all things quite clear. “When He received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,’ we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain.”

He saw the glory with his very own eyes; he heard the very voice of God Himself point to this Jesus and call Him His own beloved Son. He didn’t make it up; he didn’t follow the stories given by others. Peter saw; Peter heard. “We did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty.” The glory of Jesus is no myth, it is no story. Peter saw; Peter heard. The glory of Jesus is reality, right before his eyes. Mythmakers have been around almost as long as man, but what Peter heard and saw was no myth. Or maybe we could say that it was the true myth; the truth that all myth is searching for and pointing toward. He saw with his own eyes and heard with his own ears what the storytellers could only dream of: God in the flesh.

However clever Peter may have been, he did not come up with this on his own; it could only be revealed to him. The true myth that God is standing among us in the flesh cannot be devised by the mind of any man. “No prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” Peter saw, Peter heard, and now Peter speaks. That is the task of an eyewitness—to see something and then tell others what he has seen. An eyewitness doesn’t give his own opinion; he doesn’t make something up. An eyewitness sees and speaks. And what Peter has seen he speaks: the glory of Jesus is no myth, this man is true God, the only begotten Son of the Father.

You and I are not eyewitnesses; we were not on the mountain that day. But we are not for that reason to be pitied. “We have something more sure, the prophetic Word, to which you will do well to pay attention.” We have been given the Scriptures, the recorded words of those who were carried along by the Holy Spirit, inspired to write both the words of God to His people and the accounts of His deeds in history. The Transfiguration confirms the Scriptures; the presence of Moses and Elijah on the mountain declares that this Jesus is the One who has come in accordance with the Scriptures, as the One who has come to fulfill them. Because of the Transfiguration, because this Jesus was glorified and pointed to as the Son of the Father, we can believe both those who pointed forward to Christ and those who point back to Him. We are not to be pitied; the Scriptures give us Jesus, as sure as if we had seen Him ourselves.

“We have something more sure, the prophetic Word, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place.” The Scriptures are our light in the darkness of this sinful, corrupted world. All around us is error, temptation, sin, and death. In the wilderness, the darkness of human wisdom, of doubt, of trust in ourselves surrounds us. The world wants you to walk in the darkness, it wants you to doubt God’s existence or His goodness, to deny His great deeds in history. But all they offer you in return for abandoning the Scriptures is a shaky foundation based on human reason that shifts as the sand. Only the Scriptures stand firm, immovable, unchanging; only they can shine like a lamp in the darkness of this world. The Scriptures shine the light, the light that we need, the only light that can overcome the darkness that suffocates us.  

The Scriptures shine the light because they proclaim the One who is the Light, the One whose face and garments shone on the mountain, Jesus Christ, the Light of the world. “And He was transfigured before them, and His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became white as light.” Jesus is the Light, the Light that has come into this world of darkness to shine in our midst. He is the lamp shining in a dark place, He is the bright morning star. Through Him God created light, and thus He comes to reveal the light, to shine it forth in the darkness of your sinful heart. “We have something more sure, the prophetic Word, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your heart.” That is the light the Scriptures shine, the light of Christ, the Light that Peter saw with his own eyes on the mountain of Transfiguration.

Peter wanted to bask in that Light; he wanted to remain in that glory, but he couldn’t stay. Jesus told Peter, James, and John, “Tell no one the vision, until the Son of Man is raised from the dead.” The glory of that mountain was only a taste, only a glimpse, of the glory that was to come. But it was more than that, it was the guarantee, the promise of the glory that was yet to be. Jesus went down that mountain to walk the dark and deadly road of the cross, but the Transfiguration promised Him, as it promised Peter, James, and John, that there was glory on the other side, that the very One who was nailed to the cross was the beloved Son of the Father, who kept hidden the glory that He had from eternity. The promise of the Transfiguration is the promise of Easter, that having laid down His life as a sacrifice for sin, for your sin, Jesus would take up His life again in glory. And the same eyewitnesses that saw Jesus’ glory on the mountain of Transfiguration would see His glory as He rose triumphant over death.

But that is by no means the end of the glory that is to come. The Transfiguration is the promise that Christ will return in glory, the very glory He showed forth on that mountain, the very glory as of the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth. He is the bright morning star; His appearance will be the sign that the Day has come. He is the sunrise that inaugurates a Day that will never end. And when that Day comes He will give you glory, the glory that He won for you by following the dark road of the cross to the bright rays of the empty tomb. The Transfiguration is the promise, the sure and certain guarantee, that you will be raised up in glory when He returns, that although you now walk through the valley of the shadow of death, there is unspeakable glory ahead.

Peter isn’t just telling stories; this is no cleverly devised myth. He saw with his own eyes the glory that lies ahead for Jesus, for himself, and for you. But not yet. Peter had to travel down the mountain with Jesus, he had to follow his Lord to the cross. Even after Christ’s resurrection, Peter had his own cross awaiting him. But in the midst of trial and tribulation, as he looked to Christ’s cross and awaited his own, Peter was comforted by the glimpse of glory he saw on that mountain. He had the privilege to see the glory that belonged to Christ from eternity, the glory that would belong to all believers on the Last Day. That is the glory that Peter proclaims to you in the pages of the Scriptures. He saw, he heard, and now he speaks, and that Word, as with all the Scriptures, will endure until Jesus returns again. “And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.”

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is no story; it is no myth. It is as sure as the vision that Peter, James, and John were privileged to see, as sure as the resurrection of Jesus. There are no cleverly devised stories here, just a crucified and risen Jesus, the same Jesus who will return in glory when time comes to an end. He is the bright morning star, the star that anticipates the dawn. When you see Him returning on the clouds, with Moses, Elijah, Jonah, Peter, and all the saints, you will be raised up just as surely as Christ was. His resurrection was no myth, and neither will yours be. Until that Day, you are sustained by the vision recounted to you this day by an eyewitness; Peter saw, Peter heard, and Peter has told you of the glory that is Christ’s and will be yours, when the day dawns, when the morning star rises, never to set again. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.

Baptism of Our Lord/Sanctity of Human Life (Matthew 3:13-17, 1 Corinthians 1:26-31)

“And when Jesus was baptized, immediately He went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on Him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.’” Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and our Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. The text for our sermon this Baptism of our Lord is the Gospel lesson read a few moments ago from the third chapter of the Gospel according to Saint Matthew. Dear friends in Christ: Jesus submits. He submits to the Father’s will; in humility He, the sinless One, steps into the waters of the Jordan and allows Himself to be baptized in the baptism of sinners. John would’ve stopped it, John didn’t get it, but Jesus knows how important this is. “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” The God of the universe not only takes our flesh but submits to our baptism. He makes Himself like us in every way; He bears our human frame, and at the Jordan, the Father’s voice declares that Jesus bears our sin. The sinless One submits to the baptism of sinners to proclaim to you, to me, to the world, that He is the sinner, the only sinner, the one who carries all sin. He places Himself under our burden; a burden that can only mean death and hell. He does not exert His power, He does not refuse our sin and all that it means, but in meekness, in humility, He lays Himself aside in order to fulfill all righteousness.

No one gets it; no one understands. Even John, although he consents, is completely confused. “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” Yes, John, He must come to you. He who has all might and all power must become nothing, lower than a slave. The Lord of the universe must submit to your baptism, because He was sent to submit to your death, to submit to your hell. He came to make Himself lower than the dregs in order to exalt you into heaven. We don’t understand, because we dwell in a world that only knows power, a world that despises the weak and lifts up the strong. We live in a world where humility is a sign of weakness, where the lowly are trampled by those who are strong.

The world declares that the lowly have no existence, that they can be exploited, abused, or even killed by those who are stronger than they are. By denying their existence, by using euphemisms like ‘fetus,’ and ‘product of conception,’ the lowly are marginalized; the propaganda makes it easier for us to destroy them. The unborn are hidden from sight inside the wombs of their mothers, the elderly are shunted away in nursing homes; human trafficking and the exploitation of the poor goes on out of sight, in bad neighborhoods or behind closed doors. And when the light shines on the plight of the lowly, few pay attention. Over a dozen videos show Planned Parenthood exploiting women and their unborn children, altering abortion procedures to obtain the organs that they need, and while many watched, most did not. Our media and politicians will occasionally exert themselves to help the immigrant, or the poor; at least they can see those people suffering, but the same news programs that continually show the plight of refugees refuse to show us the inside of an abortion clinic. It is much easier to trample on the lowly when we don’t see them, when they are beneath our notice.

You have been trained by the world you live in to think in terms of power, to praise those who can take care of themselves and look down upon those who can’t. An elderly person in a nursing home bed, the unborn child in the womb, the young girl being exploited at a truck stop, the refugee in a new land and the homeless, they are all powerless, they cannot fend for themselves, they are dependent upon others, and thus they are worthless in the eyes of the world, they are nothing. Tyranny defines us; the tyranny of the born over the unborn, the tyranny of the healthy and young over the infirm and elderly, the tyranny of those who are something over those who are nothing. It is tragically ironic to hear politicians say that refusing refugees is ‘not who America is.’ America is a place where we have legalized the killing of the unborn, the weakest and most vulnerable among us. What other tyranny or exploitation is impossible for us?

The world chooses those who can exert themselves, those who have something to contribute to us or to society as a whole. Power is our language, and we have all been trained to speak it; we seek power, even in little, petty ways, and the thing about worldly power is that it always comes at the expense of another. Our boast is in ourselves, our own talents, our own accomplishments; when we have gained so much on our own, it is easy to look down on others or at least sit quietly by while they are exploited.

Dear friends, this is not to be. Repent of your hardness of heart toward the poor and lowly, repent of your silence as they are abused. Repent of your trust, your boast in your own accomplishments. You serve a God who cares nothing for worldly power, who rejected all earthly glory, who humbled Himself to death, even death upon a cross. You serve a God, you cling to a Savior, who chooses the downtrodden, those who have nothing to give Him, those who are humbled in His almighty presence. “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are.” Christ lowered Himself to exalt the lowly. He brought Himself down to raise you up. In humility He submitted to the baptism of sinners, and in humility He submitted to the death and hell sinners deserved, even though He had no sin. He submitted to John’s baptism, He submitted to the death and hell of the cross, because He bore your sin, just as He bore the sin of the world—every person, rich, poor, humble, and powerful.

You are not saved simply by being worldly foolish, weak, or lowly, any more than you are saved by being worldly wise, strong, or exalted. The poor don’t automatically receive God’s favor any more than the rich. Paul told the Corinthians, “Consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.” Some had worldly accomplishments, but most did not, and the point is that all are the same before God. You see, it doesn’t matter what your station is in life; spiritually you are poor, foolish, weak, and lowly, yes, you are nothing, no matter what the title on your desk says, no matter what size of check you can write. You are a beggar; you have nothing to offer God but your sin, filthy rags that they are. The Lord is not interested in your supposed ‘good works,’ He doesn’t care about your accomplishments, He wants to humble your heart through His Law, He wants you to see you have nothing to impress him with. The poor man cannot boast in his poverty any more than the rich man can boast of his wealth; both are completely and totally foolish, weak, lowly, and despised. But in your abject spiritual poverty, with nothing to give God, nothing at all, He chose you.

“Because of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.’” God chose you; He chose you when you were nothing, when you were poor and miserable under your sin. God chose you in Christ, the One who in humility submitted to the baptism of sinners, who made Himself lower than you, humbling Himself to death upon a cross. He came not to be served, but to serve, to serve you with salvation, to exalt you, even to the very throne room of heaven. In Christ, you are no longer nothing, you have everything. He is your wisdom; the wisdom of the cross that is foolishness to this world. He is your righteousness; He fulfilled all righteousness, making you right with God, by dying your death in your place. He is your sanctification; He makes you holy by cleansing you from you sin. He is your redemption; He paid the price you could never pay.

He took your sin, and He placed it upon Himself; when God’s voice thundered forth on the day of Christ’s baptism, it was declaring that this One, standing in the baptism of sinners, is the sin-bearer, the One appointed to take your sin to the cross to do away with it there. You had nothing to give Him but your sin; and He took it, and He died for it, and He forgives it—He forgives you; you are forgiven! Your boast is in Christ; you do not boast before Christ, for you have nothing in yourself to boast of—you boast in Christ. You boast in His love, His mercy, His grace, shown to you when you were nothing. Whether you are poor or rich, weak or strong, lowly or exalted in the eyes of the world, all that is rubbish next to knowing Christ your Savior.

Therefore, we come before Him as children, as infants; every baptism is an infant baptism. Nothing is more vulnerable, more helpless, more poor and weak than an infant. An infant cannot give, it can only receive. And that is how we come to the font, that is how we come to this place, weak and helpless, as spiritual infants, as beggars, with nothing to give but everything to receive. We come humbled by our sins, knowing quite well how foolish, weak, lowly, and despised we are. We come and Christ exalts us, we come and He gives us everything: forgiveness, life, and salvation. He gives all things, and He gives them freely to all. There is no distinction in God’s eyes between the poor or the rich, the weak or the powerful, the unborn or the born, the infirm or the healthy, the young or the elderly; all are alike His creation, made in His image, all are alike sinners, in need of salvation, and all are alike redeemed by the blood of His Son. He loves them all, and so we love them all as He first loved us, showing them the mercy that He showed us when He baptized us into His Name. For on the day you were baptized, the heavens were opened to you, never to be shut again, the Holy Spirit descended upon you, never to depart, and the Father said to you for the sake of His Son, “This is my beloved child, in whom I am well pleased.” In the Name of Jesus, Amen.

New Year's Eve (Romans 8:31b-39)

“I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and our Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. The text for our sermon this New Years’ Eve comes from the Epistle lesson read a few moments ago from the eighth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Church of God in Rome. Dear friends in Christ, what then shall we say about the year that is past? Surely there were joys—babies born and baptized, marriages performed, birthdays celebrated, a Nebraska volleyball national championship, a Royals World Series victory, and countless other causes of rejoicing for you and those you love. But there were also challenges—the growing darkness of ISIS, racial unrest and riots in our cities and our universities, numerous natural disasters, an economy that is still struggling, and the vitriol of a presidential campaign that is barely begun. In our congregation we have struggled with a shrinking school, we have had trouble paying or bills, we have watched another confirmation class leave the church behind. In your own lives you have seen loved ones lost, families torn apart by conflict and divorce, the struggle of addiction, the scourge of disease. Many of you have spent parts of this year in a hospital bed, or at a mortuary, you know what it is like to spend the night awake, wondering how you will make it through the latest crisis to enter your life. You know the truth of the words Paul quotes from Psalm 44: “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

What then shall we say about the year that is past? For the most part, we say, ‘good riddance!’ That is one reason why we celebrate the New Year with such fervor; we are optimistic that the year to come will be better than the year that is past, that the future will be an improvement on the present. But such optimism has no basis in fact; it is hope without content, a hope that has its foundation simply on the changing fortunes of politics and economics, the blind belief that our world will simply get better and better, an optimism contrary to the testimony of history. Such a hope will always disappoint, because it is founded on men. What Saint Paul has to offer us this New Years’ Eve is a different hope, a hope that will never disappoint, a hope and an optimism that is much more certain, much more sure, because it is founded not on sinful men, but upon the sinless, crucified, and risen Christ. What then shall we say about the year that is past? Paul has the answer, or rather, the question: “If God is for us, who can be against us?”

God is for us. He was for us in the past, He is for us in the present, and He will be for us in the future. In fact, the reason we know that He is for us now and in the days to come is because He was for us in the past. “He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things?” God did not spare His Son, He spared us. You deserve death, you deserve suffering, you deserve hell itself, but God spared you and refused to spare Christ. As Isaac was spared and the ram died in his place, so you were spared and Christ died in your place. He is your substitute in life and in death, He, the sinless One, dies in the place of you, the sinful one, and you are justified, made righteous in God’s sight. If God is willing to do that, if He is willing to put His own Son to death in your place, how can anything or overcome you? He has given to you His Son, His most precious gift; how will He fail to give you all that you need (not necessarily what you want), now and in the future?  

No one and nothing can destroy you; no one and nothing can take away what has been given to you through Christ. “Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.” You are not alone; you have an intercessor with the Father—Jesus Christ, His only Son, seated at His right hand. No one can bring a charge against you before the Father, no one can condemn you. The devil tries to make you despair; he holds your sins before your eyes, and he knows the penalty for them better than you do. He points to the sufferings that have entered your life as evidence that you are guilty and condemned. ‘If God really loves you,’ he asks, ‘why do you suffer so?’ 

The answer to his accusations, the only answer, is the cross and empty tomb; that is what Jesus is constantly holding up before His Father’s throne of grace, that is the basis of His intercession. When you sin, when you repent, Jesus is right there at the throne of God, holding up His death and resurrection before His Father, reminding Him that you are justified, declared righteous, fully reconciled with your Creator. No one can condemn you, no one can accuse you in God’s courtroom—not the devil, not anyone else. Every charge has already been answered by the death and resurrection of Jesus. You do not look to your sufferings to know what God thinks of you—you look to the cross, you look to the empty tomb, you look to Jesus, your substitute, your intercessor.

As long as He stands at the right hand of the Father, you have the promise, the sure and certain guarantee, that this world can do nothing to take away your salvation. “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?” Christians are experiencing every one of these sufferings somewhere in the world at this very moment; the world desperately desires to destroy the Church, and so it makes her suffer. “As it is written, ‘For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.’” It seems that we are forsaken, abandoned by God; that He has left us to fend for ourselves. But nothing could be further from the truth. “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.”

Christ will not allow sufferings to divide us from Him; we are more than conquerors in Him. When we are weak, then He is strong. When we seem to be overcome, at that moment we have triumphed. Why? Jesus died and rose again for you. It is through the cross and empty tomb that Christ has won the victory over all our enemies, and nothing, absolutely nothing, can snatch that victory away. “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Christ holds the future and the past; there is nothing that happened in the past year that can take away your salvation in Christ, and there is nothing coming in the future that can separate you from Him. You can refuse to repent and believe, you can turn your back on this salvation, and many tragically do, but this world cannot take away what has been given to you in Christ. This fallen world can destroy your marriage, estrange your kids, strike you with disease, even put you death, but it cannot separate you from God’s love. You are justified, forgiven, declared righteous in God’s sight; you are the baptized, those cleansed and made holy by Christ’s blood. All things are yours in Christ; the future doesn’t belong to the world any more than the past does—all things belong to Christ, and so all things belong to you, even time itself, because you have a future certain in Jesus.

What then shall we say about the year that is to come? More of the same, it seems: ISIS, economic recovery or downfall, a divisive election, tornadoes, blizzards, and floods. In your own life, who knows who the Lord will call home, what affliction will attack your body, how this sinful world will assail you. Only one thing we do know, for it has always been true and always will be true: God is for us for the sake of His Son. And “if God is for us, who can be against us?” So you can rejoice with every celebration that awaits you in this new year, and you can have joy even in the midst of suffering; you can face the struggles that are coming into your life, your congregation, and your world with your eyes fixed on Jesus, knowing that “in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.” In the Name of Jesus, Amen.