Oculi (Ephesians 5:1-9)

“Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” 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 morning is the Epistle lesson read a few moments ago from the fifth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Church of God in Ephesus. Dear friends in Christ: What is love? We read books about love, hear songs about love, watch movies about love, but do we have any idea what it is? Where do we look to learn about love? Do we look to God, imitating Him, or do we look to the world, and imitate those around us? Every three years, at the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod’s national youth gathering, a survey is taken, asking the opinion of the youth on a variety of topics. In 2013, only fifty-five percent of the youth surveyed agreed with the statement that homosexuality is ‘always wrong according to God’s Word.’ Do we imitate God, or have we imitated the world? In that same survey only forty-four percent of nineteen-year olds reported that they were virgins. Do we imitate God, or have we imitated the world? I have no statistics here, but most pastors today will tell you that it’s extremely rare to work with a couple in preparation for marriage that has not been sexually active, even living together as if they are married. The question remains—as Christians, do we imitate God, and His love, or have we imitated the world, and its love?

Without compromise, without equivocation, without apology, Paul calls on us to imitate God and His love. And there is only one place to look in order to see God’s love: the cross. “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” Christ’s love is for us; it is for you. His love is not self-serving or self-seeking; it is oriented toward the other, toward you. He loves you, and He gives you everything: His life, His righteousness, His glory, and the very riches of heaven. He gives you everything, and takes what is yours: your sin, your death, your poverty. He takes you place, He exchanges all that you have for all that is His, for His love is always directed outward, from Himself to you, to a world in desperate need of His love.

Christ’s love is self-giving, it is sacrificial. He gives up His own life into death for you; He does not hold onto His own life, He does not seek His own good, but He seeks yours. He gives up everything, submitting to death, even death upon the cross. The aroma of His sacrifice rises pleasing to God, for in the death of Christ, God is revealed as love. Love to the loveless shown that they might lovely be. He loves you by not leaving you in your sins; He does not pour out His wrath upon you, He pours it out on Christ, the willing sacrifice, who had everything but gave all things up for you. Jesus does not take, but He gives: His life, His blood, His flesh. He gives them to you by sacrificing them for you upon the altar of the cross, and He gives them to you by pouring out His gifts upon you in the Word and holy sacraments. Jesus did not grasp after glory, as Satan tempted Him to do, but He gave up His life into death because He loves you.

This love has very little in common with how the world teaches and practices love. The love of Christ is always directed toward the other; the love of the world is directed toward the self. This is no more evident, or potentially destructive, than in the area of human existence that Paul focuses on today: sexuality. There the world tells you that your wants, your passions, your desires rule the roost. No self-control is called for, no renunciation of the desires of your flesh. You are encouraged to indulge yourself, no matter what the consequences may be. You are told only to think of yourself; there is no thought as to what such activities are doing to your neighbor, or to the one who may someday marry your neighbor. The love of Christ is self-giving; you are told to take, to seize what is not yours, to join yourself with one who has not been given to you in marriage, the only place where God gives another person to you to become one flesh.

Saint Paul is more than explicit: such things have no place among Christians! “But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving.” Such things must not even be named among the saints! The saints of Christ, you and me, are to show the same self-giving, self-sacrificial love that Christ has showed to you. You are called to chastity, restricting sexuality to the one God has given to you in marriage. That means laying aside your desires and passions, and that means protecting the chastity of those around you, from your sons and daughters to your boyfriends and girlfriends, to every other man or woman made in the image of God. If what you are doing or saying or thinking isn’t showing to your neighbor the love of Christ, then Paul calls on you to instead give your body to a spouse when He gives one to you, to instead use your thoughts to contemplate God’s Word, to instead use your lips for thanksgiving.

The love that the world teaches, this self-gratifying, self-focused love, contradicts your identity in Christ; that is not the kind of love Christ shows to you! It is incompatible with who you claim to be. You cannot go around bearing the name ‘Christian’ and yet love as the world loves. Paul minces no words in his condemnation of such hypocrisy. “For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.” Paul isn’t talking to the heathen, he isn’t standing on the corner of Bourbon Street, he’s talking to Christians, he’s talking to you and me.

“Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.” Do not be deceived by the empty words of others, inside the Church and without, who tell you that sexual sins are no big deal, that chastity is old-fashioned and repressive, that freedom is to be found in serving your natural passions. Do not be deceived by those who would tell you that to be a Christian is to no longer have a use for the Law, those who use the Reformation teaching of grace as an excuse for lawlessness and laziness. Do not be deceived by those who promise freedom, but give only bondage, bondage to sin, a bondage that controls you and leads you away from God. Sexual sin is slavery, slavery that delivers only death. Freedom is only found in Christ, in the release from the shackles of sin won by His shed blood, the freedom He bestows day after day by His forgiveness. Do not return to the slave drivers, but live in the freedom of Jesus Christ.

“Therefore do not associate with them, for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk in the light.” You used to be associated with the darkness, but no more. You are light. Christ has shown forth His love to you in taking you out of the darkness, seizing you from the prison house of death. Christ is the Light, the Light no darkness can overcome, the Light that appeared to be snuffed out in the darkness of Good Friday, but instead shone out all the more on Easter morn. Christ loves you by giving you freedom, by releasing you from your sin. He has driven away the suffocating darkness, He has broken the bonds of slavery. He has made you light, shedding His blood and dying for every sin, against every commandment, but especially those against the Sixth Commandment. He died for every sexual sin of thought, word, and deed. He died for those sins that only you know, He died for those sins that only you and one other person knows, He died for those sins that too many people know. He died for them all. He fulfilled the Sixth Commandment perfectly so that He could pay the price for all those times you have not. He died to make you light, and Paul has one encouragement: “Walk in the light.”

What does it mean to walk in the light? It doesn’t mean a life of perfection; it doesn’t mean that you never sin. It doesn’t mean that if you have messed up you are ‘damaged goods’ and have lost something that Christ cannot restore. What does it mean to walk in the light? It means to live the life of repentance. It means to despair of your sins, to cry out for Christ’s forgiveness, receiving that forgiveness by grace, and then, having been forgiven, to bear the fruits of repentance. As Saint Paul says, “The fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true.” The life of chastity is not easy; you will battle your own sinful flesh, and you will feel the overwhelming pressure of a world that doesn’t understand you at all. You cannot live as Christ calls you to live on your own power. Only by daily repentance and faith, confession and absolution, only by continually receiving Christ’s forgiveness can you walk this road.

If you have the guilt and shame of sexual sins in your present or your past, repent and hear these words: You are forgiven! God showed His love to you in that while you were still a sinner, Christ died for you. You’re not ‘damaged goods,’ you are clean, you are pure in Christ, for you are forgiven. Bear the fruits of repentance. Repent and abstain, repent and move out, repent and purchase accountability software. And know that you do not walk this road on your own. As a Church we need to do more than give out purity rings and sign pledges. We need to support and help all who are walking the road of chastity, before marriage, during marriage, after marriage. We cannot simply tell our young people ‘just say no’ and then give them no help in leading a chaste life. The Church is not the place to excuse or ignore sin, but the place where sin is pointed out, repented of, and forgiven. That’s what Christ does with our sin. He loves us by giving up His life into death and He loves us by shining His light in our hearts, making us light in the Lord; He gives us the supreme example of love, but it is much more than an example, it is your forgiveness, your life, your salvation. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.

Lent Midweek 1

This sermon is based on a Lenten sermon series entitled "The Apostles' Creed: Knowing God Perfectly!" authored by Rev. Brent Kuhlman.

“Who is greater, he that sits at the table or he that serves? Is it not he that sits at the table? But I am among you as a servant.” 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 is the passion reading read a few moments ago: Part One, the Lord’s Supper. Dear friends in Christ: you have the wonderful privilege this night to know God perfectly! Yes, you heard right—you will leave this place knowing God, not slightly, not a little bit, not even mostly or considerably, but perfectly! Hear these words of Luther: “The Creed properly follows, which sets forth all that we must expect and receive from God; in short, it teaches us to know Him perfectly.” To know God perfectly is to know Jesus, God in the flesh, and to know Jesus is to know Him not only as teacher and Lord, not only as true God and true man, but as a servant, as One who has come to serve you. Luther says we know God perfectly when we know what we must expect and receive from Him, and tonight we learn to expect and receive Christ’s service. And not just any kind of service; He serves you with salvation. Jesus is God for you as He serves you by giving His Body into death and shedding His Blood for you upon the cross, and by giving that same Body and Blood to you to eat and to drink in the Lord’s Supper. As Jesus Himself says, “I am among you as a servant.”

He comes to serve us, we sinners who delight in serving ourselves. “My time is at hand,” Jesus says. The time of service has come, the time for Him to render us the greatest service of all. But the time of man’s wickedness has also come, a time for the schemes of self-serving men. Look what happens! The bigwig religious establishment types, the know-it-all consultants, and their lockstep followers gather in secret meetings, plotting in the high priest’s palace. They are jealous of Jesus, they are threatened by Him. Not from the Romans, not from the Greeks, but from the church, from God’s chosen people and those appointed to lead them, come plots of betrayal and murder. They seek to serve themselves; they care little for truth or error, they care little for the salvation of the people. What they care about is their own reputation, their own power. They are people like you and me; we may not plot to take another man’s life, but we will plot to take his reputation, we will seek to humble him and exalt ourselves. When it comes down to it, we will serve ourselves, even if we must destroy someone else.

The time of man’s wickedness has come. Look what happens! Satan is working overtime, lurking about, seeking a soul to entice. And he finds one, not in the brothels, not in the bad part of town, not among the atheists but in the Church, in the Office of the Holy Ministry. “Then Satan entered into Judas, surnamed Iscariot, one of the Twelve. He went his way to the chief priests and captains and spoke together with them how he might betray Jesus to them.” Whatever his motivation, political or religious, we do know that Judas intended to get rich with this dastardly deed. “What will you give me to betray him to you?” He is serving himself; his own ideals, his own opinions, but most of all his own pocketbook. He is fundamentally driven by greed. And what won’t man do, what won’t you do, in service of greed, in service of yourself? We may not hand over a friend for blood money, but we will do whatever we can to enrich our own checking account, whether it is moral or not, and no matter who we hurt along the way. We will always find a way to serve ourselves, as Judas did. But you never truly serve yourself, no matter how hard you try. In serving his own ends, Judas is actually serving another: Satan himself.

The time of man’s wickedness has come. Look what happens! Trouble, conflict, discord, contention, fighting. Where? Amongst the rabble rousers in the taverns, among the bullies at school? No, in the Church. In the Office of the Holy Ministry. “There was also a strife among them as to which of them should be accounted the greatest.” The apostles clench their fists, raise their voices, spit invectives, push, shove, and threaten one another with bodily harm, litigation and excommunication as they verbally brawl about who is the greatest among them. How appalling! What an embarrassment! The people of God, people who call themselves Christians, fighting over their position, fighting to serve themselves, to satiate their own pride. This is no conflict over doctrine, over the truth of Scripture; those are things worth fighting for. This is a contest of stubbornness, a war fought over pride, to see who has the biggest head, who can exert the most self-serving ego.

What does Jesus do with this rotten mess? What does He do in the midst of all these deadbeat losers and criminals, the chief priest and scribes, Judas and the Twelve, you and me? Look what happens! The most unexpected event in the history of the world. The time of man’s wickedness has come, but that very hour is also the hour of Christ’s service. Look what happens! “Having loved His own who are in the world, He loved them to the end.” He loves us! He loves us to the end! He loves us by serving us. You learn to know God perfectly in what Jesus does for the apostles and for you. You learn to know God perfectly as Jesus serves sinners, sinners like you and me. He humbles Himself, making Himself lower than the lowest servant. He washes their feet! “I am among you as a servant.” He came not to be served but to serve. Peter objects; he will not let his Lord become a servant. But Jesus will have none of it; the only way to have Jesus is as a servant. “If I do not wash you, you have no part with me.” He serves, we are served, there is no other way; Jesus comes in no other way than as a servant. Only as Jesus serves us do we know God perfectly.

In washing the disciples’ feet, Jesus teaches Peter, the other apostles, and you what to expect and receive from Him—love, mercy, forgiveness, salvation. And having loved them by washing their feet Jesus departs in order to love them to the end. “Simon Peter said to Him, ‘Lord, where are you going?’ Jesus answered him, ‘Where I am going you cannot follow me now, but afterwards you will follow me.’” He is going where they cannot now follow—into death, that final enemy of man, the price of your selfishness, the price of your sin. He goes where you cannot now go, for He goes in your place, He goes bearing your sin, your selfishness, your pride. He goes as your servant. He goes as God for you, winning salvation by giving up His own life into death in your place, paying the price that your sin required with His own blood. He goes where you cannot now go with the promise that afterwards you will follow Him into the grave. But because He has already walked the road of the cross through humiliation and death to the victory of the empty tomb, that journey has been forever changed for you. You will follow Him through death to life everlasting. You will live as He lives, never to die again. Christ has served you unto death, so that He can give you life.

To know God perfectly is to know what to receive and expect from Him, to know that in Christ’s death and resurrection your salvation was won, and that in this place, His salvation is given to you. At this altar, Jesus “takes off His outer garments” and goes to work for you. He comes among you once again as One who serves. “Take eat, this is my body,” He says. “Drink of it all of you, this is my blood,” He says. He gives Himself to you fully and completely, holding nothing back, coming as your servant. You sit at the table and He serves you, He loves you. He loves you to the end, and He will continue to pour that love out upon you; this is what you are to receive and expect from Him all of your life. What He says He gives. What He gives He says. Forgiveness, life, salvation. He loves you to the end. Good Friday, the Lord’s Supper, all for you. There you know God perfectly! In the Name of Jesus, Amen.

Invocavit (Matthew 4:1-11)

“Be gone, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve.” 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 first Sunday in Lent comes from the Gospel lesson read a few moments ago from the fourth chapter of the Gospel according to Saint Matthew. Dear friends in Christ: God created the man in His own image, stooping down into the dust of His creation to form him from the clay, then bending low to fill his nostrils with the breath of life. God created the woman from man, forming her from man’s own flesh and bone to be the perfect helper corresponding to him. God gave life to the people of Israel, the family of Jacob, by removing them from bitter bondage in Egypt, taking them through the waters of the Red Sea from slavery to freedom, from death to life, and placing His Name upon them as His own unique people. God made you alive, giving to you the second birth that delivered you from the curse of your first birth, taking you through the waters of the baptismal font from slavery to freedom, from death to life, and placing His Name upon you as His own child. And Jesus? He stood in the waters of the Jordan and was declared to be the very Son of the Father: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

Adam and Eve rose from their birth and entered the garden established for their good. But they did not know, they could not know, that in that garden of paradise lurked the voice of temptation. The people of Israel left slavery and death behind them in the waters of the Red Sea, but they did not enter the Promised Land immediately; they passed through water into the wilderness, the wilderness of scarcity, the wilderness of temptation. The Lord did not take your life the moment after your baptism; instead you traveled from the font out of the sanctuary into the wilderness of a world that had just received a new enemy—you, an enemy that the devil, the world, and your own sinful nature would not cease to attack, constantly seeking your overthrow. And Jesus? He too would go from water to the wilderness. “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.”

Satan always works to make us desire that which is not ours, to doubt that God really cares for us. “Did God actually say?” He wants Eve to doubt the Word, to doubt God’s goodness, to doubt who she is, the crown of God’s creation. God has promised to provide for Israel in the wilderness, but now they are hungry, they thirst. Satan’s forked tongue whispers in their ears, telling them that God’s promises are lies, that He will not give them what they need. You have wants, desires; your eyes, your mind, your very body cries out for what it wants. And Satan tells you to go get it yourself, to doubt God’s declaration that you are His beloved child, His promise that He will provide. And so you fulfill your desires: you lust after, you covet, you even take what God has not given to you; unsatisfied with His gifts, you desire what is not yours.

Jesus was hungry, deathly hungry; He is certainly true God, but He is also just as certainly true man, and after forty days and forty nights the stomach of God was famished, the body of God was weak and emaciated. Satan has been waiting for this. “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” If. Two letters full of poison, the poison of doubt. God has declared to the world that Jesus is His beloved Son; now Satan wants Jesus to prove it. But Jesus doesn’t take the bait; instead, He will take up the sword of the Word. “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” He will not take what God has not given; He will in humility receive all things as a gift from His Father, even suffering, even the burden of humanity’s sin, even the cross.

Satan is a master manipulator of God’s Word. “You will not surely die,” he says to Eve. Put God to the test, see if His Word is really true, or if He’s just holding back on you. The people of Israel, driven by their thirst, demanded that God act when and how they want, testing Him to see if He would follow their orders. “You will not surely die,” Satan whispers in your ear when you are caught in sin, when you are indulging the desires of your flesh, when you are taking what you want on your own terms rather than trusting in God to provide. What else is unrepentant sin than you testing God, daring Him to withdraw His protection, to demand your life from you? God’s Law says, ‘Repent!’ Satan says, ‘Build bigger barns; eat, drink, and be merry.’

Satan is usually content to deny the truth of God’s Word, but if needed, he can quote and misquote with the best. So when Jesus takes up the sword of the Word, Satan is ready to strike back, taking Christ to the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, ‘He will command His angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.’” Put God to the test, Jesus, call on Him to fulfill His promises, if you truly are His Son. But Jesus will not budge; He stands firm where Eve, Israel, and you have failed. “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’” He will not demand that the Father do His bidding, He will do the Father’s bidding, even if it means the way of suffering, the way of humiliation, the path of the cross.

Satan’s clinching argument is to tell Eve what she can become, if she would only extend her hand and take what has not been given to her: “You will be like God.” He attacks, he inflates her pride, and the fruit is soon in her mouth. The people of Israel thought that they knew better than Moses, that they knew better than God. And so they made their own god at the foot of Mount Sinai, bowing down to a calf made of gold. “You will be like God;” that is what every temptation comes down to. You be the god, for you know better than God; you call the shots, you say what’s right and what’s wrong. You will worship anything that satisfies your natural desires, especially yourself; a god is not a statue on the shelf, but what you desire above all else, what you cannot live without.

Satan promised Eve, Israel, and you that he can make you like God. Just exert yourself, stand up to and against God, and you yourself can have the same power and authority as God. But it’s all a lie. He has no such power and authority to give. He promises much, but he cannot deliver. “Again, the devil took [Jesus] to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to Him, ‘All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.’” Satan promises Jesus the very glory of God Himself, all the earthly power and glory that there is to give. But Satan is a liar from the first, and Jesus knows exactly how to counter lies: with the truth of God’s Word. “Be gone, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve.’” He triumphs where Eve failed, He triumphs where Israel failed, He triumphs where you failed and continue to fail. He refuses to seek His own glory, He will not stop to gather an earthly kingdom; His road leads to the cross, and He will take it, all the way to the end.

For Jesus, glory only comes after suffering. By refusing to take Satan’s deal, by refusing to seek earthly glory, Jesus has signed His own death sentence. He will be humiliated, insulted, beaten, and put to death. He will suffer the death of a criminal, but more than that, He will suffer the very wrath of God Himself; He will suffer the judgment of hell as He hangs suspended between heaven and earth. But on the other side of the horror of the cross lies the glory of the empty tomb, the Ascension, the very right hand of the throne of God. On the other side of the wilderness lies the Promised Land. God will vindicate Him, God will deliver Him; what was said at the Jordan will remain just as true on Easter: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

God is well-pleased with Jesus because He was born, baptized, tempted, suffered, and died in the place of sinful man, in your place. You have failed under every one of Satan’s temptations; you have indulged your own sinful desires, putting God to the test and indeed making yourself like God by grasping after that which was not given to you. Whenever Satan whispered, you listened; whenever he tempted, you fell. But Jesus stood fast. He stood fast for you, in your place, triumphing where you failed, and His perfect life was offered up in your place to satisfy God’s just wrath. Christ did what you couldn’t; He faced Satan and defeated him, in the wilderness and on the cross.

After hearing from God’s own lips the curse that their sin would bring, Adam and Eve cowered with fear; paradise had become a wilderness. But paradise would be restored; one would come to crush the serpent’s head and deliver all creation from the bondage of sin. His salvation was prefigured by the people of Israel, who through many trials and temptations did, only by the grace of God, cross the Jordan into the Promised Land. Now the mighty Savior has come; He triumphed over Satan in the wilderness, where Eve, Israel, and you failed, then crushed him by the cross and empty tomb. Now you have forgiveness, you have life, you have salvation; you will pass through this wilderness to the Promised Land, the Promised Land of the new heavens and the new earth. Jesus won it for you, by standing in your place, and it is your inheritance, just as sure as Jesus is risen from the dead, lives and reigns to all eternity. In His Name, Amen.

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.