Dear friends in Christ.
What would you do if you only had 24 hours left to live? What would you do if you knew that in exactly 24 hours from this very moment, your life on earth would come to an end? How would you invest your time? Who would you want to see, one last time? What words of wisdom would you want to share? What places would you want to visit one last time? Though questions like these might seem a bit formulaic, we all recognize that they are simply designed to make us think about God’s gift of time and how we use it. For the truth is, time is truly a gift—a valuable, yet limited treasure that God places into our lives. Each morning we are credited with 1,440 minutes for us to use to spend with our God, with our family, with our friends, with our neighbors, even with the body of believers that make up the church of God. Yet, even though we are credited with 1,440 minutes each morning, our unused minutes of time to not roll over to the next day. We cannot borrow minutes from the future to add to this particular day. If we fail to use the time we’ve been given in any particular day, that time is gone and can never be retrieved. Not only that, but if you really think about it, when we go to sleep at the end of the day, we might be going to sleep for the last time in this world. We may be closing our eyes in sleep in this life only to open them by our Savior’s side in heaven, because our God has not told us how long we will live before he calls us home to heaven. Our God has not promised that we will a tomorrow. In essence, our God has orchestrated it that we live only 24 hours at a time!
Yet, how often don’t we spend our time in ways that suggest that we will live forever? How often don’t we find ourselves telling our children, tomorrow, tomorrow, and yet when tomorrow comes we still don’t have the time that we promised for them? How often don’t we find ourselves trapped in the cycle of the urgent, rushing from one thing to the next until we finally make it home, exhausted, with barely enough energy to heat something in microwave and collapse in front of the TV? How often don’t we find ourselves too busy reading the paper, listening to the radio, watching TV, or doing any number of other things, that we simply don’t take the time we need to grow and develop our relationships with our spouse, or our children, our friends, our relatives, our neighbors, our fellow members of the body of Christ, and especially with our God himself? How often don’t we find that we can make time for all the things that we really want to do, but we simply aren’t able to find time for the things that are most important for our lives?
Well, if you’ve ever felt that way, turn with me now to Joshua 24:1, and we’ll here Joshua himself calling on us to change. Now, as you are turning to Joshua 24:1 like always, here comes the context, the background. The 40 years of wandering in the wilderness had come to an end. The Israelites had finally taken possession of the land the Lord promised to Abraham 500 years earlier. Joshua gathered the people in the town of Shechem, which was the very place the Lord had given a 75 year-old Abraham the promise that Abraham’s descendants would be given this land. (Genesis 12:4-7). Shechem was also the place where Jacob and his family had buried all their household gods, after the Lord had appeared to him. (Genesis 35:1-5) Now, as Joshua stands before the community of Israel he is calling on them to renew their commitment to the Lord and in their commitment put the Lord first by making time for him. Take a look with me at Joshua 24:1-15
1 Then Joshua assembled all the tribes of Israel at Shechem. He summoned the elders, leaders, judges and officials of Israel, and they presented themselves before God. 2 Joshua said to all the people, “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘Long ago your forefathers, including Terah the father of Abraham and Nahor, lived beyond the River and worshiped other gods. 3 But I took your father Abraham from the land beyond the River and led him throughout Canaan and gave him many descendants. I gave him Isaac, 4 and to Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau. I assigned the hill country of Seir to Esau, but Jacob and his sons went down to Egypt. 5 “ ‘Then I sent Moses and Aaron, and I afflicted the Egyptians by what I did there, and I brought you out. 6 When I brought your fathers out of Egypt, you came to the sea, and the Egyptians pursued them with chariots and horsemen as far as the Red Sea. 7 But they cried to the LORD for help, and he put darkness between you and the Egyptians; he brought the sea over them and covered them. You saw with your own eyes what I did to the Egyptians. Then you lived in the desert for a long time. 8 “ ‘I brought you to the land of the Amorites who lived east of the Jordan. They fought against you, but I gave them into your hands. I destroyed them from before you, and you took possession of their land. 9 When Balak son of Zippor, the king of Moab, prepared to fight against Israel, he sent for Balaam son of Beor to put a curse on you. 10 But I would not listen to Balaam, so he blessed you again and again, and I delivered you out of his hand. 11 “ ‘Then you crossed the Jordan and came to Jericho. The citizens of Jericho fought against you, as did also the Amorites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hittites, Girgashites, Hivites and Jebusites, but I gave them into your hands. 12 I sent the hornet ahead of you, which drove them out before you—also the two Amorite kings. You did not do it with your own sword and bow. 13 So I gave you a land on which you did not toil and cities you did not build; and you live in them and eat from vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant.’ 14 “Now fear the LORD and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your forefathers worshiped beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. 15 But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.” (Joshua 24:1-15, NIV)
In these verses Joshua took time to remind the Israelites of all the things the Lord had done for them as they traveled from Egypt to Canaan, as they wanted in the wilderness for 40 years, and as they finally entered into the Land of Canaan and claimed it as their own, in fulfillment of the Lord’s promise. Though there were still nations and peoples to be driven out of their territory, the Lord had given them rest from their constant warring and now their lives were about to change, because Joshua’s time as leader was coming to an end. Soon Joshua himself would be gathered to his people and no longer be the strong ruler and example of faith for the Israelites. So Joshua called all the people to himself there at Shechem, reminded them of all the Lord had done for them and then called on them to use their time to dedicate themselves to the Lord.
Joshua is calling on you and me today to do the same thing. He may not be calling on us to throw away the gods our forefathers worshiped, but he is calling on us to remember what the Lord has done for us as he urges us to use our time to dedicate ourselves to the Lord. For the truth is, even we, as Christians, need to be reminded of what the Lord our God has done because even our memories can become fuzzy. Even we, who know just how important it is to gather regularly to feast on the Flesh and Blood of our Savior, can become complacent in our spiritual lives. Even we can become indifferent in our worship lives, simply going through the motions of the liturgy and not really paying attention to what is going on. Even we can begin to feel that we are better than others or simply deserve more from the Lord because we put our time in each week or we pay our money each month. Even we can begin to think that if we simply focus on accomplishing the bare minimum, we should be blessed with the biggest and the best reward. This is This is why Joshua is encouraging us to remember all that the Lord has done for us, so that we might once again dedicate ourselves to the Lord.
If you think about it, what better message could there be for us today! What better message could there be for us than to consider all the ways the Lord has blessed us as we study his Word today! For the truth is, he is the one who has given us this great land in which we are free to worship him in the way that we have chosen. He is the one who has blessed us with this wonderful church where we can gather each week to hear about Jesus our Savior and how he freed us from our sins. Though this congregation started as a basement church, we now use that basement as a place to teach our children the precious truths of God’s Word in Sunday school. Literally, on top of that, the Lord has blessed us with a wonderful fellowship hall where we are able to gather each week for Bible Study for the strengthening of our faith as adults, and where enjoy sumptuous meals, potlucks and fellowship with each other. In addition to that it is the Lord who has blessed us with our childcare center, through which many children have heard the word of God and come to faith in Jesus Christ as their Savior!
These are but a few of the reasons that Joshua is calling on us to dedicate ourselves to the Lord today! For it is the Lord who has not only provided for our spiritual needs, it is the Lord who has also provided for our physical needs! Just try to count the times that you went hungry or thirsty because you really had nothing to eat or drink in your house. He is the one who has blessed our town with a grocery store, convenience stores, a video store, a red box, a blue box, and if I counted correctly 10 different places in Le Sueur, a lone, where we can go out to eat if we don’t feel like eating at home. He is the one who has blessed us with the vehicles we have, regardless of the shape they are in, the places we live, and the friends we have. But the best of all the blessings the Lord our God has given us is by far the love he showered upon us by giving us his Son. For when we remember how the Lord showed his great love for us by sending his one and only Son to be our Savior; when we remember how Jesus willingly gave his life to forgive our sins and how he rose again to guarantee eternal life to us; when we remember all those things that the Lord our God has done for us, we cannot help but dedicate our lives to him. When we remember all that the Lord our God has done for us throughout all the days of our lives, we cannot help but choose to serve him with our lives.
It is so true, once we begin to think about and remember all that the Lord has done for us, we cannot help but be moved by his love to dedicate ourselves to him and choose to serve him with our lives. This, in fact, is what happened with the Israelites. For as soon as Joshua had finished reminding them of all that the Lord had done for them, he called on them and said: “Now fear the LORD and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your forefathers worshiped beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD. (Joshua 24:14-15).
This is what Joshua is calling on us to do. He is calling on us to dedicate ourselves to the Lord. He is calling on us to make time for the Lord, and he is calling on us to throw away all the other gods that steal our time and keep us from dedicating ourselves to the Lord. Now, in your bulletins, is a half sheet of paper titled, “Now fear the Lord… (Josh 24:14).” Take that out and start writing on it all the different “gods” that have kept you from dedicating yourself to the Lord—gods of anger, greed, frustration, malice; gods of discontent, gossip, selfishness, pride; gods of pleasure, TV, Internet, PSP, Nintendo, x-box, youtube, facebook, twitter, sports, or whatever it might be. Write them all down as you think of them, no matter what they might be. Write them down as we conclude the sermon, even as they come to you during the rest of the service. Then, as we leave the church we will throw them all away in a garbage can in the narthex. As soon as the last person has thrown his or her gods, I will personally close the bag, tie it tight and discard it so that no one need to be afraid that someone will read what you wrote.
So then, as you continue dedicating yourself to the Lord, let me end by asking you a question: “What are you going to do with the rest of the time that the Lord has given you on this day, which could very well be the last day of your life on the earth?
Amen.
Pastor David M. Shilling
Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church--Le Sueur, MN
Showing posts with label Draw Near. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Draw Near. Show all posts
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Draw Near to the Lord (James 4:7-10)
Dear friends in Christ.
At one time or another during their years in grade school, children learn about magnets. They learn how magnets attract metal objects to themselves and how those metal objects can become magnetized by prolonged exposure to a magnet. But they also learn about the positive and negative attraction of magnets. For example, when you take two magnets that are both positively charged and try to force them together, they will repel each other, and the same thing happens when you try it with negatively charged magnets. But if you take one magnet that is charged positive and one that is charged negative, and bring them together, there will be a point when they almost try to leap out of your hands and snap together. In fact, if you would set them down at just the right distance apart, you could watch as the two magnets draw themselves closer and closer to each other until they finally connect. Well, in our text today, this is the point which James is trying to get across to you and me as he encourages and assures us that when we draw near to the Lord, the Lord will draw near to us. Just listen to what James it telling us in verses 7 and 8 of chapter 4: “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you,” (James 4:7-8a).
Now, when James wrote this letter less than twenty years had passed since Jesus had ascended into heaven, and yet there were many Christians who had simply forgotten what being a Christian was all about. There were some Christians who were simply going through the motions of Christianity without really letting the message of salvation affect their hearts. There were others who had stopped focusing their attention on God and the blessings he had bestowed upon them and were focusing on all the great things they could get for themselves so that they could rise in stature and power within their congregation. There were even others who were so taken with their Christian freedom that they really didn’t worry about how they lived their lives, they went out and did pretty much whatever they wanted to, figuring that Jesus’ death and resurrection was their get out of jail free card—their license to sin and do whatever they wanted to because they had been forgiven. So when James wrote these words calling on them to draw near to the Lord and submit themselves to him, these were words that hit them hard. They were words that cut them deep making them realize how they may have proudly walked around with their Christianity on their shoulders for all to see, and yet they failed to act like Christians. They were words that made them realize that by not submitting themselves to God they were not drawing near to God, and because they were not drawing near to God they were not resisting the devil, and because they were not resisting the devil, they were falling into his many traps and in many ways finding that they were actually lost in their sins.
How often don’t we find the same thing to be true in our lives? Rather than drawing near to the Lord and submitting ourselves to his will, how often doesn’t it happen that we actually distance ourselves from the Lord because we can’t stand the idea of submitting ourselves to anyone? After all, isn’t the idea of submission connected with the feeling of weakness? Doesn’t our national pride scream out that as Americans we never submit? We may make others submit to us, but we never submit? Isn’t it true that as soon as we hear even the remotest concept of submission our sinful nature rears up its ugly head and cries out, “Why do I have to submit to God? Why must I be subservient to him? Why must I be treated as his slave?”
Yet when we look at the truth of it, submitting ourselves to God and his will simply means that we are drawing ourselves closer to him so that he might draw himself closer to us. When we look at the truth of submitting ourselves to the Lord we begin to understand that placing ourselves under our caring and gracious God is not such a terrible thing, after all, it is exactly what Jesus did for each and every one of us. Even Jesus, who is God himself, submitted himself to the Lord, followed his will and saved us from our sins. And this is what the Apostle James is calling on us as Christians to do today. He is calling on us to submit ourselves to God and draw near to him by listening to his Word. For it is through his Word, which we have gathered to hear, that we draw near to the Lord and the Lord draws near to us, and it is through that Word that he calls us to repentance.
Back on April 30, 1863 President Abraham Lincoln was essentially calling on the American Nation to the very same thing when he proclaimed a National Day of Fasting, Humiliation and Prayer. For on that day he said, “We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven. We have been preserved, the many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to God that made us. It behooves us, then to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.[1]
Well, in the same way that our 16th president called on a nation to draw near to the Lord and repent of her sins, so also James is calling on each and every one of us to do the very same thing. James writes in verse 7-10 of chapter 4: “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you, wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.” (James 4:8a-10).
Though words like this can be difficult to hear, as we draw near to the Lord we begin to realize the extent of the sins that have piled up in our hearts like the leaves piling up on our front lawns. When we draw near to the Lord and hear his word proclaimed to us, we are reminded of the perfection we have failed to achieve. When we meditate on the commandments of our God we are reminded that no matter how hard we’ve tried to honor him above all things, we have not succeeded. No matter how hard we’ve tried to love our neighbor as ourselves, we have failed. No matter how hard we’ve tried to honor our parents, to keep our hearts pure from evil, keep from lusting, coveting, and hating, we have simply not been able to do it. For we know how we have sinned against our God with the words we have spoken, the things we have done, the thoughts that have echoed through our minds and we are laid bare and all our many sins are exposed before the Lord!
Yet, even as we draw near to the Lord and are condemned by his word, it is through that same word that we are moved to repent. It is through that same word that we are enabled to confess our many sins and iniquities to the Lord, and it is through that same word that we draw near to the Lord our God who covers over our many sins with the blanket of our Savior’s forgiveness. For it is through that message of Law and Gospel that we are convicted of our sins, comforted by our Savior, assured of his forgiveness and drawn closer to our God through repentance. It is through the message of the gospel that we learn about God’s Son, who threw himself in front of the bullet of sin so that it wouldn’t take us to hell with it. It is only in the gospel that we learn how Jesus ran into the street to push us out of the path of the Mac Truck of death, which was speeding toward us, and was killed in our place. It is only in the gospel where we learn about Jesus who gave us the life saving transfusion of his blood, which cleanses us from our sins, makes us members of his family, and gives us the gift of eternal life. This is why James calls on us to draw near to the Lord in repentance so that through his forgiveness he might draw himself closer to us and move us serve him with gratitude as we seek to follow his will for our lives.
It is gratitude that prompted an old man to visit an old broken pier on the eastern seacoast of Florida. Every Friday night, until his death in 1973, he would return with a large bucket of shrimp. The sea gulls would flock to this old man, and he would feed them from his bucket. Many years before, in October, 1942, Captain Eddie Rickenbacker was on a mission in a B-17 to deliver an important message to General Douglas MacArthur in New Guinea. But somewhere over the South Pacific the Flying Fortress became lost beyond the reach of radio. Fuel ran dangerously low, so the men ditched their plane in the ocean...For nearly a month Captain Eddie and his companions would fight the water, and the weather, and the scorching sun, and even starvation. Eight days out, their rations were long gone or destroyed by the salt water. They knew it would take a miracle to sustain them, and a miracle occurred. In Captain Eddie's own words, "Something landed on my head. I knew that it was a sea gull. I don't know how I knew, I just knew. The gull meant food...if I could catch it." Captain Eddie caught the gull. Its flesh was eaten. Its intestines were used for bait to catch fish. The survivors were sustained and their hopes renewed because a lone sea gull, uncharacteristically hundreds of miles from land, offered itself as a sacrifice. Captain Eddie made it, and he never forgot, because every Friday evening, about sunset...on a lonely stretch along the eastern Florida seacoast...you could see an old man walking...His bucket filled with shrimp was to feed the gulls...to remember that one which, on a day long past, gave itself without a struggle...like manna in the wilderness.[2]
As Christians who have drawn near to the Lord who has forgiven their every sin, we now seek to live lives of gratitude and thanks like Captain Eddie. But unlike his life of feeding gulls, we seek to live our lives in service to the Lord. We seek to follow his law for our lives, not because we have to, but because Jesus fulfilled every demand of that law for us. We seek to follow his law for our lives in order that we might say thank you to the one who gave us the life giving transfusion of his blood. We seek to follow the Law of our God so that by our lives we might please him and thank him for the salvation he bestowed upon us. We seek to follow his law so that as we live our lives in service to him, we might continually draw near to him in the same way that oppositely charged magnets will draw themselves to each other.
For in the same way that grade school children learn about magnets and how they can attract and draw other magnets to themselves, so also today we have learned why it is so important for us to draw near to the Lord our God. So let us do just that, as we continue on in our lives. Let us draw near to the Lord in repentance submission and thanksgiving, so that the Lord our God may continue to draw near to us.
Amen.
Pastor David M. Shilling
Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church -Le Sueur, MN
[1] http://www.sermonillustrations.com/a-z/r/repentance.htm (Accessed Oct 8, 2009)
[2] Paul Aurandt, "The Old Man and the Gulls", Paul Harvey's The Rest of the Story, 1977, quoted in Heaven Bound Living, Knofel Stanton, Standard, 1989, p. 79-80. From http://www.sermonillustrations.com/a-z/t/thanksgiving.htm (Accessed October 10, 2009) Modified
At one time or another during their years in grade school, children learn about magnets. They learn how magnets attract metal objects to themselves and how those metal objects can become magnetized by prolonged exposure to a magnet. But they also learn about the positive and negative attraction of magnets. For example, when you take two magnets that are both positively charged and try to force them together, they will repel each other, and the same thing happens when you try it with negatively charged magnets. But if you take one magnet that is charged positive and one that is charged negative, and bring them together, there will be a point when they almost try to leap out of your hands and snap together. In fact, if you would set them down at just the right distance apart, you could watch as the two magnets draw themselves closer and closer to each other until they finally connect. Well, in our text today, this is the point which James is trying to get across to you and me as he encourages and assures us that when we draw near to the Lord, the Lord will draw near to us. Just listen to what James it telling us in verses 7 and 8 of chapter 4: “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you,” (James 4:7-8a).
Now, when James wrote this letter less than twenty years had passed since Jesus had ascended into heaven, and yet there were many Christians who had simply forgotten what being a Christian was all about. There were some Christians who were simply going through the motions of Christianity without really letting the message of salvation affect their hearts. There were others who had stopped focusing their attention on God and the blessings he had bestowed upon them and were focusing on all the great things they could get for themselves so that they could rise in stature and power within their congregation. There were even others who were so taken with their Christian freedom that they really didn’t worry about how they lived their lives, they went out and did pretty much whatever they wanted to, figuring that Jesus’ death and resurrection was their get out of jail free card—their license to sin and do whatever they wanted to because they had been forgiven. So when James wrote these words calling on them to draw near to the Lord and submit themselves to him, these were words that hit them hard. They were words that cut them deep making them realize how they may have proudly walked around with their Christianity on their shoulders for all to see, and yet they failed to act like Christians. They were words that made them realize that by not submitting themselves to God they were not drawing near to God, and because they were not drawing near to God they were not resisting the devil, and because they were not resisting the devil, they were falling into his many traps and in many ways finding that they were actually lost in their sins.
How often don’t we find the same thing to be true in our lives? Rather than drawing near to the Lord and submitting ourselves to his will, how often doesn’t it happen that we actually distance ourselves from the Lord because we can’t stand the idea of submitting ourselves to anyone? After all, isn’t the idea of submission connected with the feeling of weakness? Doesn’t our national pride scream out that as Americans we never submit? We may make others submit to us, but we never submit? Isn’t it true that as soon as we hear even the remotest concept of submission our sinful nature rears up its ugly head and cries out, “Why do I have to submit to God? Why must I be subservient to him? Why must I be treated as his slave?”
Yet when we look at the truth of it, submitting ourselves to God and his will simply means that we are drawing ourselves closer to him so that he might draw himself closer to us. When we look at the truth of submitting ourselves to the Lord we begin to understand that placing ourselves under our caring and gracious God is not such a terrible thing, after all, it is exactly what Jesus did for each and every one of us. Even Jesus, who is God himself, submitted himself to the Lord, followed his will and saved us from our sins. And this is what the Apostle James is calling on us as Christians to do today. He is calling on us to submit ourselves to God and draw near to him by listening to his Word. For it is through his Word, which we have gathered to hear, that we draw near to the Lord and the Lord draws near to us, and it is through that Word that he calls us to repentance.
Back on April 30, 1863 President Abraham Lincoln was essentially calling on the American Nation to the very same thing when he proclaimed a National Day of Fasting, Humiliation and Prayer. For on that day he said, “We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven. We have been preserved, the many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to God that made us. It behooves us, then to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.[1]
Well, in the same way that our 16th president called on a nation to draw near to the Lord and repent of her sins, so also James is calling on each and every one of us to do the very same thing. James writes in verse 7-10 of chapter 4: “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you, wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.” (James 4:8a-10).
Though words like this can be difficult to hear, as we draw near to the Lord we begin to realize the extent of the sins that have piled up in our hearts like the leaves piling up on our front lawns. When we draw near to the Lord and hear his word proclaimed to us, we are reminded of the perfection we have failed to achieve. When we meditate on the commandments of our God we are reminded that no matter how hard we’ve tried to honor him above all things, we have not succeeded. No matter how hard we’ve tried to love our neighbor as ourselves, we have failed. No matter how hard we’ve tried to honor our parents, to keep our hearts pure from evil, keep from lusting, coveting, and hating, we have simply not been able to do it. For we know how we have sinned against our God with the words we have spoken, the things we have done, the thoughts that have echoed through our minds and we are laid bare and all our many sins are exposed before the Lord!
Yet, even as we draw near to the Lord and are condemned by his word, it is through that same word that we are moved to repent. It is through that same word that we are enabled to confess our many sins and iniquities to the Lord, and it is through that same word that we draw near to the Lord our God who covers over our many sins with the blanket of our Savior’s forgiveness. For it is through that message of Law and Gospel that we are convicted of our sins, comforted by our Savior, assured of his forgiveness and drawn closer to our God through repentance. It is through the message of the gospel that we learn about God’s Son, who threw himself in front of the bullet of sin so that it wouldn’t take us to hell with it. It is only in the gospel that we learn how Jesus ran into the street to push us out of the path of the Mac Truck of death, which was speeding toward us, and was killed in our place. It is only in the gospel where we learn about Jesus who gave us the life saving transfusion of his blood, which cleanses us from our sins, makes us members of his family, and gives us the gift of eternal life. This is why James calls on us to draw near to the Lord in repentance so that through his forgiveness he might draw himself closer to us and move us serve him with gratitude as we seek to follow his will for our lives.
It is gratitude that prompted an old man to visit an old broken pier on the eastern seacoast of Florida. Every Friday night, until his death in 1973, he would return with a large bucket of shrimp. The sea gulls would flock to this old man, and he would feed them from his bucket. Many years before, in October, 1942, Captain Eddie Rickenbacker was on a mission in a B-17 to deliver an important message to General Douglas MacArthur in New Guinea. But somewhere over the South Pacific the Flying Fortress became lost beyond the reach of radio. Fuel ran dangerously low, so the men ditched their plane in the ocean...For nearly a month Captain Eddie and his companions would fight the water, and the weather, and the scorching sun, and even starvation. Eight days out, their rations were long gone or destroyed by the salt water. They knew it would take a miracle to sustain them, and a miracle occurred. In Captain Eddie's own words, "Something landed on my head. I knew that it was a sea gull. I don't know how I knew, I just knew. The gull meant food...if I could catch it." Captain Eddie caught the gull. Its flesh was eaten. Its intestines were used for bait to catch fish. The survivors were sustained and their hopes renewed because a lone sea gull, uncharacteristically hundreds of miles from land, offered itself as a sacrifice. Captain Eddie made it, and he never forgot, because every Friday evening, about sunset...on a lonely stretch along the eastern Florida seacoast...you could see an old man walking...His bucket filled with shrimp was to feed the gulls...to remember that one which, on a day long past, gave itself without a struggle...like manna in the wilderness.[2]
As Christians who have drawn near to the Lord who has forgiven their every sin, we now seek to live lives of gratitude and thanks like Captain Eddie. But unlike his life of feeding gulls, we seek to live our lives in service to the Lord. We seek to follow his law for our lives, not because we have to, but because Jesus fulfilled every demand of that law for us. We seek to follow his law for our lives in order that we might say thank you to the one who gave us the life giving transfusion of his blood. We seek to follow the Law of our God so that by our lives we might please him and thank him for the salvation he bestowed upon us. We seek to follow his law so that as we live our lives in service to him, we might continually draw near to him in the same way that oppositely charged magnets will draw themselves to each other.
For in the same way that grade school children learn about magnets and how they can attract and draw other magnets to themselves, so also today we have learned why it is so important for us to draw near to the Lord our God. So let us do just that, as we continue on in our lives. Let us draw near to the Lord in repentance submission and thanksgiving, so that the Lord our God may continue to draw near to us.
Amen.
Pastor David M. Shilling
Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church -Le Sueur, MN
[1] http://www.sermonillustrations.com/a-z/r/repentance.htm (Accessed Oct 8, 2009)
[2] Paul Aurandt, "The Old Man and the Gulls", Paul Harvey's The Rest of the Story, 1977, quoted in Heaven Bound Living, Knofel Stanton, Standard, 1989, p. 79-80. From http://www.sermonillustrations.com/a-z/t/thanksgiving.htm (Accessed October 10, 2009) Modified
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