Put Your Sword Away! (John 18:4-11)

Ash Wednesday 

February 22, 2012

Dear friends in Christ.

Back when I was in college, I had a classmate who was filled with all sorts of creative, fun, and crazy ideas.  He was the one who regularly initiated rubber band wars by simply opening someone’s door and shooting rubber bands at them while they studied.  He is the one who organized a number of capture the flag games in the spring and fall as well as quite a few snowball fights during the winter.  On one occasion he convinced us that it would be fun to go play paint ball.  The only problem was that, none of us had any paintball equipment with us, nor did we have the funds to go off to Milwaukee to play.  So, we improvised!  We built swords out of PVC pipes and held a battle right there in the long hallway of our dorm building.  I still remember it to this day.  There were six of us battling each other in pairs of two stretched from the stair well at one end of the hall about 1/3 of the way down the rest of the hall.  We were all fiercely battling each other, switching combatants and gaining up on each other when suddenly the cry rang out, “Put your swords away!”  At first we thought we were all in trouble, but then we realized it was simply one of our dorm mates who wanted to go downstairs, and we were blocking the access to the closest set of stairs.  Hence his cry of “put your swords away.”

Put your sword away!  These same words are the words that Jesus spoke to Peter in our lesson tonight, and as he spoke these words, Jesus and his disciples were in the Garden of Gethsemane.  They were standing before the group of Roman Soldiers and the band of men from the chief priests and Pharisees who had come to arrest Jesus.  They were standing there and they had just heard Jesus tell them that he was willing to go with them; that he would allow the religious leaders to arrest him and take him for the trials that would ultimately bring about his crucifixion.  This is what John is telling us as he writes in our lesson tonight, from John 18:4, “Jesus, knowing all that was going to happen to him, went out and asked them, “Who is it you want?” 5 “Jesus of Nazareth,” they replied. “I am he,” Jesus said. (And Judas the traitor was standing there with them.) 6 When Jesus said, “I am he,” they drew back and fell to the ground. 7 Again he asked them, “Who is it you want?” And they said, “Jesus of Nazareth.” 8 “I told you that I am he,” Jesus answered. “If you are looking for me, then let these men go.” 9 This happened so that the words he had spoken would be fulfilled: “I have not lost one of those you gave me.” 10 Then Simon Peter, who had a sword, drew it and struck the high priest’s servant, cutting off his right ear. (The servant’s name was Malchus.) 11 Jesus commanded Peter, “Put your sword away! Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me?”" (John 18:4–11, NIV84)

So zealous was Peter to defend his friend and Master that he struck out with his sword wounding the servant of the High Priest by cutting off his right ear.  Thus Peter proved that he either hadn’t heard or hadn’t heard what Jesus had just been saying or what Jesus was doing for Peter, his disciples and the rest of the world.  So zealous was Peter for Jesus that the thought he needed to fight to free Jesus from these soldiers and prevent the immanent arrest of his Master.  Yet what did Jesus say to Peter? “Put your sword away! Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me?” (John 18:11, NIV84)

In some ways it was as if Jesus was saying to Peter, “Don’t you realize what’s going on?”  “Don’t you understand what I am doing for you?”  “Didn’t you just see my display of power and realize that they are not taking me but I am willingly going with them to my death so that I might pay the price my Father demands and free you from your sins?”  “No, put your sword away and see my cross.  I am going to that cross for you, for my disciples, and for all the people of the world.”

Put your sword away!  With four simple words Jesus speaks to Peter, rebukes his misplaced zeal, lays out his mission and reveals, yet again, the purpose for the cross.  And with these simple words, Jesus is doing the same thing for you and me.  For if we think about it, how often aren’t we just like Peter?  How often haven’t we forgotten that Jesus didn’t need any force, not even once single sword to save humanity?  The cross was the only instrument that he needed in order to provide us with his salvation.  He was the only one who could achieve our salvation through his willing and innocent sacrifice in our place.  There was nothing that we could do to achieve it for ourselves; no human action that could even remotely help no matter how brave or how noble. 

Yet how often don’t we lose focus on the purpose of the cross, grab our own swords as it were, and start flailing them about in an effort protect and defend our Savior, like Peter, or in an effort to aid our Savior with his salvation?  How often don’t’ we like to brandish the swords of our own godly lives as we thank God that we are not like all those other people who don’t serve him as faithfully or as well as we do?  How often haven’t we felt that we are worthy of heaven because we have used our own swords to accomplish so much for our God with our faith, with our good deeds, with our incredible public devotion to him, with our record of church attendance or Bible study attendance?  Or how often haven’t we felt that God’s church depended on us being a part of it, or the efforts that we put forth in serving?  How often haven’t we felt so important in God’s kingdom because of the status we suddenly have from being part of this one group or another?  How often haven’t we felt that if our particular group stops meeting or stops functioning in any way then the church will quickly follow suit?  How often haven’t we been so zealous for our Savior and his church that we were tempted to change the message we preach, even just a little bit, in the hopes that it might attract more people and help us to grow?

These are the times that Jesus rebukes us as he did Peter, saying, “Put your sword away.”  “Put your sword away and see my cross, because without my cross there is no hope, no forgiveness, no salvation, and no life!  But when you let go of your own importance and focus on my cross, you live in my forgiveness, my life, and my salvation.”  Thus, tonight, as we have gathered to see our Savior, we have heard him calling on us to put our swords away, and put them away we have.  But not only have we put them away, but we have come to lay them at the foot of the cross; we have come to place all our misguided zeal, our attempts at helping our Savior, even our thoughts of changing his message at the foot of his cross.  Tonight, we have placed our swords away by laying them before our Savior, and he has washed us clean of every spot and stain of our sins.  He has completely removed every trace of our guilt, and he has restored us to live a new life for him.  Tonight we have seen and been reminded of what Jesus did for us, what he knew he had to do to free us from our sins.  Tonight we have felt his gentle hand of blessing upon us assuring us of the hope and salvation that we have through faith in him.  Tonight, through faith in Jesus, we have put our own swords away by laying them at the foot of the cross.  Through faith we have been assured that his cross is the reason for the hope we have.  Through faith in Jesus we look to the cross as the instrument through which our sins were forgiven.  Through faith in Jesus we see our Savior’s great love for us in his sacrifice.  We see the forgiveness he won for us in his death.  We see the undeniable assurance of salvation in his resurrection, and we see the hope of eternal life in his empty tomb.

Though the image of a bloody, crucified, Savior is not an attractive picture to the world or even our sinful nature, through faith in Jesus it is an image of victory and strength.  Though the message of the cross is foolishness to some and a great offense to others, it is God’s wisdom for our salvation.  Though as sinful human beings it is so easy to grasp the hilt of our own swords and seek to fight our way to salvation, through faith in Jesus we have lain those swords aside.  In the same way that my classmates and I stopped our hallway sword battle when someone wanted to get to the stairs, so we have stopped our battling through faith in Jesus. We now see our Savior’s cross.  We know its purpose.  We know the forgiveness that is ours and because of that we have also put our swords away.

Amen.

Pastor David M. Shilling

Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church--Le Sueur, MN

God's Great Exchange

April 24, 2011
Easter Sunday

Dear Friends in Christ

If you’ve ever tried to return home to the United States after traveling in a foreign country, then you know what going through customs is like. You know how you have to provide the proper documentation of who you are before they will even consider letting you in. You know how you will be asked all sorts of different questions by the custom agent before he or she will approve your credentials and allow you to enter. And you know that if you should fail to provide proper identification or fail to adequately answer the questions, you will be turned away and not able to enter at all. Yet with the proper documentation it is a very easy thing to pass through customs and return home to your own land. The same thing is true for us as Christians. Though we are citizens of heaven we are currently traveling outside of our home country, but we all know that one day we will stand at the border cross between this world and the next. One day we will be asked for our passports to eternal life. One day we will be asked why we should be allowed to enter our home land of heaven. It is because of this that I want to review with you the very hope and the very reason we have in looking forward to eternal life, and I want to begin by asking you a couple of questions. The first is, “If you were to die to night, are you sure that you would have eternal life?” …The second is, “If you did die tonight, and you were standing before God and he asked you, ‘Why should I let you into my heaven?’ what would you tell him?”

… Though I don’t expect you to give me an answer right here and right now, these are questions I want you to ponder as we continue today. For the answers to these questions are answers that only come through faith, and in doing so, they lead us into a right relationship with the Lord our God.

For a person to be in a right relationship with God, that person needs first of all to ask God what his requirements truly are. To find out what those are, we turn to the pages of Scripture where we learn in Matthew 5:48, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” And again in Leviticus 19:2, “Be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy.” From this we learn that the very thing God demands of us is that we must be perfectly holy, completely set apart from sinners, without flaw of any kind, and absolutely perfect. This, in fact, is the very thing that Jesus said to a man who came to him asking , “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus answered him with a question: "What is written in the Law?" he replied. "How do you read it?" He answered: "`Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind' ; and, `Love your neighbor as yourself.' " Jesus told the man that he had answered correctly, God demands nothing less than perfection, a perfect love for him at all times, a perfect love for our neighbor at all times as well. Then Jesus said, "Do this and you will live." (Luke 10:16-28). In other words, keep on doing this at all times. Show nothing less than perfect love toward God and your neighbor in all that you do, and say and even think, and you will live. Always put God first in your life, never use his name in a wrong way, never have so much as a single greedy, covetous, lustful, vengeful, jealous, hateful, or even selfish thought. Be such a perfect, holy, sinless person at every moment of your life, and you will live, that is be in a right relationship with the Lord your God and receive eternal life.

The problem is, as we know, what God demands of us is the very opposite of what he sees. The Bible tells us, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23). That means that each and every one of us has sinned in one way or another, and because of our sins, we have fallen short of God’s glory. It’s like going to Wal-Mart to buy groceries or things that you might need. You go around all the isles, spending a few hours shopping and getting all that you need, and finally when you fill that you’ve filled your cart full enough, you go to the check out. As the cashier rings up your purchases, you dig out your checkbook only to find that you ran out of checks yesterday, and completely forgot to put a new book in. So you look in your purse, or your wallet, for a check card or credit card of some kind, only to find that you’ve left them home as well. Now, you as you begin to search for some money, you know that it will be entirely fruitless because you left all your cash at home. Though you hunt and hunt for through your pockets, all you are able to find is two quarters, a dime and a nickel. The problem is, you have fallen short of that $150 tab that the clerk has just finished ringing up, and your sixty five cents will by no means cover that bill. Now, you have no choice but return home completely empty handed. That is what our sins have done to us. For in the same way that a lack of money separated you from the possibility of buying groceries, the Bible tells us, “your iniquities (sins) have separated you from your God” In fact, in the end, our sins will finally separate us from our God forever, as Paul tells us, “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23)

So then, what can we do? If God sees in us the very opposite of what he demands, what can we do to change it? Well, some might say, “I’ll try harder. I’ll keep trying my best to sin less and less every day.” The problem is, of course, as James tells us, “whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.” (James 2:10). Another person might come up with the idea of balancing out the sins I commit with all sorts of good deeds. If I come home in a bad mood, yell at my kids, and argue with my wife, I’ll take them all out for a special dinner to make up for it. The problem is, even if we could balance out our sins, they would still be there. We would not be able to get rid of them, and we would still be stuck full of sins, completely lacking in holiness, worthy of nothing more than death. Another might give in to the fact that he is not perfect, he might say, “I know I’m not perfect, but at least I’m not as bad as that guy over there.” Though comparing ourselves to another might make us feel pretty good about ourselves in the short term, when we look up, and compare ourselves to God, we realize that we are still destined for eternal damnation. Though these ways might seem right and logical to us, in the end they lead only to death and damnation. (Proverbs 16:25)

So then, what can we do! If we are so filled with sins and so lacking in holiness that we can only look forward to eternal death. If we can do nothing to remove our sins, and every sin we commit means we are guilty of breaking all of God’s law that we cannot possibly keep it ourselves to earn eternal life, what can we do? The answer is nothing. But even though there is nothing that we can do, it is God who has done it all for us! This is God’s remedy.

God’s remedy centers in a person. That person is his own Son, Jesus Christ our Savior. Jesus is the one about whom the Bible tells us, that though he was true God, he was also true man. Though he was true God from eternity, he became fully human, exactly like you and me in every way, except he was without sin. Jesus was completely holy, completely without sin! In fact, what God demanded, Jesus did 100%

There was even a time when Jesus flat out asked his enemies, “Can any of you prove me guilty of sin?” (John 8:46). But no one could. Even when Jesus was on trial and the Jews were seeking to have him crucified, even then the accusations brought against Jesus did not agree. Even when false witnesses were coached on what to say, they still couldn’t make their stories agree. It’s as if the Lord himself were telling the world, “There’s no one who can find one fault in my Son. He lived an absolutely holy, sin free life.”

But even though he had lived his holy, sin-free life, his life still ended in death on the cross. But his death was not in vain, as Isaiah tells us, “The Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all.” (Isaiah 53:6) God transferred all our sins over to Jesus and let him pay the penalty for them. In the same way that we can easily transfer money from a savings account to a checking account, the Lord transferred all our sins over to Jesus account, and sent him to the cross with those sins, so that through his death, their payment would be covered. And when Jesus died, he cried out in a loud voice to let us know that his payment was complete that our sins had been forgiven.

It’s like being back at Wal-Mart, fishing in your pockets, fining nothing more than sixty-five cents. As you’re about to apologize to the cashier, and take your leave, someone from the line behind says, “Don’t worry, I’ll pay for your things.” That’s what Jesus did for us. He paid the penalty in full for us. He took our sins upon himself so that we could be in a right relationship with our God. This is exactly what the Bible tells us in 2 Corinthians, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21). In the same way that the Lord transferred our sins to Jesus, He transferred Jesus’ righteousness and holiness to us. Through Jesus, we become the righteousness and holiness that God demands. For God has covered us with the news cloths of Jesus’ holiness so that he no longer sees our sins, but only the Holiness and righteousness that Jesus won for us through his death and resurrection. This is God’s great exchange! He takes my sins and gives me Jesus’ Righteousness so that now, in his eyes, I am filled with holiness, completely devoid of sinfulness, and I am now in a right relationship with my God. The very thing that God demands of me, he has now given me. Not because I have earned it or deserved it, but because of his great love for me.

What a blessing this is indeed! For now that I am in a right relationship with the Lord my God through Jesus Christ my Savior, I receive his great blessings indeed. I have received forgiveness of sins and freedom from guilt. I have received the gift of eternal life and new life of faith. I have received the Lord’s guidance for life and his answers to prayers. I have received the gift of Christian fellowship and the power for living for the Lord. These are the great gifts and blessings the Lord has given me through this great exchanges. My sins on Jesus, Jesus’ righteousness on me, the gift of the forgiveness of sins, a God pleasing life, and eternal salvation forever in heaven.

So now, what about you, do you believe this? Do you know what you have to look forward to? Of course you do! If you were to die tonight, would you have eternal life? Absolutely! If you did die tonight, and you were standing before God and he asked you, “Why should I let you into my heaven?” what would you answer? Heaven is mine through Jesus Christ my Savior. This is God’s great exchange! The very thing he demands of us, he gives us through Jesus Christ our Savior. Give thanks to God for what he has done for you, for he has given you eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ, his Son.

Amen.

Pastor David M. Shilling
Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church --Le Sueur, MN

Celebrate Your Heritage! (Philippians 3:7-14)

Dear friends in Christ.

What was the last big event that you and your family celebrated? Was it a wedding, where you had the opportunity to celebrate the joining of a new couple in wedded bliss? Was it maybe a family reunion, where you had the opportunity to connect with any number of relatives that you hadn’t seen for a long time. Was it maybe a baby shower, where you had the fun of celebrating with the new and expecting mother to be? Was it perhaps a birthday, where you got a chance to shower one of your children with a few gifts and make him or her special for the day? No matter what it was, it seems that we need very little reason to celebrate events no matter how big or small they might be. Well, this morning as we celebrate the Festival of the Reformation, we will have the opportunity to celebrate with each other as we celebrate the heritage that we have together.

But what, some of you may be asking, is our heritage? Well, our heritage is a solid adherence to the teachings of the Bible. Our heritage is the time we spent unified with the Missouri Synod growing more and more conservative in our understanding of God’s Word until the time came when our paths split in the early 60’s. Our heritage goes back to 1850, almost 160 years ago when 3 German-American Pastors got together in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and formed the Wisconsin Synod. And yet, our heritage goes back even farther than that, because we can trace it back to October 31st, 1517, the night on which Martin Luther stealthily approached the doors of the castle church in Wittenberg and nailed his 95 theses—his 95 points for discussion or debate—to the door and set into motion the events that we celebrate as the Reformation. But that isn’t even the beginning of our heritage because we can trace our heritage all the way back to the first promise of a Savior delivered to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, just shortly after they had fallen into sin. It is that promise, fulfilled in the birth of our Savior, some 2000 years ago, that is the root and the source of the heritage that we are celebrating today! Today we are celebrating the fact that Jesus is our heritage, because Jesus is the one who freed us from our sins by his perfect life, his innocent death, and his glorious resurrection. We are celebrating the fact that when Jesus gave his life in our place and took it back again on the third day, by his actions he declared that you and I were completely innocent of any of the sins that satan had leveled against us. By his actions Jesus declared that we were completely righteous in his sight through the faith that he himself had created in our hearts. In fact, it is that very heritage of righteousness that the Apostle Paul is celebrating in our text as he writes, “But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ--the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.” (Philippians 3:7-9).

Though there had been a time in Paul’s life that he actually though he could earn his own salvation, once he had been called to faith in Jesus Christ, he realized that the righteousness he had was not of his own making, rather it was the heritage that Jesus himself had bestowed upon him as a gift through the faith created in Paul’s heart by the work of the Holy Spirit.

Well, the same thing is true for each and every one of us today! Though there may have been a time when we counted our good deeds as something that we could lay at Jesus’ feet and somehow gain eternal life by our own efforts, now that we have been declared righteous by our Savior’s death and resurrection, we consider all that stuff as loss. We consider it to be completely worthless; as useless to us as the garbage that we put out at the curb each week so that the garbage men can haul it away. In fact, when we compare all our own efforts to the surpassing greatness of our Christian Heritage of faith in Jesus Christ, our own works are no useful than that of burned up newspaper. In fact, when we are reminded how Jesus completed the transaction of our salvation with the payment of his blood, it makes all the more clear how our righteousness is his declaration to us—not as a result of our own actions, but as his gift to us through the heritage of faith. A gift which he himself bestowed upon us as he declared to be innocent and now, through faith, makes us perfect.

What an incredible heritage we have! For, today, as we celebrate the heritage that we have in Jesus Christ our Savior, we find that it is Christ our Savior who makes us perfect. It is Christ our Savior who makes us perfect in the eyes of our God—not merely acceptable, passing, good enough, sufficient, or even above average! It is Christ our Savior who makes us perfect in the eyes of the Lord our God through the faith he created in our hearts; the faith through which he applied to us the power of his resurrection and the righteousness that he won for us in the World Series of Calvary. This, in fact, is the very heritage that the Apostle Paul was celebrating as he wrote in our text, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:10-14).

As Christians, this is the goal to which we are pressing. This is the heritage we celebrate in Jesus Christ our Savior—the perfection that will be ours when God our Savior calls us heaven ward in Christ Jesus. We are looking forward to the day when our Lord Jesus will finally and forever make us perfect when he calls us out of this world of sin to our lives by his side in his heavenly kingdom. Though we have not yet achieved it, we know that through faith the day is coming when we will never again experience sin. We will never again deal with frustration. We will never again face suffering or pain. We will never again face any of these things because on the day when we are made perfect by our Savior’s side in heaven, we will have escaped the sorrows of this life. On the day when we are made perfect in our Savior’s kingdom, we will gather around the throne of our God and serve him day and night in his holy temple. On that day when we are called to live in perfection with our Savior, we will rest from all our labors and we will enjoy the gift of eternal life that our Savior longs to bestow upon us.

This is the Christian heritage we are celebrating today; the heritage that has been passed down to us since the days of Adam and Eve. It is the heritage of the forgiveness of sins won for us by Christ our Savior through which we have been declared completely innocent and will one day be made perfect in eternal life. Though the celebration may not be the same as a Birthday party, wedding, or even baby shower, it many ways our celebration today is like that of a great family reunion—a family reunion to which we have all been invited though faith in our brother, Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Pastor David M. Shilling
Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church -Le Sueur, MN