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
Sunday, October 25, 2009
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
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Dare to Be Disciples of Christ (Mark 8:27-35)
Dear friends in Christ.
Just a little over 25 years ago, Warner Brothers Studios released a movie about a little boy named Ralphie Parker—a little boy who wanted nothing more than a Red Rider BB gun with a compass in the stock and this thing which tells time. As the movie progresses, we follow Ralphie’s life as he struggles to give just the right BB gun hints to his parents, as his brother struggles to put his arms down, as he and his friends run from the neighborhood bully, and how he finally gets the gift he’s been dreaming of for the whole movie. Yet, out of all the fun this movie has to offer, there is one scene that always stands out in my mind when I think about this movie, and that is the school scene with the flag pole and the exchange between Flick and Schwartz. You may remember how it happened, all the boys standing around a flag pole during recess and Schwartz begins to dare Flick to stick his tongue to the pole. He dares Flick, he double dares him, he double dog dares him, and finally after Flick receives the triple dog dare, he gives in to the dare and stick his tongue to the pole. Though he knew he should have just walked away, rather than backing down, Flick dared to stick his tongue to a flag pole, got stuck, and as the movie goes, had to be rescued by the police and the fire department! Well, as Christians, our Savior is in some ways playing the role of Schwartz as he dares us to be his disciples. But rather than daring us to do something foolish, he is daring us to screw our courage to its sticking place as we dare to be his disciples who boldly confess his name, who boldly believe in his mission and who boldly follow him carrying our own crosses. In fact, listen to the beginning of Jesus daring us to be his disciples, Mark records, “Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked them, “Who do people say I am?” They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Christ.” (Mark 8:27-29)
In his characteristically bold manor, Peter jumped forward and answered Jesus’ question for all the disciples who were there. He demonstrated that he understood who Jesus was and confessed him as the Christ. Though he didn’t fully understand what it meant for Jesus to be the Christ, Peter placed his faith in Jesus none-the-less. Though he had recently seen crowds of people turn away from Jesus and stop following him, Peter was the one who stated, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Though they had seen some of the more sever persecution that Jesus had lately faced, Peter still dared to be a disciple of Christ!
Well, this is what the Lord Jesus would have each and every one of us do. He would have us dare to be his disciples who boldly and proudly confess his name. He would have us confess our faith in him before our friends and family; before our neighbors and co-workers. In fact, our Savior would have us boldly confess his name in any and every situation in our lives. But how often aren’t we simply afraid to do that very thing? Though here in church we boldly sing our Alleluias and confess the name of Jesus Christ our Savior, how often doesn’t it happen that as soon as we walk out those doors, our daring goes away? How often hasn’t it happened that we were afraid to share our faith with our friends because we are worried that they might ridicule us for what we believe? How often haven’t we walked away from a religious conversation because we were too afraid we might say the wrong thing? How often hasn’t our courage failed us so that rather than daring to stand out as Jesus’ disciples we seek to simply blend in with the rest of humanity and hope that no one will notice who whom we belong? Sadly, these are the things that happen far too often, and I know this from experience, because I too have let my courage waver and have not dared to be a disciple of Christ or to boldly confess his name when the situation warranted.
But even though we have all faced times when our courage has failed us and we have joined Peter in denying our Savior, our Savior still offers his forgiveness. Just as the Lord forgave Peter and publicly reinstated him as a disciple after his resurrection, so also when we turn to the Lord in repentance, he is the one who forgives us. He is the one who reinstates us as his disciples. He is the one who bolsters our courage through the Holy Spirit whom he has sent to live in our hearts, and he is the one whose love emboldens our daring so that we eagerly show ourselves as his disciples who are not only bold to confess his name, but who also boldly believe in his mission.
Now, in the movie, when Flick finally stuck his tongue to the pole, he was surprised that it stuck. In fact, when you watch the movie, you will hear a couple of boys say something like, “Wow! It actually worked.” Though Flick started his mission of tongue sticking with disbelieve, he quickly began to believe from experience that a warm wet tongue will quickly freeze to a flag pole. Well, in our text today, as Jesus dares us to be his disciples, he doesn’t ask us to blindly follow him in his mission. Rather, he begins to clearly and fully lay out his mission as the Christ to his daring disciples. Though he had spoken to them many times about how his mission was to suffer many things, to die on the cross, and then be raised to life on the third day, he had always spoken about these things in a veiled manner. However, as Mark tells us “Jesus then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. ‘Get behind me, Satan!’ he said. ‘You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.’” (Mark 8:31-33)
Though moments earlier, Peter had confessed Jesus as the Christ, and all the disciples had agreed with him, they still didn’t fully understand what Jesus mission was. Though they had been with Jesus for a little over two years, they still had the false idea that the Christ was to come and be an earthly Messiah. The Christ was to come and overthrow the Roman Government, establishing an earthly kingdom which he would reign over from Jerusalem. In the disciples minds, suffering and death simply didn’t fit, and that is why Peter took Jesus aside. He took Jesus aside to try to reason with him, show him, and convince him that there was no need for him to do these. But suffering at the hands of the religious leaders and dying for the sins of the world was the very reason that Jesus had come. This was the mission he was on and this is why he answered Peter as he did.
Sadly, this is how the unbelieving world views our Savior. Very few know who he truly was or understand or believe in his mission as we, his daring disciples do. In fact, if you were to ask the people of the world you would find out that many of them think that Jesus was nothing more than a prophet who conveyed a radically new message about loving each other. Others think of him as nothing more than a good man who lived a good live and gave us a good example to follow. But when it comes right down to it, if you asked people why Jesus willingly went to the cross to die, at best most people will think that Jesus was nothing more than a martyr who so believed his message of love that he was willing to show the greatest example of love by dying for his teaching.
It is because of this that Jesus is speaking so clearly about his mission as the Christ here on earth so that we, his daring disciples, might boldly believe that his mission on earth was to suffer for the sins of the world, endure the flames of hell in our place as he was rejected by God himself, pour out his blood to atone for the sins of the world, give up his life to pay the penalty that Almighty God had demanded for our sins, and then, when all hope seemed to be lost, rise again on the third day to assure us that he had completed his mission and that our sins have been paid for! This is why Jesus speaks so clearly about his mission so that we might boldly believe in it and what he accomplished for us. For when we are reminded of Christ’s willing sacrifice for us, we who are his daring disciples, are emboldened in our faith, strengthened in our courage, and ready to go forward, boldly following him while carrying our cross.
When flick stuck his tongue to the flag pole, he quickly discovered that his daring had given him a great number of hardships, as the movie showed, he remained stuck to that flag pole while all the other children ran inside. Well the same thing is true for you and me who willingly dare to be Christ’s disciples! As soon as we put on that robe of righteousness that marks us as one of his followers, we find ourselves facing any number of hardships as we boldly follow after Christ, carrying the cross that he has given us. This, in fact, is exactly what Jesus is talking about as he says, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.” (Mark 8:34, 35)
For the disciples this was the first time that Jesus clearly spoken about what was ahead for them. Though they had seen opposition as the religious leaders did everything they could to oppose him, more was to come. Though they had seen rejection as crowds of people stopped following Jesus, this was only a taste of what was to come in the future. For when they were out on their own, the disciples would face stoning, prison time, beatings, and hardships all for the name of Jesus whom they proclaimed.
As Christ’s daring disciples, we boldly follow him as we carry our own cross. We dare to follow him as disciples even though we know we may have to carry a cross of rejection. We dare to follow him even though we may face a cross of ridicule. We dare to follow him even though we may have to carry a cross of lost friends. We dare to follow him even though we might have to carry a cross of financial hardship because of what we believe. We dare to follow him even though we might have to carry a cross of being hated by our friends or even family because we have spoken up and said what was right when no one else would. We dare to follow him even though we may one day have to carry a cross of prison time because God’s Word has become hate speech. WE dare to follow him even though we may one day have to carry the cross of going underground because the world simply will not put up with the truth of God’s Word. We dare to follow Christ as his disciples no matter what type of cross we might one day have to carry, because we understand what Jesus meant when he said, “whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.” (Mark 8:35)
No matter what cross the Lord would have us carry it is designed to draw us closer to him. It is designed to make us place daring disciples who place our trust in him not relying on the things of this world, but looking to the Lord our God, trusting that one day he will deliver us from this life to our heavenly home.
Though Flick may have taken a foolish dare in the movie I’ve been describing, as Christians, we have not foolishly taken our Savior’s dare. Rather, we have boldly dared to be his disciples who willingly confess his name, believe his mission, and even carry the crosses which he, himself, has assigned to us.
Amen.
Pastor David M. Shilling
Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church -Le Sueur, MN
Just a little over 25 years ago, Warner Brothers Studios released a movie about a little boy named Ralphie Parker—a little boy who wanted nothing more than a Red Rider BB gun with a compass in the stock and this thing which tells time. As the movie progresses, we follow Ralphie’s life as he struggles to give just the right BB gun hints to his parents, as his brother struggles to put his arms down, as he and his friends run from the neighborhood bully, and how he finally gets the gift he’s been dreaming of for the whole movie. Yet, out of all the fun this movie has to offer, there is one scene that always stands out in my mind when I think about this movie, and that is the school scene with the flag pole and the exchange between Flick and Schwartz. You may remember how it happened, all the boys standing around a flag pole during recess and Schwartz begins to dare Flick to stick his tongue to the pole. He dares Flick, he double dares him, he double dog dares him, and finally after Flick receives the triple dog dare, he gives in to the dare and stick his tongue to the pole. Though he knew he should have just walked away, rather than backing down, Flick dared to stick his tongue to a flag pole, got stuck, and as the movie goes, had to be rescued by the police and the fire department! Well, as Christians, our Savior is in some ways playing the role of Schwartz as he dares us to be his disciples. But rather than daring us to do something foolish, he is daring us to screw our courage to its sticking place as we dare to be his disciples who boldly confess his name, who boldly believe in his mission and who boldly follow him carrying our own crosses. In fact, listen to the beginning of Jesus daring us to be his disciples, Mark records, “Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked them, “Who do people say I am?” They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Christ.” (Mark 8:27-29)
In his characteristically bold manor, Peter jumped forward and answered Jesus’ question for all the disciples who were there. He demonstrated that he understood who Jesus was and confessed him as the Christ. Though he didn’t fully understand what it meant for Jesus to be the Christ, Peter placed his faith in Jesus none-the-less. Though he had recently seen crowds of people turn away from Jesus and stop following him, Peter was the one who stated, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Though they had seen some of the more sever persecution that Jesus had lately faced, Peter still dared to be a disciple of Christ!
Well, this is what the Lord Jesus would have each and every one of us do. He would have us dare to be his disciples who boldly and proudly confess his name. He would have us confess our faith in him before our friends and family; before our neighbors and co-workers. In fact, our Savior would have us boldly confess his name in any and every situation in our lives. But how often aren’t we simply afraid to do that very thing? Though here in church we boldly sing our Alleluias and confess the name of Jesus Christ our Savior, how often doesn’t it happen that as soon as we walk out those doors, our daring goes away? How often hasn’t it happened that we were afraid to share our faith with our friends because we are worried that they might ridicule us for what we believe? How often haven’t we walked away from a religious conversation because we were too afraid we might say the wrong thing? How often hasn’t our courage failed us so that rather than daring to stand out as Jesus’ disciples we seek to simply blend in with the rest of humanity and hope that no one will notice who whom we belong? Sadly, these are the things that happen far too often, and I know this from experience, because I too have let my courage waver and have not dared to be a disciple of Christ or to boldly confess his name when the situation warranted.
But even though we have all faced times when our courage has failed us and we have joined Peter in denying our Savior, our Savior still offers his forgiveness. Just as the Lord forgave Peter and publicly reinstated him as a disciple after his resurrection, so also when we turn to the Lord in repentance, he is the one who forgives us. He is the one who reinstates us as his disciples. He is the one who bolsters our courage through the Holy Spirit whom he has sent to live in our hearts, and he is the one whose love emboldens our daring so that we eagerly show ourselves as his disciples who are not only bold to confess his name, but who also boldly believe in his mission.
Now, in the movie, when Flick finally stuck his tongue to the pole, he was surprised that it stuck. In fact, when you watch the movie, you will hear a couple of boys say something like, “Wow! It actually worked.” Though Flick started his mission of tongue sticking with disbelieve, he quickly began to believe from experience that a warm wet tongue will quickly freeze to a flag pole. Well, in our text today, as Jesus dares us to be his disciples, he doesn’t ask us to blindly follow him in his mission. Rather, he begins to clearly and fully lay out his mission as the Christ to his daring disciples. Though he had spoken to them many times about how his mission was to suffer many things, to die on the cross, and then be raised to life on the third day, he had always spoken about these things in a veiled manner. However, as Mark tells us “Jesus then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. ‘Get behind me, Satan!’ he said. ‘You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.’” (Mark 8:31-33)
Though moments earlier, Peter had confessed Jesus as the Christ, and all the disciples had agreed with him, they still didn’t fully understand what Jesus mission was. Though they had been with Jesus for a little over two years, they still had the false idea that the Christ was to come and be an earthly Messiah. The Christ was to come and overthrow the Roman Government, establishing an earthly kingdom which he would reign over from Jerusalem. In the disciples minds, suffering and death simply didn’t fit, and that is why Peter took Jesus aside. He took Jesus aside to try to reason with him, show him, and convince him that there was no need for him to do these. But suffering at the hands of the religious leaders and dying for the sins of the world was the very reason that Jesus had come. This was the mission he was on and this is why he answered Peter as he did.
Sadly, this is how the unbelieving world views our Savior. Very few know who he truly was or understand or believe in his mission as we, his daring disciples do. In fact, if you were to ask the people of the world you would find out that many of them think that Jesus was nothing more than a prophet who conveyed a radically new message about loving each other. Others think of him as nothing more than a good man who lived a good live and gave us a good example to follow. But when it comes right down to it, if you asked people why Jesus willingly went to the cross to die, at best most people will think that Jesus was nothing more than a martyr who so believed his message of love that he was willing to show the greatest example of love by dying for his teaching.
It is because of this that Jesus is speaking so clearly about his mission as the Christ here on earth so that we, his daring disciples, might boldly believe that his mission on earth was to suffer for the sins of the world, endure the flames of hell in our place as he was rejected by God himself, pour out his blood to atone for the sins of the world, give up his life to pay the penalty that Almighty God had demanded for our sins, and then, when all hope seemed to be lost, rise again on the third day to assure us that he had completed his mission and that our sins have been paid for! This is why Jesus speaks so clearly about his mission so that we might boldly believe in it and what he accomplished for us. For when we are reminded of Christ’s willing sacrifice for us, we who are his daring disciples, are emboldened in our faith, strengthened in our courage, and ready to go forward, boldly following him while carrying our cross.
When flick stuck his tongue to the flag pole, he quickly discovered that his daring had given him a great number of hardships, as the movie showed, he remained stuck to that flag pole while all the other children ran inside. Well the same thing is true for you and me who willingly dare to be Christ’s disciples! As soon as we put on that robe of righteousness that marks us as one of his followers, we find ourselves facing any number of hardships as we boldly follow after Christ, carrying the cross that he has given us. This, in fact, is exactly what Jesus is talking about as he says, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.” (Mark 8:34, 35)
For the disciples this was the first time that Jesus clearly spoken about what was ahead for them. Though they had seen opposition as the religious leaders did everything they could to oppose him, more was to come. Though they had seen rejection as crowds of people stopped following Jesus, this was only a taste of what was to come in the future. For when they were out on their own, the disciples would face stoning, prison time, beatings, and hardships all for the name of Jesus whom they proclaimed.
As Christ’s daring disciples, we boldly follow him as we carry our own cross. We dare to follow him as disciples even though we know we may have to carry a cross of rejection. We dare to follow him even though we may face a cross of ridicule. We dare to follow him even though we may have to carry a cross of lost friends. We dare to follow him even though we might have to carry a cross of financial hardship because of what we believe. We dare to follow him even though we might have to carry a cross of being hated by our friends or even family because we have spoken up and said what was right when no one else would. We dare to follow him even though we may one day have to carry a cross of prison time because God’s Word has become hate speech. WE dare to follow him even though we may one day have to carry the cross of going underground because the world simply will not put up with the truth of God’s Word. We dare to follow Christ as his disciples no matter what type of cross we might one day have to carry, because we understand what Jesus meant when he said, “whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.” (Mark 8:35)
No matter what cross the Lord would have us carry it is designed to draw us closer to him. It is designed to make us place daring disciples who place our trust in him not relying on the things of this world, but looking to the Lord our God, trusting that one day he will deliver us from this life to our heavenly home.
Though Flick may have taken a foolish dare in the movie I’ve been describing, as Christians, we have not foolishly taken our Savior’s dare. Rather, we have boldly dared to be his disciples who willingly confess his name, believe his mission, and even carry the crosses which he, himself, has assigned to us.
Amen.
Pastor David M. Shilling
Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church -Le Sueur, MN
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Stand Firm in the Lord (Ephesians 6:10-20)
Dear friends in Christ.
Back in 1927, sculptor, Gutzon Borglum began carving the monument we all know today as Mt. Rushmore. Over a period of 14 years, he and many others blasted, excavated, chiseled and carved tons of rock to reveal the faces of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt. Though he could have chosen any of our countries previous presidents, these four were chosen because they commemorated the founding, growth, preservation, and development of the United States. In fact, of all the presidents of our history, these are undoubtedly the presidents who are best known for how they stood firm in their beliefs and convictions to help make this nation the great nation it is today. Well, in the same way that these four men stood firm in their beliefs and convictions when their country needed them most, so also, the Apostle Paul is calling on you and me as Christians to stand firm in our beliefs and convictions as we stand firm in the Lord! In fact, standing firm in the Lord is the very thing that Paul is calling on us to do as he writes in our text this morning when he says, “Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground” (Ephesians 6:10-14).
Now, when Paul wrote these words to the Christians in Ephesus, they weren’t undergoing persecutions from the Roman Government. They weren’t being forced from their homes and thrown to the lions because they believed in Jesus Christ as their Savior. Instead, they were facing perhaps an even greater test to their faith. For these Christians were living in the city whose chief goddess was the goddess Diana. This was the goddess whose image was supposed to have fallen from heaven in a spectacular show of power, dedicating the city to her, and now that image that had been set up in the most prominent temple in the city was worshiped and relied upon by the people living in the city of Ephesus. Though the image itself was probably nothing more than a meteorite that had struck the ground in Ephesus, the people there were fanatical followers of Diana. You might remember the riot that broke out because quite a number of Ephesians had come to faith in the Savior that Paul was preaching. You might remember how Demetrius, the Silversmith, and a whole crowd of people shouted for two hours, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians.” It was because of all of this that Paul was urging the Ephesians to arm themselves against the forces of evil so that they might stand firm in the Lord, for Paul knew that their fight was against satan and all his evil angels. Their fight was against satan and his attempts to lead the believers away from the Lord and back into the worship of the goddess Diana. Their struggle was against all those who sought to discredit the Christians faith, oppress its message, and nullify the power of the Savior.
Well, things are no different two thousand years later. For we are still struggling against the very things the Ephesians struggled against as Paul was writing to them. Though we may not have a temple to the goddess Diana in our back yards, our enemy, the devil, is constantly working to lead us astray. He is looking for any opportunity he might find to lead us away from our Savior. That is why Paul is calling on us to stand firm in the Lord and arm ourselves against the forces of evil, because as Christians our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against a spiritual enemy that we cannot see. Our battle is against satan and all his evil angels who are constantly looking to lead us into sin. Though they might not sit on our shoulders as depicted in cartoons, they are constantly whispering in our ears. They are continuously looking to make us doubt what the Lord says in his word. They are regularly making us feel that we are too busy to bother reading the Bible, and then they assure us that we don’t really need to because we already know it.
Our battle is against our sin filled world, which is constantly flaunting its evil ways in front of our eyes. Though we may not even realize it, we are being bombarded with heathen ideas and opinions whenever we watch TV. Even if our favorite shows come to us TV’s yesteryear, we cannot escape those convictions. For through television programs and commercials we are being convinced that we need more and more things in order to be happy. Through television programs, commercials, and even the news we are being told, assured, and even manipulated into believing that living an alternate lifestyle is ok. We are being assured that you don’t really have to be married before you can enjoy God’s gift of sex. We are being shown that living together before marriage has absolutely no consequences. We are becoming convinced that divorce is something so common that it no longer has detrimental effects on children or families. And on top of all that, we are being led to believe that same sex marriages need to be okayed in the country because there is no reason to keep two people who love each other separated from each other.
Our battle is against our own sinful nature, which seeks to lead us back into our most favorite sins. This is the part of us that want’s nothing to do with the Lord our God but everything to do with the world. This is the part of us that longs to believe that there is no hell and no punishment for sins. This is the part of us that eagerly listens whenever one of satan’s evil angels whispers in our ears. This is the part that sits up and takes notice when our a hint of flesh, or a pair of breasts, or even a full blown sex scene are revealed at the movie house, or even across our own TV sets. Yes, it is our own sinful nature that is constantly working to make us waiver in our faith, fall away from the Lord, and be lost to him forever. And this is why Paul is calling on us to stand firm in the Lord by arming ourselves against the forces of evil. This is why he is calling on us to stand firm in the Lord wielding the weapons of our God.
Yes, it is true! Our God does not leave us defenseless in the fight against our enemies. Rather he provides every weapon we could ever need so that we might stand firm in the Lord our God. This, in fact, is what Paul is describing when he writes: “Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.” (Ephesians 6:13-18).
These are the weapons the Lord has issued us so that we might stand firm in him, and these are the weapons he gives us in his word. For it is in his Word that we learn about our Savior and all that he has done for us. It is in his Word that we are reminded how Jesus stormed the fortress of the evil one in an apparent suicide mission. In his Word we are reminded how it seemed that satan had won when he impaled Jesus’ hands and feet to the wood of the cross. In his Word we are reminded of the agony that Jesus faced as he cried out, “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?” But at the same time we are reminded of the victory that Jesus won as he cried out, “It is finished!” We are reminded of Jesus’ victory march through the heart of hell! We are reminded of his triumphant resurrection from the dead, which now assures us that all of our sins have been forgiven. Yes, every sin we have ever committed was forgiven by Jesus who died and rose again. Every sin that our sinful nature has ever led us into as been washed clean! Every sin that satan’s angels have ever enticed us into has been washed away! Every sin that the world as encouraged us in has been removed from our records, and now that we have been made clean by Jesus blood, we have the ability to take up the weapons our Lord had given us so that we might stand firm in him.
For now that we are redeemed children of God, it is our Lord himself who has buckled around us the belt of truth and attached the breastplate of righteousness. It is the Lord who has fitted our feet with the readiness of the gospel and given us the shield of faith. It is the Lord who has placed on our heads the helmet of salvation and placed in our hands the sword of the spirit. He is the one who has given us the battle cry of prayer and the armor of his word. Now, as his children, we stand firm in him wielding the weapons the Lord has given us. For it is through these weapons found only in his word that we have the power to defend ourselves against the attacks of our enemies. Through these weapons we have the ability to shield ourselves against the temptations the devil, the world, and even our own sinful nature hurl at us. With these weapons we have the power to defeat satan on his own ground so that we might continue to stand firm in the Lord. So take your position in the Lord’s army and stand firm in the Lord wielding the weapons he has given you. Stand beside your fellow Christians in the strength that the Lord has given you. Stand confidently knowing that even if your enemy should ever get the better of you and lead you back into sin, you still have the lifeline of forgiveness that Jesus has provided for you. For it is through this forgiveness that we are raised back to our feet when we fall, we are rearmed for the Lord, and we are able to stand firm in him our Lord and our God.
In many ways, standing firm, is the very thing that the four men featured on Mt. Rushmore are best remembered for. As Christians, our goal is the same as we seek to stand firm in the Lord. May the Lord bless us as we do just that, stand firm in him, armed against the forces of evil and wielding the weapons of our God.
Amen.
Pastor David M. Shilling
Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church -Le Sueur, MN
Back in 1927, sculptor, Gutzon Borglum began carving the monument we all know today as Mt. Rushmore. Over a period of 14 years, he and many others blasted, excavated, chiseled and carved tons of rock to reveal the faces of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt. Though he could have chosen any of our countries previous presidents, these four were chosen because they commemorated the founding, growth, preservation, and development of the United States. In fact, of all the presidents of our history, these are undoubtedly the presidents who are best known for how they stood firm in their beliefs and convictions to help make this nation the great nation it is today. Well, in the same way that these four men stood firm in their beliefs and convictions when their country needed them most, so also, the Apostle Paul is calling on you and me as Christians to stand firm in our beliefs and convictions as we stand firm in the Lord! In fact, standing firm in the Lord is the very thing that Paul is calling on us to do as he writes in our text this morning when he says, “Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground” (Ephesians 6:10-14).
Now, when Paul wrote these words to the Christians in Ephesus, they weren’t undergoing persecutions from the Roman Government. They weren’t being forced from their homes and thrown to the lions because they believed in Jesus Christ as their Savior. Instead, they were facing perhaps an even greater test to their faith. For these Christians were living in the city whose chief goddess was the goddess Diana. This was the goddess whose image was supposed to have fallen from heaven in a spectacular show of power, dedicating the city to her, and now that image that had been set up in the most prominent temple in the city was worshiped and relied upon by the people living in the city of Ephesus. Though the image itself was probably nothing more than a meteorite that had struck the ground in Ephesus, the people there were fanatical followers of Diana. You might remember the riot that broke out because quite a number of Ephesians had come to faith in the Savior that Paul was preaching. You might remember how Demetrius, the Silversmith, and a whole crowd of people shouted for two hours, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians.” It was because of all of this that Paul was urging the Ephesians to arm themselves against the forces of evil so that they might stand firm in the Lord, for Paul knew that their fight was against satan and all his evil angels. Their fight was against satan and his attempts to lead the believers away from the Lord and back into the worship of the goddess Diana. Their struggle was against all those who sought to discredit the Christians faith, oppress its message, and nullify the power of the Savior.
Well, things are no different two thousand years later. For we are still struggling against the very things the Ephesians struggled against as Paul was writing to them. Though we may not have a temple to the goddess Diana in our back yards, our enemy, the devil, is constantly working to lead us astray. He is looking for any opportunity he might find to lead us away from our Savior. That is why Paul is calling on us to stand firm in the Lord and arm ourselves against the forces of evil, because as Christians our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against a spiritual enemy that we cannot see. Our battle is against satan and all his evil angels who are constantly looking to lead us into sin. Though they might not sit on our shoulders as depicted in cartoons, they are constantly whispering in our ears. They are continuously looking to make us doubt what the Lord says in his word. They are regularly making us feel that we are too busy to bother reading the Bible, and then they assure us that we don’t really need to because we already know it.
Our battle is against our sin filled world, which is constantly flaunting its evil ways in front of our eyes. Though we may not even realize it, we are being bombarded with heathen ideas and opinions whenever we watch TV. Even if our favorite shows come to us TV’s yesteryear, we cannot escape those convictions. For through television programs and commercials we are being convinced that we need more and more things in order to be happy. Through television programs, commercials, and even the news we are being told, assured, and even manipulated into believing that living an alternate lifestyle is ok. We are being assured that you don’t really have to be married before you can enjoy God’s gift of sex. We are being shown that living together before marriage has absolutely no consequences. We are becoming convinced that divorce is something so common that it no longer has detrimental effects on children or families. And on top of all that, we are being led to believe that same sex marriages need to be okayed in the country because there is no reason to keep two people who love each other separated from each other.
Our battle is against our own sinful nature, which seeks to lead us back into our most favorite sins. This is the part of us that want’s nothing to do with the Lord our God but everything to do with the world. This is the part of us that longs to believe that there is no hell and no punishment for sins. This is the part of us that eagerly listens whenever one of satan’s evil angels whispers in our ears. This is the part that sits up and takes notice when our a hint of flesh, or a pair of breasts, or even a full blown sex scene are revealed at the movie house, or even across our own TV sets. Yes, it is our own sinful nature that is constantly working to make us waiver in our faith, fall away from the Lord, and be lost to him forever. And this is why Paul is calling on us to stand firm in the Lord by arming ourselves against the forces of evil. This is why he is calling on us to stand firm in the Lord wielding the weapons of our God.
Yes, it is true! Our God does not leave us defenseless in the fight against our enemies. Rather he provides every weapon we could ever need so that we might stand firm in the Lord our God. This, in fact, is what Paul is describing when he writes: “Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.” (Ephesians 6:13-18).
These are the weapons the Lord has issued us so that we might stand firm in him, and these are the weapons he gives us in his word. For it is in his Word that we learn about our Savior and all that he has done for us. It is in his Word that we are reminded how Jesus stormed the fortress of the evil one in an apparent suicide mission. In his Word we are reminded how it seemed that satan had won when he impaled Jesus’ hands and feet to the wood of the cross. In his Word we are reminded of the agony that Jesus faced as he cried out, “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?” But at the same time we are reminded of the victory that Jesus won as he cried out, “It is finished!” We are reminded of Jesus’ victory march through the heart of hell! We are reminded of his triumphant resurrection from the dead, which now assures us that all of our sins have been forgiven. Yes, every sin we have ever committed was forgiven by Jesus who died and rose again. Every sin that our sinful nature has ever led us into as been washed clean! Every sin that satan’s angels have ever enticed us into has been washed away! Every sin that the world as encouraged us in has been removed from our records, and now that we have been made clean by Jesus blood, we have the ability to take up the weapons our Lord had given us so that we might stand firm in him.
For now that we are redeemed children of God, it is our Lord himself who has buckled around us the belt of truth and attached the breastplate of righteousness. It is the Lord who has fitted our feet with the readiness of the gospel and given us the shield of faith. It is the Lord who has placed on our heads the helmet of salvation and placed in our hands the sword of the spirit. He is the one who has given us the battle cry of prayer and the armor of his word. Now, as his children, we stand firm in him wielding the weapons the Lord has given us. For it is through these weapons found only in his word that we have the power to defend ourselves against the attacks of our enemies. Through these weapons we have the ability to shield ourselves against the temptations the devil, the world, and even our own sinful nature hurl at us. With these weapons we have the power to defeat satan on his own ground so that we might continue to stand firm in the Lord. So take your position in the Lord’s army and stand firm in the Lord wielding the weapons he has given you. Stand beside your fellow Christians in the strength that the Lord has given you. Stand confidently knowing that even if your enemy should ever get the better of you and lead you back into sin, you still have the lifeline of forgiveness that Jesus has provided for you. For it is through this forgiveness that we are raised back to our feet when we fall, we are rearmed for the Lord, and we are able to stand firm in him our Lord and our God.
In many ways, standing firm, is the very thing that the four men featured on Mt. Rushmore are best remembered for. As Christians, our goal is the same as we seek to stand firm in the Lord. May the Lord bless us as we do just that, stand firm in him, armed against the forces of evil and wielding the weapons of our God.
Amen.
Pastor David M. Shilling
Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church -Le Sueur, MN
Sunday, September 13, 2009
What is the Foundation of your Faith? (Matthew 7:24-27)
Dear friends in Christ.
Over the past few weeks the Lord has delivered to us some very powerful, impactful, and important messages through his word. Roughly a month ago, we heard the Apostle Paul proclaiming to us the importance of regularly refreshing ourselves and renewing ourselves with God’s Word. On the last Sunday of August, we heard Jesus himself teaching us just how important it is for us to be regularly feasting on his flesh and blood through our worship and our reading and studying of his Word. Just last week it was Joshua who challenged each and every one of us to dedicate ourselves to the Lord by choosing to serve him with our lives as we follow his Word. Now, today, we will hear a message that will be no less powerful! For this morning it is Jesus himself, who is once again speaking to us and asking us a very poignant and personal question. It is Jesus who is asking us, “What is the foundation of your faith?” Though in some ways this may feel like a very personal question that simply should not be asked from a pulpit, when we get right down to it, it is Jesus, our Savior who is asking us what the foundation of our faith truly is. In short, he is asking us if our faith is founded on him, the Rock of our salvation, or if our faith is founded on the constantly shifting sands of public opinion and worldly ideas. In fact, just listen to the indirect question Jesus poses as he speaks to us today: “Everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” (Matthew 7:24-27)
What more powerful words could there be than these words that Jesus is speaking to us! For in just a few simple sentences, our Lord lays everything on the line and tells us that our faith will either be founded on him as the Rock of our salvation, or it will be founded on the sand of human ideas and worldly philosophies! So, what is the foundation of your faith? Well, by the simple fact that you are here today, you are showing that your faith is founded on Christ, your Rock and your Redeemer! By the simple fact that you are here today you are demonstrating that you have believed the message of salvation through faith in Jesus, and you are putting your faith into action by seeking to strengthen the bond between the spiritual house of your faith and the foundation of Jesus Christ your Savior. By your presence here, you are revealing to your spouse, your children, your family, your neighbors, and every one else who is here today, just how important it is for you to have your faith grounded and built up on the foundation of Jesus Christ, your Savior. In fact, by bringing your children to Sunday School this morning and gathering together for worship, especially on this Christian Education Sunday, you are clearly revealing just how important it is for you to maintain and strengthen the connection between yourself and your Savior, which, if you think about it, is exactly what Christian Education is all about!
In fact, if you think about it, Christian Education is all about building a spiritual house of faith upon the foundation of Jesus Christ and maintaining the very connection of that faith which began on the day that we were baptized! For it was on the day of our baptism that our Christian Education officially began as the Holy Spirit entered our hearts and built our faith upon the foundation of Jesus Christ our Rock and our Redeemer! Though it was on that day when our Christian Education officially began, it has not yet come to an end! Rather, it has continued on to this very day. Though we may not remember it all that well, our Christian Education continued as our parents worked to keep our faith connected to the Rock of our Salvation as they sang us songs like, I Am Jesus’ Little Lamb, as they told us Bible Stories of how our God cares for us, loves us and saved us. They continued our education as they taught us to pray before meal time and at bed time. Then, as we grew, they continued our education as they sent us off to Sunday School and vacation Bible School where we continued to learn the precious truths of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. As we grew and reached the age of Confirmation classes, we had the opportunity to delve deeper into the Living Water of the Word and grow in the faith which the Holy Spirit founded on the Rock of Christ our Savior. But even though the day of Confirmation often marks the last day of formal Christian Education, we never graduate from our need to strengthen the connection between the spiritual house of our faith and the solid foundation of Christ our Rock!
Yet sadly, so often it happens that even the strongest of Christians grow tired and weary in the important work of maintaining the connection between the spiritual house of their faith and the solid foundation of Christ their Savior. Sadly, even the strongest of Christians sometimes feel that once they have established their homes on the solid foundation of God’s Word they are free to forget about the work of maintaining and strengthening their connection to that foundation. Though we have been given the very tools we need, how often don’t we simply fail to mix the mortar of God’s Word and apply it when cracks begin to form in the walls of our faith? How often don’t we simply ignore the home improvement courses of worship and Bible Study which teach us first hand how to successfully care for the connection between our faith and its foundation? How often doesn’t it happen that we weaken our own faith by staying away from the Hardware store of Church simply because our personality doesn’t mesh with the presenting pastor, or because the pastor preached a message we didn’t particularly like, or because he preached to forcefully against a specific sin that we didn’t want to be reminded of? How often doesn’t it happen that we claim to know what the Word of God says, yet, never really bother to read it or learn it? Or how often doesn’t it happen that we confess that we believe in Jesus as the Rock and the foundation of our faith while at the same time allowing everything in our lives to confess that our beliefs actually lie else where?
When that happens, we are in danger of allowing the connection between our faith and the solid Rock of Christ to crumble away to nothing more than shifting sand. We are in danger because whether we realize it or not, we have begun to spend too much time at the beach of this world, building philosophical castles in the sand, and scoring numerous points in the volley ball game of the worlds ideas. When things like this begin to happen, we no longer feel the need to climb back up on to the solid foundation of Christ our Rock or even to work at maintaining our connection to him. Rather, as we grow accustomed to trudging through the shifting sands of popular opinion and human ideas, we start to feel comforted by its warmth as it covers our feet and seems to anchor us in place. We start to enjoy the time we spend lying out in the sun of our own personal truth, and before we know it, we are ready to move out of the homes built so inconveniently high up on that Rock of Christ, and we are ready to set up our own little shacks right there on the sandy beach of the world.
Yet, what does our Savior have to say about this? He says, “Everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” (Matthew 7:24-27)
So what is the foundation of your faith? Is it the Rock of Christ our Savior? Or is it the shifting sands of human ideas? Have you built the spiritual house of your faith down on the beach where the tides roll in and sweep the sands away? Or have you built it high in the hills securely founded on the unchanging Word of your God? I pray that your foundation is the Rock of Christ our Savior. I pray that you have heard his Words and are ready to put them in to action, for when you put his words into action you are exactly like the wise man who built his home on the rock. When our faith is securely founded on the Rock of Christ, though there may be times when the rain of temptation beats down upon us, the house of our faith will not fail. Though there may be times when the streams of hardship and tribulation rise against us, our faith will not be washed away. Though there may be times when the winds of death blow against us and finally snuff out the flame of our life, we will still continue to sand firm! We will continue to stand firm because when our faith is founded on the Rock of Christ our Savior, we know that there is nothing in all creation that will ever separate us from his love. Even death itself cannot ever separate us from our Savior, because all that death can do is completely unite us our Savior as we move from this life to our eternal life by his side forever. This is why it is so important for us to build our faith upon the foundation of Jesus Christ our Rock and our Redeemer.
So with all this in mind, go out now and continue in your Christian Education. Make the most of every opportunity you have been given to gather for worship and Sunday school, Confirmation class and Bible study. If it is with in your means, seriously consider sending your children to Bell Plaine or to Saint Peter so that they might have the opportunity to sit at Jesus’ feet each and every day in Bible History. If it is within your means, seriously consider sending your children to MVL so that they might continue to grow in their faith and through the daily study of God’s Word they might have the opportunity to strengthen the bond between the house of their faith and the Rock of its foundation. Go out now, and live your lives as a confession of your faith, so that what you believe is clearly affirmed in everything that you say and do. And in all things, give thanks and praise as you seek to serve the Lord in whatever way is pleasing in his sight.
How incredible for us to hear yet another powerful message from Jesus Christ, our Savior! For today, we have once again been reminded just how important it is for us to dedicate ourselves to the Lord, to feast on the flesh and blood of our Savior, and to renew and refresh ourselves with the Word of God. But even more than that, today Jesus himself has revealed to us just how important it is for us to build our faith on him, the Rock and the foundation of our faith and our salvation. Continue to build your faith on him.
Amen.
Pastor David M. Shilling
Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church -Le Sueur, MN
Over the past few weeks the Lord has delivered to us some very powerful, impactful, and important messages through his word. Roughly a month ago, we heard the Apostle Paul proclaiming to us the importance of regularly refreshing ourselves and renewing ourselves with God’s Word. On the last Sunday of August, we heard Jesus himself teaching us just how important it is for us to be regularly feasting on his flesh and blood through our worship and our reading and studying of his Word. Just last week it was Joshua who challenged each and every one of us to dedicate ourselves to the Lord by choosing to serve him with our lives as we follow his Word. Now, today, we will hear a message that will be no less powerful! For this morning it is Jesus himself, who is once again speaking to us and asking us a very poignant and personal question. It is Jesus who is asking us, “What is the foundation of your faith?” Though in some ways this may feel like a very personal question that simply should not be asked from a pulpit, when we get right down to it, it is Jesus, our Savior who is asking us what the foundation of our faith truly is. In short, he is asking us if our faith is founded on him, the Rock of our salvation, or if our faith is founded on the constantly shifting sands of public opinion and worldly ideas. In fact, just listen to the indirect question Jesus poses as he speaks to us today: “Everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” (Matthew 7:24-27)
What more powerful words could there be than these words that Jesus is speaking to us! For in just a few simple sentences, our Lord lays everything on the line and tells us that our faith will either be founded on him as the Rock of our salvation, or it will be founded on the sand of human ideas and worldly philosophies! So, what is the foundation of your faith? Well, by the simple fact that you are here today, you are showing that your faith is founded on Christ, your Rock and your Redeemer! By the simple fact that you are here today you are demonstrating that you have believed the message of salvation through faith in Jesus, and you are putting your faith into action by seeking to strengthen the bond between the spiritual house of your faith and the foundation of Jesus Christ your Savior. By your presence here, you are revealing to your spouse, your children, your family, your neighbors, and every one else who is here today, just how important it is for you to have your faith grounded and built up on the foundation of Jesus Christ, your Savior. In fact, by bringing your children to Sunday School this morning and gathering together for worship, especially on this Christian Education Sunday, you are clearly revealing just how important it is for you to maintain and strengthen the connection between yourself and your Savior, which, if you think about it, is exactly what Christian Education is all about!
In fact, if you think about it, Christian Education is all about building a spiritual house of faith upon the foundation of Jesus Christ and maintaining the very connection of that faith which began on the day that we were baptized! For it was on the day of our baptism that our Christian Education officially began as the Holy Spirit entered our hearts and built our faith upon the foundation of Jesus Christ our Rock and our Redeemer! Though it was on that day when our Christian Education officially began, it has not yet come to an end! Rather, it has continued on to this very day. Though we may not remember it all that well, our Christian Education continued as our parents worked to keep our faith connected to the Rock of our Salvation as they sang us songs like, I Am Jesus’ Little Lamb, as they told us Bible Stories of how our God cares for us, loves us and saved us. They continued our education as they taught us to pray before meal time and at bed time. Then, as we grew, they continued our education as they sent us off to Sunday School and vacation Bible School where we continued to learn the precious truths of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. As we grew and reached the age of Confirmation classes, we had the opportunity to delve deeper into the Living Water of the Word and grow in the faith which the Holy Spirit founded on the Rock of Christ our Savior. But even though the day of Confirmation often marks the last day of formal Christian Education, we never graduate from our need to strengthen the connection between the spiritual house of our faith and the solid foundation of Christ our Rock!
Yet sadly, so often it happens that even the strongest of Christians grow tired and weary in the important work of maintaining the connection between the spiritual house of their faith and the solid foundation of Christ their Savior. Sadly, even the strongest of Christians sometimes feel that once they have established their homes on the solid foundation of God’s Word they are free to forget about the work of maintaining and strengthening their connection to that foundation. Though we have been given the very tools we need, how often don’t we simply fail to mix the mortar of God’s Word and apply it when cracks begin to form in the walls of our faith? How often don’t we simply ignore the home improvement courses of worship and Bible Study which teach us first hand how to successfully care for the connection between our faith and its foundation? How often doesn’t it happen that we weaken our own faith by staying away from the Hardware store of Church simply because our personality doesn’t mesh with the presenting pastor, or because the pastor preached a message we didn’t particularly like, or because he preached to forcefully against a specific sin that we didn’t want to be reminded of? How often doesn’t it happen that we claim to know what the Word of God says, yet, never really bother to read it or learn it? Or how often doesn’t it happen that we confess that we believe in Jesus as the Rock and the foundation of our faith while at the same time allowing everything in our lives to confess that our beliefs actually lie else where?
When that happens, we are in danger of allowing the connection between our faith and the solid Rock of Christ to crumble away to nothing more than shifting sand. We are in danger because whether we realize it or not, we have begun to spend too much time at the beach of this world, building philosophical castles in the sand, and scoring numerous points in the volley ball game of the worlds ideas. When things like this begin to happen, we no longer feel the need to climb back up on to the solid foundation of Christ our Rock or even to work at maintaining our connection to him. Rather, as we grow accustomed to trudging through the shifting sands of popular opinion and human ideas, we start to feel comforted by its warmth as it covers our feet and seems to anchor us in place. We start to enjoy the time we spend lying out in the sun of our own personal truth, and before we know it, we are ready to move out of the homes built so inconveniently high up on that Rock of Christ, and we are ready to set up our own little shacks right there on the sandy beach of the world.
Yet, what does our Savior have to say about this? He says, “Everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” (Matthew 7:24-27)
So what is the foundation of your faith? Is it the Rock of Christ our Savior? Or is it the shifting sands of human ideas? Have you built the spiritual house of your faith down on the beach where the tides roll in and sweep the sands away? Or have you built it high in the hills securely founded on the unchanging Word of your God? I pray that your foundation is the Rock of Christ our Savior. I pray that you have heard his Words and are ready to put them in to action, for when you put his words into action you are exactly like the wise man who built his home on the rock. When our faith is securely founded on the Rock of Christ, though there may be times when the rain of temptation beats down upon us, the house of our faith will not fail. Though there may be times when the streams of hardship and tribulation rise against us, our faith will not be washed away. Though there may be times when the winds of death blow against us and finally snuff out the flame of our life, we will still continue to sand firm! We will continue to stand firm because when our faith is founded on the Rock of Christ our Savior, we know that there is nothing in all creation that will ever separate us from his love. Even death itself cannot ever separate us from our Savior, because all that death can do is completely unite us our Savior as we move from this life to our eternal life by his side forever. This is why it is so important for us to build our faith upon the foundation of Jesus Christ our Rock and our Redeemer.
So with all this in mind, go out now and continue in your Christian Education. Make the most of every opportunity you have been given to gather for worship and Sunday school, Confirmation class and Bible study. If it is with in your means, seriously consider sending your children to Bell Plaine or to Saint Peter so that they might have the opportunity to sit at Jesus’ feet each and every day in Bible History. If it is within your means, seriously consider sending your children to MVL so that they might continue to grow in their faith and through the daily study of God’s Word they might have the opportunity to strengthen the bond between the house of their faith and the Rock of its foundation. Go out now, and live your lives as a confession of your faith, so that what you believe is clearly affirmed in everything that you say and do. And in all things, give thanks and praise as you seek to serve the Lord in whatever way is pleasing in his sight.
How incredible for us to hear yet another powerful message from Jesus Christ, our Savior! For today, we have once again been reminded just how important it is for us to dedicate ourselves to the Lord, to feast on the flesh and blood of our Savior, and to renew and refresh ourselves with the Word of God. But even more than that, today Jesus himself has revealed to us just how important it is for us to build our faith on him, the Rock and the foundation of our faith and our salvation. Continue to build your faith on him.
Amen.
Pastor David M. Shilling
Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church -Le Sueur, MN
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Dedicate Yourselves to the Lord (Joshua 24:1-2, 14-18
Dear friends in Christ.
Over the past few weeks I’ve been reading a book entitled The Essential 55. In this book educator, Ron Clark, lists and explains a collection of 55 amazingly effective rules that he has used to become an extraordinary teacher. Though when I first began reading this book I thought it might be something to help me become a better teacher of Bible Studies and confirmation class, as I read, I was amazed at this man’s dedication to his students. Throughout his book, Mr. Clark tells story after story of how his goal in teaching is to care for the children in his classroom, give them a safe environment in which to learn, and help them to grow not only as students but in every aspect of life. He tells stories of how he will do anything he can to get and keep the students attention so that he can be sure that they are learning, and because of his dedication to his students, his students love him and cherish him because of what he has done for them, and because of his dedication to them, they choose to follow his rules because they too are dedicated to him. Well, as Christians, we are, in many ways, the class to which the Lord our God is dedicated. The Lord is the one who has done amazingly incredible things to get and to keep our attention, and today as we study the text before us, we will see his amazing dedication to us. For as we hear Joshua speaking to the Israelites, we will be reminded of all that the Lord has done for us, and as we are reminded of that, we will be moved to choose to serve the Lord with our lives as we seek to dedicate ourselves to the Lord
As our text opens today, this is exactly what Joshua was encouraging the Israelites to do. He was reminding them of all that the Lord had done for them throughout their lives and calling on them to dedicate themselves to the Lord as they entered a new aspect of their lives! For the truth is, the Israelites were at a turning point. They had claimed the Land the Lord had given them, they had divided it into the shares of their inheritance, and they had begun dwelling in the portions of the land they had conquered. 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 and as our text tells us: “He summoned the elders, leaders, judges and officials of Israel, and they presented themselves before God.” (Joshua 24:1)
Now, as all the elders and officials of Israel stood before him, Joshua began to remind them how it was the Lord who took Abraham from a foreign land, settling him in the land of Canaan, making him prosperous, and promising one day to give the land to his children. It was the Lord who brought forth Isaac and Jacob, making Abraham even more prosperous and giving to those sons the same promise he gave to their father. It was the Lord who went with Jacob as he and his family went down to Egypt, and it was the Lord who delivered his people from that land of slavery with a mighty hand and outstretched arm. It was the Lord who provided food and water, clothing and shoes for his people as they traveled through the wilderness for those forty years. It was the Lord who drove out the nations before the Israelites and gave them the land they were living in. And now, because of all the great things the Lord had done for them, Joshua calls on his people 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 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, as we will once again be starting next Sunday. 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, video store, and a good number of restaurants to choose from. 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).
With these words, Joshua was calling on the Israelites to make a choice. He was calling on them to choose the service of the Lord or to choose the service of idols. For Joshua, himself, the choice was obvious. As he had faithfully served the Lord all the days of his life, he planned to continue doing so until his dying day. However, when it came to the Israelites, their history spoke of a different story. Their history told the story of a people who were constantly turning away from the living God so that they might run after gods made of metal and stone. They were constantly ignoring the voice of the true God so that they might listen to the lies of false gods. Yet, even though this was their history, as Joshua stood before them, calling on them to make a choice between dedication and desecration, to their credit the Israelites chose dedication. For our text tells us, they replied: “Far be it from us to forsake the LORD to serve other gods! It was the LORD our God himself who brought us and our fathers up out of Egypt, from that land of slavery, and performed those great signs before our eyes. He protected us on our entire journey and among all the nations through which we traveled. And the LORD drove out before us all the nations, including the Amorites, who lived in the land. We too will serve the LORD, because he is our God.” (Joshua 24:16-18).
This is the choice Joshua has placed before us today. He has placed before us the choice of dedicating our lives to the Lord’s service or dedicating our lives to any god other than the Lord. It’s not that he is asking us to make a decision for Christ, or even accept Jesus into our hearts. Rather, he is speaking to us as ChristiansChristians who have been called to faith by the working of the Holy Spirit in our hearts through the Word of Godand he is encouraging us to dedicate our lives to the Lord’s service. Now, this by no means, means that we have to all run out and become pastors, teachers, or even missionaries in the Lord’s kingdom! But what it does mean is that we spend our lives serving the Lord in the station of life into which he has placed us. In fact, this is the very point Luther made as he included his Table of Duties in the Catechism. He writes, Are you a father or mother? Then bring your children up in the training and admonition of the Lord! Are you a son or daughter? Then show your parents honor and respect. Are you an employer? Then treat your workers fairly out of love for the Lord. Are you an employee? Then work for you boss as if you were working for the Lord. Are you a Christian? Then continue reading and studying the Word of God so that your faith might be built up in him. Continue to pray to the Lord on the regular basis, speaking to him with prayers and praises. This is the Lord’s will for our lives, and this is the road that leads, by faith, to eternal life.
So then let me call on each of you today as Joshua called on the Israelites some 30 centuries ago: “Now fear the LORD and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods of anger, greed, frustration, and malice that you have carried around with you all your lives. Throw away the gods of discontent, gossip, selfishness, and pride that you keep hidden in your heart of hearts, 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 of self and pleasure, or the gods of the Americans, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD. I pray that you will heed this call and dedicate yourselves to the Lord, seeking to serve him with every aspect of your lives!
Though dedication to the Lord is not a road that is easy to take, it is the road we as Christians do seek to travel. Though it is filled with troubles, tribulations, hardships, and heart aches. But even though it is filled with all of those, it is the road that leads to the eternal joys and bliss of eternal life through Jesus Christ our Savior. That is the very thing Mr. Ron Clark found out about teaching, and yet, because he has dedicated himself to that field, there are many students who have grown under his care. We too have grown under the dedicated care of our heavenly Father who has blessed us in so many ways. May we always remember what he has done for us and chose to serve him with our lives as we now dedicate ourselves to the Lord our God.
Amen.
Pastor David M. Shilling
Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church -Le Sueur, MN
Over the past few weeks I’ve been reading a book entitled The Essential 55. In this book educator, Ron Clark, lists and explains a collection of 55 amazingly effective rules that he has used to become an extraordinary teacher. Though when I first began reading this book I thought it might be something to help me become a better teacher of Bible Studies and confirmation class, as I read, I was amazed at this man’s dedication to his students. Throughout his book, Mr. Clark tells story after story of how his goal in teaching is to care for the children in his classroom, give them a safe environment in which to learn, and help them to grow not only as students but in every aspect of life. He tells stories of how he will do anything he can to get and keep the students attention so that he can be sure that they are learning, and because of his dedication to his students, his students love him and cherish him because of what he has done for them, and because of his dedication to them, they choose to follow his rules because they too are dedicated to him. Well, as Christians, we are, in many ways, the class to which the Lord our God is dedicated. The Lord is the one who has done amazingly incredible things to get and to keep our attention, and today as we study the text before us, we will see his amazing dedication to us. For as we hear Joshua speaking to the Israelites, we will be reminded of all that the Lord has done for us, and as we are reminded of that, we will be moved to choose to serve the Lord with our lives as we seek to dedicate ourselves to the Lord
As our text opens today, this is exactly what Joshua was encouraging the Israelites to do. He was reminding them of all that the Lord had done for them throughout their lives and calling on them to dedicate themselves to the Lord as they entered a new aspect of their lives! For the truth is, the Israelites were at a turning point. They had claimed the Land the Lord had given them, they had divided it into the shares of their inheritance, and they had begun dwelling in the portions of the land they had conquered. 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 and as our text tells us: “He summoned the elders, leaders, judges and officials of Israel, and they presented themselves before God.” (Joshua 24:1)
Now, as all the elders and officials of Israel stood before him, Joshua began to remind them how it was the Lord who took Abraham from a foreign land, settling him in the land of Canaan, making him prosperous, and promising one day to give the land to his children. It was the Lord who brought forth Isaac and Jacob, making Abraham even more prosperous and giving to those sons the same promise he gave to their father. It was the Lord who went with Jacob as he and his family went down to Egypt, and it was the Lord who delivered his people from that land of slavery with a mighty hand and outstretched arm. It was the Lord who provided food and water, clothing and shoes for his people as they traveled through the wilderness for those forty years. It was the Lord who drove out the nations before the Israelites and gave them the land they were living in. And now, because of all the great things the Lord had done for them, Joshua calls on his people 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 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, as we will once again be starting next Sunday. 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, video store, and a good number of restaurants to choose from. 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).
With these words, Joshua was calling on the Israelites to make a choice. He was calling on them to choose the service of the Lord or to choose the service of idols. For Joshua, himself, the choice was obvious. As he had faithfully served the Lord all the days of his life, he planned to continue doing so until his dying day. However, when it came to the Israelites, their history spoke of a different story. Their history told the story of a people who were constantly turning away from the living God so that they might run after gods made of metal and stone. They were constantly ignoring the voice of the true God so that they might listen to the lies of false gods. Yet, even though this was their history, as Joshua stood before them, calling on them to make a choice between dedication and desecration, to their credit the Israelites chose dedication. For our text tells us, they replied: “Far be it from us to forsake the LORD to serve other gods! It was the LORD our God himself who brought us and our fathers up out of Egypt, from that land of slavery, and performed those great signs before our eyes. He protected us on our entire journey and among all the nations through which we traveled. And the LORD drove out before us all the nations, including the Amorites, who lived in the land. We too will serve the LORD, because he is our God.” (Joshua 24:16-18).
This is the choice Joshua has placed before us today. He has placed before us the choice of dedicating our lives to the Lord’s service or dedicating our lives to any god other than the Lord. It’s not that he is asking us to make a decision for Christ, or even accept Jesus into our hearts. Rather, he is speaking to us as ChristiansChristians who have been called to faith by the working of the Holy Spirit in our hearts through the Word of Godand he is encouraging us to dedicate our lives to the Lord’s service. Now, this by no means, means that we have to all run out and become pastors, teachers, or even missionaries in the Lord’s kingdom! But what it does mean is that we spend our lives serving the Lord in the station of life into which he has placed us. In fact, this is the very point Luther made as he included his Table of Duties in the Catechism. He writes, Are you a father or mother? Then bring your children up in the training and admonition of the Lord! Are you a son or daughter? Then show your parents honor and respect. Are you an employer? Then treat your workers fairly out of love for the Lord. Are you an employee? Then work for you boss as if you were working for the Lord. Are you a Christian? Then continue reading and studying the Word of God so that your faith might be built up in him. Continue to pray to the Lord on the regular basis, speaking to him with prayers and praises. This is the Lord’s will for our lives, and this is the road that leads, by faith, to eternal life.
So then let me call on each of you today as Joshua called on the Israelites some 30 centuries ago: “Now fear the LORD and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods of anger, greed, frustration, and malice that you have carried around with you all your lives. Throw away the gods of discontent, gossip, selfishness, and pride that you keep hidden in your heart of hearts, 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 of self and pleasure, or the gods of the Americans, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD. I pray that you will heed this call and dedicate yourselves to the Lord, seeking to serve him with every aspect of your lives!
Though dedication to the Lord is not a road that is easy to take, it is the road we as Christians do seek to travel. Though it is filled with troubles, tribulations, hardships, and heart aches. But even though it is filled with all of those, it is the road that leads to the eternal joys and bliss of eternal life through Jesus Christ our Savior. That is the very thing Mr. Ron Clark found out about teaching, and yet, because he has dedicated himself to that field, there are many students who have grown under his care. We too have grown under the dedicated care of our heavenly Father who has blessed us in so many ways. May we always remember what he has done for us and chose to serve him with our lives as we now dedicate ourselves to the Lord our God.
Amen.
Pastor David M. Shilling
Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church -Le Sueur, MN
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