Jesus Is Our Compassionate High Priest

Hebrews 4:14-16 We confess that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior.  We confess that there is one God in three persons.  We confess that the Bible is the Word of God and that all it teaches is true.  We confess that that this world is not all there is, that Jesus will come again, and that death is not the end.

But the challenge for all of us comes in holding fast to that confession of faith throughout our life so that it is not mere words but the shape of our life until we go to meet the Lord. 

And so we need the encouragement we have from God’s Word tonight that in Jesus Christ we have a compassionate high priest who knows our weaknesses and understands our struggles and has done everything necessary so that we will hold fast to our confession to the end and be saved.  The Bible says:

Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.

            We know so many people who have begun their life in faith and ended it in unbelief.  Several weeks ago we heard Jesus tell us the Parable of the Sower and how the devil works to steal God’s Word from our hearts --and how we fail to put down deep roots of faith --and how we focus on the wrong things.

When we have these kinds of spiritual enemies inside of us and outside of us we can’t help but wonder and worry how we will ever be able to endure in faith and be saved.

And that is what’s necessary!  Jesus says that it is only the one who endures to the end who will be saved. Paul says that there are many who run the race and never finish or are disqualified along the way.

When we look around at how many lose their faith along the way to heaven --and when we understand how great our enemies are who would want us to be counted among them--how can we be confident that we will remain steadfast?

The Bible says that we have a great high priest who is the very Son of God.  Not just a wise teacher or kind pastor-- but the very Son of God who has laid down his life for us in the cross to restore us to God—a great high priest of power and might and glory and wisdom and power who is right now doing everything in this power to keep us in faith and bring us to our heavenly home.

The death and resurrection and ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ is our assurance that Jesus lives for no other purpose than to make sure we hold fast to our confession all our days and enter into eternal life.

And our great comfort, especially when we consider our frail we are and how often we fall along the way, is that this same mighty, glorious, powerful, wise King is compassionate towards us and will not give up on us along the way.  The Bible says:

We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.

            The great mystery and wonder of the incarnation is that God himself, in the second Person of the Holy Trinity took upon himself our flesh in the womb of his blessed Mother and became one of us in every possible way except for our sin.

When the Holy Spirit overshadowed the Virgin Mary, one cell became two cells, and two cells become four and four became eight and eight became sixteen and so it went as a baby began to grow and develop within her in exactly the same way as every other baby. 

When Jesus was born he was as helpless as every other baby and his mother cared for him as our mother cared for us.  He had to learn how to eat with utensils and how to crawl and walk and run and write his ABC’s.  He was happy and sad, tired and lonely, excited and bored like every one of us.

Jesus, our great high priest knows just exactly what it means to be human and what it means to face our struggles and live our life because he was one of us including facing temptation.

            On the first Sunday in Lent we heard about the temptation of our Lord, that he was tempted in every way just as we are.  From our very parents down to this moment and the people sitting in these pews every one of us have faced temptations and fallen to those temptation again and again.  Every person in the human family save one—Jesus Christ.

He knows about our temptation and what that means for us not just because he is omniscient, but because he faced them as well—with ne important difference:  where we have all fallen, he did not.  He took his stand upon the Word of God and remained faithful and his faithfulness is not only our example, it is our righteousness before God.

His faithfulness in times of temptation is given to us as a gift in place of our failures ad it avails in God’s sight for salvation but it also means that our crucified and risen and ascended glorious king is able to understand and sympathize with what we have to face as fallen people and his compassion leads him to reach out to us with his mercy and forgiveness for every time we fail and so we can come to him in our need and brokenness.  The Bible says:  Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace

When Adam and Eve fell victim to temptation in the garden they fled from God and hid from God in shame and fear.  What they did to hide their guilt was wholly insufficient.  But God sought them out and God forgave them and God made a blood covering to hide their shame, promising that there was one to come who would destroy the works of Satan that led to their ruin.

That is who Jesus is and that is what Jesus has done.  He is the sacrifice whose blood washes away all our sins and he is the priest who makes that sacrifice with his own body on the cross.

There is absolutely no reason for us to hide from him in fear and shame and guilt—absolutely no reason to think for a second that we must do something to make things right with God by the work of our hands.  Jesus Christ has done that for us and so when we fail and when we sin we can draw near to his throne of grace.

And yet we know how often we are tempted to ignore that gracious invitation.  The devil tells us that Jesus will never forgive that sin or that there is some kind of forgiveness limit that we have already met.  But those are the devil’s lies.

Jesus lives and reigns at this moment on a throne of grace for the very purpose of forgiving us and welcoming us back into our Father’s house and restoring to us all that sin and Satan have robbed from us.

The throne of our great high priest is one of grace and not judgment-- and grace is exactly what we can expect to receive as we come to him with our sins and weaknesses and failures—grace to help in time of need.  The Bible says that we come to Jesus:  that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

When we come to Jesus with our sins and guilt and shame what we receive in their place is his mercy.  Mercy is the kindness and love and help that the powerful show to the weak and that is exactly who Jesus is and exactly who we are.

Our great high priest has defeated death and the devil and he rules the universe at this moment for the sake of his people, causing everything to work for our eternal good.  Jesus wants us to not only begin in faith but end in faith.  Jesus wants us to have all of the blessings—both earthly and eternal that are rightfully ours as children of God.  But he also knows and understands everything in our life that keeps us from enjoying those blessings and that trip us up along the way.

And so when we come to him in prayer, confessing our sins and throwing ourselves on his mercy.  His blood forgives us all our sin and keeps on forgiving throughout our lives.  But we also receive help so that we can go forward in life in a way that is better and more Christ-like than we have gone before.

He speaks to us in the pages of Holy Scripture so that we know better his will and are encouraged to follow it.  He feeds us with his own body and blood to strengthen our faith and remind us all that he did for our salvation.

He gives us pastors and teachers and fellow Christians who will instruct us and admonish us when needed and set an example for us to follow.

As we turn to him again and again we will always find a compassionate high priest who stands ready to meet our needs.  Amen.

Jesus Is Powerful and Merciful

Jesus Is Powerful and Merciful

Matthew 15:21-28 Surely this scene has to be the most unflattering pictures of Jesus in the Bible!  This poor woman had a daughter being tormented by demons.  She came to Jesus for help and at first he ignored her and then he cast into the role of a dog.  All of it so completely unlike the Lord that there had to be something else going on.  And there was.

In the days before Jesus met this woman, a delegation of Jewish leaders had been sent from Jerusalem with complaints about Jesus and his disciples.  Apparently the disciples had not been following all of the rules and regulations of the Pharisees and Jesus, as their rabbi, should have corrected them. 

But Jesus told the disciples that the Pharisees had it wrong—that they were hypocrites because their religion was all for show when what God really wanted were hearts that trusted in him and relied on his grace.

It was right there that Jesus and the disciples met the Canaanite woman-- and that was no accident.  Jesus had not only explained to his disciples what faith really is—but he also had an opportunity to show them a wonderful example of a great faith that dared to believe that in Jesus there is grace enough for all.  The Bible says that:  Jesus went away from there and withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon. 

Tyre and Sidon were cities where the Canaanites lived—people who were so evil that God had commanded Joshua and the Israelites to wipe them off of the face of the earth—which they failed to do.  They were enemies of the Jews and the disciples must have been thinking: nothing good can come of this.  But what they did not realize is that in Jesus, there is grace enough for all—even for God’s enemies.  The Bible says that

A Canaanite woman from that region came out and was crying, "Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely oppressed by a demon." 

            The Jewish leaders who should have been Israel’s teachers—pointing the Jews to Jesus as their Messiah—were so caught up in their own rules that they couldn’t see the truth of their own Scriptures which revealed the Messiah: that the grace and mercy of God extends to all people without exception—even to those who are God’s enemies. 

But this Canaanite woman who had never seen Jesus before—who didn’t have the benefit of the incredible learning of the Jewish leaders—understood this.  She had a truly great faith and came to Jesus in her need, sought his mercy, and confessed her faith in his identity and his mission.  She said: 

"Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely oppressed by a demon."

Everything that Jesus wanted and hoped for from his own people—that they would know believe in him as the Messiah that God had promised to his people—he received instead, from this woman who was not even an Israelite-- but one of their ancient enemies. 

She didn’t have the benefit of seeing Jesus’ miracles.  She didn’t have the blessing of hearing his teaching—but somehow, some way she had heard enough about him to come to faith in Jesus and confessed him to be:  the Lord—the promised heir of David and the source of God’s grace to all men. 

And because that is who he was—she also knew what he had come to do—to defeat Satan.  The Bible says that:  “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil”.  This Canaanite woman believed in the mission of the Messiah and she came to Jesus in that faith—trusting that there is grace enough for all and that he would do what he came to do for her poor daughter.

We don’t know much about demon possession in that day but looking around at the devil’s work in our world today we can get a pretty good picture of what that evil would look like focused on a single child—something too terrible to behold—every parent’s worst nightmare-- which is why we instinctively recoil at what happens next.

Jesus did not answer her a word. And his disciples came and begged him, saying, "Send her away, for she is crying out after us." 

            Even if we can’t immediately understand why Jesus remained silent we have no problem understanding the concerns of the disciples, do we? 

A Jewish rabbi and his twelve disciples—thirteen respectable Jewish men—with a screaming Canaanite woman calling out to them about demon possession.  What will people think!?  And what’s their response:  send her away!  Get rid of her!

How tempting it is in the face of human need to turn our backs on the broken-ness of others because the need is so great and what we can supply seems so small.  But the Lord always reached out to those in need—he showed that the grace of God is for all people--which is why it is so surprising what happens next.  Jesus answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." 

We don’t know if Jesus was responding to the woman or the disciples or all of them together but the response is just as shocking no matter who the audience is:  Jesus affirmed that his mission as the Messiah was to the Israelites-- and while that was a hard thing for the Canaanite woman to hear—it was an incredible word of mercy for the Jews, that God’s grace was for them too. 

Paul said of his own kinsmen, the Jews that “the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable” and here we see the proof that the grace of God was for them too—even though they rejected their Messiah.

Despite the fact that so many Jews wanted a different kind of Messiah—despite the fact that their religious leaders were focused on the wrong things—despite the fact that Jesus’ own disciples so often got things wrong—the God of Israel loved his ancient people and in mercy wanted to save them and sent his Son. 

We must never forget that.  Oftentimes when we read the New Testament we see the Jews as Jesus’ enemies.  And at times they made themselves that very thing.  But Jesus wasn’t their enemy.  He was their Savior and he would not leave one thing undone to provide for their salvation.  The grace of God was for them too.

In fact, every piece of the Messianic mission was accomplished in their midst—so that they could hear it and see it-- which is why it is such a tragedy that so many of the Jews rejected the salvation that God provided for them.

But what about that poor woman who was not an Israelite-- but a Canaanite?  She came and knelt before Jesus, saying, "Lord, help me."  A truly great faith not only recognizes who Jesus is and what he came to do-- but also trusts wholeheartedly that the grace of God extends even to them and trusts in his mercy.  

            The really great hero in this scene is whoever told this woman about Jesus-- for even though she knew he was sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel--she also knew that that his gracious mercy and love extends to all people. 

Isaiah had promised that very thing—that besides the Jews, God’s Messiah “would gather yet others to him besides those already gathered.”  And that promise was about to be fulfilled in the life of a woman of great faith who had a great need.  Jesus answered her, "It is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs." 

            As shocking as it is to hear Jesus use this figure of speech, it’s not quite as bad as it seems because the word Jesus used does not refer to the mongrel scavengers that would have roamed the towns of that day, but to a little pet dog that a child would own. 

But the point is still the same:  children are children and pets are pets and as much as we pamper our pets it would be scandalous to treat them better than our kids. 

Jesus’ point was that the Israelites were different than all of the other people of the world.  The Messiah was sent to the Israelites and his whole ministry of salvation was conducted in their midst—among no one else in the world and nowhere else in the world.  That was the Lord’s promise and plan from the beginning and Jesus would not deviate from it.  And yet, so great was her faith that she said:  

“Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table."

            The really amazing thing about her faith is not just that she knew who Jesus was and what he had come to do- but that she accepted the Lord’s judgment about herself. 

The Pharisees and scribes would never accept Jesus’ judgment that they were white-washed graves—holy on the outside and rotten on the inside.  They never accepted that they were an evil generation for demanding sign after sign from the Lord despite all the miracles he performed. 

We too struggle constantly to accept the Lord’s judgment that we are sinners who deserve only wrath rather than mercy. 

The greatness of the faith of the Canaanite woman was that she accepted the fact that she had no claims upon the Lord whatsoever and hoped only that the abundance of his grace would overflow into her life and the life of her daughter.  And it did!

Then Jesus answered her, "O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire."

Only two times in the Bible does Jesus comment on the greatness of someone’s faith—the Roman centurion with the servant who was sick-- and this Canaanite woman whose daughter was possessed of a demon.  Both of them were the most unlikely of people because of their background and status—and yet their faith was great.

They recognized who Jesus was—they confessed him as Lord—they knew that he was powerful enough to save—they counted on the fact that in him there was grace enough for all.  And both received what they needed. 

The Bible says that “her daughter was healed instantly”.  After all that had come before, we are tempted to regard that little sentence as an afterthought—but of course it really is the whole thing—that the woman’s faith in the Lord was not misplaced or disappointed.  She received the grace she asked for and her daughter was delivered. 

The mission of the Messiah in destroying the works of Satan was accomplished in the woman’s daughter-- who was not even present—nor did she need to be-- because the power of Jesus is not limited by time or space.  So it still is today.

About a year after these events, Jesus would complete his messianic work by dying on the cross and rising from the dead.  The powers of sin, death, and the devil were defeated so that God’s grace extends to all people. 

Those acts of salvation occurred two thousand years ago, in a place very far removed from this one—but Jesus still answers the prayers of all of those who come to him in humble faith, accepting his judgment that we are sinners—making no claims upon the Lord for who we are or what we have done—but simply believing that in him there is grace enough for us all!  May God grant us all this kind of great faith for Jesus’ sake!  Amen.

Jesus Is Our Great High Priest

Jesus Is Our Great High Priest

Hebrews 1:1-3 When Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan River, he was anointed by the Holy Spirit to be our prophet, priest, and king.  He is our prophet in that he speaks the Word of God faithfully because he is Word who has taken on our flesh.  He is our King who rules our lives and the church and the world for the sake of our eternal salvation.

But it is his work as our great high priest that is especially remembered during the Lenten season as we mediate on the sacrifice of his own life that he offered on the cross of Calvary for the sins of the world.  A man and a moment that had been promised by God from the beginning.  The Bible says that:  Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets,

When Adam and Eve sinned, when their lives were full of fear and shame and guilt—God stepped in and promised them that everything their sin and the devil’s deception had destroyed, he would restore by sending the Seed of a Woman who would make things right again.

And he showed them what that meant in the death of the innocent animals whose blood was shed to cover the shame they had tried to hide themselves.  From that moment on, the shedding of blood was the central act of worship of God’s people.

In those days, the head of the house would serve as the priest for his family, telling the story of a Savior to come and shedding the blood of the innocent. 

Eventually God established a formal priesthood that would serve all of God’s people by standing between them and God and confessing the people’s sin and assuring them of God’s pardon and shedding the blood of the innocent as a sign of that great truth of God’s love for the fallen and his plan to redeem them by the One to come.

 That story was told again and again over thousands of years by Adam and Noah and Abraham and Moses and the judges and the prophets. 

All of them telling the same story connected to the shedding of blood and adding more and more details as God revealed them by his Spirit—the One to come would be born of a Virgin in Bethlehem, that he would be raised in Nazareth, that he would flee to Egypt, that he would heal the sick and raise the dead, and that the blood that would finally bring sinners peace and forgiveness would come from the stripes laid upon his back and from his hands and feet that were pierced.

Through priests and prophets—in the details of the worship of the people of Israel--in the various signs and miracles-- the story of God’s Savior was told and re-told right up to the moment of his birth.  The Bible says that:

In these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.

            The One who was promised in the garden to Adam and Eve—the one whose story was told for thousands of years—the One who was born in Bethlehem-- was different from every other servant of God who had come before—for he was no mere servant but was the Son of God.

            He was there in the beginning with God and everything was created through him-- and he will stand upon the earth on the last day and call into being a new heaven and a new earth unbroken by sin and death and the devil—a world just like he created in the beginning. 

From the very beginning of his earthly life he was worshiped by the Kings of earth and by the angels of heaven-- for God himself, in the person of his Son, had entered into this sin-broken world to fulfill the mission promised in the beginning when God spoke to Adam and Eve and all their children and promised that he would send a Savior.

For thousands and thousands of years it was sufficient for salvation to believe that promise-- and the promises of the prophets-- who added more and more brushstrokes to the portrait of the Savior of the world. 

In Jesus Christ that Savior has come and God spoke again and said “This is my beloved Son.  Listen to him!”  Jesus is God’s first and final word to a world full of sinners because he is the only one who can truly reconcile us to God for he is himself God in human flesh.  The Bible says that:

He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.

            Throughout the Epiphany season before Lent, the church reveals the meaning of these words that the radiance of the glory of God filled Jesus Christ because he was, by his very nature, not only man, but God.

We saw an ordinary baby worshiped by great men and the heavenly angels.  We heard Anna and Simeon proclaim him as the Savior of the world while he slept in his mother’s arms.  We heard him lay claim to the temple as his Father’s house.  We saw him heal the sick and relieve the shame of a young couple at Bethany just like he did for Adam and Eve.  We heard him quotes the prophets concerning the Messiah and say that in himself were their words fulfilled.

By healing the sick and raising the dead and calming the stormy seas he reveals the power of the Creator God who has come to his broken creation to restore it and make it right.

And finally on Transfiguration Sunday we saw him on the mountain surrounded by Moses and Elijah as the veil of his very real human flesh was allowed to show forth the fullness of the radiant glory of God that filled the temple and hovered above Sinai and led the people to the promised Land—now in the human flesh of Jesus.

And the church tells that story through the words of Holy Scripture so that we can know just exactly who it is that identifies himself with our sins and bears them on the cross and suffers and dies under that terrible burden—that it is God who is there at the cross—the Creator dying for his creatures.

If you and I and a world full of sinners from every place and time are to be saved, it cannot be the death of a good man or wise teacher that saves us-- but it must instead be the death of God himself.

That same God who brought the world into being—that same God that upholds the universe by his power—that same God who is holy and righteous and good—that same God who is all powerful and all-knowing and eternal and present everywhere—that God who is so filled with love for a world full of sinners—is the God who suffers and dies on the cross so that we might be saved from our sins. 

Jesus is our great high priest who has purified us from our guilt and shame by the shedding of his own blood on the cross.  The Bible says that:  After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,

            Our great high priest Jesus Christ offered up upon the cross the once for all, fully sufficient sacrifice of his own life that has fully paid for our sins and reconciled us to God.

Every one of your sins—those of which you are particularly ashamed, those that continue to undermine your life with God, those you are no even aware of-- have been washed away by the blood of Jesus at the cross where he was not only the sacrifice but the priest that offered that sacrifice.

The Bible says that the blood of Jesus Christ purifies us from all sins and the Jesus is the atoning sacrifice for our sins and the sins of the world.  When he died on the cross he said, It is finished.

But his death on the cross was not the end of the story.  Every other priest before him, every other sacrifice before died and that was the end of the story—death.

But Jesus Christ our great high priest rose from the dead—the Father’s own promise that the Son’s high priestly work was accomplished and complete.  The end of death had come so that his priestly work now means life for all who receive it by faith.

And after his resurrection, he ascended to the right hand of his Father where his priestly work continues for us.

He stands at the Father’s hand at this very moment, lifting up his sacrifice in place of our sins.  He intercedes for us with his heavenly Father so that his saving will is accomplished in us.

And he continues to serve his people with the gifts of salvation by giving us the same body and blood sacrificed on the cross, now under bread and wine, so that we can be assured that his priestly work is an ongoing reality in our lives, forgiving us again and again of our sins.

The one who was promised from the beginning, the one who would destroy the work of Stan, the one promised by the prophets has come to us in Jesus Christ, God’s own Son who is our great high priest.  Amen.

Jesus' Victory Over Temptation

Jesus' Victory Over Temptation

Matthew 2:1-11 In our Old Testament lesson today we heard the story of mankind’s fall into sin—not just the fall of Adam and Eve—but the fall of all of us because of their sin.  The Bible says that “sin came into the world through one man and death spread to all men.” 

Now, we may not think that is fair—that one man’s sin has brought death to all of us-- but the fact of the matter is we too have sinned, we too have followed the deadly path of Adam—we too have gone our own way and not God’s way—and so have countless others in the family of Adam. 

God’s judgment upon Adam and Eve and upon all their children that sin equals death is perfectly just when we look at our own lives of sin.  All of us—without exception—along with the whole human family—without exception—is caught up in sin and the judgment of God rests upon us by nature.

But in the midst of that sin, when Adam and Eve ruined God’s perfect creation and doomed to death every one of their children, God stepped in. 

He sought them out, forgave them their sin, promised them that he himself would raise up a champion who would defeat Satan and restore to the human family everything we have lost on account of sin and he showed them a picture of what that would look like as he covered them in the bloody flesh of an innocent victim.

That story of sin and salvation was told again and again for thousands of years—it was shown again and again for thousands of years-- in the sacrificial worship of God’s people as believers looked to and hoped for and prayed for the promised Savior who would not be another victim of Satan and sin-- but be their conqueror and our deliverer. 

That is the One we encounter today in the wilderness One born as a member of the human family.  One who has to fight against the devil just as we do each day.

And the Good News for us who are so often wounded in this battle, is that in the same way that Adam’s sin has destroyed us, Jesus’ holy obedience and his victory over temptation has saved us. 

The Bible says that:  Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. Please note that Jesus did not put himself in harm’s way spiritually—he was not the least bit cavalier about the spiritual dangers of encountering Satan, but this was the direction that his life had to go as the Savior of the world.

He was the champion promised by God.  He was the new Adam who had to get things right if we are to be saved. 

And so he took upon himself our nature- and he was born under the law-and faced temptation like every other child of Adam in the weakness of our frail human flesh.  The Bible says that:  After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.

Please contrast this with what we saw in the Garden with Adam.  Adam and Eve lived in the perfection of God’s creation.  The universe was their playground.  Everything was made for them.  They were the pinnacle of God’s creative work and everything in the universe was theirs to use and enjoy except for one small tree.

That tree was to be their altar and pulpit where they showed their obedience to God’s commands.  It was where they exercised their faith in the goodness and promises of God.  That tree should have been for them the eternal location of their worship of God. 

But it became instead- the location of their fall- and of our destruction- and the end of God’s perfect world.

That is what Jesus encounters in the wilderness.  A place where the devil had free reign and a body that was subject to all of the frailties of our human existence.  And so it is not in the strength of Adam that Jesus fights against temptation.  It is not in a perfect creation that our Lord enters the field of spiritual battle against the devil, but in a broken, fallen world and a body that is as weak as our own.  The Bible says that:

The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.”

            If you know the context, you know how utterly evil and depraved these words of the devil are. 

Just a month or so earlier, Jesus entered into the waters of the Jordan and was baptized by John and the Holy Spirit rested upon him and Jesus heard the voice of his Father:  This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.  This IS my Son!

            And here now in the wilderness, when there is no tangible sign of his Father’s love but only his promise to lay hold of, Jesus is attacked by the devil:  If you are the Son of God…  Will Jesus believe the testimony of his Father?  Or will he listen to the voice of Satan and eat what he holds out?  This is right where Adam failed and plunged the world into ruin.

Please understand—there is no sin in bearing hungry—there is no sin in desiring food to meet that need.  Adam and Eve were right when they said that the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was beautiful and it would give knowledge—but God had forbidden it-- and that should have been enough for them-- and it should be enough for us—but it is not.

There is no sin in any physical desire in and of itself—God made us physical creatures.  But he has put a hedge around those desires for our own good.

He says that sex is reserved for marriage-- and food and drink are to be used in moderation-- and the Giver is to be valued above the gifts-- and yet we have cast aside the words of God regarding our lives as creatures again and again because much too often we value bread more than God just as the Israelites did in the wilderness.

But Jesus did not.  He was the new Adam who held fast to the words of his Father and he was the new Israel who valued his relationship with his Father more than food.

His life as his Father’s Son was infinitely more valuable to him than meeting some need no matter how desperate the straits-- and his Father’s words were infinitely more powerful than the devil’s temptation-- and so he took his stand on the words of his Father: 

“It is written, “‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” 

  Adam would not gain, but lose his life, by ignoring God’s Word and eating from the forbidden tree.  We do not gain, but lose our life, when ignore God’s word about material things and then misuse God’s good gifts. 

But Jesus believed the words of his Father.  And such is the devil’s deceitfulness that the very words of God became his next place of attack.  The Bible says that:

The devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, “‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and “‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.’”  Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

            Adam and Eve knew the Word of God.  They had heard the voice of the living God of the universe say, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die”.  

And yet when Satan arrived on the scene, those words were the exact location of his attack, “Did God actually say that”? And then, “It’s not true”. 

And so it was that day in the wilderness that the new Adam (who has just withstood temptation by taking his stand on the Word” is attacked by Satan in the same place where dam fell—on the Word of God.  He says, “This is what the promises of God are, if you are the Son of God, put God to the test and see if he is faithful or not.” 

It is a particularly demonic mode of attack because it is an attack on the faithfulness of God and the truth of his Word and it is used against those who know God and believe his Word and it sounds so reasonable—surely I can test God in this promise and see if it is true or not.

But faith that must be proved beyond the promises of God’s Word is not faith at all—it is faithlessness.

We have all fallen victim to it.  We say to ourselves, “If God really loved me then he would do this or that.”  Or we say, “If God really loved me he would preserve me from this or that.” 

And we put God to the test by demanding something of him beyond the promises that he loves us so much that he has sent his Son into this world for us.

Jesus did not fall victim to this temptation.  There was no need to prove the faithfulness of God and the power of his promises beyond the power of his Word itself. 

He took the sword of the Spirit in hand and defeated the devil in exactly the way he was being attacked and affirms his Sonship and the Father’s love for him and his own role as the Savior of the world. 

It is here, in the saving purposes of Jesus that the devil wages his last attack.  The Bible says that:

The devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written, “‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.’” Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and were ministering to him.

 

            When the devil came to Adam and Eve, they lived in the perfection of God’s creation and they literally possessed everything in the universe save one.  And that is where the devil attacked.  It is the mystery of evil that they succumbed to temptation when the lacked one small thing in the whole universe including a life with God.

But we see it all around us.  A husband and father has everything and throws it away for some fling.  A musician or artist has every gift and ability and the admiration of millions and they kill themselves.  An athlete makes it to the big leagues but ruins it all with drugs or gambling.

That is how the devil came to Jesus.  He said, “It is not enough to be God’s Son, I will give you the world”.  Please know, as Jesus did, that the devil is a liar and whatever he says he will give you is a lie that is meant to destroy you for time and eternity.

The world already belonged to Jesus.  He was the one who created it-- but now it was ruined by sin and the only way for him to reclaim it for himself was not by the lies of Satan-- but by his death on the cross and his glorious resurrection. 

The worship and service of God by man that was lost by Adam and lost by us too was reclaimed and renewed by the holy obedience of our Lord Jesus Christ, an obedience unto death, so that what was lost by Adam and his children was regained by Christ for  us in his victory over temptation.  Amen.  

Return to the LORD Your God!

Return to the LORD Your God!

Joel 2:12-19 If you have your bibles open please look at the first few verses of chapter 2 and if not please listen as they are read

Blow a trumpet in Zion; sound an alarm on my holy mountain!  Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming; it is near; a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness. 

And then Joel goes on to describe just exactly what is about to befall God’s people: a plague of locusts so far-reaching that no plant of any kind will be left alive.  Crops will be devastated and millions of people will starve. 

Even today, plagues of locusts can cover hundreds of thousands of square miles and be so all-encompassing that they can block out the sun.

That was what was about to befall the people of God and it was a sign so terrifying that they thought it was ushering in the end of the world and the final judgment-- for this was not merely a sign of living in a broken world-- but the temporal judgement of the living God upon the sins of his people.

For years they had strayed away from the Lord.  For years they had turned a deaf ear to God’s prophets and chosen for themselves men who would tell them what they wanted to hear.

But now in this dark moment, God’s judgment was at hand.  It was right then, when all seemed lost, when they would experience the wrath of a holy God over his creature’s sins that our text begins—a plea from God for them to repent of this sins and return to him.

Yet even now,” declares the Lord, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.”

            Yet, even now…Those have to be some of the sweetest words in the Bible!  Even now when all seems lost!  Even now when my sins have finally caught up with me!  Even now when the world around me is crashing down on my head and there is no one left to blame but myself!  Even now… it is not too late for me, declares the Lord.

So long as we are still living and breathing there is for us hope and a day of grace and an opportunity to return to the Lord.  That story is told again and again in the Bible. 

It is the story of God’s enduring love for a people who never seem to get it right—for a people that much too often get it really wrong.  It is the story of God seeking out Adam and Eve when they destroyed the world; the story of God sending Jonah to Nineveh; the story of the conversion of Saul and the restoration of Peter. 

It is the story of God’s love for us that will not leave us alone in our sin but calls us again and again to repent of our sins and return to him in faith.

“return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.”

What God is looking for in our lives is what he heard from David in the psalm: 

Against you, you only have I sinned and one evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment. 

All of us know how easy it is to mouth the words of the confession in public worship while at the same time having no real desire to be done with sin and go in a new way—to make a show of our sorrow. 

But what God is wanting from us is a real recognition- of our real sin- that shows itself in real sorrow -that we have sinned against our Savior God who stands ready to receive us back into fellowship with himself even when it seems to be too late.

Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster.  Who knows whether he will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind him, a grain offering and a drink offering for the Lord your God? 

            When Adam and Eve sinned they fled from the presence of the Lord in shame, the guilt weighing so heavily upon them that they forgot that the Lord was a God of love.  That is what sin does—it makes us forget who God really is in his love and mercy.

When we take our first few steps on the path that leads away from the Lord we can still see his goodness—we can still know him as the God who forgives. 

But the further we go on that path and the farther we get away from God—the more difficult that is to see--until finally God’s love and mercy is lost to view altogether and we are left alone with the lies of the devil who tells us it is too late and we are too far away and we have done too much for the Lord to ever take us back.  But that is a lie! 

Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster. 

This is the truth about God-- and this is the truth that allows us to return to him no matter how often we have failed, no matter how far we have wandered, no matter how grievously we have sinned and we can count on a Father’s welcome when we turn from our sins.

When Jesus told the parable of the prodigal son, this was the story he was telling.  The younger son did everything wrong.  He wanted nothing to do with the father, only what the father could give.  He wasted what his father gave him, he debased himself beyond imagination.  But when he repented of this, he knew he could return home because he knew his father’s love.

And while the boy was still a long way off, the father ran to him and welcomed him home and assured him he was his son.  Ever since he had left, his father’s eyes were always looking for his return and his father’s heart always yearned to pour out his love on him. 

That love that welcomes sinners even when it seems that God’s judgment cannot be escaped is what God wants every one of us to know tonight and it is why we are here.

Blow the trumpet in Zion; consecrate a fast; call a solemn assembly; gather the people.  Consecrate the congregation; assemble the elders; gather the children, even nursing infants.  Let the bridegroom leave his room, and the bride her chamber. 

            The failures and sins of the people of God were not limited to just the common folk or just the kings or just the religious leaders—everyone was guilty and the judgment of God was poised to fall on them all, without exception—and so they would gather together without exception and confess their sins. 

So it must be for us.  It does us no good whatsoever to bewail the failures of our culture or to point the finger at our political leaders.  We are the culture.  We elected our leaders.  And our lives much too often reflect the very evil we see so clearly in the lives of others.

There is selfishness and pride and a love for material things over God’s spiritual gifts.  There are lives that are not even close to the faith we profess.  There is a lack of concern for those who are poor and weak.  And the judgment of God is that all of us deserve his wrath.

The Bible says that there is no one who does good, not even one.  The Bible says that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.  The Bible says that even our good works are as filthy rags in God’s sight. 

And so the call to repentance excludes no one and instead calls every one of us to cast ourselves upon the mercy of God and beg him to spare us and then trust that he will.

Between the vestibule and the altar let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep and say, “Spare your people, O Lord, and make not your heritage a reproach, a byword among the nations.  Why should they say among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’”

            Even in that late hour it was not too late because God remained the same loving, faithful, merciful, compassionate God he had always been.  These were his people.  He claimed them as his own.  He chose them for himself, delivered them from slavery in Egypt, and provided for them. 

And though they knew about themselves that they had failed to be who God called them to be—God had not failed them and would never fail to be the God he claimed to be:  the covenant-keeping Savior God who will always come to the aid of his repentant people.

And so they gathered together in God’s presence in the temple and they did just exactly what God’s people have always done:  confess their sins and trust in the unfailing mercy of the God who saved them.

Then and now there would never be a moment when God would fail his people.  His love can be counted on again and again. 

In their confession of sins and our  confession of sins there is no thought of deserving God’s love or earning God’s love, there is simply the glad confidence that we can return to the Lord because of who he is in mercy and forgiveness. 

Then the Lord became jealous for his land and had pity on his people.  The Lord answered and said to his people, “Behold, I am sending to you grain, wine, and oil, and you will be satisfied; and I will no more make you a reproach among the nations.

            The Lord heard them, had pity on them, claimed them as his own and answered them and judgment was averted.

So it is for us here tonight.  The Lord has heard our confession of sin.  The Lord has had mercy on us and answered our need for forgiveness so that we can once again belong to him by sending his Son Jesus Christ to be our Savior.

God poured out the judgment we deserve onto his Son.  Jesus drank the cup of God’s wrath that belonged to us and in its place has poured out upon us all the blessings of life in his kingdom—a full measure, pressed down and overflowing. 

And so on this Ash Wednesday we hear and heed the call of our Savior God and return to him with all our hearts for he is merciful and compassionate and abounds in steadfast love.  Amen.

Jesus' Journey to Jerusalem

Jesus' Journey to Jerusalem

Luke 18:31-43 Taking the twelve, Jesus said to them, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished.

            Over the course of his life Jesus traveled up to Jerusalem many times to fulfill the religious requirements of the law—but this would be his final journey and he wanted his disciples to go with him. 

He wants the same for us this Lenten season--that we would travel with him to the cross.  Jesus wants us to see what he did for the salvation of the world and for our own salvation.  He wants us to once again see and know how great is the Father’s love for us.    

In the old King James Version Jesus says:  “Behold”!  In other words:  “Pay attention”!  “Feast your eyes upon this”!  “Look at what I am about to show you”!  And then Jesus tells us what we are going to see: 

He will be delivered over to the Gentiles and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon. And after flogging him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise.” 

What do we see as Jesus makes that journey to Jerusalem one last time?  We see the words of the prophets accomplished. 

We see Jesus ride into Jerusalem, not as a mighty warrior, but as a humble King mounted on a donkey just a Zechariah had promised.  We see Jesus pierced for our transgressions and wounded for our iniquities just as Isaiah had foretold.  We see Jesus spit upon and ridiculed as David had prophesied.  And we see Jesus stand victorious over death just as Job had looked forward to in faith.

Jesus wants us to know that he is the fulfillment of all of the promises of God—that is why he took his disciples on this final journey to Jerusalem and its why we travel with Jesus to the cross each Lenten season—so that we can once again feast our eyes of faith upon the promises God that have been fulfilled in Jesus’ suffering, death, and resurrection—so that we can understand what it all means for our lives.  And yet, the Bible says that the disciples:

…understood none of these things. This saying was hidden from them, and they did not grasp what was said.

            That Jesus was handed over to the Romans—that he was mocked and shamefully treated—flogged and crucified-- is a matter of the historical record—it happened.  That Jesus rose again on the third day is a matter of the biblical record that hundreds of people bore witness to—they saw him alive.

There was nothing difficult in the words Jesus spoke about what would happen to him in Jerusalem—he had said them before.  There was nothing unusual in the crucifixion scene he described-- it happened every day in the Roman world.

And so what was the difficulty the disciples had in understanding these things?  Why couldn’t they grasp what Jesus was telling them? 

At least part of the problem is that they didn’t want to believe what their master was telling them.  To think that this terrible thing would happen to someone they loved, was unbearable-- and there had been other occasions when they tried to deny it.

People still shy away from the scandal of the cross—even in the church.  Many Christians are perfectly happy with a cross in the sanctuary but a crucifix is a little too graphic.  That the bread and wine of Holy Communion are actually the broken body and shed blood of Christ is a bit over the top for many Christians who deny the very words of Jesus.  Countless sermons are preached every Sunday where the suffering and death of our Lord have no place whatsoever. 

Then and now the death of Jesus on the cross is a scandal. 

The other reason that they couldn’t get a handle on what he was saying is that they really didn’t see the necessary connection between the Messiah and the cross. 

They were perfectly willing to accept Jesus as the Messiah because they thought that role was about earthly things like position and power.  But to accept that the Messiah of God HAD to suffer and die—that death is what sin required--they struggled to believe it.

But the fact of the matter, is that if we are to live a life with God—it can only come through the cross of Jesus Christ and the death he suffered there. 

That is why Jesus invites us to go with him to Jerusalem-- so that we can understand that salvation and wholeness and new life are only found in what he accomplished in Jerusalem in his death and resurrection.  The Bible says that:  As Jesus drew near to Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging.

            At the beginning of their journey to Jerusalem we heard the Lord tell us and the disciples:  “Behold”!  “Feast your eyes on this”!  And yet they couldn’t see the truth.  But as they traveled on, they met a blind man who could see what they couldn’t see because the truth about Jesus is discerned by the heart-- not the eyes.

Can there be a picture of anyone as helpless as a blind man in the ancient world?  No social agency to help him.  No vocational training to give him some place in life.  Nothing for him to do but beg for pennies from other peasants, hopeful that his basic, human needs could somehow be met by their mercy. 

That was his life until Jesus walked by him on his way to the cross.  The Bible says that:

Hearing a crowd going by, he inquired what this meant. They told him, “Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.” And he cried out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”

This little exchange really is the key to understanding what the Holy Spirit is telling us this morning about Jesus’ journey to the cross.  It’s why the disciples and the crowd didn’t understand what Jesus was about-- and why the blind man did.

When he asked about what was going on, the crowd said that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by—and so he was—the humble man of Galilee. 

The crowds of that day, and the crowds of this day, are perfectly content to confess the same—to recognize and accept the historical facts that Jesus of Nazareth was a good man- who said wise things- and died a terrible death. 

But that was not the confession of the blind man.  He said:  Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!  Not Jesus of Nazareth—but Jesus, Son of David!

There are great confessions of faith that are found in the Bible.  Peter says of Jesus, “You are the Christ, the son of the living God”.  The centurion at the cross says of him, “Surely this man was the Son of God”.  The confession of the blind man was just as great.  Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me. 

This was the confession of a faithful child of Israel who recognized by faith just exactly who Jesus was—that he was the Messiah that they had been hoping for and praying for—the One who would make EVERYTHING right that sin had destroyed.  It is in that faith and hope that he cried out for the Messiah’s mercy.  The bible says:

Those who were in front rebuked him, telling him to be silent. But he cried out all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”

            Things really haven’t changed that much in the last two thousand years have they? 

There are still those in the crowd who try to shout us down as we confess that Jesus is the Savior of the world.  There are still those who want to silence the witness of Christians that we have in Jesus a God who is merciful and willing and able to help.  

The blind man shows us the way to respond to the unbelieving crowds of our own day when he refused to be shouted down or ridiculed for his confession and instead cried out all the more:  Son of David, have mercy on me!  The Bible says that at these words:

Jesus stopped and commanded him to be brought to him. 

            The blind man couldn’t come to Jesus by himself.  He couldn’t find him in the darkness.  He didn’t posses what was necessary.  All that he could do was recognizes his own great need and cry out for mercy.  And that is what he received. 

Jesus commanded others to bring him to him just as he has commanded us to bring others to him by carrying our children to the baptismal font and inviting people to church. 

There is a world full of people who need what only Jesus can give and yet they lack the ability to make it to him on their own.  Jesus has commanded us who can see the way, to bring them to him to be healed of all that is broken in their lives.  The Bible says:

When the blind man came near, Jesus asked him, “What do you want me to do for you?” He said, “Lord, let me recover my sight.” And Jesus said to him, “Recover your sight; your faith has made you well.”  And immediately he recovered his sight

            700 years before this moment the prophet Isaiah promised that through the Messiah’s work “the eyes of the blind shall be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped; and the lame shall man shall leap like a deed and the tongue of the mute sing for joy”.

Jesus of Nazareth—the Son of Man and David’s Son-- accomplished every one of these messianic signs just as the prophets had written.  And the benefits of his saving work are received today in the same way as they were that day:  by faith in Jesus. 

Jesus told the man that his faith had made him well.  And so it had—not because the power rested in his believing—but because the One he believed in was able to do what was promised of him:  give forgiveness, salvation, and wholeness.

So it is for us.  Faith is necessary to receive what Christ has done for us.  His saving works were done for all but to receive the benefits of forgiveness, life, and salvation (and the wholeness that will come on the Last Day) it is necessary to have faith—to recognize that we have no claim upon the Lord but our great need for his mercy-- and to come to him in faith for the new life he gives—just like the man did that day. 

The Bible says that the man who was healed:  followed Jesus, glorifying God. And all the people, when they saw it, gave praise to God.

This is the life of faith!  That we who have received the Lord’s gifts follow him as his disciples—that we praise God and give him all the glory for the great things that he has done for us—that our lives bear witness to the goodness and mercy of Jesus Christ.

The man who was healed that day was a man reborn.  He had a brand new life ahead of him.  And that life was dedicated to the glory of God.  Many the same things be said of us, who are also the recipients of our Lord’s saving work!  Amen.