Reflection: Naming God's Promises (December 22, 2013)

The 4th Sunday in Advent
Isaiah 7:10-17; Romans 1:1-7; Matthew 1:18-25

There’s a persistent false teaching among Christians (primarily in America) that that believers can shape God’s promises by “naming it and claiming it.” Like many false teachings, this one has enough truth in it to make it seem legitimate. It starts by pointing out that God has made many promises to His people (true) and that when God makes a promise that He will certainly keep it (also true). But then it makes the believer, rather than God, the source of crafting the promise (false) by instructing the believer to “name” the promise and making it specific to what they are seeking from God even if God’s promise is not as specific as what is “named.” At the core of this sinful exploitation is turning the naming of God’s promises upside down and backwards. What we learn from His Word is that God, not we, name His promises.

God’s promises are certain because He makes them, not us. Very rarely does God leave it up to someone to name a promise. King Ahaz is one of those rare examples. God offered Ahaz the opportunity to “ask a sign of the Lord your God” so that God could prove what He was revealing through Isaiah. When Ahaz foolishly refused to name a promise, God made and named one of His own: “the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” Like all of God’s promises, the promise which He named “Immanuel” (which means “God with us”) was kept in due time. Long after Ahaz and the kings that he feared had passed from the scene, God announced to a virgin named Mary that she would give birth to His Son. It wasn’t something that Mary had asked for, let alone “named” and “claimed,” but she was willing to receive it along with the difficulties that it brought her. Among those difficulties was that of explaining to her betrothed husband how she had become pregnant as a virgin. From our perspective, Joseph acted reasonably and justly when he decided to name Mary on a divorce certificate and end their relationship. But God had other plans for Joseph. He revealed that He had chosen Joseph to play a special role in the life of Immanuel and then revealed the full intent of the promise made to Ahaz, “You shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.”

The promise that God named first to Ahaz and then named again more clearly to Joseph is the very promise that we are preparing to celebrate on Christmas: God coming to be with us in order to save us. God named His promise to rescue us from sin, death, and everlasting punishment; and the name of His promise is Jesus.

Click here to listen to the sermon "Naming God's Promises" (or right-click to download the MP3 file).

Reflection: The Violence of God's Kingdom (December 15, 2103)

The 3rd Sunday in Advent
Isaiah 35:1-10; James 5:7-11; Matthew 11:2-15

The prophet Isaiah described the coming kingdom of God as a time in which “everlasting joy shall be upon their heads” and when we will “obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away” (Is. 35:10). Based on that description of God’s kingdom, we might expect it to be a kingdom of peace. But Jesus painted a very different picture for us. He described God’s kingdom as coming with violence. Either Jesus is contradicting the Old Testament or we’re missing something. So, what are we missing?

What we find described in Isaiah is the end state of God’s kingdom. One day, when Jesus comes again in power and glory, the kingdom of God will be a peaceful kingdom in which we will experience and enjoy everything in today’s Old Testament reading and more. We have to wait for this. This is why our Epistle lesson calls us to “be patient … until the coming of the Lord.” We’re encouraged that “the coming of the Lord is at hand,” but we’re also reminded that until the Lord returns that we will endure suffering and need to “establish our hearts” in order to rise to the challenges that come with the kingdom here and now — the very challenges to which Jesus was referring when He said that “until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force” (Matt. 11:12).

The violence that Jesus was referring to is not reflected in the violent actions of people, but in the driving forces of nature. As a violent storm drives the waves the ocean and a violent wind presses against structures to the point of their collapse, those who understand the nature of the kingdom of God are driven to it. Contrary to what others have tried through the ages, the violence of God’s kingdom does not take hold of people, but “violent” (i.e., driven and desperate people) take hold of the Kingdom. Martin Luther described it this way: “Since John [the Baptist] showed the people their sins and shortcomings, which all pastors should do, they longed so for the kingdom of God and its help that they immediately and forcefully pressed toward it and seized it. God loves such guests; they who are thus hounded by their sins and transgressions are welcome to him.”

We live in the Kingdom of God now while it is in its “violent” state. It’s challenging and it’s dangerous. It brings us to the Cross and calls for the patient endurance that comes from establishing our hearts with the hope that one day all the struggling, suffering, and violence will cease and we will live in peace. That day is coming soon.

Click here to listen to the sermon "The Violence of God's Kingdom" (or right-click to download the MP3 file).

Reflection: Endurance, Encouragement, and Hope (December 8, 2013)

The 2nd Sunday in Advent
Isaiah 11:1-10; Romans 15:4-13; Matthew 3:1-12

“It’s a marathon, not a sprint” describes many of life’s challenges and opportunities. This saying conveys the understanding that whatever it is that we are getting ready to undertake will take a lot of time and energy to finish. Whether it’s something that we are pursuing as a life goal, like working toward a college degree or starting a new career, or it is something that has happened to us without our choosing it, like recovering from an injury or illness, the marathons in our lives require us to have stamina and drive. When we know what is coming our way, we can prepare for the challenges of the marathons in our lives. Even then, we often find that our endurance and resolve isn’t enough to run these marathons. We also need the encouragement of other people in order to keep going when we feel like giving up. Without both endurance and encouragement, we would lose hope.

Like running marathons and living out the marathons of our lives, we also need endurance and encouragement to meet the challenges of living our lives faithfully before God. Our life in Christ is also a marathon that calls for serious preparation. Beginning in Baptism and continuing to the day we enter into Christ’s presence through physical death, our journey in the Faith is all encompassing. It is the most challenging marathon that we can experience. We would quickly lose heart and give up running the course of faithfulness to Christ if it were not for the endurance and encouragement that He provides.

John the Baptist shows us what it takes to be prepared for our spiritual marathon with Jesus. John’s ministry was a ministry of preparing people through the preaching of repentance and then either baptizing those who were penitent for forgiveness or rebuking and warning those who were impenitent. He calls us to prepare the way for the Kingdom to come into our lives through repentance. Unfortunately, we often think of repentance as a sprint rather than as a marathon. When we do, we’re likely to lose hope when our lives are not immediately conformed to Christ and we continue to struggle with sin and the effects of sin in our lives. When we understand that a life of repentance is a marathon we are far more prepared to meet the challenges of living out our Baptisms in a fallen world. With the endurance and the encouragement of God’s Word, we live each day in repentance knowing that when we stumble God will hold us up (or pick us up) and see us to the completion of the race that He has set before us. With His endurance and His encouragement we will abound in hope.

Click here to listen to the sermon "Endurance, Encouragement, and Hope" (or right-click to download the MP3 file).

Reflection: Our Hour Has Come (December 1, 2013)

The 1st Sunday in Advent
Isaiah 2:1-5; Romans 13:8-14; Matthew 24:36-44

After France fell to Nazi Germany, Winston Churchill delivered one of his most famous speeches to prepare his nation for the Battle of Britain. He called on his countrymen to rise to the challenge of turning back the Nazis and then to liberate Europe. He put before them the very real threats that they would face as well as the potential of achieving what he said history would recognized as Britain’s “finest hour.”

As Jesus prepared to go to the Cross, He explained to His disciples the very real threats that they would face from His enemies. He also shared with them what would come about when Satan unleashed all of his power and might in a final
assault on the Church. Jesus told them that “No one knows that day and hour, not even the Son, but only the Father only“ so that instead of focusing on a date they would understand that Jesus was giving them (and us) a calling. His statement, “Stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming,” is His way of encouraging us to be ready to meet the challenges of what is meant to be our finest hour.

We struggle with this call because we look at and experience time in a very different way than God does. The psalmist explains that “a thousand years in Your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night” (Ps. 90:4). We, on the other hand, live our lives with precise measurements of time. So when God tells us that “the hour has come” we think in terms of a clock rather than in terms of our circumstances. Yet if we look around and take Jesus’ teachings to heart, we quickly recognize that the time to wake from our spiritual slumber and rise to meet our oppressive enemy has certainly arrived. We do know the time, that is, the times in which we live. And these times are filled with all of the indications that the day of the Lord is fast approaching.

That great and terrible day of the Lord has been fast approaching for nearly two thousand years. If we think about that with our idea of time we will have no sense of urgency. But when we realize that it is like two days to God we start to understand that time is very short indeed. “The hour has come for you to wake from sleep” is an urgent appeal to rise to the challenges of our time, “cast off the works of darkness,” “put on the armor of light,” “make no provision for the flesh,” and, above all, “put on the Lord Jesus Christ.” Time is running out and there is much work for us to do while it can be done. The stage is set. The time has come for us to shine as we “walk in the light of the Lord.” In Him, through Him, and by Him this will be our finest hour.

Click here to listen to the sermon "Our Hour Has Come" (or right-click to download the MP3 file).