Peace Lutheran Church
Posts Tagged "Salvation"
Fourth Sunday of Easter
April 22, 2024
Alleluia! Christ is Risen!
He is Risen Indeed! Alleluia!
My dear beloved flock, the text for our meditation today is the First Reading from the book of Acts chapter four verses one through twelve.
Boys and Girls, I pray that you are doing well. Have you ever seen really small animals? In the ocean there are small microscopic vegetable life of the sea who provides food for many of the ocean's smallest creatures. These little vegetable plants drift thousands of miles, wherever the current takes them. They have no power or will of their own to direct their destiny. They are called "plankton," a word that means wandering or drifting. How are we often like Plankton in our lives? How does God stop our drifting? Ponder those questions as you hear the rest of the sermon. You may go back to your seats and those who love you.
Plankton is an accurate term to describe the aimless life of many people of our century, people who have lost a sense of direction, who are powerless to direct their own destiny, and wander through life without a purpose.
These are the people who are subject to the shifting wind of every fad. They struggle to find a purpose in their lives either in some sort of pleasure or in one of the new religious movements or mind control efforts. In our text today, Peter is saying that there is one way of escape; one way of finding meaning and purpose in life; one way to a new kind of life with God and that way is through the name of Jesus.
One of the exciting things about knowing that way through the name is that we can share it with others. Have you ever tried to share the name? Polls have indicated that about half of all Lutherans never do it, 40 percent do it once in a while, and 10 regularly. Yet, look at the power of the name that we share!
A. The Name Healed the Lame Man
The background of the text is that Peter and John had gone to the temple to pray as was their custom. As recorded in Acts 3, which was the First Reading last Sunday, they were confronted by a cripple at the gate of the temple, and Peter said, "I don't have any silver or gold, but what I've got I'll give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth walk" (Acts 3:7). Immediately the man got up, leaped and jumped, and praised God. A great crowd gathered around to listen, so Peter began to preach as he usually did when a crowd gathered. He told the crowd that it was by this name of the servant Jesus that the man was healed and able to walk. It was not long until the temple guards, the riot control squad, arrived and dragged Peter and John off to prison for the night. The next day they were brought before the court, and there the question was asked, "By what power or by what name do you do this?" (Acts 4:7). In response Peter spoke those words of our text that it was by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, and he explained what Jesus did as he adds, "whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead. By Him this man is standing before you well."
B. God Chose the Name
The way is the name. The name is "Jesus," the name that God the Father chose to give His Son. It is not a name that the Old Testament prophets attributed to the coming Messiah. The name is in the Old Testament but in different forms, in words like Joshua and Hosea. It was God who chose the name for His Son. When it was time for the Messiah to come, God sent His messenger, the Angel Gabriel, to say to Mary, "His name shall be called Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins." That is what the name really means, "one who saves." In His sermon to the crowd in the temple, Peter connected that name "Jesus" to the "holy and righteous one," and to the "author of life whom God raised from the dead" (Acts 3:14, 15), making it clear that this "one who saves" is none other than the Son of God Himself.
C. The Name Saves
In some cultures, it has been common to give the name of Jesus to sons as a way to honor them. That is why some professional ballplayers have names that are variations of the name Jesus, as Jesu, or Jose. Some years ago, a group of mothers sent a protest and request to the archbishop of Mexico. They wanted him to ban the use of the name Jesus and refuse any christening by that name. The reason they gave was that it was sacrilegious to have so many crimes committed by Jesus—and then written on the police record.
Jesus is the Son of God, the one who is holy and righteous. To live a holy life for us was part of His work on earth. Then He took our sins upon Himself, suffered and died and rose again, making atonement for all sins for all people. That was how He "saved His people from their sins" and became the "author of life."
D. The Name Is the Only Way
Peter says that it is through this name that we have life with God—and there is no other way. "Saved" in the New Testament means that we are rescued. By nature, you and I and all people are in a state of sinfulness, which the Bible calls death. It is a spiritual death, a life without God. This is the basic cause of the restless search for meaning in life. People are separated from the God who created them and who wants them to be in fellowship with Him. Unless they find the way to God, they will keep on searching and finally die in their sins.
The way to have that life is through the name of Jesus. It is the only way. Jesus said, "I am come that you may have life, life in all of its fullness." That is His very purpose for dying and rising from the dead, to give us the fullness of eternal life.
E. There Is None Other
Only one name, only one way. But the way is for everyone in all of the world.
Yet, many in the world try a wide variety of different ways. There was once a survey of Lutherans which says that 70 percent of young people would agree to this statement: "God is satisfied if I live the best life I can." This is a subtle form of universalism that is, if our neighbor is a good person and lives a good life, he is going to make it. He is going to be all right somehow. Or as I think about my Jewish friends, I would like to believe that they can be saved through the Old Testament, and then I do not have to share Jesus Christ with them. There are many other forms of this kind of subtle universalism which takes away the need for me to share Jesus Christ with them. But we must share Jesus with theme. They need it just as much as we do.
F. The Name Must Be Shared
It is our privilege and our commission to share that name with other people. Peter gives us the example in our text. He is before the Sanhedrin, that august body, the Jewish high court consisting of 71 members. The high priest is the ex-officio president. There are the wealthy Sadducees, the religious Pharisees, the learned Scribes, the respected elders, and our text even mentions that the priestly family was present. The high priest was supposed to have been a hereditary office and one for life. But under the Roman rule the office was filed with intrigue, bribery, and corruption. Between 37 B.C. and A.D. 67 there were 28 high priests. All but six of them came from four families. Many of those former high priests were here at this court.
So Peter and John were standing before the wealthiest, most intellectual, most powerful men in the country. There Peter, an uneducated, humble fisherman, makes his witness. A number of weeks earlier Jesus went before this same court, and they sent Him to the Romans recommending crucifixion. Peter was then in the courtyard denying that he even knew Jesus. And now Peter stands before this same group of men and says, "You crucified Jesus of Nazareth, but God raised Him from the dead. Now this name is the only name under heaven, the only name in all the world, by which you can be saved." The difference in Peter, of course, is that he was filled with the Holy Spirit. This was after Pentecost, and the Spirit empowered him for his bold witness.
That same Spirit is still active today though you. You received the forgiveness of your sins and new life in your baptism. The Holy Spirit came into your life and has been nurturing your faith so that you can trust in the name of Jesus and live a life with meaning and purpose. Just as Peter witnessed to the Sanhedrin, the Holy Spirit can help you be a witness to others, to your friend, your neighbors, and even your own relatives who do not know the way to peace with God through the name of Jesus.
Think of it like sharing the cure of cancer. Someone is dying of cancer. He has taken every known treatment for it, and some of the treatments almost killed him, but he is still dying, and it won't be long now. What if I knew the cure for his cancer? Should I let him die or share the cure so he can live? Do you have friends, neighbors, relatives, who are dying because of the cancer of sin in them? They are separated from God and destined to an eternal death. There is one way to be saved. That is through the name of Jesus. Sharing that name really puts meaning and purpose into life.
Some people can witness better than others. The Bible talks about some having the "gift of evangelism," which means that they can communicate the Good News of the way and help lead a person to trust in the name of Jesus. Of course, it is the Holy Spirit that creates faith, but we are the instruments He uses, His mouthpiece. Some people think about 10 percent of all Christians have this special gift of evangelism. What about the other 90 percent? We also are witnesses, Jesus said, even though we can't do as well as the person with the special gift. Each one of us needs to share as we are able. We share in the daily contacts that we have with people, we show by our words, deeds, and example the wonderous news that Jesus is the only way to salvation, that there is no other name by which we must be saved.
Alleluia! Christ is Risen!
He is Risen indeed! Alleluia!
The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard and keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
Good Friday
March 29, 2024
Text: Isaiah 52:11-53:12
Theme: Gilded words of a Sin bearing Sufferer
Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
My dear beloved flock, the text for our meditation tonight is the Old Testament lesson from the book of Isaiah the fifty-second and fifty-third chapters.
The pounding of hammer and nails. A constant cry of agony and pain…. a quick intake of breath before it is ripped away as his body slumps down with effort. The victim’s full weight borne by his wrists and feet and the points at which the spikes had been driven through them and into the wood. To breath in and out, Jesus would have to move up and down on the sipes. He would have to lift Himself up by pulling on His writs and pushing up on His feet. With any movement the spikes driven through His feet would have sent sheering pain up both legs. Likewise, with the movement upward to exhale, His arms would have rotated around the spikes causing excruciating pain to shoot through His upper body and arms. It is difficult to imagine the agonizing pain. Each breath forcing Jesus to push up on His feet, pushing His back against the cross. Shredded flesh and muscle grating against the trough timber. Every breath, exhaustion soon followed then death. Truly, crucifixion is a horrible and brutal process. One that the Romans perfected and made efficient and deadly use of, killing thousands of people. Many of those crucified were for their own sins that the criminals and murderers had brought upon themselves, harsh examples of what would happen to you if you tried to break the law against the might of Rome. A very effective deterrent to not commit a crime.
Yet, one crucifixion was different. That of Jesus our Lord. Still horrible in its agony, pain, and torment. Still brutal in its method and mockery. Jesus ”had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. ” He had nothing that we should adore him. He was not strong. He was not handsome. He appeared just the same as any other human upon the earth. In fact, He was marred to the point of no longer looking like a human being. Why does this horrible pain and death happen to Him? Not because of anything sinful or wrong that He Himself has done. He is the spotless, perfect, Lamb of God. Yet, He dies.
“He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.4 Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.5But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. 6All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”
Did you catch it? As Luther writes, these are indeed words gilded in gold. Why does Jesus die such a horrible and painful death? Why is there a split within the Holy Trinity as the only begotten Son is estranged from His Father? Why has the Father forsaken the Son? Because of us, because of our transgressions, Our griefs, our sorrows, our transgressions, our iniquities, our chastisement, the iniquity of us all is laid upon Him to give us peace. Our sins demanded payment in blood. Those vile deeds that we do. Our lies, our slander, our murder, our adultery, our covetousness, our stealing, our putting other gods in the place of the true God, and much more that I could name. All of this demand’s payment in blood, who pays? Because of us the Creator of the Universe is mocked, beaten, scorned, bleeds, and dies.
God established from before the foundation of the earth were laid, that He would have mercy upon us. He sends us His own Son. There, at the cross, Jesus takes our pain, our scorn, our shame, our guilt, every single one of our transgressions, our iniquities, everything is laid upon Christ. He bears it all on our behalf so that we, as sinful humans, are reconciled to a Holy and Just God now and forever. The price has been paid; Jesus’ gruesome death in place of ours.
The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard, and keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
Amen.
Ash Wednesday
February 14, 2024
Let now these ashes make their mark, upon our foreheads and our hearts; from dust to dust we see decay that only God can take away.
O Lord may the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in Your sight O Lord our Rock and our Redeemer.
As I look our today, I see a lot of crosses. Crosses made with Ash. Why? How does this remind us not only of our mortality, but also of what Jesus Christ has done for us?
Black of ash made their mark upon our foreheads. Why? As a reminder of what we are made from. All the way back in Genesis, when God creates Adam and Eve, He forms Adam from the dust of the earth. He forms Eve from Adam’s rib as a helpmate fit for him. When they sin against God. When they violate the one command that God gives. That command is to not eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil, they are rightfully punished. Eve is cursed with pain in childbearing. Adam bears the greatest of the curses, because he did not speak up, rebuke the snake, and tell Eve to stop talking to him. Because of Adam, the entirety of creation is doomed for death and decay. For dust you are and to dust you shall return.
A death and decay that extends to us still today. The ashes are not only on our foreheads, but also to mark the darkness within our own hearts. Every single one of us have what we call original sin. The desire to break every single one of the commands of God. Sin that we have inherit ate by the fact that we are humans born of humans. We are sinners. We lie, cheat, steal, and covet. We put other things and people in the rightful place of God in our lives. We are deserving of present and eternal punishment. We are dust and to dust we shall return. Eventually, we will die. We will die because every single one of us has violated the Law of God in thought, word, and deed.
Black, dusty ash to remind us of our mortality. Yet where do these ashes come from? They are made from the palms of last year’s Palm Sunday. This is done to remind us that our King has come, not in the terrors of judgement, but to redeem us. A King who answers our cries of Hosanna, save us! In the most unlikely of ways. While we are deserving of eternal punishment, astray from God, violating His commands. The Creator of the universe enters His creation to save us. The seed of the woman through the womb of the blessed Virgin, Jesus lays aside His divine power, glory, and authority. He assumes the form of a servant. He assumes our sinful dust, yet was without sim, that our sinful black ashy self may be reconciled to God once again.
How is this reconciliation done? Look at how the ashes have been applied to you. They are applied in the shape of a cross. Why a cross? That is how Jesus reconciled us to God forever. By the wood of the cross, we are saved. Jesus saves us by living the Law perfect on our behalf. He bears our punishment when He dies a brutal death upon the cross. He covers our sinful, black dust, with His innocent blood. By dying He destroys death forever. By rising again from the dead, Jesus gives to us newness of life with Him forever.
Black ash to remind us of our dustiness, our sinfulness, and mortality, yet in the shape of the cross to remind us that we are redeemed dust because of Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection.
In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany
February 01, 2024
Text: Isaiah 40:21-31
Theme: God cares for you!
Outline:
1. Seems as though no one cares about you
2. God cares for the stars, former generations, cares for you as well. How? JC! Daily Life!
Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
My dear beloved flock, the text for our meditation is the Old Testament lesson of Isaiah chapter forty, verses twenty-one through thirty-one.
Boys and girls, I pray that you are dong well today. Have you ever felt like no one loves you? Like everything that can go wrong does go wrong? We have all had moments, days, or years like that. Times when we do not feel the love people have for you. You know that your moms and dads, grandparents, and many more love you but sometimes our feelings lie to us. That is how the people of Israel felt. They felt like they were not loved by God. That He no longer cared about them. What does God tell them? How does God care for us today? Ponder those questions as you hear the rest of the sermon. You may go back to your seats and those who love you.
1. Seems as though no one cares about you
Have you ever felt like no one cared about you? You could die tomorrow and no one would mourn? No one would bat an eye in sorrow. Many times, our sinful nature and Satan tempt us to feel that God is so far distant from us that He cannot care about us. We feel as though we are nothing but grasshoppers and ants, too small for Him to care about. If He is far away from us, then we need to make a god in our own image. One that is closer to us, thus we fall into idolatry.
The human mind has been so darkened by sin that it cannot imagine God as he is. Isaiah pictures God as the Creator and Ruler of the world. God sits high above the created world. He stretched out the heavens as easily as one would pitch a tent. God is not created but uncreated and eternal, without beginning and without end. He is separate and different from the world he created. He is holy, infinite, perfect, and changeless. Humans are like so many grasshoppers. Because of sin, they are nothing like God. They are finite, temporal, imperfect, subject to changes of all kinds, and mortal. What arrogance for finite creatures to fashion God! If we want to know about God, we must humbly listen to what he tells us.
2. God cares for the stars, former generations, cares for you as well. How? JC! Daily Life!
What does God tell you? God tells you that He created all the host of heaven. Just look up at the night time sky sometime and you will see His wonderous work in creating the sun, moon, stars, and other planets. A work that humbles us and reminds us how small we truly are. God created all the stars, put them in their places. He knows each of them by name. God controls the motion of the stars of heaven. Astronomy studies the movements of the stars in the vast expanse of the universe, but God determines the movement. We talk of galaxies and planets; God controls them all. He controls the movement of the stars as a general would control his army. But God does not control them with impersonal detachment. He knows each heavenly body by name. What a contrast to those who think that the stars control their destinies and who consult their horoscopes to discover what life will bring them. God controls the stars and us; the orbits of the planets and stars do not control us.
IF God’s wondrous care of creation is not enough, just look at everything God has done in your life. All we need to prove that God cares for us is to look at what He has done in the past. He shows His great love for you in daily providing for you everything you need in this body and life. As we confess in the first article of the Creed, He gives us all good things purely out of Fatherly divine goodness and mercy. He gives us daily life. Every breath that we take is a gift given to us by Him. He gave you daily life yesterday, this morning, last week, otherwise you would not be here. Our loving God is not an aloof and distant God. Rather, He care for you as an individual by providing for your earthly life.
He also provides everything you need for the life to come. Look at what He has done for you in Jesus Christ! In love for you, the Father sends the Son for your salvation. He does what you could never do. Jesus bears the punishment of every single one of your sins. By dying and rising again from the dead, Jesus destroys death, crucifies your sinful self with Himself, and gives you newness of life. This great love He shows you in, and through, His Son. He has ultimate authority and deigns to use it to love and care for you.
No matter what happens in your life, God is in control and loves you. We are God’s people by faith in Jesus Christ, but we are no less prone to complain when things go badly. God loves us not just when all goes well, but also when everything is going wrong. He loves us always. He has his own reason for allowing trouble, pain, and tears into our lives. Remember that he is almighty and all knowing. We are not. We can trust him to do the best for us. He loves us too much to do anything less. When your feelings betray you, when Satan tempts you that God is too far off. When your sinful flesh says that God cannot have created everything. God says, “My Child, look up. See the stars, I place them. I order them. I am here for you, see my great love for you in My Son.”
Depending upon His strength, we not only are strengthened but we are renewed in our strength. We are compared to eagles soaring in the sky. God promises to be our strength, to be the wind beneath our wings. Continue, beloved in the Lord, to depend upon the Lord and His great love for you shown in Jesus Christ and His wonderous care for you.
The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard, and keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.