Grace and truth are yours in Jesus Christ, friends. Amen.

Who is Moses? That’s the question which stuck out to me as I read our Old Testament text to prepare today’s message. I know who Moses is. So did Moses. But he asks that question in our reading, as he replies to God’s words from the burning bush. “Who am I,” he says, “that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”

There’s a back and forth in this account between the two speakers, God and Moses, and it revolves on this question. “Who am I?” Moses asks this question, and of course, what he means is, “How could I be worthy of such a ministry? Who am I?” We don’t get an answer to that question, though. Because then there’s God, speaking about who he is.

It’s God’s identity - who he is, what he does - that’s more important here than Moses’ rhetorical question about himself. Because when Moses goes forth to carry out this mission, it’s God’s mission. It’s God carrying it out.

Who God is, is more important than who Moses is. But I think, this morning, it’ll help us to understand who, indeed, Moses is. We are given his biography in the Bible; it’s not that God doesn’t want us to know anything about Moses. And understanding who he is, and what his life was like, will help us stand in his shoes - or, in his bare feet, I suppose - and find the same comfort as we’re called into service by the same holy God.

Moses lived about three and a half thousand years ago; a millennium and a half before Jesus. When Moses was born, the Israelite tribes did not live in Israel. Four hundred years before Moses, a man named Jacob, who was also called Israel, moved with his large family to Egypt to avoid a famine ravaging their home country. This man’s family grew and grew over four hundred years in Egypt, until they became a nation - the Israelite nation.

Some time before Moses was born, the Israelites had been subjugated as slaves to the Egyptians. And at the time of his birth, there was a particularly evil policy in place. The Egyptians were trying to have every baby boy killed as they were born. The Egyptian rulers were afraid that this nation living in their borders would become too large and strong for them, and would overthrow their rule.

Moses’ parents managed to conceal his birth, and they hid him for three months, until they realized that as the baby grew, someone would turn them in. So they entrusted his fate to God, and did something that must have been gut wrenching. They put him in a basket and sent him floating down the Nile River. Moses’ older sister Miriam followed, wanting to see her baby brother as long as she could.

Then there’s a coincidence only God could have arranged. Right as this baby is floating down the river, the Egyptian king’s daughter comes down to the river to bathe. And she sees this baby lying in the basket, sobbing. We’re told that immediately, she knew this was an Israelite baby boy. Probably she saw that he had been circumcised.

But rather than turning him over to her father, the king, Pharaoh’s daughter adopts Moses. She gives him his name, which means “brought out of the water.” And Moses grows up in the royal palace of Egypt, tutored by the best minds in one of the ancient world’s most advanced cultures. When he was born, the Bible says that his parents saw that this was “no ordinary child,” and he proved that right by his mastery of Egyptian wisdom. He was a prince.

So how do we get to the Moses we met in our reading? A shepherd, working for his father-in-law in a backwater country like Midian. This is like running into a Rockefeller working at the corner deli.

Well: When Moses was forty years old, he learned of how terribly his people, the Hebrews, were being treated. He went out to confirm this for himself, and encountered an Egyptian man savagely beating an Israelite. So Moses killed the Egyptian. It’s unclear exactly how this happens, because the account tells us that when Moses kills the man, he doesn’t see anyone around. Then later, he’s surprised to find that some people have learned of what happened. So perhaps Moses waited until the Egyptian left the site, stalked him, and killed him at a different location. A Christian named Stephen tells Moses’ story later in the Bible, and seems to support this sequence of events by saying that Moses “took revenge” on the Egyptian. He kills the man not in active defense of the man being beaten, but in cold blood; a vigilante murder. He does something which God forbids, because God says, “Vengeance is mine.”

When he’s found out, Moses is afraid. Two Israelites are fighting the next day, and when Moses tries to break them up, one turns on him and says, “Oh yeah, the big man from the palace is gonna break this up? Are you gonna kill me like the Egyptian?” Moses is shocked. He’s been found out. This will surely make its way back to the king, and the Israelites apparently don’t support Moses.

So he flees. The forty-year old prince of Egypt runs from a murder charge and ends up married to a rancher’s daughter on the other side of the Red Sea, and he spends the next forty years poking sheep with a stick. Until - the day we read about - God shows up in a burning bush. He commissions Moses to do exactly what Moses had been trying to do forty years before: Save the Israelites.

But, as we heard: Moses is afraid. Afraid to look at God; afraid of what Pharaoh will say; afraid of what the Israelites will say. He once wanted, more than anything, to liberate his people; and now the thought of doing it makes his stomach churn. He was ready to kill an Egyptian in cold blood, in secret, but to actually risk himself and oppose Pharaoh openly? Moses found out, forty years ago, he didn’t have the stomach for that.

But Moses does go. God’s promises - his revelation to Moses of who he is - spur Moses forward in faith. And then Moses spends what may have been the most triumphant year of his life as God’s spokesman, announcing to Pharaoh God’s judgment, which will be delivered in the infamous Ten Plagues. These disasters convince Pharaoh to release the Israelites, only to renege and come after them with his army. Again, God uses Moses to work a mighty miracle; he opens up the Red Sea for Israel to cross, then slams the water down on the pursuing army.

From there, Moses leads God’s people to Mount Sinai, where Moses receives God’s Law on stone tablets, and with Israel’s leaders, he eats and drinks with God as they sit on a gemstone pavement. From Sinai, Moses is directed to lead the people back into Israel, ending five hundred years of life away from the Promised Land.

Only it’s the people who are scared this time. As Moses had been afraid to return to Egypt, the people are afraid to return to Israel. There are other people living there now! Big, strong people. So the Israelites rebel against Moses and the other leaders. They make plans to return to Egypt. God is angry. They have failed to trust him. And God issues his sentence for their rebellion. This must have made Moses’ heart drop. God tells the Israelites, “You will wander in the wilderness for forty years because of your rebellion.”

Forty years. Moses was forty when he killed that Egyptian, intending to begin Israel’s liberation. He spent another forty years poking sheep, until God’s call. And now, he’s going to have to wait another forty years to enter the Promised Land. Moses will be a hundred and twenty when he finally sees the land promised to Abraham.

So his patience runs out. During their wilderness wanderings, just after his sister dies, an exhausted, emotionally weary Moses angrily rebukes the people, and then claims the credit for providing them miraculously with water, rather than crediting God. So God hands down a sentence specifically for Moses. Moses will not enter the Promised Land. Moses will die during their wandering.

That’s Moses. What a life. There’s the answer to the question he asks God, the question I wanted to answer for you. Who is Moses? So much of his life undoubtedly seems very remote, to us. And it is. He lived in an entirely different time, place, culture.

But I also hope that as you listened there, you heard something that made you connect with Moses. You found something in common. If you didn’t, I’m gonna run through his life again quickly, and, hopefully, help you see these things.

Moses was privileged, in a very literal way. Raised in a palace. You are privileged, too. You live in America, in 2023. You have more opportunity to advance, to succeed, than ninety-nine percent of the human race has ever had. And Moses thought his privilege made him special. So do you. Everyone thinks they deserve the status they have. Many of us think that we deserve higher status. Moses thought he deserved to be the liberator of God’s people; their vengeance, their Batman, killing their enemies in the dark.

So Moses misused the gifts God had given him. God’s simple gift of physical strength became a tool for murder. God’s gift of Moses’ status in the palace became the motivation for that murder. He thought he deserved to be the savior of Israel, because of who he was. His status later, as the people’s leader in the wilderness, which was also a gift from God, led him to claim credit for God’s provision of water for the people.

We also misuse God’s gifts to us. There’s a simple phrase sometimes used to categorize all the gifts God gives us. He gives us time, talents, and treasures. Three T’s. We misuse all of these. We fail to use the time he gives us wisely. We spend it on ourselves. We misuse our talents; by failing to use them, or by abusing them, as Moses abused his physical strength in cold-blooded vigilantism. And we misuse our treasures, as we fritter away the money God gives us on keeping up with the Joneses.

We’re like Moses in our frustrations and aimlessness. We get fed up with a situation, take matters into our own hands, and only make things worse. We find ourselves in a dead-end situation, with no apparent future, and we sink into that.

Here’s Moses as we meet him in today’s reading. A gifted person, who has abused his gifts. A capable person, who is stuck in an endless rut. A sinner, whose sin has spoiled things. Spoiled relationships; spoiled his career; spoiled his future. We’re Moses, aren’t we? Sinners, like him.

We are Moses in other ways as well. Moses’ name, “drawn out of the water,” is your name also. You were rescued through water; brought into the King’s family by your baptism. In the king’s palace, Moses was taught wisdom. You also, here in the King’s house, are given the gift of wisdom and knowledge; not through the word of man, but the word of God. And when Moses’ sin ruined his plans, his life, his future, he left Egypt, Hebrews eleven tells us, looking ahead to Christ. Understanding, through his own failure, that he needed a Savior; the Savior whom God had promised to Abraham, to Adam; to all.

I would love to talk this morning about the apostle Paul, who wrote our second reading. Or

Matthew, the man Jesus called in our Gospel reading. I’d love to give you their biographies as well. But honestly - we’d find the same things. Sinners, redeemed by God. Abusers of God’s good gifts to them, led to repentance by his Holy Spirit. That’s who Moses is; who Paul is; who Matthew is; who you, we, are. Sinners, saved by God’s forgiving love in Jesus.

In just a minute, we’re going to speak a creed together, as we always do after the sermon: An expression of what we believe about our Savior-God. This week, we’re using the Athanasian Creed. It’s longer than the other creeds we usually speak, the Apostles’ or the Nicene. It was written by Christians about fourteen hundred years ago to express, in very clear words, who our God is. He’s inexplicable, the Athanasian Creed clearly teaches. A wondrous God, a triune God; a God who can’t fit inside our brains. A God who is so far above us, so majestically supreme - and who nonetheless loves you. Personally. Individually. Who drew you out of water into his family. Who called you into his service. Who has forgiven all your abuses of his gifts.

I want to tell you one last thing about who Moses is. As God had announced to him, Moses died outside the Promised Land. Because of his sin, God did not allow him to enter.

But when Moses died, God personally buried him. God dug a grave for him. God lowered Moses’ body into that grave. God took care of him in his death.

Whatever your frustrations, or dead ends, or heartaches are in life - God is with you as he was with Moses. You are so precious to him, you dear child of God, that he has already made sure to plan your death. I hope that doesn’t sound morbid. I want to comfort you. Your God has made sure he knows the where, the when, the how, of the end of the life which he has gifted you here on earth, so that on the other side, the first thing you’ll get to see are his nail-scarred hands. Amen.

This year, I made simple digital versions of some more useful diagrams to include in my Christian Doctrine I and II courses.

If you have questions about the images, I’d love to answer them. I find these helpful as I teach; I hope you find them helpful to either clarify something for yourself, or to explain something of the Christian faith to another person. And if you like visual aids, check out Professor Luke Thompson’s gallery of resources HERE.

Peace to you, friends, in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God. Amen.

Picture with me a man walking down the road, and some people tell him, “Head this way.” So he turns down the street that they’re walking down. Then they tell him, “Come on over here,” and he stands with them. And lastly they tell him, “Pull up a chair,” and he sits down with them.

That’s how the book of Psalms in the Bible begins. Psalm 1:1, “How blessed is the man who does not walk in the advice of the wicked, who does not stand on the path with sinners, and who does not sit in a meeting with mockers.” First walk; then stand; and in the end, sit.

The Bible often uses this metaphor of walking to describe our lives. We can walk (as Psalm 1 warns) into the meeting of mockers; in the path of sinners. But there is another way to walk. This year at St. John’s School, Ephesians 5:8 is the theme for our life together as students and staff and families. In that verse, the apostle Paul uses this walking metaphor. He writes, “You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light.”

“You once were darkness,” he says. Darkness is sin. There are dark sinful actions; things that people prefer in darkness, or out of sight of others. Stealing or abusing or cheating; other such things. These actions simply display what’s already in the heart. Before I steal with my hand, I had to covet. Before I harm, I had to hate. What I do displays what’s inside me.

Someone who “is darkness,” to use Paul’s phrase, can look quite a bit like someone who “is light.” Think back a few weeks in worship to hearing Jesus’ parable of the weeds and the wheat. The plants would only be distinguished, and separated from one another, at harvest.

So then, what exactly is sin? The Christian preacher and teacher Augustine, who lived about seventeen centuries ago, came up with a helpful way to explain sin. Sin, Augustine said, is incurvature. Sin is being curved in on myself; I see only my needs, only my wants, me me me. I can’t see anything else. And I act in alignment with that. I act to benefit myself. This corresponds to Paul’s darkness metaphor. In the dark, I can’t help someone else. I can barely even help myself. I am focused on myself, and addressing my needs.

The opposite of sin, in the biblical vocabulary, is love. To love, or to be “light,” is to be curved outward; to see beyond myself. God is light; God is love; thus the Bible speaks. God is curved outward even by the very nature of God. The person of the Trinity - Father, Son, and Spirit - have existed from all eternity in mutual love and esteem. And when God created humanity, he made Adam and Eve in his image; curved outward, given to one another to care for one another and for the world around them, not for themselves alone.

But they fell. Adam and Eve curved in on themselves; they blamed one another for their fall, seeking to protect themselves alone in the face of God’s judgment. And so we read in Genesis 5 that when “God created man, he made him in the likeness of God,” but when “Adam lived 130 years, and he became the father of a son in his own likeness, according to his own image, and he named him Seth.” The image of God, our reflecting God’s love to the world around us, was lost. Humans are no longer by nature light, no longer by nature do they bear God’s image for the world to see; by nature we are “darkness.”

This curved-in or curved-out, light or dark, is an inner reality. It’s not inherently visible. Someone may do things which, outwardly, appear good. But the question we want to ask is, what motivates these actions? Do I help others to help them, or because I enjoy the praise I receive? Even good deeds that serve others can be motivated by egotistic self-centeredness. And that’s what Paul is diagnosing when he says to the Ephesians, “You once were darkness.” He’s not saying, “Everything you ever did was obvious wicked evil.” He’s saying, “You were curved in on yourselves. No light entered you, and none did you produce.”

The prophet Moses was aware that this was the nature of humanity. In our Old Testament reading, notice how he speaks of the people he was leading: “This is a stiff-necked people, Lord. Pardon our guilt and our sin, and accept us as your possession.” Stiff-necked is his choice of words. He isn’t talking about the people of Israel alone; all people are by nature stiff-necked, inwardly curved; dark in sin.

So how did this change take place which Paul describes? “You were once darkness, but now,” he says, “you are light in the Lord.” How? God does this. And doesn’t that make sense? God is the one who in the beginning made us in his image, who caused us to reflect his love’s light in the world. He did that in the beginning; he is also the one who restores it.

He does so through Jesus. Notice exactly what Paul says: “You are now light in the Lord.” When the apostle Paul uses the word Lord, he is usually referring specifically to Jesus Christ, the Son of God. In Jesus, we are light. That inner reality has changed.

Jesus is God, who from eternity has always been love, been light, been curved outward in love and light. He is also a man, a real human being. He lived the outwardly-curved life, the life that shows what God is like, the life in the image of God which no other human being has ever lived. And he poured out his own holy blood, and gave his body over into death, for us. So that our inwardly-curved, dark actions could be forgiven.

When we are curved inward, we trust only ourselves. That’s really the root of all sin; trusting ourselves, not God. The change God works in us is bringing us to trust him. Giving us faith. He does by showing us Jesus. Showing someone whom we can see is entirely trustworthy. Yet our sinful darkness is so great that were it left totally up to us, we would still not trust Jesus! We would not believe in him! As Jesus said to Simon Peter in today’s Gospel, “Simon son of Jonah, flesh and blood did not reveal this to you,” your rational natural human faculties did not lead you to trust me, “but my Father who is in heaven” did this. The Holy Spirit of God is sent forth through the good news about Jesus and brings faith to life in our hearts. Changes that inner reality.

So Paul, at the end of our theme verse, says, “Walk as children of light.” He’s saying , “Demonstrate that inner reality.” What does it look like to walk as children of light? Again, there are some genuinely good things that both people who believe in Jesus and who don’t believe in Jesus do. Volunteering; working through their marriages when things are hard; telling the truth. Such things are good. To do the opposite of them (to lie, or to refuse to help others) would not be walking as children of light.

But in particular, walking as children of light means displaying what God is like. God explained what he is like in our first reading: “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, and overflowing with mercy and truth, maintaining mercy for thousands, forgiving guilt and rebellion and sin.” Yet he also says about himself that “He will by no means clear the guilty. He calls their children and their children’s children to account for the guilt of the fathers, even to the third and the fourth generation.”

So: Walking as children of light also means being aware of the presence of sin in the world. It means shining light on the dark deeds done by sinful human hearts; even on our own deeds! It means humility, a readiness to acknowledge our own sin and ask for forgiveness; it also means boldness, a readiness to name and reprove sin.

I want to talk about that last line of God’s words to Moses; God “calling children to account for the guilt of the fathers even to the third and the fourth generation.” Does that mean that God punishes other people for someone else’s sin? No. What it means is God takes sin seriously. God is not the sinner; we are the sinners. And our sin can leave consequences long after we’ve exited the stage. God permits that, so that we learn to hate sin. Yet as long as people continue to love sin, to stay in darkness, God permits sin’s consequences to endure.

But he also (we heard him say it) “forgives guilt and rebellion and sin.” Where sin’s consequences lead someone to hate sin, and to look for hope, God holds out forgiveness and healing in Jesus. He is compassionate and gracious.

I’ll end with some words to different groups gathered here this morning. First, to our St. John’s students, parents, staff; a school where God’s Word is the foundation is a great blessing. Don’t let God’s Word be a “classroom only” or “Sunday only” thing. Curve outward toward one another; shine the light of God’s love into one another’s lives. Parents, be patient and firm with your children. Children, honor and aid your parents.

Next, to those students and parents who don’t make use of St. John’s School: I offer you those same encouragements, but I have more for you as well.

It would not be true for me to tell you that everyone who doesn’t go to St. John’s School (your classmates at the public school, or your fellow parents there) it would not be true for me to tell you that they are all “darkness.” But (you know this) your environment is different. Take the counsel given in Psalm 1 to heart. Ask what the paths are which people are walking down.

And lastly, to those of you whose children are no longer at St. John’s, or those of you who’ve passed through the school years yourselves but who don’t have children at the school: Pray for our school; for her students and staff. And encourage your brothers and sisters by your examples. If you are a young adult, be an example to the schoolkids of one who walks as a child of light. If you are an elder among us, be an example and a help to the parents. Love one another, as you have been loved. Shine the light on one another which has illuminated your heart. Amen.

Friends: Peace to you from and in him who is our peace, the Cornerstone of the Church; Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Today’s Gospel is an important one. Every time I come to this story in the Gospels, it reminds me that, when I think I have Jesus all figured out - when I think I know exactly WWJD in every situation - Jesus comes along in this story and upends the market tables in my mind, where I’ve got him nicely laid out on display. Aslan is not a tame lion.

I cannot imagine ever speaking to the woman in this story as Jesus does. And that’s a clue to me that the Jesus I picture in my head sometimes looks more like Tim Walsh than he ought to.

Now: I do not think that I should imitate what Jesus does here, to be clear. Nor should you! Jesus knew this woman’s faith. He knew that he could test her severely, and that he would in the end be able to praise her “great faith” before his followers. You and I do not know such things. It is not given to us, in the Word of God, to test others in the way that Jesus does here. Instead, the Lord charges us with carrying one another’s burdens; charges us with, so far as we are able, making the loads which others carry lighter, not heavier.

So this story always challenges me. I have to wrestle with understanding Jesus here. But that’s not all this story does. I also find something very valuable here. I’m reminded that Jesus is a Savior even for pastors. Yes, it’s true: Jesus can even save pastors!

Let me explain that. There’s quite a bit of background to this story. If you think back two weeks in worship, we heard about the miraculous feeding of the five thousand. Just before that, Jesus had heard that his cousin John had been killed. Jesus was grieving and hoped to have a quiet prayer retreat, but the crowds found him. After feeding them, he got a night to himself, and then (last week we heard this) as he walked out onto the lake to meet his disciples in their boat, Peter asked him for an invitation to walk on the water, but then doubted Jesus’ invitation.

Then, from last week to now, we jumped over a couple events. First: When the boat lands, John’s Gospel chapter 6 records that the crowds who’d eaten the loaves and fish tracked Jesus down, hoping for another free lunch. Jesus instead began teaching them about who he is, and what he really came to do for them. He told them that he is the Bread of Life, and that whoever does not eat his flesh and drink his blood will not have eternal life. So, John 6:60 and 66; “Many of his disciples said, ‘This is a hard teaching! Who can listen to it?’” “So many of his disciples turned back and were not walking with him anymore.”

After that, the Pharisees show up and start arguing with Jesus about why he doesn’t follow the traditions they do. He explains his position, and then further explains it to his disciples, and yet they still need clarification. Matthew 15:15 (the section just before today’s reading), “Peter said to Jesus, ‘Explain your teaching to us.’ Jesus said, ‘Do you still not understand?’”

To get to the point: This woman comes to Jesus after he experiences what I would consider a string of disappointments. And she wants his help! Here’s someone who actually trusts him, who wants his care. And that Jesus whom I sometimes picture in my head (the one who looks a lot more like Tim Walsh) that Jesus would react by giving her exactly what she says she wants, right when she asks for it.

That’s a danger for pastors. When we’ve been disappointed, and suddenly an opportunity presents itself that seems too good to be true (someone wants our help; someone wants to lead a new ministry or program), we jump at what seems like an easy win, instead of giving it the careful, prayerful thought which ministry to God’s people always calls for. And in such decisions, pastors often make mistakes that impact the souls we’re called to care for.

Thank God that we pastors - even us pastors! - have a Savior in Jesus. A Savior who not only reminds us, by his actions, of the need for us to slow down, but a Savior who did it for us; in our place. All my thoughtless haste and rash decisions are covered by the blood of the Lamb.

I suppose that that’s not comforting only for pastors alone, is it? You also are tempted to quick shortcuts and fast fixes after being disappointed. Rather than prayerfully going to God’s Word, or asking counsel from other Christians, we act. But (you know this) such actions often make our problems worse, rather than better. Sometimes we even stoop to sin in our haste and desire to solve our own problems; to move past disappointment.

Our psalm proclaimed this wondrous truth: “Eternal are your mercies, LORD.” God does not treat us as our sins deserve. He daily protects us from the consequences of our sinful haste, and when he does allow us to experience consequences, he does so as a loving Father; not to harm us, but that we might learn to hate sin and love his ways all the more.

Jesus’ actions in this story teach us these things. We see that in him, we sinners have a Savior whose ways are not our ways (thank God!), nor are his thoughts our thoughts (praise the Lord)!

There’s another protagonist (the technical term, a deuteragonist) in this particular story from the life of Jesus; the Canaanite woman. Her actions also teach us something. They teach us what it looks like to trust such a Savior.

How would you react to someone saying the things which Jesus says about her about you? First, he tells his disciples, “I wasn’t sent to help her.” “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Matthew calls her a “Canaanite,” while Mark’s Gospel calls her “a Greek of Syro-Phoenician origin.” Matthew’s term is more general; Mark writes with more exactness; but they both make sure to highlight her non-Jewishness.

Have you been given the impression that Jesus isn’t for people like you? Your life is too much of a mess. People your age aren’t at church. Or you don’t wear the right clothes, or you don’t sing the songs, or the prayers that everyone else knows by heart aren’t familiar to you.

I am still getting to know everyone who worships here at St. John’s, so if you are new here, I don’t know it. But if you are, and you’re getting the impression that people are thinking the same things as the disciples (“Send her or him away!”), please hear this: Jesus is for you. And the things that may jar you upfront, the things that his people do as we gather which don’t make sense right away (the songs, the standing and sitting, whatever else), things that seem to be for other people; that is not all there is to Jesus.

This woman knew that. She kept pressing. Despite being told that Jesus wasn’t for people like her, “she came and knelt in front of him” (the word for kneeling there can also mean worshiping), and she said, “Lord, help me.”

I read another preacher’s sermon about this event, where the preacher suggested that worship was what unlocked Jesus’ blessing on her. I’ll quote him: “She came in brokenness and openness to worship Jesus, and her worship worked.” That’s a convenient message for pastors to preach, because it’ll get people in the pews! “This is what you have to do to get God on your side. Worship! That’ll do it.”

But it’s not true. Do you see that, which this preacher missed? Her worship is met by another refusal from Jesus. He tells her, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to their little dogs.”

Ah! Jesus! How can you say something like this?! I read another sermon that excused Jesus this way: The preacher explained, “The Greek word here means ‘pet dog,’ not ‘mangy stray.’”

So?! I still wouldn’t want to be called this! I doubt you would! We read this as Americans, with the history we have, and we ought to think of the words and actions that were socially accepted in the past simply because someone was of the “wrong” skin color. And now are we finding that Jesus acts in such a way?

But this Canaanite woman knows better. She is humble, but she’s bold in her humility. “Yes, Lord, yet the little dogs do eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”

How (I’ll risk a pun) how dogged she is in her petitions! She won’t let him go! She’s like Jacob, who wrestled God at the Jabbok River and told him, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” Only one person, I think, has wrestled with God in prayer harder than Jacob or this woman. That was Jesus himself, in Gethsemane, pleading for the cup to be taken from him.

But for this woman’s sake, and Jacob’s sake, and Pastor’s sake, and your sake, what did Jesus say to the Father? “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to pass from me unless I drink it, may your will be done.” He was ready to do whatever it took to save you.

How did the woman know that about Jesus? How did she know that he would have compassion and help her? How, despite all the evidence, could she trust in his love? She had faith. Faith Knows What Jesus is Really Like. And faith is a gift from God; faith comes not by our works, so that no man may boast, but from the Spirit through the Word of God. She had heard of Jesus; she knew he was the “Son of David.” The message about Jesus - the Gospel - it worked faith in her heart.

And Jesus knew her faith (because God looks at the heart, while man looks on the outward appearance), so Jesus knew that he could test her, so that he could praise her. And in the midst of this testing, by faith, she Knew What Jesus is Really Like. She knew that he is the one “through whom we have access to the Father by one Spirit.”

The Holy Spirit, by the Word of God, works faith in your heart also. Faith which is a gift from God, not a reward for your worship or other good deeds. He works faith in the hearts of infants, like Frank; in the hearts of children, like Miseli; in the hearts of pastors, even! No sinner was forgotten by Jesus on his cross. Grab onto him. Tell him what you want. Don’t be discouraged. He has rpomised to bless you. Amen.

Grace and peace to you, friends, from Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. Amen.

The first verse of our Gospel reading tells us that “Jesus urged the disciples to get into the boat and go ahead of him.” Urged is not quite strong enough, as an English translation of the Greek word there. This is a Greek word that (elsewhere in the Bible) means forcing someone to do something they do not want to do.

The apostle Paul, for instance (when he describes how he, then known as Saul, used to persecute Christians) uses this word in Acts 22. Paul says there, “I went from one synagogue to another,” looking for Christians, “and I tried to force them to blaspheme.” His word for force there is the same one that Matthew uses in our Gospel, which our English Bibles translate as urge. But this is a strong word. Almost a violent word (as in Paul’s case).

Why did Jesus do this? Why did he force the disciples onto the boat? Why would he need to? Many of the twelve disciples had sailing experience. Perhaps they saw that the wind would be against them; they knew that it was not a good time to set sail. Nonetheless, “Jesus urged” - Jesus forced - “the disciples to get into the boat.”

Have you been urged into a boat? At work; at home; in some area of life, you see a trouble or trial - a storm - coming. And you would love to avoid being caught up in that storm! But it’s not to be. Because you know God’s Word, and God’s Word tells you that as a Christian spouse, or parent, or worker - whatever the role is that you have - you have to climb into the boat and face this wind and these waves. Is that you? Is Jesus urging you into a boat?

Such situations - our struggles against our own sins; the needs of others; the opposition of the unbelieving world - such things can drain and discourage Christians. That was the prophet Elijah’s situation. We heard about the beginning of his prophetic ministry last week; this week, our reading comes from the middle of his ministry.

Elijah was frightened and discouraged. King Ahab and Queen Jezebel wanted him dead. The people of Israel were worshiping the idols Ahab and Jezebel worshiped, and killing God’s other prophets, and intended to kill him, if they could! So he ran and hid in a cave in the wilderness.

God did not leave Elijah alone. He came and spoke to Elijah. Notice that he asks Elijah the same question twice, and Elijah offers the same answer twice. In their interaction, God comforts and encourages Elijah with two truths.

The first truth is in the wind and earthquake and fire and then the gentle voice. God is reminding Elijah that he is in control of this world; even in control of the disastrous and frightening things that happen around us. But his reminder to Elijah (and to us) is that we will not find him in such things. We will not find God in a tornado, or a tsunami. He controls such things, yes, but we will not know him through them. We will know God through his Word.

Compared to disasters around us, the Bible may seem foolishly quiet and powerless. But that is not true. God is in his Word. Elijah needed to remember that.

Elijah also needed to hear the second truth God showed him: He was not really alone in the world. Yes, God was with him through his Word, and was watching over him daily; but there were also other believers! And God would lead Elijah to others who would encourage and support him in his work.

You need to remember this also. You are not alone in your troubles. The family of God, your brothers and sisters, are called by God to love you. As the apostle John writes in 1 John 3: “This is how we have come to know love: Jesus laid down his life for us. We also should lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.” These are promises from God for us. He does not leave his children alone.

Faith is trust in God and his promises. Peter trusted that Jesus was his Lord and Savior. Peter trusted (for a time) that he could walk on water because of Jesus’ Word to him. When the Bible speaks of great or little faith, it is speaking of holding onto more (or less) of God’s promises. Saving faith - Christian faith - holds onto the promise of forgiveness and salvation in the Lord Jesus. As that faith grows, it holds onto other promises as well. Promises that God gives about providing for us daily; about the blessings he will give as we attend worship; so on and so on.

Our trust in those promises can be shaken, like Peter’s in the promise of walking on water. Peter did not stop trusting that Jesus was his Savior. But Peter did stop trusting that Peter could safely walk on water.

So notice that Jesus does not call him “unbeliever Peter,” “unfaithful Peter.” He simply says to him, “You of little faith.” Would that Peter had had a bigger faith! A faith which held onto all the promises given to him. But Peter held onto this promise; Jesus is my Savior, and Jesus will not let me go. That promise, Jesus surely kept.

Would that we had bigger faiths as well! Would that we clung to every promise from God, even when storms come into our lives. And by God’s Spirit working through the Word, our faith does grow. We hear God’s promises, and we cling to them, even when we are sorely pressed. Pray daily for increased faith, to meet new troubles with confidence. But be sure that Jesus is still the Savior for “you of little faith.” Take courage! Jesus is with you. Do not be afraid. You are not facing life’s storms alone.

God made the promise today that little Conrad belongs to him. And infant Baptism is another interesting way to regard Jesus’ actions at the beginning of the Gospel reading. Conrad had no choice in this. He was brought to these waters.

But Jesus is in those waters. We brought Conrad to Baptism according to the Word of Jesus, who told his disciples, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them,” and also, “Go and gather disciples from all nations by baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

In Baptism, Jesus has promised to Conrad (as the apostle Paul explains in Romans 6) that “all who are baptized into Christ Jesus are baptized into his death,” “so that just as Jesus was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too would also walk in a new life. For if we have been united with him in the likeness of his death, we will certainly also be united with him in the likeness of his resurrection.”

This same promise, God has made to all of you who are baptized. Your Baptism is union with Jesus in his death and resurrection. It is forgiveness for your sins.

Therefore, may you, family of Conrad in particular, and people of God in general, be convinced by God’s Spirit working through God’s Word that “neither death nor life, neither angels nor rulers, neither things present nor things to come, nor powerful forces, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in creation,” no trouble or trial, no wave on life’s sea, “will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Amen.

Friends, grace and peace to you in abundance from our Savior-God. Amen.

What should we think of the crowds who followed Jesus to this “deserted place” in our Gospel reading? They were not prepared for this trip, apparently. They followed him out into the wilderness, and they stayed too late, and they didn’t have food with them. They had a foreseeable need, but they didn’t act according to that need. Should we look at them like I might look at one of my kids telling me, fifteen minutes after we get on the road for vacation, that they need to use the bathroom? “Why didn’t you think of this at home?”

But thinking and reacting that way is never really helpful. And it’s not the way Jesus reacted to these crowds. Verse 14: “When Jesus got out of the boat, he saw a large crowd. He had compassion on them.” Jesus knew that they had not prepared for their foreseeable needs. He knows all things! He had compassion nonetheless.

First, he saw that they brought their sick loved ones to him. He healed them. Then, he knew that they needed food. So he provided that for them. Jesus cares about our physical needs. He moves to meet our needs with compassion. We have another example of God’s compassion, meeting physical need, in our Old Testament reading. Elijah the prophet announced a coming drought, but God made sure that Elijah himself was provided for. From that reading: God tells Elijah, “‘Hide yourself by the Kerith Ravine. You will drink from the stream, and I will command ravens to provide for you.’ So Elijah went and did just as the Lord had said. The ravens brought him bread and meat, and he drank from the stream.”

Three examples of God compassionately answering physical needs. And we can also be sure that, as in those accounts, God will answer our physical needs. He will provide us with what we need. Not always what we might want (Elijah probably would have enjoyed staying somewhere with more amenities than that river canyon offered) but, yes, always what we need.

All that is true, and I could say Amen here, and we could move on in our Sunday worship. But there’s more to deal with in our Scripture readings. In the first reading, where Elijah has these birds miraculously bringing him food at God’s command, there is more to consider. That reading begins: “Elijah from Tishbe, one of the settlers in Gilead, said to Ahab, ‘As surely as the Lord lives, the God of Israel before whom I stand, there will be no dew or rain during the coming years, except at my word.’” And indeed, for three years there was not.

Who is this Ahab? He was the king of Israel at Elijah’s time. Last week I talked about King Solomon, son of King David. Under David and Solomon, the twelve tribes of Israel existed as a united kingdom. But during the reign of Solomon’s son Rehoboam, ten of the twelve tribes seceded from their union. Only the tribes of Judah and Benjamin remained loyal to David’s family. That kingdom, ruled by David’s descendants, became known simply as Judah (since Judah was the more influential of those two tribes). The other ten tribes, since they were greater in number, took the national name Israel for themselves and their kingdom.

Ahab was one of the kings over this rebel kingdom of Israel. Here’s how the book of Kings describes him: “Ahab son of Omri did more evil in the eyes of the LORD than any of those before him. He served and worshiped Baal. He set up an altar for Baal in the temple of Baal that he built. Ahab also made an Asherah pole. He did more to arouse the anger of the LORD, the God of Israel, than all the kings of Israel before him.”

So Elijah - a man of Israel, one of Ahab’s subjects - was called by God to be a prophet to this rebel king. Our Old Testament reading is the beginning of Eljiah’s prophetic ministry to the kingdom of Israel. And what was God’s message through his prophet? God tells Ahab and his kingdom, “I am going to inflict physical need - physical hardship - on you.” This drought that Elijah announced lasted three years. It caused real hardship for people who depended on rain for their crops. Our garden behind the parsonage was getting dry after these couple weeks without real rain. But in 2026, we can walk down to the IGA and pick up all the food we need. In 900 BC? Not so much.

That truth which I expressed earlier (God will provide for physical needs) has to be tempered by another truth: At the same time that he is concerned for our physical needs, God is even more concerned for our spiritual needs.

Ahab hated God. He was in open rebellion against the only true God, the God of Israel. He was worshiping other gods, Baal and Asherah; false gods, powerless gods, deceptions from Satan. And as king of Israel, Ahab was leading his subjects away from the true God.

So the true God created a situation of desperate physical need in Israel. And Ahab could pray to Baal and Asherah all he wanted, but he would find that they could offer him and his kingdom no relief. Only the true God, who caused the need, could solve the need.

God is concerned for our bodily needs. He made us, and the world in which we live, and none of it would last a moment outside of his sustaining care. But even if he would grant us all the physical blessings we could ever hope for (healthy food, clean air and water, safe homes, and more besides), we will still die one day. And then the only needs that will matter are our spiritual needs. So God uses physical needs to open our eyes to our spiritual needs.

What are those? Well, the apostle Paul put together a list of spiritual blessings from God in our Ephesians reading. Reading through that, we get a picture of what our spiritual needs are. First, Paul says that God blesses us by “adopting us as his sons through Jesus Christ.”

What need is addressed there? Our relationship with God. Naturally, that relationship is that of estrangement. In fact, we are by nature God’s enemies. We are Ahabs by nature; rebels in a kingdom of rebels, worshiping anything but the true God. In God’s courtroom, the charge of treason stands against us. That charge needs to be resolved.

So God sent his Son Jesus. His loyal Son; his Son who perfectly submitted to his Father’s will, who never rebelled. God’s Son was punished as a traitor, a rebel, so that we rebels could be adopted as sons of God.

The second spiritual blessing Paul mentions: He says, “In Jesus we also have redemption through his blood.” Redemption; to redeem. These words have contractual meaning. Like paying off a mortgage, or a car loan; you are now able to completely say, “This belongs to me.”

By Jesus’ blood, shed on his cross, we are redeemed. We belong to him. Jesus’ blood serves as the currency and as the receipt for this transaction. We can point to Jesus’ blood and say, “This is the price paid for me. I belong to him, and no one gets to tell him what to do with me.”

Who would try to tell Jesus what to do with you? Satan would. Satan (which means accuser) wants to claim you for hell. But by Jesus’ blood, Satan has no right to you. You are already redeemed; ownership is claimed. And the One who owns you looks at you like he looked at those crowds: With compassion beyond our understanding.

Thirdly: Paul says we also have “forgiveness of sins.” These two blessings, forgiveness and redemption, are two ways to explain the same truth. Paul’s words even list them that way. See verse 7, where he writes this way: “In Jesus we also have redemption through his blood,” comma, “the forgiveness of sins.” Paul links these two. Redemption is Jesus making us his own. Forgiveness is Jesus setting aside his right to something; his right to penalize.

Forgiveness is not saying that something “doesn’t matter,” or that “it’s okay.” Sin is never okay. Jesus did not say to us that our sin didn’t matter. It did matter. And he treated it as something that mattered.

If sin didn’t matter, Jesus’ cross makes no sense. But sin does matter. It needed to be forgiven, not brushed off. By taking sin to his cross, rather to God’s courtroom, Jesus has blessed us with forgiveness.

The last spiritual blessing Paul lists: He tells us that God “made known to us the mystery of his will.” This is an incredible thing. We get to know what God is up to! We get to peek into the mind of the Maker as we read the Bible. The one who knows all things reveals himself to us. In particular, he reveals his will to us. How should I approach that thought? How can we understand what Paul is saying here?

We can be motivated by two things; needs or wants. When someone is motivated to action by a need, it’s usually easy to see what their need is, based on that action. For example, hunger (true hunger, the need for food) makes us get up and find food.

But when someone’s actions are motivated by a want, it can be harder to figure out what that is. “Why did she say that? Why didn’t he do that? What do they want?” Harder to figure out.

In the Bible, God reveals to us what he wants. He reveals his will to us; he (as Paul said) “makes known to us the mystery of his will.” What motivates the Lord of Lords, the Creator of heaven and earth?

He wants us to know him. And we come to know God only in and through Jesus, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.

What should such knowledge cost? College is pretty expensive these days, and a lot of people question whether they even teach anything worthwhile anymore. So shouldn’t knowledge about the will of God be staggeringly costly? It should cost more than we could ever pay, to know the mind of God.

But, as it turns out, coming to know God doesn’t come with a tuition bill. A wealthy Benefactor, who saw that you and I could never afford the price of this education, has paid that cost. Your need is met by his compassion. And he’ll also cover the cost of your meal plan, each and every day. The Lord Jesus Christ will provide you with all you need for body and soul, now and forever. Amen.

Grace and peace to you in Jesus’ name, friends. Amen.

What would you have asked for, if you were in Solomon’s shoes? (Or slippers, perhaps.) From our Old Testament reading: “The Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream at night and said, ‘Ask for whatever you want me to give you.’” What would you ask for?

Or here’s a slightly different question: What do you think Pastor Tim would wants you to ask God for? “I want my sins forgiven”? “I want to go to heaven when I die”?

I hope I wouldn’t hear those specific answers, because you don’t have to ask God to grant those things. If you were in Solomon’s shoes, you would not need to ask for forgiveness and salvation. He already promises forgiveness and eternity with him to all who trust in Jesus.

Solomon had that same promise. God had shared that promise with his father David, and with their ancestor Abraham, back to Adam and Eve. Those Old Testament believers were Christians like us. “Christ” in Greek and “Messiah” in Hebrew mean (in English) “anointed.” The people who waited for the Messiah, Christ, in the Old Testament were waiting for God’s promised Savior. We know more about him than they did, but our faith is in the same Savior.

So Solomon did not have to ask for salvation, or for heaven, when God came to him in this dream. Solomon knew that the Savior in whom was his faith would win that for him. So Solomon asked for wisdom to lead God’s people well. And it’s a great thing he asked for.

Solomon wanted to be an “expert in the law who is trained as a disciple in the kingdom of heaven,” as Jesus references in the mini-parable that closes today’s Gospel reading. Solomon wanted to render good decisions as king of Israel. To do so, he needed to “bring both new things and old things out of his treasure.” What does that mean, exactly? One way of understanding Jesus’ picture there: Someone who knows the Bible (God’s ancient and powerful Word) and can apply it in new situations is someone who “brings forth both new things and old things out of his treasure.”

You should expect pastors to “bring out of his treasure both new and old things.” A couple other ways to apply this metaphor Jesus gives us to pastors today: You should expect your pastor to preach and teach both the Old and New Testament. You should also expect your pastor to read and study old and new things outside the Bible. One of my seminary professors said it wisely: “If your bookshelf only has the newest books, balance that with some old books that have held up over time. If you’re only buying old books, see what’s new out there that’s relevant to your ministry.” Expect such things from pastors in general; from me in particular.

God’s Word is the treasure that I, as your pastor, should be bringing out to you. And the wonderful thing about this treasure? Sharing it does not reduce the amount. As we’ve heard the last two weeks, God’s Word is a good seed which produces a bountiful harvest to God’s glory in our lives. It is a treasure that does not shrink when it’s shared (like the estate that’s carved up among heirs when someone dies). When a treasure is shared, usually, what each person receives is less than the whole amount. But when we share God’s Word, everyone walks away with as much as they can, and the treasure is still there to keep sharing.

Jesus uses treasure as a metaphor in two of the other parables we heard today. The parable of the Treasure Hidden in the Field, and the parable of the Pearl of Great Price.

People come to know Jesus, and God’s Word, in different ways. These two parables depict that. The hidden treasure, first. Some people were not looking for Jesus, necessarily; not looking to learn about God, or any of that. Like the man in the parable -

(An aside: Why is this man in the parable in a field he doesn’t own? Maybe he was taking a shortcut; maybe he’s a laborer working for the owner. And where did the treasure come from? Well, before banks, this was sometimes how people would hide valuables. Or it could have been plunder which criminals hid, like pirates in a movie. Jesus doesn’t explain, and it doesn’t really matter.)

So, anyways: Like the man in the parable, some people were just going about their lives. Working, playing, dreaming, thinking. And then, their neighbor invited them to church. Or (as it happened for one guy I know) he overheard a couple of people talking about church at the gym and asked them about it. Or a flyer was left on their door. Or they opened the drawer at their hotel and found a Bible. They weren’t looking for it, but suddenly, they found treasure. And when someone in this situation realizes what he’s found, verse 44, “he goes away and sells all that he has and buys that field.”

On the other hand, sometimes people meet Jesus because they are looking. They’re the pearl merchant in Jesus’ second parable. They want to find spiritual truth. They’re asking questions. They’re going to churches, talking to pastors (maybe even investigating other religions), reading different things, and then they find it. The pearl.

In the ancient world, pearls were incredibly valuable. (Today, we have very advanced techniques for cultivating them at scale.) One general in the Roman empire who wanted to be emperor actually sold a family heirloom pearl and raised enough money to finance a military campaign that ended with him as emperor! (He only lasted eight months before being assassinated, though.)

The pearl merchant in this story has found a pearl like that. A pearl of life-changing value; a Powerball pearl. And he knows it. So (like the man who stumbled across treasure in a field) “he went and sold all that he had and bought it.”

What is this going, and this selling all they had? These parables are depicting people who are saved, who come to faith, later in life. They can look at their lives and see a time when they didn’t know Jesus, and a time now when they do. Changes come with that. Habits and behaviors from the before-time are reconsidered. “We are not our own; we were bought at a price,” as Paul wrote to the Corinthians. Our sex lives (which is such a weird phrase, isn’t it?); the words we use; the way we spend money; God’s Word speaks to all these things. Acquiring the treasure means giving up the way we used to think about our lives.

But we do this with joy. How could we not? How could we not give up such passing things for eternal life? The Christian writer C. S. Lewis had a metaphor - his own little parable - about people who don’t want to hear God’s Word, who don’t want to know Jesus. He said (I’m paraphrasing) that people act like kids playing in the dirt in the backyard as Mom and Dad pack the car to go on vacation. And when Mom and Dad come around to see, “Wash up and we’ll get going!” the child says, “I want to stay right here!” Foolishness. Understandable from a child, but we expect better from adults. We expect wisdom. We expect good decisions.

Solomon was wise. He made good decisions. Under his leadership (and under God’s caring hand) Israel was more prosperous than it would ever again be.

But Solomon was not perfectly wise. He was still a sinner. He married 700 women, and slept with another 300. When he became old, his wives (most of whom were princesses from other lands) turned him to worshiping their gods; false gods. Thankfully, by the end of his life, Solomon seems to have recognized his sins in this area and repented of them. He wrote the book of the Bible we call Ecclesiastes toward the end of his life, and this is how he ends that book: “Fear God and keep his commandments. For mankind, this is everything. Yes, God will bring everything that is done into judgment.” Solomon recognized that he, and his actions, would be subject to God’s judgment.

God’s judgment is the theme of the last parable from Jesus we’ll look at this morning (the third one in this section we read); the parable of the dragnet. Those first two parables are best understood as being about people who come to know Jesus as adults. This parable applies to anyone who says they know Jesus; anyone in the visible Christian Church.

Lots of people end up in church. That’s the net that’s cast into the sea. People end up in church because they were invited, or because their parents (or grandparents) bring them, or because their kids go to the church’s school, or because they’re just curious. There are fish that don’t end up in the net, just as there are people in the world who never end up in church.

But those who are caught up in the net will still be sorted. Good from bad; believers from unbelievers, because even in the Church there are unbelievers. Solomon was among them for a time. King of Israel! Literal son of David! A thousand years later, Jesus himself would be born from Solomon’s family!

And yet, although Solomon was visibly in the Church, his heart was not. He worshiped other gods. He followed his heart, not God’s Word. He did not sell all he had to get spiritual treasure.

Just because someone is a pastor, or a lifelong church attender, or even really excited about Jesus in an overt way, does not mean that they have faith in Jesus as their Savior. Only in the end will the fish be sorted.

But Solomon - when his end came - was a believer. He saw his sin. He saw his need for a Savior. He trusted God’s promise that that Savior would come, and would pay for Solomon’s sin, so that when Solomon died and left the palace that he had built for himself, filled with earthly riches far beyond his needs, he could enter the heavenly palace which would put all his riches - and all ours, also - to shame. And Solomon could sit at the King’s table in that palace; not as king himself any longer, but as a child of the Father above.

You are also welcomed into that palace; offered a seat at that table. I don’t know how all of you found the treasure we share here at St. John’s; whether you were looking for it, or weren’t, or whatever. But the treasure is real. It’s yours for the taking. And along with this treasure - the forgiveness and salvation won for you by Jesus - God also offers you wisdom for your everyday life in his Word. You are rich beyond measure, friends. Amen.

Friends - my brothers and sisters - grace and mercy and peace be yours now and always as gifts from your Heavenly Father, guaranteed to you by the Lord Jesus Christ, and delivered into your hearts by the Spirit of God. Amen.

When Jesus tells these stories recorded in the Bible for us - these parables - it is important to note what they are about, and what they are not about. For instance, Jesus tells one that we call the Parable of the Dragnet. In that story, a fishing boat lets down its nets and scoops up a mess of fish. The fishermen head to shore, and there they sort out the fish. Some fish are good, and are taken to the market. Some fish are not good. (Too small; a species that people don’t eat.) Those fish are dumped on the beach.

That is a parable about the Christian Church. Jesus’ point in that story is that as the Church “fishes for men,” all kinds of people will end up in church; gathered in the net. But not all of them will go to heaven. Church membership, church attendance: These are not tickets to heaven. Only Jesus gets us to heaven. To trust in anything other than him as a way to heaven is to turn away from the One who is the Way and the Truth and the Life.

This parable isn’t about the Christian Church, and how there will be false believers - hypocrites - among Christians. They’re very similar stories, but this particular parable is about the world. Verse 38, Jesus says that clearly: “The field is the world.”

So why is it important to know that this parable is about the world, not the Church? Because that shapes how we apply the truths of this parable in our lives. If this parable were about the Church, we would not exercise church discipline. Pastors would not confront people about sin. We would let weeds and wheat coexist.

But Jesus tells us elsewhere that we are to exercise discipline within the Church. In Matthew 18, he instructs us on how to go about that. That’s because this parable is not about the Church; it’s about the world. In the world at large, there will be wheat and weeds growing alongside one another until the day that Jesus returns.

What’s the difference between the world and the Church? The Church is where God is glorified. The world is where God is supposed to be glorified. Our psalm today, and our epistle reading, both teach that truth. Psalm 19: “The heavens declare the glory of God!” Look up into the sky, David says, and see that there is a glorious Creator. Paul likewise says in our Romans reading, “God’s eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen since the creation of the world. They are understood from the things he made.” There is no reason for anyone to deny the existence of the almighty God; no reason not to glorify him or seek him out.

The whole world, therefore, should be the Church. Everyone should know God through Jesus. Everyone should worship and praise God for his love. But not everyone does. Why not? Why is the world not the Church? Why is God not glorified everywhere? It turns out that God has an enemy. Jesus gives this enemy two names as he explains his parable; “the Evil One,” and “the devil.” We also call this enemy Satan.

Satan hates God. He wants only to lead or keep people away from God. And so, in this world where God ought to be glorified everywhere by everyone, Satan dedicates himself to keeping that from happening.

Notice when it is that Jesus says that Satan does his work. “While people were sleeping, the farmer’s enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat.” We need sleep. We need rest. We cannot be on and aware 24/7. Satan, on the other hand, has no such limitations.

This is why God is not glorified everywhere in the world. He has a tireless enemy at work in the world. An enemy who does not need to sleep or eat. An enemy who can march endlessly without blisters, who can tear down what we build without throwing out his back.

How would we ever undo such an enemy’s plots? We can’t! But Jesus can. Jesus has not met his match in Satan. He could bring all Satan’s work to an end in an instant. And he in fact will do that! On the world’s last day, all Satan’s schemes will end in an instant. Jesus has that power now, and in his own time (not ours), he will make use of it. The Lord Jesus will return to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.

Until then: Satan, the enemy, is at work in the world. He causes pain and suffering all around. But blaming everything on him is too simple an explanation, isn’t it? It’s not only Satan’s fault that God isn’t glorified everywhere. Humans deserve blame also. We humans sin. And Jesus makes that point in this parable. The enemy plants the seeds, but the seeds grow up into “weeds which are the sons of the Evil One,” people who “cause sin and continue to break the law.” He is not speaking of the laws that our police officers or sheriff’s deputies enforces, but of the Law of God, which Jesus elsewhere sums up in two commands: Love God above all, and love your neighbor as yourself. To obey those commands is to glorify God. To do anything else is sin which dishonors God.

The particular species of weed Jesus references bears a fungus that can sicken or even kill anyone who consumes it. Imagine gathering wheat from your field, grinding it, preparing food, and not knowing that toxic fungus spores have contaminated your flour. The enemy’s action was directed at the farmer, but it will affect the farmer’s family also; the families of the workers, who will share in the harvest; the families of all who will purchase grain from the farmer. Had the servants not noticed, unknown numbers of people would have been harmed.

Sin does this. Not just Satan’s sin, but ours also. The effects of our sin ripple outward, like a rock thrown into a pond.

We like to think otherwise. We think we can keep sin contained. It will hurt just the person we want to hurt; it will bring us only the benefit we hope to acquire; then it will be done. Not so. Sin is a spark thrown into dry brush, sending smoke and death far afield. Only by the mercy of God are our lives spared from the spiraling consequences of our sin.

The disciples are thinking about the spiraling consequences of sin as they approach Jesus with their question. Verse 36: “Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field,” they say to Jesus. Following their lead, the Bibles we use here at St. John’s (the Evangelical Heritage Version), put a little title over this story. It calls this “the parable of the weeds.”

Jesus himself did not give this story a title. (He didn’t give any of his parables titles, in fact.) The disciples titled it. What would Jesus have called this story, if we asked him for a title? We don’t know. Maybe we can ask him one day, when we sit at the heavenly wedding feast, the unending banquet in the presence of God. “Jesus, what title would you give all your parables?”

But instead, the disciples gave titles to some, and we give titles to some. We could give this story other titles. “The parable of the two seeds.” “The parable of the enemy in the field” (that’s what your worship folder art focuses on). “The parable of the weeds and the wheat” (that’s one I’ve seen in some Bibles). But our Bibles, and the disciples’ question, focus on the weeds alone. “Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field.”

Why focus on the weeds? Because the weeds get burned up, and the disciples want to be very clear about what that means. What - or who - is getting burned? We’re not worried about the wheat! The wheat is fine! The wheat is safe! The weeds won’t be. And what if (the disciples ask themselves) what if they, or the things that matter to them, turn out to be weeds?

It’s a good thing that Jesus told the parable we heard last week before this one. Last week, Pastor Baerbock shared Jesus’ parable of the seeds and the soils with us. Also a parable about seeds in a field, but a different message. In that one, the seeds were the powerful Word of God, the good news about Jesus.

God’s Word itself is a good seed. When it is planted in our hearts, it brings to life faith and love through faith. God’s Word makes us God’s children. It’s the good seed in today’s parable. The bad seed, that yields weeds, are the lies that Satan tells about God and the world we live in.

Jesus (who is the Good Teacher) told last week’s and today’s parables in the order he did so that we would first understand how we are good seed, good wheat; how we can know that we aren’t going to be gathered up and burned. He wants us to know that God makes us his children. God took our sin - the weeds among the wheat in our own lives - and gathered it all at the base of his Son’s cross, and lit it on fire there. And our sin burned there, and Jesus died there, and because Jesus died with our sin on him, God has good news for us: We are righteous in his sight through Jesus.

Jesus did not stay dead. He rose. He conquered death, which is the penalty that our sin has earned. But until his return - until the harvest - sin and death still linger in the world. There will be sin in this world until Jesus returns, is the main point of this parable.

So (back to a question I asked earlier): If we see sin, does this parable mean that we should do nothing about it? Like the servants who are told to simply let the weeds grow alongside the wheat, should you expect your new pastor (as a servant of Christ Jesus) not to speak against sin where I may see it? No! This parable is not telling us - not me, not you - to ignore sin. What Jesus is telling us is, “This is what the world will be like.” And he’s right! (As he always is.)

Maybe there’s another way for us to apply this parable, then. Perhaps we need to live in a rigidly separatist manner. We should, as Christians, all be living like the folks who sometimes come by on 5th St here with horse-and-buggy. Or maybe it’s a matter of Christian obligation for us to send our kids to St. John’s School, rather than public. Or to shop only at Christian-owned businesses.

That’s also not the point. In the parable, the weeds and wheat cannot easily be distinguished from one another. The darnel (that’s the proper name for this weed) is sometimes called false wheat. At a glance, they look the same. But come harvest, the plants will be sorted. Until then, they will grow together.

Trying to sort the plants before the harvest is uncertain. Expecting every believer to act one way, to make the exact same choices, would be missing Jesus’ point. We are not given specific directions for life in this parable. We are simply told to be wise and aware. Be aware of the presence of sin in the world; be wise in our response to it. The world will be a mixed bag. The Church is in the world, but it is not the world and it is not of the world. The Church is found in the world wherever people are praising God for the salvation he offers through Jesus.

Notice sin. See it clearly. Just as clearly as we see God’s glory showing forth in all that he’s made, in the stars above and the beautiful world below, let us also see the dishonor toward him which is sin. Be aware of sin, and learn God’s Word, that you may be wise, and effectively distinguish good from evil. And take what you see to the Lord in prayer.

Don’t only look for sin. Look for wheat. Look for other Christians. Others who, yes, will struggle against sin, and will occasionally stumble, but whose roots are in the Word of God. Who look to that Word for guidance and correction and comfort. Who trust in Jesus, rather than themselves, for their salvation. Look for them, and stand alongside them.

Jesus’ Field is God’s World. He is in charge. He will make all things right, and even now, as we wait for his return, we know that God is active in the world; frustrating sin, turning evil for good, and rewarding love. Amen.

1
O wand’ring soul, whom storms have left
adrift and helpless on the waves;
Would you not on our shores find rest?
Will here your life not sure be saved?

2
This kingdom (where, Scripture records,
all must through water once arrive)
is ruled by such a kindly Lord:
a Lord who for your rescue strives.

3
None here are natives; young or old,
all from the flood the Lord has drawn.
Death tried, but could not on him hold,
nor holds it those he calls his own.

4
Since he has saved you from the flood,
and with his Spirit giv’n you breath,
You have been cleansed by Jesus’ blood
and given aid ‘gainst sin and death.

5
Now through the waters having passed,
and his name being on you thrown,
be sure your life forever lasts:
Dear child, you’ve an eternal home!

Scripture does not make any distinction between the blessings promised to adults and children in baptism. (Nor do Lutherans, for that reason.) Baptism is, as Peter assured the Pentecost crowds, “for you and your children and all who are far off.”

However, for someone who can remember their baptism, and who has experienced life without the mighty promises which in it God makes, I hope that this hymn has particular meditative resonance.

Grace and peace to you, friends, from God our Father through the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

There’s something I do as a parent sometimes that I know is not helpful. It’s something I do when I myself have a lot going on in my head, when time is short before an appointment or some other reason we need to be out the door. I find myself telling the kids, “Do this and this and this and don’t forget that and don’t forget that,” and then ten minutes later find myself frustrated with them, saying, “Why didn’t you do the thing I said?” But I didn’t say one thing, I said a half dozen things! Maybe they even did one or two of them, but not everything, and why should I expect that they would? My communication was subpar.

Verses 13 and 14 of our epistle reading this morning: Paul tells Timothy, “In the sight of God, and of Christ Jesus, I charge you to keep this command without spot or blame until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ.” But when we look at this reading here, there’s not one command. Paul says a bunch of things! “Do this and this and this and don’t forget that and don’t forget that,” like me with my kids rushing to get out the door.

Now, we adults rightly hold one another to higher standards than we do children. We expect one another to ask for clarification when needed; to think through a message; to be more independent. This skill is especially necessary for someone like Timothy, who was a church leader.

As careful readers of the Word of God ourselves, we do well to ask the question: What is the command which Paul refers to in that line? What command is he urging Timothy to observe, even calling God the Father and the Lord Jesus as witnesses?

Earlier in the letter, Paul says (chapter 1, verse 18), “Timothy, my son, I am giving you this command in keeping with the prophecies once made about you, so that by recalling them you may fight the battle well.” And then at the end of the letter, chapter 6 verse 20: “Timothy,” Paul says, “guard what has been entrusted to your care.” When Paul talks in these places about “a command,” “this command,” it’s the overarching theme through this letter: “Be a pastor. Do your duty to your flock in the eyes of God.” All the instructions Paul gives throughout the letter are subpoints under that command.

So this is a text about ministry, about the work of a pastor. Is there something in this text for members of a congregation to learn? Especially a congregation that’s saying farewell to its pastor? There is. What Paul tells Timothy here about the life which a pastor should lead is applicable to all Christians. Christians learn here some things to expect from their leaders. And ultimately, Paul here reminds us all who God is. Paul is not talking about the God of pastors alone. This is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords; this is your God.

Every time we read the Bible (unless you sit down to read it cover to cover), we get just a part of the whole. We have to remember that every word is part of a phrase, which is part of a larger thought, which is part of a larger argument, which is part of a book, which is in turn part of the whole Bible. Our reading today makes that clear right at the beginning. “But you, man of God, flee from all this,” it begins. What is “all of this”? We have to back up to understand this line.

In the verses just before our reading, we find Paul telling Timothy to avoid “controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy.” To avoid “strife, malicious talk, and evil suspicions.” To avoid “love of money” and “constant friction between people who have been robbed of the truth and think that godliness is a means to financial gain.” In short, Paul tells Timothy, “Avoid pointless arguments and prosperity theologians.”

Paul was no stranger to arguments or disputations. We read of him arguing with people, Jews and Gentiles, who rejected his preaching of the Gospel. We read of him arguing with Peter, when Peter ceded ground to the Judaizers and withdrew from fellowship with Gentile Christians. But these arguments had a purpose. Paul wanted people to know Jesus; Paul wanted people to properly understand the Scriptures.

Christians in general, and pastors in particular, must distinguish whether a dispute will be useful. What is actually at stake? What would be lost or gained? There are empty, useless arguments. (In fact, they are the most common!) Timothy must be on the lookout for them.

Timothy is also to “flee” prosperity theology. He is to “flee” any preaching and teaching that promises financial gain as the result of godliness. Paul presents this as an imperative for pastors, but again, no Christian should listen to such things.

So how does one “flee” such things? Paul says, “You flee these unholy, unprofitable, unloving, un-Christian behaviors and attitudes by running toward something else.” “Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness.” If you run east, you cannot run west. So too, if you go after these things, you cannot go toward those things.

There are three pairs in these virtues which Paul wants Timothy to pursue. “Righteousness and godliness” are gifts from God to the believer; the righteousness of Jesus, which is imputed to us by faith and is lived out in godliness by the power of the Spirit. Then there’s “faith and love,” the defining characteristics of the believer’s life: Trust in God, and concern for the good of others. And lastly “endurance and gentleness.” These are how the believer responds when the world responds to our faith and love. Do people take advantage of our love? Do people mock our trust in God? “Endurance and gentleness” are the believer’s response-response.

How do we “pursue” these things? Well, like a private eye in an old-school gumshoe movie, we go looking where we’d expect to find our target. Humphrey Bogart would maybe go to a seedy pool hall, looking for his underworld quarry. Where would we go that we expect to find “righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness”?

Let’s look for Jesus, first! Is he not the preeminent example of these virtues? Is he not, indeed, the one who perfectly embodied all such virtues, and in so doing won our salvation (miserable sinners though we are!)? To find these things, look for Jesus.

Where will we find Jesus? We start by just finding out about Jesus (like the detective reading his target’s police file, his arrest record). We go to the Bible, and we read about Jesus there. We read his very own words (as we did in today’s Gospel). And we find where he hangs out. In our Gospel reading, he told the disciples, “Anyone who welcomes you welcomes me.” Ah-ha! Jesus is with his followers. Chase Jesus by finding his people.

Paul used to do that! He used to chase Jesus by chasing Jesus’ people. But Paul (Saul, as he was then known) chased them with malice. He chased and persecuted them, and as he did so, he actually chased and persecuted Jesus.

That’s what Jesus told Paul-Saul on the Damascus Road, Acts 9: “As Saul neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ ‘Who are you, Lord?’ Saul asked. ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.’”

Paul refers to that light from heaven which flashed around him in this reading from 1 Timothy. He talks about the “unapproachable light” in which God “dwells.” On the Damascus Road, Jesus allowed Paul to see something of this light. Jesus blinded Paul with it.so that Paul could see. Could see his sin. Could see his need for Jesus.

Timothy must have been familiar with that story. I’m sure Paul told it many times; we preachers are prone to such things. Timothy knew Paul’s stories. He knew what God’s “unapproachable light” meant in Paul’s life. He knew what it meant in his own, and in ours.

We cannot get ourselves to God. There’s a tension: I’ve been saying, “Pursue Jesus,” but also, we can’t approach God. Jesus is God, come down to us. The unapproachable God, living in unapproachable light, made himself approachable in Jesus, the light of the world.

Jesus walked and talked and lived among us. One day, he will return from heaven’s throne to judge the living and the dead. He will certainly return: Paul says, “God will bring it about in his own time.” God-time is always perfectly timed. He’s never late, he’s never early.

Jesus’ return is not the only thing that runs on God-time. Everything happens on God-time. When we think something is taking too long, or that it ended too quickly, we look for someone to blame. Don’t look around you for that person! Look up! Our times and days are in God’s hands. Take the attitude of the Psalms to heart. Cry out to God. “How long, O Lord? When? Why now?” Take it to the Lord, the Lord of Lords, in prayer.

Among the names Paul gives God here at the end of our reading - “God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords,” the one “who lives in unapproachable light” - one more is given: God is he “who alone is immortal.” Literally in Greek, Paul does not quite say that God is immortal (although that is certainly true). Paul says that God “has immortality.”

This is a poor analogy, but try it out with me. If I simply am tall, I can’t share that with you. But if I possess stilts which make me tall, you can also be tall! I can share my stilts with you.

God is immortal because God possesses immortality. And what God possesses, God can share. He has promised to share immortality with you in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and in your baptism. Paul wrote in Romans 6, “We were buried with Christ through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. If we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his.”

When Paul says “united with him in a death like his,” he doesn’t mean you have to die on a cross like Jesus to be sure of that promise. Two men did die deaths like Jesus’ own death on the crosses to either side of him at the Place of the Skull that Friday afternoon. But one was taken, and the other was left.

Instead, we are united with Jesus in his death and resurrection, Paul says in Romans 6, when not our body, but the sinful nature is put to death, and the new man is born; when we are born again, regenerated; when we believe. Faith is the new birth which the Spirit of God brings about.

In being born again, we die. We die to sin, and rise to righteousness and life forever. As Jesus promises, “Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.”

Pursue Jesus, people of God. Pursue him in your thoughts, words, and deeds. Wrestle him like Jacob did! Before the night is over, he will surely bless you. Make your good confession. The crown of righteousness is in store for you. Amen.

“Sing to the Lord! Give praise to the Lord,” friends, for “he rescues the life of the needy from the hands of the wicked.” Amen.

Jesus lived in a different time than us. One place that stands out comes in his Sermon on the Mount, when he makes reference to the fact that verbally insulting someone could land you before a judge. Matthew 5:22, “Anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court.”

Raca is an Aramaic word which (I’ll suggest) roughly translates to “moron” or “idiot.” It’s a word that insults someone else specifically by calling their intelligence into question. Can you imagine if we, today, knew that using words such as that could end up with us standing before a judge? Half the posts on the internet would need to disappear! Our grocery store parking lots would be much quieter.

That’s the world into which Jesus was sending his disciples. Today’s Gospel reading continues from the section we heard last week, where Jesus appointed twelve of his followers as his apostles before sending them out on a missionary tour of Israel. This section, here, continues with instructions for them, as well as warnings.

Look at verse 25 with me. Jesus says to them, “If the head of the house has been called Beelzebul, how much more the members of his household!” Bible commentators are divided on who, exactly, Beelzebul is. This is either a name for Satan, or for some other powerful demon in league with Satan. I personally think this is a name for Satan, but the precise identification isn’t important, because the point is the same either way. Jesus is saying, “If people will call your master (me) a demon, imagine what they’ll call you!”

Later, in Matthew 12, people see Jesus’ miracles, are “astonished and say, ‘Could this be the Son of David?’ But the Pharisees said, ‘It is only by Beelzebul, the prince of demons, that this fellow drives out demons.’” There it is. Jesus, being in very nature God, had foreknowledge of the future. He knew that he would be called Beelzebul by his enemies.

Again: Jesus’ disciples lived in a time, a culture, where what you could say about someone was much more patrolled than in our day. If I called someone a demon today, it might offend them. It might offend others. But would I be held legally liable? Hardly. The Pharisees could have been. They cannot say things like this so lightly.

And so this is Jesus’ point, as he commissions the twelve apostles to go on their preaching tour. “People will be willing to insult me, your master. Imagine what they will be willing to do to you, who are only my servants.”

That’s one aspect of their time, their culture, which is quite different from our own. But some things were not so different. Verse 21: “Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death.”

Sadly, this is not different in our day, is it? Read the crime section of the newspaper and you’ll find that in our fallen, sinful world, people - even family members! - harm each another. This is generally true, as it was in Jesus’ time. But Jesus is making a more specific point here. He is talking about the reaction people will have to the work of the Gospel among them. As his disciples go about their missionary work, teaching and preaching and healing, some will believe in their message. They will come to trust in Jesus as their Savior-Lord. Yet these converts will find themselves opposed by family and friends. And when seasons of persecution come, Jesus predicts that brothers will betray brothers; likewise, parents and children will be set against one another. (And that will go in both directions, Jesus says. He talks about a father betraying his children, and about children rebelling against their parents.)

What an awful world! Jesus sends his followers into a world of sin and opposition, where it is inevitable that we will face opposition. “When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another,” he tells them. Not “if,” but “when.”

Now, Jesus spoke those particular words to the apostles in advance of this mission trip. He was not saying that for the rest of history, as soon as someone speaks a word against Christianity, churches should “flee,” should pack up and move themselves to the next town over. What he is saying is, “Expect opposition, and be prepared to adapt in response.”

Why is there opposition? Why have Christians ever been persecuted, at any time? Jesus answers that question: “You will be hated by everyone because of me.” There is one reason Christians are ever persecuted: Jesus. But that one reason encompasses our whole lives.

We follow Jesus. We listen to his Word, and we live out his teachings. Not perfectly, because we are not perfect. We are sinners, and have often (in thought, word, and deed) contributed to the mess of the sinful world around us. To follow Jesus is to recognize that truth.

Jesus teaches that there will be a final judgment of all people. In that judgment, “the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.” Stands firm in what? In their own righteousness, their own perfection? Well, then only Jesus would go to to heaven! Thankfully, that’s not what he means. Jesus explains what “standing firm” means at the end of our selection. “Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my Father in heaven.”

What results from being either acknowledged or disowned by Jesus? Jesus tells us here that, after the judgment has taken place, people will either spend eternity with God, in the place he calls “heaven,” or apart from God, in the place he calls “hell,” a place where “both soul and body” are destroyed. Jesus uses other pictures for hell on other occasions. In one recurring description, Jesus simply called hell “outside,” depicting it as a lonely and forsaken place “where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Hell is a place where, according to Jesus, both soul and body are destroyed. This is because, one day, all people will be resurrected. We call this the general resurrection. This will take place when Jesus returns to judge all people. All will rise, and all will be brought before him. It’s worth remembering this. The general resurrection is not only a promise for Christians. All people will rise; some to glory, others to shame. Hell and heaven are not places for souls alone. One day, bodies will also dwell in either heaven or hell.

This general resurrection will take place by the power of God. Jesus makes reference to “the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” Earlier, I noted that we’re not sure if Beelzebul is a name for Satan or for another demon. Here, though, we know exactly who “the One who can destroy both soul and body” is.

It’s not Satan, to be clear! It’s God. God rules over all things, whether “in heaven or on earth or under the earth” (to use Paul’s taxonomy from Philippians). He is the Supreme Ruler. Even Beelzebul, even Satan and all the fallen angels, only work their hateful schemes within the limits God sets. God is almighty, and (Jesus says here) we should “be afraid of the One” who rules over everything.

What does it mean to fear God? It means to listen to him. To recognize his power. And that’s the direction Jesus moves in next. He reminds us that God is omnipotent, all-powerful, so that we are sure to listen to what he says. And this is what Jesus wants us to hear. “Two sparrows are sold for a penny, yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.”

Which one is it, Jesus? “Be afraid,” verse 28, or “don’t be afraid,” verse 31? It’s both. Fear the right things. As we go out into this sinful, opposed world with the good news about Jesus, don’t fear people. We can flee from them. They cannot kill the soul. But we cannot flee from God. He knows how many hairs we have on our head.

What good news this is: We have no reason to flee God! He is our Father. He cares about us, and he has the power to take care of us. Earthly fathers, at their very very best, can be only a shadow, only a quiet echo, of the Father who looks over us from above. Indeed (as Jesus says here) earthly fathers and children may even be enemies.

That’s one of the things that will make people hate us (hate Christians) because of Jesus. In family life, people can be very hurt. Sin in families often cuts deeper than sin elsewhere. It leaves longer-lasting hurt. I may get over a bad boss: One who’s unsympathetic, or simply mean. But if my father? my mother? acts in such a way, my wound is far deeper. (Let alone worse situations, such as abuse, in the family.)

Christians, in the face of sins in the family and elsewhere, point to Jesus’ cross. And we stake this claim: “What Jesus did there means that those sins have been paid for.”

People do not like to hear that! When a parent who hurt them finds Jesus late in life, I’ve seen children angry with the idea that their parent now has some peace. I’ve seen the same be true in the other direction; parents angered by the peace which children who rebelled and dishonored them have found in Jesus.

Even outside the family, the idea that Jesus offers forgiveness to sinners angers people. They want to determine what satisfaction looks like. They want to define the terms for forgiveness.

So do we! Isn’t that often true? We, in our natural minds, demand the right to determine on what grounds forgiveness may or may not be offered.

Jesus does not care what our natural minds think about the matter. He got on his cross, and he died for all sin, even the sins that we really think he should have thought twice about dying for.

Thanks be to God for that. For every sin someone else has committed that we balk at forgiving, someone can look at our own sin and react the same. But this is not the reaction of our Lord. He made satisfaction for all sin - even yours, even your sin! - at his cross. And because he did that, “God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name.”

One day, he will return to judge the living and the dead. You and I will be judged on that day. Our sin has already been judged. At Jesus’ cross, God showed that our sin deserved death. So on the last day, we no longer have any judgment to fear. We can stand firm until the end, clinging to Jesus’ name, acknowledging him before people as our Savior and Lord, because we know that he will acknowledge us before our Father in heaven. We live in this world until then; a sinful world, one full of opposition, but nonetheless, one ruled by our Savior-God. Amen.

Friends, grace and peace to you in Jesus’ name. Amen.

As I said earlier, rather than hearing the first reading in its usual place, I’ll read it now to begin my message this morning. We read from Numbers 27:15-23, found in your worship folders.

“Moses said to the LORD, ‘May the LORD, the God who gives breath to all living things, appoint someone over this community to go out and come in before them, one who will lead them out and bring them in, so the LORD’s people will not be like sheep without a shepherd.’ So the LORD said to Moses, ‘Take Joshua son of Nun, a man in whom is the spirit of leadership, and lay your hand on him.’

“‘Have him stand before Eleazar the priest and the entire assembly and commission him in their presence. Give him some of your authority so the whole Israelite community will obey him. He is to stand before Eleazar the priest, who will obtain decisions for him by inquiring of the Urim before the LORD. At his command he and the entire community of the Israelites will go out, and at his command they will come in.’

“Moses did as the LORD commanded him. He took Joshua and had him stand before Eleazar the priest and the whole assembly. Then he laid his hands on him and commissioned him, as the LORD instructed through Moses.”

The Word of the Lord. [Thanks be to God.]

Is it obvious why I chose to preach on this reading? We have, in this reading, a leader in the Church, concerned for the wellbeing of his congregation after he leaves them. Hmm.

At this point in the book of Numbers, Moses is an old man, closing on 120. Yet we read in Deuteronomy 34, “Moses was a hundred and twenty years old when he died, yet his eyes were not weak nor his strength gone.” He is still capable of leading. But he is tired. His brother, Aaron, has already died by the time of our reading. Their sister Miriam has also died. In fact, by this time, most of the people who initially followed Moses out of Egypt are dead. There is hardly anyone left of that generation. And God has already told Moses, “You will not lead the people into Canaan.” Just before this morning’s reading, God reminded Moses, Numbers 27:12, “Go up this mountain in the Abarim Range” (Mount Nebo) “and see the land I have given the Israelites. After you have seen it, you will be gathered to your people,” “for when the community rebelled at the waters in the Desert of Zin, you disobeyed my command to honor me as holy before their eyes.” Moses had dishonored God, and would therefore not lead the people into Canaan.

Who would? That’s the question preoccupying Moses here. Who will lead the congregation of Israel? God already had a plan for that. Verse 18: “Take Joshua son of Nun, a man in whom is the spirit of leadership, and lay your hand on him.” (In the Hebrew text, the word leadership isn’t there; God simply says that the Spirit is in Joshua.)

Is that what I should, before I leave our congregation? Pick someone and ordain them to the office of pastor in this church?

When we read the Bible, we distinguish between descriptive and prescriptive passages. Descriptive passages tell us, “This happened.” Prescriptive passages tell us, “Do this.” And it is very important to carefully mind this distinction. Simply seeing that something happened in the Bible does not mean that we must do the same thing. This is obvious in cases of sin. When we read about, for instance, Gideon making the ephod which the Israelites worshiped (Judges 8), should we make an ephod and worship it? No. That was sin.

But when we read stories in Scripture such as today’s Old Testament reading, where no one is sinning, it is easy to forget this distinction. “What Moses did was good!” we think (correctly.) “So we should do it!” we think (incorrectly). The stories from the lives of the saints who have gone before us, which Scripture recounts for us, are indeed given to us as examples, that we should imitate them. But we should not pretend to be them. Grace of God may be in a similar situation to the congregation of Israel, but it is not the same situation.

So what do we learn from Moses’ example here? Two things, right off the bat. First: Moses prays. He takes the situation before God and asks God to help his people. That, we must also do. As we look at our situation, and wonder what God has for our church in the future, we pray.

Second: Moses listens to God’s Word. Here, God directly speaks to him. And if (in reply to my prayers about our church’s future) God would indeed speak to me directly, sharing his plan for our future, that is what I would go ahead and do! Whatever it is he says.

If God does not do that particular thing, we still have his Word. Again: We are not in the same situation as the congregation of Israel. We have the Scriptures, written and complete. Through Moses, the Holy Spirit gave the first five books of the Bible to the congregation of Israel. Joshua (under the Spirit’s inspiration) would add the book of Joshua to that corpus. We have 61 more books in our Bibles than the congregation of Israel did during Joshua’s ministry. We have a book full of counsel and wisdom from God; full of Law to convict and Gospel to comfort in every circumstance of life. And we have partners! We have other churches, other support available to us that they did not have. We can queue up videos right here, anytime we want, to hear biblically sound messages through which the Holy Spirit will work our growth in faith and in godly love. There’s no reason for us to feel anxious about the future at all!

Well: Saying that is going too far. We look at our Gospel reading, where Jesus contemplated all the crowds who were following him and listening to his teaching. They had 39 books in their Bible now. They had resources available to them for their spiritual growth. But Jesus still “had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” What Moses had been afraid of, 1400 years earlier, had come about. The “LORD’s people were like sheep without a shepherd.”

It is no good to catastrophize about our situation, as a congregation. We have a good and gracious God; a compassionate God. He has seen his people through far worse circumstances; the fact that we are gathered here ourselves attests to that. The Church has endured through all generations, and it will stand against all attack until the Lord Jesus returns to judge the living and the dead.

But it also does no good to pretend that therefore, there is nothing of concern happening. I have heard in the last months comments (well-meaning comments) in this vein: “We’ve been through this before.” And I understand the thought there. But this morning, I need to push back against that thinking. We have not been here before, as a church. This is new. There are new people in our church who have not dealt with a vacancy before. Who have not deliberated choices such as the ones which are before us. This is new for many people here.

Even if you have been here through our previous vacancy - and through vacancies before that - this is new. The financial pressures on our church are new. The circumstances in our synod are new. When our last vacancy started, there were more pastors than churches in WELS. There are now less pastors than there are churches. And you - members who were here before - you are different now. You are not the same as you were then.

We have gone through difficult situations before as a church. But to say that, in response to our situation now, we should do what we’ve done before is to make the same mistake as thinking we need to imitate Moses’ ordination of Joshua. We can learn from the past without imitating the past. Bluntly: What has happened in the past got us to where we are right now. And some of our current situation is very good! Our church building is in better shape than it has been for almost two decades. We have more people than when our restart project began in 2021. But if we want to be somewhere different in the future, we should not expect doing what we’ve done in the past will achieve that.

Hear me carefully. I am not offering a prescription. I am not telling you all what your plans for the future should be. That is not my role any longer. That’s a way in which I am like Moses in this reading. I won’t be with you for the next phase of this congregation’s life. It is no longer my role to (using Moses’ words in verse 16) “go out and come in before you,” to “lead you out and bring you in” (if that is even my role as pastor; I don’t think I would use that description).

But you do have leaders. You have our church councilmen, and these are trustworthy men who not only care about you and your spiritual health, but also care about bringing more people into contact with Jesus through the Gospel we share here. We have Joshuas. Joshua was not some random unknown. He was already a leader among the people. He had been one of the twelve spies sent into Canaan as scouts (and was, along with Caleb, the only one who trusted that God could deliver the land into their hands). He had been Moses’ chief lieutenant, leading men in battle and carrying out Moses’ directions. Now, here, Joshua steps up to new responsibilities. So, too, will our leaders.

But you know what Joshua couldn’t do for them? The book of Hebrews talks about this. It says, Hebrews 4, “The promise of entering God’s rest” (eternal life in heaven with the Lord) “still stands.” “Joshua did not give them rest,” but “we who have believed in Christ enter that rest.”

Neither Joshua nor Moses could gain heaven for the congregation of Israel. Neither I nor another pastor nor our leaders can gain heaven for the congregation of Grace of God. That’s what Jesus does. That’s what Jesus did. Leaders in the church, Paul says in our second reading, should be regarded “as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the mysteries God has revealed.” That’s an important role! But the word servant is key. We leaders serve Jesus. We don’t - we can’t - replace him. And things like church buildings are poor substitutes for the eternal rest of heaven.

Jesus is looking down on you with compassion. He cares about you, sheep of his flock. He will provide you with everything necessary for you to be with him in heaven forever. Trust him; trust your leaders. Make wise decisions, informed by the words of the 66 books of this big beautiful book that our compassionate God has given us. “Freely you have received; freely give.” Amen.

I hope that my readers who belong to other North Atlantic congregations, or WELS congregations in other places, find this report useful!

A Highlights Report for Grace of God Lutheran Regarding the 2026 North Atlantic District Convention

What is “convention”?

• In our church body, local congregations spend money, and the synod itself spends money. Local churches themselves decide how to spend their money, while how the synod will spend money is determined every other year at a synod convention. Between the synod convention years, the congregations of each of WELS’ twelve districts convene to discuss ministry and formulate recommendations to the next WELS convention.

• Our church is a member of the North Atlantic District. More information about the NAD as a whole, along with various ministry resources suited for the NAD, can be found at www.nadwels.net.

• Various elections take place at each convention. This year, Pastor Mike Seifert was reelected as NA District President, and Pastor Ben Berger was reelected as our circuit pastor.

Highlights from the District President’s report to the convention

• The largest part of the funding for WELS’ work as a synod comes from Congregational Mission Offerings (CMO), which are monies remitted by individual WELS congregations to the synod itself. WELS asks its congregations to set a goal of 10% of local offerings for CMO.

  • Grace of God is right on with that goal (over the last 4 months, 9.5%). The NAD overall gives an average of 7.6% (up from 7.1% in 2021).

  • CMO giving has gone up over the last few years, but not enough to keep pace with inflation synodwide.

• Rev. Mark Schroeder is retiring next year. The 2027 WELS synod convention will elect a new WELS president. NADP Seifert has also been appointed to the WELS Synodical Council.

• There are 128 pastoral vacancies across WELS (5 actively calling vacancies in NAD) and ~110 teacher vacancies across WELS.

• WELS Congregational Services produces resources for our congregations to use across all areas of ministry. They are close to releasing a suite of abuse prevention materials (such as training materials and policy templates). WELS is urging all its congregations to adopt and implement abuse prevention policies and training.

• WELS VEBA went up about 20% this year across the NAD, and it will go up similarly next year. Across the synod as a whole, VEBA rates went up 8.5%.

  • Our own experience with this; from 2025 to 2026, the VEBA premium for the Walsh family went from $2386 to $2886. It would likely be going to $3500 next year.

  • To support a pastor with my demographic characteristics according to WELS recommendations would cost over $9000/month as of next year.

  • NAD is recommending that congregations be given information about plans other than VEBA.

The Report to the Twelve Districts

This report, over 100 pages long, is produced by WELS “headquarters” for the benefit of the districts as they meet in convention. There is a link to it at the NAD website.

• Our church body is a member of another larger body, the Confessional Evangelical Lutheran Conference. They have a website, www.celc.info, where you can sign up for news alerts from our global partnership.

  • The CELC was made up of 34 church bodies globally. Their own convention just conluded on June 1, and that number should now be 35 (three new, one absorbed, one defunct).

• WELS has developed, and will be publishing, new constitution templates for our churches.

• A new English-language app modeled after Academia Cristo is being developed.

• As part of WELS’ long range planning, the Board for Home Missions intends to strategically locate new church plants such that the share of the US population living within (2>3% US pop)

  • The NADMB wants a new plant on Long Island underway in 2027.

• Christian Aid and Relief (CAR) is a WELS agency that administers material relief to communities and individuals dealing with various crises. From Jan. 1 through Dec. 31, 2025, CAR spending included:

  • $592,899 of the gifts entrusted to us for foreign and domestic disaster relief.

  • Humanitarian aid projects in WELS mission fields at home and abroad were supported with $387,221.

  • Personal relief grants amounting to $429,373 were given to assist WELS members and prospects experiencing severe financial or medical crises.

• Both monetary and non-monetary forms of relief were coordinated by CAR in response to:

  • fires in Los Angeles, Calif., and on the San Carlos reservation in Arizona;

  • hurricane relief in Florida, Tennessee, and North Carolina;

  • tornado relief for Camp Shiloh in Pittsburg, Texas.

  • August 2025 flooding in Milwaukee County, Wis., by providing more than $150,000 in aid to WELS members who lost washers, dryers, furnaces, and water heaters, and had other flood damage.

  • flood relief in India, Vietnam, Thailand, Kenya, and Pakistan.

  • rebuild several churches destroyed by windstorms in Malawi

  • apartment fire in Hong Kong,

  • cholera outbreak and a hurricane in Haiti,

• riots in Bangladesh

Highlights from the reports on WELS Missions

• As noted above, our NADMB wants to plant on Long Island in 2027. Our Hudson-Delaware circuit as a whole hopes to plant another church in 2028. Our own defunding this year also took place alongside the defunding of Refuge Lutheran in Durham, North Carolina (NAD). Two other WELS missions outside the NAD were also defunded. The BHM’s report explains its rationale:

  • “With a limited amount of money and manpower, saying “yes” to one request means we are saying “no” to another. Resources invested in one mission means those resources aren’t available for another mission opportunity. This means we may need to start fewer missions for the sake of providing ongoing financial support that our healthy missions need, and we may need to withdraw support from missions that have a history of struggling and are not on a viable path to be self-supporting.”

• In our district, we have many connections to WELS World Missions. The Rev. Dr. **************** remotely serves “East Asian” Christians from ************. His ministry is called *******************.1 The convention voted to support his work with the offering that was gathered at opening worship.

Highlights from reports regarding education across WELS

Encourage young people to study for the ministry! WELS want to train them, and to keep them out of debt while doing so. In the course of this report, it was noted that two-thirds of WELS churches reported zero marriages in 2025. When new families are not forming in our churches, there will be long-term consequences for all our ministries, and for our schools in particular.

WELS-Canada highlights

WELS Canada President Rev. Caleb Schultz shared some updates from across the border.

• Changes in Canadian culture pose challenges for Confessional Lutherans.

  • A bill passed this week, under whose provisions Biblical teaching on the order of creation could constitute hate speech.

  • Already, it was made illegal for a pastor who is approached by someone expressing gender dysphoria to counsel that person to remain aligned with their actual sex.

• Nonetheless, WELS Canada reports stability-to-growth among all their congregations!

Convention Bible study highlights

Professor Brad Wordell from Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary led a study on the Psalms, tracing the overarching structure of the five books and pointing out “highlights.” His outline of the Psalter overall:

• Psalms 1 and 2 are an introduction to all the Psalms

• Book 1 (3-41) speaks of David’s kingdom. How is it established? What is its nature?

• Book 2 (42-72) treats the mission of David’s kingdom (which is announcing the LORD’s name to the world).

• Book 3 (73-89) tells of the destruction of David’s kingdom.

• Book 4 (90-106) proclaims the hope in the faithful and compassionate LORD, whom David worshiped, which God’s people can have despite the earthly kingdom’s destruction.

• Book 5 (107-150) moves into praise for the coming King, sometimes speaking in riddles (examples, Psalms 110 and 118).

May the grace of our Lord be poured out on you abundantly, friends, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. Amen.

The apostle Matthew was a taxman. He worked for the Roman Empire’s IRS. And we don’t know much about Matthew’s career as a taxman, but we know the reputation that imperial taxmen in general had during Jesus’ day. The population viewed them as leeches. The taxman was empowered to tell you, “You owe the government this much.” (And the reaction then, as now, was always, “That’s more than the government deserves!” Such is human nature.)

The taxman made his living by collecting the tariffs and tolls and various revenues, and taking a portion for himself, and sending the rest on. Oh, imagine the opportunities for greed which this presented! Their countrymen imagined it. They were certain (and sometimes correct) that the portion which went to Rome, and the portion which went home, were out of balance.

So when Jesus walks up to the Matthew’s tax-booth (which would have been carefully located so Matthew could keep an eye both on the goods being moved on the highway as well as the boats coming into harbor from the Sea of Galilee) and calls this taxman to be one of his disciples, the religious leaders are scandalized. And they come to his disciples (rather than to Jesus himself), asking, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

Jesus hears them, and he has a reply: “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means:” (and now he quotes the Old Testament, Hosea 6) ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

As always, a perfect reply by Jesus. He acknowledges that Matthew and the folks gathered in Matthew’s home for this meal are indeed sinners. But he points out that the Pharisees were sinners themselves! God calls for his people to show mercy, rather than ostentatious sacrificing. The Pharisees were very ready to sacrifice. They tithed everything. When their garden herbs came in, they took a tenth of it to church. They sacrificed great amounts of their time studying the Bible. But they were unmerciful. Therefore, they were sinners.

What good news Saul the Pharisee - better known to us as Paul the Apostle - discovered! “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” This is “a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance,” Paul assures us. If you are a sinner, Jesus came for you.

Paul describes his life prior to becoming a Christian in verse 13. “I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man.” This Greek word for “violent” has a particular connotation. You could call a soldier a violent person. They are literally trained to kill. But they are taught to keep their violence under check. They are taught discipline.

Paul’s self-description uses a word meaning violent and undisciplined. No restraint, no compunction about using violence. Paul uses this word in Romans chapter 1, describing common sinful conduct: “People are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent (there’s the word, translated insolent here), arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents.”

Paul is describing, with this word, the kind of person who solves problems with their fists. A man who gets in someone else’s face: “Make me!” A woman who pushes someone and then screams “Don’t touch me!” Paul says that he was such.

He also says that he was a blasphemer. We hear that word and think of a very technical definition: Insulting God. But in New Testament era Greek, this word is used more broadly to mean, insulting anyone who deserves our respect. Parents, teachers, pastors, police officers, members of congress; all these and others deserve our respect because of the office they hold. To disrespect them is to be a blasphemer, in the way Paul uses the word here.

And one more self-description from Paul: He was a persecutor. Paul attacked what was good and right; the Gospel of Jesus, and the people who believed that Gospel.

What is important to stop and note, here, is that these are bad things. They are sin. And Paul doesn’t say, “I was in some bad patterns, but my actions didn’t really reflect who I was.” That’s how public figures make apology statements, right? They separate who they are from their actions. Paul doesn’t do that. He says, “What I did defined me.” I was this.

We don’t like to talk that way. We don’t like to acknowledge that the way we act is who we are. We think of ourselves as someone separate from our actions. “I’m rational, I’m calm, I’m thoughtful. And when I’m not, you have to understand, that’s not really me.” But maybe it is. Maybe, when you’re short-tempered with your spouse, it’s because you are short-tempered and irritable. Maybe, when you don’t apply yourself at work, it’s because you are lazy (“slothful,” to get King-James-y for a moment.)

Sin is not only actions. Sin is our fallen nature. We are sinful sinners; fallen people who do things that are wrong. That is true for all of us; what’s different is, which sins we have committed, or are tempted by. Everyone is sinful; not everyone is lazy. Everyone is sinful; not everyone is insolently violent. Et cetera, et cetera.

Your sinful flesh doesn’t like hearing this. Your sinful flesh would like to convince you that your actions are separate from you. And so, the sinful flesh - the natural mind - misrepresents the Gospel of forgiveness granted in Jesus into something that sounds like this: “Your actions won’t be judged. God looks at the sin you have done as something separate from you.”

That is not the Gospel. Your actions are judged. They have been judged, are being judged, and will be judged. “Mene mene, tekel, uparsin.” The Gospel is that God, having judged you (as evidenced by your actions) completely unfit to enter paradise with him, offered up his only Son in your place, punishing him as you (as evidenced by your actions) deserve.

That’s God’s mercy. God’s mercy is not pretending that you aren’t a sinner, or that someone other than you did the sin. God’s response was Jesus’ willing sacrifice.

We go on in Paul’s words: “Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy.” He has to be thinking here about his Damascus road experience. Acts chapter 9 recounts that as Paul and his fellow goon-squad members approached Damascus, where they intended to persecute Christians, a bright light flashed. It blinded Paul and dazzled his companions. Paul fell to the ground. And as he lay there, Jesus spoke to him. He told Paul that by persecuting Christians, Paul was actually persecuting him; Jesus. Paul’s companions had to lead Paul by the hand the rest of the way into the city, because for the next three days he was completely blind. And Paul was so shaken by the events, and so troubled, that he didn’t eat or drink all those three days.

Paul says, “That was God’s mercy!” To knock Paul onto his back, blind him, and emotionally distress him to the point that he didn’t eat for three days. That was mercy. Because Paul needed his eyes opened to the truth about his actions; about his sin. “I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief.”

What is Paul saying there, and what is he not saying? Paul is not saying that his ignorance saved him. He is not saying that ignorance earns mercy. He is simply saying that ignorance provides an opportunity for mercy to be shown. A police officer who pulls over an out-of-state driver for violating a specific local traffic law, and gives them a warning, is showing mercy occasioned by ignorance. But their ignorance did not earn mercy, because mercy cannot be earned. Mercy is undeserved; that’s what it means.

Mercy can, therefore, also be shown to someone who knowingly does something wrong. But this is less likely. When we know that someone has acted in ignorance, we are disposed toward mercy. If they acted knowingly, less so. Paul wants us to be aware, we can expect the same dynamic regarding God’s mercy. Knowingly-committed sin may not receive the same mercy as ignorant sin.

Now, what do I mean, and what do I not mean? I don’t mean that there are sins, or sinners, for which Jesus did not die. Let the horrible doctrines of limited atonement or extreme reprobacy be condemned. Salvation is offered to all people in Jesus Christ. That mercy, all are shown.

God can also mercifully protect us from sin’s worldly consequences. Not every sin leads to the consequences in this life that it could. That is God’s mercy. We’re thankful for this mercy. We rely on it! But trying to exploit God’s mercy is a dangerous game we ought not play.

If we are aware of our sin, and of particular temptations for us, Paul’s words have a warning here. “I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief,” he says. Had he acted knowingly, Paul is aware that he may not have been shown such mercy.

This is the first Sunday in what our society sadly, foolishly, calls “Pride Month.” It’s a tragic thing, that our culture encourages people who are tempted by such sins to indulge in them. And it makes our work harder as Christians, because people are lied to about this. They’re told that, one, nothing is wrong with the behaviors Pride Month celebrates, and two, anyone who tells them that there is something wrong hates them.

The Bible speaks differently. The Bible says that such behavior is sin, and that all sin arises from the sinful human heart. It also says that there is mercy from God for all people, and forgiveness offered for all sin.

We don’t celebrate Pride Month, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have a pride problem. Paul acknowledged that to label him by his sin was fair. “I was a blasphemer, I was a violent man.” Not, “I said some things I shouldn’t have said.”

Are we as honest about our sin? Or do we insist that our sin needs to be viewed as something separate from us? That it can’t be used to judge us? That attitude is pride.

Lord, save us from pride. Not the Pride out there in the world (though we do pray that you deliver us and our culture from such foolishness, Lord), but from the pride that would reject your Son on his mission to save sinners. Let us see, by your Word, that we are sinners; let us turn to you in daily repentance and faith. And by your Spirit, may we praise you with our lives.

That’s why we gather here. In your high school cafeteria, did you have the jocks’ table, the cheerleaders’ table, the nerds’ table? Downstairs in the fellowship hall, all the tables are sinners’ tables. I’ll be sitting down there; I hope you will too.

One day, us sinners will actually not be able to call ourselves that anymore. We will no longer sin. We will be sitting at the table of the saints with the Lord Jesus, who gave his life as our ransom, eating of the banquet which all the milk and honey of Canaan only faintly foreshadowed. We don’t deserve that place at the table. But Jesus Shows Sinners Saving Mercy. Amen.

Friends, may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all. Amen.

I don’t know what to make of the end of verse 17 of today’s Gospel. “When they saw Jesus, the disciples worshiped him; but some doubted.” Who exactly doubted, and what did they doubt?

We’re not sure when Jesus and his disciples met on this mountain in Galilee. This isn’t the Ascension; this is earlier. It was after Easter Sunday evening, when Jesus appeared to most of the disciples in their locked lodgings in Jerusalem. This would also be after his appearance to them in Jerusalem a week later, when he showed Thomas his hands and feet. I think this was also after Jesus ate breakfast with the fishermen-disciples in John chapter 21, but I am not sure about that one.

When he appeared to Thomas and the other disciples a week after his resurrection, Jesus came up to Thomas, who had refused to believe the other disciples’ testimony of the risen Savior. Jesus walks up to him: “Thomas, look at my hands, pierced by nails at the wrist. Look at my feet. Look at my side.” And then Jesus says something that gives Thomas a nickname which endures to our day. “Stop doubting and believe,” he tells him.

The Greek word Jesus uses there in John 20 is apisteuo; literally, “not believing.” And for this reason, we still call this disciple Doubting Thomas. I bring this up because our Gospel uses a different Greek word. The disciples, here, were not apisteuo-ing. The word Matthew uses here is distazo. This word means something more like, “they were hesitant.” “They were uncertain.”

They (including Thomas, now) believed that Jesus had risen. They believed that he was God’s Messiah. In some way, though - as they saw the risen Jesus on this Galilean mountain and worshiped him together - some of them were hesitant.

There are times in our lives when we are uncertain; hesitant; and there’s no clear reason. When we are unsettled and nervy, and can’t figure out how to solve it (if there even is a solution!).

“Then Jesus came to them and said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.’” That’s what they need to hear! They need to hear about Their Great God. And what’s more, they need to hear about their Great God’s Great Commission and Great Promise.

On the first Sunday after Pentecost, every year, our worship considers the great mystery of the Trinity. When I say mystery, I mean “a truth that we could not by ourselves discover.” The truth of God’s triune nature, God had to share with us in the Bible. It is not explained in the Bible. To explain something is to make sure the other person understands it. The Trinity is not explained. It is simply shared with us.

There have been many groups throughout history who have broken off from the Christian Church by rejecting (among other things) the doctrine of the Trinity. And if you talk to non-Trinitarians (JWs, Mormons, others) they will often point out that, one, the word Trinity isn’t in the Bible, and two, they’ll say that it doesn’t make sense.

I’m happy to admit (when I talk to these folks) that “Trinity” is not going to be found, as a word, anywhere in the Bible itself. If you do ever talk to someone about this, get right past that. Ask them: “So who is Jesus?” Get into what the Bible says about him.

That gets to the second objection. Because the non-Trinitarian will object, not just because the word isn’t in the Bible, but because it doesn’t make sense to them. Here’s what I say to them. “It doesn’t make sense to me either. The Trinity does not fit inside my head. I just believe that this is who God is, because it’s what the Bible says.”

Where does it say that? Some examples: Jesus tells his disciples that where he is, so is his Father. “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father,” he told them before his crucifixion. After his resurrection, on Easter Sunday evening, Jesus “breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” Yet at his baptism, the Spirit visibly descended on Jesus from above in the form of a dove. And the Father spoke from the sky: “This is my Son.”

How can this be? How can Jesus and the Father be one, how can Jesus’ breath contain the Spirit, when the Father is also speaking about Jesus as a separate person? We simply confess the truth of the Trinity: God is one, and God is three. We can’t explain it! But it’s true. God does not have to fit inside our heads. We have a Great God. A God who is unlike anything else in all creation, unlike any other so-called “god” worshiped by humans. Our Triune God is a completely unique being.

The man who rose on Easter Sunday, and who stood on that hill in Galilee with his disciples, is that Great God. And on this mountain in Galilee, our Great God gave his followers a command.

These verses at the end of Matthew’s Gospel have been given a special name. There are Bible verses with special names. “The Golden Rule,” a verse in Matthew 5. “The Ten Commandments,” a section of verses in Exodus 20. “The Protoevangelion,” a verse in Genesis 3. There’s a special name for these words of Jesus: “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” This has been called “The Great Commission.”

To be commissioned is to be entrusted with a mission as the representative of an authority. Jesus’ disciples represent him and his authority over all things, as the King of Kings who sits on heaven’s throne. He gives them a mission here: Tell others about him. The Great Commission is to tell the whole world about their Great God.

This is not an unnatural thing for us. Daily, we tell other people things we think they should know. We tell them about a new store that opened up. We talk about how happy we are with the car we bought (or unhappy). We talk about who they should vote for. We share wellness tips, diet advice. We do this because we think it will help others. We think it will make them happier, healthier. For the same reasons, we tell others about our Great God. This is what he commissions us to do.

Our Great God’s words here are not exclusively a Commission. There is one more Great thing in this section: A Great Promise. “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” We can take that promise apart, word by word, and see how much comfort is in it.

“I.” Just that word. Who says this? It’s Jesus. Our Great God. Our Savior. The Good Shepherd, the Church’s Bridegroom, who so loved his people that he gave his own life for them. The Crucified One, the Man of Sorrows, who knows what it is to be hurt and betrayed. “I am with you,” he tells us. Isn’t it good to have a friend who’s experienced what you experience? Or to have a caring mentor, a kind and wise teacher? That’s Jesus. He is with us.

“Always,” he adds. “I am with you always.” The Greek here (to go into that again) is literally, “all the days.” This is an unusual phrase. There is one Greek word that we usually translate “always.” That word is pantote. Jesus uses that word on other occasions: “The poor you will pantote have with you,” for instance. That’s not the word here.

Is Jesus saying here that he will always be with us? Yes, obviously, so “always” is fine as a translation. But Jesus is particular here with how he says that. “All the days.”

There are better and worse days. There are weddings, and there are divorces. There are births, and there are funerals (and sometimes those come far too close together for our hearts). There are beginnings, and there are ends. But “all the days,” Jesus says, “I am with you.” There is not a day where that promise won’t apply.

“To the very end of the age.” I wish our English Bible used a different word than “end” here. (I know I’m really caught up on translation stuff today.) A really good word to use here, instead of “end,” would be “conclusion.”

Sometimes things just end, and we don’t feel closure. An end comes abruptly, and it surprises us. Jesus here says that there will be not simply an end, but instead a conclusion to this age of the world. A considered end. From Jesus’ perspective, the world is not meandering along aimlessly. There is a purposeful ending toward which all things are headed, and the fiercest efforts of Satan and of our sinful flesh will not stop that conclusion from coming about.

What is that conclusion? It is the visible return of Jesus as King of Kings. It is you, purified from all sin and praised by the Lord for your faith and love. It is us beholding the true God with our own eyes. It is us, sitting with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the saints at the Lamb’s everlasting wedding feast. It is God being praised by all the nations!

That day will come. Our Great God promises it. And he has commissioned us to share this living hope. May his Spirit put joy in our hearts and praise on our lips! Amen.

May the Spirit of God - the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the LORD - rest on you day by day. Amen.

Our Gospel reading, and our Acts reading, take place during the two different harvest festivals God had commanded his Old Testament people to observe. The Gospel reading takes place during Sukkoth, about six months before Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. The Acts reading, on the other hand, takes place seven weeks after Easter (so almost eight months after our Gospel reading). This outpouring of God’s Holy Spirit, and these miracles the Spirit worked on that day, coincided with the Jewish festival of Shavuot (which was called Pentecost in Greek).

Sukkoth was a fall harvest, celebrated when all the crops had been taken in. Shavuot was a spring festival; a firstfruits festival, celebrated as the earliest crops (like barley) were harvested.

Celebrating two harvest festivals is not a common thing across most world cultures. Most cultures have only one harvest festival. For instance, we have Thanksgiving each fall. But God instituted two harvest festivals for his people. The Israelites were told to look at everything they had, and to recognize that it was given to them from the loving hand of their Savior-God. No amount would be too great to return to him in thanks.

That was what the Israelites understood from their two-harvest-festivals-a-year worship schedule. God would abundantly bless them, and they could abundantly thank him. Our psalm said it today: “All creatures look to you, Lord, to give them their food at the proper time. When you open your hand, they are satisfied with good things.”

But maybe we don’t see that. We look at our lives, and what we have, and what others have, and we are envious. They have the nicer home, the newer car. Or we’re anxious. Do I have enough? Everyone else has more. Will I be well? Will I be safe?

I read the book Hatchet to our kids recently. Great book. One of the things that Brian, the teenage protagonist, discovers as he survives in the wilderness following a plane crash is that animals’ lives revolve around eating. Chapter 14: “Food was simply everything. All things in the woods, from insects to fish to bears, were always, always looking for food—it was the great, single driving influence. All must eat.”

“All must eat,” that’s true for us too. People need to eat, same as animals. So when we have fears about our materials needs and comforts, we assume that those fears arise from reality. “If I’m afraid that I don’t have what I need; I must not have what I need.” Simple as that.

But that’s not true. God promises that he does provide us with what we need, day by day. Our fears about having what we need, therefore, do not have a material basis. They have a spiritual basis. Jesus calls it, in our Gospel reading, “thirst.” Spiritual thirst. That is what produces our fears of material lack. Spiritual thirst.

Some of you came to church today with those fears on your hearts; all of us will have those fears at some point. Among the crowds with Jesus on that Sukkoth in Jerusalem, there were people asking those questions; fearing those fears.

Jesus had spent the prior days of this festival teaching in the temple. He had gotten to know the people. He had heard their questions; he knew what was on their hearts. And so, on the last day of Sukkoth, the “greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.’”

It sounds like Jesus is quoting an Old Testament passage. We heard him doing that last week: He quoted Psalm 110 as he conversed with the Pharisees about the identity of the Messiah. But this is not actually a quote from the Old Testament. There is no verse anywhere else in the Bible that says something like, “Living water will flow from within you.”

So what Jesus is saying here is more than simply, “Here’s a Bible passage about me.” He’s saying, “The whole Bible is about me.” He’s saying that this is the message of the Bible: You are in need. You are spiritually thirsty. And only in Jesus will you find that need quenched.

It’s passages such as this that inspired Augustine’s famous remark in his Confessions: “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.” Augustine beautifully summarizes what Jesus basically says the Bible’s whole message is. It can be boiled down to this: We need Jesus.

“We.” Humanity. We are the same. We are something which can be spoken of collectively. We often lose sight of this; we distinguish and divide between ourselves and others, we assign ourselves to a group and distance ourselves from another. But when we read words like “whoever” (as Jesus uses here) in the Bible, we need to understand that there is no fundamental difference between any two humans. Our humanity is a greater commonality than the differences which make us individuals.

“We need.” We are all in the same mess. We are fallen. We are rebels, who by nature hate God and good. We are needy and foolish, and we foolishly look to ourselves to solve our need.

“We need Jesus.” Our own diagnosis of the problem we face is all wrong. We look at the world, and our lives, and think things like, “I just need money.” “I need a spouse.” “I need a better job.” “I need the politician I voted for to win.” “I need society to change.” We think our needs are material. And that’s all wrong. Our need is spiritual. We are spiritually thirsty. And only Jesus answers that need.

The Holy Spirit of God opens our eyes to this truth. The Spirit opens our eyes to see that we need Jesus, and the Spirit does that opening-of-our-eyes through the message about Jesus!

How elegant, God’s plan of salvation is. Elegant; unlike the world we live in, or the way our daily bread is produced. The clothes we wear and the cars we drive and the phones we hold and the food we eat is produced, yes certainly by God’s gracious action in the world, but (due to sin) often by processes we rightly find objectionable. Are my clothes made in a sweatshop? Did a child dig the precious metals in my phone out of the ground? Messy, inelegant, sinful systems, we humans devise.

But God’s system for answering our one real need, our spiritual thirst, is so elegant. We hear the message about Jesus, and the Spirit comes to us through that message to work faith in us. To convince us of its truth. To lead us to trust Jesus. Simple. And when the Spirit brings us to trust in Jesus, this is what Jesus says happens: “Whoever believes in me, rivers of living water will flow from within them.”

Think about the picture there. Jesus has used this idea of living water, water that will satisfy in an enduring way, before. He spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well about living water, John 4. But there, he spoke about her needs - her thirst - being individually filled. Here, he says there’s more. It’s not only your individual thirst he fills. Instead, you become a source of living water. What he pours into your heart gushes out into the lives of others. That (John says) is the presence of God’s Spirit in our lives.

The last lines of our Gospel shows how interconnected Jesus’ and the Spirit’s action toward us is. “Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.” The Spirit’s outpouring on the Church would wait until after Jesus’ glorification.

What was Jesus’ glorification? We heard about the Ascension last week; Jesus rising to heaven, his disciples gathered around him for one final blessing. That sounds pretty glorious!

Or maybe (going back a bit further in our worship services) it would make sense to understand his glorification as his victorious descent to hell. The moment when the risen Jesus showed up to announce his victory before Satan himself. That’s glory!

John’s Gospel, though, tells us exactly what “Jesus’ glorification” consisted in. Chapter 12, during Holy Week, Jesus says, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” And chapter 17, the night of his betrayal, Jesus “looked toward heaven and prayed: ‘Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you.’”

Jesus was glorified when he worked salvation. When the plan which he and the Father and the Spirit had arranged in eternity reached its consummation. When humanity could look at him, on his rugged old cross, and say, “There’s my Savior.” When the soldiers standing by exclaimed, “This surely was God’s Son!” Jesus was glorified by God on the cross. He was shown to be the most important person who has ever lived. He was shown to be the Savior.

You need Jesus, and you have Jesus. He died for you on his cross. And his Spirit is being poured out on you, into you, to bring forth rivers of living water from inside you. You are not in need, nor are you simply satisfied; you are filled to abundance by God, filled with his Spirit to glorify him in your every day. Amen.

Grace and peace to you, friends; grace and peace to you, as gifts from the King of Kings, the one who sits enthroned in heaven as the firstborn of the resurrection and the Judge of the living and the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The two most complimentary words you could give to a speech, or a book, or any piece of writing or rhetoric, would be that it was inspired and inspiring. To call something “inspired” would mean that another force - something outside the writer - entered into his work, breathed life and power beyond mortal into it. To call it “inspiring” is to say that the speaker’s words are so persuasive, so powerful, that they enter into her audience. They motivate, they animate, with (again) a force and a vitality beyond the mortal.

Jesus says (verse 43 of our Gospel reading) that David was “speaking by the Spirit” when he wrote Psalm 110. Jesus’ exact words are en pneumati, literally, “in spirit.” “Inspired.” A power, a force, beyond David’s own intellect and skill was at work as David wrote this song. The Spirit of God - the personal, divine, together-with-Father-and-Son-forever-worshiped Spirit - spoke through David. Inspired his words.

This is Jesus’ own confession of what the Bible is. It is the inspired Word of God. The Bible was (in the words of Jesus’ disciple Peter) not written by or according to human will. Rather, Peter says, the holy writers “spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1). We call this, the doctrine of inspiration.

The doctrine of inspiration is practically applied when we go to the Bible to find truth. Sometimes people flip open the Bible to random pages, trying to find insight. But treating it like a Magic 8 Ball, or a pile of fortune cookies, is not how Jesus read the Bible. Jesus read the Bible with a conviction that it spoke clearly, and also, that it spoke in distinct places about distinct topics.

In this conversation with the Pharisees, Jesus poses them a question. “Whose son is the Messiah?” The Jewish people had been promised that through their nation, God would send a unique person, a figure with monumental consequence for world history, into the world. They had been waiting for this figure, this person, to arise. They read the Bible (which, for them at the time, was just the Old Testament) and found various portions of the Bible - prophecies - that offered cues and clues to the Messiah’s identity. One of those was Psalm 110.

Jesus tells them here that the way they were reading the Bible was correct. They believed that God had accurately and wisely communicated truth about the world, and about events that had not yet taken place, in the Bible. They were reading the Bible properly; they had, however, missed something important about the Messiah. The Messiah would not be merely human. The Messiah would be “David’s Son,” yes, a man descended from King David; but the Messiah would also be “David’s Lord,” the divine Son of God. As I said two weeks ago: We need that Messiah! We need the Godman, because only the Godman can reveal God to mankind.

The Pharisees needed to understand the Bible better. And Jesus is very generous in the way he phrases his question here; he doesn’t force them to affirm or deny his Messiahship on the spot. But he pushes them to reckon with that possibility. They need to! They needed to see that Jesus, standing there questioning them, was indeed the Messiah, the promised figure who would be the axle on which world history would turn.

The Pharisees needed to know that. By God’s grace, thanks be to him alone, we do! We gather in worship under the sign of the cross because we know that Jesus is the Messiah, and that at the cross he accomplished our salvation.

Let us not reduce the Bible to that truth. “All Scripture is God-breathed,” the apostle Paul assured Timothy. The Pharisees refused to see the Bible’s teachings about Jesus, and that was an error; to reverse their approach, and ignore anything that isn’t specifically about Jesus, is also an error. There is a way of reading the Bible which assumes (without necessarily stating it plainly) that only the Gospel, the message about Jesus, is God’s inspired Word.

But this is not how Jesus himself read the Bible. The two messages of the Bible - Law and Gospel - he affirmed both as being God’s inspired Word. He preached on the Ten Commandments, and called his followers to live by an even more exacting standard than a surface reading of the Old Testament would suggest! Jesus did not teach us to read the Bible like a man panning for gold; sifting out what doesn’t interest us, looking for shiny gold. No; Jesus tells us to read the Bible like Bilbo and Thorin’s company in The Hobbit, digging through the dragon’s hoard. Everything they see and touch is priceless treasure, and yet there is the treasure above all other treasures, the Arkenstone, hidden in the lot. That is the Gospel; among many treasures, the one which is valued beyond all others.

Do we react to all the Bible in this way? Do we so value it? Or, when we read something that doesn’t sit well with us, do we look for ways to set it aside?

“Paul says we have to respect and obey all governing authorities. But that was a long time ago; their government was so different; he doesn’t mean I have to do that.”

“God says he hates divorce, but society is so different today; marriage isn’t so important a cornerstone of our economic system; that can be softened.”

“Peter says that when I talk to unbelievers about Christianity, I have to do so with gentleness and respect, but some people, I can definitely mock. I don’t need to work toward understanding them, they don’t deserve that respect.”

“Paul comes off so anti-woman in his writings; maybe they’re translated badly. Regardless, we know better now.”

We have these thoughts. Something in the Bible butts up against something in our lives, and we look for ways to avoid it. We have doubts about what we are reading. But those surface-level doubts will develop into a deeper uncertainty: “Has Jesus been able to pass his teachings along to us, to our generation?”

He certainly can. Jesus Christ, could raise himself from death. Ensuring that his teachings are faithfully passed along is small potatoes.

Very well, we may say; what Jesus wanted passed along, has been passed along in the Bible. But what we read there is meant for most people; not me, though. See, I am unique. My situation is unique. My history is unique. Other people haven’t had to go through what I’ve gone through. And the Bible can apply to them, fine; but I want to hear from Jesus directly, I deserve to hear from Jesus directly.

If Jesus were still here on earth, that’s what we would want from him! We would read something in the Bible we don’t agree with, or another Christian would point it out to us, and we’d say, “Well, let’s wait until Jesus visits, and then we can sort that out.” And we would want to wait until he could make a visit (maybe driving around in a little car with a bulletproof bubble) to adjudicate our cases personally.

But this is not what Jesus chose to do. Instead, he ascended. He went to sit at the Father’s right hand on the throne of glory in heaven, and he has left us with his inspired, inspiring Word. He told his disciples (in our Acts reading) that they would be inspired (that the Spirit would come on them) and that they would then be his witnesses to every corner of the earth. And so here we sit, on Long Island - six thousand miles and two thousand years removed from the Ascension - and we have the inspired words of these witnesses of Jesus. And these words tell us who he is, and they tell us who we are, and they tell us what we have done and what we have failed to do, and they tell us what he has done and promises to deliver to us.

Jesus could have shared those promises with the Pharisees that day. They could have asked him (presaging the sainted Doctor Luther), “What does this mean?” “What do you mean, Jesus, that the Messiah is David’s Lord?” And he could have told them (as, five days later, he would tell two disciples walking to Emmaus) all about the person and work of the Messiah, as the Scriptures foretold.

But they didn’t ask. “No one could say a word in reply, and from that day on no one dared to ask him any more questions.”

Matthew doesn’t write that as a commendation. They chose to stop asking questions; instead, they chose to kill him. The next day, on Wednesday of Holy Week, they and Judas made their plans for Jesus’ arrest. They stopped asking Jesus questions.

The disciples did not! See our Acts reading: After the resurrection, they still ask him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” They have questions for Jesus.

Ask Jesus questions. There are questions that he will not answer (again, look at his reply to the disciples). But there are many he will. He’ll do so in the pages of the Bible. This book is his inspired Word. He worked through the authors to bring you guidance and insight and conviction and comfort that you need. And this book is his inspiring Word. He will breathe out his Holy Spirit into your heart through it. He will be present with you. Amen.

Grace and peace to you, friends, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

There’s a woman hiding under a bed. Someone is looking for her. She can hear footsteps coming closer. She tries to be as quiet as she can, she pushes herself further back under the bed. But the person seeking her comes to stand next to the bed. She sees their feet. She’s trying not to make a sound. Then a face appears; they’re looking right at her.

“I found you, mom! My turn to hide!”

Did I set it up well enough that you expected something else there? Something more like a thriller, horror, film? How to read the scene depends on us knowing why the woman is hiding.

Our Isaiah reading, verse 17, described God hiding: “The LORD is hiding his face from the descendants of Jacob,” Isaiah lived 700 years before Jesus; he wrote this looking ahead to the fall of Jerusalem at the hands of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. (We just covered that event in our Monday afternoon Bible study.) Isaiah saw that God would seem absent as enemies attacked his people.

Why was God hiding? Our Monday afternoon Bible study saw the explanation which God gave Jeremiah: The people of Israel had sinned. They had worshiped other gods, and they had refused to listen to God’s Word, spoken through the prophets. Isaiah (throughout his book) also recognizes that God hid from his people, and allowed them to pass through difficulty, because of their sin.

But here, God shows Isaiah something more. He is hiding not only so that his people see and understand the consequences of their sin. He is also hiding in ambush for their enemies. Verse 9 of that reading: “Raise the war cry, you nations, and be shattered!” “Prepare for battle, and be shattered!” “Devise your strategy, but it will be thwarted,” “for God is with us.”

God hides here like warriors setting an ambush. The enemy presses forward with confidence; they think they are winning, they defeat the token resistance put up against them; suddenly, they are attacked on all sides. Their escape is shut off. They’re shattered.

God hides to do this. To crush his enemies. To give us refuge when we are attacked. We flee to the hidden God, and in his strength we are made safe. Peter, in today’s epistle reading, tells us that, to do his work, Jesus is hiding in our trials, in our lives, and in our baptisms.

What we’re reading in today’s second reading comes from a letter the apostle Peter wrote around the year 65. He was in Rome at the time, serving the church there (which means that yes, Peter did serve the church at Rome, but does not thereby mean, as Roman Catholics hold, that he was the Bishop of Rome, nor that every Bishop of Rome since Peter therefore deserves the fealty of all Christians). He wasn’t writing to the Roman church, however. At the beginning of the letter, he addresses it to “God’s elect, exiles scattered throughout the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia.” All of these are located in modern-day Turkey, which (at the time) was part of the Roman Empire.

Peter wrote this at a hard time for Christians. This letter was probably written just after the Great Fire of Rome, which Emperor Nero used as an excuse to begin mass persecution of Christians (whom he blamed for starting the fire which devastated the city). So Peter’s own flock, the Christians in Rome, likely lost loved ones and property in this disaster, and on top of that, the Roman Christians were being arrested to be crucified, or torn apart by dogs!

Were the same things happening to the Christians in Turkey to whom Peter wrote? It seems that they were. Some of the people who got this letter may have been Christians from Rome, who fled the persecution there. But they found that persecution followed them.

Trouble on trouble, was what these Christians saw. Broader troubles for everyone - the disaster of the Great Fire - affected them as well, and then these broad troubles resolved into acute trials for them in particular. Members of their church fled. Others were killed.

So Peter’s question at the beginning of this reading seems foolish. “Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good?” Um, Nero, Peter?! And plenty of others?!

We get a better perspective on Peter’s question if we back up to verse 12. He quotes from the Psalms, and tells his audience, “the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer.”

Reading Peter’s question in verse 13 with that in mind, here’s the point we understand him making. “Who is going to hurt you while you’re doing good? Some people may. God will not.”

Peter then draws on one of Jesus’ best-known teachings; the Sermon on the Mount. Even before the apostles and their associates wrote the books of the New Testament, Christians were familiar with the Sermon on the Mount. They had written down little portions of it, and memorized those. One well-known section was what we now call the Beatitudes; those sentences at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus says a few things in this vein: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”

Peter draws on those familiar words, which even these people who were being persecuted - who maybe didn’t have access to physical copies of Scripture - would have known. And he tells them, “If you suffer for what is right, you are blessed.”

To be “blessed” means to be favored by God. The blessed person, God cares for; takes care of; gives gifts to. Peter is telling these Christians, “When you are going through trials, you are not alone. God is there to bless you.”

Suffering is suffering. Suffering itself is not a blessing. When Jesus returns, there will be no more suffering. Do not read the Bible and think that you need to enjoy suffering. Do not let your heart be troubled by questions like, “If I really believed, would hardship bother me like it does?” Of course it bothers you! Suffering bothers Jesus! He will do away with it on the last day.

Until then (Peter tells us), in our trials, God is present for us. But he is hiding. I spoke of this last week: When we carry our crosses - when we react to trials in life as Christians - we find Jesus walking alongside us with his cross. He is hidden in our trials, and we find him there. The world does not see this. Jesus predicted that in our Gospel reading: “Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me.”

God hides in our trials to bless us. At times, he uses trials to shape us. He teaches us humility when our plans fail. He teaches us perseverance when success is further off than we initially thought. These are blessings. He also provides others to share our trials. As the old saying goes, “Joy shared is joy doubled; grief shared is grief halved.” The person we share our grief with is someone we can rejoice with in better times. Such community is a blessing from God, and he hides in trials to give these blessings to us.

So what do we think when we go through trials? When people leave our church, like they left Peter’s. The reasons may be different, but it still affects us. Or when society faces major challenges. A great fire that burns down whole cities? Not something that happens in a place with pump trucks and fire companies. But rising inflation? Job market stagnation?

Peter quotes Isaiah: “Do not fear their threats; do not be frightened.” In this sentence, Peter doesn’t mean, “Don’t fear the threats people make toward you.” That would make sense as his point in this section. But what he means is, “Don’t fear the things that other people think are threatening.” “Don’t fear the threats that they fear.”

Unbelievers fear not being in control. They fear societal change. They fear for their material needs. They fear these things because the Spirit of God does not guide them; because they do not have a Father in heaven watching over them. You do. God our Father has (as Jesus promised) sent an “advocate to help you and be with you forever — the Spirit of truth.”

So you and I react differently to trials. We know that Jesus is hiding in our trials. And so, as we respond to those trials, Jesus hides in our lives. Peter says, verse 15, “In your hearts revere Christ as Lord.” The heart, in the Bible, is the center of thought and emotion. Actions come out of the heart; what we do shows what’s in our hearts. Peter says that revering Christ as Lord in our hearts plays out practically this way: “Give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for your hope. Do this with gentleness and respect.”

Jesus hides in our lives. People will see hope in our lives that they’ll want to ask about. And what they’ll find is Jesus.

After all (Peter goes on), that was Jesus’ life. People slandered him, and scoffed at him, but occasionally wanted miracles from him. Isn’t that so often the Christian experience? You’re often aware that people around you don’t necessarily like what you are. They don’t want to hear about your church, or your faith. Yet, every so often, someone asks you to do something that will benefit them, and expects that you’ll do it, because you’re a Christian!

Good! Let them do exactly that, and do good to them. You don’t have to do exactly what they ask. I think of calls I get to the church phone, asking if we’ll pay someone’s rent. The answer is no, but I usually offer to stop by with some groceries. I’ve been taken up on that; I’ve also gotten other responses. What I am willing to do, is do good. What I am not willing to do, is whatever someone asks me to do.

Peter did the same. We heard last week of his healing the lame beggar-man. The man asked them for money: “No money,” Peter said, “but let me do this for you.” What he did was better!

You can also give something better than money to people. You can tell them about the hope you have in Jesus. And you can (and should) offer what material good you can. The book of James is very clear on this, as is 1 John: “Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.” Jesus hides in your life. People see him in your actions. Your love gives witness to him; your sin denies him.

And when I look at my life, I know that I have denied Jesus in thought, word, and deed. I have not always shared my hope in him with others; I have not always shared the blessings I have with those in need as I could have; I have not reacted to all trial with faith. Have any of us? No!

So Jesus hides in one more place for us. When we don’t see him in our trials, and when our lives haven’t revealed him, we find him hiding, with a promise, in our baptisms.

In Baptism, God makes us a promise: “You are innocent in my eyes.” Peter says a crazy thing here. He says (verse 21) that the waters of the flood symbolized baptism, and (this is the crazy thing) “baptism now saves you also.” In case we thought he misspoke, he says it again! Baptism (still verse 21) “saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

The risen Jesus, who conquered death and defeated sin and Satan, hides in Baptism for you. He promises - his Father affirms it - that your Baptism is “the pledge of a clear conscience toward God.” Not our pledge toward God, but God’s own pledge toward himself for our sake.

If Baptism was our pledge to be good - to maintain a clear conscience before God - it would be useless. We cannot maintain such a pledge. It would be nonsense to say that such a thing saves us. So Peter does not say such a thing. He compares Baptism to the Flood. God sent those waters, and with them, saved Noah and his family. God sends the waters of Baptism also, and by them, saves you.

Jesus is hiding in your Baptism. Remember this. Hold onto Jesus’ promise that you have a clear conscience before God because of his work. When trials come (as they came into the lives of Noah and Peter), Jesus is hiding in them, with blessing for you. And when others look at your life, you baptized child of God, by his grace and through his Spirit, they’ll see Jesus in the hope you have. Amen.

Grace and peace to you, friends, from God our Father through the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

“Do not let your hearts be troubled,” Jesus says in today’s Gospel. Okay, Jesus. He must have seen my heart recently. “Jell-O on a plate during an earthquake” is an appropriate visual.

My heart - our hearts - they’re easily shaken. We need somewhere unshakeable, secure, unmoving, to put our Jell-O hearts.

The disciples thought they had found that in Jesus. After all, he had told them (Matthew 7), “Everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.” He had promised that if they built their lives on his Word, they would be safe.

And yet, on this night, as they eat the Passover meal together, Jesus himself seems shaken. He said that one of them would betray him. Peter spoke up: John 13:37, he says, “Lord, I will lay down my life for you!” But Jesus answered, “Will you really lay down your life for me? Very truly I tell you, before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times!”

That shuts Peter up for a while. But the others are troubled and confused. So Jesus tells them, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.”

Doesn’t that feel heartless? Like saying to someone in the hospital, “Don’t let your stomach have cancer.” But Jesus doesn’t stop at telling them, “Stop.” He does something which will actually give their hearts rest. He gives them promises.

That was what had originally given them rest, after all. He’d promised that they would be safe and secure if they built their lives on his Word. And now they’re troubled, but guess what? Promises from Jesus are still what they need - what we need - to rest our Jell-O hearts. Our Shaken Hearts Find Sufficient Security in Jesus.

The disciples are troubled because Jesus is troubled, and he isn’t being straightforward with them about what’s troubling him. Like kids when mom and dad are arguing, they can tell that something is going on, even though they don’t have the words to explain their intuition.

Jesus told them, 13:33, “My children, I will only be with you a little longer.” Thomas has clearly been chewing on that; it prompts his reply to Jesus in our text: “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” Tell us, Jesus! Be straightforward!

Would that actually have helped them? Jesus knew it would not. The last time Jesus spoke directly about the fact that he would be crucified in Jerusalem, Peter took him away from the rest of the group and scolded him. “Don’t talk that way, Jesus!” If Jesus would tell them now exactly what would happen that night, Peter wouldn’t have let him leave! He’d have barricaded the door. “I’ll let this building fall down around us before I let you out, Jesus!”

When the future troubles our hearts - shakes our Jell-O - we want the same thing. We want God to be straightforward with us. We think, “God, if you’d just tell us exactly what’s coming, and we’ll be able to handle it better.” Like being at the doctor; we want to hear, “When I give you this injection, you’ll feel just a little pinch.” Hearing that helps us.

Well: God does give us that. He tells us what will be helpful to us, but not more. The doctor doesn’t tell you, “The needle is 25 gauge, 1 inch long, and I’m going to apply about 3.5 newtons of pressure to the plunger to pierce your skin.” Would that help you? It wouldn’t help me! If she says, “Pierce your skin,” I’m going to be tense. 3.5 newtons? What does that mean? That level of detail would not be helpful, and the doctor knows that.

The Doctor of our souls - the Great Physician - knows this also. He knew this about those disciples that night; he knows it about you and me. He knows exactly what will be helpful for us to know, and what won’t. It was helpful for the disciples to know that Jesus was going to be betrayed, and that he would be going away. They could be sure, when they saw these things happening, that it was not a surprise to him. That it was all according to God’s plan.

Still, Jesus recognized that their hearts were troubled. So he made them a promise. “My Father’s house has many rooms.” “I am going there to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me.”

Oh, this is what we need to know. There is a place we will get to call home forever. A room in the family home. Not a rental; not a hotel room or a waiting room; not a tent. Your room. Your bed, your bookshelf, your desk. Your clothes. Your charger. Your knick-knacks and decor. A place made just for you, perfect for you, because (as we heard last week) the Good Shepherd knows you. He calls you by name.

“I will come back and take you to be with me,” Jesus tells the disciples. When I read this, at first, I heard it as Jesus talking about the end of the world; the day when he will come back in glory, flanked by heaven’s angel armies. But that’s not what he’s talking about here. Jesus is talking about the day when his followers individually go to heaven; the day that they each die.

Philipp, we hear from in this reading. He was one of Jesus’ very first followers. Nathanael, one of the other apostles, only met Jesus because Philipp invited him. Philipp died in the city of Hierapolis (today known as Pamukkale, in Turkey). He was either beheaded or crucified upside down. Thomas, the other speaker here, would (years later) go on to teach the Gospel in India, and died there by being stabbed to death with spears.

When that happened, Jesus “came back and took them to be with” him. He greeted them. He took Thomas and Philipp by the hand, and he led them home to the Father’s house. To the room he had prepared for them. (I imagine that Thomas had a full shelf of Mythbusters on DVD, and that Philipp, whose name means “horse-lover,” had a pony.) Jesus had everything ready for them. And then he took them to meet the Father.

That was what Philipp had wanted that night in the upper room. “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.” But Philipp already knew the Father! He knew the Father because he knew Jesus. “I am in the Father, and the Father is in me,” Jesus tells him. This is the Trinity, the holy mystery of the very essence of God. When they were with Jesus, learning from him and speaking with him and eating and drinking and laughing with him and crying with him, they were with the Father. They were learning what God is like.

We need to know Jesus to know God. No image could ever adequately convey God is to us. Only a person can show us who God is, what God is like. But if a person is going to show us what God is like, that person cannot be less than God and do him justice. Yet that person cannot be above humanity, separated from us and our experience.

This is why Jesus is “the way and the truth and the life,” the only way to God. He is a man, a human being, who lived among us. He is, at the same time, God from God; the eternal and divine Son of God. “No one comes to the Father except through me,” he says. That is both a theological and practical claim. He is the only way theologically, this is the clear teaching of the Bible, and that clear teaching is practical. Only the Godman can reveal God to mankind.

He goes on: “If you really know me, you will know my Father as well.” I don’t like one word in our English translation there; the word really. In the Greek words which John wrote down, there isn’t an adverb like really. And placing that word there, as our English translation is doing, raises a question that Jesus’ actual words don’t raise. “Do I really know Jesus?” we ask. But Jesus’ actual words here are simply, “If you have known me, you will also know my Father.” No “really” in sight.

We still ask a question as we read these words: “Have I known Jesus?” But we don’t push into asking how well we’ve known him: “Well, I thought I knew him, but have I really known him? Have I known him well enough?” If you can answer that yes, you’ve known Jesus, then (Jesus promises) you will know his Father.

So how do we know Jesus? We know him, first, through the Gospel; through the message of the forgiveness of our sins. We know Jesus through the Gospel because Jesus is the Gospel! Without Jesus, there is no message to be called “the Gospel.” There is no good news. There is only the Law: Love God above all else, and love your neighbor as you love yourself. And we don’t - we can’t - accomplish that. Our hearts make idols of anything and everything. We put ourselves first. We sin, and fall short of God’s glory.

Jesus did not sin. He is the one sinless human being who has ever lived. And the good news is that he offered his sinless life for us. In our place. Because of him, God forgives our sins. We know Jesus through the Gospel.

We also know Jesus through the cross.

Jesus told his disciples (Luke 14) that whoever wanted to follow him had to take up their own cross and follow him as he carried his. He took up his cross because, one, he loved his Father and submitted to God’s will, and two, he loved humanity and was willing to take on our guilt.

When Jesus told his disciples to “take up” their crosses, they were doubtless confused. They had not yet seen him carry his literal cross to Golgotha. They would have wondered why he chose the word “cross.” Yet they understood what he meant. He meant that his followers can’t run from the trials and difficulties we’ll face. We must pick them up, and follow Jesus.

Everyone faces trials and difficulties in life, whether they are Christians or unbelievers. But only Christians can call trials and difficulties “crosses.” We call them crosses because, like Jesus and his cross, we carry them out of love for God and for our neighbor.

A cancer diagnosis is a cross for the Christian to bear as he considers how to humbly ask for help and support, and how to rely on God’s love in the face of disappointment. A struggling marriage is a cross for a Christian to bear as she considers how to love when she’s frustrated, or as she considers how to forgive and ask for forgiveness. A struggle against temptation is a cross for the Christian to bear as he works out how to avoid that temptation, and brings himself to confess his failures to a brother in Christ.

We bear these crosses because we love God and we love our neighbors. Jesus bore his cross because he loved God and loved his neighbors (all people). So as we carry crosses, we are following him, and we are knowing him. And because we know Jesus - through the Gospel, and through our crosses - we know the Father also.

This is peace for your Jell-O heart: In your trials, you glimpse the heart of God. “For now, we see only a reflection as in a mirror; one day, we will see face to face.” When your trust in God wobbles - when questions come more easily than praise - you are glimpsing the heart of Jesus for you. His perfect trust in his Father covers over your wobbling. When you are called to love someone who has hurt you, you are peeking at the Father’s heart. You can look at your own imperfect love and marvel at the depth of God’s perfect love for us rebellious sinners.

“Do not let your hearts be troubled,” brothers and sisters. We “will not die but live, and we will proclaim what the LORD has done.” Amen.

The Good Shepherd Feeds Us, Leads Us, and Calls Us By Name.

John 10:1-11

Grace and peace to you, friends, from Jesus our Good Shepherd. Amen.

Whose advice do you take? I talk about this often; the internet era has introduced this problem. If you engage with the internet, especially with social media, you will encounter advice from people whose lives you cannot know. They show you what they want to show you about their lives, and you can’t know whether they’re telling a half truth, or completely lying.

Further, these people can’t know your life. They film a video and post it, not knowing anything about your personal circumstances. Not knowing whether they were understood, or whether their advice was bad in your case.

If Jesus had not risen from death on Easter, He would be no better than such people. There would be no good reason to listen to Him. We would actually know how His life did turn out (in contrast to these online advice-givers we don’t know). We would know that the life He led ended in abandonment and agony. Looking at the outcome of His life, we would have no reason to follow His advice. And if He were dead, He wouldn’t know us. We would have no reason to think that His advice was good for us, as individuals.

But Jesus Christ has indeed been raised from the dead. He is the firstfruits of the great resurrection. On the present earth’s last day, He will return, and He will raise all the dead to life, and He will assemble the living and the dead before Him on that day for judgment.

The basis of that judgment will be our trust in Him. Do we believe that apart from Him, we have no good thing? Do we believe that we are sinners, undeserving of His love, reconciled to God above through mercy alone? To believe such things, to trust in Christ, is to receive these promised blessings.

Because Jesus lives, we can trust Him. We can trust that His Word will be a firm foundation, a solid rock, on which to build our lives. We can trust that He knows us, better than we know ourselves. He is the Good Shepherd. He feeds us, leads us, and calls us by name.

Jesus, our Good Shepherd, feeds us. All the material goods which we have are a gift from his loving hand. Money in our checking accounts; cars in driveways; meat in the freezer, vegetables in the fridge; roofs over our heads; friends and family; church buildings; jobs; sunlight and fresh air; we did not earn these things. God has given them to us.

There are people who work harder than you or I who do not have the blessings you and I enjoy; there are also people who have less, and work less. So also, there are many people who enjoy greater material wealth than us who work harder than we do; and there are those who work less than we do, and yet enjoy greater material wealth.

We can often see effort paying off positively in people’s lives, but the Bible is clear, and an honest look at all of human experience confirms this: We are not able to guarantee our own material comfort, Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount that God “causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”

Material blessings are given by God out of his love for all humanity. The mechanisms through which such blessings come to us - money through our jobs, jobs through our friends, friends through our communities - these are all dependent on the grace and mercy of God. Were He to withdraw His mercy and grace, all our efforts would be in vain. We could not count on having any of the blessings we enjoy day by day.

Material wealth is a fickle thing. It comes and goes. We’re never certain of our ability to acquire it. But we - Christians - can be confident daily, because Jesus is our Good Shepherd. We will have everything we need day by day. He will not let His sheep go hungry. He will provide for His flock.

The good news of the love of God for us is spiritual nourishment from our Good Shepherd. When Jesus speaks here about providing for His sheep - helping them “find pasture,” giving them “life to the full” - He is not talking about material blessings alone. He is talking about spiritual nourishment. Jesus has the good news from God for you that your sins are forgiven. You can count on God’s loving care because of what Jesus has done for you. You have a Father who listens to your prayers and acts in your best interest. You, sinner, need not fear Him. Your sins have paid for.

You will meet people who want to share a different message with you. People who want to convince you that your relationship with God is based, not on His grace and mercy, but on your merits. Such people want you to be spiritually hungry. They are the “thieves and robbers” who Jesus says “come to steal and kill and destroy.” Steal your certainty about God’s love. Kill you with spiritual starvation, and destroy the work of Jesus.

But you know better. You know the voice of your Good Shepherd. He is the One who will feed you day by day, and He will also lead you.

We hear the voice of Jesus when we hear words such as Peter’s, in our second reading. Peter tells us that “Jesus Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; ‘by His wounds you have been healed.’” There’s God’s promise for us. We are forgiven because of Jesus.

So Peter also tells us that we want to follow in Jesus’ footsteps. “It is commendable if someone bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because they are conscious of God.” “If you suffer for doing good and endure it, this is commendable before God. To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you.” There, again, we’re hearing the voice of Jesus.

Those thieves and robbers who climb over the fence will not tell you to follow Jesus. They will tell you to follow them. They will talk about themselves in their sermons and their podcasts; their works, their actions, themselves as examples for you.

But when you hear such things, you are not hearing Jesus’ voice. You can reject such voices.

You do not need to be afraid of them; your Good Shepherd is stronger than they. He is stronger than death; He laid His life down for us, and He took it back up again, because death could not keep its hold on Him. He can protect you from thieves and robbers. He will keep us safe as we follow Him.

He will do this because He loves us. The thieves and robbers want to take from you. They want your money, or your praise. Jesus needs nothing from you! He is a Giver, the Giver of all your blessings. He will care for you because that’s who He is. He loves you, not as one generic human among the mass of humanity which He cares for. He loves you. Our Good Shepherd feeds us, and He leads us, and He calls us by name.

Jesus knows you personally. He knows your needs, your history, your fears and hopes. In Baptism, God brings us individually into his family. The minister says in Baptism, “Your name; I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Jesus knows your name. It’s written down in the Book of Life, it’s recorded on the family tree of heaven.

When you think that no one really knows you - that no one cares about you - that’s simply not true. Jesus knows you better than you do. He has better insight into your mind than you; He knows what really motivates you, no matter what you tell yourself.

He knows you better than you do right now; He also knows your past better than you do. We look at our pasts and don’t genuinely remember why we did the things we did. We tell ourselves stories about our past that unfailingly paint ourselves in the best light. But we don’t remember our thoughts, our motives, as accurately as we think we do.

Jesus knows your past; He also knows your future. We don’t! We simply don’t. We like to guess what our futures hold; we like to think we know we know how to get there. But Jesus does know what your future holds. And He knows how you’ll get there. Jesus calls you, by name, to follow Him. The Good Shepherd knows you, and He loves you. Trust Him. Amen.