Category: “A Top-Down Faith” series

Sow What?

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(Mark 4:26-34)

You don’t have to have a green thumb to be fascinated by seeds. When it comes to growing things, without diminishing the hard labor of farmers or gardeners, the seed is really responsible for doing all of the work. Once the seed is in the ground, it more or less takes over from there. The one tending to it may be able to control certain variables, like irrigation or fertilizer, but the seed is going to do what God designed it to do regardless: grow. 

It doesn’t always work like that, though. Consider the baker. The cake doesn’t bake itself. Multiple steps like properly following the recipe and baking it at the correct temperature for right length of time are necessary for the cake to turn out. That work does depend on the baker. Or take the software designer – if his coding is off, the software will have bugs and glitches and not work as it is supposed to. There are plenty of jobs that require constant monitoring and following the appropriate steps and procedures for everything to go smoothly. But when it comes to making a seed grow, the seed does all the work. 

The Word Works

Jesus emphasized this in his first parable. Once the seed was in the ground, look at what happened next. “Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how” (v.27). To a degree, whether the farmer works hard or hardly works, whether he puts in a full day or slacks off by sleeping in, either way, the seed is going to do what the seed is going to do: grow. And, it doesn’t need anyone’s help, as Jesus reminded his listeners: “All by itself the soil produces grain” (v.28).

Jesus’ is interested in more than just agriculture here; he is illustrating how God’s Word grows his kingdom. His Word, and his Word alone, does all the work.

The Bible doesn’t need our help to be effective. It doesn’t need to be wrapped up in a catchy sermon series or marketing. It doesn’t need to be supported by flashy professional media. The Word doesn’t work better because the church is bigger or smaller or has a cooler name. The style of worship doesn’t enhance the Word, nor does our logic or reason make it more likely to take root. It’s not anything we do at all. The Word does the work all by itself. The Holy Spirit uses it to bring life from death. He uses it to create and keep faith, faith that receives an abundance of rich gifts which he continually distributes through that same Word. 

Neither do we need to know the inner workings of the Word to know that it will work. In fact, you can’t. That’s why one individual soaking up everything about Christianity with a fervor that is contagious, suddenly becomes MIA and turns into a cold case. It’s also why the obstinate atheist unexpectedly becomes filled with faith. Why the one and not the other? I don’t know. Neither do you. God does, and we know how he does it and we know that he only does it one way: through his Word.

That’s why we understand how essential that small sentence at the beginning of Jesus’ parable is, “A man scatters seed on the ground” (v.26). If it starts with that, then we need to start with that. Nothing happens without the seed being scattered. Nothing happens to stored away seed. It won’t grow. It won’t produce. It won’t… anything.

So the Word must be sown. The seed must be scattered. The bedside Bible that is rarely opened is nothing more than another item to be dusted off when cleaning. The Bible app on your phone that never sees the light of day is only adding more clutter to your home screen. For the Word to work, just like anything else, it has to be used. If the Word is not spoken, shared, read, studied, confessed, preached, taught, passed on, etc., it will not produce. The Word needs to be communicated for it to work. The seed needs to be scattered. Are you scattering the seed?

When the stranger in line next to you opens up and ends up sharing some personal matters she is working through, are you looking for a chance to scatter the seed? When your unchurched friend returns from traveling to a family member’s funeral and expresses to you his doubts and uncertainty regarding death and the afterlife, do you scatter the seed? Your classmate is wrestling with feeling worthless and insignificant – do you scatter the seed? A church member close to you confesses something they’ve done that has left them reeling in guilt and shame – do you scatter the seed? 

Scatter the seed under your own roof, too. Fathers, are you taking the lead in this area? Are you scattering the seed of the Word in your marriage and in your home? If not, what is holding you back? If it’s your fear of having an inadequate understanding of the Bible or feeling that you aren’t qualified, look again at Jesus’ words: “Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how” (v.27). God isn’t calling you as a father to be an expert in the Word; he’s just calling you to scatter it so that he can do the work of building his kingdom. The Word works, so put it to work. And as you do, you’ll begin to notice the blessings over time.

The Word Works Big Blessings from Small Beginnings

The Word works, and it works big blessings. But it does so from small beginnings. Jesus explained, “It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds on earth. Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds can perch in its shade” (v.31-32). The Word’s work is like the mustard seed – it starts small, but over time grows and develops into something big.

A newborn infant and splashes of water accompanied by God’s powerful promise. God is able to grow the small seed planted there into something magnificent. A small beginning, yes, but big blessings will follow. An ongoing dialogue between two friends, one of whom is asking questions of the other about God and the Bible. A small seed is being planted, which God can grow into much bigger blessings over time. 

A sermon is shared, a service is streamed, an invitation is extended. A passage is quoted, a prayer is said. A hurting soul is comforted. A small bit of bread and wine are received. A devotion is read together. In all of it, the small mustard seed of the gospel is being scattered, and through all of it, God is causing big blessings to grow. 

But because it starts so small, and because at times it seems to take so long to grow, we must fight the urge to give up on it when we fail to see immediate results. The atom-size attention spans we have in our day and age have not helped. We hardly have to wait for anything anymore, so when we do, we become quickly irritated and give up to move on to something else. Perhaps the days of dial-up internet and rotary phones weren’t as bad as we make them out to be – at least they fostered a measure of patience in our everything-is-instant age! Regardless, keep scattering the seed with the complete confidence that from that tiny gospel seed, God will grow big blessings. 

The Word Works in Me

It isn’t necessary for us to know how the Word works to be able to trust that the Word works, since the Holy Spirit is the one doing the heavy lifting. While that is true, one of the blessings that Word produces in us is the desire to learn it, to know it, and to understand it better. Look at Mark’s description of Jesus’ teaching at the conclusion of these two parables. “With many similar parables Jesus spoke the word to them, as much as they could understand. He did not say anything to them without using a parable. But when he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything” (v.33-34). They grew in their learning. Jesus used parables to explain to them things they didn’t understand. And what they didn’t understand, he explained to them. And this happened on an ongoing basis!

Such is the cyclical relationship we have with the Word. The more we’re in it, the more we crave it. To those who avoid it because they don’t understand it, the solution is to be in it more – not less! – so that it will provide us with better understanding.

What did you do the last time you didn’t understand something.? Perhaps a movie ending didn’t make sense. Maybe you couldn’t explain why something that appeared to be in good working order wasn’t doing what it was supposed to. What did you do? Did you just walk away, clueless and content to remain in your ignorance? I doubt it! I’m guessing you googled it in hopes of finding an answer. You may have even texted or talked to a friend about it. You very likely took at least some step toward having a better understanding.

Why are we so reluctant to do the same with the Word? If you don’t get it, that’s fine, but getting away from it is not the solution to getting it. The solution is to scatter more seed. More, not less, and give the Word time to germinate in your heart and mind. Allow the Holy Spirit to enlighten and open up the Scriptures to you.

It’s been said that people overestimate what they can accomplish in one year, but underestimate what they can accomplish in 3-5 years. Reading the Bible in a year may not be for you, but what about reading it in three? What about finding others in whom the seed has just been planted and is starting to sprout, and committing together to keep after it for the long-term? It starts small. It takes time. But it can and will grow great things in your life, because the Word works! Scatter the seed!

Victory from Defeat

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(Genesis 3:8-15)

The team that gets swept in four games doesn’t win the championship. The candidate with fewer votes doesn’t win the election. The contestant with the wrong answer doesn’t win the gameshow. There’s no rigorous testing or investigation that needs to happen in such cases to determine the winner from the loser; it’s plain to see.

Unless you’re God. Then it’s more of a challenge. Why? Because God wins, and God doesn’t just win in victory, but God has repeatedly shown that he also wins in “defeat.” In other words, no matter how things may appear to us through our earthly eyes, whatever we’re seeing, God is able to use to win – to bring victory out of it. Yes, even victory from defeat. 

We have the follow-up to what appeared to be the most tragic defeat in all of history in our verses from Genesis 3. God had spoken the world into existence and established Adam & Eve as its keepers and overseers. He gave them the freedom to enjoy the created world in countless ways, while also providing them with opportunity to worship him by honoring the one command he did give them: not to eat the fruit of a certain tree. Satan, though, had his rebellious heart set on turning the created against their Creator, and never before and never again will one bite come at such a price. With it, sin had infiltrated God’s perfect world, and the occasion in our verses details for us what happened next. 

The question is often asked, “Why didn’t God just start all over after the fall?” That’s actually a fair question. The thought behind that question comes from the rationale that starting over could have avoided so much of the devastation that sin has caused in the world. While that may be true, if God had elected to take a mulligan and do it all over again, he would have been bound to his own word that warned of hell for anyone who ate the fruit from the one tree he prohibited (Gen. 2:16-17). To start over would have resulted in the first two souls ever created being sentenced to hell for eternity.

So God chose the better way, laid out in these verses from Genesis 3, so that no one – not even our first parents – would need to be sentenced to hell for eternity, because his Son would serve that sentence in our place.

The same question, “Why didn’t God just start all over after the fall,” could be asked from another perspective: that of God’s righteous wrath. Why didn’t God instantly turn his holy face from them? They had disobeyed his clear command. They didn’t deserve an explanation from him, let alone to ever have any interaction with God again. He surely could have written them off, condemned them, and started all over again based on just their actions alone.

Instead, God shows us who he is. He is more interested in pursuing sinners than he is in punishing them. Do you believe that about God? He reveals that to us about himself in this very account. Not only that, but our top-down faith also allows us to see that God is more than capable of bringing victory out of defeat. 

While God will not force anyone to come to faith in him or to love him, what God will do is make those things possible for everyone. Not only that, but he also provides more than enough reason for our faith and love to be directed to him.

Perhaps no account demonstrates this so clearly and so powerfully as “The Fall.” In fact, the heading for this section in our Bibles might be better labeled “God’s Determined Grace.” For even though the fall into sin brought irreparable damage to God’s perfect creation and to our lives and relationships, it was also the occasion through which God introduced his radical grace. And the greatness of God’s grace will always far outshine the severity and shame of sin. That’s because grace makes it possible to experience victory even in defeat. 

That doesn’t otherwise happen outside of grace. The losing side loses. While there may be some lessons learned and some positive takeaways, the defeated side in any war still loses. The losing party in the election still loses. The jury in a courtroom doesn’t rule in favor of both sides; there is a winner and a loser in every trial. That’s the way it works. The winning side enjoys the victory while the losing side is defeated.

But God’s promise in Genesis 3 turned that on its head. Even as God lays out his first gospel promise in all of Scripture, what is he doing but announcing victory in the face of defeat? The serpent had won. He had succeeded in deceiving Adam & Eve in sin. He was victorious. Yet look at how God proceeded with the interrogation process and judgment rendered after the fact.

He started with Adam, and the fact that he was hiding was a dead giveaway, an obvious indicator of his guilt. In a roundabout “I did it but it’s not really my fault” kind of way, double-dishing the blame on both the woman and basically God for putting her there with him, he did at least admit his defeat. He had eaten the fruit. Guilty. 

Instead of declaring Adam’s sentencing for his guilt right then and there, God moved on. The woman was up next. Taking her lead from Adam’s example, in similar fashion she gave yet another “I did it but it’s not really my fault” response, pinning it on the serpent. But at least she did admit her defeat. She had eaten the fruit. Guilty.

Instead of declaring Even’s sentencing for her guilt right then and there, God moved on. The serpent was up next.

This time, however, there is no interrogation. There is not trial. There is no opportunity for the serpent to defend himself. Instead of providing Satan with the opportunity to respond, God has only one thing to declare: judgment. Defeat. Yes, Satan looked like the victorious one as the juice from the fruit trickled down Adam & Eve’s lips, but God had something else to say about it. In no uncertain terms, he declared Satan’s defeat at the hands of the Savior, and victory for any and all who would believe it. The Lord God declared to Satan about Eve’s offspring, Jesus, “he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel” (Gen. 3:15). 

When we leave the garden and arrive at Golgotha, we see God’s promise of victory carried out – albeit a victory that would come through what appeared to be defeat. That supposed defeat, that Jesus had to endure the crucifixion as our substitute, was Genesis 3:15 playing out, for there Satan struck the heel of Eve’s offspring, the Savior. He had to suffer and die. 

His death, however, was not defeat; it was the first of a one-two punch to Satan and all of hell, by which Satan’s head would be crushed. His death served the sentence for all sinners. Jesus bore not only the weight of all sin of all time, but also all the fury and wrath of God’s righteous anger against sin by being abandoned and forsaken to endure hell in our place.

But not forever! No, the glorious final blow of the one-two punch came three days later when the very same Savior, Jesus, rose triumphantly in – not defeat, but in victory! So both in the garden and again at Golgotha, God rendered victory from defeat!

So God still does this for you and for me today. In one of the most painful experiences of what appears to be defeat, a loved one dies. We even speak in terms of defeat – they “lost” their battle with cancer or we “lost” them last night. Yet for those loved ones in Christ, theirs is not a loss at a all; rather, they have crossed the finish line of victory and made it home. They’ve won, because God wins.

It happens also in the aftermath of sin that we commit, when we’ve “lost” (there it is again!) the battle of temptation and are reeling from the collateral damage of that sin – ours or another’s. That empty cup of self-inflicted suffering is where God’s grace and forgiveness are poured out and overflow. So even sin, with all its damage and loss, must give way to the victory of forgiveness and renewal and reconciliation, which is ALWAYS right behind sin, cleaning up its mess. What looks like loss is the very grace of forgiveness that assures us of not only victory, but newfound strength that shapes us ever more into the image of the Savior, so that next time we don’t so easily or willingly stumble. We are battle-tested and better-prepared because of the grace of forgiveness. Victory from defeat. We win, because God wins.

That leads us to thank God through the joy of our sanctified living. But sometimes our sanctified living doesn’t look very sanctified. Sometimes, even though God’s grace has and always will declare us to be victorious, to be winners… we still live like losers, like those who have been defeated. This happens when the life of an unbeliever and the life of a believer appear to be virtually identical. The believer’s language still sounds like he’s on the losing side of the world. The believer still jokes the course jokes that sound like the losing side of the world. The believer is just as indifferent or disinterested in growing in faith and God’s Word like he’s on the losing side of the world. The list goes on.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, in the garden, God promised victory from defeat. At Golgotha, he delivered on that promise. Through faith in Jesus Christ as the Guaranteer of that victory, you have won. Your baptism solidifies it. The Supper reminds you of it. So let us live like it. Let us not be indistinguishable from those of the world who do not know or care to know about the victory we have in Jesus Christ. Let us stand out, like winners, like sanctified saints who have a spiritual swagger that is backed up by righteous living. In doing so, we reveal to others what it looks like for God to bring victory from defeat in our lives – and show what it could like like in their’s too.

Real Rest Is God-Given

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(Mark 2:23-3:6)

Are you well-rested? Typically when that question is asked of us, we take it to refer to whether or not we got a good night’s sleep. Certainly that matters when we gather in God’s house for worship. Running on a few hours of sleep or a restless night of tossing and turning presents a very real challenge to remaining alert and fully engaged.

While there is a place for speaking about the importance and benefits of sleep for our bodies, we gather for worship in search of a different type of rest. So I ask again: are you well-rested – spiritually?

We aren’t bound to the Old Testament mandate that worship had to take place on Saturday, which was known as the Sabbath. However, is there perhaps something lost in our not associating that biblical term more frequently with our Sunday morning worship? Its meaning is a good reminder of why we gather, for the word Sabbath means “rest.” That is why we gather worship with God’s people around Word and sacrament – so that God might provide rest every week for sinners stumbling into his house, saddled with a surplus of sins from yet another week. In worship, we find spiritual rest for our souls.

But is it just spiritual rest that God offers us? Are physical and spiritual rest as unrelated as we might think? Consider Jesus, Peter, and Paul in the New Testament. They worked tirelessly for the gospel, so often willing even to put their lives on the line and to stretch themselves physically beyond what the average person is capable of. Do you suppose that was because they had three nutrition-packed meals a day, exercised regularly, and got a full night’s sleep each night? We acknowledge those things are all important, but it isn’t likely an accurate description of their typical day! And yet they had energy and zeal to carry out the work given to them. Why was that?

Might it be that they knew the source of real rest? They had the spiritual rest that flows from the good news of the gospel, the absolute forgiveness and freedom they had through faith in Jesus Christ as their Savior. Could that kind of rest have the benefit of providing what is needed to not only function, but to thrive – even when physical rest is lacking and the body might otherwise feel depleted? Could it be that the benefits of the rest God gives go well beyond the realm of the spiritual and extend into the physical as well? After all, Jesus does invite us to, “seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Mt. 6:33). Is it too limited a point of view to presume that his promise referred only to tangible blessings like possessions, or could that promise be stretched to include even the physical rest our bodies need? Maybe that point merits further discussion for another time.

Nonetheless, because spiritually we are like the stubborn toddler refusing to go down for nap time even though he’s exhausted, we always need reminders of why spiritual rest is so important and where we are to go to find it.

Sadly, we have an example of where not to seek out that rest in Mark 2. Rest is not found in a rigid adherence or disciplined obedience to the law. Rest is not earned, as the Pharisees thought of it was. Their upbringing and understanding was that rest was waiting on the other side of righteous living. 

They could not have been more wrong. To approach the law as if it could possibly serve that purpose is to grossly misunderstand the law.

Have you ever played the game of Operation? The goal is to remove all of the bones/ailments without allowing your tweezers to touch the metal rim surrounding each area of “surgery.” Otherwise, the electric buzzer sounds the alarm of failure, which only startles and stresses you out all the more. Yet as stressful as that game may be, at least someone can win it. It has an end.

But there is no end, no way to win when it comes to keeping the law, because it’s a never-ending thing. All day, everyday, the buzzer sound of God’s law is constantly going off, signaling yet another failure on our part, and with no end in sight. What a far cry from rest that is! 

And so instead, to fabricate their own little “wins,” the Pharisees would do primarily two things: 1) add extra laws that they could keep on occasion to boost their ego and confidence, or 2) draw attention to how miserably others failed to keep the law by comparison. How easily they deceived themselves! They believed that either course of action was somehow providing the ever-elusive rest they sought in the law. In reality, all either one of those options ever achieved was to distract and deceive them from a real awareness of their own epic failure at keeping the law. That’s because the law can’t achieve what they wanted it to. It cannot offer peace. It will never bring rest. It only accuses, condemns, and kills.

Jesus clearly demonstrated this for them one day in the synagogue. Appealing to their deep affinity for the law, while also showing them how far off they were from understanding it, he introduced his miracle by calling their understanding of the law into question. “Jesus asked them, ‘Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?’” (v.4). He plainly asked the experts of the law what their understanding of it was, and their response spoke volumes: “But they remained silent.”

The law is summed up in one simple four-letter word: love. And yet, they refused to grasp what Jesus was saying because their own loveless hearts were so attracted to their twisted misunderstanding of the law that it blinded them to the neighbor in need right in front of them. Not only that, but their understanding of the law was so corrupted that they couldn’t even rejoice in the merciful miracle of healing that Jesus had carried out; instead, they went out and plotted how they might murder the loving Healer!

The law can never provide us with rest, because that is simply not a path it provides. The law’s path provides just one purpose: to show us how loveless we are. Do you understand that?

That is why you will be disappointed when using the law as a metric for anything other than judgment within the Christian faith. Judgment is all the law can bring. So if we seek rest through the law, we either end up like the Pharisees, choosing from those two options of either creating extra laws or focusing in the inability of others to keep the law. The greatest danger of either option is that we end up driven away from Christ and Christianity altogether. That is because rather than ending up at the cross, where God desires his law to lead us, the one who rejects the cross in favor of remaining on the path of the law will always and only end up at a spiritual dead-end.

This happens gradually. It happens subtly. It happens when more and more, we put the acknowledgment of our own sin on autopilot, as if confession is merely a prerequisite for focusing our attention on the real problem: how bad everyone else is. While we sin, others sin in worse ways AND they don’t even admit their sin like we do!

In this way, instead of the awareness of our own sin leading us to deep sorrow and contrition, we actually pridefully spin our awareness of our sin as proof that we’re on a level above other sinners who not only do worse stuff than we do, but they’re so bad that they don’t even acknowledge it!

While we might deceive ourselves into thinking that short-term satisfaction is a rest that comes from repentance, it isn’t at all. Instead, it’s the temporary high of a puffed-up pride that wants to cling to the false rest of being a higher-class sinner than other low-life sinners. Eventually, though, it all comes crashing down. Eventually we are set straight by the realization that the very thing that we looked to for temporary relief from sin – zeroing in on other worse sinners, is not relief at all! On the contrary – it is actually more condemnation and guilt! Because now we must heap yet another sin onto the existing pile of our own sins: the sin of pride, for thinking ourselves to be superior to other sinners! Mark my words: there is no rest in the law!

Jesus set us straight with two truths from his profound words in verses 27 & 28. “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.” First, the Sabbath was not given to man as another religious ritual that was required, but rather as rest to be received. It was not another item on some perceived to-do list that God required as a prerequisite to rest. No, it wasn’t “do this, then rest,” but rather, “ rest, for all is done for you.” 

But who could make such a claim? Only the One who is “Lord even of the Sabbath.” What does it mean to attach the title of “Lord” to some activity or achievement? It means that the one named is the owner, the supreme, the authority, the master of that thing. The “lord” of anything means he’s over it and oversees it.

So if Jesus is Lord – master – even of Sabbath rest, then where else would anyone turn for rest? Where else, other than to the One who is over it, who owns it, who determines how to dispense it? If Jesus is the master of rest, then, dear friends, go to him alone for it!

Rest in the waters of your baptism, water that was poured over your pride and washed away the heavy burden of your sin! Hear the words of the Invocation at the beginning of worship and let them take you back to the baptismal font. There the Triune God placed his name on you, and when he did, he purified you from all sin and made you his family member. Rest easy in your identity as a baptized child of God, a reality and a status that cannot ever be stripped from you.

Rest in the words of the absolution that fall upon sinners’ ears to set the tone for our worship every Sunday! Don’t just mindlessly mumble the opening confession of sins each Sunday like a bunch of brain-dead zombies. Prepare for worship beforehand each Sunday by reflecting on the past week and all of the things your sin damaged or destroyed and all of the ways your sin sabotaged the good blessings that God would otherwise have worked through you in the lives of others. Think on those sins and as you do so more and more and their weight grows heavier and heavier, bring them with you to God’s house and leave them their in confession. Then, rest, as through the lips of your pastor and your brothers and sisters in Christ, Jesus himself speaks the assurance of your forgiveness in the words of absolution.

Rest in his body and blood in, with, and under the bread and wine in the Supper, for there he provides food that feeds and strengthens weary souls! The forgiveness that has touched our ears and hearts already in worship then also touches our lips, that we might taste the reality of our forgiveness, even as we remember the very sacrifice that was made to offer it. With this sacred meal he feeds us forgiveness and rest follows. Just as dinner on Thanksgiving Day begs to be followed by even a brief rest, so this sacred Dinner of Thanksgiving in Holy Communion is followed by the spiritual rest which flows from it.

Dear friends, are you well-rested spiritually? You are when you run to the Lord of the Sabbath, the master of rest, for what we are so eager to receive, and he is so eager to give.