Free! – to Face Death

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(based on 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18)

I must confess I am somewhat puzzled by our current relationship with death. It would seem we’re all over the place on our views of death. There is a strong demand in our country for the freedom to put children to death through abortion. Euthanasia and suicide appear to be increasingly acceptable options. Yet, a virus that kills only a minuscule percentage of the population has multitudes paralyzed with fear. I can’t make sense of it. I don’t know if we care too much about death, or not enough as a society. But, society’s relationship with death is not what informs or influences our relationship with death – at least one would hope. For the freedom we have in Christ is a real thing, and it has a direct impact on how we as Christians approach and deal with death. 

The freedom we have in Christ not only frees us from the fear of facing judgment on the Last Day; it also frees us to face something most of us are more than likely to experience before Jesus returns: death. The apostle Paul addresses the very subject of death in our verses this morning. He acknowledges that a lack of knowledge around death and what happens when we die is a legitimate cause for concern and even fear. Often fear flows from what is unknown, so Paul seeks to address that ignorance by educating us under the Holy Spirit’s guidance. 

He introduced the subject matter with these words: “Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope” (v.14). Notice the connection between being uninformed, or ignorant, about death, or as Paul puts it in reference to Christians who have died, “those who sleep,” and hopeless grieving. That is to say, those who are uninformed or ignorant about this matter of death are understandably left mourning inconsolably because they have no hope. So then, how do we ensure hope in the face of death? We make sure we’re informed. 

People speak in all kinds of ways about what happens when a person dies, as if this is some unknown area where one person’s guess is as good as another’s. But the Bible, while it doesn’t come close to answering every single question we have surrounding death, is nonetheless clear on what happens when a person dies. Ecclesiastes 12:7 states, “The dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.” Every human being has both a body and a soul, and at death, the two are separated. The body or its remains are placed into the ground, while the soul goes immediately to either heaven or hell. There is no purgatory or place of limbo where souls are placed “on hold” until the Last Day. There will be no rapture or second chance for people to believe at another point in time, for the writer to the Hebrews established that “people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment” (Hebrews 9:27). Then, as Paul describes in the last four verses of our text, Jesus will return on the Last Day. Every dead body, both believers and unbelievers, will be raised and rejoined together with its soul, and will then be permanently and publicly permitted to the final destination of either hell or heaven.   

While many of us have questions about heaven and hell, many of which the Bible doesn’t answer, again the Bible is clear enough in its descriptions about hell that we know it isn’t something we’d wish anyone to experience. The pictures of eternal agony and torment and suffering without any relief whatsoever rule out any foolish idea that maybe there are a few spots in hell that aren’t so bad, as if court-side seats or VIP suites would somehow make it more bearable. While people make passing comments about experiencing hell on earth, such flippant descriptions only serve to seriously downplay the reality of real condemnation in hell. 

Heaven, on the other hand, only gets five-star ratings throughout the whole Bible. It is only ever described in desirable, favorable, blissfully blessed terms. All suffering and sorrow, all letdown and loss, all hardship, hurt, and heartache – all of it is filtered out of heaven so that all that remains is every day is the best day you could ever imagine. And while it will surely be a joyful reunion of the saints, including our loved ones, even those hoped-for reunions will be overshadowed by the beautiful reminder Paul provides: “And so we will be with the Lord forever” (1 Thes. 4:17b). We will no longer know Jesus just from hymns and songs, Bible verses, or artistic renditions, but in reality, face-to-face, in the flesh, in person, in his presence, forever. Any fear in the face of death fades even just by contemplating that magnificent reality of heaven: being with the Lord forever.

What makes the difference? What determines our final destination? We touched on it last Sunday, but have it again here today from Paul in verse 14. “For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.” It’s that simple. There need be no uncertainty in the face of death if we can affirm our confidence in this simple statement of Paul. We believe that Jesus died and rose again. Period. And, that means we believe we’re going where Jesus goes, because his death and resurrection have already punched our ticket.  

That means we’re going where six of our church family members have already arrived this year. Each of them believed that Jesus died and rose again, and so God brought each of them to be with Jesus to their final destination of heaven. While gathering restrictions this year did not permit us to hold services for each of these sainted brothers and sisters, nevertheless, no restrictions can ever rob us of the comfort we have in knowing they are with the Lord forever.

And someday, we will be, too. For we, too, “believe that Jesus died and rose again” (v.17b). If Jesus did, and if we believe it, then we’re free. We’re free from the fear of death. So much fear, after all, is based on the unknown. But when we take whatever is unknown and make it known, fear dissipates. When we don’t have to wonder what happens when a person dies, when we don’t have to worry about where we’re going or how we can be sure of it, we’re free to face death. It holds no terror over us. 

But it does more than that, actually. It isn’t about simply making something we all face less scary; it’s about putting what we’re all facing right now in the proper perspective. When we have the peace of knowing that death means being with the Lord forever, then we can take in stride everything this year has thrown at us. While we’re all mentally and emotionally worn out from hearing the same nauseating news over and over and over again, we can temper it with the triumph that is in store for us in heaven. Ah, but friends, if Sunday morning is the only time each week when we think thoughts of Jesus, our salvation, and our place with him forever, but the rest of the week let the news and headlines tickle our ears, are we making the most of every opportunity for the gospel to keep us uplifted and inspired? Are we giving it a fair chance to counter the chaos of our culture right now? 

When Paul wrapped up these verses the same way he did the verses we heard last Sunday, do you think he had in mind just occasionally? Did he just mean once in a great while? Or does his last verse, “therefore encourage one another with these words” (v.18) sound like something we ought to implement as often as necessary? I don’t know about you, but I have not yet had anyone turn down any extra encouragement these days. And I myself appreciate it when you all encourage me. Could we do more of that, especially with an eye toward eternity? Friends, listen to me: this. will. pass. But even better than that, we don’t have to just “get through this”; we actually have something better in store!

With that in mind, and perhaps as a way to keep the encouragement of this Saints Triumphant Sunday before us, here is a planning guide for you. It’s a guide to help you plan your funeral. It doesn’t cover every detail, but does allow for giving consideration to appropriate or favorite Scripture sections or hymns that you would like to have played at your funeral. I invite you to grab one, take some time to think through it, and when you finish it, return a copy to your church and keep one for yourself. Now this might sound like a weird thing to do, but if we’re truly free to face death – and we are – then aren’t we also free to plan for it?

One of the many added blessings of this kind of planning? It is a blessing to a congregation. When we think through and plan for such things because of the confidence we have “that Jesus died and rose again” (v.17b), we can bless Christ’s church long after we leave earth and are with the Lord forever. That is exactly what one of this year’s sainted members did when planning to leave 25% of their estate to support the continued proclamation of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Is that not encouraging?!? That member, blessed by the message of Jesus for so many years here, planned to ensure that same blessing would continue for others after departing for home in heaven. Friends, when we are free to face death, that is the kind of impact we can make! So no, we “do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope” (v.14), for we know “we will be with the Lord forever” (v.17b).

Free! – to Face Judgment

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(based on 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11)

I don’t imagine the first three verses of our text this morning would serve as the ideal bedtime story as you’re saying goodnight and tucking in your little one. “Now, brothers and sisters, about times and dates we do not need to write to you, for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, ‘Peace and safety,’ destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape” (v.1-3). “Sweet dreams.” These aren’t the kind of soothing, calm words that would put a child at ease when lying down for the night!

For that matter, these aren’t the kind of words that go over all that well with adults, either. In fact, some might point to verses just like these in Scripture as the reason they never have and never will give Christianity the time of day. The gloom and doom version of God doesn’t go over so well in a society that has given itself permission to redefine or design the divine according to personal preference. When we’ve allowed our ideas of religion to closely resemble ordering a pizza with our favorite toppings and leaving off the stuff we don’t like, is anyone surprised that most people would prefer to leave off the toppings of hell, destruction, wrath, or judgment? Hardly.

However, though we may not readily admit it, we are all in favor of judgment. Imagine you’re a small business owner and someone breaks into your store and makes off with tens of thousands of dollars worth of product or goods. If the police caught the guys that did it, you’d likely be in favor of justice being carried out and a judgment being rendered. The same would also be true if a drunk driver hit and killed a member of your family, or if someone published an unfounded, slanderous report about you online or in a magazine or paper. When we’re wronged, we’re not opposed to judgment at all when it means justice is being carried out. But when God talks about judgment, it doesn’t sit as well with people. 

You know why that is, don’t you? Consider the child who suddenly hears his father call out to him, “Son, come here right now. We need to talk.” Those words are able to evoke totally different responses in the son. On the one hand, he might immediately react with curiosity, wondering what it could be that his dad wants to talk about. On the other hand, those words can be totally terrifying if he happens to know exactly what dad wants to talk about and it isn’t going to be good. In that situation, what is that determines the son’s perception of his dad’s words? It’s not anything on dad’s end but on the son’s. If he did something wrong, that’s what makes those words terrifying. But if he didn’t do anything wrong, those words are relatively harmless.

So when people balk at the notion of God and judgment, it’s clear why. We don’t want to consider God’s judgment, because our conscience makes it pretty clear what he means when he says, “Come here right now. We need to talk.” When we consider that God is omniscient – all knowing, omnipresent – everywhere, and omnipotent – all powerful, that pretty convincingly rules out any of our wrongs going unnoticed, doesn’t it? There’s no chance that God just happened to be looking the other way. There’s no chance that maybe he didn’t hear us. There’s no chance of anyone pulling one over him.

That means you didn’t actually have to speak your bitter response to that political comment someone made recently, the Judge knew your thought well enough. It means he doesn’t need to check your browser history to see what sites you visited online – the Judge has a browser history that can’t be erased. That means you can lie to your parents, deceive your spouse, and fool your boss – the Judge knows the truth in each and every case, right down to the last disgraceful detail. So it’s no surprise that the idea of God and judgment going together isn’t a popular one with many people.

Especially when we consider the sentence that such judgment deserves. There were two words Paul used in the text this morning to describe what awaits those who don’t meet God’s standards of judgment: “destruction” (v.3) and “wrath” (v.9). Here we must explain another sticking point many have with Christianity. It’s one thing for people to believe in a heaven – that’s all well and good. The struggle for many, however, is the only alternative that exists outside of heaven: hell. They see no reason whatsoever that a loving God could send anyone to a place of such suffering. No heaven? That’s one thing. But why the extreme pain and torment and suffering of hell? Does God delight in that? Then why else would it exist? 

But that misunderstands what heaven is and what it means to be in the presence of God. What makes hell so wretched and unyielding is the absence of God. It’s not that God deliberately or intentionally wished to set up such a place of suffering as some curb or threat so that people would be drawn to heaven instead. Rather, when God is not present, all that remains is unyielding and relentless agony. Not because God wants it, but simply because that’s all that exists when God is removed from the picture.

However, remember that judgment is only something to be feared if you are guilty of something. If you haven’t done anything wrong, then you have nothing to fear. And if Jesus is in the picture, then you have nothing to fear. “For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him” (v.9-10). Paul is addressing believers – then AND now. Believers know that they have been chosen – “anointed” as Paul writes – to receive salvation. That salvation is received not by going to church, not by voting for the right presidential candidate, not by anything you could do on even your best day, but only “through… Jesus Christ.” And then, lest we try to make it too terribly complicated, Paul also lays out how Jesus made that possible: by his death. 

This is where the focus ought to be. When so many defiantly denounce God because of their disdain over realities like judgment and hell, they’re pouting over something that doesn’t have to be anyone’s reality – including theirs! Since we’ve already agreed that most everyone is in favor of judgment when it means that justice is being served, we ought to dumbfounded that God chose to carry out the sentence of his just judgment on his own Son instead of you and me. So rather than being disgruntled about judgment and hell, we ought to be delighted that we don’t have to fear it! God’s judgment to all who believe is that since Jesus died, you will live. What’s to fear?

With no fear of judgment then, we live as we have been made to live – not as those who belong to the night, but as those who live in the light as those who belong to the day. That’s how we’re free to live. “You are all children of the light and children of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness. So then, …let us be awake and sober. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet”  (v.5, 6, 8). Faith, love, and hope. Do those sound like the qualities that embody your day-to-day living? 

The verdict has already been made. “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). Let every man and even your own conscience itself be liars, but let God’s declaration and promise stand true. If you are in Christ Jesus, you have nothing to fear. There is no condemnation for you. You are free to face judgment because you already know the verdict. 

Could I ask something of you? Could you please – please – follow Paul’s advice? “Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing” (v.11). So many in our world right now need so much encouragement, and you have the best encouragement imaginable to share with them. You have no fear of judgment. Encourage others by reminding them that in Christ Jesus, neither do they.

Free!

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(based on Galatians 5:1-6)

This week we elect the next President of the United States. Today we observe Reformation Sunday. What do the Reformation and a National Election have in common? How are they similar? One might say they both have to do with the important matter of freedom. Regardless of political party, each side has expressed its concern over loss of freedom, whether that concern is tied to the fear of an agenda on the part of one political party or the fear of unilateral actions on the part of the President. During the Reformation, the freedom Jesus came to bring was being stripped by the Roman Catholic Church.

Yet, it is that similarity that could potentially cloud how drastically different each event is. One deals with what is temporal; the other what is eternal. One deals with our role as citizens of an earthly nation; the other deals with our place in the spiritual kingdom. One may some day be taken from us or limited; the other never can.

During the month of November until Thanksgiving, we’ll be directing our thoughts not on the temporary, worldly freedoms we enjoy, which have undoubtedly been a blessing to us in this great nation for so long, but rather on the freedom that lasts forever and is a far greater blessing to us now and into eternity. We will see how the freedom we have in Christ plays a role in our lives on a daily basis. The freedom we have in Christ allows us to Face Judgment, to Face Death, and to Be Ruled. 

For starters, though, we must understand the source of the freedom we have as Christians, and why that freedom we have in Christ is so very important. It is not just because of the liberties it allows us in our Christian living, the freedom to live for and serve God and others not out of coercion, fear, or obligation, but rather with love and gratitude and thanks. These are tremendous blessings, indeed! But they pale in comparison to the greatest blessings of being free – the blessings of being free from the guilt of sin, free from Satan’s control, and free from the fear of death. These, friends, are the blessings of being free!

The Galatian Christians were at risk of losing those blessings of being free. They had heard and believed the gospel message that salvation was God’s gift to them through faith in Christ Jesus. They had experienced the joyful realization that a perfect Savior had fully satisfied every requirement necessary to be at peace with God, and had paid with his own life to cover the cost of their own inability to do so. But Paul wrote this letter to them because they were in danger of trading all of that in – and the freedom that comes along with it. He put it this way in the beginning of his letter: “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel – which is really no gospel at all” (Galatians 1:6-7).

What was the big deal? What was Paul so concerned about? Some among the Galatians were insisting that being a Christian still had its requirements, that faith in Jesus didn’t mean that God had let his people off the hook of ceremonial requirements and restrictions, but that those were still binding. What a person ate and wore and the rules you kept – they were insisting that those were still essential. In fact, they accused Paul of deliberately removing such requirements from his preaching and teaching to make his message more attractive to his hearers. The scary part was that the Galatian Christians were starting to buy it. 

Have you noticed that the same threat to the gospel appears today? While it may perhaps be a bit more subtle, it’s present. In fact, you may even have been guilty not only of believing it, but declaring it yourself. Today’s version of it sounds like this: “No Christian would ever eat/drink/wear/watch/listen to [blank].” “You can’t be a Christian and support this company or that organization.” “No God-fearing Christian could ever vote for [blank].” “You can’t be a good Christian and [blank].” It doesn’t matter how one fills in any of those blanks, either, because even implying that there are such conditions to Christianity puts an asterisk by our salvation. It implies that Jesus and his work alone aren’t all that really matters for salvation, but that certain requirements and restrictions still apply. If we start believing that rhetoric or find ourselves speaking that way, are we any different than the enemies of the gospel that Paul was addressing in Galatians?

And if anyone thinks this is a little matter, listen to Paul: “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!” (1:8-9). Those are strong words directed at anyone that wants to convey that Christianity is based on the good news of the gospel AND anything else! If anyone teaches that it’s necessary to “read the fine print” or that “certain restrictions apply” when it comes to the gospel, Paul says, “let him be eternally condemned!”

Do those words sound familiar? Ironically, it was the same threat directed at Martin Luther and others who questioned the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church that works were necessary for salvation. So in essence, the church in Luther’s day was guilty of committing the exact same crime as those Paul was addressing in Galatians, implying that only the gospel AND works could save, but here the tables are turned and it is the church of Luther’s day condemning the very teaching Paul was defending in Galatians – that we aren’t saved by what we do, but through faith in Jesus and what HE did for us! Paul condemned anyone insisting that what we do saves, and the church of Luther’s day condemned anyone who denied it!   

In an effort to defend the good news of the gospel, Paul encouraged the Galatians and us, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery” (5:1). Paul plays off the words of Jesus, who invited us to come to him when we’re spiritually worn out and need the rest of forgiveness that only he can provide. Jesus invites us to rely on the “yoke” that he bore for us to provide that rest. But to resort to the law is essentially to remove Jesus’ yoke of rest from our shoulders and replace it with the unbearable yoke of slavery to the law. Paul is trying to establish how ludicrous it would be to exchange the freedom we have in Christ for suffocating standards of the law. And he doesn’t just stop there, but goes on to highlight three devastating consequences of trading in the yoke of Jesus’ rest and forgiveness for the yoke of slavery to the law.

The first Paul lays out in verse two: “Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all.” What Paul is saying that if you want to insist on bringing observance of the law back into the equation, then Christ holds no value to you. Imagine an edited Bible that cut out out every reference to Jesus Christ, Savior, Messiah, etc. What would you be left with? You’d have nothing but law. Sure, there would still be talk of God’s love, but any assurance of that love would be entirely dependent upon one’s ability to keep the law – an impossibility! Without Christ in the picture, all that is left is the law. That leads into Paul’s second devastating consequence of putting on the yoke of the law.

To be bound to any part of the law is to be bound to all of it. Paul wrote, “Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law” (v.3). There is no middle ground with the law – it is all or nothing. The law makes clear that God isn’t interested in you giving it your best effort or the old college try. Only perfection from A to Z is acceptable. Martin Luther’s experience in a monastery enlightened him to how deceiving the appeal to observance of the law can be. He wrote, “Thus it is certainly true that those who keep the Law do not keep it. The more men try to satisfy the Law, the more they transgress it. The more someone tries to bring peace to his conscience through his own righteousness, the more disquieted he makes it” (LW, 27:13). He spoke about having seen many murderers facing execution die more confidently than “these men who had lived such saintly lives” [monks]. The law appears to offer the promise of a legitimate utopian oasis, but it is nothing more than a mirage that leaves souls parched with unquenchable thirst. 

Finally, if Christ is of no value and we have obligated ourselves to the whole law by thinking we could keep any part of it, the ultimate consequence is that we fall out of grace. “You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace” (v.4). Picture God’s grace as him scooping you up in the palm of his hand. You did nothing to deserve it. He chose you, even working in you the faith to believe that Jesus is your Savior. As you rest, suspended up in the palm of his hand, you see the exemplary achievements of the law falling all around you, enticing you with their promise of acclaim and worth if only they can be accomplished. Wondering, imagining, that you can perhaps reach out and grab just one or two of them, you stretch yourself too far, falling out of the his palm, out of his grace, into the abyss that awaits all who make the mistake of thinking God’s favor can be earned instead of freely given by his grace. Shudder the thought!

No, friends, the law will never earn us the righteousness God demands. That is ours only through faith. Martin Luther rejoiced to discover what Paul wrote, “For through the Spirit we eagerly await by faith the righteousness for which we hope” (v.5). Luther knew that his freedom wasn’t granted to him by the pope or an emperor, but by faith. Faith alone made him righteous before God – and free! Friends, faith alone makes us righteous before God – and free! No earthy election can ever rob us of that freedom. 

Divine Dress Code

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(based on Matthew 22:1-14)

You may not know the name Mouna Ayoub, but she likes clothing. That is an understatement. The French socialite has arguably the most expensive wardrobe in the world. She possesses over 1,600 pieces of haute couture, each costing up to $400,000. All of the high-end fashion labels, like Chanel and Christian Dior, for example, have there own mannequin replica of her to allow them to tailor clothes to her size when she is unavailable for fittings. Where does she keep all her clothing, you ask? In her apartments. Not apartments in which she lives, mind you, but apartments which she has solely for the purpose of serving as large closets for her clothing. 

Yet, as much coin as she may be willing to spend for a personally designed and fitted dress, not one of them would be spectacular enough to allow her to gain access into the banquet Jesus talked about in this morning’s parable. In the last parable of Jesus that we’re looking at in this series, while there are a number of points Jesus makes, we want to pay special attention to the dress code required to get into heaven. “But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. He asked, ‘How did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend?’ The man was speechless. Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth’” (v.11-13). The man was speechless. Why? Not because he wasn’t an invited guest – remember the invitation had been extended to everyone. However, the invitation for everyone was clear: only those wearing the proper attire would be welcome to the wedding.

Anyone who has attended a wedding knows you get dressed up. You don’t just throw on a T-shirt and tennis shoes and show up. You dress up. You wear something special. It’s just what we do, and for many it’s even a fun excuse to go out and buy a new suit or dress for the occasion.  

But if we think we do the same when it comes to the wedding banquet Jesus is referring to in his parable, we risk finding ourselves in the same situation as the speechless man in the parable, the one who ended up booted from the banquet. 

Honestly, though, does this really resonate with us? If there’s one thing we know as Christians, it’s that our only hope for heaven is Jesus’ righteousness, his perfection, his holiness. Right? Yes, we may know this. We may have been taught this. We may confess this. But… do we believe it? Do we live it? Or, do we still find ourselves slipping on this attire or that outfit, just to be sure? If we know what we need to be wearing to be welcomed into the banquet, what warning is there for us in this parable?

Could it be that we may have to be wary of trying to squeeze in with a knock-off or some off-brand imitation of Jesus’ righteousness? We know that righteousness is the requirement that needs to be met to gain access to the banquet, but can we deceive ourselves into thinking that maybe our self-righteousness is sufficient to make the grade? Sure, it’s not the real thing, but it’s pretty close, right? We uphold traditional values. We treat people well. We go to church. Basically, we’re good people – the kind of people that by default everyone presumes will populate heaven. So maybe our righteousness will make the cut.

But do we really think our imitation haute couture will stand up to the Divine Tailor’s inspection? Will he not see right through the poor stitching of our self-righteousness with all its loose threads? Will he not notice the inferior fabric and materials from which the garments of our works are made? Will the mismatched cuts and disproportionate lengths of our obedience escape his notice? If we think we can don our own look-alike knock-off garment of righteousness to be allowed in, we will only end up embarrassing ourselves and dishonoring the king by thinking we could pull it off and fool him!

Maybe we’re not so brazen. Maybe it’s a little more subtle. Perhaps we aren’t foolish enough to imagine that a garment made up entirely of our own righteousness would ever pass the test… but we still find ourselves clinging to that little something extra, just in case we may need it. Like that lucky pair of socks or that lucky jersey we only pull out when our team really needs a win, we insist on bringing something of our own to wear beneath the provided wedding attire of Jesus’ righteousness, just in case, for a little added insurance. So beneath Jesus’ robe of righteousness, we sport that lucky sock or undergarment of status or achievement (“I’ve been a Christian/Lutheran my whole life,” “I read the Bible every day,” “I’m a devoted spouse,” “I… anything”) that we don’t presume will replace Jesus’ righteousness, but we figure it can’t hurt to wear that into the banquet just for good measure. 

But do we really suppose we can improve on the wedding garments the host freely provides? What an insult to imply that what he provides is somehow lacking! Imagine interrupting the photographer at a wedding to insist on a little change here or there to improve on the wedding party. You’d insult both the photographer, as well as the bride and groom for their choice of attire for the bridal party! Who are you to suggest such things? Who are any of us to think that Jesus’ righteousness isn’t enough, but must also be accompanied by this or that accessory to make the outfit complete?

The bridegroom himself provided the only clothing necessary and permitted to the party – his righteousness. Paul captured this very truth in 2 Corinthians 5:21: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” God made him without sin – no sin, perfectly right with God – for the specific purpose of being our righteousness! Jesus alone is the righteousness we need to meet God’s standards. Jesus alone is the righteousness we need to gain access into the eternal heavenly banquet. Let us leave our own personal attire at the door – it will amount to nothing but an eternal fashion disaster!

Rest assured, the garments provided for you will be enough. They have been washed. They have been made clean – not with detergent, not with dry cleaning chemicals, but with the blood of the Lamb, the bridegroom himself – Jesus Christ. The picture from Revelation is a vivid one describing the saints in heaven: “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Revelation 7:14).

That guest list of gathered saints that John saw in his vision is pretty extensive. In Jesus’ parable, the king wanted a banquet hall filled with guests, so when those he invited first declined his invitation, he simply invited anyone and everyone else to be his guest. There is room for everyone, and the king’s genuine desire to have everyone join him was expressed by his patience even with the underdressed guest. Could it be that Jesus was illustrating how extensive the king’s patience is? He didn’t remove the guest outright, but gave him one last chance to acknowledge that he was underdressed. Would it have been too late for the guest to apologize – repent – and ask the king for the wedding garments instead? There was still a chance! He needed only to speak up and in humility ask for the proper attire! But he was speechless. If he wasn’t allowed to the banquet wearing what he already had on, then he wasn’t interested in sticking around. But still today, to you, to me, to everyone, the king is patient and loving – not hesitating to point out that our filthy rags are not welcome in his holy hall, but still today, to you, to me, to everyone – offering the only attire that is, the Son’s righteousness.

And there is added peace of mind for you in the present, not just waiting for you in the future: friends, you do not need to wait until the banquet doors are opened to wear your attire. In fact, you wear it today. You were dressed in it in your baptism. Though not as common as it used to be in the church, baptismal gowns would adorn infants as they were brought to the font to be baptized – white gowns that symbolized the very attire required to be a guest at the banquet. In baptism we were dressed in that righteousness. Today you wear it. Today you live in it.

What peace of mind that offers a world caught up in trying to measure up! You already do! There is no pressure from God to achieve the highest test score, to be the perfect spouse, to be the next YouTube sensation, to get more likes, to be good enough for your parents’ approval, to get recognized by the boss. Jesus’ righteousness that covers you this very moment means that you quite literally cannot be more perfect in God the Father’s eyes! The Son, the bridegroom who gave himself up for the church, for believers like you and me, has clothed us with his holy righteousness. Because of him you are more than good enough! Live with that peace of mind.

It’s OK if you enjoy finding a good deal on used clothes at Goodwill. It’s alright to wear hand-me-downs. You don’t need an extravagant wardrobe sporting designer labels that fade out of style faster than you can say Loius Vuitton or Armani. In Jesus, you already meet the divine dress code necessary for a place at the banquet. But the good news is that you don’t have to wait until you get there to start celebrating. Start celebrating today – every day! – knowing that Jesus’ righteousness makes you good enough. Amen.

Searching for Fruit

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(based on Matthew 21:33-43)

If you were hired as the executive chef at an exclusive restaurant but then refused to spend any time in the kitchen, I don’t imagine you’d be holding on to that job very long. If you sign a lucrative contract as the starting QB in the NFL and end up rarely completing a pass, it won’t be long before you find yourself sitting on the bench or playing for another team as a backup. The movie star leading in flop after flop at the box office will find the offers for roles eventually start to dwindle as they’re offered to others. The point is, if you’re hired to do a certain job and don’t do it, it’s only a matter of time before that job will be taken from you and given to someone else who will do it.

In a nutshell, that was exactly the point Jesus was making in the parable he told in our Gospel today when he concluded, “Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit” (Mt. 21:43). Simply put, the Lord is searching for fruit, and where and when he doesn’t find it, he will take his blessing elsewhere and provide others with the opportunity to produce its fruit. Where God’s Word and the work he desires to carry out through it are despised or disregarded, he will take his Word and work elsewhere that he might bear fruit through others. Martin Luther observed: 

“For you should know that God’s word and grace is like a passing shower of rain which does not return where it has once been. It has been with the Jews, but when it’s gone it’s gone, and now they have nothing. Paul brought it to the Greeks; but again when it’s gone it’s gone, and now they have the Turk. Rome and the Latins also had it; but when it’s gone it’s gone, and now they have the pope. And you Germans need not think that you will have it forever, for ingratitude and contempt will not make it stay. Therefore, seize it and hold it fast, whoever can; for lazy hands are bound to have a lean year” (LW 45:352).

Last Sunday we had a short and sweet parable – only three characters in three verses. Today’s parable is longer and more detailed. Thankfully, Jesus clearly spells out the point of this parable. Because he does, 1 ) we don’t have to worry about missing out on the big picture because of all the details, but 2 ) we can also gain a better understanding of the main point by giving out attention to the various details of the story. 

First, we note that God took every care to set up his people for success. “There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it and built a watchtower” (v.33). God had given his chosen people everything they needed to bear fruit. Even as their people were just being established in Egypt, the Lord granted them the lush lands of Goshen to settle in when Joseph brought his whole family there. The next stop after that was the land flowing with milk and honey that God had promised exclusively to them. And on the journey there the tabernacle in the desert was their portable house of worship to visualize for them the Lord was among them. At Mt. Sinai God further set them apart from every nation on earth by blessing them with the Ten Commandments and a special set of laws to bless them and protect them from the world’s corruption. In describing the steps the landowner took to bless his future tenants, Jesus is simply putting into story the picture Isaiah painted from our First Lesson: “I will sing for the one I love  song about his vineyard: My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines. He built a watchtower in it and cut out a winepress as well” (5:1-2). Jesus put into a parable the very word picture painted by the prophet. The message: God had given his chosen people everything they needed to bear fruit. The Lord even raised the very question through Isaiah, “What more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done for it?” (v.4).

Now then, against this backdrop we have certain people represented in the parable, the tenants, the servants, and the son. The son plainly represents God’s Son, Jesus. As for the tenants and the servants, the reaction of the hearers that Matthew provides after the parable shows that even they clearly understood who the wicked tenants represented. “When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus’ parables, they knew he was talking about them. They looked for a way to arrest him, but they were afraid of the crowd because the people held that he was a prophet” (Mt. 21:45-46).   That leaves the servants sent by the landowner to gather his fruit. These are the prophets the Lord sent again and again to his people in hopes that their message would yield fruit in his people (people like Isaiah, the prophet/writer of today’s First Lesson). But sadly, throughout the history of the Old Testament, God’s people responded just as the religious leaders were responding at the conclusion of Jesus’ parable. 

It is clear how this parable applied at the time and in the circumstances during which Jesus told it, but is it as clear how the parable applies to us today? Surely it isn’t recorded for us in the Bible just so that we have yet another opportunity to shake our heads and point our fingers in disappointment at those poor excuses for religious leaders, the full-of-themselves Pharisees. For in so doing, as Jesus’ condemnation of them leads us to hold an even lower opinion of them through this parable, we can become blind to how easily our disappointment directed at the Pharisees can slowly mold us into their modern day counterparts! 

We guard against that by striving to understand how any application of the parable can serve as a personal warning or application to us. Consider first how the tenants’ behavior served as a warning to God’s representatives in his church today. Their behavior in the parable showed a severe misunderstanding of their role int the vineyard – it wasn’t their vineyard to operate and control as they saw fit; rather, it was the landowner’s who had entrusted it to them.

When God’s representatives in his church today forget that, the ship can very easily start to veer off-course. When church leaders take the wheel, so to speak, and speak/act/lead as if it is their ship to steer in the first place, they put everything at risk and potentially chart a course that may lead to a shipwreck. No pastor, ministry, or organizational leader has anything to manage except that which has been entrusted to them by God himself. This is not my church, for example, but God’s church which he has privileged me to shepherd. No congregation belongs to any pastor, but to the Good Shepherd himself. God’s vineyard is not for me to use to further my own self-interests. It does not exist as a means to line my pockets or advance an agenda. The tenants forgot that, and just as it did not end well, so will it be for any under shepherd or leader in the church who forgets whose vineyard it really is in which we’re working.

Ah, but the parable doesn’t just serve as a warning to God’s representatives in his church, but to everyone in his church. For the way the tenants treated the servants sent to collect the harvest ought to be a clear warning to all of us in how we also treat God’s representatives in his church. Remember that it was the landowner himself who sent the servants to the tenants. So to mistreat or abuse the servants as God’s people mistreated and abused his prophets throughout the Old Testament, is tantamount to mistreating and abusing the landowner – God – himself. 

Does this happen in Christ’s church today? Of course it does, otherwise we’d have to conclude the Jesus was quite oblivious in providing a warning in this parable that is unnecessary. When a message from the Word of God is faithfully proclaimed, but falls on ears that do not wish to hear it or have it applied to their lives, nowadays the hearer may simply depart from one place in favor of another messenger or community whose message is more suitable to their palate, even if it uses God’s Word to lie and deceive instead of hold forth the truth. Or, and this may be even more common in this day and age in which there’s no shortage of access to messages via video, podcast, blog, etc., we simply choose to avoid or ignore one of the servants sent by the landowner in favor of another, leaving issues unresolved. When we disregard the efforts of pastors, elders, and church leaders to communicate and reach out to us, we are essentially letting God know that we’re not interested in his efforts to care for his sheep or that we don’t agree with how God is doing it. 

Knowing what not to do is one thing; correcting it is another. The wonderful part of this parable is that making corrections is actually some of the most desirable fruit God craves in his vineyard. It’s called repentance, and it means acknowledging wrong on our part, turning from that sinful, unrighteous behavior, and turning to the Son of the landowner for forgiveness. For God’s representatives, this means confessing when they have not guarded their hearts from seeing their position as self-serving instead of serving selflessly. It means confessing when we’ve placed our ways before His. It means acknowledging the times we’ve defiantly claimed his vineyard as our own to do with it what we please.

We also bear this fruit when we acknowledge our role in mistreating those servants God sends to us to collect the harvest. We confess that we don’t pray enough for those God sends to serve us. We repent of the times we ignore their efforts to serve us. We acknowledge that we let our personal indifferences and preferences get in the way of their service to us and not taking their words and actions in the kindest possible way. When in repentance we turn from our own mistreatment of God’s servant to the Suffering Servant himself, Jesus, for forgiveness, we rejoice that he never turned his back on those who turn away from him, those who mistreated and abused him, and not even those who would crucify him, but even pleaded to the Father for their forgiveness. Rest assured, the forgiveness for which he pleaded has been applied to you and me as well!

How do we respond when faced with those unpleasant calls to repentance? Hopefully not the way the chief priests and Pharisees responded when Jesus told this parable! Rather, let us swallow the bitter pill of repentance and embrace that such difficult steps are exactly the types of fruit God wants to see in our lives! Through the ongoing practice of repentance we are actually removing the rocks and tilling the soil, enabling the Holy Spirit to produce abundant fruit in us.

We are furthermore equipped and empowered to bear abundant fruit when the burden of doing so is removed by the Savior whose perfect harvest of fruit fully satisfied the landowner’s demand and expectation. Where we have forgotten whose vineyard it is that has been entrusted to us, when we’ve treated God’s servants as poorly as the tenants in the parable, the Landowner’s Son has not. His Father’s will, not his own self-serving purposes, was his only concern 100% of his time on earth. Even the religious leaders who plotted against him and finally murdered him, he always treated with respect, even when he directed his harsh calls to repentance at them. The Son produced the perfect harvest of fruit, removing the burden from our shoulders to do so. 

And, at the same time, the Son inspires and moves us to step our fruit-bearing up. Does that mean we have to start a ministry that helps feed 1 million starving children or build 100,000 homes for the homeless, or rescue thousands of sex-trafficked children? Of course it doesn’t. But… could it? What if we the only thing holding us back from bearing abundant fruit on that scale is ourselves? What if we’ve been too quick to think so little of ourselves – and actually it’s God we’re thinking too little of – that we’ve never dreamed of, envisioned, or prayed for God to bear that kind of fruit through us? Could it be possible? My response to that question would simply be, “Have you not seen the astronomical things God has done in Scripture and throughout history through his people?” You better believe God is capable of producing that kind of harvest of fruit in our lives! Maybe all we need to do is remember that he can, and provide him with the opportunities to do so. 

Brothers and sisters in Christ, you haven’t been hired as an executive chef at some exclusive restaurant or signed on to some lucrative contract in the sporting world or offered a starring role in the next blockbuster movie. No, you’ve been called to something far greater – you’ve been brought into God’s vineyard to produce something that will last far longer than a fine plate of food, or championship, or academy award – you’ve been set apart to produce fruit that will not only cause God to grin from ear-to-ear with delight, but fruit that has the potential to make an eternal impact in the lives of others. Let’s get to work.

A Story of Sons, Sorrow, and Salvation

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(based on Matthew 21:28-32)

Jesus knows how to grab our attention, doesn’t he? He introduces his parable with the question, “What do you think?” (v.28). That question is about as powerful as they come, because it clearly and directly invites the listener to be a part of the story. What was true then may be even more true today – everyone has an opinion, and we love being asked it, because the truth is, we were going to give it anyway! No one holds back on their opinion, so Jesus, the master story-teller who knows our hearts even better than we do, draws us in by asking, “What do you think?”

Well let me go first. I suppose there are plenty of ways the response, “No,” can get our attention, but few of them make get to me as much as when that “no” is spoken by a child in direct defiance of a parent’s command, as it was in today’s parable. I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me that kids, sinful nature and all, are prone to such a response. What is really telling in those situations, however, is how the parent responds. Will mom or dad tolerate such a defiant response and let it go, further reinforcing it and guaranteeing that it will be spouted off with much more confidence by the child in the future, or will it be addressed right then and there? 

If, like me, you’re waiting to see how the dad responds in the parable, don’t hold your breath. We don’t ever get his response. Rather, we’re just told the son eventually changed his mind and ended up doing what his father asked. “There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’ ‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went” (v. 28-29). That’s it. A brief introduction to the first son, a description of his actions, no response from the father, and then the parable continues on to the other son. “Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go” (v.30). And that concludes the parable. Three verses. Three characters. Very few details, and “The End.” One of the effects of Jesus’ short and sweet parables, though, is that instead of trying to sort through lots of details and trying to associate meaning to them, we’re left with more of an urgent, nagging desire to know the meaning behind the parable. In the case of this one, namely, whom do the sons in the parable represent?

For the answer to that, Jesus again involves his hearers, the chief priest and the elders, who were listening to him teach in the temple courts and had already questioned his authority to do so. Jesus asks them a question and uses their response to explain what would have been to them a rather unpleasant and outright offensive truth. “Which of the two did what his father wanted?” “The first,” they answered. Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did” (v. 31-32). Jesus then clearly identifies the first son in the parable as representing the tax collectors and the prostitutes, the very types of people the religious leaders despised. Because we are familiar with the religious leaders from Jesus’ interactions with them in the Gospels, we don’t have to imagine how that sat with them. 

How does it sit with us? The past two Sundays, at the conclusion of our previous sermon series and the start of this one, we were reminded that forgiveness and grace are for everyone. That makes for a very touching storyline, but it seems to get a little tougher to swallow when we stop to consider the challenging reality of who that includes. Who could the first son represent today? It’s definitely not the types of people we’d consider as fine church-going folks, is it? Rather, it’s those with checkered pasts, to put it mildly, who at some point after their prodigal son-like wayward living, eventually come to faith in Jesus. Basically, think of the type of person that makes you cringe, the farthest thing away from the church going type. The people like that, who at some point in time come to faith in Jesus, are represented by the first son. 

It could be the die-hard atheist who spent his lifetime attacking Christianity, who finally succumbs to the very gospel he hated and sees Jesus as his Savior. It could be the sinners who sin that sin that reaaaaaaally gets under your skin, only to later confess that sin, and in repentance rejoice in Jesus’ forgiveness. The first son could be the political analyst who holds what you consider to be a radically opposing view, who actually is a Jesus follower, too. The first son could be the converted prisoner we skeptically roll our eyes at when he claims to have “found Jesus” while serving time. We could go on.

There’s something else worth noting when we think about “those types of people”; Jesus seemed to spend a lot of time around them, didn’t he? Jesus, the churchiest of church guys, not only didn’t avoid such sinners, but actually went out of his way to be among them! Think of how frequently the Pharisees themselves tried to shame Jesus for associating in such scandalous circles. Jesus spent an awful lot of time in his ministry with first sons who by their lives defiantly protest, “I will not” to the father, so that in the end, through his patient preaching and teaching, they might later change their mind, as well as their ways and their heart, and up believing in Jesus and living for him. 

And here’s the most shocking part of Jesus’ parable: these are the ones who are first in line for heaven! They don’t eke it out and barely squeeze their way in, as we might expect; no, Jesus told the religious leaders that these are the types of people “entering the kingdom of God ahead of you” (v.31). How could the church-going types not be first in line? Frankly, it’s a rather offensive thought, isn’t it? It reminds me of the story of the “upstanding” member of a church who discovered that the pastor had called on a dying delinquent, a non-active member of the church, and assured him of Jesus’ forgiveness and his home in heaven. Upon hearing this, the upstanding member took the pastor to task, incredulous that he would do such a thing. “If that is the sort of person who is allowed in heaven, then I have no desire to go there.” To that the pastor replied, “Don’t worry – if that is truly your feeling on the matter, you don’t have to be concerned about being in heaven with him.”

Here’s where this particular parable leaves us feeling a little unsure of ourselves. On the one hand, when we hear about the types of people represented by the first son, we don’t particularly gravitate toward that crowd! That’s not really how we want to be thought of or considered… yet they’re first in line for heaven, which DOES appeal to us. Well, if we’re not sure about how we feel identifying as the first son, there’s only one more option in the parable, and it isn’t really any more appealing.

The second son gave what we’d all consider was the proper – and particularly polite! – response. “Yes, sir – I’ll get right on it.” But it goes no further than that. There is nothing that follows the dutiful reply. He was merely paying lip service to his father. Though his response made him appear to be the perfect child every parent dreams of, his actions showed something else. The second son bears a striking resemblance to the individual Jesus warned about elsewhere when he said, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom’s of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven” (Mt. 7:21). Yikes! And if at this point it isn’t clear who does Jesus identify as being represented by the second son? Not necessarily a much more favorable social circle: the pharisees. He pointed out that this was the third time they were being called to repentance. First, they refused to heed John the baptist’s call to repent and believe. Second, they weren’t convinced even after the prostitutes and tax-collectors did repent and believed. Now Jesus comes to them again with his call to repentance through this parable.

The bigger question though, is where does this all leave us? The first son would seem to be the easier one to spot, agree? Are there some hearing this message that need to hear and heed that warning? Yes. The second son may not be as easy to spot, but where would he be more likely to hang out? Wouldn’t it be in church? Wouldn’t it be at a Bible study? Wouldn’t it be in a leadership position? Wouldn’t it be the proper, polite, say-all-the-right things person that everyone would agree on the outside appears to be everything we’d expect of the ideal Christian and much more? Yet, aside from saying the right things and looking the part, there is no actual substance. There is no faith behind the guise of right words and possibly even actions.

So where again does this parable leave us? Believe it or not, with hope. Because you notice that Jesus leaves the doorway to his kingdom cracked open for both sons. The first sons may be entering first through that door, but Jesus explained to the second sons that the door was still cracked open, for “ahead of you” means there’s still room. You hear that? It doesn’t matter if you’re a first son or a second son – the door is still open. There still is room. For you. For me. For every other son! 

How can this be? How can the doorway to heaven remain opened for both sons? Someone once made an excellent point about the missing son in the parable, the unmentioned son one we might call the third son. How was he different from the first two? He not only said “Yes, sir,” but he also followed through perfectly and did what he said he would do. Who is this third unmentioned son? It’s Jesus. The perfect Son. Our perfect Savior. He is the reason heaven is held open to any son, first or second, life-long church-going member, or late-to-the-party prodigal. This third Son Jesus literally did everything the Father asked him. And he did it perfectly, satisfying the Father’s righteous expectations. 

What’s more, he paid the highest price that could be paid so that other sons and daughters would be able to enter the kingdom of God. Only by his blood can we rightly even be called sons and daughters, brought into the family through repentance and faith. The change of mind, the turning away from my way to God’s way; the confession of sin; the confidence of complete forgiveness. These are the blessings the third Son brings for everyone else, for us.

You’ve heard it said that it’s not how you start; it’s how you finish. Regardless then of which son you are, cling to the third Son, Jesus, and live in faith over fear, peace over panic, and hope over helplessness. 

It’s God’s Grace

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(based on Matthew 20:1-16)

Parents can relate to the experience all too well. Mom or dad hasn’t yet made up their mind about whether or not dessert is on the menu for the night. Maybe it depends on how supper goes. Maybe the decision is based on how much junk food the kids have already had over the course of the day. Whatever the criteria, the kids pester with the same question all day – “Can we have dessert?” “Are we having dessert?” “Have you decided if we’re having dessert?” “So, how about dessert?” Finally, the joyous declaration resounds throughout the house, “Yes, we shall feast on dessert this evening.” And, as you would expect, cheers ring out and words of gratitude pour forth from the lips of the children. Only… that doesn’t happen. Instead it sounds like this: “He got more than I did!” “She got a bigger piece!” “We didn’t all get the same amount – it’s not fair!” What should be expressions of gratitude and thanks are instead replaced by outbursts of inequality and charges of unfairness. Parents wonder if their children will ever outgrow this phase. 

But at some point it becomes obvious – or should, at least; we don’t ever outgrow that phase, do we? We spend our entire lives being concerned about the very same thing – making sure that everything is fair and that everyone gets the same or at least no more than they deserve. We find other ways to belt out the adult version of “It’s not fair!” It’s not fair that I got a speeding ticket and that other guy back there going fast enough to zip past me doesn’t get pulled over. It’s not fair that I always get picked for jury duty and she never does. It’s not fair that they got their food first when we ordered before they did. This isn’t fair. That’s not fair. It’s not fair.

“It’s not fair” had the hired hands up in arms in Jesus’ parable, too. It just wasn’t right in their minds. Person A who showed up at the crack of dawn and worked all day long should earn more than Person B who strolled in at the tail end of the work day. That’s how it is supposed to work. That’s fair. And it would be fair if this was a parable to teach us about economics. But, like all of Jesus’ parables as we’ll see the rest of this month, their purpose is not to provide some temporal takeaway, but to provide spiritual insight that gives us a clearer picture both of who God is and who we are. Our parable today achieves both. 

Jesus introduces this parable using what for him is a typical introduction: something “is like” this or that. He is clarifying that what he’s about to say is not a literal occurrence or an actual historical event, but rather a story that is intended to illustrate a particular point or teaching. In this case, he is explaining what “the kingdom of heaven is like” (v.1). What is “the kingdom of heaven,” exactly? It is one way that Jesus reminds us that our sense of belonging in this world – a family name, a town in which we were brought up, or citizenship in a certain country, for example – is vastly different than what it means to belong to the Lord, to be his, or as Paul puts it in his letter to the Philippians, to have “our citizenship [is] in heaven” (3:20). The criteria for belonging to Christ’s kingdom, the kingdom of heaven, is unlike any criteria on earth for belonging in that it is based on one thing and one thing only: grace. 

We love grace. We celebrate grace. We just sang a hymn about grace that is near and dear to many of our hearts. Grace is what we’re all about. We know forgiveness is extended to us because of grace. We know salvation is ours because of grace. We know that even the gift of faith itself which clings to all these truths is because of grace. From start to finish, through and through, it’s all by grace.

But it is the very thing that makes grace so attractive – that it is underserved – that makes it tough for us to swallow when others receive it. The real irony? It irritates us to see others receive grace when we don’t feel they deserve it! It’s the very definition of grace – undeserved love, that ruffles our feathers when we see it extended to those we don’t think deserve it. But no one deserves it! That’s just it. I don’t deserve it. You don’t deserve it. No one deserves it. 

Yet God desires to extend it to everyone. “Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other” (Isaiah 45:22). “All the ends of the earth” includes everyone – including you, if I’m not mistaken. But “everyone” also includes the estranged family member. Everyone includes that jerk from high school who treated you like garbage. Everyone includes the offensive co-worker. Everyone includes the alcoholic, the addict, the rapist, the racist, the sex-trafficer, and the pedophile.

Here’s where Jesus’ parable challenges us. We know that God wants everyone to be saved. We know that that means everyone needs his grace. So why is it that we can slip into the same thinking as the first hired hands who worked the longest and resent that those who worked the least got paid the exact same amount? Why should such resentment ever creep into our hearts? Well the truth is, it doesn’t creep into our hearts – it’s always been there. It resides there, and a parable like this just exposes it. But why would we ever resent God extending his grace to anyone else if, like him, we also want everyone to be saved?

I wonder if Jesus’ final words in this parable clue us in. He concluded with, “So the last will be first, and the first will be last” (Mt. 20:16). And, if you look at how Jesus concluded his teaching in the previous chapter, he closed the same way. Why does Jesus need to make this statement repeatedly when teaching? Isn’t it rather obvious? It goes against our very nature. We are bent toward self first and foremost. When that happens, you know what we tend to do? We use ourselves as the metric by which we judge others. We are our own measuring stick. When that is the case, we lose our bearings and it throws everything out of perspective.

See what it did for those hired first in the parable? When they got paid the same exact amount as those who put in less time, “they began to grumble against the landowner. ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day’” (v.11-12). The metric by which they determined how things should be was on the basis of the long hard day that they had put in. By comparison then, the workers whose timesheet reflected fewer hours worked didn’t deserve the same wages. 

Worst of all, their skewed sense of comparison led them to resent the landowner who had hired them in the first place. He even called them out for resenting his generosity (v.15). So an ego-fed hard day’s work as their standard resulted in their despising not only all those hired after them, but also the generous landowner who had hired them all in the first place. And, how quickly they forgot that they had even agreed to work all day for the payment that was promised!

Rather than using our inflated sense of self as the measuring stick, there is only one metric by which we can explain this parable, and really understand the kingdom of heaven. Only when grace is the metric does all of this make sense. Grace makes room not just for those hired last, but also for the resentful workers hired first. Grace hires those who never even applied for the job. Grace pays out the same wages to every worker. What a beautiful thing that is for us! What a beautiful thing that is for everyone! Hired first? Work hard, work faithfully, work as long as it is day, because you know that Jesus means your payment in heaven is never in question. Hired last? It’s never too late to get working in the vineyard. Though even the majority of your life may have been a missed opportunity to serve in the kingdom of grace, Jesus means your payment in heaven is never in question. 

So what is our takeaway from this parable? Let it be two-fold: 1) thank God that he deals with us on the basis of grace and not our own standards, and 2) guard against allowing that grace to be taken for granted or despised when we see it extended to others. How do we keep these two points in our hearts and minds? We remember that it’s God’s grace. It’s his. Though he extends it to us, he doesn’t entrust it to us to determine who does or doesn’t deserve it. Then it would no longer be grace. For it to remain grace, it must remain God’s to give freely as he determines. 

Notice the arrangements of those hired later in the day. They didn’t agree to work for a set amount as did the first hired hands, who agreed to a denarius. No, they agreed to work for whatever the landowner determined was right (v.4). They were excited to be asked to work, not even worrying about the payment. They were totally fine with the landowner paying them as he saw fit. So their joy wasn’t based on how much they stood to earn. In fact they weren’t even worried about that. Their joy was found in getting to work in the vineyard. They were elated to be chosen. 

Actually, if we really want to get at the point of this parable, we have to admit that the landowner really was being unfair. Not only did none of the workers apply for the job or deserve to be hired, but none of them actually deserved to be paid. Yet they were all hired. They were all paid. 

When it’s God’s grace, not ours, to dole out, it isn’t fair. No one deserves it. In fact we all equally DON’T deserve it. But rather than grumbling and complaining about God being unfair with his grace, let’s celebrate it, work our tails off in his vineyard, and then when the time comes, look forward to being paid something far greater than a denarius, far greater than even the dessert your kids pester you for… let’s look forward to finding out what it’s like to be on the other side of the kingdom of heaven. We will, by God’s grace. 

Church Is For Everyone

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(based on Romans 11:13-15, 28-32)

You’ve undoubtedly already done it if you’ve seen the image (“Church Is…”). You’ve finished the statement with some word or phrase that expresses your view of what the church is. Church is… what? Just what is the church? Is it a place? An event? Does it invoke positive feelings or negative? And it may very well be that the past 5 months have forced us to revisit previous thoughts we had about church and see if they have changed. Some churches have worshiped exclusively online during that time; many have at least in some way returned to a hybrid form of worship, and still others have closed their doors permanently. What, then, is church, and what role does it have in your life, my life, our lives, today? We will be spending five Sundays exploring the church’s identity and its role in our lives today. 

I personally have at least one specific outcome I will be praying for as a result of our time in the Word these next few weeks: that more eyes and hearts would be opened to see church less like a toothbrush and more like a phone. Sounds like a pretty weirdly specific prayer, huh? What I mean is this. The toothbrush has pretty much one specific purpose. You use it for brushing your teeth. You don’t grab it for anything other than that. People who view church as a Sunday morning gathering are viewing it like a toothbrush – while an important part of what church is, that’s not even close to tapping into the full potential of what church is for! Church is far more similar to a phone, which does much more than just make phone calls. Your phone is your calendar, your personal assistant, your search engine, your weather forecaster, your photo album, your camera,… etc. You get it – it does so many things! So does church, and I hope that becomes clear today and in the coming weeks.

My encouragement to you is this: be willing to challenge your own personal views, no matter how long-held they may be. If church has never even been on your radar in life, at least be open to hearing a clear picture of what you have (or haven’t!) been missing. If church has always been a part of your life for as long as you’ve lived, be open to the possibility that somewhere along the lines the routine and regularity of it may have allowed its role to become somewhat blurry over time – after all you aren’t the same person you were years ago, and chances are, neither is your church in some respects. If you’re somewhere in-between, where church has held varying degrees of importance in your life through different seasons of your life, perhaps the time is ripe for it to play a more consistent role. 

This morning as we seek to fill in the blanks, we want to focus our attention on who the church is for (disregard the grammar, because saying it the right way just sounds goofy these days). You probably have at least some idea of the type of person you think of in connection with church. Maybe your description of those you associate with church is positive, or it may very well be negative. The church might be the last place you’d expect to find hypocrites, but I assure you, there are plenty of us here, and you might even be surprised to find that we’ll quickly admit it. We know as well as anyone that God wants us to live a certain way, and we know as well as anyone that we fail daily. You may think of the church as being made up of a class of people who are pretty decent – so much so that you could never see yourself belonging, as your past record would somehow disqualify you. I totally understand that, and admit that sometimes we Christians are even guilty of making you feel that way, unfortunately. Some may loathe church-going people as small-minded caricatures of everything that is wrong with our society today. Others joke about lightning striking if they ever set foot in a church, and sadly, they’re only half-kidding in their own minds. So who is church for? 

A man named Paul provides us with the answer in the letter he wrote known today as the book of Romans in the Bible. Paul is well-suited to spell out who the church is for, as he experienced two vastly different types of “churches.” One church, the church in which he grew up, was fixated on rules and regulations, last names and lineage. The essence of church to him was based on who you were and how you lived. This church was made up of the Jewish people, who could trace their ancestry all the way back to the family tribes that would eventually make up the part of the world that we call Israel today. Only Jewish people belonged to this church. 

Those outside of this church – everyone who was not Jewish – are referred to as a Gentiles. There was a point in Paul’s life that he was so zealous for the Jewish church that he persecuted and hunted down Gentiles for speaking against it or believing a different message. Paul thought he was doing the right thing, until the Lord made it clear to him that his view of church was all wrong. In these verses from Romans this morning, Paul shares how he better came to understand who the church is for, and he shares his observation of the Lord God’s brilliant plan to ensure that it would be know that the church is for everyone. That’s right – everyone. Including you.

The way Paul explains it in these verses may be somewhat challenging, so permit a bit of a modern day parable to clarify. A man wanting to start his own business needed to hire some employees to work for him. Wanting to do things right, and to show them how much he appreciated them, he went above and beyond in taking care of his employees. They were paid well, they received generous benefits, plenty of time for family and vacation, and had the best working environment possible. On top of that all, the company was growing and enjoying great success. The employees were thrilled… at first. No one else enjoyed the level of compensation they did. But eventually they got used to it. They saw what others received and wondered what it would be like to work there. Either out of indifference or being enamored with others, eventually they left. 

Their departure, of course, meant the owner needed to hire new employees. He had no problem finding new employees, as word of his generosity and appreciation as an employer spread quickly. Others were hired and soon enjoyed the same wonderful compensation that the very first employees had. After some time elsewhere, the original employees realized how good they had had it and saw it in the lives of the current employees. They longed to have their old jobs back and to be welcomed back into the company again. Of course they were delighted to find that the growth and success of the company meant that there was more than enough room to take on more employees, and they were rehired to enjoy the same outstanding benefits once again. 

Of course this analogy limps greatly in this – there is no work or effort whatsoever required for one’s salvation! But the rest of the parable hopefully helps us grasp the point Paul was making in these verses from Romans. “Inasmuch as I am the apostle to the Gentiles, I take pride in my ministry in the hope that I may somehow arouse my own people to envy and save some of them” (v.13b-14). Paul didn’t hesitate to make a big deal about his ministry to the Gentiles – not shying away from pointing out that God wants them to be saved, too, and that Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection were all the proof they needed that God wanted to include them. In generating that kind of excitement about the one-of-a-kind good news found only in the Christian faith, Paul longed for his fellow Jewish people to be stirred up by the seemingly radical idea that everyone could be saved. HIs people then would be drawn back to the true God and find salvation in his Son, Jesus Christ, the very Messiah they had rejected, but who nonetheless died and rose for them, too!

Naturally, the Lord’s determination to take the good news to the Gentiles had the potential to fill them up with pride. Paul addressed that. “Just as you who were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their disobedience, so they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God’s mercy to you” (v.30-31). Paul is reminding his Gentile hearers to remember that they were once the ones on the outside looking in, but that God opened up and extended his loving arms to embrace them with his grace, his underserved love, too. Now, the same is true for the Jewish people. Just as they turned away from the Lord’s mercy through the Messiah and were suddenly on the outside looking in, God’s plan in welcoming in the Gentiles was not to exclude the Jewish people, but to win them over again and see his heart for them, too. 

Paul summarized God’s approach in verse 32: “For God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all.” This sounds irrational, doesn’t it? Why turn everyone to disobedience and not just to obedience? However, if you are an unbeliever, would you be OK if I forced you into believing? Of course not. So why should anyone turn around and take issue with God’s plan to let us have our own way, especially when his purpose for doing so is 100% purely noble – “so that he may have mercy.” God wants to extend his mercy to all people, and so he leveled the playing field and disregarded all of the different ways we humans have of categorizing and casting people to determine status. God did away with that and put everyone in the same sinking Titanic of unbelief and sin – everyone in the same boat. That way, as everyone comes to realize their grave situation, they would see their need for rescue and deliverance, and see that the Lord is always waiting with his mercy to extend to everyone who realizes their need of it.  

Church is for everyone. Everyone. Yes, that means church is for you. Now that we’ve established that, and that you know our doors, like Jesus’ arms, are open to welcome you, stick around for a few weeks to discover more about what church is.

God’s Good

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(based on Romans 8:28-30)

“Trust dies, but mistrust blossoms.” Though attributed to the Greek playwright Sophocles around 2,500 years ago, I wouldn’t fault you for assuming this quote was written in 2020, for it surely fits today as well as ever. Those more easily trusted only a generation or two ago are more commonly mistrusted today. Our trust in doctors has eroded as we become aware of pharmaceutical payouts and bonuses for pedaling certain pills, and hospital protocols or insurance limitations. Journalists and reporters used to do an admirable job of presenting the facts and details of an account in an unbiased manner, but today openly reveal – even overtly in the headline itself at times – their personal opinions, shaping their slanted writing. While “trustworthy” may never have been a common description applied to politicians, we trust them less today than ever. Sports heroes dope and cheat, charities and crowd-funding efforts are mired in scandal, and even religious leaders and their ministries mislead. Trust is not easy to come by today. 

That may be a contributing factor in why Romans 8:28 can come across as such a polarizing passage. In a society that breeds mistrust, even the words and promises of God are brought into question – both inside and outside the church. So Paul’s statement in verse 28 receives a mixed response. “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (v. 28). Some things? Sure, but “all things?” We can read the verse, we rattle it off to others going through hardships, but to actually trust that it’s true that in everything – everything – God is at work for our good? Well, it may be a pretty tall order for many of us to buy into that one.

Good? Everything? Tell it to the mother who just miscarried. The spouse crushed by infidelity. The classmate mortified by what was posted about her on social media. The exhausted single mom straining to raise her children. The dad who discovers his adult son living on the streets. Stretched and stressed caregivers. Cancer. Unemployment. Abuse. Good? Everything? Can you really blame the unbeliever for scoffing at this verse when it pushes us as Christians to the limits of our own faith to fully trust it?

Let’s stop right there and reflect on one key understanding of this verse. If we don’t understand this, we’ll remain perpetually puzzled by this passage. Moreover, it could then have the exact opposite effect that God intended – it could drive us further away from God instead of closer to him. That key understanding is this: God’s “good” is not the same as your “good.” God is not promising here that he will work things out for good according to how you define and determine what is good. Now you may not wish to hear that right now, but it has been my experience that his good is always greater than my good.

One may actually appreciate that God’s “good” is greater than our “good” if we review some of what we thought was good at any given time in our lives, only to have experience later reveal otherwise. That boyfriend or girlfriend that we had our heart set on didn’t turn out so well. The job we thought would be best for us left us worse off than when we started. More money created problems instead of solving them. And how many times didn’t we think we knew better than our parents just to end up learning the hard way they were actually looking out for our good? Looking back at our own ideas of what was good and best over the course of our lives serves as all the evidence we need to see for ourselves that our own ideas of what is good miss the mark nearly as often as they hit it. Our notion of what is good is flawed. 

While that may be the case, you still may find it quite a leap to believe that God’s good is any better. Let’s allow him speak for himself and make his case. He doesn’t hide what his idea of good is. He spells out exactly what his purpose for us is: “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified” (v.29-30). Now there’s a lot of theological jargon there, but if we break it all down, God’s purpose is for you to be numbered among the many brothers and sisters in his family, and for that to happen, a pretty big change has to take place: “being conformed to the image of his Son.” Put another way, God wants you in his family, and to be numbered among his family, you have to be like Jesus. That is God’s good purpose – for you to be like Jesus. 

Think of what that means! The fruits of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (cf. Gal. 6) – these would all be fully yours, all the time. And consider how we see Jesus live and treat others in the Gospels – who wouldn’t want to be like Jesus?! Always forgiving, always caring, always genuine, always longing to carry out the Father’s will. Perfect. Holy. Without sin and therefore without guilt.

Oh, to experience that alone – no guilt! But the image of his Son, the image of Jesus in all his righteous glory – it is so far beyond our reach, so far out of our league. We could never attain it. The fruits of the Spirit so often serve as reminders of all that we’re not. Our animosity in place of love, bitterness instead of joy, quarreling in place of peace, impatience, cruelty, wickedness, unfaithful, harsh, out of control – these are all our spoiled fruits! As if our own spoiled fruit didn’t condemn us enough already, we return back to this promise of God to work things out for good and are reminded of how our trust in that very promise is so lacking. How on earth should we ever hope to be numbered among God’s family? We are nothing like the Son. Surely there is no place at the table for the likes of you and me if we must be like Jesus.

And this is where God’s good far exceeds what we could ever hope for or imagine. His good will be carried out, and nothing can stop it. Paul used the words “foreknew” and “predestined.” Those terms, which are the basis for the Bible’s teaching on what we call election or predestination, simply mean this: God determined that you would be numbered among his family. Period. It is that simple. You belong to God because God determined that you would belong to him, and he determined that not only long before you were born, but even before he brought creation into existence. He didn’t save you by peering into his crystal ball to see that in the future you’d believe or do enough good works for him to include you. He saved you because he wanted to save you. That’s grace, pure and simple.

What Paul then does to demonstrate this is lays out every step God took along the way to ensure it would happen. He chose you, he called you, he justified you, he glorified you. Notice what role you play in all of it? Nothing. From start to finish it is all God’s work. You do nothing but receive it. Since he chose you, he then called you to faith, made possible because in Jesus, who paid for your every last sin, you have been declared free of all guilt, and all that remains is glory, in part now, but fully when we’re brought home to heaven. 

God’s good is that he wants you to be like Jesus so that you can be a part of his family. God’s good is that because of Jesus, and through faith in him, you now are a part of the family. 

So then, if God has addressed every necessary detail to bring you into his family, is there even a sliver of a chance that he somehow could be unconcerned about your day-to-day life? Could you really fathom that the gracious God who handpicked you for his family even before time itself existed, could for a second, a minute, and hour, day, week, etc. not care about you or your life? Impossible. No, the God whose greatest good for you has already been accomplished in and through Christ Jesus, will also continue to orchestrate the ups and the downs in your life for your own good. 

To us it might look at times like the underside of a hand-woven rug. It appears to be full of loose ends and mismatches through and through. But to see that same rug from the other side is to reveal a beautiful work of art. Here on earth we see our lives as the underside of the rug. Home in heaven we’ll see a different view, the top-side, the life that God was weaving and working into a thing of beauty. So no, you may not always see the good that God promises to bring out of all things in your life, but you can still trust him in that promise. You can still trust him because he’s already taken care of your greatest good. He’ll do the same in your life today, tomorrow, and the next day, all the way up until we get to the place where there’s only good all the time.

The Best “No”

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Photo by Kai Pilger

In many parts of the U.S. right now, including where I live in southern California, we’ve gotten accustomed to an almost daily dose of “no’s” being doled out in an effort to practice social distancing (everyone’s new favorite phrase to hate):

  • no gatherings of groups over 250, then 50, now 10, which has resulted in
  • no coffee meetups with friends at your favorite local spot (like here or here)
  • no workouts at the gym (ah – just the excuse you needed to continue avoiding them.)
  • no taking in a movie at the theater (thank you, Netflix and Disney+!)
  • no libraries (time to get at that stockpile of books you’ve been accumulating)
  • no church
  • no work for many
  • no leaving your home except for essential needs.

Whether or not you agree with the extreme measures being taken to avoid the spread of COVID-19 (is it some rule that we have to put a virus in all caps to make it sound more terrifying?), we are currently in a state of “no’s” as a society. If they haven’t already, those “no’s” will start to take their toll. They can make us feel constricted, discouraged, and frustrated.

So, to counter all the negative “no’s,” here’s one of the best “no’s” you’ll ever come across:

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

Romans 8:1

Did you catch that? “No” condemnation. No rejection. No abandonment. No forsaking. No judgment. None. That assurance belongs to all who have not socially distanced themselves from Christ. To be in Christ, to call him Savior, to trust in him alone for salvation, is to have complete confidence that the best no possible is yours: no condemnation. When you have that kind of confidence, you know what else you have?

No fear.

We don’t know how long restrictions will be in place. We don’t know the long-term impact they’ll have on our lives. We don’t know if more “no’s” will be coming out in the days ahead. But we have this right now in Christ: no condemnation. That is the best no ever.