Tag: JEsus

God Can Do a Lot with a Little

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(Judges 6:33-7:25)

450 to 1. That’s how outnumbered Gideon’s 300 soldiers were. An army of 135,000 vs. an army of 300 (if you can call 300 soldiers an army!). There is not a military strategist in history who would go to battle with those odds. There is no plan that could be devised that would see 300 soldiers victorious against 135,000 – especially in the days predating all the technology and weapons we have today to fight wars with – when hand-to-hand combat was how battle was carried out. No one in his right mind would take those odds, that chance, and willingly initiate any sort of engagement when the deck is that stacked against you. 

But you know what? God can do a lot with a little. He makes that abundantly clear as we focus on the next judge in our series, Gideon. 

Before we dig more into the story of Gideon, in order for today’s takeaway to sink in, I want to take a few moments to consider where you might need this reminder that God can do a lot with a little. There are so many areas in our lives that are filled with too little, with not enough – so many areas that are inadequate or insufficient. Or at least that’s the way we allow ourselves to think. Where do you think you are too little, or you have too little, or are lacking in one way or another? Now ask this question: do you really have too little in these areas of your life, or is the real issue that you think too little of God to be able to do anything with it? May our time exploring God’s goodness to Gideon this morning change not only your mind, but the way you think about God and what he is capable of. 

Look what God had to work with in the case of Gideon. He started with a nobody. When the Lord came to Gideon, he wasn’t decked out in imposing armor preparing to lead an army into a glorious victory on the battlefield. He wasn’t seated on a throne in kingly fashion in some palace somewhere. No, he was threshing wheat, and not even in the normal fashion, but as inconspicuously as possible – he was hidden in a winepress so as not to alert the Midianites. He was nothing more than a common man carrying out manual labor. That’s when the Lord addressed him. “The LORD turned to him and said, ‘Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand. Am I not sending you?’ ‘But Lord,’ Gideon asked, ‘how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family’” (Judges 6:14-15). Gideon didn’t see himself as being up to the task. His view of self was so low that he could not imagine God using him for such a monumental task! Sound familiar? Remember when the Lord came to Moses to send him to save Israel from Pharaoh’s hand? His response was similar: “Who am I?” (Ex. 3:11). Gideon wasn’t the first time the Lord used a nobody to get things done, and he won’t be the last. 

Can you relate to Gideon? You can. You have. Throughout different stages of life we all struggle with the same feelings of inferiority or being unqualified. “I’m not ready to make the jump to high school. I’m not actually good enough to do the job for which I just got hired. I’m not qualified to be a parent to a newborn – I have no idea what I’m doing. I can’t make this marriage work. I can’t care for my aging parents. I can’t be a leader in my church.” We echo the same refrain that Moses and Gideon echoed: “How can I do this? Who am I?” Do you know why that’s so natural for us to think that way?

Because it’s true. When God started with you, he started with a nobody. Actually it was worse than that. A nobody would have been neutral, indifferent, happy to just remain anonymous. But by nature you came into this world as God’s enemy. The sin you were born in set you against God from the start. His perfect holiness doesn’t sit well with sinners. So we oppose him. We despise him. We guard our sin. We defend our sin. We don’t need him telling us it’s wrong today. If nothing changes, we remain on that same path of opposition to God the rest of our lives.

But you’re here because something did change. You did, because God changed you. God took you, his enemy – a nobody, and washed you clean with Jesus’ blood. The very God we despised by nature is the gracious God who made us more precious in his eyes than we could ever have made ourselves. Grace and forgiveness transform nobodies into somebodies in God’s eyes. Without sin as a barrier between you and God, he sees you as he made you to be: perfect, righteous, and ready. Ready for him to use you as he sees fit. Ready to be sent for his purposes. God can do a lot with a little. You are the proof. You weren’t much. But now you are everything to him. He would die for you. He did die for you.

Speaking of doing a lot with a little, kind of sounds like how the Lord carried all of this out, doesn’t it? God made a powerful demonstration of that through Jesus in general. A lot with a little. A little child. Born in little Bethlehem. A little cross outside Jerusalem. One man, not a nobody by any stretch of the imagination, but the God-man, Jesus, put to death on it. Yet through this one crucifixion, this one little death on Good Friday, a cataclysmic event unfolded. Hell lost its hold. And on Easter morning, as the empty tomb opened up, so did heaven, ready to welcome every nobody made a somebody through faith in the Savior, Jesus. 

God can do a lot with a little. Jesus made a powerful demonstration of that in our Gospel today as he fed thousands with a little. He had previously turned out the best wine ever tasted at a wedding in Cana, only needing a little water to do so. 

So let us bring it back to Gideon. Could God do a lot with a little? You already know the answer, but it’s as if God wanted to underscore it in the way he weeded out Gideon’s fighting force. He started with 32,000, but that was too many in God’s opinion, for he was concerned about Israel boasting that its victory was a result of its own strength (7:2-3). So he had Gideon dismiss 22,000 who were afraid to fight and allowed them to return home. That left 10,000 soldiers, but God wasn’t done weeding them out yet. He then had the remaining men get down for a drink of water, and from the different ways they drank water, he sorted them out so that just 300 men remained. That was how God wanted to demonstrate that he could do a lot with a little. 

But what of Gideon’s doubt, you ask? What about his insistence on a handful of signs? There are of course instances in Scripture in which the demand on the part of God’s people for a sign stems from outright doubt. This does not appear to be one of them. No, in this case, Gideon was simply well aware of his own insufficiencies. He wasn’t questioning anything on God’s end; he was questioning himself. So he asked God to let him know that he was sure he had the right guy for the job, a nobody like Gideon. 

What does this say to your doubts? Do you have a rather low opinion of yourself like Gideon? Or perhaps your view of yourself is is on the other end of the spectrum – rather inflated? Finally, let’s confess that sin of thinking of self too much and leave it behind and instead deal with the real issue: the question of what we think of God? What is God able to do? The answer is, anything. Anything. There is nothing he cannot do. Now I don’t know if we have kind of forgotten that or if the common “science-backed” refrain we hear everywhere today has eaten away at our confidence that God actually can do anything, but it remains true. God can do anything. And, God can do anything with anyone.

That includes you. So go back and revisit those areas of life in which you think or you have too little, those areas where you’re convinced that nothing’s ever going to change or improve because you just don’t measure up. If God – not Gideon, but God – can use 300 men to topple an army of 135,000, is God able to change or improve that area of life where there’s too little, where you’re too little? Absolutely. If you struggle to believe it, then it’s because your confidence is misplaced. You think too little of yourself. You don’t think you can do it. You think you’re not enough. Stop limiting what God can do by wrongly thinking you’re the one doing it! It’s not you. It’s not going to be you. It’s going to be God, always the Lord, who can do a lot – so much more than you could imagine! – with a little. 

Stop thinking you’re too old. Stop thinking you’re too young. Stop thinking you’re not smart enough. Stop thinking you’re not spiritual enough. Stop thinking you’re not experienced enough. Stop. Thinking. About. Yourself. Let those who think like this belong to the world. Let the Church instead be filled with bold believers whose confidence rests 100% in a good, gracious God who can do anything with anyone.

God’s Promises Don’t Need to Be Propped Up

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(Judges 4)

How soon do you suppose your next flight would be able to take off if, after accelerating for a few seconds, the pilot repeatedly had to slow down for something on the runway? How likely do you think an Olympic long-jumper is to take home a medal if keeps slowing down and speeding up as he approaches his jump? Neither the pilot nor the long-jumper are going to have much success, are they? There are just some things in life that simply require a measure of momentum in order to achieve success. Without that momentum, certain limitations can’t be broken; we get stuck. 

Has your spiritual life ever felt like that? Or, maybe your spiritual life has only felt like that! We start, then slow down, then maybe stop, then start up again, but the only result we ever seem to achieve is that we end up getting stuck. Or backsliding. But any progress seems to be short-lived. Either we take our foot off the gas and slip into complacency, or sin abruptly steals our momentum. How do we break the cycle? How do we get unstuck? Enter the time of Judges. 

You want to see what it looks like to get stuck, to get caught up in an unhealthy cycle that gets progressively worse, spiraling downward like dirty bathwater circling the drain? Look at the 300-350 year period after Moses and Joshua, before any kings were ever established in Israel, and you see the same pattern repeated: rebellion, regret, and rescue. The Israelites would turn away from God in favor of the surrounding pagan worship and customs. Oppression from those pagan nations would ensue, resulting in the Israelites calling out to the Lord in desperation for deliverance. God would raise up a judge and rescue, and the whole cycle would repeat itself again and again for over 300 years. As we study several key judges over the next several weeks in this series, we want to take note of key takeaways that each judge provides to help us get unstuck and break the cycle, so that we can finally make the progress we’ve wanted in our spiritual lives. 

The book of Judges begins on a high note: “After the death of Joshua, the Israelites asked the LORD,…” (1:1). Joshua had led them well! When they needed direction, they knew to seek out the Lord, and so they asked him how to proceed in securing the land he had promised them. Unfortunately, they failed to act in the same confident faith that was a staple of Joshua’s leadership, and so the whole rest of the first chapter of Judges – and essentially the snare that would plague Israel throughout this period of history and up to and through the age of kings – was this: they failed to completely drive out the enemy. Again and again the refrain is the same: each tribe would advance, fight, get comfortable with their success, but then fail to completely drive out their enemies. 

The Lord made clear to them the long-term damage that would result. “‘You shall break down their altars.’ Yet you have disobeyed me. Why have you done this? Now therefore I tell you that I will not drive [your enemies] out before you; they will be thorns in your sides and their gods will be a snare to you” (2:2-3). So it comes as no surprise the tragedy that results shortly thereafter. “After that whole generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation grew up, who knew neither the LORD nor what he had done for Israel” (2:10). Think it doesn’t matter when we treat our religion, our Christian faith, our relationship with God, like a spare tire? When we allow it to remain nothing more than something that is accessible to us only when absolutely needed in extreme situations, this is what happens. And let’s embrace the sad reality: this is what is currently happening right now in the church. 

Notice I said “church.” It would have been an easier pill to swallow if I had said “in our country,” right? Because that doesn’t sting as much. It depresses us, sure. It frustrates us, definitely. But it also easily allows us to pass the buck and blame everyone else for the direction we’re going. But we’re the ones – you and me – who are guilty of repeating the same deadly cycle that is blatantly obvious throughout the time of Judges. We start out on the high note, seeking out the LORD, but then we either don’t bother to obey what he says, or only partially so, we get caught up in one sinful snare after another, and wonder how things got so bad and how the next generation seems so hopeless. It’s our fault! So do we want to keep repeating the cycle, or do we wish to actually do something about it and break the cycle? Then let’s commit not just to learning the lessons that the book of Judges teaches us, but actually living them, applying them, and putting them into action. Let’s lean on God’s power to equip us to break the cycle and not settle, but strengthen ourselves and the next generation of believers. 

The first lesson God teaches us in our Judges series is that his promises don’t need any human help to bolster them up and make them more believable. God’s promises need no human intervention to validate them or make them more palatable. We take God at his word because it is God’s Word. 

As we look at chapter four, already we see the cycle repeating. God had already delivered his people through the previous judge, Ehud. He provided them relief from oppression, but with that rest and relief they also became relaxed spiritually, and not in a good way. “Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, now that Ehud was dead.  So the Lord sold them into the hands of Jabin king of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor. Sisera, the commander of his army, was based in Harosheth Haggoyim. Because he had nine hundred chariots fitted with iron and had cruelly oppressed the Israelites for twenty years, they cried to the Lord for help” (Judges 4:1-3). Sisera and his iron-reinforced chariots were wreaking havoc on the Israelites. The advantage he had would be like an army of infantry today going up against a tank battalion – no contest. God, however, would turn the tables on Sisera and Israel’s enemies by showing that opposing him would yield the same result – no contest. 

He spoke through his representative, Deborah, to reveal how he would bring about deliverance and rescue his people. Who was Deborah? We’re told she was leading Israel at the time. She was a prophet recognized by Israel as being gifted with discernment to provide counsel and direction and settle disputes as they arose. Remember this was the time before the monarchy had been established, before Israel had begged to be like other nations and have its own kings. And it was after God had appointed a permanent leaders like Moses and Joshua to lead his people with the specific purpose of guiding them out of Egypt into the promised land. For this time, God saw fit to lead his people through these individual judges, and Deborah was one of them. 

She showed herself to be an exceptional leader, even more so because of the obvious contrast from Barak, the man called to lead the Israelites into battle. If we wonder why, in a primarily patriarchal culture and Bible history in general, a woman (Deborah) was leading, perhaps Barak’s hesitancy to follow God’s direction demonstrates the answer for us. When the Lord had revealed through Deborah that he planned to give Sisera and his army into Barak’s hands, hear again how Barak responded: “Barak said to her, ‘If you go with me, I will go; but if you don’t go with me, I won’t go’” (v.8). Deborah rightly pointed out that her command had come right from the top, right from the Lord himself, who had promised victory! But God’s direct promise alone wasn’t enough for Barak; he required human intervention. He needed the assurance that Deborah would accompany him.

Think of how backwards that is! How often don’t we find ourselves in a situation that leads us to the conclusion, “Only a miracle will save us now,” or “only divine intervention will change this outcome”? Yet divine intervention is exactly what the Lord promised to Barak, and it wasn’t enough. He thought that he needed an additional confidence booster from a human being. It should have been the other way around! Barak should have told Deborah to sit tight and that he’d be right back, because the Lord had already guaranteed that victory was a done deal!

Wouldn’t we all like to have a little more Deborah and a little less Barak in each of us? We have a Bible stacked with God’s promises of intervention on behalf of his people, yet we insist on worldly confidence boosters before acting on those promises by faith. The Lord promises to watch over our coming and going, but it takes the confidence booster of a clean bill of health from the doctor for me to believe it. Jesus reminds us that since he dresses the flowers and feeds the birds, we don’t need to lose any sleep over his ability to provide for our needs. But it takes the confidence booster of a steady job and income and to put my mind at ease. God promises that forgiveness and heaven are his free gifts only by grace, only through faith, but I am easily deceived by the false confidence booster that I’ve been a pretty good person to really reassure me. 

We have it backwards! God’s Word is enough. God’s promises are enough. How can some earthly factor or some worldly circumstance add any value whatsoever to what God himself has declared? It can’t. Nothing can. Barak needed Deborah’s assurance for God’s promise of deliverance to be more believable. God forgive us for every time we need some added assurance for God’s promise of deliverance to be more believable!

But God delivers anyway, despite our doubt, just as he did for Barak and the Israelites. “At Barak’s advance, the Lord routed Sisera and all his chariots and army by the sword, and Sisera got down from his chariot and fled on foot. Barak pursued the chariots and army as far as Harosheth Haggoyim, and all Sisera’s troops fell by the sword; not a man was left” (v.15-16). Not a man was left! How does an army of foot soldiers not just scrape by, but completely wipe out a superior fighting force of state-of-the-art chariots? God intervenes, and emphatically at that! Read the praise song of victory in the next chapter and discover that divine intervention definitely played a role! The very plain in the valley that Sisera thought would give his chariots an advantage became his undoing when roaring waters rendered them useless (cf. 5:21)! And though Sisera was able to escape Barak’s sword, he could not escape the Lord, who humbled Barak by allowing a woman, Jael, to fearlessly finish him off. 

As he did Barak, God may choose to humble us for requiring additional confidence boosters to trust in his promises. But here’s what will not change: God will always keep his promises. Now if God waited on us until he had 100% perfect and complete trust from us, well, he’d hardly be able to keep a single promise! He doesn’t operate that way, though, as you know. He doesn’t withhold from us what he has a right to. He doesn’t treat us as he has a right to. He doesn’t give us what we really deserve. Instead, he delivers. Just as we’ll see over the course of the next several weeks in Judges, God delivers. 

In baptism, he delivers. In his Supper, he delivers. Through his Word, he delivers. He always delivers! He delivered his Son into this world so that he could deliver his Son for this world. He has done this great thing – the greatest thing – for you. His forgiveness flows freely to you in an abundant stream that will never slow to a trickle, but will always overflow. You are his and he will deliver you always. Let’s stop the cycle and start taking his promises at face value, not requiring any earthly circumstance at all to make his promises more palatable.

God Calls Me to Glorify Him

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(Colossians 3:15-17)

Three letters, SDG, not to be confused with the San Diego Gas & Electric company (SDGE), can sometimes be found at the close of a Christian book or essay. Many a paper at pastor conferences has closed with those very letters. The Lutheran composers Bach and Handel included the letters in many of their musical compositions. What do they stand for? They are three Latin words – Soli Deo Gloria – which mean, “to God alone be the glory.” It is a reminder that whatever worthwhile or significant contribution a person might make, God, who gave everyone their ability, skill, and talent to do anything excellent at all, is the one who deserves the glory. 

As we consider that element of our vocation, our calling, to glorify God, it might be helpful to first define what it means to give glory to someone or something. We sing of it in our songs and hymns, we come across it again and again in the Bible, so what do we mean when we speak of giving glory to or glorifying God? Is it one of those churchy terms that naturally flows from our lips without really processing in our heads and hearts what it actually means? What then does it mean to glorify God?

Actually, before we step into the “what” or even “how,” we may better be served addressing the “why.” Why glorify God? If we don’t know why it makes a difference to give glory to God, then the what or the how don’t really matter, do they? The what without the why ends up being that unused kitchen gadget that you had to have at the time, but which ends up at the back of the gadget drawer or tucked away in the back of a cupboard somewhere because you don’t remember why you ever got it. Knowing what or how it looks like to glorify God will only help us if knowing why moves and compels us to actually do so.

First things first, let’s be clear on this: God is already glorious. Glory already belongs to God. It is his, entirely independent of anything we might do. God doesn’t need us to give him glory. The psalmist pointed to creation itself as an indicator of his glory. “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (Psalm 19:1). Moreover, Jesus, the heart and soul of everything God had promised, by virtue of the victory he came to bring all people, is rightly called “a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel” (Luke 2:32). So glory already belongs to God. It is his as a result of his jaw-dropping creation and his unconditional salvation. In that regard we cannot bestow glory to God anymore than we can give the sun light or heat, for the sun is the source of those things and they emanate from it. In the same way, God’s glory emanates from him. Therefore, when we speak of glorifying him, this isn’t talk of giving something to God that he somehow lacks.

Why then do we glorify him? Why do we speak of giving him glory if it’s already his? The Bible reveals no fewer than three reasons why. First, when we glorify God we are simply acknowledging and highlighting the glory that is already his. We’re giving it the attention it deserves, giving him the attention he deserves. In giving glory to God, we are saying God is the GOAT (Greatest Of All Time). I recently saw a close-up of the glitter on Simone Biles’ gymnastics uniform. There is a subtle – or not so subtle once you realize it’s there – picture of a goat on it. Why? Because she is considered the GOAT of gymnastics, the greatest of all time. While there will always be debate over who is the goat in their respective fields when it comes to celebrities and superstars, there is no debate when God is brought into the discussion. We glorify him because we acknowledge that God is the GOAT. There never was, nor will there be anyone or anything greater. He is truly the greatest of all time. 

One who understood this and reflected it beautifully was John the Baptist. In speaking of Jesus, John the Baptist reflected: “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). Less of us to make room for more of God. We’ve all seen the decal on the back of cars that reflects this attitude, He > i. In humility we recognize that God is worthy of all attention, commendation, praise, and anything else of worth we might offer up to him. We glorify God because he alone is worthy of it. God is the GOAT.  

In doing so, we also benefit. A second reason we glorify God becomes rather obvious when reflecting on the frequency of a certain attitude in the words from Colossians. Each verse in its own way reveals the same attitude, one of gratitude. The phrases “be thankful,” “with gratitude in your hearts,” and “giving thanks” go hand-in-hand with glorifying God. Which one comes first, the glorifying or the gratitude? It doesn’t matter – they feed off of each other! As we glorify God, it fills us with gratitude, and the more we’re filled with gratitude, the more we want to glorify God. It becomes a spiritually healthy cycle that just keeps feeding itself. Glory leads to gratitude, and gratitude leads to glory. God is magnified, and we are filled with gratitude. 

Now I don’t know where you might struggle emotionally. It might be worry that weighs on you. Perhaps anxiety rather easily overwhelms you. Maybe anger or short bursts of rage have plagued you. But you know what can help with all of them? Gratitude. It’s not very easy to worry, to be anxious, or to be angry when I am filled with gratitude. In fact, it’s extremely difficult, if not impossible, for those emotions to coexist with gratitude! Why else do we glorify God? Because when we remember that God is the GOAT, we also benefit, for glorifying him fills us with gratitude. 

The third reason we glorify God is for the benefit of others. Through faith our eyes have been opened to see God’s glory in so many ways. But Paul reminds us elsewhere that that isn’t the case for everyone. Sin blurs God’s glory so that it is not naturally seen. “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Corinthians 4:4). If you’ve been hiking or outside enjoying nature and caught sight of something spectacular off in the distance or using binoculars, it’s frustrating when you try to help someone else see it, but they can’t spot it. We point here and give directions there as to where they should be looking, but no matter what, they just can’t see it. We want so badly for them to see what we’re looking at, but the moment passes and they miss out. 

God doesn’t want that to be the case when it comes to the unbeliever seeing his glory. So what is his solution? You are. Listen to how Peter echoed the words of Jesus from our Gospel (cf. Mt. 5:13ff) this morning. Peter wrote, “Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us” (1 Peter 2:12). What does it mean for them to “see your good deeds and glorify God”? It means that they were brought to faith – through you! Not that God somehow did an end-around and avoided his Word in the process, but rather through you, God wants to draw others to his glory, always revealed through the Word, so they, too, might know him as their Savior! That’s why Jesus sends us to be salt and light, so that others might bring him glory by believing in him. 

We may not always like playing the numbers game. We sometimes downplay the tracking of numbers, of attendance, of metrics, and surely we do have to be careful when it comes to an unhealthy focus on numbers. But you know what? God is a numbers guy. God is very interested in numbers! You know how many people he wants to be in heaven with him to spend eternity with him when he returns on the Last Day? More. Always more. It’s safe to say that if Jesus hasn’t returned yet, God is waiting for more to be added. That means he’s waiting for you to glorify him with your good deeds that are so attractive to the unbelieving world that they are drawn to him and to his Word, and are added to his kingdom. 

There’s your why. We glorify God because God is the GOAT, because it fills us with gratitude, and because it turns unbelievers into believers. Now let’s put some gas in the tank. What fuels us to give glory to God? It’s the peace that he first gives to us. Gratitude isn’t the only theme that runs through the verses from Colossians this morning; so is peace. Paul wrote, “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Colossians 3:15-17). Where does the gratitude that goes hand-in-hand with glorifying God come from? It comes from the peace that we have in Jesus. 

Do you have that peace? I mean, really, does peace mark your days? Are they characterized by peace, or… something else? Busyness? Inadequacy? Guilt? Restlessness? You do know that Jesus came to set you free from all of that, right? So if you don’t have it, why don’t you have it? Paul hits on what might be one thing to address if you’re lacking peace: “let the message of Christ dwell in you richly.” Richly. Richly. Richly. When we allow the Word to be an afterthought or an “I’ll get to it later” in our lives, we’re only robbing ourselves of the peace we already have in Jesus! He’s already done it all. You are forgiven. You are at peace with God. Your sin doesn’t count against you. And, the icing on the cake is that he’s already perfectly glorified his Father (cf. John 17) in your place! The work has been done. Live in the joy that Jesus has already earned for you. There is no fear for the child of God; just peace. When we live in that peace, glorifying God pours naturally out of it. 

So now to the practical matter of carrying out our calling, of giving glory to God – how do we do this? What qualifies as giving glory to God? After all, giving glory to God is a pretty big deal, right, so we must be talking about stuff on a pretty grand scale! Rightly giving glory to God surely involves overseas mission trips and generous charitable gifts and serving faithfully for years on church boards and committees – these are the things that truly glorify God, right? Sure they do. 

But so do these: the every day, the mundane, the routine, the often-overlooked, the seemingly small and unnoticed words and actions that we carry out every single day. These, too, are the things by which we can glorify God! It’s not the scale of the service that determines whether or not God is glorified in what we do, but rather the spirit of faith by which we do it. Simply put, virtually anything we do can be a way to glorify God, which is what Paul was emphasizing when he wrote “whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus” (v.17). When I consider that it is God who gave me the life and breath and health and ability to do anything and everything, all of it can glorify him. Then go and take out the trash to God’s glory. Wash the dishes to God’s glory. Lend your neighbor a hand to God’s glory. Change a diaper to God’s glory. Work hard at your job and help your coworker who is behind on a deadline to God’s glory. Attend church to God’s glory. Post on Facebook to God’s glory. Go on a date to God’s glory. When these and everything else we do are carried out because the peace we have in Jesus fills us up with such gratitude, then we are carrying out God’s calling to glorify him. And we joyfully do that because God is the GOAT, because it raises our own gratitude, and because God uses it to make believers out of unbelievers. So go out and live an SDG life – Soli Deo Gloria; “to God alone be the glory.”

God Calls Me to Bear My Cross

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(Luke 9:21-26)

If you want to tune out for a bit, this might be the sermon to do so, because Jesus isn’t speaking these words to everyone. How do we know that? Because he’s only addressing “whoever wants to be [his] disciple” (v.23). That’s not everyone. That’s rather obvious when it comes to unbelievers. But it isn’t just unbelievers; it’s a whole lot of people inside the church that aren’t really interested in being disciples either. They may be quick to identify as Christians, but the blunt truth is, there’s no shortage of Christians who have little interest in being disciples.

Does being a Christian automatically make one a disciple? Consider two individuals enrolling at SDSU in the fall. One of them attends all the classes, completes the homework, studies hard, and eventually graduates. The other is there to party, making zero academic effort. Which one is the student? In that they are both technically enrolled and pay tuition, each would be considered a student. But an honest evaluation would conclude that only one of them is in reality a student. So also, Scripture lays out criteria that apply to disciples of Jesus: they hold to his teaching (Jn. 8:31), they love one another (Jn. 13:35), they bear fruit (Jn. 15:8), and they make other disciples (Mt. 28:19), to name a few. To that list, Jesus adds yet another challenge: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me” (v.23). There you have it. Jesus’ disciples are called to bear our cross. Doing so involves a three-step checklist: deny self, bear crosses, and Follow Jesus. 

Do you know why this is such a struggle for us? We want to jump right to the cross-bearing part, which is tough enough as it is… but made even tougher if we don’t address the bigger obstacle in the way before we even get to the cross-bearing part: ourselves. Imagine if every time you opened your eyes, no matter what you were trying to look at or which direction you were looking, all you saw directly in front of you was a mirror, reflecting yourself back to you. While there isn’t literally a mirror right in front of you 24/7, that really is the problem each one of us has – it’s completely natural for us to see ourselves before we see anyone or anything else.

Trace that reality all the way back to Eden. Adam and Eve believed Satan’s lie that God was trying to hide their true reflection, that he didn’t want them to see how god-like they really were, convincing them that they’d see what they actually looked like if they just ate the fruit. The reality was, they had a perfect view – the wonderful image of a gracious, caring, loving God who designed an amazing world for them! But they traded it in to be able to replace that image with a picture of themselves.

They got it, but it wasn’t what they had hoped. The mirror with their reflection was completely cracked. It has been ever since, and sin’s curse has carried with it the desire to see only self and nothing else. So what does it mean to deny self? It means shattering the mirror so we can see beyond the reflection of self, so we can put up a fight against our selfish, self-absorbed worldview.

Then we’re ready to pick up a cross, right? We might think so, but we’re not done just yet denying self. There are two other obstacles that we often need to address. We need to slow down and put down. We think the more efficiently/faster we get things done, the sooner we’ll have time for God… but that only speeds up the treadmill; it doesn’t actually ever free us from it. We end up running ourselves ragged because we never slow down. 

And we need to put down. When we finally arrive at the cross we are to take up, we won’t be able to pick it up if we insist on having our hands full with the other things we are carrying! What do you insist on hanging on to that won’t free your hands to pick up your cross? To what are you so attached that it’s worth disqualifying you as a disciple, and possibly even resulting in a forfeit of eternal life? Jesus gave a very blunt warning and then followed it up with a very pointed question. “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self?” (v.24-25). Hang on to your loves in this life, whatever they may be, and you run the risk of losing out on eternal life. Put those things down.

Then, assuming we have slowed down and put down enough stuff to finally free up our hands so we can take up our cross, we’re ready to bear it, right? Just one problem: crosses aren’t pleasant! We want to avoid them! We don’t naturally gravitate toward them or ask the Lord for them, and when we see them in our lives, often our first reaction in prayer to the Lord is to ask him to remove them, to get rid of them. They get in the way of our best life now, of the life we’ve been trying to design for ourselves. Crosses, by definition, are not convenient! 

So why do we ever bother bearing any cross at all??? Because bearing crosses bears blessings. It wouldn’t seem like it, but each time you lift up that cross, to carry it, what you find on the other side are the blessings that God had hidden beneath it. Paul mentions many of those blessings in his letters, reminding us that suffering produces perseverance, character, and hope (Romans 5), patient endurance, and comfort (2 Corinthians). We also know that in cases of suffering that the world cannot solve or explain, we are compelled to lean more and more on the Lord, to anchor our trust in him, which ultimately brings us into a closer relationship with him. And each of these blessings from cross-bearing ready us for the next cross to bear, which may be even slightly larger than the previous cross. That’s less daunting… when we realize that blessings are hidden beneath that cross – the larger the cross, the more blessings are hidden beneath it. 

Take that imagery literally. Picture a small cross, one the size of an earring or a necklace. We naturally want to avoid it because remember, bearing a cross will involve hardship and trial; it will in include some measure of suffering. But eventually, when you pick up that small cross, you see the blessings that were hidden underneath it, blessings that would have remained hidden had you never picked up the cross to carry it. Then you come across a little bit bigger cross, one the size of your hand. You immediately remember the difficulty that resulted the last time you picked up the smaller cross. But then you also remember the blessings hidden beneath it. So you pick up this cross, too, and sure enough, beneath the larger cross are hidden even more blessings. And so it goes throughout life – God allows one cross after another to come into your life, sometimes bigger than the previous. Our natural inclination is to avoid the cross, to leave it where it is. But each time we have picked up that cross, an abundance of rich blessings were hidden beneath it, blessings we could not have experienced without the trial or hardship that preceded them. So it is – we bear our cross, and God blesses our cross-bearing. 

We’ve denied, we’re picking up the cross. Now we follow Jesus. “There’s more?!? Weren’t the first two enough?!? What about when Jesus goes a direction I’d rather not, when he veers this way and I’d rather go that way?” Recently I met someone for coffee. It was a place I hadn’t been to yet, so I did what we all do and punched in the address to my navigational app and off we went. It worked just like it was supposed to… until I arrived at the address and there was no coffee place. It wasn’t hidden or tucked away somewhere that I couldn’t see; it was just gone, not at the destination I had punched in. A little looking around online revealed that it had recently moved – very close by, thankfully – but at a different address altogether.

Isn’t that often how our lives work? We punch in where we want to go or where we think we need to go and then we arrive and there’s nothing there, or at least not what we expected. Our own navigation system just isn’t trustworthy, is it? But you know what will never steer us wrong? Following Jesus.

Now following Jesus doesn’t mean that he will provide little signs along the way throughout our lives on every little decision we make. Following him doesn’t mean waiting for him to reveal which menu choice he wants you to make when you go out for breakfast. Neither does it mean he’ll reveal to you whether you should date this person or accept that job. But following him does mean that we look to God’s Word for guidance in our decision making. It does mean that we follow his guidance toward paths that help us avoid sin rather than paths that bring us closer to it. Following Jesus does mean that our relationship with the Bible ought to better resemble our relationship with our phone than it does our relationship with the unused treadmill or exercise bike sitting in the garage. 

And I know it seems like a tall order to follow in the footsteps of perfect Jesus! It IS a tall order! It is impossible. But think of it the way a small child follows in dad’s footsteps after piles of freshly fallen snow. He’d never be able to get through on his own without getting stuck in the snow. But what an easier time is made of it when he simply traces dad’s footsteps ahead of him, each step having packed down the snow in a clear path that makes it much easier to follow. That child will go his own direction at his own risk, but he can’t fail when he follows in his father’s footsteps.

Why is that the case when it comes to following in Jesus’ footsteps? Because we know that the value of following him is not in making it possible for us to perfectly keep in step with him; no, the value is in seeing where those footsteps led: to the cross. Ah, and we have come back to it again, haven’t we? The cross. But this time not to bear it ourselves, but rather in faith to gaze on the One who bore it willingly for us. For if we do not follow his steps to his cross daily in our lives, we will struggle mightily to ever see the point in bearing our own crosses. But to see his cross is to see the price Jesus paid to forgive self-absorbed, imperfect disciples, who prefer to go their own way and avoid any cross placed before them. To follow Jesus to his cross is to see that my forgiveness means freedom for cross-bearing!

Before calling his disciples to pick up their cross and follow him, Jesus reminded them that he had to be rejected, had to suffer, had to be put to death, and had to rise from the dead. All this had to happen so that we could call ourselves his disciples, bought and paid for with his own blood. All this had to happen so that we can now bear our crosses and follow him.

Is any of this easy? Will any one of us ever attain the status of perfect cross-bearers this side of heaven? Never. So God addressed that problem by sending the perfect cross-bearer. Literally. Jesus bore the cross for those who couldn’t as well as those who wouldn’t – he bore it for everyone. He bore his cross so that we can bear ours. We do so because cross-bearing brings blessings. THAT is our calling.

“Help Me See… that God Keeps His Promises”

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(Luke 24:13-35)

The most memorable movies almost always have a great ending. What makes for a great ending? While there are a lot of factors that contribute to a great ending, the one that I think stands out the most is when something completely unexpected happens. We recently had this experience in the Grand Canyon. One of the most spectacular hikes was because it was unexpected. While it was impressive to finish the first part of the hike that involved a significant descent, once we got to the first lower section, everything sort of started looking the same. It was as if the hike could have been in any number of other National Parks – it wasn’t too special or unique. But then when we shot off on another trail, almost out of nowhere, an unexpected view caught us by surprise: the steep walls that had surrounded us cracked open and revealed miles of canyon upon canyon, all splitting right from where we were. It was completely unexpected and breathtaking. A good movie ending is like that, leaving the viewer completely caught off guard by a twist that didn’t feel at all forced, leaving him almost speechless. We love those kinds of endings. They’re the ones that make for the most memorable movies. 

So one might expect that we’d also love those kinds of endings in real life, right? Wrong. A movie is one thing; our life is another. No, in life we prefer to know exactly what is happening next. We like to have control. We like to see how we’ll be getting from where we are right now to where we want to be or need to be. We don’t particularly care for the twists or the turns, but would rather see the road ahead of us maintain the straight trajectory that we’re currently on. Keep your twists and turns, thank you very much. 

The problem is, have you noticed by now that the twists and turns are often how God tends to keep his promises? We confuse the path of God’s promises for God passing on his promises. We conclude that God is overlooking his promises when he is in fact overseeing them. A recent devotion used the picture of a detour, which is really a great illustration of how God keeps his promises. We’ve driven a familiar route long enough and expect to get there a certain way. A detour throws everything off. It throws us off. It frustrates us. It leads us to conclude that God has checked out and is no longer interested in keeping his promises, when in reality the detour is God keeping his promise. Just not using the means, methods, or map that we had in mind! 

Wasn’t that how the disciples on the way to Emmaus were seeing things? They recounted all of the details that had happened. “The things concerning Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet powerful in action and speech before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him. But we were hoping that he was the one who was about to redeem Israel. Besides all this, it’s the third day since these things happened. Moreover, some women from our group astounded us. They arrived early at the tomb, and when they didn’t find his body, they came and reported that they had seen a vision of angels who said he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but they didn’t see him” (v.19-24). They had just captured everything that had happened, just as it was supposed to happen – as Jesus had said it would happen – but they concluded that something was wrong. Something was out of place. Something hadn’t played out the way it was supposed to. In fact, everything had played out just as it was supposed to, but they didn’t see it that way. God was in fact doing just what he has always done – carrying out his promise. Yet they drew the entirely wrong conclusion – that it wasn’t happening the way it was supposed to. 

Since Jesus knew better, it doesn’t surprise us to hear the response that he gives – “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken!” (v.25). As if Jesus was saying, “Guys, how are you missing that everything you just explained was like a movie that perfectly followed the script from beginning to end, not ad-libbing or changing things on the fly, but playing out according to the script God had revealed through his prophets from day 1? It’s happening just as it was written, yet you’re somehow befuddled by the reality of what it looks like. How can this be?”

Indeed, how can it be that we would ever conclude that the events in our life not playing out exactly as we expected must mean God isn’t keeping his promises? We can’t relate to that at all, can we… except on an almost daily basis! God is busy keeping his promises to his people day in and day out, yet as we track the way by which he chooses to do it, we conclude that God must be overlooking his promises instead of overseeing them, as he actually is. Take a brief waltz through the significant events in your life and make a mental list of how they played out. Did you get through school the way you planned to? Did you find your spouse the way you planned to? Did you come by your current job the way you planned to? Are you current living where you planned to? Not too much of our lives plays out the way we planned, but our altered plans are not God’s altered promises – they are rather the means by which he was carrying out his promises all along!

Now it’s one thing to look back and see this play out in hindsight, but it’s not so easy when we’re in the middle of it. It doesn’t look like God is keeping his promises to provide when I’m in a season of unemployment. It doesn’t feel like God is keeping his promise of peace and unity in the middle of so much division. God promises that he’s always with us, but that’s hard to experience when those closest to me have abandoned or forgotten me.

Sometimes the issue in these cases is because God has just begun the detour in keeping his promise; other times it’s simply my disobedience. What I mean by disobedience is that we fail to act on the direction he provides that allows us to see him carry out his promise. He promises peace when we place our trust in him. But we don’t have peace because we don’t trust. He promises relief from anxiety when we cast our cares on him. But we’re anxious because don’t cast our cares on him. He promises freedom from bitterness and anger when we forgive. But we’re bitter and angry because we refuse to forgive. So our disobedience doubles the damage – it is not only sin against God, which is wretched enough in its own right, but on top of that it is also debilitating to us! It’s not that God isn’t keeping his promise; it’s that we rob him of the opportunity to do so by our disobedience! When God says “Do this” and we don’t, is it reasonable for us to expect the promised blessings he attached to that act of obedience? Not really!

The good news is that whether our struggle to see God keeping his promises is due to our impatience with the detour he has chosen to take, or because of our disobedience, the solution to both is found in the same place. How did Jesus help the disciples see that God was simply carrying out his promises? He explained the Scriptures to them. “‘Wasn’t it necessary for the Messiah to suffer these things and enter into his glory?’ Then beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted for them the things concerning himself in all the Scriptures” (v.26-27). Jesus, the incarnate God, the One who breathed everything into existence, who has no beginning and no end, is right there with the two disciples, and how does he open their eyes? He uses the Bible. Jesus used the Bible to unfold for the two exactly how God was overseeing – not overlooking – his promises. Jesus’ go-to was the Word of God. And that in-depth search of the Scriptures pointed them more clearly to Jesus. The Word was how they saw God keeping his promises.

So detour or disobedience – it doesn’t matter; the Word will always help us see that God keeps his promises. It will always be the necessary first step in reminding us of this because it is always the first step in finding forgiveness. Why do we begin every service with confession and absolution? Because that comes from the Word, where alone and more than anything else we find the forgiveness we need. Oh, the day we stop sinning we won’t need to hear that assurance of forgiveness again… but I don’t see that happening anytime soon. So forgiveness is the first aid we need most for our disobedience and our doubts about God keeping his promises. 

And it is the same Word that records for us promise after promise that God has made and delivered. Hang on to this worship folder just for the Lessons, if nothing else. Keep it accessible so that when you next question God’s promise-keeping, you can go back to these Scriptures and be reminded that the issue is NEVER going to be one of God’s failed promises. That will never happen. But we need to be reminded of that truth again and again. We need to hear the refrain in our heads. We need to meditate in our minds over they myriad ways God has always kept his promises. Promise-keeping is what he does. He’s the best in the business – no one else even comes close to delivering on promises the way God does! His Word is his diary of kept promises for you.

And is there greater proof of those kept promises than the vacant tomb? Talk about unexpected twists and great endings! It appeared as if the credits were ready to roll when he breathed his last on Good Friday, but in the greatest ending ever, he didn’t stay dead! Let Jesus’ resurrection help us see that God keeps his promises. And let it help us see that it really isn’t the end of the story, but our lives are a continuation of God’s perfect promise-keeping record. We hold on to that until this chapter of the story concludes and the final twist takes place: Jesus returns and fulfill his final promise. Come, Lord Jesus!

“Help Me See… that I have a Good Shepherd”

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(John 10:11-18)

Last Sunday we were reminded of our purpose to feed, care, and follow. Today we see what it’s like to be on the receiving end of that care as we focus on the picture of our Risen Savior as our Good Shepherd. That picture may be one of the most well-loved images of our Savior. It’s virtually impossible to consider this picture of Jesus without reflecting on Psalm 23 and this chapter of John’s Gospel. There is no shortage of hymns that pair these pictures of our Good Shepherd with song. The Church has highlighted it for centuries and for generation after generation. If you have a picture of Jesus up in your home, it is as likely to depict Jesus as the Good Shepherd as any other image. Inside our sanctuary we have three beautiful stained glass pieces above the cross that display our Good Shepherd, a Shepherd who cares about his sheep.

Receiving care gets mixed reviews from us. On the one hand, one of the big fears that adults express is the fear of aging and requiring 24/7 care from family members or friends. We don’t want to be a burden to others. On the other hand, who doesn’t appreciate being on the receiving end of care as we recall fond memories of mom or dad taking care of us when we were sick at home? We are grateful for a spouse who goes above and beyond to show us care. When deployed or away at college, care packages from loved ones mean the world. We appreciate receiving care.     

But after this one Sunday of the year when we focus on the Good Shepherd, what is the real significance of this picture in our lives? What does it really matter that Jesus is our Good Shepherd? Who cares? Who cares when my marriage is imploding, when my spouse’s or my own repeated wrongs have brought our house to ruin – what good is a Good Shepherd then? Who cares when my own habitual sin keeps haunting me and the guilt is overwhelming – what good is a Good Shepherd then? Who cares when my wayward kids no longer listen and I am afraid not only of losing them, but their wandering from the faith – what good is a Good Shepherd then? Who cares about this Sunday School picture of a Good Shepherd – what real difference does it make when I have real problems that need real solutions? Who cares?

Well, he does. He cares. That’s just it. The Good Shepherd cares. Your Good Shepherd cares. Do you imagine that the Lord had no good reason in mind for weaving the imagery of himself as a shepherd throughout Scripture? Or do you envision the Triune God brainstorming with himself trying to come up with some filler for his Holy Word and after they sorted through all of the other suggestions, the picture of a shepherd was the best they could do and so they settled on that one? No, there is a reason the Lord wanted this picture of a shepherd to be one of the many ways we understand our relationship with him. Because he wants us to know how much he cares. Jesus even set up that contrast in verse 13 by highlighting how different the shepherd is from the hired hand. “The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep” (v.13). Jesus cares, and he wants you to know he cares about you, the way a shepherd cares about every single sheep in his flock. 

He cares because you are his. Watch children interact with each other when one of their belongings is involved. Show and tell is an opportunity to showcase a favorite item or toy. Kids are thrilled to be able to show other children something of theirs that means a lot to them. However, what happens later on when another child wants to explore or play with that show-and-tell item? “No. You can’t. It’s mine.” A teacher or parent trying to referee a similar issue between siblings points out that it’s OK to let someone else enjoy playing with the item for a little bit, but the owner of said toy refuses. Why? “It’s mine.” There isn’t often a much more profound answer than that: “It’s special to me. It’s mine.”

Taken in a positive way, the Good Shepherd feels the same way about you, his sheep. “It’s mine. You’re mine. You belong to me, and no one else may have you.” The Good Shepherd owns the sheep. He bought and paid for every sheep of his flock, unlike the hired hand, as Jesus pointed out: “The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep” (v.12a). Implied is that the Good Shepherd does own the sheep, and Jesus doesn’t leave any doubt as to the price he paid to own the sheep. Five times in these verses he refers back to the price paid for the sheep, starting in verse eleven: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” The sheep – you! – belong to the Good Shepherd because he paid the highest price ever for anything that has ever been purchased: he paid with his life. 

No one makes a sacrifice for something they don’t care about or value. Think about how many appeals you receive on a regular basis, how many causes come asking for support. There’s the call from the police or fire representative asking if they can count on your support. There’s mailings from ministries and organizations. There’s youth sports teams and community causes, stations, channels, here, there, and everywhere. While I’m guessing you probably don’t say yes to all of them, there are some that are dear to you, so you support them with your time and/or money. 

But for which of them would you be willing to give your life? What would that take? How precious, how valuable, how dear to you would something have to be for you to give your life? I imagine there may not be a cause for which you’d be willing to die, but there might be a person or two who mean that much to you that you would give your life. 

But now let’s take that a step further. They probably don’t hate you and treat you like dirt. They probably don’t trash you and disrespect you and want nothing to do with you. But those are exactly the types for whom the Good Shepherd laid down his life.

You, are exactly that type. I, am exactly that type. We wanted nothing to do with the Good Shepherd. We prefer to wander off on our own, without being confined or corrected, regardless of the danger lurking around every corner. But the Good Shepherd, Jesus, cared too much to leave you to your own destruction. So he died. He cared that much – to die so that you could live. So whatever anyone might say about Jesus, let it never be that he didn’t care. No one ever has nor ever will care about you as much as Jesus. He laid down his life to quiet any who might say otherwise.

Dear friends, news gets better: the Good Shepherd doesn’t just care for you; he knows you. “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me–just as the Father knows me and I know the Father” (v.14-15). Does that comfort you… or terrify you? No one knows you better than Jesus. Yes, it means what you think you have hidden from others, you cannot hide from him. He knows. He knows your past. He knows about last month, last week, last night. He knows it all. Your sin is not hidden from him. You cannot hide it from him. Ever.

But. Still. He. Stays. Do you understand? He knows you, he knows the worst that you could ever do, and still has not abandoned you. And will not ever abandon you. How refreshingly unlike so many relationships we’re used to! He knows us at our worst. And still the Good Shepherd stays. In our Twitter-dredging, social-media-scrutinizing, history-hacking, cancel culture society that tirelessly tries to dig up even the slightest scoop of dirt on everyone and anyone, the Good Shepherd already knows it all. You don’t need to be afraid that he’ll uncover your shady past – he already knows! And still he stays. The Good Shepherd knows you. He knows his sheep. And he will not abandon them. He will not abandon you.

Think about it: if death itself didn’t mean he was deserting you, then what possibly would? He didn’t even let death keep him from a relationship with you, but the Good Shepherd who laid down his life “took it up again,” just as he said he would. You mean too much to him. He cares too much. He knows you and loves you too much to turn from you. His resurrection helps us to see that. It helps us to see that he isn’t just the Good Shepherd, but he’s my Good Shepherd, and that’s when our relationship with him deepens.

I get the privilege of pointing you to your Good Shepherd every Sunday. Do you know what drives me to do that? Do you know why there is nothing that I will ever experience that will be more exciting, more delightful, than seeing sheep come to faith in their Good Shepherd? Do you know why that is the best thing ever? It’s because he’s my Good Shepherd first. He’s mine. And when that clicks for us, that we aren’t just spinning our wheels week in and week out talking about some general God or superficial Savior or a Good Shepherd, but instead my God, my Savior, and my Good Shepherd, then it sinks in. Then that relationship deepens. Then it means something altogether more to know that my Good Shepherd cares for me and knows me. Then I want more than anything else for other sheep to see that their Good Shepherd cares for them and knows them, too.

“Help Me See… that I Have Purpose”

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(John 21:15-25)

“When they had finished eating…” (v.15). Did John catch your attention with these words? Remember who the “they” is made up of – it includes Jesus! The dead guy was eating a meal with the disciples! They had been out on the Sea of Galilee fishing, not catching anything, and then Jesus told them to throw the net on the other side of the boat. When they did, the haul of fish was too great that one boat alone could not drag it to shore! Then, once they were on the shore together, they ate. Jesus, the dead guy, was eating. The one who had taken his last breath on the cross, whose lifeless corpse had been removed from the cross and placed in a tomb, was there. Eating. Doing something that only living people do. John tells us this was the third time Jesus had appeared to the disciples. Were the disciples still in awe of it at all? Had the magnitude of the Resurrection begun to sink in yet… or had it already lost its luster?

It’s been two weeks already since we celebrated Easter Sunday. Does the magnitude of the Resurrection still sink in for you… or has it already lost its luster? Another question: is the Resurrection simply an historical event that we celebrate, or is it an eternity-altering, life-changing shift in how we view ourselves and our reason for being in this world?

How we view it makes a difference, as we seem to be lacking purpose. It seems like people are more content than ever to just ooze through life, like molasses slowly dripping off a spoon. There’s no drive. There’s no motivation. There’s no yearning to make a difference. In fact, indifference is maybe the best description of it. People don’t care. We just exist. We wake up. Eat. Do nothing for a whole day. Go back to sleep. What are we here for? What is our purpose? Today’s message is needed, because Jesus provides us with the purpose many are lacking.

The word “purpose” needs clarification. We can use it to mean two things: what? and why? Both are essential when it comes to Jesus helping us see our purpose. It is one thing for a person to know the “what?” of his purpose, but if there is no “why?” to his purpose, no drive, no determination, no motivation, then it’s possible that nothing changes. A child knows the purpose (what?) of school – to learn and receive an education. But parents and teachers alike realize that the child/student also needs purpose (why?) – motivation, encouragement, drive, to carry that follow through. 

And Jesus gives it both to us – the “what?” and the “why?” of our purpose. And there is nothing more noble than the purpose Jesus provides. Do you hear that? There is nothing more noble, no greater achievement than the purpose Jesus assigns to us as his disciples. We’ll focus on the “what?” of our purpose in just a moment as we see Jesus dialogue with Peter. But Jesus’ resurrection also provides us with the “why?”  After all, what is more inspiring than his resurrection from the dead? What could be more impactful than the dead end of death being overcome and stripped of the chokehold it would otherwise have on anyone’s purpose? For if the end result of anything we accomplish in this life would simply be the meaninglessness of death, why bother? Why care? Why get up in the morning? What would be the point if death had the final say?

But it doesn’t. There is more. So much more than the here and now, and Jesus’ resurrection helps us see it, helps us see our purpose, and propels us to carry it out with enthusiasm and vigor because we know something that far too many don’t: there’s more. There’s a life waiting for us that by comparison would make the best days of this life seem like a nightmare. Sure, had Jesus remained in the tomb and stayed and decayed, we would have reason to be deflated and defeated, like a boxer getting pummeled who is encouraged to just stay down and give up. But that’s not how it ended. The finality of death was flung off by Jesus’ resurrection. The whole picture of rising up is one of intention and purpose! His death by itself would have been the end, but his Resurrection was just the beginning. It means purpose, purpose for Christ which means purpose for you and me, and by the very same act he propels us to carry out our purpose, meaning that our work makes a real difference! So let us explore and embrace his purpose for us, and let the Resurrection help us see what a profound impact the risen Jesus can make in and through each and every one of us as we feed, care, and follow. 

Jesus told Peter to feed, and he told him twice. The first time he told him to feed lambs, which could mean either little ones, children, or also those who are new to the faith. The second time Jesus told Peter to feed, he used a different word, the word “sheep,” which would include everyone. So his purpose was to feed everyone, little ones, grown ups, and those new to the faith – all of the sheep of God’s flock. 

You don’t have to be a pet expert to realize there is one key requirement for having a pet that matters more than anything else. This key requirement pretty much applies across the board, regardless of the type of pet – dog, cat, bird, hamster, lizard, fish, snake, etc. Whatever type of pet you have, it needs to be fed. You might occasionally miss a meal here or there, but if you go too long without feeding your pet, you won’t have a pet for very long.

I don’t know if there is a simpler analogy in the whole Bible than the concept of needing to be fed to live. Everyone understands that basic truth. Eat and live. Don’t eat and starve. Yet as simple as it might be to comprehend, it may be one of the most difficult to make stick spiritually. Go to church every week. Participate in Bible study. Read your Bible. Have devotions. “But why? Why do I need to do those things?” Because you’ll die if you don’t. Because you want to live. Because you need to be fed to stay alive. And if you don’t take Jesus’ command to feed and be fed seriously, thinking these things don’t really matter or make much of a difference, please see me after the service and I will sadly provide a list of names – many of them names we know – of those who have either died or are dying because they are not being fed. “Feed my sheep” (v.17). That is your purpose!

And care for them. In addition to feeding his sheep, Jesus gave to Peter the command, “Take care of my sheep” (v.16). Feeding sheep is essential to keeping them alive, but it’s not the only thing that is necessary. They also need to be cared for. Whether you’re caring for a newborn or an aging parent, you know that making sure they are fed is not the only thing they need. They aren’t able to carry out basic functions on their own. They aren’t able to know what pills or medicine they need. They need care. 

All of us do – especially in a world that is sending conflicting messages about what it means to care. Consider the messages we’re used to hearing: “Distance yourself. Isolate yourself. Stay away from others. Don’t say anything negative about others living their truth. Mind your own business.” While it isn’t overtly stated, how can anyone ignore that the overall message being received in all of this is “worry about yourself,” and is that really any different than, “stop caring about others?” One of our members just recently commented on how nice it is to come to church and frequently be asked by one person or another, “How are you doing?” Think about where else we can expect to receive such a simple, yet impactful, expression of concern in our world today? Working remotely? From neighbors we don’t know? From distance learning on a screen? But the church is called to care. That is our purpose. That is why you are here – to care for each other. Why does the Acts 2 church have to be the standard for what care should look like among believers in the church? Why can’t we raise the standard even higher? What is stopping us from caring about each other in such a radical way that our neighborhood and community couldn’t help but be attracted to how deeply we care for each other? 

Jesus gives us purpose. He calls us to feed, to care, and also to follow. He told Peter in verse 19 and again in verse 22: “Follow me.”  Not casually. Not occasionally glancing up. Not the way we find ourselves trying to follow two or more screens at the same time when we watch a movie, with the television on, with our phone in hand and another screen on our lap. That’s not focus. That’s not following. That’s being distracted. But it’s also perhaps a better illustration of how many of us follow Jesus. We glance up on occasion from the other stuff in life when we get a break, but we’re not really engaged. We’re not really focused. Jesus is there, and we keep tabs on him and check on him. But we don’t follow him the way he calls us to, we don’t follow him the way the winter storm driver clings to the wheel, white-knuckled, when the road itself is hardly visible and she’s locked in to the red taillights on the car in front of her. THAT’s the kind of following Jesus calls us to do.

Why? Why should you follow, feed, and care for each other? We need to revisit the “why?” of our purpose. Why should you carry out this purpose to which Jesus has called you? Because of what he did for you in the first place to even enable you to not only have a purpose, but to live. Being reminded of our purpose this morning is a double-edged sword, isn’t it? It convicts and condemns each of us for how indifferent we’ve been to his purpose for us, and how infrequently we concern ourselves with carrying it out, and how inadequate even our good days really are. So for all of that, Jesus died. For all of that, more importantly, Jesus rose. He did not need to die and rise for himself, remember. He did not need to depart the holy majesty of heaven for himself. He died and rose so that your purpose would mean something. So that as you feed and care and follow, it would actually matter. For eternity and for this life. The past two Sundays Jesus’ resurrection has helped us overcome negatives – fears and doubts, but too often we fail to see how the Resurrection amplifies our lives, the positives it brings to us. It isn’t just about what he’s freed us from – Satan, sin, and death itself – but also what he has set us free for – purpose! You are not only on this planet for a purpose, but you are here in this place, in this church, around these people God has brought together, for a purpose, for each other. Love your brothers! Love your sisters. And show it.

Did you make that connection that Jesus did for Peter? Three times he asked Peter if he loved him. Each time Peter responded with a resounding “Yes!” Each time Jesus then gave Peter the opportunity not just to speak his love, but to put it into action. Feed. Care. Follow. Jesus loves you fiercely. Do you love him? Really? Then feed, care, follow. You have purpose. Carry it out purposefully with the strength his Resurrection provides.

“Help Me See… that My Doubts are Unfounded”

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(John 20:19-29)

People don’t rise from the dead. People die. They die all the time. We are accustomed to daily news reports of accidents or tragedies that took place, and one of the most commonly reported details in such cases is the number of those dead. Sadly, mass shootings have been a regular occurrence this year so far. We may not be shocked to hear that there’s been another shooting, but we do look immediately to see how many died. Headlines and news stories report people dying. They don’t, however, report people rising from the dead. 

That being the case, we ought not be the least bit surprised by the reaction of Thomas at the news of the resurrected Jesus appearing to the disciples. Dying, sure – that was normal. Everyone died. Word had even spread that Jesus had died. But rising from the dead is not normal, so when this completely abnormal event was reported to Thomas, of course he doubted. Let’s not pretend we would have done otherwise. 

Doubt is most likely in situations that are most unlikely, right? In other words, when there is not a very high probability or likelihood of something taking place, doubt is quite common. Not too long ago when the lottery jackpot kept rising and no one kept winning, I did something I rarely do – I bought a couple of tickets. Do you suppose I had a high level of confidence that I was going to win? Absolutely not, but it’s a fun way to teach my kids that lottery tickets are an absolutely horrible method of financial planning for your retirement. Winning the lottery is reality-based reason to doubt – the likelihood of a person winning is extremely low – especially when the jackpot is high and more tickets are sold! The same could be said of aspirations to play professional sports or fly into space. The likelihood of some things happening is statistically so low that there are reality-based reasons to doubt.

But there is another cause of our doubt. It isn’t always just reality-based; sometimes it’s brain-based. When my mind is made up that something isn’t going to happen and I drum up enough doubt to derail it, or to see to it that a thing never even gets a chance in the first place, that’s a different kind of doubt. “I have been single this long, so I doubt I’ll ever get married.” “I can’t put thoughts to words like this author can, so I could never write a book.” “I’m not a strong enough Christian to serve in my church.” Regardless of what the reality of these situations is, the doubt isn’t based on overwhelming external evidence or statistics or probabilities – it isn’t reality-based, but brain-based. There is something to it when we tell others, “It’s just in your head.” So very often, doubt is, too. It’s just in our head, and as long as we let it take up space there, it will leave us limited.

Of these two types of doubt, reality-based and brain-based, which do you attribute to Thomas? When the disciples ecstatically announced that they had seen the risen Jesus, and Thomas responded, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe” (John 20:25), was his doubt based on reality or was it just in his head? Wouldn’t we be inclined to presume his doubt was reality-based? Remember, dead people don’t rise! Not only is it statistically unlikely – it’s impossible! So it would seem Thomas’s doubts were reality-based. 

Jesus’ resurrection, though, is different. While resurrections in general are not only improbable, but impossible, not only was Jesus’ resurrection possible; it was also predicted! The prophets Isaiah (ch. 9) and Micah (ch. 5) had both predicted that the Messiah’s rule would never end. It would be eternal. Therefore, the Messiah would have to live forever; death could not be the end. Psalms 16 and 22, Jonah, and Isaiah (ch. 53) also make reference to death and rising or living again. Since David died, such references could not be to him alone, but to the Messiah who would not be abandoned to the grave, who would live to see his offspring. The resurrection, while not explicitly stated in the Old Testament, was clearly taught nonetheless.

And Thomas didn’t just have the Old Testament. He also had the words of Jesus himself. Jesus had predicted both clearly and directly on numerous different occasions that he would die and three days later rise again (clear enough, in fact, that even his enemies accused him of making such a claim!). So Thomas also had the words directly from the source!

And Thomas didn’t just have the words of Jesus – though even those would have been more than adequate! He also had the words of the other disciples. Perhaps if one or two had made such a claim, it might be easier to doubt. But all of them agreed. These were people Thomas trusted and respected. They were his friends. They saw Jesus – alive!

So in light of all of the evidence, was Thomas’s doubt in fact reality-based, or brain-based? Think of a similar situation. Suppose tomorrow a headline reveals that a doctor discovered the cure for cancer. Based on reality, you would have reason to doubt. We can’t cure cancer, after all, we can only treat it. But in addition to his claim, he also provides evidence of his studies and work. And on top of that he provides case studies of real-life people whose cancer has been cured, and their friends and witnesses who attest to it! Reality-based doubt suddenly falls by the wayside when a previous reality changes. So it was with Jesus’ resurrection. Dead people don’t rise. Until Jesus did. Any doubt about it at that point was no longer reality-based, but brain based. It was all in Thomas’s head. 

Let’s shift now from Thomas’s doubts to yours. From where do most of your doubts stem? Are they based in reality or in your own brain? 

Take our theological doubts. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Christian or not – there are plenty of teachings and concepts and characteristics about God that leave us doubting from time to time… even the event that is the reason for this season of the church year and the focus of this series: the Resurrection. There are times when we are pondering our relationship with God and doubts arise as to whether or not Jesus did rise. And, while we’re at it, let’s be totally honest and go back a step further – there are even times we doubt if God exists. There, I said it – do you feel better? Now those might be the big ones, but they’re just the tip of our theological doubts. Ever doubted the Trinity? Ever doubted Creation? Ever doubted that in respect to our roles as men and women, God actually did create us differently, and that it’s a good thing? Ever doubt that there’s a hell… or even a heaven? You’re not alone. 

But I don’t know how much of a comfort that is. See, you’re not alone because every doubt you and I have about God can be traced all the way back to the same seed of doubt planted in the Garden of Even. Tragically, it sprouted immediately into sin. Satan introduced doubt into Eve’s mind when he asked, “Did God really say you couldn’t eat the fruit?” (Gen. 3). Just as surely as that doubt snowballed into sin, so today it is no different. Our doubts about God aren’t merely the stuff of innocent ignorance, but rather willful rebellion. Doubts about God are natural for a human race that despises being beneath anyone else, that wants no one over us, no one controlling us, no one the boss of us. But even that false impression we have of God isn’t from God himself, but from his enemy. The relationship Adam & Eve first had with God was nothing like what Satan tries to sell us today! It was beautiful! Harmonious! No bossing or controlling – only perfect love seen for what it truly was! Before the Fall, when Adam & Eve had enjoyed the holy image of God, there was no doubt, because there was only perfect understanding. But where sin reigns in this world, doubt abounds.

So we find ourselves between a rock and a hard place. Do we give in to doubt, keep our heads stuck in the sand about the reality of our doubts being indicative of our sinful nature and its ultimate destination of hell, or in repentance do we trade in our doubts for trust? Do I trust that my sin – all of it, including every ounce of doubt – has been forgiven? Do I believe that my doubts, while common to us all and which would rightly condemn us all, have been dealt with and disallowed as inadmissible evidence against me because of Good Friday and Easter Sunday? Do I believe that my gracious God actually wants to replace my crippling doubts with concrete trust in him? Do I believe that the Resurrection truly does help me see all of this? Do I believe that a former way of life that was riddled with doubt can give way to a life full of faith, of confident trust in a compassionate, gracious, forgiving God? Do I believe it can make a difference living a life that is secure and assured, not in self, but in my resurrected Savior and his promises? If you believe these things – when you believe these things, you experience the exact blessings Jesus promised to Thomas when he appeared to him a week later and said, “Peace be with you! Stop doubting and believe… blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (cf. v.26-28). As the Holy Spirit increasingly replaces your doubts with his trust, blessings will multiply in your life.

Finally, whether reality-based or brain-based, we doubt on a daily basis. But… we also trust on a daily basis. Every bite of food you eat, you are trusting that you’ll swallow it without choking. Every time you obey a traffic light, you trust others will do the same and not collide into you. Every time you follow the doctor’s orders and the directions on the pill bottle, you trust that doing so will be good for you. When you go to bed at night, you trust you will wake up in the morning. Everything I just mentioned amounts to a fraction of the times we exercise trust each day, and they all have this in common: not one of them is 100% reliable! Your personal experience has taught you that! Yet we still live daily placing our trust in these trivial activities. So what do you suppose happens when we place our trust completely in the one who is 100% reliable, in the God who has never failed to follow through with a promise, who has always had the best eternal interest of his people on his heart and mind, who went to the lengths he did to put you at peace? Friends, now as much as ever, it is time for us to leave Thomas and his doubts behind and let the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead help us see that our doubts are unfounded. Christ is risen, he is risen indeed!

“Help Me See… that I don’t Have to Be Afraid”

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(John 20:1-18)

Over the years when people have commented on the relatively tiny Bible I use while preaching, the running joke has always been that you’ll know when my age is showing and my eyesight is going because that’s when I’ll start lugging around a bigger large-print version. Well, it’s probably time to at least acknowledge that I am increasingly becoming more and more aware of quickly that need is arriving. It’s nothing major, really – just a word or two here or there that I mistake for another, or adjusting its distance from my eyes. While I don’t think it’s yet a significant issue, I can tell that certain details here and there do seem to be a little fuzzier than they used to be, and not just to an aging brain, mind you, but to aging eyes.  

But our eyes aren’t the only way we see. In fact we talk about it in quite another way, when another person doesn’t “see” things the way I do. We aren’t talking about physical sight in those instances, but sharing a similar perspective or opinionated view about something. Teenagers lament that their parents don’t get it. What they mean is that parents don’t see things the same way they do (BTW, it’s true – and thank God that they don’t!). And this past year has exposed so many different ways that so many different people see so many different things. People see things differently. One sees excessive police brutality; another sees an officer doing his job under extremely stressful circumstances. One sees the government just doing its job; another sees it far overstepping its role. One associates a mask and vaccinations with saving lives; another associates it with control and loss of freedom. We see things differently.

Here is a question we have to answer before we go any further: Am I willing to acknowledge that there may be another way to see something than the way I see it? It sounds so absurd to even have to ask that, but in this day and age, we seem to be much more interested in solidifying our own deep-seated personal opinions than we are in learning why someone else might see something differently. So if you are too proud or too entrenched in your own opinion to ever be open to the possibility that in some cases, there may be another way to see something, then you might want to tune out right now. This isn’t for you. But if you are open to seeing things differently, then pay attention, because Easter specializes in this department. The Resurrection helps us see differently. When unprecedented, historic events take place, we forever see things differently afterward. Man couldn’t fly. Then he flew, and we’ve never seen things the same way. Man could never land on the moon. Then he did, and we’ve never seen things the same way. 

So if ever there was something that just might lead me to see things differently, it’s when something happens that isn’t typical, ordinary, or normal. And the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is anything by typical, ordinary, or normal. So when there’s a claim that someone rose from the dead, and when billions of people throughout history have believed and still believe that claim, it merits consideration. This morning and in the weeks that follow, we want to be open to the possibility of how the single boldest claim in all of history – the Resurrection – might Help Me See.

I mentioned how this last year has revealed how many different ways we see things. Yet the real issue is not just seeing things differently – that has always been the case and always will be. The real issue is that we have become so polarized over those differences. THAT is the issue. Why were your grandparents and their grandparents able to see things differently without being so polarized by those differences like we are today? Do you know what the difference today is? Fear. The polarization comes from fear.

Before you quickly dismiss that notion, let me suggest a possible reason you may not see it that way: the older we get, the better we get at hiding our fear behind other things. We hide it behind anger – one of the more popular options of our culture today – that a person really only cares about something if he’s angry enough to do something about it. So we have cancel culture. We also hide our fear behind indifference. We claim not to care about something or have an opinion about something because we’re afraid that if we actually express it, it might not be the popular one or might get shot down, so we quietly pretend it doesn’t matter to us one way or the other. And we can also hide our fear behind humor. We suppress our concern behind jokes that seek to downplay one view or another, so that others would conclude that it’s not really a big deal to me if I am joking about it all the time. And fear is such a crippling thing that we’ll hide it behind anger, indifference, and humor for years, decades, even, rather than deal with or address the fear that is behind them. 

Mary brought her fears with her to the tomb. “Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!” (v.1-2). One can understand why she was so distraught. The past several days had been an emotional tug-of-war. Her Savior had died as she helplessly watched. The least she could do was provide him with a proper burial. She would be honored to carry out that responsibility. But her heart, still heavy with thoughts of the crucifixion weighing it down, would find no relief even in serving her Savior in his burial, for he wasn’t there! And after she had returned from telling the disciples, John tells us she remained outside the tomb mourning, not for her dead Savior, but from the overwhelm of not knowing where his body was. She explained her fears to the angels, and even to Jesus himself, thinking he was the gardener. She didn’t know what to think, what to feel, what to do!

Then everything changed. Jesus spoke to her. Called her name. “Jesus said to her, ‘Mary.’ She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, ‘Rabboni!’ (which means ‘Teacher’)” (v.16). Take note of what happened that changed everything! It wasn’t seeing – she had already seen the empty tomb. She had even already seen Jesus himself, but it wasn’t until she heard that she could really see. She had to hear to see. And when she heard Jesus call her name, when she heard the voice of her Savior, the fear melted away. After Jesus explained to Mary what would happen next, John tells us, “Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: ‘I have seen the Lord!’ And she told them that he had said these things to her” (v.18). So when she heard, she saw, and when she saw, her fears melted away. She arrived at the tomb filled with fear that it was empty, but she departed that tomb that day leaving her fear behind. 

I can tell you from my experience, and many of you would agree, that is precisely the power the empty tomb has. Before we arrive at the tomb, we are filled with fear, but after we hear the voice of our risen Savior and see, we leave our fears behind. Just like Mary, when we hear, we see. When we hear his voice speak to us in the Scriptures, we see that we have nothing to fear. 

What is your greatest fear? Listen to the voice of your resurrected Savior, and he will help you see. Is your greatest fear that you’ll never have enough, that you’ll never be able to keep up with the Joneses’? Jesus said, “life does not consist in an abundance of possessions,” (Lk. 12:15), but “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (Jn. 10:10). Is your greatest fear not being loved or accepted by others in general, or by someone specific? Jesus said that God loved you so much that he gave up his only Son for you (Jn. 3:16). Is your greatest fear not knowing how something is going to play out or what the future holds? Jesus encourages you to look at how he cares for all of nature and the animal kingdom and that you are much more valuable than they – don’t worry, he will take care of you in the future (Mt. 6). Is your greatest fear being overcome by circumstances in a world that feels as if it is slowly splitting at its seams? To that fear, Jesus says, “Take heart! I have overcome the world” (Jn. 16:33). Is your greatest fear having to take your last breath and not knowing what happens next, not knowing where you stand with God? Fear not, for Jesus “shared in [your] humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death – that is the devil – and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death” (Hebrews 2:14-15).

So many of our fears are based on the unknown. We don’t know what’s on the other side, and so we fear. But let us leave today with the same encouragement a doctor gave his patient. The patient explained that he was afraid of dying, because he didn’t know what was on the other side of death. He looked to his doctor for answers. “I don’t know,” replied his doctor. “You don’t know? Aren’t you a Christian, and you don’t know what’s on the other side?” While they were talking, the doctor was holding the handle of the door to the room, and there was scratching and whining on the other side of the door. As soon as he opened the door, a dog eagerly darted into the room to smother the doctor. The doctor turned to his patient and asked, “Did you see how eagerly my dog flew into this room? He’s never been in this room before. He didn’t know what would be inside of this room except for one thing: me, his master. That was enough for him to spring into the room without fear. I may not know all the details about what is on the other side of death, but I do know that my master, my Savior is on the other side. And that is enough.” May we all continue to hear the voice of the resurrected living Jesus, so that he would help us see that we, too, don’t have to be afraid. Christ is risen, he is risen indeed!

“Habits of His Grace: Humility”

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(Mark 11:1-10)

A mutual friend recently sent this message to my wife: “What I love about myself is I work hard to gain humility.” We realize the irony of a statement like this is quite humorous. It also shows why humility is such a challenge for us – we want to be recognized for it when/if we achieve it! To demonstrate that truth, how would you rate your development in this department over the past year or two? Would you give yourself a fairly decent rating on a scale of 1 to 10 for having gradually improved in being more humble? And here’s the meta question: if you would be inclined to give yourself a strong or even respectable score in growing in humility, wouldn’t that actually be an indicator that you haven’t grown? If you were truly humble, wouldn’t you consistently give yourself a very low score? And, to take it a step further, if you’re now saying to yourself, “yes, I do give myself a low score in the area of humility,” doesn’t that come from a place of wanting to be recognized or acknowledged for your humility, which is of course the exact opposite of humility?!? Ach! Our lack of humility is humiliating!

The reason behind this frustration has been quoted frequently by C.S. Lewis: “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.” The greatest concern that man has had ever since the Fall is self-preservation. Putting others first is not our default mode. Thinking of how we might serve others with all that we are and all that we have is not the first thought that fills our head when we wake up in the morning. We don’t think of how the day’s events affect others, but how they affect me. Humility isn’t natural; it is a habit of his grace. And Palm Sunday (Passion Sunday), the start of Holy Week (Passion Week), puts Jesus’ humility on display. 

The colt is a picture of humility. A donkey was not a picture of greatness or royalty, but a work animal, and nothing more. A horse, on the other hand, can be a fickle animal, prideful even. If it doesn’t want to be ridden, its rider won’t have an easy time mounting it. But a donkey puts up no fuss when being forced to labor or carry a burden. It humbly does what it is asked. Little girls don’t clamor for a donkey, but a horse. No one says they want to buy a farm and raise donkeys. We associate them not with greatness, but with humility. So how appropriate that a donkey would be the animal chosen to carry the humble Savior to Jerusalem, his final destination.

But perhaps you’ve found yourself wondering the same thing I wondered this recently: if this is an act of humility in the first place, then why is Jesus riding anything into Jerusalem? Why not quietly sneak in the back door, unnoticed? Why not just walk into Jerusalem without making a big scene? Why ride? Why all the fanfare? Is that really humility?

The colt and the praise-proclaiming parade of people have less to do with humility or some overt attempt on Jesus’ part to draw attention to himself, and much more to do with fulfilling Scripture. The Word of God said these things would happen, and so they had to happen that way. The prophet Zechariah prophesied that Jesus would enter into Jerusalem amidst rejoicing and on a donkey. “Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey” (9:9). 

Maybe it isn’t a surprise to see people shouting in the middle of a parade, but… why were the crowds present in the first place? They hadn’t received a text message that the Messiah was coming. There weren’t billboards announcing Jesus’ arrival. There were no television or radio ads publicizing the date and time of the Savior’s arrival, so from where did these crowds suddenly appear? God’s divine hand was clearly intervening to clarify the magnitude of this event. And they didn’t just shout any old thing, but very specific words that Mark recorded: “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!” (11:9-10). Was it mere coincidence that the shouts of the people echoed Psalm 118? No – prophecy was being fulfilled. 

So no, these details don’t detract from Jesus’ humility so much as they draw attention to the fulfillment of Scripture. For that reason, Jesus’ humility is ironic and one-of-a-kind: his humility is by its uniqueness attractive. The one quality that goes against drawing attention to oneself is exactly the quality that makes Jesus so attractive. It wasn’t pride – to be known for the sake of being known, or to be famous for the sake of being famous – that compelled Jesus. Rather, his perfect humility set him apart. His humility is attractive because it’s unlike any other humility the world has ever seen.

There are two elements of Jesus’ humility that make it stand out (aside from the simple fact that his humility was perfect!). First of all, his humility is remarkable because of who he is. Don’t you love how Paul put it in Philippians? “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage” (2:6). Jesus, eternal Jesus, God-in-the-flesh Jesus, answers to no-one Jesus, did not use his divine nature to trample over every earthly authority – which was itself established by him in the first place! 

Aren’t those the examples of humility that stand out most to us? When we see the highly regarded and those to whom society looks up act in humility, it is more noticeable because of who they are. So when Jesus acts in humility, it stands out so much because of who he is.

The other element of his humility that makes it stand out? Who we are. We know who Jesus is, and that he would humble himself for anyone defies our understanding; that he would humble himself for the likes of us takes humility to a whole other level. Turn the table for a moment. For whom are you more likely to humble yourself – a king, a president, a brilliant professor, or… your garbage collector, the barista who messed up your order, or the less-than-helpful customer-service rep on the phone? It’s one thing to humble ourselves before those we look up to, but to humble ourselves before those we perceive to be beneath us? That’s not so easy. 

Jesus achieved both in his humility. His divine nature didn’t go to his head, so to speak, and he humbled himself for you. For you, who think too highly of yourself too often. For you, who think too little of Jesus too often. For you, who stumbles back into sin so effortlessly. For you, so disinterested in really putting any effort into your life of sanctification and these habits of his grace. He, who is everything, humbled himself and “made himself nothing” (as Paul put it in Philippians 2:7) for you, who are nothing apart from him.

The One who is everything made himself nothing so that you, who are nothing, might have everything. And because of what he humbly rode into Jerusalem to do, you do have everything. Do you understand that? His humility is the reason you have everything. Humility that will see him serve the least of his disciples on Maundy Thursday. Humility that will see him scorned and suffer on Good Friday of this week. Humility that will see him die and be damned by the Father. 

All so that you could not only avoid all of that, but also in its place receive everything. Your sins are forgiven. You have peace. You have no reason to fear death. You have the promise of never having to go without what is needed. What does the world offer that compares to the “everything” you have through your humble Savior? Nothing that lasts. Nothing that endures. Nothing that makes a real difference. Nothing but fickle, fleeting, empty promises that will never satisfy. Let go of your attachments to the nothing of this world in favor of the “everything” you have in Jesus.

And then take seriously Paul’s encouragement: “In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5). Be humble like Jesus. You already have everything. Treat others as better than you. Think of others before yourself. Serve others before you serve yourself. Let the person cut in front of you in line. Let the driver into your lane. Let her go first. Put yourself beneath everyone else and in your humility find genuine joy that comes from being able to because you already have everything through him who made himself nothing for you.