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| Now What? (Ephesians 2:1 -10) |
| Written by Pastor Fausel | |
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Grace, mercy and peace be to you … It’s not often that our readings for a given Sunday go together so well …and at the same time, offer such a wealth of talk about God’s love. Our reading from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians gives us the flagship verses from Scripture which testify to our being saved by His undeserved gift of grace trough faith alone … Eph. 2:8-9 … “For by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast …” And Our Gospel for today has that well know and wonderful passage, John 3:16 … “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” And, if these passages were not enough, we have this very pointed object lesson from the Old Testament about Moses’ Snake on a pole which foreshadowed and pointed to the ministry of Christ … As we hear Jesus Himself point back to those days of Moses in our reading from John’s Gospel. Now. Having these wonderful texts … and all the lessons they teach us about God’s love and grace … can be like having a car with a beautiful fuel-injected, twin-cam engine in the driveway, all washed and polished … gassed up … but with no where to go. And unfortunately, that image of a powerful, beautiful car going nowhere is the picture that some claim that many churches look like today… All gassed up, tuned up, shined up and polished … but going nowhere … and with no inclination even to venture out of the drive way. Why that picture? Well, it’s said that we Pastors, with the help of the Holy Spirit, have held up these wonderful truths of Scripture… and through words and examples have made the character of God … His love and His Forgiveness come alive … but then … we’ve not told the people what they’re supposed to do… the “what’s next.” Well… one school of thought on this says that the preaching of salvation through the blood of Jesus Christ is the essence of the faith … and once a person is in that faith, then, the Holy Spirit in them does the rest. The Holy Spirit will bring about those good works that God prepared in advance for them to do. But another school of thought says that that’s just the beginning … after the Spirit, through the word, has made a person a child of God, they must be encouraged and shown how, if we expect them to live out their faith. And as you may well suspect, these two schools of thought have been differently embraced by different church denominations Lutherans, by enlarge, have been characterized as those who have left the question of “What’s next … after I’ve come to faith?” to the Holy Spirit. And there is good biblical precedence for that … God’s Word promises that He will, through the Holy Spirit, complete the good work He began in each and every one of us. But the detractors of this point of view, point to our church, The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod in particular, and call us a “Sleeping Giant.” They point to us as a church full of those with a wonderful understanding of God’s mercy and grace, but also as a church which is content to just sit on Sunday mornings… at least that’s their perception. You see, they don’t see us out there sharing this wonderful, beautiful gift of the Gospel God has given us. They see us open to those who might come into the church on their own and join us … but otherwise, it would seem to them that we would rather keep this great power of the Gospel to ourselves. It’s a funny thing about perceptions … somewhere in them there usually is a grain of truth. So … as a reaction to that criticism … some within our church body have gone and adopted a view of church and ministry that puts a lot of emphasis on encouraging people to go out and do good works. And in their midst you’ll hear sermons which are more of what you might call “practical.” The emphasis of the message tends to be more on me and my activities, my response to faith … than it is about Jesus Christ. Our Human Nature likes that kind of message; it’s about me, it’s something I can relate to. I might be encouraged in such a message by hearing about the trials somebody else went through … or the work that others are doing. Unfortunately, all the while, Jesus, His life, His death and His resurrection get moved further and further into the background. Sure, Jesus is held up as our motivation for what we DO … but more and more that’s all Jesus becomes … a good example, a teacher, a guide. What happens in that context when we talk about Jesus as our bloody sacrifice for our sins? Our human nature doesn’t want to hear talk about that… We would much rather hear people speak glowingly about good deeds … and good works … and about how God is pleased by our obedience and behavior … so much so, that He might even be moved to reward us with a higher station in heaven. And wouldn’t we rather sing something else … rather that those reverent, but sober hymns, which speak of Jesus’ suffering and death? You see … when we remove grace and faith from their object, namely, Jesus Christ, we are opening ourselves up for a trick of Satan. We get tricked into believing that once we’ve been saved by God, we become totally new people … that we’re no longer wretched, blind or lost … and implied in that, is that it’s now our job to go out and win one for the gipper. But what happens then? Life is great for a while, until our Old Adam comes back and surprises us. And we find that we’re still a wretch in many ways…, and in other ways … we’re still lost and blind. And for many souls, when this occurs, they lose their faith. Like the seed that fell on the rocky soil, they sprang up quickly, but just as quickly, they withered away. They lost their faith not because of persecution from without, but because they found in themselves a paradox … two equal but opposing truths at work in their lives … which they could not deal with. And the Paradox is this: They claim to be Christians … and yet they are still sinners … and because they are, they begin to doubt God’s love and grace as they fail to live up to their own, much less God’s, standards. Now obviously, that’s the outcome of one extreme, emphasizing ME over Christ in our worship. … But on the other hand … just ignoring the practical … can lead to us looking like that car all gassed and polished up with nowhere to go. That’s why we have chosen to take a middle road. To be a Church that can sing the sober, objective Hymns about God’s Love and Grace in Christ Jesus … as well as sing those songs that let us express our personal joy of having received that grace. A Church that never lets Jesus out of the Spotlight in our messages … but also a church that can teach some practical things about Christian living … like “Experiencing God” and most recently our series during Epiphany on personally sharing our faith. But … we are also Lutherans When our worship is Christ centered, our response is not to just run out and do something for God. The response is … in all humility … to come and approach His altar, and there receive His Body and Blood for the assurance of His Love and Grace … His forgiveness and our salvation. And the Power of His Holy Spirit to live our lives for Him. You see …as we live in this world, we truly are like the Israelites who were bitten by the snakes. Notice that God didn’t make the snakes go away … He didn’t give the people an antidote to drink which would make them forever immune to the snake’s venom No, God told Moses to make a symbol, a symbol on a pole. To be saved then, the people had to repent. That means give up their pride in themselves and admit their need for God … admit their inability to save themselves … and then in all humility …to look upon God’s provision for their salvation. So it is with us. I pray that when we come to worship, that it’s not about what’s in for us … but we come like the Greeks who came to Philip the disciple asking, “Sir, we would see Jesus.” We cast our eyes upon Him who is our salvation, we put our faith and trust in Him, and in so doing are not deceived into trusting our own works and our own deeds … as Godly motivated as they may be. Think about it… What is our response to God’s grace? Humble praise? Yes, in how we worship … and in how we live … so that. …in the everyday, even mundane things of life … Christ Jesus is seen in us. St. Paul talks about these works in our Epistle reading. Works that God created us in Christ Jesus to do … Truth is, they’re not always of the “trophy-case” variety. Remember the scene Jesus paints of the final judgment? The sheep He puts on His right are dumbfounded as he praises them for their works of just everyday caring … feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting those sick and in prison … “When did we do these things for You, Lord?” the righteous respond, unaware, it would seem, that they were doing the works God had prepared for them all along. And that’s really the Good News we have this morning. God has, as Paul tells us, prepared in advance these “good works” for us to do. The constant in all this is faith… faith makes us who we are. And who we are determines how we will live our lives … and out of that will naturally flow … what we do. Being precedes doing, just as love precedes loving. Think about what God was doing through Moses again. Moses lifted up a snake on a pole. Our Job, our good work, is to hold up Christ. And to hold up Christ means for us to hold fast to Him and to all that He taught. And to point to Him and His merits, not our own and not to ourselves. You see, we have a great testimony to share … but it’s not ours … it’s God’s! It’s Jesus’ … And as we share that testimony … we are walking in His light. We pray His blessings on us all today … that His Grace would be the Hallmark of each of our lives… In Him. Amen. |