Monthly Archives: March 2020
Come Back to Me.. and be Happy! A sermon on Romans 5
Come Back to Me
and Be Happy
Roman 5:1-8
† In Jesus Name †
May the grace of God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ be so real in your life that you now true joy and happiness!
What am I thinking?
As I looked over the reading for tonight, the one word I would choose to describe my emotions was “mad”.
The only problem is I couldn’t figure out was whether I was mad as in angry at God, or mad as in insane. I honestly don’t know.
This isn’t right, to have this place of peace so empty, so devoid of smiles and laughter, of even the tears that come as we find it easy to lay our burdens down.
It has been a hard day, our preschool “chapel” time was just Susan, three teachers and myself. Looking forward to tonight, with just a few of us here, was difficult.
I so want to share the Lord’s supper with every person possible!
And as I looked at the sermon schedule, planned months ago, based on readings set in place decades ago…. I realized I was supposed to preach on happiness.
Come on God, what are you thinking?
And the madness elevated to another level.
But look at the verse again,
Christ has also introduced us to God’s undeserved kindness on which we take our stand. So we are happy, as we look forward to sharing in the glory of God. Romans 5:2 (CEV)
So are happiness comes from more than this life, it comes from looking forward to sharing in the glory of God forever….
We know we will be happy then… but what about now?
The process of suffering?
Paul continued this passage… now please remember this was planned months ago… don’t blame me – I am just the messenger…
3 But that’s not all! We gladly suffer, because we know that suffering helps us to endure. 4 And endurance builds character,
How in the world do we gladly suffer through a pandemic, through watching people whose anxiety levels are maxed out, who are challenged beyond our ability? I know that a lot of you aren’t worried by the virus, as much as you hurt for those who you love whose lives are more impacted.
Some of you will understand what I mean when I say that watching people suffer, watching them struggle is harder often than struggling ourselves.
And yet, the saints I know who are my age and older, have seen God work through wars, and earthquakes, through sickness, and economically challenging times, and they know God will be with us in these times. God will be there with our laughter, and with our tears.
And His presence will give us hope, a hope that will never disappoint us.
For that Hope is found in the presence of God, a presence we can faintly see now, but will see in all its glory one day.
This is why He calls us back to Him, to give us this hope as we realize how …. beyond words His promises are.
In times like these, we need to be able to focus, to realize how much God loves us. That is how we find the strength to get through. That is why Paul goes from hope – the right to explaining why we have hope.
All of this happens because God has given us the Holy Spirit, who fills our hearts with his love. 6 Christ died for us at a time when we were helpless and sinful. 7 No one is really willing to die for an honest person, though someone might be willing to die for a truly good person. 8 But God showed how much he loved us by having Christ die for us, even though we were sinful.
Romans 5:5-8 (CEV)
We need to hear that right now, that even before we knew God’s love, back when we were even more rebellious and sinful, GOD LOVED US.
And if he loved us then, He certainly has not given up on that love, or the mercy that sustains us, and calls us back to Him, even in the deepest depth of sin….
He still calls us to come back to Him,
He still will forgive us when we ask
He will still throw a feast for us, as we come home.
He loves us, the children who finally realize our need for Him…
That is how we find happiness in the midst of trauma, tragedy, and yes pandemic.
That is how we gladly embrace our suffering, knowing He is here…
This is our God… who loves us…
And happy are all He calls to His feast.
AMEN!
Encountering God in the Midst of Isolation
Encounter God amid Isolation
(and be happy!)
John 4:5-26
† In Jesus Name †
May the grace of God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ simply leave you praising Him…
What is God Looking for
What do you preach on, when the world seems, unlike anything you have ever experienced? What do you wen everything doesn’t make sense, and you seem to be holding on by the edge of your fingers?
How do you cope, when the new term for the day is “social distance.” And we are being told and telling people not to shake hands, or even exchange elbows.
How do we cope?
Of all the people in scripture, the Samaritan woman at the well knew the frustration of isolation, She went to well at lunchtime, in the middle of the heat of the day, because there was no one there. Five times she had been abandoned by her husbands, and the latest jerk didn’t respect her enough to marry her, he just used her… and therefore the women in town treated her like trash if they even thought of her at all.
She was isolated, lonely, probably more than a little bitter.
And then it happened, she encountered God.
We need to hear her story today, and realize we encounter Jesus the same way,
The problem – do we really know Him
As the encounter goes on, as they move from an odd discussion about water to an odder discussion about her past, Jesus then says something that seems a bit… abrupt.
You Samaritans know very little about the one You worship…
The original language is blunter – you don’t know the one you worship.
That is harsh, especially if you want to keep a conversation going!
This God you claim to worship – you don’t know who He is, or anything about him.
I am surprised she didn’t run off at that moment!
Or at least say, “What do you mean, I don’t know who God is? Who do you think you are?”
But it is true, that there are times in our lives when we wouldn’t recognize God if He was standing right in front of us, or if He dropped right into our hands.
That is one of our challenges in life, that when we all to often isolate ourselves from God. That all to often we self-quarantine and miss out on the love we so desperately need. It is not coronavirus that does this, but our own sin, as if we think w could infect God, or maybe he has some kind of scanner that will toss us out of His presence.
How the problem is being taken care of.
How we need to encounter Jesus the way this lady did!
Right in the middle of her self-isolation, right in the middle of her questioning what was going on in life, right in the middle of her brokenness.
God showed up.
It wasn’t even the normal route from Jerusalem to Galilee, not even a secondary route. Peter must have been navigating for them to come to this place.
That day, that moment, she encountered God, and of all the people in the middle east, this Palestinian woman with a life that didn’t make sense encounters God, and hears Jesus confess something he was vague about until the resurrection.
Then Jesus told her, I AM the Messiah!
This lady would run to her village, and without realizing it, shatter all her isolation, her self-imposed quarantine would disappear, as she shared with all the others the Messiah. Jesus would stay with them a while, but the change he made in her life, in that encounter was amazing.
It is the encounter He would have with each one of us this morning.
In the middle of our brokenness, in the middle of our questioning, in the middle our frustration, our questions, our fears.
He is here.
I am the Messiah is an incredible statement, for it means God anointed Him to come here for her, and for you. To be more than your savior, more than someone who lifts you up and gives you hope.
To be the Messiah, your Messiah means to reveal to you that you are loved by God.
It all begins there, with the love of God, that brings God to weird places, like beside a well, or to a church in Cerritos in the middle of a pandemic in Lent.
To people who need to know that their past will be forgiven, that their deepest thirst will be satisfied, that God will reveal Himself to them…
This is our miracle today, whether here in person, or “out there” watching the service. You are not alone, you are not quarantined from God, you are not isolated any longer from Him, so let us worship the Lord.
The Lord God is with you! AMEN!
Is God Causing Pandemic To Make You Suffer for Your Sins? Here is the answer
Photo by Wouter de Jong on Pexels.com
Devotional Thought of the Day:
1 As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man who had been blind from birth.2 “Rabbi,” his disciples asked him, “why was this man born blind? Was it because of his own sins or his parents’ sins?”3“It was not because of his sins or his parents’ sins,”Jesus answered.“This happened so the power of God could be seen in him.4We must quickly carry out the tasks assigned us by the one who sent us.The night is coming, and then no one can work.5But while I am here in the world, I am the light of the world.” John 9:1-5 (NLT2)
But some may say, “It is my complaint that my sufferings cannot be compared with the sufferings of the saints. I am a sinner and do not deserve to be compared with them. They suffered for their innocence, but I suffer for my sins. Little wonder that they bore everything so blithely!” That is a very stupid statement. If you suffer because of your sins, then you ought to rejoice that you are being purged of your sins. Then, too, were not the saints also sinners?
During my life, I have noticed that after disasters and major challenges, some groups come out and blame the trauma on the fact that someone has sinned. They blindly say this epidemic or that earthquake, or whatever tragedy is because of this groups’ sin.
Glad I haven’t seen that so far… I really don’t want to get that angry.
But it is a question that has been asked before. While I wouldn’t call it stupid the way Luther did, it does show a lack of knowledge about God., about His love for you and the incredible depth of His mercy. These things aren’t new, the love and mercy is gloriously rampant throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament.
God doesn’t punish this group of sinners less than that group. For all have sinned – we see that in the world, and of course scripture acknowledges it. Even the “heroes” and holy prophets did. They had their time of weakness, scripture has no problem showing us that!
But even in the midst of our suffering, we can see God at work, using the moment to bring us back, to cleanse us of our sin, to reveal to us again that we are saints, that we are the people He is healing who have been broken by sin, even shattered by it. Yet God can and does put us back together.
The power of God seen in us… healing our brokenness, while using us to help heal others.
What a glorious thing!
Lord, help us just look to you! Help us to depend on Your love and mercy. Help us to rejoice in Your glorious work that is revealed in our lives, even during this time of pandemic. We pray this in the Namr of the Father, and of the Son † and of the Holy Spirit! Amen!
Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Vol. 42: Devotional Writings I, ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann, vol. 42 (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1999), 140.
The Kind of Faith We Need in These Days
Devotional Thought of the Day:
David sneaked over and cut off a small piecen of Saul’s robe, but Saul didn’t notice a thing. 5 Afterwards, David was sorry that he had even done that, †7 and he told his men, “Stop talking foolishly. We’re not going to attack Saul. He’s my king, and I pray that the LORD will keep me from doing anything to harm his chosen king.” 1 Sam. 24:4-7 CEV
One may do more mighty works, and may bring more glory to his Father, but he whose name is the least in the kingdom of heaven is as much the child of God as he who stands among the King’s mighty men. Let this cheer and comfort us, when we draw near to God and say, “Our Father.”
Yet, while we are comforted by knowing this, let us not rest contented with weak faith, but ask, like the Apostles, to have it increased. However feeble our faith may be, if it be real faith in Christ, we shall reach heaven at last, but we shall not honour our Master much on our pilgrimage, neither shall we abound in joy and peace.
Of all the things King David did in his life that demonstrate trust in God, there are two that stick out as incredible.
Twice he had the opportunity to kill the man who was hunting him down, who was stalking him. He could have killed him right there, and the nation would have never batted an eye.
He didn’t though, and he demonstrated the kind of faith we need in this time, a faith that can obey God, even when disobeying would make life easier, or less worrisome. Faith that isn’t content with self-preservation, but trusts God when we are oppressed, when we are struggling, and when we are being tempted
Spurgeon is right of course, that those who are weak in faith, yet still have it, will find themselves in heaven, but the earth will be more like hell. Anxieties and self-preservation will lead to temptations which will lead to the brokenness of sin.
Yet trusting God, hearing His voice as He cleanses us of all sin and shows us how to truly love others, is what faith is all about. It sets aside our fears, knowing that God is bigger than what our minds imagine.
He is with us… and His love inspires and empowers our ability to love more than seek after our own needs and preservation.
even in the presence of those who think they are our enemies…
God is with you and loves you….
AMEN!
C. H. Spurgeon, Morning and Evening: Daily Readings (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1896).
Priorities in a Time of Plague
Devotional Thought of the Day:
31 “So don’t worry about these things, saying, ‘What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?’ 32 These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs. 33 Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.
Matthew 6:31-33 (NLT2)
Raise magnificent buildings? Construct sumptuous palaces? Let others raise them. Let others construct them. Souls! Let us give life to souls—for those buildings and for those palaces! What fine dwellings are being prepared for us!
There is a balance to life, especially a religious life.
It is hard not to worry about the food we will eat this week or next. It is hard not to see the pictures of the lines. It is hard not to try and make large plans, and make decisions that affect our people. It seems every other day that the government is changing what restrictions are out there, and foreseeing the impact on our people is hard.
As I get to work, my instinct is to lay aside my devotions, to get right to work. There is so much to do, so many people to talk to, care for, so many different things to consider, how do I have time for 30-45 minutes (or preferably 75-90 to catch my breath and remember I dwell in God’s presence?
My devotional readings this morning were kind of bland.. which didn’t help. I didn’t see anything much to think through that was applicable to my day until I got to St. Josemaria.
Soul care! What German Lutherans call seel-sorge – this is our calling as the church. Making sure our people are looking to God – realizing that even now, we still need ot seek Him, and lay our burdens down. Then take the guidance He offers, and go about our lives, assured of His peace.
So I will let those who make the decisions, make the decisions. I will care for those who come to me and go to the ones who are mine. I will point them to Jesus, and find ways to help.
God is with us, and the peace that news brings gives us the ability to live, and love those around us.
Seek Jesus first!
It will make a difference.
Escriva, Josemaria. The Way . Scepter Publishers. Kindle Edition.
Encounter God – Sermon #1 Encounter God in the Midst of Sin
Encounter God… in the Midst of Sin?
Genesis 3:1-21
† In Jesus Name †
May the grace of God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ enable you to know He ill always provide for you.
Where are you?
In the series we are starting today, we are going to look at a number of people who encountered God in scripture. Each one is different, each has a story to tell, a story that many of us will relate to, stories we can learn from, which will cause us to grow in our faith, that will help us to depend on God longer.
Just as these people did, many of them the hard way.
Just like us!
So we start with Adam and Eve.
Where it all started! Or perhaps one may say ended.
The encounter we are looking at is probably the scariest encounter with God that could exist.
And it is one of the best that you can have, prior to judgment day.
The Encounter
I’m not going to rehash Adam and Even’s sin, most of us know the story, and they acted like most people. You tell them not to doo something, and they do it.
Well, most people except Tom and Chuck. They always do what they are told to do…
That is assuming they hear it.
So let’s start with the question God asks,
WHERE ARE YOU!!!
Adam, Eve? Where are you?
Are you over here??? No. What about here??? No… Hmmm, I wonder where they are!
Some people I know think that God is outraged, furious, storming all over the place.
I think this worked out more like a very concerned parent, but one that wants to care for His children.
He knows exactly where they are. He knows what they’ve done, and that they are scared, that they feel guilty, they are buried in shame, and they even know what it means to be ashamed.
And He cries out with the care and compassion that is appropriate for God who is love,
Adam, Eve, where are you!?!?!
God’s Action
Every sermon I have written or heard on this passage focuses on what Adam and Even have done, and sometimes takes a theological side trip talking about who is to blame. But I think we need to look closer to God’s action.
First, He goes after them
Then, He gets to the basic issue, patiently brushing aside the blame game.
You ate… yes?
uh..uh.. yeah, but…
And what did you do,…
Uhh.. yeah I did, but I was deceived…
Despite their “explanations”, despite their trying to minimize what they did, despite all of their fears and anxieties, They knew the punishment now, and the idea of death was no longer a stranger. I would like to say I don’t know what they are going through, but been there, hiding from God.
Waiting for Him to tell me I was completely lost… completely beyond His forgiveness, beyond His love.
And as God shares the complications they invited into their own lives, the curses they chose, Includes something else.
What Luther called the first gospel ever preached, and it was preached at the Devil, “And I will cause hostility between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel”
By the way, that is why you see a snake in many of the old pictures of the crucifixion, for that is where Jesus crushes that snake, Satan.
And then, there is the second prophecy,
21 And the LORD God made clothing from animal skins for Adam and his wife.
The LORD God kills something, to cover the sins, that should have resulted in His killing Adam and Eve. He provides what is needed, and though there are consequences, the result is that they are still His children, they are still the ones He loves, that He will always care form that He always has…
So where are you?
So now I have a question, well, I don’t,
God does.
Here Him asking you “Where are you?”
Where are you?
What have YOU done?
Don’t worry about excuses, don’t worry about the name game,
Just respond, and hear this,
14 Instead, clothe yourself with the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. Romans 13:14 (NLT2)
Does that sound familiar? God clothed Adam and Eve with animal skins. Animals had to die in order for the guilt and shame to be taken away.
He’s done the same thing with Jesus. He died for one purpose, to ensure that the Father doesn’t have to cry out, “where are you?
And can instead cry out, “I love you!”
No longer do we have to hide, for we are beginning to know His love and compassion will find us, and the promise of forgiveness applied, even more surely than the promise was made and forgiveness applied to Adam and Eve.
This is what it means when we say in a couple of weeks, “Alleluia! Christ is Risen!”
O wait, we aren’t supposed to say that… yet.
Too bad!
We need to hear it.
For sometimes still think we need to hide, sometimes we still think that guilt and shame are the norms.
No more my friends, for we have, in the midst of our sin, encountered a God who wouldn’t let us hide anymore!
He’s been calling, and the best thing you can do is listen, and hear Him say, I love you!
Then, as He carefully deals with your sin, you will realize this is one of the best encounters you will ever have in this life…
and His peace, a peace beyond comparison, a peace beyond all logic, will replace the guilt and shame… and you will realize you always have dwelt in His presence. AMEN!
