Prince
of Peace and Christ Our Savior Lutheran Churches November 16, 2003
Pastor
Steve Geiger Saints Triumphant
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John
5:25-29
25
I tell you the truth, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear
the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. 26 For as the Father
has life in himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in himself. 27 And
he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man.
28
“Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their
graves will hear his voice 29 and come out—those who have done good will rise
to live, and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned.
1.
He raises today 2. He raises on the Last Day
I’m
very embarrassed to admit this.
It’s
never happened to me before, not in my whole life. Not that it couldn’t have happened before. I think I’ve come close. But two Tuesdays ago I’m driving a friend
from Yankton to Vermillion. My
plan? To get gas after I drop him off.
We’re
going fine, braking to 45 in Meckling, climbing back to 65 east of
Meckling. Suddenly, engine coughs. Slowly we slow. I pull to the side. I
turn the key. Nothing. Gas gone.
Maybe this isn’t that that unusual.
Maybe some of you have had the same experience.
One
thing obvious as you’re sitting by the road is that your car has no power. Your car has no power. We talk about engines having power. 130 horsepower. 360 horsepower. But your
engine has no power. Without gas. Even with gas, that’s no guarantee. Something else can go wrong. Cars can just die. Cars do not have life in and of themselves.
Just
like your body. Even with food, humans
can just die. Which means that humans
also do not in themselves have life. We
depend on something for life.
On
what? From where does life come? There is one who is life. Dependent on nothing. He is life.
He is the power to give life.
Jesus. God.
For
this there is no comparison. There is
nothing that simply is life other than God himself. Jesus.
That
didn’t seem to sit well with some of the people who lived in Jesus’ day. It didn’t seem to sit well with them when
Jesus showed that he was life and had the power to give life.
In
the temple on a Saturday Jesus shared a small part of his power to give
life. To a man who couldn’t walk. Hadn’t walked for 38 years. But with a word: “Get up.” At once he was cured.
Why
would anyone have a problem with that, handing out life?
That
actually wasn’t the problem. Rather,
some Jews saw the healed man carrying the mat he had been lying on for many,
many years. “That’s wrong,” they said. They had added a definition to God’s law. God didn’t want people to work on the
Sabbath, but to focus on honoring him.
The Jews said that carrying a mat was work. This healed man was working, their personal definition said. When they found out Jesus was responsible,
he became their target.
Jesus
gives an interesting reply. “My Father
is always at work,” he said. My Father
doesn’t take the Sabbath off.
The
point was, God never wants us to take off from doing his work. That was the whole point of the Sabbath: to
focus on doing God’s work. But the Jews
had succeeded in turning something that was to be focused on doing God’s work
into a mere outward rule. When Jesus
showed that their hearts weren’t really devoted to loving God’s work, they got
really mad at him. “You are breaking
the Sabbath law,” they said. “Then, you
call God your Father? Well, that’s
making yourself equal to God.” Which he
was.
But
when humans begin emptying God’s commands of their true intent and basically do
what they want to do, they’re not interested in having a God period. Not Jesus.
Not the Father. They’ve told God
they’re going to do what they want to do.
Do
we ever turn our religion into pretend worship of God, in reality doing what we
want to do?
For
some of the Jews, avoiding the Christian love part of worship and merely
observing outward rules. For us, is the
temptation similar? Where we imagine
the worship of God to consist first and foremost in coming to church. That if we are here Sunday after Sunday,
showing up at the right time and standing at the right time and singing at the
right and not carrying our mats into the pew, that we have worshipped God.
Now
it isn’t that God would prefer we don’t come to church. Or that he would prefer we’d come only every
third Sunday. It wasn’t that Jesus was
saying to the Jews, “You’re wrong in saying, ‘No mat carrying,’ so you might as
well do all kinds of other activities on Worship Day. Work as much as you want.”
No. What concerned Jesus is that we all can be
tempted to see the ceremony as the heart instead of seeing what’s at the heart
of the ceremony. God’s love for
us. Our reflection of that love to
others.
Which
is not limited to the two-and-a-half hours of a Sunday morning. But so often we forget that heart. We go home and get back to our lives. Our self-centered lives. How I am hurting and how others should be
helping me with what I want. Are we
right back to arguing with our brothers and sisters about who should clean the
living room instead of offering to help?
Do we return home and immediately get to all the jobs we have to do to
help ourselves instead of noticing a sick neighbor who could use some
leaf-raking help? Does a part of me
really not want to think first of others?
Does a part of me really not want to worship God from the heart every
moment of my life?
So
that when we hear of God doing that, showing love to a lame man on the day of
worship, we might think, “Oh, I don’t have time for that. I have to go to church.” Or, “Jesus is bad, because he made you walk
so that you have break our own Sabbath rule.”
As if church and showing love are a choice: one or the other.
When
God then starts telling me that I should dedicate more of my life to the love
part, well, that can make us even more angry.
It’s my life. I’ll do what I
want. Don’t tell me I’m wrong. I go to church.
How
different are those words from those escaping the mouths of Jews who wanted to
kill Jesus?
From
a certain perspective, we can totally understand those enemies of Jesus. Our sinful flesh, so selfish, also likes a
type of worship that conveniently forgets about the twenty-four-hour,
seven-day-a-week privilege of worship.
We
are so deserving of God’s abandonment.
So
strange. That’s not where Jesus starts,
even with this crowd of enemies who was plotting to kill him.
Yes,
he wanted them to know that they were being so misled. Just like he wants us to know that our
sinful flesh can make up our own idea of what God wants, what we think worship
of God should be like. This is
eternally dangerous. This leads to a
very real judgment.
But
do you know what else Jesus wants you to know?
That
he is life.
Why
would he tell his enemies that? Why
would he tell us that? Because he so
much wants all to see him for who he is.
He’s not out to get you. He’s out
to save you.
How
could I ever be saved?
We
think back to the car and no gas. We
think back to our human bodies and our inability even to keep our lives
going. We think back to the sinful
flesh and our inability ever to undo the many unloving acts which have filled
our Mondays through Saturdays, even Sundays.
Cars,
humans—no power in themselves to bring life.
Just death. But Jesus is life.
Jesus
is life in himself. Jesus is the power
to take those spiritually dead and naturally hating God and resurrect
them. “A time is coming and has now
come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear
will live.” Has now come. This is Jesus describing his power to create
life now. His power to bring calm and
peace as he creates faith in the fact that his life, perfect, and death,
innocent mean forgiveness and life for me.
A spiritual corpse, suddenly moving.
A fallen Christian, faith restored.
A struggling Christian, faith strengthened.
How? By words.
The voice of the Son of God.
Jesus’ words.
How
can words bring me peace when I know my evil?
How can words bring me life when I know I deserve death? How can words make a lame man walk? How can words make a blind man see? How can words make a dead Lazarus walk out
of a tomb?
I
don’t know. But that is what words can
do when the words come from one who has life in himself. Who is life. This is the power of words from Jesus. Listen: “Take heart, son [and daughter], your sins are forgiven
you” (Matthew 9:2) “The Son of Man came
to seek and save what was lost” (Luke 19:10).
For the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give
his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).
Even as blood was flowing and hell was to be endured in our place, Jesus
showed his heart with words: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what
they’re doing.”
Words. Jesus loves you. Jesus came to give his life for you. Your sins are paid for.
Jesus is your life. See him as
your life!
Yes,
through words he works the miracle of confidence, trust, faith . . . life in
human hearts once dead. Spiritual
resurrection.
If
that makes you say “Wow!” be even more amazed.
Jesus, who is life, will work a bodily resurrection as well. On the Last Day. When Jesus comes on clouds to give a bonus type of life to those
who in his mercy saw him as life.
The
fact is, when Jesus creates in your heart that simple confidence that because
he died for the sins of the world, he has died for you and you are forgiven . .
. when Jesus creates faith in your heart, he has brought you from death to
life. You right now have already begun
your eternal life. But the body you
have remains sinful. That must still
die. To dust.
The
bonus life is that God will give the real you, already eternally alive, a new
body which will also be eternally alive.
Sadly, on that day those who refused to see Jesus as life will also get
a new body, one not described as something that will live forever in a good
way, but which will exist forever, eternally dying. How sad to see the bodies of those who did evil, who rejected
their Savior, coming to life only to stand before the judge and be damned. We can weep today at the thought. And work today and tomorrow to share with
others power words to change that, words that Jesus is life.
But
let us this day also rejoice, for those who did the good things . . . who by
the power of the living words of a forgiving Savior walked out of their
spiritual tombs to live for Jesus . . . for them the new body given by the
voice of Jesus will be for eternal living.
Another
“Wow.” Beyond the comprehension of
those whose bodies do not have life of themselves.
But
completely within the power of the one who is life in himself. Jesus is life.
Amen.