May 12, 2024 Text:  1 John 5:9-15

Dear Friends in Christ,

About 15 years ago Anthony Esolen wrote this in an article entitled “Nowhere Man.”  “’Behold,’ says the Psalmist, ‘I searched for the place of the wicked man, and he was no more.’  It is the second clause (his place knows him no more) that expresses the greater dread, of a death beyond death.  It is the terrible prospect of a total and unalterable severance – expressed as a loss of place.  How should it be, if one were wiped clean from the memory of earth and heaven and all that dwell therein?  How should it be, not to cease to live, but to have one’s few days of life delivered over – in their essence – to nothingness?”

Western Civilization has succeeded.  It has reduced the Christ to a minor player on the stage of human history.   What has been, what is, and what’s to come will not be altered by Him who sits in the heavens and laughs.  When it comes to Christ and possessing eternal salvation . . .

“EITHER YOU DO OR YOU DON’T”

John writes, “If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater, for this is the testimony of God that he has borne concerning his Son.  Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself.  Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has borne concerning his Son.” 

Concerning these verses, it has been correctly noted by Mark Jeske:  “People of all cultures are used to hearing human testimony in court and assigning great weight to it.  How much more impact does the Christian message have since God is talking!”  And this insight.  “There is only one truth – God’s truth…Christianity is not one of many philosophies that you can select interesting views and ideas from as though in a cafeteria.”

Well, our text says it, “Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar.”  The hatred may grow in intensity against Christ and the Church, but Paul gives this chilling truth.  “Do be deceived:  God cannot be mocked.  A man reaps what he sows.” (Gal 6:7)

I want to live forever, don’t you?  Not here though.  In heaven, with the Triune God.  The older I get the less I want to put up with the crap of this world.  It all ends eventually at the grave.  But John gets us past the grave when he writes, “And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.” Either you do or you don’t.  There is no middle ground in Scripture.  The wages of human sin is always death.  Christ alone enters humanity and offers the alternative.  It’s a gift.  Given to the sinful and undeserving.  God has given to us eternal life in his Son. 

Many of you know George Orwell’s book 1984.  Orwell was a socialist.  In 1940 he wrote of Europe’s rejection of God, and he approved of that.  But listen to how he expressed his approval:  “For two hundred years we had sawed and sawed and sawed at the branch we were sitting on.  (Like the present pruning going on in America).  And in the end, much more suddenly than anyone had foreseen, our efforts were rewarded, and down we came.  But unfortunately there had been a little mistake:  the thing at the bottom was not a bed of roses after all, it was a cesspool full of barbed wire . . . It appears that amputation of the soul isn’t just a simple surgical job, like having your appendix out.  The wound has a tendency to go septic.”

Wow!  Man does reap what he sows.  Either you believe in the Son or you don’t.  You can’t straddle the tree branch.  “Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.” (v. 12)  There are a lot of people around us crashing to the ground who need our prayers.

Friend, you have got to do something with Jesus.  By the power of the Holy Spirit embrace Him.  Or by human might reject Him.  Either hang on to Him or throw Him out.  There is no in-between.  Another way.  A something else.

We are identified with Christ. You sang it with belief, didn’t you?  “The Church’s one foundation Is Jesus Christ her Lord…With his own blood He bought her, And for her life He died.”  He died for our sins and then rose for our eternity.  Christ comes to you and I again and again in the Word and the Sacrament.  He did it all…for us.  We are so identified with Him that it isn’t an issue of either we do or either we don’t know and find comfort in His mercy and eternal life.  It is not “either you do or you don’t” for us.

We do.  Forever.

Amen.  

May 5, 2024     Text:  1 John 5:1-8

Dear Friends in Christ,

In our English language we have words that can have two opposite meanings.  One of those words is “overwhelm.”  On the news this week, we saw towns “overwhelmed” by tornadoes.  A city can be “overwhelmed” by an invading army.  We can be “overwhelmed” with grief at the death of a loved one.  In all these examples, “overwhelmed” is negative.  But it can also be used in a positive way.  I was “overwhelmed” with joy at the outpouring of support.  

The disciples saw it played out in their lives.  They were called to work alongside the Savior of the world and their world was turned upside down.  They were “overwhelmed” by the miracles and the healings and the way this man spoke.  Positive.  They also had times of being “overwhelmed” by the waves at sea or the soldiers marching into the garden or the trial and horrible crucifixion.  Peter’s denial and Judas’ betrayal “overwhelmed” them with sin and guilt.  Negative.

John knew the feeling.  John writes today to the Christian congregations so that they would not be “overwhelmed” by the world.  Which way is it going to be . . . 

“OVERWHELMED OR OVERCOMING?”

False claims were rampant when John writes this.  The virgin birth was denied, Jesus and the Christ were divided, and Jesus was buried but had not risen.  People had been conquered by the world.

People are still conquered by the world.  The virgin birth is still denied.  God becoming man is denied.  Jesus rising from the dead is denied.  All we have are new faces being put on the same heresies. 

We do not want to be “overwhelmed” by these deniers.  We don’t want to become complacent, or compromise our faith.  We do not want to stand in fear of rejection or conflict.  The world is powerful.  The voices of the world are powerful.  The devil is working.  How do we know all this?  Because there are pews in this sanctuary this morning that were formerly occupied by every Sunday worshippers and leaders in our church.  They now sit in silence because their hearts and minds have been “overwhelmed” by the world.  It is probably about the saddest thing a Pastor and congregation can experience.

John’s encouragement is that we “overcome” the world.  “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God.” (v. 1).  We overcome as we love and live out the command of God in our lives with one another.  Christ sacrificed on the cross our sins of doubt and complacency and compromise and silence.  

This faith in Jesus as the Law-keeping, sin-bearing Redeemer of the world is the “victory that has overcome the world.” (v. 4). The world’s desires pass away and the one who “does the will of God abides forever.” (1 John 2:17)

The object of our faith is Jesus the Christ.  He secured the victory for us by “the Spirit and the water and the blood.”  The life-giving Holy Spirit, by the life-cleansing water of Baptism, connects us to the life-redeeming blood of Jesus, who has overcome the world.  Jesus is God enfleshed coming to us yet today in his body and blood here in the sacrament of the Altar.  The church is nourished and overcomes the world.

In Christ we have overcome the world.  Without him the world would “overwhelm” us.  Victory in Christ.  That is the theme by which Sat. John lived and with which St. John died.  Christ breathed that divine theme into the Revelation of John, his last testimony to the churches John so loved.  In the New King James version of the Bible John uses the word “overcomes” seven different times.  Here are just two of those verses.  Revelation 2:7 – “To him who overcomes I will give to eat from the tree of life.”  Revelation 3:5 – “He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments, and I will not blot out his name from the Book of Life; but I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels.”

We are not “overwhelmed” by the world – or by whatever may happen to us in it – because we are, as St. John says, those who, in Jesus Christ, are overcoming the world.

Amen.