Author: TechCommittee

January 31, 2021                                                           Text:  Deuteronomy 18:15-20

Dear Friends in Christ,

            Have you ever been on a sailboat?  You are on a journey but you are not quite sure where you are going.  Water all around, shore far away.  Sailboats pretty much sail themselves and the speed is not excessive.

            Would you expect to go faster with the wind behind you or in front of you?  In sailing if you have a wind at your back at 5 mph you go 5 mph.  On the other hand, if the wind is coming toward the sailboat, then – with a zigzag route – you will sail faster than the wind.  You will get from point A to point B but the journey will be longer and have more challenges.

            In the Book of Deuteronomy. Israel is on the verge of a new journey.  For forty years they had traveled from Sinai to Kadesh-barnea then on to the King’s Highway and around Edom and through the plains of Moab and now they are on the east bank of the Jordan River gazing west into the Promised Land.  They made it from point A to point B but if you have ever looked at a map of their travels it was like they were in a sailboat – no straight lines just a lot of zigzagging.

            Do you ever feel like your life takes a zigzaggy route?  In a sailboat where sometimes the wind is at your back and other times it blows right in your face?  We need a stable direction and we have it this morning . . .

“A NEW JOURNEY”

            Moses makes this promise in our text, “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me.” (v. 15a)  Because Moses was under divine judgment he would not lead the Israelites into the Promised Land.  He only saw it from afar.  But the Lord would raise up other prophets – Joshua, Samuel, Elijah, Elisha – these prophets were the Lord’s voice, leading Israel in her journey of faith.  The prophetic Word endured forever.

            The final fulfillment of the Lord’s promise of a prophet like Moses is Jesus who is greater than Moses.  Jesus not only speaks the truth, He is the truth.  He not only speaks God’s Word, He is God’s Word.  Jesus not only knew the Father face-to-face, He is the face of the Father.  Moses longed to see the Lord’s glory, while Jesus is the glory of the Father.  Moses led Israel to the brink of the Promised Land; Jesus completely finishes what he began. 

            Verse 15 says we are to listen to this prophet.  Consider this passage from Hebrews that we sometimes say in our liturgy, “In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by His Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe.” (Heb. 1:1-2)  Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets.  To know Jesus is to know God. 

            Jesus would take a new journey.  He would see His travels take him this way and that way.  It all began at his birth when his family had to take another route home.  His roundabout journey ended on a hill called Calvary.  The One the prophets had spoken about gave his life for you and me.  He then went to hell to declare victory and rose on the third day to continue the earthly journey for forty more days.  Then His ascension took place and He rules at the right hand of the Father.  He made it from point A to point B but it was never easy.  He took a journey and completed it.  It could only be done by Jesus.

            What journey has you on edge?  When do we come out of the pandemic?  Should we journey with a new child through this world?  Does the Lord have a faithful spouse waiting for me?  Where will my child matriculate for college?  What do we do with dad and mom as they age?  Will my job and finances always be secure?  Do we leave our home for better weather and a more stable state?  Is a new journey on the horizon?

            Satan interrupts our thoughts with his whispers.  Expect the worst.  Triple lock all the doors.  Protect yourself from every danger and peril.  Worry yourselves to death with “What if?”

            Jesus took his journey to perish those thoughts from our mind.  Because of the cleansing blood, resurrection joy, and the power of Pentecost we march straight ahead.  Paul tells us why in 2 Cor. 2:14:  “But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession.”

            I went sailing once, in San Francisco Bay, with my dad and uncle.  It was a new journey.  We started in the South Bay and made it up to the Candlestick Park area.  Then the clouds started to roll in and I was asking the “what if?” question.  What if this wind blows us out into the Pacific Ocean?  This Gilligan is standing here so you know I made it back to homeport.  We made the journey safely.

            The journey is life.  God is telling us to go.  But He guarantees you will never, ever, go it alone.  “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers – it is to him you shall listen.”  Listen, we must.  Follow, we will!

                                    Amen. 

January 24, 2021 – Sanctity of Human Life Sunday                      Text:  Jonah 3:1-5, 10

Dear Friends in Christ,

            Jonah wants an abortion.  Jonah wants God to do it.  He would never do it himself, but he supports the option remaining available for Nineveh, even if it means crossing state lines to Tarshish.  Clearly these Ninevites were a mistake – sinful and against the Israelites – unfortunate and unwanted.  One way or another, Jonah wants to see the Ninevites euthanized.

            Their continued existence makes him uncomfortable.  They embody his mistake.  Should he suspend his career aspirations to single parent them?  Should he be saddled with their responsibility?  Does he have any use for them?  Surprisingly he finds them quite important.  They matter.

            Their punishment matters – “Yet forty days, and Nineveh will be overthrown!” Jonah is delighted to cry out.  He camps outside the city and waits for the worst.  Their suffering matters to Jonah, to demonstrate his superiority.  Their mistakes are pawns to advance his agenda.  They are trophies to justify his self-indulgence.  They matter, but not as hearts and lives.  They matter to Jonah not for their own sake but for his.  Use them, but abort and euthanize when done.

            You matter too.  To supporters of abortion, you matter.  To advocates of assisted suicide, you matter.  To embryo experimenters and fetal tissue pharmaceuticals, you matter.  To power hungry lawmakers, you matter.  You matter to the consumer culture and sexual freedom.  You matter to crusaders for progress.  To hands that want to hold authority over life and death, you matter.  To sinful souls that long to play god, you matter.

            Your ambitions need to be exploited for their benefit.  You need their support for your political aspirations and they need yours to stay legal.  Your crisis is leveraged for their profit.  They need your insurance coverage.  Your rebellion and sexual choices validate their services.  Your unborn and elderly make great sacrifices to the god of choices; they can’t speak for themselves or are too old or frail to put up much an argument anyway.

            Your suffering warrants my freedom.  Because you sin, I should get to also.  I stand on the side of history.  Everyone wins when you let me use you.  Never mind that it looks like hell.  It only costs humanity.

            Rather than punish, God pursues and persuades.  Instead of condemning, He courts and convinces.

            “GOD’S LOVE MAKES EVERY LIFE MATTER”

            His love is big enough to make Jonah and Nineveh matter.  Where the Ninevites settle for sex scenes, God writes them into a love story.  Jonah angles for a divorce while God is already arranging a next date.  Instead of slinking into a one-night stand, God would have none of it and He serves up happily ever after.  Jonah and the Ninevites would accept spiritual prostitution, but the Almighty Maker of them all can’t stand any less than proposing marriage, and family as well.

            He wants to win their love.  He craves their heart and prizes their eternity.  “When God saw what they (the Ninevites) did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.” (v. 10)  It only takes four chapters and three days and God moves the heaven and earth for Nineveh.  His Word secures their survival and salvation.  Faced with keeping Jonah or Nineveh at the other’s expense, God sacrifices himself and His justice instead.  All suffer loss, but only the loss of self, and they gain the other two for the price of that one.

            Your life matters as much as any other life.  Your entire being matters to God so He leads with the full-force of the Law, but He follows with the sweetness of the Gospel.  God doesn’t perform sleight of hand and make your obstacles disappear.  He sends Jesus.  He enters and involves Himself.  He sets His mind, heart, body, and will next to and in front of yours, because all of you matters.  Mary’s manger, violent cross and vacant grave show how much you – yes, you – do matter.

            Time and servanthood He inhabits.  In suffering and humility, He reaches the infant and elderly and unplanned and accidental ones, because your life matters right now and ever after.  With body and blood, He touches the harlot and Pharisee, because your life matters – earth and kingdom come.  He gives life to unwanted and unworthy and selfish, because your life matters – resurrection and immortality.  For better and worse and richer and poorer and sickness and health; to have and hold and love and cherish; from this day forward and even forevermore; and not even death do us part, because your life matters. 

            Jesus ascended but present, Christ enthroned but intervening, Savior imminent – your life matters and others just like you.  Their life matters because your life matters.  Our lives matter because His life matters.  Jesus life given into death was sufficient to save us all.  The same Word, Baptism and Communion grace us all.  Faith in Jesus saves us all.  Forgiven and redeemed changes world like it changes Church.  This Father, Son, and Spirit God of ours knows nothing other than love making lives matter out of once did not.

                                                                                    Amen.      

January 17, 2021                                                                Text:  1 Corinthians 7:29-32a

Dear Friends in Christ,

            We have some city slickers in our congregation but when I look at the cherubs in the sanctuary and those worshipping at home most of us are familiar with the farm.  We grew up on one, worked on one or lived near one.  So when I use this opening illustration and talk about silos/grain bins you will understand.

            You don’t see as many silos as you use to.  Today you see more grain bins.  Chopped up corn known as silage would be put in a silo to feed the cows.  Hay would be put in the loft of the barn and straw in a different part of the barn.  Grain would be in a grain bin.  Corn in one, soybeans in another.  Everything was kept separate from the other.

            We live lives that look like silos.  There is a family life silo and a work silo.  We have a church silo and a recreation silo.  Here is one for our role as citizens and another for our friends.  They are separate from one another.  The people we know at work are usually not the same people we know at church.  What we do at home is different than what we do at school or at our job.  How we use our money recreationally is different than the offering we leave at church.  Do you see how this works?  We live in silos.

            The problem with silo living is that Jesus is often kept out of parts of our lives.  We go to work and Jesus recedes.  We pull out our credit card quite easily but does our tithe come first.  We get caught up in fun that we neglect worship.  Politics and church do not mix.  We relegate Jesus to a church silo.  He is not guiding all areas of our lives and this is no good.

            We need a better way to conduct our day-to-day living.  The Bible as always has the answer, let’s take a look at . . .

“LIFE AS A WHEEL WITH JESUS AS THE HUB”

            The Apostle Paul writes in our text, “The appointed time has grown very short.  From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they have no goods, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealing with it.  For the present form of this world is passing away.  I want you to be free from anxieties.”

Paul is encouraging that we live every day for Jesus.  Why?  Because the time we have left is “short.”

            Paul isn’t trying to predict when Jesus will return, but one day He will.  What a glorious day!  Tears and sickness gone.  Evil in hell forever.  No more bullying.  No more cancel culture.  Jesus will rise from the grave and a new creation will come forth.  Our bodies will be whole and healthy and we will be in perfect peace and safety.  I can’t wait for that day.  How about you?  Come, Lord Jesus.

            We live with that hope because Jesus has already risen from the dead.  On the cross He took on our death and hell.  He took all the evil and buried it in a tomb.  Then on Easter He burst forth in glory and life.  Be free from anxiety because you know what awaits.  There will be groaning pains as we are experiencing but hang on to the hope that will not disappoint.

            Yes, the world will pass away.  Before that the Lord calls on us to live in this critical time with Jesus in every area of our lives.

            Instead of living in silos, we live as if life were a wheel.  The hub is Jesus.  The cross is empty.  Jesus is present now in our lives.  With Jesus at the center everything revolves around Him.

            The spokes coming out of the wheel are the various areas of life we live every day.  Work is connected to Jesus.  Honesty and integrity.  Our money and stuff are not our own.  It is all a gift of Jesus.  Money decisions are made after the Lord receives what is due Him.  We respect our governing authorities because again He has placed them there.  Our recreational decisions include Him.  We vacation or travel with our children to an event and we ask – where will we worship?  Do you see how it works?  Live life as the wheel with Jesus as the hub.  Eternity is our hope and so every spoke is lived with Jesus and for Him.

            Time is moving on.  Shoveling on Sunday morning two weeks ago reminded me of that.  I’m in-between.  Two months ago a kid asked if I wanted the senior discount.  He got a not so nice look.  Ten days ago I told a man at the funeral I had been a Pastor here at Good Shepherd for 21 years.  He looked at me and said, “What, did you start in the ministry at age 16!”  No matter what age we are or feel the end could come at any time.  I guess as you age these thoughts creep into the mind more and more.

            Jesus could come back tomorrow, wouldn’t that be nice?  Or it could be 125 years.  I could have a lot more years or very few.  You as well.  That is not the key question.  The key question is this?  How do we live when life is so short?  Not as silos but as a wheel.  The hub is Jesus risen from the dead and the end is glorious.  The time now is critical and what an opportune time God is giving us to live with Jesus and for Him.          Amen. 

January 10, 2021 – Baptism of our Lord                                       Text:  Genesis 1:1-5

Dear Friends in Christ,

            Currently we have 5 to 6 of our members who are gone.  Left the area.  Headed south.  Mainly to find warmth but they all are somewhere near water.  Last winter Toni and I took a trip and we just drove until we found significant climate change.  We eventually stopped 100 feet from the Gulf of Mexico – water.  What do we do to relax – hot bath, hot shower, or even better sit in a whirlpool.  Toni and I have stayed at a place with a pool in the room.  Wow!  Even your sound machines and little gadgets that are supposed to calm your nerves revolve around water – ocean waves, a rolling brook, water bubbling and falling down some rocks.  We find comfort in water.

            It didn’t take long for God to put this in place on earth – we’ve got water by the 2^nd verse of Genesis.  He was “hovering over the face of the waters.”  Maybe this calmed God as He was creating the world.   He knew that water was important from the beginning. 

            It seems that week after week our world gets more chaotic.  Sickness and vaccines and special elections and fighting.  Throw in a cloud of fog that enveloped us, homes without electricity, tree branches ready to snap and fall wherever, and the general malaise of winter.  We’ve got to keep fighting our perspective or we are all going to go crazy.  We are on the brink.  Please, help us Lord.

“BREAKING THE CHAOS”

            Water is you and me.  It transports, it dissolves, and replenishes nutrients and organic material while carrying away waste.  We have a brain – 70% water.  Lungs – 90% water.  Blood – 83% water.  We drink water and need water.  The dying person in film always asks for a drink. 

            God knew all this before He started his craftsmanship of world and man.  2 Peter 3:5 says, “the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God.”  The Holy Spirit used water to make things as they are.  Scientifically we know this…there is no life apart from the element of water.  The heavens and the earth came into being, exist now, and are preserved only because God has so commanded and ordered all things.  The heavens and the earth are preserved through the Word of God alone.  The only One who can break the chaos is God because He controls what He has made.

            Don’t let your mind play tricks with your thoughts.  God continues to work in the midst of His creation.  His ways are not your ways.  What is the opposite of chaos?  Order.  We call it the Order of Creation.  God had a plan and He saw that it came to be.  In our text “God saw that the light was good.”  He never said darkness was good.  He doesn’t promote sin or people who want to change what He created.  He doesn’t want to see you and I living in darkness.  He sent Christ to be the “light of the world.”  He had a plan for the chaos.

            In our Gospel lesson John baptizes Jesus.  The same Spirit that was at creation descended on him like a dove.  Then a voice from heaven:  “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”  We sin.  Jesus didn’t.  Yet, He is baptized with a baptism for sinners.  Jesus takes our sin upon Himself.  Heaven is torn open.  The Savior breaks the chaos.

            Jesus had to deal with chaos, didn’t He?  The smarter-than-thou crowd always questioning His words.  Chaos in the streets of his hometown.  Confidants turning their back on Him.  Friends and family of Jesus dying.  Politicians who didn’t just want to make His life miserable but who wanted Him dead.  Sickness and disease and is He the Messiah?  Crowds that always surrounded Him and few moments to be alone.  And in some of those alone times where did He find Himself – on or near the water.  He created it.  He enjoyed it.  When it got too rough – He calmed it with just His Word.

            He gives that same peace to you and I.  God’s Word and water when first sprinkled or dumped or dunked into brought us from the chaos of our sinful nature to the peace of forgiveness.  It took us from the scariness of death to the beauty and promise of eternal life.  Paul writes in our Epistle, “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” (Rom. 6:4)  This is an everyday pledge that we carry in our DNA.  This water and Word never left your body. 

            Let all of this calm you down.  Let in flow in you and around you, as the chaos is broken.  God created the heavens and the earth.  Not man.  Not some happy accident.  The Creator spoke the Word and it was done.  The void was filled.  He does the same for you.  His Word…His water…all speak to a void you may have.  Order in the midst of chaos.  He’s here.  He has to be because all of this belongs to Him. 

                                                                                                                                    Amen.