October 14, 2018                                                                       Text:  Hebrews 3:12-19

Dear Friends in Christ,

In our Adult Bible Class we are studying the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt.  They endured slavery, plagues, Passover, the parting of the Red Sea and wandering for forty years.  Led by Moses they were on the way to the Promised Land.  Along the way many of them lost the faith – fiery serpents and a bronze snake lifted on a pole.  They turned their back on the God who could rescue them.

As we look forward to our Promised Land – heaven – we too are on a journey.  Like the Israelites we endure setbacks, tragedies, and messes of our own making.  We need the Lord’s help to sustain us to the end.  In your daily struggles do you ever question . . .

“IS MY CONFIDENCE WAVERING?”

That is not such a crazy question because we all know people who sat in these pews over the years that in their wandering walked away from the faith.  Was it the influence of the world?  Did their priorities change?  Did they just get lazy?  Did they turn to some other god?  This is the warning this morning, “Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.” (v. 12)

The people of Israel were partakers of the blessings that God gave.  When they grumbled against Moses they were grumbling against God.  Many died in the wilderness, short of the promised rest.  Had they remained faithful they would have seen God’s deliverance.  They would have seen God raise Joshua, in the Greek – Heseus – Jesus.  In Joshua, the guarantee of God came to its fulfillment; Joshua led the people of God to be partakers of, sharers in, the long-promised land of rest.

Are you remaining faithful?  Is your confidence wavering?  As people of all stripes question Christ and the Christian faith do you find yourselves wondering?  As society turns its back on many of things that Christianity stands for do you teeter on the edge?  As the Law of God is dismissed as ancient or not conducive to this new world thinking do you ever want to go along to get along?

The Israelites instead of encouraging one another in the promised joy that awaited them, inflamed one another in sinful passions, self-gratification, and various sins of wickedness and unbelief.  “Their bodies fell in the wilderness” (v. 17) and “we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.” (v. 19)  St. Paul recounts the sad example they left for us, admonishing us, “Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did.” (1 Cor. 10:6)

Hopefully we see them as examples this morning of what we don’t want to be and where we don’t want to go.  We look to Christ but not merely as example.  He is not the occupant of the house, He is the builder.  “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” (Jn. 2:19)  “On this rock I will build my church” (Mt. 16:18), and again, “I go to prepare a place for you.” (Jn. 14:2)  Christ is the builder of the house.  He is the righteous substitute who endured all things in order that the promise would be guaranteed.  As the Son He is faithful over God’s house.  He is our confidence and hope as the Holy Spirit helps us to hold to the promise.  So heed the warning of our text, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.” (v. 15)

This is our encouragement so that our faith does not waver.  “For we share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.” (v. 14)  The Holy Spirit is working tirelessly to bring all that is Christ’s and give it to us.  Christ took all the sin and bondage that is ours, the faith that wavers on the brink, and hung with it on a tree in our place and overcame it and paid for it.  He has given us all the riches and inheritance that are His, that we might be sharers, part-owners, in Him, according to the mercies of God.  Joshua means God saves so Jesus means God saves.  Christ has delivered you from the bonds of greater Egypt and leads you through this world’s wilderness.  He is the bread of heaven and the spring of living water that you need to be sustained.  He keeps the promise.

Do you ever just sit and think about that Promised Land that awaits you?  Could it be forty years?  Could it be tomorrow or next week or next year?  You wander and have your ups and downs but you have a hope.  You have a confidence that does not waver because the Lord has made that promise.  He is faithful and through your consistent worship and prayers and Scripture study the promise will not be taken away.  “Thus the Lord gave to Israel all that the land that he swore to give to their fathers.  And they took possession of it, and they settled there.  And the Lord gave them rest on every side just as he had sworn to their fathers…Not one word of all the good promises that the Lord had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass.” (Joshua 21:43-45)

Amen.

October 7, 2018                                                                          Text:  Genesis 2:18-25

Dear Friends in Christ,

We are living in a time of crisis.  At the core our present difficulty is a radically new understanding of sexuality, marriage, and humanity, with profound implications for our society, as well as our church.  Many of our young people have been led astray.  Sheep and shepherds are confused and afraid.  To those who are still apathetic, Erick Erickson and Bill Blankschaen have famously warned, “You will be made to care.”

It is the Gnostic view that human beings – living members of the human species – are not necessarily persons.  Having a human body does not define you as human.  This makes it easier to justify abortion, euthanasia and the use of human embryos.  If we are not fully human beings we can then define our own existence.  We must play along or get punished.  Sherif Girgis writes, “For the New Gnostic, then, a just society cannot live and let live, when it comes to sex.  Sooner or later, the common good – respect for people as self-defining subjects – will require social approval of their self-definition and approval.”  Whether the emperor is wearing no clothes or a dress, we must nod and smile – or else.

Make no mistake about it – the Holy Scriptures reveal God’s plan for the human family.  Marriage and family are not a social construct, something we dreamed up.  We don’t get to define them as we choose.  In our text for today marriage wasn’t Adam’s idea it was God’s.  He created the woman to be the helper for the man, so he would not be alone.  God brought Eve to Adam and he received her as a gift.  As people mess with this gift and screw it all up, it’s good to ask . . .

“WHAT IS THE PRICE OF A RIB?”

For God, the price of a rib is the start of the human family.  “Bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh,” says Adam.  This is the Lord’s plan.  Male and female, man and woman, given to each other.  When the two become one the Lord blesses the union with more gifts – children.  We heard it in our Introit:  “Children are a gift from the Lord; they are a real blessing.”

The Lord reminds us today of this crown of His creation.  Listen to these words from our Epistle lesson:  “What is man, that you are mindful of him, or the son of man, that you care for him?  You made him a little lower than the angels; you have crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet.”  Crowned with glory and honor.  If sinful man can get us to deny God’s wonderful creation and where man should be then the next step is to kill a child or old person while saving an owl or salamander.  If we mess with God’s creation, that beating heart in the womb is not a person.  Young and old forgo commitment and live together.  Divorce escalates because “happiness” is more important than God’s Word.  And the most dangerous of all – when we – in our own churches give tacit approval to some or all of this under a satanic twisting of our Lord’s words, “Judge not”?  What is going on?

All God-given relationships have been ripped apart by sin.  Satan’s angle has always been to have us fight, argue, disagree to those in whom we are the closest.  Adam and Eve against God.  Adam and Eve against each other.  Cain and his brother Abel.  Just in Genesis alone we have Noah and Ham, Abram and Lot, Sarai and Hagar, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers.

The most intimate relationship is that of husband and wife.  The only human relationship described as “one flesh.”  The price of a rib today is the sucker punch of Satan and his minions who want us all to turn on our back on this “one flesh union.”

The Lord saw this coming.  From that first rib came all of humanity until a Savior came in human flesh.  As God put Adam to sleep and took from his side that which he made the woman, so our Lord Jesus sleeps in death on his cross and his tender heart is pierced.  Then from that heart flows a fountain of blood and water.  In the church that is a picture of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, by which the Holy Spirit creates the Bride of Christ, the Church, and brings her to the Bridegroom.

And that Bridegroom, Jesus is faithful to you.  Jesus is faithful even when you have been faithless to Him.  He is not giving up on us but His patience goes only so far.  We need the Spirit’s help to turn from life choices outside the bounds of His creation.  We need the Spirit’s help to turn from rib-rocking cohabitation to the sociological bedrock of society – marriage between a man and a woman.  It was important to the Lord in our Gospel.  It is so needed now.  We need the Spirit’s guidance when we want to throw our hands up with “what else can I do?”

This is where our faith in the Lord of creation is such a blessing.  All of this, you see, is pictured in the way God – not we, not Adam, not society – long ago designed the institution of marriage and family.  God established marriage and family to be an image of His own unfailing commitment to you, his people.

Therefore, if there is anything in this sad world that can bring hope and a future to counter the mess we’ve made of trying to do marriage and family on our own terms, thinking we know better than God, it is the open heart of Jesus.  His patience and kindness is upon us.  He sends you forth forgiven and renewed to mirror in your families and neighborhoods the divine love of the Bridegroom, Jesus.  The price of a rib was His life.  Let us live for Him who has become one with you forever.

Amen.