Perilous Times: A Meditation on 2nd Timothy 3

This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.

For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters,

proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,

Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers,

incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,

Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;

Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof:

from such turn away.

Sometimes the prophetic foresight of Scripture is overwhelming in its contemporary application, and such is the case with the third chapter of St. Paul’s second letter to Timothy.  Nearly 2000 years ago, Paul as an Apostle of Jesus Christ, ordained and set Timothy in charge of a locality of churches, giving him encouragement, challenge, and warnings appropriate to the work that lay before him.  As a young bishop entrusted with the care of souls, Timothy was given by Paul a great deal of practical advice for his vocation, which the Church has benefited from ever since.  For this Sunday’s lectionary readings, the Church turns her eyes and ears to this wisdom once again.

Timothy is warned that despite the nobility and high regard Christ holds for His pastoral office delegated to men, bearing that office in our fallen world would be a path of sacrifice, suffering, and service more akin to Jesus’ path to Calvary than any worldly path to glory.  St. Paul warned the young pastor that not only will his service be hard in the days at hand, but as time wears on, the world will only grow worse in its disregard for Christ and His Gospel.  This worsening of the world, the hardening of its heart against the truth of Christ revealed in Scripture and handed down since the days of Adam, Noah, Abraham, and Moses, would manifest in ever greater public embrace of evil.  Unlike the empty headed theologians of the last century or so, St. Paul does not paint a picture of man’s efforts bringing about the Kingdom of God on earth; rather, it is God who invades this dying world with His Kingdom, preserving it by His Word, and sustaining it against the ever darkening days which culminate in the final apostasy and judgment of all mankind.  St. Paul and all of Scripture warn us that the world is getting worse rather than better, and that the cross to be born as a baptized child of God is only going to get heavier in this world, rather than lighter.

This may seem counter-intuitive, when perusing the progress of history.  From a worldly perspective, we might be tempted to see ourselves at the pinnacle of an evolutionary ladder, building new rungs upon which future generations may climb as they achieve new technological, political, and social goals.  From a human perspective, we see today’s world as ever closer to utopia, with scientists on the verge of producing Artificial Intelligence to rival that of people, medical wonders to cure disease and forestall death, complex energy and utility systems that provide electricity, water, and sanitation to all, military weaponry to quickly obliterate any foe, political alliances aimed at global trade, world peace, and common prosperity. More and more people convince themselves that they have evolved beyond the ancient world’s attachment to gods and myths, and are becoming the gods of their own persons and societies.  These individuals now free from the absolutes of good and evil which flow from an absolute and transcendent God, seek to rebuild the world and redefine everything in their own terms—everything in relation to the pursuit of personal pleasure, losing not only their grasp on God but on philosophy, reason, and even Natural Law.  We find today a world leaning forward into the vortex of disordered passion and unhinged sentimentality, building ever greater technological wonders to prop up the civilization they have dreamt.  No longer content to live upon the shores of the civilizations which gave them birth, they yearn for the horizon of a not too distant shore, where they may be the gods they desire, and fashion the world in the image of their passions.

These are perilous times, indeed.  Throughout history’s ebb and flow, there have been civilizations which rose and fell as they gained or lost their grip on reality.  Regardless of the technological wonders of the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, the greatness of Assyria, Babylon, Greece, and Rome, the various empires of the East and the West, the hearts of fallen man remain the same:  bent on passion and lust, pride and avarice, if they are not curbed or held in check they produce some the darkest and most deadly of times.  In fact, we have the near history of the 20^th century, which shows in startling detail the inability of the technological wonders of the Industrial Revolution to prevent the greatest loss of human life the world had ever known—not wars of religion, but tyrannical aspirations of twisted atheists, who bent the technological wonders of their day to re-craft the world according to their disordered passions.  Hell bent to rebuild the world according to Darwinian, Marxist, and Nietzschean visions of a world without God and beyond good and evil, hundreds of millions of lives were brutally slaughtered to make the foundations of their tyrannical and murderous empires.  These atheists knew well that without God there was nothing left for man but the will to power, and they were quick to seek their place at the top of heaping skulls.  The technological marvels of the 20^th century did not curb the darkness of the human heart, but rather became the mechanized weaponry able to implement those dark passions with every greater brutality.

And now we come to our own age, this burgeoning 21^st century rushing to the end of its second decade.  New voices call for abandoning God in search for a new technological utopia, convinced that the world they will build in their image with these new tools and wonders will be better than the one’s attempted before.  Don’t be naïve—in the hands of those with darkened and fallen hearts, new technological wonders will only help them accelerate the implementation of their disordered passions in ways and rapidity unknown to past generations.  Those who know the end game of atheism know that all which remains without God is the will to power, and those who are ignorant of their ambitions will be made to know them in time, as their wicked power is brought forth to slaughter or enslave them.  As each successive generation has discovered down through the halls of human history, each technological step our race takes is not a step closer to utopia, but a weapon in the hands of evil men who unwittingly strive to bring hell on earth.  The fulfillment of the image of fallen man in the world is not a reflection of the beauty and virtue of heaven, but of the twisted fires of corruption and vice curling around the devil in his eternal prison.

Our minds in proper focue, we are prepared to hear St. Paul’s encouragement and admonition for how to endure this ever darkening world.  The answer is not in human hands, but rather in the pierced hands of Christ—an answer of grace, redemption, and restoration which God works through faith and repentance in His Only Begotten Son.  In Jesus we see the good that the world and all mankind was originally made to be, and in His death we see not only the height of human wickedness but the inexhaustible depths of God’s love and mercy for His creation.  In Jesus’ resurrection we see the first fruits of God’s promise to restore and resurrect His people and His cosmos to the good, the virtue, the beauty of His image.  There in Jesus we find the promise of His abiding Holy Spirit to keep and guard His people in every darkening age, and His assurance that the gates of hell shall not prevail upon His Church.  Not in the technological wonders of man’s fallen intellect, but in the eternal Word and Wisdom of God made flesh, Jesus shows us the beginning, the middle, the fulfillment, and the eternity of His saving love for us.  The salvation, preservation, flourishing, and assurance of mankind is not found in man, but in Jesus Christ alone.

And where does fallen man learn of this saving Jesus but in His Word, the power of the Holy Spirit working through it to give new life by faith through grace in Christ alone?  Thus St. Paul points his young pastor, and all to come after him, to that sure foundation breathed out by God, which has endured the rising and falling of every past age, and which will endure through every age yet to come:

All scripture is given by inspiration of God,

and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction,

 for instruction in righteousness:

That the man of God may be perfect,

throughly furnished unto all good works.

Here is the rest and the assurance of the saints in our age, no matter how dark and perilous it may become, just as it was the rest and assurance of the saints in every age before.  Hear the Word of the Lord come to you this day, breaking through the wicked delusions of fallen men, to declare to you the love and mercy of Almighty God through Jesus Christ His Son.  Hear Him, turn from your evils and the passions of evil men; repent, believe, and live.  Amen.

The Giver and the Gift: A Meditation on Luke 17

And it came to pass, as he went to Jerusalem, that

he passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee.

And as he entered into a certain village, there met

him ten men that were lepers, which stood afar off:

And they lifted up their voices, and said,

Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.

And when he saw them, he said unto them,

Go shew yourselves unto the priests. And it

came to pass, that, as they went, they were cleansed.

 And one of them, when he saw that he was healed,

turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God,

And fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks:

and he was a Samaritan.  And Jesus answering said,

Were there not ten cleansed? but where are the nine?

There are not found that returned to give glory to

God, save this stranger. And he said unto him,

Arise, go thy way: thy faith hath made thee whole.

In this short vignette from Luke 17, Jesus’ encounter with these ten lepers reveals something very troubling about human nature.  Leprosy was an umbrella diagnosis with serious physical, social, and religious implications in ancient Israel.  Regardless of which skin ailment or deformation was medically presenting, Mosaic Law prescribed that such people should be segregated (quarantined) away from the community until the priests cleared them to return.  While modern understandings of micro-biology and infectious disease have given us tools for more refined treatment of people with contagious diseases, quarantine is still the method used when dangerous or life threatening diseases appear in populated areas (consider the recent Ebola outbreaks) and infected people are not allowed back into the general population until evaluated by a competent authority and declared “clean.”  For these lepers which Jesus encountered, their disease left them rotting in exile, excluded from their families, their communities, and their places of worship.  When Jesus healed them and sent them to show themselves to the priests, He gave the gift of life and restoration in every facet of their lives.  However long these ten lepers had been in their condition, their ostracization was at an end.

The enormity of the good gift Jesus gave them was apparently enough to make nine of the ten forget the One who gave it to them.  Just one of the ten returned to fall at Jesus’ feet, giving glory and thanks to God for rescuing him from his morbid fate.  Jesus took the moment to teach those around Him, noting to His Jewish disciples that though all ten were cleansed by His miraculous and gracious gift, only one foreigner—a Samaritan, generally loathed by Jews—recognized the Giver of the gift.  Nine Jews who should have known better, taught by the Hebrew Scriptures to reverence their God of grace, healing, and mercy, instead reveled in the gift without regard to the Giver.  Noting the depth of difference between those nine and the thankful Samaritan at His feet, Jesus told the penitent and grateful man, “Arise, go thy way: thy faith hath made thee whole.”  Something more than leprosy had been healed in that Samaritan, as the gift of grace Jesus offered him was received in faith, raising him up in a new life of love and gratitude for the One who had saved him.  All ten had been healed of their leprosy, having received a great and wonderful gift—but we see only one who received the even greater gift of reconciliation with God by grace through faith in Jesus.

It is worth taking a moment to examine ourselves in light of this teaching moment Jesus offers us.  How many great and wonderful gifts have we received from Almighty God, as individuals, families, communities, a nation, and a world?  Our world is blessed with much abundance, variety, and beauty, set apart from the wasteland expanses of sterile space.  Our nation is blessed with stability and prosperity unrivaled anywhere in the world.  Our communities have running water, electricity, sanitation, schools, and hospitals, so that even our most downtrodden enclaves still fare much better than so much of the rest of the world.  Our families generally dwell in peace, protected by the laws of the land.  As individuals we live as free persons, where everyone can work and learn and make a living for themselves according to their own choice, effort, and competence.  On even the most superficial of examinations, we are blessed—and at a finer point of consideration, every person, no matter how rough or coarse their circumstances, is blessed with life in this world, and the promise of eternal life in the world to come.  All of these gifts, and so many more, come to us freely from the hand of our good and gracious God, whose life and love and mercy He pours out to us through His Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ.

And yet, how many of us become so bedazzled by the gifts, that we forget the Giver of our gifts?  How easy it is to revel in the beauty of nature, the freedoms of our nation, the joys of hearth and home, and our own personal freedom to determine the paths we tread in our lives, and to forget the good and gracious God who gives them all to us by His grace.  As great and wonderful as these gifts are, it is all too easy for us to forget that deep down inside us all is a sinful and fallen nature which before God is sick, diseased, contagious, ostracized, and unable to heal itself.  Deep down inside us all is a dead and dying heart full of pride, malice, lust, covetousness, hatred, and a thousand variations on the evils which enamor us.  Way down deep in places we don’t like to talk about even with our closest friends, we know we’re in desperate need of forgiveness, new life, salvation, and reconciliation with our good and gracious God.  In that dark and diseased recess of our corrupted soul, we know we need Jesus to heal, cleanse, restore, and enliven us again.

Hear Jesus as He calls to you from the pages of His Holy Scriptures, that you might not lose sight of the Giver as you enjoy His good and gracious gifts.  Rejoice in the good creation He has given you, but do not forget the Creator; enjoy the blessings of good government and local community, without forgetting the King of the Universe; embrace the joys of family and friends, yet without forgetting your heavenly Father; give thanks for your life and the freedom you have to live it, while remembering the Author of Life.  And beside all these things, so wondrous and gracious and good, give thanks and glory to Jesus who restores your soul and your eternal fellowship with your good and gracious God through the sacrifice of His Cross.  Return by faith to the feet of Jesus, that you may hear His Word of grace reach into every corner of your being:  Arise, go thy way: thy faith hath made thee whole.

Amen.

They Have Moses and the Prophets: A Meditation on Luke 16

Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father,

 that thou wouldest send him to my father's house:

For I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them,

 lest they also come into this place of torment.

Abraham saith unto him, 

They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.

And he said, Nay, father Abraham: 

but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent.

And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, 

neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.

After having been derided by the religious leaders of His day for teaching that one cannot serve both God and money, Jesus put a very fine point on the seriousness of His message for those who would hear Him.  Moving from temporal to eternal consequences, Jesus recounted the story of a rich man and a poor man-- one who ended up comforted in heaven, and the other tormented in the flames of hell.  Lest the Pharisees conclude that all this talk of how we treat our neighbors with the resources God has given us be an innocuous intellectual debate, Jesus gave them a window into the eternal future they were building for themselves through greed, avarice, ambition, and their abuse of the poor through the power of their political and religious offices.

There is much to be learned from Jesus' parable (the separation of the blessed and the damned in the world to come; the eternal finality of one's judgment after death; the inability of those in heaven or hell to move freely across the gulf which divides them; the living cognizance of people after death in both heaven and hell; the horrible torments of hell which anyone in their right mind would want to avoid, and spare others of, as well; the blessed comfort and end to suffering in heaven; and so much more...) but the concluding point He made to wrap up His teaching in this section is paramount:  If they hear not Moses and the prophets with their message to be reconciled to God by His grace through faith in Him and His Word, repenting of evil so that they might love God and their neighbor rightly, and escape the just sentence of eternal hell all men face for the sake of their willful, wanton wickedness, neither will they be persuaded, though one rise from the dead.  This truth would be witnessed by those who heard Him, when later He would be crucified, dead, buried, and risen again on Easter Sunday for the salvation of the whole world.  After His resurrection, when He came back from the dead, He commissioned His disciples to preach repentance and the forgiveness of sins to every person in His Name, sent them to make disciples by teaching His Word and baptizing in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, having sent to them the wonder-working power of the Holy Spirit to work faith in all who would hear and believe His saving Gospel, and having promised never to leave His people until He returned at the end of the world in glory to judge the living and the dead-- what did the Pharisees do?  As the teachers of the Law, the keepers of God's Word given through Moses and the prophets, they rejected the testimony of both them and Jesus by persecuting the Church through lies, treachery, imprisonment, beatings, threatenings, and murders.  Puffed up in their titles, their positions, their offices, their wealth, all their earthly trappings of prestige and self justification, they rejected the Holy Spirit who spoke through Moses and the Prophets, just as they had rejected Jesus and the Holy Spirit speaking through Jesus' Apostles.  Jesus revealed Himself as the eternal and living Word of the Father, showing that the testimony of the Holy Spirit in every true Prophet or Apostle is a testimony of Him, His Law, and His saving Gospel.  Thus all of Holy Scripture, breathed out by God's Spirit through His Prophets and Apostles, testifies to Jesus.  If anyone rejects Moses, he will reject Jesus, too, because Jesus is the fulfillment of the divine Word to which Moses and the Prophets were faithful witnesses.

It is tempting to think that people today would believe if they could see just one more miracle, one more resurrection, one more sign or one more wonder.  The truth, however, is that the heart which refuses to believe the Word of the Lord and resists the power of the Holy Spirit to give it new life from above, will continue to resist every miracle God would perform for His people.  The reason people move away from God in our day is no different than it was in the day of the 1st century Pharisees:  they deny Him because they want to deny Him.  They reject His Word, His Prophets, His Apostles, and His Gospel of salvation by grace through faith in Christ alone, first because they are inclined to do so by their own corrupt fallen nature, and then by an act of their own free will when the Holy Spirit enlivens them to hear and believe His Word.  Like the rich man in the parable, they have the Word of God given to them, they see their suffering neighbor dying at their gates, and they choose instead to serve money-- all their own selfish appetites-- rather than turning to God that they might be healed themselves, and then reflecting God's saving love to their neighbors in need.  The reason people end up in hell is not because God wants them to be there, for He has clearly declared His will that all mankind be saved through the sacrifice of His only begotten Son; rather, the only reason people end up in hell is because they chose to be there by rejecting the only God who could save them.  People end up in hell, because they freely chose the path to hell of their own accord-- they are there by their own fault.

Like so many things people choose in their shortsighted selfishness, the consequences are far worse than they imagine.  Even the rich man in Jesus' parable, unmoved by the suffering of Lazarus before his living eyes, once he entered into his awful fate, desired that his family not be likewise condemned through similar unbelief and unrepentance.  While no one will go to hell apart from their own choice to reject God and receive His judgment, rather than receive the grace of forgiveness in Jesus Christ, no one will desire to remain under that awful judgment forever.  But once our choices are made complete in our earthly death, and God's judgment is cast, our fate is final and eternal.  There will be no more preaching of the Gospel of grace in hell, but only the inescapable declaration of the perfect and holy Law.  Once the Holy Spirit has withdrawn Himself and His Word from any person, that person's fallen nature becomes his only nature, and his only fate can be that which is shared with the devil and his unholy demons, forever twisted together in the flames of perdition.

Jesus comes to you this day, that you might never taste of that awful judgment of God-- that instead you might drink in His grace, mercy, forgiveness, and eternal life through faith in Him and His saving Word.  Jesus did not suffer and die under the weight of all the world's sin so that you would be lost, but rather that you might be found and live in Him forever.  His loving Word and Spirit pursue you, whether you be wrapped up in delight or despair, whether you are rich or poor, the persecuted or the persecutor.  God desires none to come to that place of rejection and torment, for He has spilled the holy blood of His only begotten Son for you, and for every soul that would ever walk this earth.  Hear Him as He appeals to you through all His Prophets and Apostles, His Word working in you by the power of His Holy Spirit to create faith unto repentance and eternal life in His Name.  Flee the distractions and deceptions which would tempt you to a fate worse than death, and instead cling to Jesus whose Gospel will wash you, cleanse you, enliven you, and keep you forever.  Hear the Word of the Lord which comes to save you-- repent, believe, and live.  Amen.

No One Can Serve Two Masters: A Meditation on Luke 16

No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; 

or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

And the Pharisees also, who were covetous, heard all these things: and they derided him.

And he said unto them, Ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth your hearts:

 for that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God.

Jesus' words may ring strangely in our modern ears, as we all seem to serve many masters.  If we are blessed to have a job, or perhaps more than one, we have bosses that define what we will be doing with our time in exchange for our paychecks.  If we drive on the public roads, there are police who are always ready to help us remember how we are obligated to use our time and resources, and take our money or freedom is we don't comply.  We have a government at local, state, and federal levels which write and enforce our laws, collect our money for taxes, and provide general services to the community-- even a military in which some of us served or served, which may govern much of our lives.  Some are blessed with families, with obligations commensurate to their callings in those families (fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, etc).  With all the masters we seem to serve on a daily basis, how can Jesus say, "No one can serve two masters"?

Jesus points to a deeper reality we all know is true, having to do with priorities.  Ultimately we can have only one Master which sets our priorities and establishes the terms by which we relate to everything else.  For far too many, their Master is the love of money, and everything they do in their lives is ordered to that priority, leaving human and divine obligations to wither.  For some, it is the love of their own pride, which causes everything other than their pursuit of power and prestige to be stepped upon to reach those goals.  For others their Master may be their appetites, always in pursuit of pleasure or fleeing from pain, leaving everything else abandoned in their wake.  Some make another person or their own families their Master, sacrificing everything for them, and when that person either betrays or is taken from them, they fall into deepest despair.  Still others might make public service or some organization their Master, giving the years of their vigorous youth to endless social causes or campaigns, finding only later what they have lost in the exchange.  Jesus' words bore deeply into our fallen souls to reveal what we have really made our Master, so that we might understand to whom we are really beholden.  Regardless of what it is, our Master sets our time lines, the boundaries of our relationships, orders our lives, takes its sacrifices, and gives whatever payment it has offered.

And what do our earthly Masters offer us?  Temporary pleasure, power, wealth, prestige, or satisfaction?  When the years of your life are spent, and you look into the horizon of eternity surrounded by the temporary baubles you have pursued all your life, what have your really gained?  What shall you hold up before your eternal Creator, to justify the way you have spent the life He has given you?  And which of these temporary pursuits do you think you shall offer to satisfy the Judge who gave you your breath, your being, and your time?  If we think we shall approach the King of Glory bearing these trifles to impress Him, we are deluding ourselves.  As He has given us our very existence, He has also given us His expectations as our legitimate Master.  As the Author of Life, He tells us clearly what He expects of us by His Law and thereby what the terms are of His gift of eternal life:  we are to love Him fully and completely, and our neighbors as ourselves.  That divine Law of Love finds full expression through the Natural Law written into the cosmos, the Ten Commandments carved into stone by His hand on Mt. Sinai, and written across all of Holy Scripture by His Prophets and Apostles.  The works God demands are eternal, complete, and holy, showing how our lives ought to be entirely ordered toward Him, His Word, His holiness, and His love.

That reality should be terrifying to us all.  There is no life of fallen men which meets this holy and eternal obligation, which means that no man on his own power, choice, or capacity actually has God as his true Master.  Rather, we have chosen other Masters, none of whom can grant us eternal life, and none which can give us rewards which will satisfy our holy Judge.  Of our own fallen nature we seek to be our own Masters, and find that instead we are enslaved to one of the many faces of the evil one, whose only eternal reward for us is death, destruction, pain, and misery.  While it may seem that there are many Masters to whom people are beholden in their lives, there are really only two in the whole universe:  the Master who is Himself Life everlasting, and the rebel Master who himself is destined for eternal fire together with all he wooed to his service.  Of these two, we can serve only one, as our lives can be ordered only toward either Life or Death.  Jesus' words call everyone to look at themselves honestly and see their hopeless state, as our sin and rebellion from God's Word declare us all to be servants of death.

Having brought us all to recognize our condition, Jesus alone took the steps necessary to restore us all.  He alone is God incarnate, living out the perfectly ordered life of service to God our Father, then taking our disorder upon Himself shed His blood upon His Cross to satisfy our just condemnation.  He offered His perfect, holy, and eternal life so that we might not suffer and die in our rebellion.  His gift of sacrifice for us restored our relationship to the Master of Life, so that we might be free from the Master of death.  In Him, as He made His Vicarious Atonement for the sins of the whole world, He earned through His life, death, and resurrection the grace we all need to be forgiven and free from sin, death, hell, and the power of the devil.  In Jesus we see the eternal Law with all its justice satisfied, and the everlasting Gospel of grace proclaimed for all who will repent and believe in Him.

Some will scoff at Jesus and deride Him, choosing to hide instead behind their trifling academic degrees, secular power, pursuit of pleasure, or some other Master they have chosen for themselves.  But how does Jesus' word meet you this day?  Has Jesus shown you the depths of your sin and rebellion, and the only end to your path of death?  Be of good cheer, dear Christian, for in removing your disordered hope and passion for the Master of death and destruction, He has prepared your heart to receive the Gospel of His grace, mercy, and life.  Jesus is the Lord who has taken your death from you, that you might stand and live forever, forgiven and free, covered in His Blood and washed clean of your every failure and stain.  Jesus is the Master of Life who died for you that you might live in and for Him, and through Him live in divine love for His whole creation, as you were always meant to live since before the world began.  Hear the Word of Life which calls to you today, that His Spirit might move you to faith in Him and repentance from the ways of death, and unto eternal life in Jesus your Savior.  Amen.

Joy in Heaven: A Meditation on Luke 15

What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them,

doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness,

and go after that which is lost, until he find it?

And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing.

And when he cometh home, he calleth together his friends and neighbours,

saying unto them, Rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost.

 I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth,

more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance.

I have heard over the years many theories about what pleases God.  There’s a common refrain that being attached to this or that social justice motif brings pleasure to God, or perhaps more piously postulated as Christians working to bring God’s Kingdom down to earth in some politically tangible way.  Moving from the outside world of politics and social justice campaigns to inside the Church itself, there are suggestions that a particular form of worship pleases God, or particular songs, or particular instruments, or a particular way of holding one’s hands, or a particular kind of dress (for both laity and clergy), or a particular building style, or any host of man-made customs. And while it’s certainly true that some customs are much more appropriate in the House of God than others, attempting to tie such menial contrivances to God’s pleasure or joy is ignorant at best, and at worst a kind of unbearable hubris.  Who are we, after all, as creatures of infinitely lower dignity and capacity than the eternal divine majesty of God Almighty, to attempt to tell God what should and should not please Him?  Do I really think that I can manipulate God’s emotions the way some slick politician, praise band, or charismatic preacher can manipulate the hearts and minds of impressionable people?

At root, our human pride always seeks to find something in ourselves that grants us dignity before God, as if of ourselves we have some standing before God which requires His respect.  Unfortunately, given our fallen and sinful state, there is nothing we can do of ourselves that pleases God, and there is nothing in us that has not been twisted by our own pride and wickedness.  Not only are we originally created inferior to God as our Creator, but our fallen evil nature constantly seeks to take glory and honor from God which He has not given.  This impulse of our fallen nature moves men to think themselves capable of moving God to pleasure or joy by their own efforts, and thereby securing for themselves some reward or payment from God as a just desert.  Not surprisingly this motive is found in nearly every pagan religion across the globe, where man has tried to build his religion toward God without the guidance of His Word and Spirit.  Where fallen man attempts to reach and satisfy God through his own works, there inevitably emerges a religion which reflects man’s twisted and fallen nature, and which cannot ever please or satisfy the only true, holy, and almighty God.

Once we come to understand the absolute futility of pleasing God on our own terms or through our own works, we are prepared to listen to God’s solution to our problem.  God’s Law, written generally into all of nature so that every armchair pagan philosopher can grasp its basic tenets, yet explicitly revealed in Holy Scripture, prepares each and every human heart to despair of their own ability to reach, please, manipulate, or bring joy to God.  God’s Gospel, however, revealed in Holy Scripture as the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ for the salvation of condemned sinners through the forgiveness of sins by grace through faith in Jesus, lifts the despairing human heart into the joy and peace of God.  God’s joy is not something we give to Him, but rather something that He gives to us—it is what Jesus secured for the whole human race through His Cross, when He took our sinful wickedness and condemnation upon Himself, so that He might give His grace, mercy, love, compassion, joy, and eternal life back to us.  God does not present Himself as one to be manipulated by sinful men, but rather as the One who calls all fallen sinners to repent and believe in Him through the power of His Spirit working through His Word.  How then do sinful people enter into the joy of God in heaven, but by trusting in the gracious invitation God makes to us by His Word?  It is such faith and repentance which brings every lost sinner into the joy and celebration of heaven, where God and all His Holy Angels, His Prophets and Apostles, and all His blessed saints and martyrs of every time and place, rejoice in grandeur surpassing earthly understanding for every soul saved from perdition.

Where does God’s Word of Law and Gospel meet you this day? Are you still striving to please God through your own works and manipulations, thinking you have something in you which God is obliged to honor and reward?  Are you exhausted from your fruitless and vain pursuits to bring joy to God by your own offerings of service, praise, plans, or contrivances?  Are you at last despairing of any reason why God would take joy or pleasure in you, for you have come to understand the totality of your fallen depravity, and your utter inability to climb out of your sins and into the holiness of God’s presence?  Take heart, dear Christian!  Hear the Word of the Lord which calls you to repent of your fallen wickedness, of your pride, of your attempted manipulations of the King of the Universe.  Hear the Word of the Lord which speaks to you life and forgiveness and mercy and hope, all for Christ’s sake.  Hear the love which God has had for you from before the foundation of the world, which moved Him to seek and to save you from the despair and vanity of your fallen works by the shed blood of His Only Begotten Son, that whosoever would repent and believe in Him might not perish, but rather be given His eternal life.  Hear the Word of the Lord reveal to you that God’s joy is manifest to you in Jesus His Son, and that He has always been beckoning you back into the fellowship of His eternal joy through faith in Him.

Be of good cheer, for God has not commanded that you bring Him joy, but that you receive His joy by grace through faith in His Son—a faith and repentance He brings forth in you through the power of His Holy Spirit, working through His Holy Word.  Hear Him.  Repent, believe, and live.  Amen.