Of Doctrines, Rocks, and Keys: A Meditation on Matthew 16

When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi,

 he asked his disciples, saying,

Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?

 And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist:

some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets.

He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?

And Simon Peter answered and said,

Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.

And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona:

for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee,

but my Father which is in heaven.

And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter,

and upon this rock I will build my church;

and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven:

and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven:

and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

 

Matthew 16 begins with the Sadducees and the Pharisees, religious leaders of the people of Israel, haranguing Jesus for a sign to prove that He really was the Christ.  What is revealed across Jesus’ long interaction with these religious leaders is that they had no intention of acknowledging Him at all.  They saw His miracles, heard His teaching, and were continually trying to undermine, trick, and ultimately betray Him to death under false accusation to the Romans.  Their doctrine was one of man and politics, of hypocrisy and power.  They denied Jesus and the Scriptures, creating their own traditions upon which they built their kingdom, and exercised their authority to their own benefit.  Many of them were, in St. John the Baptist’s words, a brood of vipers whose teachings and actions lead to both physical and spiritual death.  To them, Jesus offered a correction that in their blindness which could see the weather better than the signs of their own times, the only sign they would receive was that of Jonah—a cloaked reference to Jesus’ coming three days of death in the belly of the earth, only to emerge triumphant over the grave.

 

This is the context in which Jesus gave His disciples warning to beware the false teachings of the Sadducees and the Pharisee, which like leaven begin small with false words, assumptions, and corruptions, but manage to infect the whole mind and spirit of people.  A religion of power, politics, and personal advantage blinds the eyes to the authentic works of God, and dulls the ears to hear His saving Word.  No greater an example can be made than the situation in which Jesus and His disciples were in, where the very Incarnate Word of the God walked among them, full of grace and truth, inspiring many to follow Him, while others plotted His death.  Jesus put a point on this when He asked His disciples to tell Him who people conjectured Him to be, and they responded with all kinds of whacky answers:  John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or some other heroic prophet of antiquity brought back from the dead.  The religious leaders were blinded to who Jesus really was by their own commitment to false doctrine, and the people were muddled and confused by the influence of that same false religious system.  False teaching not only corrupts the ones who teach it, but those who learn from it.

 

When Jesus asked directly who the disciples knew Him to be, St. Peter responded on behalf of them all by declaring Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of the living God.  This declaration and doctrine Jesus warmly confirmed as having come from God Himself, and noting Peter’s rock solid answer, Jesus told him that it was this rock of confession—this bedrock doctrine of Jesus as the simultaneously divine and human messianic Savior of the world—upon which His unconquerable Church would be built. To Peter would be given the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, the power to forgive sins in Jesus’s Name according to Jesus’ own teaching that all who repent and believe would be saved by grace through faith in Christ alone.  This power would be a power over sin, death, hell, and all the wiles of the devil; a battering ram against which the gates of hell itself could not stand.  The power to forgive sins would change the world, rescuing people from the condemnation of their inherited Original Sin, as well as the sins of their own commission.  These Keys would unlock the gates of heaven for all mankind, that everyone who would repent and believe the Gospel might be unchained and set free from eternal perdition.  These Keys would be the gracious gift of life earned by His Vicarious Atonement upon the Cross, given freely to a world which did not deserve it, nor could ever earn it.  These Keys, to proclaim the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation to all who repent and believe in Jesus, or to declare bound in sin all who refuse to repent or believe in the Word of Christ, would be the living and active Word of Jesus among His people until His final return, empowered to accomplish what it says by the omnipotence of His Holy Spirit.

 

And what Jesus promised to St. Peter in Matthew 16 before His crucifixion, He fulfilled in John 20 after His resurrection, where John clearly declares that Jesus breathed on all His disciples, gave them these Keys of the Gospel, and sent them out as His Apostles to bear His saving Word.  Jesus accomplished what He promised, building His unassailable and eternal Church upon His Eternal Word, and the sacrifice of His own body and blood upon the Cross.  What Jesus alone could earn, He gave freely to His disciples, instructing them to give just as freely to others as they themselves had received.  The Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven which Jesus gave to His Church are the living power to forgive the sins of all by grace through faith in Christ alone, and to declare to a fallen world that there is salvation in no other name given under heaven but Jesus.  This is the power of the Keys, of the true doctrine of Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and His ultimate return to judge the living and the dead.  This Eternal Word of Law and Gospel, the confession of Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the Living God, has been, is now, and shall be forever the Rock upon which Jesus’ Church is built.  This is the Rock no storm can shake, no demon can assail, and no brood of vipers can overthrow.  This is the Rock of our Salvation.

 

Let the words of false teachers and the leaven of hypocrites fall away, and hear once again the sounding trumpet of heaven to mankind:  Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of the Father, in the power of the Holy Spirit, has come to save sinners like you and me, and calls us all to eternal life by grace through faith in Him alone.  Hear Him today, gather together with His people where His Keys are rightly administered according to His Eternal Word, that repentance and faith might bring to your hearing the declaration that your sins are forgiven for His sake, and that the gates of heaven are open to you.  Amen.

The Election of Grace: A Meditation on Romans 11, for the 11th Sunday after Pentecost

I say then, Hath God cast away his people? God forbid.

For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin.

God hath not cast away his people which he foreknew.

Wot ye not what the scripture saith of Elias?

how he maketh intercession to God against Israel saying,

Lord, they have killed thy prophets, and digged down thine altars;

and I am left alone, and they seek my life.

But what saith the answer of God unto him?

I have reserved to myself seven thousand men,

who have not bowed the knee to the image of Baal.

Even so then at this present time also

there is a remnant according to the election of grace.

 

As we pass the ides of August, and our communities seem stuck in the political vicissitudes of an election season marred by a fanned public panic in the latest pandemic, it is easy for a Christian to feel alone.  In various parts of the country, hostile politicians have attacked the Church with renewed vigor, facilitating mobs which persecute them in their congregations for having the audacity to gather around Christ in His Word and Sacraments.  Worse yet, faithless church leaders have abandoned the faithful to the whims of government, effectively shutting down their churches and taking away from the people their blessed communion.  Insanity has reached a fever pitch in many cities, where elected officials have bowed to Marxist mobs to defund police and deliver over the people’s property and livelihoods to masked marauders.  Such civilizational suicide waxes stronger in some regions than others, but nowhere seems immune from its reach.  There is an infection of unbelief in both the body politic and the Body of Christ which is causing massive suffering both locally and globally, and many there are who despair of our recovery.

 

However, the words of St. Paul to the church at Rome nearly 2000 years ago, help us remain centered and grounded in times such as these.  Lest we forget, the church at Rome was persecuted not only by the government but also by fellow Jews, and not many days hence that vitriolic persecution would become a persecution of blood.  St. Paul reminded the Christians at Rome that they stood in the election of grace by faith, which is how the people of God had always stood—from the ancient Israelites to the current day.  There were times in ancient Israel, hundreds of years before Paul’s writing to the church at Rome, where the faithful thought they were being persecuted into oblivion.  Yet even in Elijah’s time, when he was whisked away in the wilderness, fed by ravens in a secret location to avoid his government execution, he cried out to God in his loneliness, and God told him that He had retained for himself over 7000 people of faith even in that dark time.  St. Paul used this example to remind the Christians in Rome that they stood by grace through faith, grafted into the Root which supported both the faithful Jews of times past, and the people of faith in times present.  Various times of unbelief in the history of Israel caused some of those branches to be broken off in judgment so that others like themselves might be grafted in, but the Lord of the Harvest had power to graft every branch back in again, should they return to Him in faith and repentance.

 

The thrust of Romans 11 is to remind the Gentile Christians of Rome that they stood by grace through faith, and that if the Jews had become the enemy of the Gospel, partnered with a pagan government to persecute them in unbelief, the calling of God was still irrevocable, and everyone who returned to Him in faith would receive grace.  The message to the Church at Rome would strengthen them for the times of trial ahead, knowing that if God did not abandon His people during the time of Elijah, He would not abandon them now.  For in every age, God retains His remnant of faithful people who do not bow their knees to the pagan idols of their age, but remain steadfast in His Word.  And that remnant was strengthened by divine grace through an election which could not be overthrown by any powers of man or devil.  This was true in ancient Israel, in the days of St. Paul, across the 2000 year history of the church, and in our own day, as well.

 

As I shared with some friends this weekend who lamented that they thought they would never live to see such days as ours, the reality born of history shows that every generation has its time of controversy and conflict over the faith.  And while some times and places have greater or lesser persecution of the people of God, it is more likely than not that a Christian will face some form of persecution in their time and place if they seek to abide in the Word of God by faith.  This time in which we have been called and sent, grafted into Jesus like branches to a steadfast and living Root, is our time to live out our faith and resist the forces of despair, unbelief, destruction, and death.  And if we feel alone in our struggles, we can remember the times past when God’s Living Word sealed to Himself by His own power a remnant which would not bow their knees to Baal, just as He has done in our own time.  We are not alone as we stand in the election of grace by faith in Christ alone, but rather we stand together with all those who are sealed by the Holy Spirit in our time, and in the great cloud of saintly witnesses who have been saved and sealed in every generation before us.

 

We stand by grace through faith in our time and place, because God has very intentionally placed us here in this time, and in this place.  We are not accidents of the universe bouncing around with pointlessness and fear toward oblivion, but the called and elect children of God who live forever, forgiven and free.  We are the ones through whom the Lord of Glory has chosen to shine His saving Gospel today, to accomplish in our time and place the works He has ordained for us from before the foundation of the world.  And we do not stand alone.  For we are grafted together into the Body of Christ, born from above by Water and Spirit, receiving our eternal life in this world and the next through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.  The Gospel of faith and repentance which we carry by Jesus’ Word is irrevocable, piercing through every darkness in each generation, calling all who will return to Him, to forgiveness and life.

 

Be of good cheer, for we may not have chosen the times in which we live, but we can be sure that we were chosen for our times by Him who holds the whole universe in the palm of His omnipotent and gracious hand.  We stand forever by grace through faith in Christ alone, calling all people to join us in that life, through the Everlasting Gospel of Jesus.  Amen.

Of Wheat and Tares: A Meditation on Matthew 13

Another parable put he put forth unto them, saying,

The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field:

But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way.

But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also.

So the servants of the householder came and said unto him,

Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares?

He said unto them, An enemy hath done this.

The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up?

But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them.

Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them:

but gather the wheat into my barn…

Then Jesus sent the multitude away, and went into the house:

 and his disciples came unto him, saying,

Declare unto us the parable of the tares of the field.

He answered and said unto them,

He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man;

The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom;

but the tares are the children of the wicked one;

The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world;

and the reapers are the angels.

As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire;

so shall it be in the end of this world.

The Son of man shall send forth his angels,

and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend,

and them which do iniquity;

And shall cast them into a furnace of fire:

there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun

in the kingdom of their Father.

Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.

All the vignettes of Matthew 13 pertaining to the Kingdom of God are worthy of meditation, and each add to our understanding of who we are relative to that Kingdom.  As Jesus noted when He gave these parables to His disciples, they were making known truth which had been kept secret from the foundation of the world.  It is worth spending time to hear what He has to say, and consider what meaning it has for our lives.

What we see in the parable of the Wheat and the Tares helps us appreciate the suffering we find ourselves in.  God is not the author of evil, nor does He teach men to be evil.  The world He created is good, and by His Word, we know His intentions for the world and everyone in it.  The devil, on the other hand, as an enemy of God and man, plants his seeds of deception, destruction, division, theft, murder, and insurrection in the world, and teaches men to follow in his footsteps.  In the parable, the Holy Angels look upon this mess and ask the Lord if they should tear it all up immediately, so that evil may no more dwell upon the good creation of God.  But God, in His mercy, allows the evil one to persist in his weeds and tempt others toward evil, so that the people of God are allowed to live, and grow, and find their future with Him in the fullness of time.

From the perspective of the wheat, this life among weeds is a constant struggle, with an enemy who is unceasingly working to choke them out.  Not only would the devil corrupt the world by infesting it with his own works of malice and evil, but he would turn every person he could into a noxious reflection of himself.  Every person, tempted as we are by our own fallen nature and the smooth seductions of the evil one, is susceptible to this fate.  And while the Weeds are growing, they seem at times to be winning the war against the Wheat; like the kudzu of the south or the blackberry vines of the northwest, weeds can seem to have the upper hand against cultivated crops, and the temptation of every generation is to simply give in and join them.

However, Jesus is clear that while God allows the suffering of a corrupted world to continue for the sake His people’s continued life, it is not a forbearance without end.  The fullness of time comes, both in an individual sense and as a whole creation.  Each stalk of Wheat, or every child of God who lives by grace through faith in Christ alone, will find an end to their suffering and strife against the evil one and all his minions at the fullness of their time in this world.  It is then that the Holy Angels come to harvest that soul, that it may shine with undimmed glory in the presence our unconquerable King forever.  As individual servants of the Living God, no matter the struggles and strife brought upon us by the servants of the wicked one, our destiny is sealed in the loving promise of our Father in heaven, where we shall live in blessed communion with all the saints forever.  Likewise, the fate of those who embrace the evil one is also sealed regardless of their apparent temporal successes in this world, and those same Holy Angels who come to take the saints to heaven, will gather the wicked to be cast into their hellish prison, a furnace of fire, for all eternity.

And yet, beyond the individual fullness of time we each experience as either Wheat or Tares, disciples of God or disciples of the devil, there is a fullness of time for the world, as well.  Eventually time will run out for the devil and his scheming horde, and the great harvest at the end of the age will come.  There will be a unique event for all who still abide on the earth in those days, where they will see their individual fullness of time coincide with the fullness of time in creation.  For that generation, they will see the return of Jesus to the earth, together with all the saints of every age and the hosts of Holy Angels, who will descend in glory to judge the living and the dead.  In that day, all evil will be removed from the earth, the resurrection of all flesh will be accomplished, and the saints will shine forth in the victory of Jesus in a new heaven and a new earth.

Of this time, we do not know.  Jesus did not reveal it to His disciples, but He did command them to watch.  So while we cannot know the fullness of time for all creation anymore than we can know the fullness of time for our own lives, we watch and we pray, living out our faith in love for God and neighbor, striving to do our duty according to the calling we have received from our Lord.  This life of faith lives in grace, knowing that He who holds all the fullness of time in His omnipotent hands, has promised to work all things out for good to those who love Him.  Our blessing and our duty is to live in faith and repentance, assured of the promise of God’s Word, that He will guide all things—including us—into eternity.  In this promise we find our hope, our rest, our confidence, and our inspiration, as the Eternal Word of the Father gives us a victory no conglomeration of evil men or demons can overcome.  All glory be to our saving God, now and forever!  Amen.

The Life of the Mind: A Meditation on Romans 8

There is therefore now no condemnation

to them which are in Christ Jesus,

who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.

For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus

hath made me free from the law of sin and death.

For what the law could not do,

in that it was weak through the flesh,

God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh,

and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:

That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us,

who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.

For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh;

but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit.

For to be carnally minded is death;

but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.

Romans chapter 8 continues St. Paul’s theological magnum opus, by drawing out for his readers the significance of the life of the mind and its relationship to the life of the individual.  This life of the mind is something different than many philosophers of the last several centuries might have made it out to be, and certainly not the Gnostic bifurcation of spirit and body that abounded in the Greek culture of Paul’s day.  St. Paul makes clear for his readers in the Church at Rome that the life of the mind cannot be separated from an individual’s life as a whole, and that what begins in the mind as focus or conviction will play itself out in the physical aspects of a person’s life.  A person who, in their own mind, focused on and pursued the Spirit of Christ (another way of saying the Holy Spirit, who bore the Word of Christ through the Prophets and Apostles, and is the ultimate author of the Holy Scriptures which all testify of Jesus) was one who walked or lived in Christ and was free from the law of sin and death.  Conversely, a person who, in their own mind, focused on and pursued the various passions and lusts of their flesh, was one who walked or lived in the flesh and was still subject to the law of sin and death.

In this context, St. Paul was mapping out two distinct paths:  a person could be alive in Christ, where the mind was fixed on Jesus and His Word by grace through faith, continually disciplining both body and mind through repentance, or they could be dead in their trespasses and sins by ignoring Jesus and His Word, fixing their minds instead on the disordered passions and lust of their flesh.  These two paths, one of life and one of death, were paths begun in the mind.  Where the mind began, the body and soul followed.  This allowed St. Paul, as St. John would do later in his epistles, to advise his readers if someone claimed to be a Christian and didn’t walk after Jesus, abiding in Jesus’ Word, then that person did not really belong to Jesus or the fellowship of Christians we call the Church.  While the Christian would aspire to follow Jesus by abiding in His Word through faith and repentance, receiving grace and forgiveness to rise up again if they fell to sin or temptation, the unbeliever wouldn’t really care about Jesus or His Word, and would happily abide in their own sins without faith or repentance, and thereby forgoing grace and forgiveness.  The path of Christian struggle against sin, death, hell, and the power of the devil through faith in Jesus ultimately resolves in resurrection unto eternal life, where the path of the flesh resolves in the terrible resurrection to eternal condemnation in hell.

Thus today, as in St. Paul’s day, Christians continue to gather together around Jesus’ Word and Sacraments by grace through faith, in the hope of eternal life, while striving within themselves to put to death the disordered passions of the flesh, and bring their flesh under the control of the Spirit of Christ.  Unbelievers today, as in days past, still gather together in unbelief around anything other than Jesus’ Word, comforting each other in their sins and passions, and lying to themselves about the judgment which awaits them.  These two paths are irreconcilable, are destined for two entirely different ends, and they both begin with the life of the mind.

It is tempting, but ultimately unfulfilling, to imagine that we are fully in control of our own mind.  Apart from the Word and Spirit of God, our minds are dark, fallen places from which emerge all the sins and wickedness known to mankind.  If the battle for our minds were decided simply by our own efforts to win them, we would be as lost today as we ever were—unable to believe, trust, or hope in the promises of God, or to love Him and keep His commandments.  Our fallen powers are hopelessly twisted, both of body and mind, so that our fallen spirit careens toward the abyss we have rightfully earned.  And yet, in His mercy, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.  While we were unable to fix our minds on anything but our lusts and passions, the Word of God Made Flesh became our atonement upon His Cross, and by His Holy Spirit preached this Good News to all who might repent and believe in Him, reconciling the household of faith to the Father by the blood of the Son in the power of the Spirit.  In this the Christian trusts the battle not only for their daily physical walk of life, but of their life of the mind, as well.  For Jesus came to save sinners such as us, who could not save ourselves by our own thought, word, or deed—by the things we’ve done, nor the things we’ve left undone.

The good news to all people today, is the good news that St. Paul shared so many centuries ago, and that the people of God have lived in since the dawn of time:  that we are saved by grace, through faith, in Christ alone.  In Christ alone, we find the power of the Spirit to abide in His Word, that our minds might be conformed to His, and that the entirety of our lives may follow—a work begun in this world, and made perfect in the next.  In Christ alone we find the path of life which rings true to the mind as well as the body and the soul, calling all people to leave behind the ways of death and destruction.  In Christ alone do we find our salvation from the evil which corrupts our every fallen power, and the hell which yawns wide to receive all those who prefer darkness over light.  In Christ alone is our mind renewed as we are born from above by Water and Spirit, that we might be called the children and heirs of God.

Hear the Word of the Lord as it calls to you today.  Turn to the light which would dispel your darkness, the grace which would absolve your sins, and the life which would swallow up your death.  Let the Word of God reign in you, that your mind, your feet, your hands, and all that you are, might be found on the path of life.  Amen. 

The Wisdom of Fools: A Meditation on Matthew 11

Then began he to upbraid the cities wherein

 most of his mighty works were done,

 because they repented not:

Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida!

for if the mighty works, which were done in you,

had been done in Tyre and Sidon,

 they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.

 But I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable

for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment, than for you.

And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven,

shalt be brought down to hell:

 for if the mighty works, which have been done in thee,

had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day.

But I say unto you, That it shall be more tolerable

for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee.

At that time Jesus answered and said,

I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth,

because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent,

and hast revealed them unto babes.

Even so, Father: for so it seemed good in thy sight.

All things are delivered unto me of my Father:

and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father;

neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son,

 and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him.

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden,

and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me;

for I am meek and lowly in heart:

and ye shall find rest unto your souls.

 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Matthew 11 begins after Jesus gave power to His disciples and sent them off to preach in the surrounding towns that the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand.  Hearing what Jesus was doing, John the Baptist from his prison cell sent two of his disciples to converse with Jesus, whom Jesus received, instructed, and sent back to John.  Then He turned back to the surrounding crowd with some pretty tough accusations, derisively comparing them to market place children playing games with capricious rules.  John the Baptist they didn’t follow, because he was an ascetic, and his lack frivolity didn’t pair with their own; Jesus they were disregarding because he ate and drank and socialized with everyone, including sinners, which conflicted with their own sense of piety.  The people to whom Jesus was speaking thought themselves quite smart, insightful, and judicious, while their rejection of the Prophet John and the Christ Jesus showed them to be fools beyond compare.

In fact, Jesus points out in plaintive tones, that if the preaching of John and the works of Jesus were done in the times and places of previously judged and destroyed cities, those people would have repented and remained until the current day.  Places like Tyre, and Sidon, and Sodom, cities which suffered the severe judgment of God for their misdeeds, were known to Jesus as more righteous and willing to receive His Word than the Jewish towns to which He was now speaking.  This was, of course, a profound rebuke, and many people didn’t take kindly to it.  As with most ages and places, modern people tend to think themselves the wisest and most intelligent, while blind to their true status in history.

Such a time is ours.  Screaming mobs of social justice warriors fill both media and the streets, spouting vulgarities and offenses which would make other generations blanch.  Within hours, or days, or weeks, one stupid idea can become a movement of thousands or even millions of people, tearing down monuments, vandalizing public spaces, destroying individuals and their communities over slanderous accusations.  Armed rioters demanding the dissolution of police; looters demanding the freedom to steal from private businesses; academics and their students using the freedoms of this nation to call for the destruction of the nation; Marxists, Socialists, Fascists, Anarchists, all fanning the flames of public outrage, while sympathetic (or cowardly pathetic) politicians lend their endorsements.  Destructive mobs are promoted and encouraged by mayors and governors and senators, while churches and schools are shut down.  The intelligentsia of our age perceives itself as the pinnacle of enlightenment and sophistication, yet when compared to other ages and places it is petulant, ignorant, and incapable of the civil, ecclesiastical, and artistic triumphs of their ancestors.  Our age tears down the Rembrandts and Aristotles and Augustines of ages past, replacing them with their own compositions of sidewalk chalk art and spray paint graffiti.

And yet, Jesus continues to reveal Himself to every generation, calling everyone to reconciliation with the Father through His grace.  Unlike the vapid and tumultuous mobs whose appetite for power and destruction is never satiated, Jesus shows the world a way which is truly wise, virtuous, righteous, and yields peace.  It is a way which leans not on human understanding or human power, but rather rests in the wisdom and power of God by faith.  Such faith hears the Word of the Lord for the eternal truth that it is, piercing to the center of every person to reveal not only their own personal depravity, but the sacrifice of love which absolves every fallen person in Jesus.  This is the way which leads to eternal life, a fellowship with God today which can never be broken by the putrefying powers of wicked men or demons, regardless of the size of their hordes.  This Word of forgiveness for Jesus’ sake, which calls everyone to turn from their paths of evil to the path of faith, hope, and love, is one marked by grace, life, and peace.  It is a burden which is light, a rest which is won, and a victory which is sure—not because of what we have done or what we can accomplish, but because of what Jesus has done through His life, death, and resurrection, and what He has promised to all who will follow him.

That is the difference in the callings of our times, between the voices leading to death and destruction, and the Voice which leads to life and providence.  Abandon the false wisdom of the fools of our age, and take refuge once again in the Wisdom of God, who alone has been the light and life of every age before us, and will be for every generation to come.  Amen.

The Danger of False Prophets: A Pentecost Meditation on Jeremiah 28

Then said the prophet Jeremiah unto Hananiah the prophet,

Hear now, Hananiah; The Lord hath not sent thee;

but thou makest this people to trust in a lie.

Therefore thus saith the Lord;

Behold, I will cast thee from off the face of the earth:

this year thou shalt die, because thou hast taught rebellion against the Lord.

So Hananiah the prophet died the same year in the seventh month.

The prophet Jeremiah had a tough job—to preach repentance to the people of Israel, and the catastrophe of the Babylonian captivity should they refuse.  The people of his country were in a time of rampant wickedness, selfishness, adultery, and idolatry, and his call to turn from their evil and cling to God in faith was largely rejected.  Also at his time, there were many who wore the mantle of prophets claiming to speak for God, as well as those who served as priests whose duty it was to shepherd the people in the Word of the Lord.  The vast majority of these official prophets and priests were apostates, teaching the people to be comfortable in their sins, and presuming to speak words from God which God did not give them.  Like so many of the authentic prophets, Jeremiah’s was a lonely road, full of scorn and derision among his peers for refusing to preach the official party line, but instead clinging fast to the Word of God.

The conflict with Hananiah was climatic.  God had told Jeremiah to fashion a yoke and put it upon his shoulders, as a sign that the people of Israel would serve the King of Babylon as judgment for their sins.  If the people would accept a lesser service to Babylon as penance for their sins, their faith and repentance would receive the grace of most of them continuing to live in their land while a smaller number lived in exile, awaiting a final return.  If they continued to rebel, God would use King Nebuchadnezzar to destroy them with war, famine, and pestilence.  Hananiah preached continued resistance to God and His judgement, took the yoke off Jeremiah’s shoulders, and broke it in pieces, saying that their suffering under Babylon would be complete in less than two years.  God slew Hananiah for his false prophecy, but not before he convinced many to follow him in rebellion, and the suffering of the people of Israel was tremendous.

As at the time of the Babylonian captivity in the 6^th century BC, so too in our time and place; many people are given over to wickedness in a thousand variations, from sexual sins to violence, insurrection, gluttony, covetousness, and idolatry.  Also as in their time, we have many who take to themselves the mantle of prophets, pastors, and priests, who falsely claim to speak for God when God has not spoken to them, leading people to feel comfortable in their evil and their rebellion against God’s Eternal Word.  Trusting in their lies, many individuals, and even whole communities, are rushing headlong into destruction, while authentic preachers of God’s Word are sidelined, ignored, ridiculed, or persecuted out of their livelihoods.  While we may not have a Jeremiah in our day who is receiving the direct call of God to speak verbatim to the people, we do have the Word of God which was given to Jeremiah, as well as all the Prophets and the Apostles whom God has sent to the world to bear His call to faith and repentance.  And while the multitude of apostate false prophets and malignant shepherds may have the public ear, befriended by the organs of media, politics, academy, and celebrity in which the people of our time find their idols, there are still faithful voices out there of those whom God has sent to preach His Law and Gospel, to call every soul, family, community, and nation to repentance and faith.  In our time, as in the times which have come before us, the Lord has preserved His saving Word, desiring that none should be lost, but that all might come to a saving knowledge of the Truth.

And that saving Truth is the same today, as it was in Jeremiah’s day; what Jeremiah prophesied and foreshadowed, the Lord Jesus Christ fulfilled and completed in His life, death, and resurrection.  Where the people could not save themselves from their slavery to sin, death, and hell, Jesus took their sin, death, and hell upon Himself at the Cross, breaking the yoke of eternal condemnation by sacrificing Himself in our place.  By the shed blood of Jesus our debt and penance is paid, making satisfaction before the Father for the justice we have earned through our rebellion.  In Jesus the Word of God became flesh and dwelt among us, that we might behold His glory as the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth, and the only Name given under heaven by which we must be saved.  In Jesus all the words of God through the Prophets find their completion, and the words of the Apostles whom He sent find their power.

The world is still full of lies, half-truths, and deceptions, promoted by countless false prophets and false shepherds wrapped in the finery of this age, and those who follow them find calamitous destruction in this world and the next.  But the Word of the Lord Jesus Christ is still the only Way, Truth, and Life for all who will repent and put their trust in Him.  Kingdoms rise and fall across the ages as did King Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon, but the Word of the Lord remains forever, with the undiminished power of the Holy Spirit carrying it forth through faithful servants in every generation.  Today this Word calls to you like a clear clarion through the cacophonous fog of our times, that you might lay aside every false teaching and false teacher, and cling once again to the saving Word of Jesus.  Hear Him today, repent, believe, and live.  Amen.

While we were yet sinners: A Meditation on Romans 5

For when we were yet without strength,

in due time Christ died for the ungodly.

For scarcely for a righteous man will one die:

yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die.

But God commendeth his love toward us, in that,

while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

 Much more then, being now justified by his blood,

we shall be saved from wrath through him.

For if, when we were enemies,

we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son,

much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.

It remains a central mystery of the Christian faith, that it is God who moves toward mankind for his salvation, rather than man who first seeks reconciliation with God.  Such a move by God goes contrary to so much of human experience and intuition, that it is often ignored or explained away by those who simply can’t accept the clear testimony of God through His Prophets and Apostles of Holy Scripture.  Yet St. Paul, in his epistle to the church at Rome, calls everyone to hear the blessed Gospel that it is not man who seeks and saves himself, but rather Jesus who seeks and saves a lost humanity.

In our time of fascination with all things material, our pride can make this hard to swallow.  The western structures of economics and commerce all function on the principles of individual interest and motivation, where consumers pursue that which they desire (and marketers work feverishly to inflame those desires toward their own peculiar wares.)  Western government is built on the principles of self interest and individual liberties, where democratic process reflects the individual will of voters exercised through their duly elected representatives.  In other places throughout the world, individual desires and the will to power drive people into systems of commerce and politics based on the exercise of strength and cunning, where the leaders work hard to keep their power, while others constantly seek to take it.  Educational systems present the rewards of work completed, where students pursue knowledge or advantage, then take their skills into the workforce for trade or barter.  Every person eventually learns the basic laws of physics written into the universe, at least as they apply to them—that every action has a reaction, effort produces results, and that a person will reap what they sow.  The industrious tend to live better than the slothful, the clever better than the slow, the strong better than the weak, with every conceivable shade of variation between those respective poles.  Book stores, publishers, and educational institutions make fortunes (cleverly) pandering to the crowds of people who will snap up every self-help, multi-step program they can buy, particularly those promoted by a slick and wealthy author.  In a materialist world of cause and effect, there is always an inclination toward finding the right recipe for wealth, power, pleasure, or a thousands kinds of exhilaration, comfort, or distraction.  The emphasis is on the individual, what they do, and how well they do it.

And yet, for all the blessings of industrious labors and soaring minds, the human race continues to find itself trapped in death.  Our fallen nature and twisted desires infect everything we touch, as evidenced by the never ending wars, tyrannies, and frauds we perpetuate upon each other.  There is always the inclination of the strong to dominate the weak, and the clever to manipulate the less agile of mind.  Our laws reflect this reality, attempting to put boundaries or limits on the evils of men, with greater and lesser effect in various times and places.  As fallen creatures we live with the blessings of life in a good world, yet use our lives and resources in violation of natural law and our neighbors, making us at once enemies of the universe in which we live, and the Creator who brought forth both it and us.  We receive our lives from the breath of God, and live as rebels in His creation, denying His Word even as we strive in our own God-given powers to take as much as we can from the universe He has given us to live in.  It is not merely that we are flawed creatures occasionally wounding each other in our ignorant pursuit of personal pleasure, but rather that we are corrupted to our core, worthy of eternal judgment before the God whom we have despised through the abuse of His creation and creatures.  For all the grandeur of our unfolding universe, humanity remains a defiant and malevolent mob, occupying this world like a petulant band of agitators, declaring our world a God-free “autonomous zone” as we shout vanities and profanities at the One to whom we must inevitably give account.

And so, when St. Paul declares the Gospel truth that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, it is a mystery beyond fathom in every age of man, including our own.  While we were yet the riotous and inglorious mob; the robber barons and carpetbaggers; the slave traders and insurrectionists; the murderers, thieves, adulterers, and fornicators; the plotting tyrants and the traitors; the cowards and the abusers; the selfish and the self-centered; the devious and the duplicitous; Christ died for us.  While we might pride ourselves on thinking we would die for glory or for a righteous cause in our own limited estimation, Jesus died for a world of people just like us.  And in so doing, Jesus turned the world and all its systems on their head.

Today, we know the blessed truth that Jesus comes to save sinners, of whom we are chief.  To us, His Word of reconciliation and peace comes even when we aren’t looking for it, or think we don’t need it.  To us comes His grace of forgiveness, life, and salvation, poured out freely to all those who will hear Him, repent of their evil, and trust in Him for eternal life.  Such a Gospel is not of works, as if anyone in our besotted race could ever raise himself to the heights of deity, but rather a work of love and compassion that transcends our brokenness and restores us to the divine image God created us to bear.  This Word of grace and peace transforms us from condemned enemies to sanctified children of the Living God, into people empowered to use their God-given gifts of life and resources for the glory of our Creator and the good of our neighbors.  This Gospel which comes to us today, in the cacophony of our present world and the confusion of our present souls, speaks a Word of life, and peace, and hope.  Hear Jesus as He calls to you today, for He died for you while you were yet a sinner, and there remains no condemnation for you in Him, as you live in Him forever by grace, through faith.  Amen.