SERMON 482
EPIPHANY 1V – JANUARY 28, 29, 2006
Deuteronomy 18:15-20, 1 Corinthians 8:1-13, Psalm Mark
CONFRONTING THE POWERS WITH BOLDNESS AND CONFIDENCE!
Beloved in the Lord, grace
and peace be unto you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus
Christ, and from the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life.
In his book “A Pretty Good
Person,” Lewis Smedes writes:
“A federal judge had ordered
Except Ruby Bridges! Her
parents sent her to school all by herself, six years old.
Every morning she walked
along through a heckling crowd to an empty school. White people lined up on
both sides of the way and shook their fists at her. They threatened to do
terrible things to her is she kept coming to their school. But every morning at
ten minutes to eight Ruby walked, head up, eyes ahead, straight through the
mob; two
When asked by a professor who
was curious about what went into the making of courageous children, Ruby’s
mother said, “There’s a lot of people who talk about doing good, and a lot of
people who argue about what’s good and what’s not good,” but there are other
folks who, “just put theirs lives on the line for what’s right.”
In our lessons we run across
three people who always put their lives on the line for what was right. More
specifically they put their lives on the line because God revealed to them what
was right. They put their lives on the line because there was only one person
that they feared and that was almighty God, none other.
As we examine our lessons we
shall do so under the theme, CONFRONTING THE POWERS WITH BOLDNESS AND CONFIDENCE!
The first person we meet is
Moses in the lesson from Deuteronomy. We are reminded in his words about what
happened to him. God spoke to his people on
That is precisely what
happened. Moses was called upon to deliver the message of God’s will and God’s
word for the rest of his life time. It was certainly not an easy task. Moses
faced rebellion after rebellion. One powerful group after another challenged
his leadership, yelled at him, threatened him. Moses had to confront the powers
of rebellion and disobedience and evil, time after time.
But Moses feared God above
everything else. He knew, as the Psalmist tells us in our lesson for the day, “The
fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, those who act accordingly have a
good understanding.” So Moses was willing to confront the powers that
threatened him with boldness and with confidence, because with God walking
beside him, and with God’s word on his lips, he had no reason to fear anything
else.
The only thing that Moses had
to fear was if he failed to speak the Word that the Lord God gave him. Every
other power could be confronted with God beside him.
Then in this same passage
from the Old Testament we have a prophecy about Jesus. God told Moses that God
would raise up a prophet just like Moses from among their own people, a prophet
who would speak everything that God commanded and with boldness and confidence.
Now, it is not easy to be a
prophet in the first place. Can you imagine attempting to speak exactly the
Word of the Lord, and to do so in front of a people who would be suspicious
that one was speaking his own word and not the word of the Lord?
We have been studying the
book of Isaiah and listening to his oracles of judgment about the nations and
the peoples around him. One of the assignments for the class was to meditate on
the Word of the Lord and to attempt to define what the Lord was speaking to his
people today. The only word that we could come up with was the Word that had
already been spoken.
CONFRONTING THE POWERS WITH
BOLDNESS AND CONFIDENCE! Well, Moses told us that there would be a prophet just
like him. And we find that prophet in our Gospel lesson, the Lord Jesus. And
what a prophet he was. Our lesson takes us to
The listeners were simply
overwhelmed by his presentation. He taught them as one who had authority and
not as one of the Scribes who mumbled about this and about that. He taught them
as one who actually spoke the Word of the Lord. He did, of course, because he
had come from the Father. He did have authority, of course, because in the
beginning He was the very Word. But on this occasion his authority was
demonstrated also by his command not only of the Word of the Lord but over the
unclean and demonic spirits that were actually present in one of the men in the
synagogue.
It was not only those present
who recognized the authority with which Jesus spoke. The unclean spirits also
recognized the prophet that had come into their midst. They knew who they were
dealing with. They knew that this Jesus of Nazareth was not only the prophet
that Moses had said would come but they knew that they were facing the Holy One
of God. They were terrified because their time of residence in the man, and the
period of their power over this man had also come to and end. They feared
destruction at Jesus hand.
Spirits have no bodies. They
require a place of residence somewhere. Whether Jesus sent them somewhere or
whether he simply let the spirit go, we do not know. We know that it or they
came out of the man. When an unclean or demonic spirit comes out of a person it
is generally accompanied by something that looks like a convulsion. So it was
on this occasion.
Any one who witnesses an
exorcism will never forget it. The people in the Synagogue were dumfounded.
Some of them may have gone home and told their neighbors that they had now seen
everything there was to see. They also told their neighbors about this Jesus of
Nazareth, the one who taught with such authority, the one who confronted the
powers with boldness and confidence. Jesus fame spread quickly.
CONFRONTING THE POWERS WITH
BOLDNESS AND CONFIDENCE! The third person in our lessons who spoke the word of
the Lord with confidence was the Apostle Paul. But in the lesson from Paul’s
letter to
When one confronts an unclean
spirit one does not speak tenderly. One must name the spirit and order the
spirit to leave and cast it out with power. When one confronts hostility and
hatred as did Ruby and Moses and Jesus and Paul, one moves ahead with boldness
and confidence, without wavering, trusting in the power of the Lord God. But
when one faces people who are suffering, weak, or people who are confused, the
boldness is always accompanied by tenderness, understanding and compassion.
Paul talks about the weak in
faith in our lesson. Many of the early Christians had come out of paganism and
there was confusion about proper conduct; what was right and what was wrong. In
public gatherings, when they came for meals, some of the potluck might just
have been blessed in front of an idol. And if one Christian ate of that food,
his conscience not bothered at all, he might offend one of his weaker brothers
or sisters who would have considered such eating to be wicked.
So what was the bold and
confident Christian to do in such circumstances? Paul said that bold as he was
and must be in his confession of Christ, he would never offend the conscience
of a weak sister or brother. Paul was free, free to love, free to abstain, free
to care for his weaker brothers and sisters. Bold and confident Christians use
their freedom in Christ to lift up the faint and weary, strengthen the weak and
insecure, and bless the whole congregation of the faithful. Bold and confident
Christians are never puffed up with their own knowledge, but always willing to
humble themselves under the mighty hand of God for the sake of their brothers
and sisters.
CONFRONTING THE POWERS WITH
BOLDNESS AND CONFIDENCE! We are called, in this so called post modern world, to
confront such powers. Evil and unclean spirits of all sorts have invaded our
culture and indeed our church and congregations. Even our supreme court is
prepared to call good, evil and evil, good. We must be prepared to name the
unclean and evil spirits before the world, and by God’s power, cast them out.
We are called in this world
to confess Christ, the very Word of God, with confidence and boldness. Moses
and Jesus and Paul were prophets called to speak the word of the Lord. We are
not prophets, but we are a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people,
and we are called to declare the mighty deeds of God in Christ before all the
peoples of this world.
We are called to use our
Christian freedom in boldness, free to love, free to tenderly and gently lead
and care for the weak, the oppressed, the suffering and the despised, free to
give up our own lives as servants of others.
Let us pray that such
boldness and confidence will be found in our midst. AMEN!