SERMON 490
LENT 1V – MARCH 25, 26, 2006
NUMBERS 21:4-9, PSLAM 107:1-3, 17-22, EPHESIANS
2:1-10, JOHN 3: 14-21
THE WONDERS THAT GOD CONTINUES TO DO FOR US!
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.
We have some interesting as
well as absolutely beautiful lessons set before us on this 4th
Sunday in Lent. The first things that we run across in the Old Testament lesson
are some snakes.
I do not know about you but I
do not care for snakes at all. In the first village that I remember living in,
in
Serpents are not something
that we admire. Indeed, the worst thing that we can call a person is a snake in
the grass. That conjures up a picture of some one who says one thing to your
face and another behind your back; some one you simply cannot trust.
That dislike of these
creatures, and the temptation to refer to another that we distrust as one, goes
back to the Old Testament stories. The first snake that we meet is Satan. Satan
is represented as approaching Adam and Eve in the guise of a serpent. It is
from that story of the temptation and fall of human kind into sin that we find
and carry most of the negative feelings about snakes. Evil came to tempt us in
the form of a serpent and we have never forgotten that common identity,
twisting, cunning, deadly.
God’s people met serpents
once again. They rebelled against God and Moses and God sent snakes into their
midst to quell the rebellion and bring people back to their senses. These creatures
were not harmless like our garter snakes but filled with a poison that could
bring sickness and death. It did, and many died. But there was genuine
repentance. They freely admitted their guilt and their sin and God looked with
mercy upon his people and gave them healing. Moses was instructed to put a
bronze snake on a pole in the middle of the camp and God sent his healing power
to his people through it. All they needed to do was believe in the power of God
to heal them, believe in the word of the Lord to them, and go and look upon the
bronze serpent lifted up in their midst.
But rather than continue to
center our attention only on snakes and what they represent we will turn to
look on the mercy of God. Our theme which comes from the Psalm for the day is
THE WONDERS THAT GOD CONTINUES TO DO FOR US!
We have not only been bitten
by a poisonous serpent, we have, according to Paul, in our lesson from
Ephesians actually died. We have been declared dead in trespasses and sin, the
passions of the flesh at work in us, and disobedience to God being the chief
characteristic of our sinful nature. We were even called by Paul, children of
wrath. But the wonder of what God did in the wilderness is still with us. We
have been given more than a bronze snake to bring a healing touch into our
lives.
The first wonder is the love
and mercy of our God toward us. How can God possibly love a person who is as
unworthy as we are? We cannot love and fear and trust in God above all things
on our own. And as Paul exclaims in his letter to the Romans we are by nature
persons who find ourselves doing what we do not wish to do and not doing those
things we are called upon to do. How can God, who is called the Holy One,
possibly love us?
And we are told by Paul with
absolute certainty in his voice, and he ought to know because he had Jesus
speak to him and was even taken up into the third heaven to hear things that we
long to hear. Paul, who ought to know, tells us with complete and absolute
certainty that this Holy One, who made us, is rich in mercy and has a great
love for us, even when we were dead in trespasses and sins.
And sure enough we also hear
Jesus speak to us in the words of the Gospel of St. John. Jesus, himself, tells
us that God so loved the world, that God so loved you and me that he gave his
only Son. God himself came into this world in the person of his son to tell us
that he loved us and that he wanted us as his own, that it was his intention to
save us and redeem us, lost creatures though we may have become. God did not
come to us with a word of condemnation. God came to us with a word of mercy and
grace and love.
God is certainly not like any
snake in the grass who says one thing to one person and another thing to
another person. God himself, in the person of his son, showed his love and
complete commitment to us by letting the evil of this world hang him on a cross
so that whoever would look upon him and believe in him would come into life and
life eternal, draining away all the venom and poison of sin and evil.
THE WONDERS THAT GOD
CONTINUES TO DO FOR US! We have been saved. We have been rescued from sin and
death and the evil one by the goodness and love and grace of God. We are called
to look up to that cross and believe in the Lord Jesus who died and was raised
from the dead, and be raised up with him and seated with him in the heavenly
places. Now, how about that for a wonder or two or three?
This past week, our Lord
Jesus took to himself the oldest living member of Ascension Lutheran, Emilie
Poeller, in her 105th year. For some time now she has been looking
forward to going to be with her Lord, praying often that her heavenly Father
would take her home. God did just that. She is home with the Lord and waiting
now with all the saints at rest for the Lord God to usher in the new kingdom
that our Lord Jesus Christ is preparing for us all.
We all look forward to that
kingdom with hope in our hearts too. We often long to be there. But one of the
wonders that God continues to do for us is stated by Paul in that lesson from
Ephesians. We are already there and yet not there, if that be possible.
A teacher was asking his
Sunday school students about heaven and how to get there. He asked, “If I am a
good father and husband and really take care of my children well, will that get
me to heaven?” They all said No!
The teacher asked, “If I care
about the environment and do all that I can to save the threatened animals from
extinction, will I go to heaven?” They all said No!
The teacher asked, “If I care
for the homeless and the poor and go out of my way to help other people get
jobs, find homes, and comfort them in their sorrow, will I get to heaven?” The
children all said No!
The teacher asked, “If I am a
good person and go out of my way to do what God commands and love him as I
ought, will I go to heaven?” They all said No!
The teacher was beginning to
think that he was really dealing with some theologically astute children, so he
asked, “Well then what must I do to get to heaven?” A five year old replied, “You
got to be dead!”
We long to be with the Lord,
and with the little boy, we know that we first die before the Lord will take us
to himself. But Paul tells us that though we are not yet there, there is a real
sense in which we are already there, if that makes any sense.
Paul tells us in Ephesians
that we have been made alive in Christ and that God has raised us up with
Christ and seated us with Christ in the heavenly places. So in a real sense we
are already seated with Christ in the heavenly places even before we have died
and gone to be with Christ.
THE WONDERS THAT GOD
CONTINUES TO DO FOR US! What kind of wonder is this we may ask, to already be
seated with Christ in the heavenly places? Well, first of all we understand
that in our baptism into Christ we were not only given the new life in the
Spirit but we were literally adopted as children of God and heirs and joint
heirs with Christ in all that is to come. So in a real sense we are already
seated there before we even get there. Our names are recorded in the book of
life and our inheritance has been set before us along with our place at the
table of the Lord.
When we come to the table of
the Lord, of what food do we eat and drink? We eat and drink of the body and
blood of our Lord Jesus Christ who is also present as our host. And as we
gather, according to the author of the book of Hebrews, we are surrounded by a
host of witnesses, a host of the saints of the living God. In a real sense,
though we cannot see it, we are already seated in the heavenly place. The
immeasurable riches of God’s grace in kindness is yet to be revealed to us in
Christ Jesus, but we are there nevertheless, for we are in him and he is in us,
and he continues to provide for us all that we need, both earthly and heavenly
food.
At the service of remembrance
and thanksgiving for Emilie I mentioned one experience that she had shared with
me. On one occasion when she was deeply troubled and almost in despair, a hand
touched her and a voice spoke to her saying something quite closely resembling
a verse of the Bible, “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.” The hand of
God is never very far from any one of us. The voice of God is never removed
from us, for God continues to speak to us through his spirit, in and through
the Word of God.
And as God’s angels
ministered to Jesus as he walked in the desert, so God’s angels minister to us
as we go through temptation and the depths.
THE WONDERS THAT GOD
CONTINUES TO DO FOR US! We will continue to encounter snakes in our daily walk
in the form of the devil, the world and our own sinful flesh. But we need only
look up to the cross of Jesus Christ for the power to resist and for the power
of forgiveness and healing.
We need only remember the
wondrous love of God for us, and the fact that we have been raised up to sit
with Christ in the heavenly places. Our companions in our continuing earthly
journey are his Word and Sacraments, the indwelling Holy Spirit, the Lord
Christ who rules over all things, his holy angels, and the saints whose prayers
join ours before the throne of God.
What wondrous love is this, O
My Soul!
AMEN!