Brothers and sisters,
Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and
our risen Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
The church has a unique relationship to time. For
2000 years the church has been in a state of waiting; for the return of Christ,
for the resurrection, for the day of the Lord. And this while the unbelieving
world continues to mockingly ask us “Where is He? Why has He not come back yet?
Why doesn’t He just show Himself?” And so to this very day we find comfort in
these words from our Lord, “…with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and
a thousand years as one day.” You see
Jesus is not slow to fulfill His promises as some count slowness. It is more a
matter of His remarkable patience with us; sinners that we are. God does not want any of us to perish but
rather He wants all of us to be brought to repentance. God has remarkable
patience with us and so we should have seek to have remarkable patience with
God.
God calls
us to patiently trust the promises that He has revealed to us so many times
before; that Christ Jesus is preparing a place for you, that He is making all
things new, that He is with you to the end of the ages, that where two or three
are gathered in His name He is there among them; all of God’s promises. In the
lessons for this morning our Lord Jesus reveals to you not only just how important
being patient with God is but also how infinitely patient He is with us.
In our
second lesson Paul says to Timothy and you “…continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing
from whom you learned it 15and how from childhood you have
been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for
salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. Staying rooted
in the Word of Christ is absolutely essential to Christians. This goes without
saying. You have known the importance of abiding in the scriptures probably
most of your life.
But is an
urgency to this because, there is indeed, as Paul says, a time coming when
people will not endure sound teaching. I believe that time is here now. The
very notion of sound doctrine is considered by many in the church to be
antiquated and not relevant to a changing culture. This is because the Word of Christ is always
under attack because it does not just call you to faith but it creates,
nurtures and sustains faith in the crucified and risen Savior.
What Paul
is talking about is an all out attack on the Gospel. The Gospel has the power
to save you from the devil so the devil attacks it. In the two verses that come before this
passage Paul warns against this attack, saying that those who desire to live a
godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, and that this attack finds people
not enduring sound teaching but with itching ears accumulating for themselves
teachers to suit their own passions. False teachers will deceive God’s people
just as the devil has deceived them. The truth of God’s Word is replaced with a
lie as people find man-made myths more suitable to their sinful minds.
Sounds
like much of what we see today. Sin and the devil have convinced an unbelieving
culture that they don’t need God. We are not wired to think we need help so the
godless crowd looks around and says “Look at what we have done on our own. We
don’t need God.” There are countless TV
shows, books and magazines that add fuel to this fire by undermining biblical
truth claims. People fall hook, line and sinker for the latest attempt to
disprove the Gospel; and before you know it the devil has convinced millions,
even billions of people-sadly many of whom are Christian-that a lie is the
truth and the truth is a lie.
And sadly
some even calling themselves “pastor” are part of the attack as preachers
who claim to be rooted in God’s Word
preach a message that is far more man-centered than Christ-centered. When asked if Jesus is the only way to
salvation they will hem and haw for fear that they might otherwise offend someone.
When their ministry is held up in the light of the great commission you see
that they have replaced God’s plan of salvation in Christ with earthly,
temporal objectives. And gullible souls continue to be impressed by all of this
and so they turn away from listening to the truth and they wander off into
myths.
With our
penchant for exchanging His truth for lies we give God more reason not just to
be impatient with us but to cast us aside and forget about us. But this is not God’s desire for you. It is His
desire that you repent of your sins and trust in Christ, and what Christ has
done for you, bearing the punishment that you deserve on the cross and rising
for your salvation. It is His desire that you would continue to abide in the
sacred writings of scripture which are able to make you wise for salvation
through faith in Christ Jesus. It is His desire to be with you for all
eternity.
But you
are born dead in your trespasses and sins. Dead people cannot save themselves.
Sin and the devil will tell you otherwise, but that is just an attempt to draw
you away from Christ. But in baptism the work you cannot do is done for you as
you are joined with Christ Jesus in His death and resurrection. In baptism the
sin that corrupted you and makes you worthy only of death is cleansed and you
are sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ.
And so this
One who saves you from sin and the devil in baptism can also protect you from
the attacks of sin and the devil that come in this time of waiting. Holding
fast to the Word of Christ is exactly what Christ Jesus wants of you for He
desires to be near you to save you. He wants you to be like Jacob and the
persistent widow.
Jacob is alone
and scared. He is convinced that his brother Esau will kill him since he is
coming to meet him with 400 men. Jacob had prayed that God would deliver him
from the hand of his brother. And then as he is all alone, a mysterious man begins
fighting and wrestling with Jacob until daybreak. And this man does not prevail
against Jacob so he puts Jacob’s hip out of joint. The man was certainly able
to prevail because it was God Himself but He doesn’t.
And Jacob
is injured and hardly able to fight but he tenaciously clings to this mysterious
stranger and asks the man for a blessing. This is a humbled Jacob. This is a
man who has seen the errors of his previously deceitful ways. He has seen the
futility of following his own path of deceiving his brother for his birthright
or scheming against Laban. It was his scheming that put him in this position.
And so Jacob finds himself wrestling with his Lord and what does he do? He
doesn’t try to scheme or lie, but he asks for a blessing which shows he
recognizes the man as at least being from God and that Jacob has faith. The man
asks Jacob his name. And this is important because Jacob’s name identified him
as one who schemes, lies and cheats to get his own way.
But now he
is given a new name; Israel because he had striven with God and with men and
prevailed. That whole wrestling match was God giving Jacob a new name. And it
didn’t happen through scheming or lying but through faith. When Jacob was
finally at the point where all he could do was ask for God’s mercy that was
when God finally gave him the name that would always be an indicator of relying
on God in faith; Israel. God could have prevailed, but instead He had mercy,
even with taking Jacob’s hip out of joint He was still showing mercy. He was
driving Jacob all the more to where all he could do was trust and rely on God’s
mercy.
So also
the persistent widow in the Gospel lesson was at a point where all she could do
was rely on God’s mercy. As a widow she would have been among the most
vulnerable people. She was poor. She was oppressed and the unjust judge whom
she kept pleading to clearly cared nothing about her. But she continues to
plead to the judge; not because of her faith in the judge but because of her
faith in God.
She reminds
us that as we wait for Christ’s return we can and indeed should continually
pray in the midst of the attacks on God’s truth, just as the widow continually
prayed in the midst of oppression. We are to cling to God’s mercy revealed to
us in Christ through scripture. Jacob’s injury as well as the reality of the
widow continuing to have to live under the rule of the unjust judge provide us
with a foreshadowing of Jesus appearing with His wounds after the resurrection,
after He had defeated sin and the devil through His death and resurrection.
They remind us that though we are still under attack, though we still deal with
sickness, death and oppression like the widow, God is still merciful to us and
Christ Jesus is the ultimate revelation of this. As God was faithful and
merciful to Jacob and the widow so He is to you.
You are
marked with the cross of Christ. As the cross meant suffering for Christ so it
means suffering for you. And as the Father was faithful to His Son Christ Jesus
in His passion so He is faithful to you in the midst of the attacks of sin and
the devil. And so this period of waiting is not a time for passivity, it is a
time to heed Paul’s words to preach the word and be ready in season and out, to
be sober-minded and do the work of an evangelist. For it is not with power and
might that we fight the forces that oppose the church but with the Word and
promise of Christ. With Jacob and the persistent widow we know that even in
difficult times God is our friend and not our foe; that He is faithful and
trustworthy and that He desires that you would be with Him for all eternity. So
you can pray and not lose heart. He hears your prayers and answers them. He
blesses you with the forgiveness of sins and He has overcome your enemies of
sin, death and the devil.
Amen
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