Brothers and sisters,
Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and
our risen Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
There is of course a great deal of mystery relating
to God, even for Christians. There are some things that we can be certain of
with God. We know that in Christ Jesus we see, as Hebrews 1 says the exact
representation of God’s being. Jesus is the essence of who God is. So in Christ
we know that God loves us more than we can imagine; so much so that He gave all
of Himself on your behalf by becoming incarnate in human flesh in the form of
His Son Christ Jesus.
And in
Christ Jesus we see that God is so merciful toward you that He would even
become sin on your behalf and suffer and lay down His life as a propitiation
for your sins, redeeming you from bondage to sin, death and the devil,
delivering you from the horror of God’s wrath which you deserve because of your
sin. And directly connected to that is something God reveals about Himself in
His Word; and that is that He makes promises and keeps those promises. It’s the
time in-between when God makes a promise and keeps a promise that He can be so
unpredictable.
For instance,
in the Old Testament lesson God confirms to Moses, His intention to keep the
promise that He made to Abraham that He would bring judgment on Egypt for
enslaving God’s chosen people for 400 years and that He would deliver His
people out of Egypt with great possessions. And God has chosen Moses as the
instrument through which He will accomplish this.
And
understandably Moses is quite humbled and perplexed by this. In the light of
God’s holiness Moses’ impiety and sinfulness is revealed to him and he is
driven to ask God, “Who
am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of
Egypt?” Moses is given this impossible task and he is understandably shocked
and confused.
Of course he is, it is an impossible task.
Moses has absolutely no hope to accomplish this except for a promise from God
that He will be with Moses. Moses was right in recognizing his own
short-comings in the face of such a daunting mission, but God promises Moses
that he can be assured not in himself but in God’s promise to be with Moses.
And God gives Moses His name which is a means
to call on God in prayer, in the same way that the people of Israel had called
on God during their captivity in Egypt. God also reinforces Moses’ authority
with the Israelites by sending him to tell them “The Lord, the God of your
fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent
me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout
all generations.” God gives Moses His name through which Moses can call on God
in prayer and praise and then promises Moses that He will always be with Him
and be there to hear his prayers.
But of course, though they had the assurance
of God’s promise it was not long before the Israelites were griping and wanting
to go back to Egypt, convinced that they had it better in slavery. They wanted
immediate gratification. They wanted something now. God had promised them
something more in the future but they wanted something now and when it didn’t
happen they turned to a false god of their own making.
You see, the promise of something more is
at the heart of the promise of the Gospel. Just as God promised something more
beyond the wilderness to the Israelites so God in Christ promises you something
more beyond this sinful world. He is not the God of the dead but the God of the
living, the eternally living. Being in Christ means death has lost it’s sting
and no longer has a grip on you.
This is the promise our Lord fills you
with. It is a promise that can sustain you and uphold you in the midst of all
that this sinful world throws at you. But so often you are like those Israelites
in the desert, who had been in bondage so long that at any inconvenience they
yearned to go back to slavery. In December 2011 a USA Today article reported on
a surge of spiritually apathetic Americans. According to the article there was
a survey that indicated that 44 percent of the people surveyed said that they
spend no time seeking “eternal wisdom” and 46 percent said that they never
wonder whether they will go to heaven. These are people who have tacitally said
that unless God reveals Himself to them on their own terms then they are not
really going to spend any time thinking about God. But spiritual apathy is
hardly a new phenomenon.
I would argue we see a foreshadowing of
this in what Jesus ran into with the Saducees in the Gospel lesson for this
morning. The Saducees didn’t like Jesus because they didn’t believe in life
after death. To the Saducees claim of “This is all there is” Jesus answered
back with “There is more! Much, much more!”
Jesus promises eternal life for all who
believe in Him. But it’s even more than simply our souls going to heaven. He
also promises the Day of the Lord. Jesus
promises eternal life at the end of time; when our bodies will rise out of the
graves-whatever that grave may be, a casket, an urn, the ocean, or simply bones
turned to dust. Jesus looks into the chaos and emptiness of death and the end of time and promises you His
beloved that there is more, much, much more.
But the spirit of the Saducees is still
around. Oh you may not go to such spiritually apathetic extremes as denying the
resurrection but this Saducee Spirit is still in your hearts and minds, always
whispering in your ears “Did God really say?” The doubts are there filling your
mind with the lie that this life and this broken and sinful world is all there is.
You go to a funeral, look at a body in the casket and you notice how lifeless
it appears. You notice that the grave looks so final and you can’t help but
wonder “Is this all there is? How can there possibly be more when this body
before me appears so bereft of any life?”
But then the service starts and into this
valley of the shadow of death the Lord Jesus sends a preacher through whom He
promises “Let not your hearts be troubled, there is still more. Much, much,
more!” And this is the promise that can
sustain you in the midst of the devil’s attacks that comes with this veil of
tears.
As we come closer and closer to the Day of
the Lord, sin and the devil will continue to tempt and deceive you away from
the eternal promises of Christ even tempting to fool you that he-the devil cannot
harm you. The Thessalonians, whom Paul
wrote to in the second lesson, believed that the new-age had already come, and
that they were living in a time when there would be no problems for Christians;
that there was no more. We see this sort of teaching today in so-called
preachers who deny the reality of sin and act as if there is no need for
repentance even in the midst of a culture that seemingly rejects God more and
more with each passing day. They are simply heretics trying to pass their
self-help teaching off as preaching by dove-tailing a scripture passage ripped
horribly out of context onto the latest thing they are trying to pass off as a
sermon. But all it is a satanic lie that makes you a sitting-duck for the man
of lawlessness that Paul warns the Thessalonians about.
To see the threat that these
false-teachings pose you need only hear the words of our Lord Jesus from Mathew
7 speaking of the fate that awaits those who put their faith in a false-gospel
Jesus says On that day many will say to me,
‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your
name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ 23 And then will I declare to
them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’
These are the words that the man of
lawlessness, whom we also call the anti-Christ, wants you to hear of the day of
judgement. He is currently being
restrained but he will be fully unleashed. In the face of whatever he hurls at
you, whether he is restrained or fully unleashed, you have the Lord Jesus Whom
you can go to in prayer praying that His kingdom come, that His will be done on
earth as it is in heaven.
And He makes His Kingdom come and His will
be done but not in power and glory but in Word and sacrament. The opposition to
the Gospel you see now is a shadow of what it will look like when the man of
lawlessness is no longer restrained. Persecution of the church will be
widespread; the Gospel will be reviled.
But Christ Jesus has already overcome this.
God’s promise in Christ assures you of God’s
eternal grace in Christ to save you. In the face of all the attacks of the devil,
you have the cross of Christ, you can say to the devil that you know that you
are nothing but a sinner and that your good works get you nothing, but Christ endured
God’s wrath for you. The devil has no claim on you. God has chosen you in
Christ Jesus before the world was created. Christ Jesus is with you always, just
as God promised Moses. Before you we even conceived God planned your conversion
to everlasting life; He planned your salvation and nothing can separate you
from His love in Christ Jesus.
There
is life, life after death. Abide in the promises of Christ. Trust Him and cling
to His promises because no matter what happens-there is more, much more for
you.
Amen
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