Into the Fire

 

Jesu Juva

Daniel 3:8-28                                                     

March 6, 2024

Lent Midweek 3                        

 Dear saint of our Savior~

        This really happened!  Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, Nebuchadnezzar, the fiery furnace heated seven times hotter than normal.  This really happened.  What we so casually refer to as a “Bible story” isn’t just a story. This is one of the very first sections of Scripture I ever learned.  I still remember that Arch Book from Concordia Publishing House about the three men and the fiery furnace. It was a terrifying account.  But unlike other scary, childhood stories, this was no fable or fairy tale. This is no bedtime story.  This is history.  This is a real-life account of God delivering His people from evil.  This really happened.

        Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego had done everything right.  They were exiles—Judaean Jews—strangers in a strange land—who were living out their faith beneath the beastly Babylonian bureaucracy of King Nebuchadnezzar.  These young men had not compromised on matters of faith while, at the same time, they accepted certain compromises with the culture of Babylon.  They had accepted Babylonian names, and learned Babylonian language and literature—while still maintaining their loyalty to the Lord and to Jewish dietary laws.  Along with Daniel, they were the best and the brightest—faithful men of God appointed by Nebuchadnezzar to manage the affairs of Babylon.

        But as tonight’s reading picks up, these three men had everything to lose.  They had power.  They had status.  They had places at the King’s dinner table.  With the Lord’s help, they were living as the light of the world, amidst the dark and deathly evil of Babylon.  (If you’re a Lord of the Rings fan, when you hear “Babylon,” think “Mordor.”)  But it was precisely because of their God-given success—it was precisely because God made these men to be a blessing to Babylon—that they now were at risk of losing everything.

        Satan set His sights on these three faithful men, and soon unleashed a plan to exterminate them.  To do this, he stirred up a vast government conspiracy.  He filled all the bureaucrats of Babylon with seething jealousy against Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.  The satraps, the prefects, the governors, the king’s counselors all conspired to entrap these three:  Why should these Jews—these foreigners—have such plum positions?  Why should Jews be taking good Babylonian jobs?  And so they concocted a final solution, and laid plans for a little Holocaust that would reduce these Hebrews to ashes.

        The Babylonian bureaucracy lived by lies.  It ran on lies.  They had many, many gods.  And so it was nothing for them to erect a golden image and fall down and worship it.  This would be a little loyalty test—an opportunity to weed out those rightwing, extremist monotheists who refused to bend their knees to Nebuchadnezzar’s big idol.

        Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego stood to lose everything by not bending their knees.       Yet these faithful three never wavered from their cheerful confidence in God:  O Nebuchadnezzar, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand. . . . O King, we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up. They were clear and unambiguous.  No waffling or schwaffling.  They stood firm precisely when the stakes were highest.  One way or another, God would deliver them.

        Babylon was a land of lies.  Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego had so far deftly maneuvered around these lies.  But in this land of lies, the moment of truth had now come.  God’s people do not—ever, under any circumstances—bow down to idols.  You shall have no other gods.

        These three men teach us how to maneuver in a land of lies.  For we too live under a lying Babylonian bureaucracy:  Where the murder of the unborn is called “reproductive health,” where the mutilation of little children is called “gender-affirming care,” where judging person solely by the color of their skin is called “diversity.”  Lies like these have become the idols of our age.  And these idols increasingly demand loyalty.  And those who do not bend the knee—those who hold to a higher authority—those who live by the truth—can expect to be thrown into the fire.

        Jesus knew what it was like to maneuver in a land of lies.  He came from heaven to earth to save us from our sins.  But He was ever so careful not to put on His “Messiah” name tag too soon.  That would have derailed everything, and would have kept Him from His cross.  So Jesus was always saying things like, “My hour has not yet come.”  When the demons cried out that He was the Christ, He shut them up.  He often told His own disciples to tell no one that He was the Christ.  To multitudes that experienced His miraculous powers in personal ways, Jesus said to say nothing about it to anyone.

        Tonight’s Passion account describes when the moment of truth finally arrived for Jesus.  Having been arrested, betrayed and abandoned, Jesus was led before the Jewish Council—a collection of seventy scribes, chief priests, and elders.  Seething jealously had led them to bring Jesus before this kangaroo court.  Now Jesus had everything to lose.  Now Jesus was surrounded by His enemies.  Now encircled by seventy men who wanted Him dead, His hour had come.  He would say the thing that sealed His fate:  The high priest asked him, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?”  And Jesus said, “I am.”  And with that answer, His suffering and death became a certainty.  And God’s great plan to save the world could commence.

        Suffering happens.  Throughout this season of Lent we’ve been looking at suffering and the Christian life.  And sometimes suffering can be avoided and evaded.  Christians aren’t required seek out suffering.  It seeks us out because we’re different—because we hold to truth in this land of lies.  We’re different—like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.  We’re exiles too—citizens of heaven temporarily deployed for duty in a land of lies.  We’re strangers here; heaven is our home.  By His suffering and death, Jesus has made it so.  But here on earth, we will inevitably suffer with our Savior.

        But we do not suffer alone.  No Christian ever suffers alone. Consider this:  Three men were thrown into the fiery furnace.  Three, not four.  But as Nebuchadnezzar peeked into the flames, he saw four men, not three:  I see four men unbound, walking in the midst of the fire, and they are not hurt; and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods. We know by faith what Nebuchadnezzar could only guess at.  This fourth man—this “son of the gods,” was, actually, the Christ, THE Son of God, delivering His people from evil.  Oh, and by the way, this really happened.

        Jesus who suffered for us and for our salvation—He also accompanies us in all our suffering.  When the flames threaten to devour us—when we are overwhelmed—when we are surrounded by our enemies and their lies—Jesus is with us to deliver us.

        And His ultimate deliverance will come on the day of resurrection.  Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego ultimately take us to Easter!  Not a hair on their heads was singed.  Their clothing was intact.  They didn’t even smell like smoke.  They who had everything to lose had been given more than they desired and more than they deserved.  Even in the middle of Lent, we can only confess that Christ is risen.  In Him death has met its demise.  In Him we have a caring companion who is with us always—but especially in our suffering, and even in our death.  He is the way, the truth, and the life.  Live not by lies.  Live by faith in the Son of God who loved you and gave Himself for you.

        In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

The Lord--Your God

 

Jesu Juva

Exodus 20:1-17                                                 

March 3, 2024

Lent 3B                                 

 Dear saints of our Savior~

        The Ten Commandments are on the table today, which is always a good thing.  Most Christians have something of a love/hate relationship with the Ten Commandments.  On the one hand, God gives us these commandments because He loves us.  The law of God is good and wise.  But on the other hand, the Law always accuses.  The Law always shows us our sin.  The Law takes no prisoners.

        For all the mixed feelings they generate, the Ten Commandments haven’t changed at all over thousands of years.  They have always been, if nothing else, a solid point of reference for God’s people.  They help us get our bearings in a complicated, fallen world.

        When I was on sabbatical in Germany a few years back, getting my bearings was a constant challenge.  Especially when I was on the move from city to city, I would wake up every morning asking the all-important question: Where am I?  Or when I emerged from a dark, underground subway station into the bright Berlin sunshine, it took a minute to get oriented—to get my bearings—to know which direction to start walking. But with the right navigation tools I knew where I was; I knew where I had been; and I knew where I was going.

        The Ten Commandments serve a similar purpose in the Christian’s life.  These Commandments—and especially that all-encompassing First Commandment—serve as a kind of spiritual GPS as we travel along life’s way.  They provide a center of gravity—a solid reference point—for us.  With one simple sentence—You shall have no other gods—God simultaneously shows us both the way we should be going and just how far we have strayed from that way.

        The Ten Commandments are utterly dependable and reliable because, as Moses makes clear, “God spoke all these words.”  Moses was just the tablet-toting messenger.  God spoke all these words.  No judge, no legislature, no congress crafted the Ten Commandments.  They are God’s own words.  They still hold and apply to us today.  No statute of limitations.  No sunset clause.  No expiration date. 

        Jesus fulfilled God’s law; but He didn’t abolish it.  If anything, Jesus took the Ten Commandments and sharpened them.  He brought them to bear on human conduct at the very deepest level.  Avoiding adultery, for instance, is much more than just avoiding sexual intercourse with the wrong person; for Jesus tells us that even our private thoughts must be pure and chaste.  Avoiding murder is much more than just refraining from plunging a knife into my neighbor’s back; for Jesus tells us that even hateful thoughts are a form of murder.

        It’s that First Commandment, however, that really gives us our bearings:  You shall have no other gods before me.  Don’t think for a second that this is simply God beating His own drum—declaring Himself to be the “big cheese” who needs to be catered and kowtowed to.  When He says that He’s number one, it isn’t for His own sake.  It’s for our sake!  Only He can be God for us. No created thing can take His place and pull it off.  As His creatures, our life and success can only come from Him.  There are no alternatives.  We are either walking according to His plan, trusting Him above all else, measuring and evaluating every step against this divine point of reference, OR we are dangerously distancing ourselves from the one, true God.

        Unlike every other god, the true God—the giver of these Commandments—He’s not a tyrant who wants to enslave you.  He allows for the option of rejection. You can love Him . . . or leave Him.  But if we persistently orient our lives to do without God—if we chart our own selfish, self-centered course—the Lord will finally say, “Have it your way then.  As you wish”—which, ultimately, means hell.

        Time doesn’t allow us to explore all Ten Commandments in one sermon.  You can be thankful for that.  Such a sermon would likely leave you feeling more than a little depressed.  For, the truth is, your commandment-keeping has been a colossal failure.  Your performance has been pathetic.  You have not measured up to God’s standards of holiness, and you never will.  God have mercy on me, a sinner.

        But for a bit of good news, consider this question: Why did God wait as long as He did to give His people these commandments?  Today’s text is from Exodus chapter 20—which puts us about seventy chapters into the Old Testament—perhaps seven centuries past the call of Abraham.  Why did God wait so long to write down the rules?  In many ways, God’s timing tells the whole story here.  There’s one simple sentence we dare not overlook.  For the Decalogue doesn’t begin with the words “You shall” or “You shall not.”  No, it begins with the words “I am—I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”

        What took the Lord so long to scribble out those commandments?  Why the divine delay?  He first of all had to baptize a people for Himself in the waters of the Red Sea.  He first of all had to save and deliver His people from slavery and death—without any merit or worthiness in them.  Because only then—only after they could look back and see Pharaoh’s horses and chariots washed away forever under the waves of the Red Sea—only then could they know that this God . . . was their God.  Only then could they believe Him and trust Him—fear Him and love Him.  Only then could they see that the relationship with their God was ultimately governed by grace and mercy and love.  The commandments didn’t come first.  First, God acted.  God saved.  God delivered.  God rescued.

        Only then could the Israelites know that they were loved by this God.  And only in that love could they find a solid center of gravity—a reference point for life.  Only then could they understand that the words which followed—the Ten Commandments—were not just rules for the sake of rules—or rules by which to earn God’s acceptance.  They already had God’s acceptance.  No, these commandments were given in love.  It’s the very same reason God has given you these Ten Commandments:  Because He loves you.  He is your God.  You can believe Him and trust Him.  He has washed you and made you His own—not with Red Sea waters—but in the tide that flows from the pierced side of His beloved Son, Jesus the Christ.

        Israel knew her God because of what happened at the Red Sea; and you know your God because of what happened at Calvary.  How do we know that God is for us and not against us?  How do we know that His rule is one of grace and mercy and love?  We see it at Calvary.  There He makes it clear that He is your God, who has rescued and delivered you from sin and death.

        We’ve made a royal mess of God’s commandments; so God has sent His royal Son into the midst of our mess.  He is like us in every way—yet without sin.  And although His commandment-keeping was perfect, yet He takes your sin and He answers for it.  He takes your death and overcomes it.  All this He did for you, so that you might know Him by faith as your God—the God who forgives you, the God who makes Himself your brother, and who gives your life eternal meaning and significance.

        He is God; we are not.  You shall have no other gods.  He’s number one.  What He gives and says goes.  But we’re often reluctant to let Him have the final say.  We all have our personal idols that we like to bring into the conversation—to get a “broader perspective” on things.  But be careful relying on your idols.  God is in the idol-destroying business.  And when He’s through with you, He may just leave you with nothing—with nobody at all to rely on—but Him alone. 

        That’s the sort of love He shows to all of us from time to time.  And this is good.  For when He cleanses us of our other gods—when He cleanses us of all our attempts to play God—well then, what we are left with is the true God—the God in the manger and the God on the cross—a God you can rely on and love—a God you can touch—a God from whose nail-scarred hands we are given life that lasts forever.

        Week after week the people of God gather right here.  This church is a solid reference point for you—a place where you get your bearings—where you get reoriented to the Savior at the center of our universe.  In the Divine Service we take our place here in God’s throne room—with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven.  We first remember the relationship we have with God—the one He forged—with the invocation: In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  And that, my friends, is a solid point of reference—a very good place to be. 

        Here in God’s presence, we get things sorted out.  We see clearly where we’ve been and where we’re going.  We confess and get rid of everything that has gotten in the way—every idol, every false god, every sin.  We confess it all and ask forgiveness.  And that forgiveness is given in the name of Jesus.  Here we drink deeply from His Word.  We are fed from His altar.  We respond with prayers and praises.  And then we go back outside to the callings He has given us. 

        But as we take our leave from here, we have our bearings. By God’s grace, we know where we’re going. We know that one day we shall emerge from this dark land of shadows into the bright light of God’s presence.  No navigation tool can get you there; but that’s okay.  You know the way.  Just follow Jesus.

        In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Faithful, not Faithless

 

Jesu Juva

Revelation 2:8-11                                        

February 28, 2024

Lent Midweek 2                

 Dear saints of our Savior~

        Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life.  That call to be faithful is something we’ve all heard before.  It’s entirely possible that this sentence from Revelation chapter two is a confirmation verse for some of you.  In fact, Confirmation Sunday is probably the most likely Sunday to hear these words of our Lord.  Smiling children in white robes, looking forward to white cake and red punch.  And on a few of those cakes, spelled out in red frosting, you just might read these words of our text:  Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life.

        But in reality these words are mostly lived out under far less festive circumstances.  Shortly after these words of Jesus were written down by the Apostle John, they would have been delivered to the Christian congregation in Smyrna.  And among those in Smyrna who first heard these words from Jesus was a boy—right around confirmation age—named Polycarp.  That young boy lived to a ripe old age with those words of Jesus ringing in his ears.  Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life.

        For Polycarp these words would be lived out on February 23, 155.  Polycarp was by then an old, old man—serving as the pastor of the church at Smyrna.  A bloodthirsty crowd in Smyrna had just cheered and jeered as a group from Polycarp’s congregation was thrown to the lions.  Hungry for more blood and gore, the crowd demanded Polycarp, the pastor of the Christians.  Catching wind of the evil that was afoot, Polycarp was encouraged to flee—to save himself.  Instead, when the police arrived, Polycarp invited them in, and ordered that food and drink should be served to them.  He asked for an hour to pray; and the request was granted.

        When later that night Polycarp was finally dragged before the judge and a bloodthirsty mob, he was informed that it would be very easy for him to avoid being burned alive.  All he needed to do was say “Caesar is Lord” and “Cursed be Christ.”  Those words, together with just a pinch of incense offered to a statue of Caesar, would spare Polycarp’s life.  How easy it would have been to say a few words.  How easy it would have been to avoid suffering and searing pain.  But deep in this old soul the words of the Lord still resounded:  Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life.

        The old pastor spoke to the judge calmly and firmly:  Eighty-six years I have served Christ, and He never did me any wrong.  How can I blaspheme my King and my Savior?  You threaten me with fire that burns for an hour and in a little while is quenched;  for you know not of the fire of judgment to come, and the fire of eternal punishment, reserved for the ungodly.  Why do you delay?  Do what you will.  The enraged mob needed no encouragement to ignite an inferno of hungry flames to burn an old man to death.  But those flames only served—for Polycarp—to light the pathway home.  And within minutes, he was home—home with the Lord Jesus, his King and Savior, in paradise.  Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life.

        The account of Polycarp’s martyrdom is a treasure handed down to us through the centuries.  It is, at the same time, moving . . . and shaming.  How can we hear of his faithfulness without recognizing our own faithlessness?  For even under far less pressure—in peaceful times of plenty—we have all failed to be faithful.  Polycarp’s situation was rather clear cut—black and white:  Confess the Christ or curse the Christ. 

        The temptations to unfaithfulness we face are often less clear and shaded with gray.  The pull to be unfaithful often plays out in private for us—with no judge, no jury, no bloodthirsty crowd clamoring for a conviction.  For us the temptations to deny Christ—to put other things ahead of Him—come in subtler ways, even in ways that suggest we might, in fact, be doing Christ a service by shirking our duty and slipping away under the cover of darkness.

        None of Jesus’ disciples had any trouble justifying their own escape into the darkness when Jesus was betrayed and arrested.  Except for one sword stroke, nobody dithered about whether to fight or flee.  They fled!  This despite the fact that Jesus had told them plainly earlier that night:  You will all fall away, for it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.’  Every last man objected strenuously to what Jesus was predicting.  But just seconds after Judas planted his lips on Jesus, every last man left Him and fled—they all scattered like sheep—including a young man who had to high-tail it out of there, naked as a jaybird.  It would be funny if it weren’t so shameful.  It would be funny if we couldn’t see ourselves doing the very same thing—parting company with the shirt off our back to save ourselves from suffering with Jesus.

        When you are confronted with suffering and the cross, the road to unfaithfulness seems so broad and so easy and so appealing.  In those moments we need to hear the Lord say what He said to the church at Smyrna:  I know.  I know your tribulation.  In our uncertainties and our temptations and in the mess we often make of things, we can be confident that our Lord knows.  He knows the details—He knows the facts of our failures and our faithlessness, no matter how we might try to camouflage things.  And the Lord’s knowing of these things should drive us to our knees in repentance.

        But there’s another kind of knowing which is unique to our King and Savior.  The Lord Jesus knows what you have to face.  He knows your temptations to doubt Him.  He knows the enemies you face—even the ones who might just betray you with a kiss.  He knows all the ways you will be tested.  Even the worst of it the Lord knows and uses as a way to bless you and cleanse you.  He Himself highjacks all the hell that comes your way, and uses it for His purposes—so that you might grow in endurance and in character and in hope.  Jesus says, “I know your tribulation.”  He knows it not just in the way of facts in a divine data base or spreadsheet.  He knows it all just as if it were happening to Him.  Because, in truth, it has—it has all happened to Him, as your sacred substitute.

        His crucifixion cross reveals His love for you unmistakably.  There He bears all your sin and all your faithlessness.  He was abandoned by every last friend and disciple so that He might be with you always—in the power of His promises, in the cleansing splash of your baptism, and in His holy Supper.

        He is your crucified King and your risen Savior, who controls all things in heaven and on earth.  He wrote to the church at Smyrna about suffering tribulation for “ten days.”  That didn’t necessarily mean a literal ten days; but it did mean a specific span of time—a set time, a limited time, a short span specified by Him.  He is the Lord who numbers all our days; and through all these days of our lives He gives us a heart of wisdom.

        This Jesus who is first and last, who died and came to life—He says of your suffering, “I know.”  But He also says, “I will give.  I will give you the crown of life.”  That crown of life sounds so nice.  Notice that it is given, not earned.  “I will give,” says Jesus.  And nothing is so certain as the Lord’s giving and our receiving.  And we know and believe that the giving of that crown of life is based entirely on His faithfulness, His forgiveness, His love, His death, His resurrection.  Whether it’s eighty-six years you have lived in and with Christ, or some shorter span of years that He has numbered out for you, the Lord is faithful.  He knows.  He will give.  In Him we believe and trust—even unto death.

        In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.