Luke 2:21

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We’re now in the warm glow of Christmas, having celebrated rightly, the birth of our dear Savior, Jesus Christ. And now we come to another holiday very soon. And that, of course, has to do with the changing of the calendar year celebrated on New Year’s Eve and the next day also on New Year’s Day. The world, of course, seems fascinated to observe the holiday with parties and meals and other events.

However, in the Christian church we observe also another very, very important event. And that’s something that Saint Luke describes for us in his second chapter of his gospel, where at verse 21 he writes

On the eighth day, when it was time to circumcise him, he was named Jesus, the name the angel had given him before he had been conceived. (Luke 2:21)

My wife and I are now experiencing the joy of being grandparents in our family. When we learned that a baby is on the way, we begin almost immediately to burden the parents with our own ideas for names that they should give their child. Will the name that is selected fit nicely with the last name? Will that name that selected be popular, or is it maybe too popular? Will it honor a brave grandfather, or will it give honor to an especially lovable aunt? However strongly we might make our case for a particular name, we understand that finally, it’s the parent’s decision, and they alone are the ones who decide which choice for a name prevails over all of the others.

That wasn’t the case, though, for Mary and for Joseph when they learned of the coming of the Lord. In getting the announcement of her conception from the angel, Mary was told, you will call his name Jesus. And that’s a very appropriate name. The name Jesus comes from actually two Hebrew names which together give a very important message “the Lord saves.” That’s what Jesus means. How appropriate that is for us, who are troubled by our sins and worried that we can’t earn salvation, no matter how hard we might try for ourselves. We hear and trust the name Jesus the Lord saves.

In fact, when the angel appeared to Joseph with the same message of the conception, he told him he will save his people from their sins. That’s the best news we could hear. And that’s the name that we trust. When later on, the Apostle Peter was seized and put in jail over the healing of a man at the temple gate in Jerusalem, and when he was asked under what name or authority he was doing this work of healing and preaching the name of Christ, he told those who questioned him, salvation is found in no one else. It’s under the name of Jesus Christ. There’s no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.

So we who follow Jesus have that very powerful name to trust in for our own salvation from sin. We have that powerful name to share with the world, as they too are in desperate need of a Savior and knowing who that Savior is. For Jesus has fulfilled the meaning of that name for each one of us the Lord saves. Amen.

Psalm 48:14 EHV, Psalm 27:13 NKJV

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Recently, somebody told me about Psalm 48, and they pointed me especially to one rather beautiful and startling verse from Psalm 48:14. It says,

For this God is our God forever and ever.
He will guide us beyond death. (Psalm 48:14 EHV)

In Psalm 48, the psalm writer is really starting at first to talk about the city of Jerusalem and what a beautiful place it was, and situated in the mountains. It was a place that enemy armies found it very difficult to scale and to successfully invade. In fact, the psalmist says, when they see all that the enemies of God’s people freeze, turn, and run away back to where they came from. The psalm writer also says of the city of Jerusalem, the kingdom of God’s people in the Old Testament. He says, God establishes her forever. So from that, we understand he’s not just speaking about the physical kingdom of Judah and Jerusalem. He’s really speaking about something that is spiritual, something that is eternal.

For there there are the gifts of mercy and righteousness, and they’re given to us through Jesus Christ our Savior. For his sake God is merciful to us, and here we receive through faith the righteousness, that is the innocence of Jesus, as we are safely at home in this kingdom of Zion. The New Jerusalem the Bible speaks of us. But again, at the very end, he has that striking statement where the psalmist says,

He will guide us beyond death. (Psalm 48:14 EHV)

This shows us that beyond the moment when our bodies die, we are still under God’s care and that we are still alive.

Jesus rising from the dead on Easter is our guarantee that what this says is very true. For Jesus promised, the one who lives and believes in me will never die. After life has left our body here, still our soul will continue to live on with him in heaven and not in the anguish of hell. Because of this promise, and because it has been fulfilled by Jesus righteousness, his perfect life for us, his death for us. God graciously forgives us all of our sins and promises a place in that eternal kingdom above, where he will guide us. First welcoming us there to its joy and then guiding us in that joy forever and ever. And knowing this, then we can say with the psalmist in another place

I would have lost heart, unless I had believed
That I would see the goodness of the Lord
In the land of the living. (Psalm 27:13 NKJV)

That’s our land. Trust in his forgiving word. Trust that he will guide you even beyond death. Amen.

Isaiah 53:2b, Psalm 17:15

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What did Jesus look like? That’s a natural question for us to think about as we think about Jesus. What did he look like? If I met him, would I recognize him? Oh, that’s my Savior. It’s a good question to think about. What did Jesus look like? After all, he is the most important person in our lives, and we know that it’s only through him that we have forgiveness of sin and life and salvation.

Down through the centuries, artists and theologians have sometimes portrayed Jesus as being stunningly handsome. And that makes sense to us. We sing in the familiar hymn Beautiful Savior. Others emphasizing the suffering that Jesus did for us, present him as someone who is grotesque and pitiful as he bears the sin of the world, tortured and dying for our sins on the cross. We assume, I suppose, that Jesus of Nazareth didn’t look so different from other people of his time and place and culture.

Isaiah chapter 53 gives us a hint about his physical appearance. There the prophet says of Jesus,

He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. (Isaiah 53:2b)

Perhaps if we had seen our Lord Jesus standing among a group of other men of his time, there wouldn’t have been anything that would have led us to say, I believe that gentleman at the end of the line is the Son of God.

So we see him in the Scripture according to his passion. And there we see his willingness to suffer for us. And so we would say that he’s not so beautiful always. And when we think about it, when we estimate his beauty, remembering that one day we, after closing our eyes in death, will immediately open them to the glorious sight of heaven. And be face to face with the one who loves us more than any other, the one who was willing to be bodily tortured and to suffer for our sins. And he will welcome us home to be with him in the eternal glory of heaven. And then with the Psalm writer, we will say these words

In righteousness I will see your face; when I awake, I will be satisfied with seeing your likeness. (Psalm 17:15)

Amen.

Romans 6:23, Matthew 12:31-32

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What’s the worst sin of all? What’s the deadliest sin? And as we think about that question, we should remember that the Bible tells us that

the wages of sin is death, (Romans 6:23)

and it doesn’t delineate grades of sin. It just says that any sin against God can kill the soul. Any sin that we refuse to repent of and to turn away from can lead us to be separated from our God. One sin, though, is spoken of in the Bible as coming with a horrifying warning. In the 12th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, our Lord Jesus said,

Therefore I tell you, people will be forgiven every sin and blasphemy, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven—either in this age or in the one to come. (Matthew 12:31-32 EHV)

What is it that’s so deadly about the sin against the Holy Spirit? Or, as Jesus speaks of it, blaspheming against the spirit? It’s deadly because it is God, the Holy Spirit, who works in us by the means of grace, by the Word of God, which we read and hear, and our baptism and in Holy Communion. And so it’s the Holy Spirit who works in us, that ability to see our sins and repent of them, to turn from them, and then trust in the forgiveness and the life eternal we have through our dear Savior.

To blaspheme the Spirit, what does that mean? We assume that that involves, perhaps in some more public way, acting against the Spirit, speaking against him, seeking to persuade others also to do the same thing. To set themselves in opposition to God, the Holy Spirit. And as we lead others to do that, we would lead them to hell also.

We regard, though, from our human perspective, all people as candidates for conversion to restoration with God so long as they’re alive. The Bible speaks of our time here on earth, whatever that length is, as our time of grace, our time to receive all the blessings that he wants us to have through Christ. But do we ever ponder, maybe in a quiet moment, have I committed that sin? Have I unknowingly committed the sin against God, the Holy Spirit, am I currently outside of the sphere of God’s forgiveness? We hate to think of that. Troubles our hearts to wonder if we’ve disqualified ourselves in that way. And when we do feel a fear, as we naturally would over that question of have I committed the deadliest sin, then we should remember that only one who still is under the guidance and the control of God, the Holy Spirit, would ask that question. The person who’s committed that sin probably would not be at all interested in even thinking about whether that’s a problem or not.

But for the one who’s troubled by that prospect, we should remember that’s a sign that the Holy Spirit is still with us in our lives, taking care of us and directing us as we should go. And so we ask that God would always keep us and protect us from falling into that unforgivable sin Jesus speaks of by mocking God the Spirit’s grace, or by urging others to do the same. And when we’re troubled, remember it’s the Spirit who leads us to think, “the one who comes to me, I will never drive away,” as Jesus himself said. (John 6:37) And as it says elsewhere in scripture, all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved. (Romans 10:13) Thanks and praise to him for his goodness. Amen.

Luke 24:50-53

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I’m reading from Luke chapter 24, the last verses of Saint Luke’s Gospel. It says,

And He led them out as far as Bethany, and He lifted up His hands and blessed them. Now it came to pass, while He blessed them, that He was parted from them and carried up into heaven. And they worshiped Him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple praising and blessing God. Amen. (Luke 24:50-53 NKJV)

Here Luke closes out his gospel account with a brief description of what we know as Jesus’ ascension into heaven. After everything that had happened, his arrest and torture, his crucifixion, his resurrection from the dead, his disciples had witnessed an awful lot. And now here they were again, watching as he was taken up physically from them. We might think that this would have been a time then marked again by great sorrow and discouragement for his disciples. Instead, one of the verses we just read says that they return to Jerusalem with great joy after witnessing his ascension into heaven. That, too, may be surprising. We would think that Jerusalem would have been one of the last places the disciples would have wanted to go. It was there, just 40 days before this, that their dear Lord had been arrested and crucified, and they, recognized as his followers had to assume that they also would be very vulnerable to similar treatment in Jerusalem.

But how interesting, it says they returned with great joy. What was it, do you suppose that prompted their joy after watching Jesus ascend into the clouds, ascend into heaven? It probably was a result of understanding that this was a signal that he had completely accomplished everything necessary for our salvation, that the mission was performed. Nothing else needed to be done to deliver them and all of us from our sins. They were also comforted by a specific promise that Jesus had given them when he told them, Go to Jerusalem, he said, wait there until the Holy Spirit comes upon you.

And the day of the Holy Spirit would be only ten days after that, the time we know as Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they were given the great strength from knowing he was with them, and the power even to speak in languages they had not formally studied or known before this.

So now they knew that they would be given the power to complete the task that Jesus had left with them to go and preach the good News all over the world, as you and I trust in the finished, perfect work of Jesus for our salvation. And as we trust in the presence of God, the Holy Spirit, we also can carry out our lives as Christians and carry out our efforts and tasks on behalf of our church with joy and with fearless confidence. Even though, like those early disciples, we sometimes experience dangers and persecution here in this world. But the Lord has given to us the message of completed forgiveness and deliverance from all of our sins. And he gives us the Holy Spirit still today, who enables the church to go forth and proclaim this good news of our salvation, the world’s salvation through our Lord Jesus. Amen.

John 20:30-31

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I was watching a long series on television about halfway through. It occurred to me that the main character of the story, even though he had started out as a fairly decent person, had probably directly or indirectly been responsible for the deaths of many, many people. And I thought, oh, somebody should keep track and count up how many people died because of him. Well, that was just a TV show. And finally, that doesn’t matter. But someone not long ago asked this question how many people did our Lord Jesus heal during the three years of his public ministry?

And we know that he healed quite a number of people. Some of the healings he carried out were really quite spectacular and famous. He healed people who were suffering with leprosy. He restored movement to paralyzed people. He gave sight to the blind, restored hearing for those who were deaf. He healed little children. So it’s good for us to have that record. But finally, we don’t have the exact number. It’s probable that he healed many, many more people than we learn about in the Bible. John wrote a couple of verses in his gospel account kind of dealing with this. In John chapter 20, verse 30 and 31, this is what he wrote.

Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe[a] that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. (John 20:30-31)

So it really isn’t the final number of healings that Jesus performed that is so very important to us. Rather, it’s this comfort that we can have in knowing that as both true God and true man in one person, Jesus was able and still able to deliver and rescue those who are in any trouble. That’s the comfort that we have, knowing him.

It’s good for us to remember that he is still able to hear and to answer prayers for rescue and healing and deliverance. And he does that sometimes still in miraculous ways, where someone who is very, very sick or injured, inexplicably makes a good recovery. More often, he does that healing through the vocation of first responders and emergency room doctors and nurses, others who are able to help. All of this comes from him.

It’s good for us to know, though, that and to rely on him not only for the physical healing that we probably all need at one time or another, but more important, the spiritual healing that we have. Because he is the one who went to the cross. He’s the one rightly known as the Great Physician, who took upon himself and immersed himself in the disease of our sin, and by his suffering and death for us has removed that curse from us, has won the forgiveness for our sins, so that we as God’s own forgiven, innocent children, trusting in him, can look forward to eternal life forever in the bliss and peace of heaven, where there is only perfect health and joy forever.

And so he says that he is the Son of God believing in him. We may have life in his name elsewhere. He said, I’ve come that they may have life and life to the fullest. Amen.

Zephaniah 3:15-17

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I’m reading now from one of the minor prophets in the Old Testament, Zephaniah. Zephaniah wrote just a three chapter prophecy. He lived and worked about 600 years before Jesus was born. He was a contemporary of a more famous prophet by the name of Jeremiah. And like Jeremiah, the prophet Zephaniah issued some very frightening warnings to the people of Jerusalem and Judah because of their unfaithfulness. They would be swept up in the coming Babylonian Empire and its fierce confiscation of that part of the whole world coming upon them. And the prophet warns them, this is a punishment from God.

But God always has his faithful remnant, those who wanted to remain faithful to His word and loved His Word. And as with the other minor prophets, here Zephaniah also then issues some very sweet and comforting promises to his faithful people. In some ways, our world is probably not so much different from the world of Zephaniah all those many centuries ago. And there are things that are coming upon our world that seem to be quite frightening. And the most frightening for some will be the last day, the day of the Lord, as Zephaniah calls it, when Jesus will return for the final judgment of his people.

And yet, even with such a day in our own future, perhaps as Christians, we can be at peace knowing that the one who is coming is our friend, and that he has paid for our sins and delivered us from this world unto himself for eternal life in heaven. So Zephaniah the prophet, in his last verses here of his prophecy says,

The Lord has taken away your judgments, (Zephaniah 3:15)

By his death he canceled out the punishment that our sins would have brought about. He says

He has cast out your enemy. (Zephaniah 3:15)

Our fiercest enemy is the devil, and through Jesus the devil has been defeated and can no longer rightly accuse us. He says,

The King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst; (Zephaniah 3:15)

The one who’s coming is the one who’s already with us in our midst, already present with us in the word that he gives to us and speaks to us the word of the forgiveness of our sins with the hope of heaven. So thinking about what’s coming, the prophet says,

You shall see disaster no more. In that day it shall be said to Jerusalem: “Do not fear; Zion, let not your hands be weak. (Zephaniah 3:15-16)

Imagine in all the dread and fury of the end, we can stand up and be at peace, knowing our friend is coming. And so again the prophet says,

The Lord your God in your midst,
The Mighty One, will save;
He will rejoice over you with gladness,
He will quiet you with His love,
He will rejoice over you with singing.” (Zephaniah 3:17)

What a precious image that is of our Lord. So happy to know that we will be with him even through the turmoil that comes at the end, and that he is glad to do this for us. He rejoices over us. He quiets us with his love as a mother can quiet her crying child, frightened of a dream in the night by holding her. That’s how we can imagine our dear Lord approaching us and interacting with us as we wait for the coming day of his return.

May God bless us as we wait and keep us trusting in him. Amen.

Psalm 44:6-8, Ephesians 2:8-9, 1 Corinthians 1:31

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Reading from Psalm 44, verses six and seven and eight.

I will not trust in my bow, nor shall my sword save me. But you have saved us from our enemies, and have put to shame those who hated us. In God we boast all day long. And praise your name forever. (Psalm 44:6-8)

At Mount Olive Lutheran Church and School, when children enter the fourth grade, we give them their own Bible and the pastors and the principal of our school, we all autograph the copies of that study Bible for the children. And I was going through the big pile of Bibles to sign, and I told a secretary, I wish I could be doing this at a bookstore somewhere with people lined up to get my autograph for some interesting novel I’ve written. It sort of appealed to my sense of human pride.

And then I get to thinking about a time years ago when I actually did sign books. My wife and children and I went to France, and we were visiting a monument at the location where my dad’s B-24 bomber crashed in the French Alps after being shot down over Munich. Thankfully, all of the crew members were able to jump out and parachute to safety.

So I wanted my wife and children to see the monument that had been installed there in France. And one of the Frenchmen had written an interesting book about that, and I was the only American and the only descendant of any of the Americans there. So they handed me a stack of books, and I stood there and gave my autograph to them. And I felt, on the one hand, proud that I could do that. But also I felt like an imposter because I hadn’t done anything that is described in that interesting book. Nothing heroic. And yet I got that feeling of being someone who was admired and my autograph was desired.

And so I’m just thinking about that pride that we feel we live in a prideful world. If you watch the NFL especially, you will see that after scoring a touchdown, the one who’s done it doesn’t hand the ball to the referee. Or rather, he celebrates himself and his own accomplishments. Spiritually speaking, that’s a very dangerous thing to do. And the psalmist here speaks of that when he said, I’m not going to trust my own prowess on the battlefield. I’m not going to boast about myself. I’m helpless. But God is the one who saves me. And in God I boast. All day long.

He hands us the victory of his holy life lived for us and his own suffering and death for us on the cross. So we reap the benefits and the joy of what he has accomplished, so that our boasting is not in us. Rather, it’s in only in our Lord Jesus. So the Apostle wrote in Ephesians 2 that our salvation is the gift of God, that our faith is even a gift, that he works. Not a result of works, he says, that no one may boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9)

And so that’s a good reminder for us Christians. We’re the recipients, and we get the blessings of what our Lord has done for us. We boast in him and in his love. And in doing so, then we’re recommending him to those who hear us so confident of our final deliverance from this sinful world and eternal life in heaven. And so again with the apostle who said to the Corinthians, let him who boasts, boast in the Lord. (1 Corinthians 1:31) Amen.

Ecclesiastes 9:12, Psalm 124:7

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One of our Bible classes at Mount Olive. We’ve been reading through the Old Testament book, Ecclesiastes. If you’ve ever read or studied that particular book from the Old Testament, you know that it can be a little bit gloomy. Solomon is speaking in a very blunt and realistic way about life here under the sun. And one of the themes that he returns to again and again is the universality of death and the inevitability of death. In other words, everyone will die unless our Lord comes back on the last day before then. Nobody gets out of here alive. Death is inevitable.

That’s a frightening thought, of course, if we dwell on it, especially as we realize that sometimes death can come with cruelty. Can be unexpected. And so true to form Solomon here, in Ecclesiastes in the ninth chapter says

Certainly, no man knows his time [of death]. Like fish caught in a deadly net and like birds caught in a trap, people are trapped at an evil time which falls on them suddenly. (Ecclesiastes 9:12)

And so, of course, the caution for us is, that we be ready to face that inevitable death that comes to us all, knowing that sometimes it can come to us very suddenly and with cruelty. As Solomon speaks of that, a bird getting caught in a trap. One moment it’s flying, enjoying the world God has created, the next the bird is on the ground looking for something to eat. And then suddenly it’s caught in the trap. And the fouler now has that bird in its possession and its life is probably about to end.

We’re reminded that when Jesus calls us out of this world, it could be quite sudden and we need to be ready for that. If this is where the message of the Scripture ended, of course we would be very discouraged and frightened by it. Solomon’s father was King David. David, we know, wrote most of the Psalms, beautiful poems, often very comforting and uplifting. And here’s an example of what Solomon’s father said about this notion of birds getting caught in a trap. In Psalm 124.

We have escaped with our lives like a bird out of the fowlers’ snare. The snare has been broken, and we have escaped.(Psalm 124:7)

Well, who broke it? Here we can picture our Lord Jesus walking through that field on the floor of that forest and coming upon a trap and with a heavy stick, he hits the trap and it breaks. And the little bird is suddenly free. Free to return to its nest, free to fly. And that’s what we too, can look forward to, because our Lord Jesus, by his holy sinless life for us and by is innocent suffering and death on the cross has paid for all of our sins, and he has actually wrecked death itself, just as the snare of the fouler has been wrecked.

And when life ends for us, in the words of the famous American folk song. Someday I’ll fly away. Now, as we approach Lent, we’ll again celebrate this wonderful news that in Christ, our sins have been paid for and nothing can hold us back from entering into paradise when life ends. May God keep us in that faith always, amen.

Hebrews 9:27-28, Romans 8:1

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Well, it’s early February, and so just the other day, the nation once again observed Groundhog’s Day focusing especially on a certain groundhog out in Pennsylvania named Phil, who emerges from wherever he lives. And if he sees his shadow, that means that we can expect another six weeks of winter. And if he does not see his shadow when he comes out and looks around, then the rule of thumb is that we’ll have an early spring. He’s not very accurate in predicting the length of the winter, but it’s a cute tradition.

Back in the early 1990s, there was a famous movie by the same name Groundhog Day, and in it a man is fated to relive the same 24 hour period of time over and over again, sometimes committing the same mistakes, sometimes improving things a little bit. It’s a very popular movie. And for some though, that idea of returning and doing things over and over again is not fiction. It’s what they believe. That’s the teaching of reincarnation. And it’s very popular throughout the world.

People maybe are attracted to the notion that they’ll get a second chance to relive their lives, possibly, and to make up for some mistakes they’ve made. On the other hand, that same notion of coming back again can be quite overwhelming, can even bring about a sense of despair with the idea that I’ll never be able to do things just as I should. I’ll never get out of this relentless cycle I’m living in.

By contrast, our Christian faith teaches something different. In Hebrews, in the New Testament, in the ninth chapter, we read the third verse 27. It says,

Just as it is appointed for people to die only once and after this comes the judgment, (Hebrews 9:27)

And so that reminds us that we don’t anticipate returning again and again but that we live our lives here on Earth one time and that they will end either when Christ returns or with the day of our death, with a judgment over our lives. That, too, can be quite a daunting prospect. I know I’ve sinned. Now, how am I going to make things right with God in that moment of my judgment? Well, as Christians, we know that that isn’t such a frightening thought. After all, the Bible says

So then, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. (Romans 8:1)

and then going on in this same section in Hebrews.

so also Christ was offered only once to take away the sins of many, and he will appear a second time—without sin—to bring salvation to those who are eagerly waiting for him. (Hebrews 9:28)

So we find our comfort in knowing that Jesus came and lived that perfect life the law demands of us for us, and so found in Christ, trusting in Him when it’s time for us to face the judgment we know that we will pass and that we can look forward to eternal life with our Lord in heaven. Amen.

John 21:17, Matthew 28:18

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Well, Happy New Year, everyone. I was thinking about a couple of Bible passages that are, to me very meaningful as we think about the start of the next 12 months on the calendar. One of them is in John chapter 21, verse 17. It’s after Jesus had risen from the dead and He was speaking to his disciple, Peter. He asked Peter, Do you love me? And Peter had to answer that question three times. On the last time Peter said to Jesus in response to this question, Do you love me?

Lord, you know all things. You know that I love you. (John 21:17)

And there’s another passage that is also comforting. And that is in Matthew 28, verse 18 again, Jesus, just prior to his ascension, his return into heaven, told his friends,

All authority in heaven and on Earth has been given to me. (Matthew 28:18)

Now, as we’re standing at the start of a new calendar year, I know I need to get out my calendars and fill in some important dates that I’ll look ahead to. I do that, of course, so I don’t forget about them. We know that when we’re dealing with things like that, we’re thinking about the future. And though we may have in our own minds a sense of what is going to happen in the future, the truth is, of course, none of us can accurately predict the future. For us, that remains something quite mysterious.

But not for God. God is omniscient. It means he has a perfect knowledge and awareness of everything behind us, everything now in the present and everything in the future. And I’m so thankful that our Lord Jesus, the one who came and paid for our sins by offering up his own wholly innocent life for us, that he’s God. So when Peter said to him, “you know all things” Jesus didn’t dispute that. He didn’t say, “Well, I know a lot, but not everything.” As true God, he could accept Peter’s statement. Lord, you know, all things.

What a great thing for us that Jesus is aware of the future. He said, I’m with you always, even to the end of the age. He knows the hard things that are in front of us and the things that frightened us if we knew about them. But we can be assured, he says, Don’t be afraid, little flock. He’s our shepherd who will accompany us every step of the way.

Jesus also told his friends all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. When we think about it, the one who has all the authority gets exactly what he wants. And what Jesus wants is for you and me to be with Him forever in heaven. And He wants us to be happy here on Earth and blessed with him in eternal life. And so he brings that about, too. He causes us to be under his authority so that his will is done in our lives. And his most important will for us is that we know him and believe in him and rely upon him as our true friend, our everlasting Savior, the one who has opened heaven for us poor sinners.

So that while we don’t know everything that’s going to happen here on Earth in 2023, we do know that when we leave this Earth, even if it should be this year or many years from now, knowing his will, knowing his power, knowing his awareness of all things, trusting in him, we can look forward to a wonderful and beautiful future with him in heaven. May God grant that to you and to all of us. Amen.

John 20:19-20, 1 Corinthians 14:40, Romans 15:33

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We’re celebrating the resurrection of our Lord, with that in mind, I’d like to read from John Chapter 20, reading there verses 19 and 20.

Then the same day and evening being the first day of the week when the doors were shut, where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in the midst and said to them, Peace be with you. When he said this, he showed them his hands and his side and the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. (John 20:19-20)

Recently, I was visiting with a friend and we were talking about the things that everyone is talking about these days, all of the conflict and all of the uncertainty that we’re currently experiencing in our society and in our world. With the deep political, cultural divisions, and also with the ongoing pandemic and all the questions that swirl around that. So we are talking about the subject of chaos. And it got me thinking, just what do we mean when we speak of that word, chaos in our world?

I looked it up. It means an intense and deep confusion or disorder. And spiritually speaking, that would seem to be right up Satan’s alley. He loves the idea of us being confused, especially confused about our salvation and confused about the future of our world and our lives. He loves the disorder that is created by our sin and the danger that that can represent too.

I was reading the other day in the news and something interesting is happening in Iceland, that little country in the middle of the North Atlantic, they’re going through some interesting times because there’s a lot of volcanic activity going on there. And so lately there have been a lot of tremors and small earthquakes that seem to indicate that a major volcano is about to erupt. When you think about chaos, that’s a pretty good picture of it, isn’t it? With the earth trembling and with fire raining down from the sky, it’s hard to have a very orderly society when that’s going on.

And then ironically, I came upon something else in the news about Iceland. Apparently in that country, when people have a baby, the names that they can name their child are restricted to what has been approved by the government. I guess they want to protect their culture that way. But recently they’ve added a name that is now acceptable for Icelandic children, either boys or girls. And that name is Chaos. That’s an interesting choice now in these times that we’re all facing and that they’re facing, especially in Iceland.

We are so thankful that in Jesus Christ who died for us and who rose again, we know the opposite of chaos. It’s that Peace that Jesus first shared with his disciples when he came in through the door in the upper room on Easter evening. Peace be with you. We’re so thankful that he’s called us to faith in him and put us in his church here on Earth. And we know that the guidepost for conducting ourselves in the church was spoken by Paul when he said Let everything be done decently and in order just the opposite of the disorder represented by chaos. (1 Corinthians 14:40)

Where Christ and his church are found, then chaos and everything else that comes out of sin is replaced by this quiet order, this peace that we have with our Father. Peace that we can have with one another. And so because Jesus died for us and rose again, the chaos is gone. And as Paul ended one of his epistles, we can say to one another, the God of peace, be with you. (Romans 15:33)