Tag: Discipleship

From that time on: the cross

Posted on by nfuller

Last Sunday we left off in our gospel reading with Peter’s confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God.  We continued in our gospel reading this morning with the introductory sentence “From that time Jesus began to show his disciples..”  From right after Peter’s Confession, Jesus began to show his disciples what it means to be the Christ, the destiny that awaits him as the Savior. 

Clearly Jesus did not want the disciples to become too comfortable with the status that they were with the Son of God, without understanding the purpose for why Jesus came. He did not want them to become distracted by their allegiance to Jesus as a King for this world only. 

In just a short time after Peter confessed Jesus as the Christ, Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke Jesus.  In Peter’s mind God’s Son was wrong. Wrong for saying that he would be betrayed and die on the cross.  Peter struggled to accept that Jesus should be betrayed. He thought that he would die defending Jesus so that it would never happen. “This shall never happen to you.”

It is our human nature, like Peter demonstrated, to want Jesus to be a Savior on our own terms, a king who we follow and protect.  We would like to fight for Jesus and fight for the cause of our faith and our church, rather than receive God’s gifts. That way we feel we have advanced the cause of righteousness, that we have opposed evil with good.

But this is not God’s will for us to vanquish all the enemies of the Lord and His Christ.  Jesus did not come to be a conquering king.  That was in fact the third temptation Satan brought before Jesus, “All the kingdoms of the world and their glory I will give to you if you fall down and worship me.”

In that moment Peter wanted honor and splendor and recognition for Jesus and all of the disciples. Perhaps he thought Jesus deserves all of the luxury and comforts available in this world.   In response Jesus commanded to Peter, “get behind me Satan”  He was setting his mind on the things of man instead of the things of God.

To set our minds on the things of God is difficult, we tremble to consider the cross as God’s plan and our road of discipleship.  We have so many desires of our human nature we would like to follow instead of picking up the cross.

We would like to find the right balance in life where we are comfortable in our life circumstances, where we find fulfillment and enjoyment in all of the good things the world has to offer. We would like to always have sunshine, carefree days, and the freedom to live life without worry or responsibility toward others.

Picking up the cross can be a confusing phrase to us. What does Jesus mean when he says, “if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”  It sound so familiar to us, that Christians follow Jesus and carry our own crosses in life. 

How different it must have sounded to the disciples who were just wrapping their mind around Jesus talking about how he must be killed and on the third day rise. How strange it must have sounded to be asked to pick up a means of execution, a cross and carry it wherever Jesus leads- like Jerusalem where people are waiting to persecute them.

For us Christians to take up the cross can mean two things, it can mean to reject what is comfortable in our life and exchange it for hardship for the sake of the kingdom or helping others.  It can also mean to follow Jesus despite the persecution from others.  So bearing the cross is both our taking up hardships upon ourselves in the choices we make for the sake of others, and also suffering that may be inflicted on us for simply being Christians that is our cross to bear.

It is hard for us to willing take up crosses in life where we care for others first, where we face the persecution for our faith that sometimes comes with following Jesus. We feel we are giving up quite a bit of what we would like to do when we deny ourselves and follow Jesus.

Yes, we do appear to give up a lot when we take up our cross and follow Jesus, but in Him we gain everything that is of worth and value, in Him we gain God’s kingdom.  For we know that if we have died with Christ we certainly shall rise with Christ. 

The Lord has blessed us with his presence through the difficult moments we face day by day as we endure the crosses of this world. He has prepared us for these moments through the work of the Holy Spirit, through the ministry of the church.

Every Sunday we are given the opportunity to confess our sins and then receive the assurance that Jesus forgives us of our sins. The result is that each week the Holy Spirit is working in us through the words of confession to bring us to repentance.

And just as God turns our hearts so that we die to our old sinful nature, God also gives us new hearts through the words of absolution.  In worship we take up our cross and die to our old sins and we are given new life as we receive his complete forgiveness for all of our sins on account of Jesus.

In the Lord’s Supper as we come to the Lord’s Table empty and defeated by our sin and the sin in the world, we are given new life.  His body and blood brings us fulfillment and satisfaction in a way that nothing else in the world can. His gift of life and mercy fills our cup to overflowing, so that day by day the promises of the world sound less as and less appealing.

We heard from Psalm 37 in our Introit: “Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” 

When our heart’s joy is in Jesus, the desires of our heart are going to be much different than that which comes out of our human nature. We find our life and our true desires of our hearts when we die to our sinful nature and leave it at the cross. 

In Christ our hearts seek to lift others up, to pray for those in need and those struggling with spiritual distress.  In Christ we find the desires of our hearts met as we wait for him and trust in faith he will act to bring deliverance to his Church.

With our fallen human heart we could never follow the directive from our Epistle reading in Romans chapter 12.  For our love to always be genuine, to always hold fast to good over evil. To love one another with brotherly affection and to always be fervent in spirit to serve the Lord. 

In taking up our cross and following Jesus we learn how freeing it is to bless those who persecute us, we learn how to put aside our selfishness so that we are free to live peaceably with all.

Today we will find many circumstances in our lives where following Jesus will bring the cross of persecution.   Through our defense of the sanctity of all life, especially the unborn we face derision in our culture. Through our firm confession that Jesus is the only way of salvation we will be accused of a cultural imperialism where we do not support and affirm the spiritual views of others. 

Now more than ever we will face ridicule for our defense of God’s design for family rooted in the bond of marriage between one man and one woman. We will be called dinosaurs in a world with ever evolving ethics and codes about how to be respectful to people’s sexuality.  

But the ridicule and the persecution that is on the horizon means little compared to the joy of walking with Jesus.  There is nothing that man can do to us to change God’s love toward us.

Our gospel reading began proclaiming from that time on. From that time on Jesus spoke of the cross and the resurrection.  That time has not ended, God’s Word continues to proclaim this to us, that whatever the challenge set before us as the church, we have the answer in the cross and the resurrection. Jesus tells us today I died for you and I am risen for you. Amen.   

Take A long Look at Discipleship

Posted on by nfuller

Thanks and recognition are due to Dr. Carl Fickenscher II for the excellent and versatile thematic idea of “Take a long look at discipleship” as featured on the Issues Etc. radio, internet, and podcast ongoing series “Looking Forward to Sunday Morning” This is the text of the message preached at Christ Lutheran Church last Sunday September 8th.

Grace Mercy and peace from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. A father gives advice to his daughter before she goes to buy her first used car:  Don’t just go with the first car that catches your eye.  Watch for pitfalls and red flags that say this car is not all that it is cracked up to be. Look past the surface. Take a long look.  

A mother gives advice to her daughter about beginning to date.  Don’t get swept off your feet by the first young man who gives you any attention without paying attention as to what his character is truly like. Take a long look.

A realtor speaks to a first home buyer: Picture what it would be like with your own furniture and family here, picture spending years and years within these walls of the house and looking out into this yard. Take a long look.

If I were to talk to one of my children about his or her wedding day, I can picture myself saying: Take a long look- see how beautiful it is that God has provided you with someone to love and cherish and journey with you in this life of following Jesus. Cherish the moment and take it in: take a long, transcendentally beautiful look. 

God’s Word for us this morning invites us to take a long look at what it means to follow Jesus.  In Deuteronomy chapter 30 Moses is speaking to the people of Israel as he approaches the end of his life.  “See I have set before you today life and good, death and evil.”  The people of Israel are about to enter the promise land.  They are at a turning point in their lives that deserves some careful consideration.

He does not want the people of Israel to treat entering the Promise Land lightly without any consideration for what is at stake to their lives.  He speaks to them of what is at stake in the positive and what is at stake in the negative. The positive: If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord God will bless you in the land you are entering to take possession of. 

The negative: If your heart turns away and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, “I declare to you today that you shall truly perish. You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and posses.” After all the acts of deliverance from Pharaoh, all the giving of the law through the wilderness- you would enter into the promise land only perish.

Can you picture the age lines around his eyes and the weariness Moses must have carried with him as he spoke those words?   Moses witnessed firsthand how ugly it can get when people disobey God’s Commands- especially when he is not directly watching over them.  He saw how easily the people cooked up the golden calf, or how easily they grumbled and wished they had never left slavery in Egypt.   

Moses saw what is in the heart of man, and how hard it is for the people to remain faithful- despite all that the Lord does for them. Take a long look at Moses, near the end of his life, and see how difficult is the road of discipleship.  

Today is September 8th.  You have a congregational Call Meeting scheduled shortly after the service. Take a long look at the costs of discipleship- the work that is ahead, the hard painstaking work ahead of us in a hard time in history to be the church where many in our generation simply prefer to stay home than come to a church and have people know who they are and perhaps at times disappoint them.

Look at our culture today where more people than ever have convinced themselves that they can be Christians without attending or being part of a church because we as a society in so many ways like to fool ourselves into thinking we know better than God in how to live our lives, and that what we choose, whether it agrees with His clear Word or not, God must be proud of because he loves us and just wants us to be happy.  Take a look at how difficult it is to minister to our culture today that wants a generalized spiritual God who provides no direction or limits in life.  Of course such a god so many people would choose is no god at all.  A god that is not somewhere for you is nowhere.  Take a look at our culture in dire need of a specific Savior named Jesus, the God who is there and present for us, who is the Way the Truth and the Life.    

See for yourselves how hard the walk of discipleship is.  You have to count the cost and be ready, like building a tower, you want to make sure you are able to complete it.  .  Jesus has spoken clearly how difficult it is: “Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.” The cross brings division at the level of our very families. “So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.”  Take a long look and consider whether you are ready for the challenge.

As a church we want to be ready for the challenge.  If we decide we have nothing left to give, not enough faith in Jesus to commit to the work of the kingdom we are like salt that has lost its taste. We are of no use to anyone if as a church we just want to be safe and secure and are not ready to follow Jesus. 

Take a long look at the cost of discipleship, but see also how beautiful it is that Jesus walks with us.  Take a long look at our Savior, see his nail scars and the hole in his side. As one of our hymn describes it, see how glorious those scars are, those dear token of his passion.  

See how beautiful is God’s kingdom before us, like the view from Mount Nebo as the Lord showed Moses all of the promise land: Gilead as far as Dan, all Naphtali, the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, all the land of Judah as far as the Western See , Negev and the Plain that is the valley of Jericho , the city of palm trees as far as Zoar.  It was just as God promises to His people “A land flowing with milk and Honey”   

Take along look at how beautiful the sight of the righteous who put their trust in Jesus, like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its due season, and its leaf does not wither, in all that he does, he prospers.

How beautiful the sight of God’s people in this place together worshiping our Savior, now and forever living by the Word of God. See the beauty of how members of Christ Lutheran Church care for one another and lift up one another in times of need:  ‘Bearing one another’s burdens and so fulfilling the law of Christ.’

Take a long look at how our Lord has provided for our congregation’s needs in this last year! An AC/ heater unit goes out and within days our church receives a completely unexpected sizable donation enough to cover the cost. 

Look back in awe of the Lord’s work that a church can go from trying to survive for just one more week or month to instead planning for the future-  holding youth Sunday school for the first time in perhaps two years. Look carefully at what prayers are being answered among us.  

In our closing hymn today: Guide Me O Thou Great Redeemer we will sing about the moment in our life that will parallel the people of Israel’s entrance into the promised land- when we face our last hour, knowing that Jesus has conquered the lasting sting of death and Hell’s destruction for us on the cross: 

“When I tread the verge of Jordan, bid my anxious fears subside, Death of death and hell’s destruction, Land me safe on Canaan’s side. Songs of praises, songs of praises I will ever give to Thee.”

The easy way and the hard way

Posted on by nfuller

Brother or Sister in Christ, if you are reading this blog- this message is for you. It is based on a sermon I gave this past Sunday, but is now condensed into blog form to fit an appropriate reader context. I hope you will find this message edifying to your Christian jouney- and if you do not have a church home, consider worshiping with us at Christ Lutheran Irvington.

We are on a journey.  We are fellow travelers, who can agree that there is a hard way and an easy way to undertake the journey.  Following His baptism in the Jordan River, Jesus was on a journey.  Led by the Holy Spirit, Jesus was on a journey of faith.  Forty days and nights in the wilderness without food, and under the whim of temptation by Satan. 

Satan tempted Jesus with an easy route through the journey.  Satan’s temptation was a fiercely shrewd attack. It was the same method that worked so effectively with Adam and Eve, “Is this way God commanded you really the way you should go? If God really loves you, wouldn’t he want you to have your heart’s desire? Satan tempted Jesus to replace fasting hunger with satiation, to replace his humble state in life with all of the riches and power of this world. 

Jesus came to the world to redeem all of the world, and here Satan, who has been the prince of our fallen world ever since the Fall into sin, here Satan was offering it all to Jesus- if Jesus would only bow down to him. If you want to save the world what better way than to enlist the master of all of the world. Don’t the ends justify the means?

In our faith journey we have an easy way before us. It is the way of convenience, fast solutions, and a way of trusting in our own inventions and provisions instead of those of God.  It is the way where the ends justify the means.   The hard way before us is God’s way. This is a way that goes through the cross. It is the only way that we can actually travel the journey. 

Jesus knew the journey to save the world was going to be the hardest of all journey’s.  Fasting for 40 days was only just a taste of the difficulty. He would also be betrayed by his own, praying in the garden of Gethsemane for the cup to be taken away, while his disciples slept.  He would be beaten and flogged and humiliated, stripped naked , and then crucified.

Lent is a journey for us as the church. It is not as difficult a journey as Jesus fasting for 40 days.  We could not handle such a journey ourselves. We cannot overcome the temptation of Satan in the way that Jesus did.  Lent is not about trying to match ourselves what Jesus did for us.  If we could overcome Satan on our own and resist all temptation perfectly we wouldn’t need a Savior.

The specific journey that Lent is for the church, is to focus on repentance, humility, and self denial.  That is why the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod has long practiced refraining from singing Alleluia’s, we are putting aside a mood of celebration, we are being honest with ourselves, that in this world we will still have trouble.

But we can receive the gift that Jesus has overcome temptation for us. We can receive this gift and connect ourselves by faith to this gift. That is the journey we take, to leave behind those things that weigh us down and distract us from receiving the gift in our lives.

The journey we take is hard and difficult. It requires everything we have to resist the allure of the easy ways of this world in favor of picking up our cross and following Jesus.   We follow Jesus through the disappointments and trials of life, through peaks and valleys, we hold on in faith to the promise that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. We follow Jesus through the promise that in self denial, humility, and even suffering we are closer to Jesus.

We do not take the journey of Lent in order to impress God.  Nor do we take this journey so that we will be considered more worthy in God’s eyes, or so that we are loved more.

Instead we undertake this journey to prepare us to resist the temptations of this world more effectively. We seek to mortify our flesh, as the Book of Concord describes as an essential aspect of our faith. 

In article 26 of the Augsburg confession the reformers refuted the idea that justification by faith, being truly Lutheran means there is no to be for Christians no discipline or mortification of the flesh. “For concerning the cross they have always taught that Christians should endure afflictions. To be disciplined by various afflictions and crucified with Christ is a true and serious, not a simulated mortification.” 

“In addition they teach that all Christians should so train and restrain themselves with bodily discipline, or bodily exercises and labors, that neither over exertion or idleness may lure them into sin. But they do not teach that we merit forgiveness of sins or make satisfaction for them through such exercise.”

This article then illustrates Christ’s command in Luke 21:34:  4 “But watch yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly like a trap.

And in Mark 9:29  6 And after crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out, and the boy was like a corpse, so that most of them said, “He is dead.” 27 But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose. 28 And when he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, “Why could we not cast it out?” 29 And he said to them, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.”

Can you picture some of the applications this article about mortification has for us.  We mortify our flesh, we put to death the selfish and sin motivated aspects of our life so that we are not lured into sin by either complacency and idleness or by over exertion where we become too preoccupied with our own achievements. 

Our calling as Christians can be significantly stalled by our sinful human nature.  We have good intentions in how we live our callings in life, but pit falls surround us on all sides. In some cases we think too little of ourselves where we are paralyzed by depression or anxiety. In other cases we think too highly of ourselves where we commit sins of pride and selfishness.    

With all of these pit falls we need as much of God’s Word in our lives and as little distractions as possible.  I am mindful this season of Lent how I might prevent wasting time in the idleness of reading news headlines, when I could instead take advantage of times of down time meditating on God’s Word. 

Take some moments to think about what calling in life you have struggled to fulfill because of the weight and hindrance of your own idleness, your own self doubts, or even your own pride. What joy awaits you, what blessings to others you could give if through the power of God’s Word you more diligently followed the way of the cross!

The challenge of overcoming our well worn patterns of indifference, selfishness and pride is great, but perhaps instead of complaining or feeling defeated by the challenge we should take counsel in our Lord’s Words that this kind of demon can only come out by fasting and prayer.   The spiritual darkness of this time is thick. But the more we are connected to the truth of God’s Word, the more prepared we are for the challenge.  

Through the cross we walk a hard way.  We would like an easy way where people just came into our lives and said, ‘O what a faithful and loving person, I want to be around her more!’ That is the easy way we wish we had.

We have another way before us, a way that is going to require courage, persistence, hopefulness and long suffering, and above all faith in the teaching of Our Lord that the Cross is the only way of life. 

In Christ, the way of the cross is hard.  Yet the scripture also describes how following Jesus is in essence an easy way because of its complete fulfillment of all of our needs:   28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

From the gospel of John we hear: “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.”

Likewise we hear in 1John the lightness and freedom of following God’s law:  For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.

The way of following Jesus is light and easy because it is a way free of the sorrows of this world.  The way of the world is heavy and burdensome and difficult for it is a way full of the sorrows of hoping in worldly things that fall through our fingers like sand dropping in a time glass. The way of the world involves some who are rich and some who are poor.

How completely different is the way of God’s kingdom!  We heard in our Epistle reading from Romans that, “Anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame.” 12 For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, 13 for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”  This is the way of God’s Kingdom, an easy and wonderfully simple path to walk. The blessed journey we have been called to.