Tag: LCMS

Jesus, why do you not leave me alone?

Posted on by nfuller

What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me.” 

The demons recognize and know who Jesus is more than anyone else.  They are the first to call Jesus the Son of God, not the disciples. But they say this in dread fear- recognizing the power of Jesus and their helplessness before Him.  “Jesus, do not torment me”- is not a phrase you could imagine any man or woman saying.  A bruised reed he will not break, a smoldering wick he will not put out. 

Only the dark forces recognize the true spiritual warfare at stake for which Jesus was born to fight.   They recognize the power of their enemy- Jesus. They see their end and beg for a delay to their demise.

What have you to do with me? Or in another translation of the original Greek, “Why do you not leave me alone.”  What does the Son of God, pure truth, the light of the world have to do with a legion of demons inhabiting this man?  What business does light have visiting the darkness? 

Was it the demons alone who spoke this phrase, ‘what have you to do with me’ or did the man possessed himself ask this question, what have you to do with me Jesus because nobody else had anything to do with him.  The account in this reading of this man’s isolation and suffering is staggering.  

We hear: For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he had not lived in a house but among the tombs. It is hard to picture a more pitiful and miserable existence than this man was in.  His depravity was so great that he was not even among civilization, sleeping in tombs, living among unclean pigs.  Naturally he would wonder what business Jesus would have talking to him.

The business is that Jesus has come to liberate us from the darkness.  What does Jesus have to do with this demon possessed man- everything.  Jesus has everything to do with these demons- for he has come to vanquish them.  He does not leave this poor man- separated from society, suffering with an inhabitation of thousands of demons if the name Legion is accurate.   This poor man, the lowest of low- Jesus has everything to do with him. I have not come to seek the saved, but the lost.

The demons begged Jesus to let them enter the pigs on the hillside. They drove the pigs over the cliff in order to destroy them.  They settled for destroying the pigs- destruction being their ultimate aim in life.   As a result of this dramatic scene the villagers and herdsmen were afraid, they asked Jesus to leave.  They feared Jesus when it was the demons who they should have feared.

The people feared to see the power that Jesus had healed this man- but they should have seen this as a cause for comfort and peace.  The man was experiencing peace and comfort, as he sat with Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. He wanted to stay with Jesus, but was told:   Return to your home and declare how much God has done for you. 

As we appreciate how much God has done for us, as we truly recognize how helpless we are on our own, we will want to declare to the world what God has done for us.

When I was first entering seminary after I graduated from undergrad I had many opportunities to tell people what I was pursuing for my career.  Often this would be one of the first time church or Christian faith was the center of the topic of conversation with some friends of my parents from my dad’s work place or riding Harley Davidson motorcycles. 

“If I ever entered church, flames might spontaneously erupt.”  “If I walked in the earth would tremble.”  People will make jokes about how unworthy they are to actually be in a church- its not for me, I don’t belong here, I would never fit in, It would be a joke.

How I wish I would have thought more of the man possessed with demons, who said to Jesus, what have you to do with me, have you come to torment me.  Well yes it is a wonder that the church doesn’t erupt in flames when I walk in too! Chief of sinners though I be, Christ laid down his life for me.  The man possessed with demons had plenty of cause to question how it is that Jesus came to him- and we have plenty of cause too. 

By all rights we should be just as afraid and perplexed about how vulnerable we are to the destructive agenda of the demons, with our fallen human nature, with our natural state of seeing God as our enemy who is coming to destroy us.

Yet while we were still sinners Christ died for us.  And Christ has come to vanquish all of the demons from our world, be gone and trouble my own children no more!   Psalm 139 puts it well:

Where shall I go from your Spirit?  Or where shall I flee from your presence? 8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there!  If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! 9 If I take the wings of the morning  and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, 10 even there your hand shall lead me,     and your right hand shall hold me. 11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,” 12 even the darkness is not dark to you;  the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you.

God has everything to do with us. Daily he has everything to do with us. We are reminded of this in the Small Catechism of Martin Luther,the 4th petition of the Lord’s Prayer.

Give us today our daily bread: God certainly gives daily bread to everyone without our prayers, even to all evil people, but we pray in this petition that God would lead us to realize this and to receive daily bread with thanksgiving.

We often stress in the Lutheran church God’s great provision to us in the gift of salvation through Christ’s saving work on the cross. But we also see God’s provision in upholding creation and sustaining our daily lives.

What is meant by daily bread? Daily bread includes everything that has to do with the support and needs of the body, such as food, drink, clothing, shoes, house, home, land, animals, money, goods, a devout husband or wife, devout children, devout workers, devout and faithful rulers, good government, good weather, peace, health, self-control, good reputation, good friends, faithful neighbors, and the like.

Daily God has everything to do with us, even unto the last day where God has everything to do with us through the cross and empty tomb and his kingdom forever. Amen.   

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.