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Jesus is God
A recent theological survey (2020) from Ligonier ministries asked Americans whether they agreed with the statement, “Jesus was a great teacher, but he was not God.” 52% of respondents agreed with this statement and even 30% of evangelicals agreed with it. I pray that we would know better. Our Lord Jesus is true God and true man. When we reflect upon the birth of Jesus that first Christmas we confess that God Himself was wrapped in swaddling clothes, laid in a manger, and worshipped by shepherds. Jesus is our Emmanuel, God with us. When we reflect on the death of Jesus on the cross, we confess that God Himself died for our sins. How can God be born? How can God die? This is a great mystery. It is something that we cannot fully comprehend, but we must simply confess. Does it matter whether or not Jesus was God? Absolutely! God took on our flesh. Jesus is God and man, "not by the conversion of the divinity into flesh, but by the assumption of the humanity into God" (Athanasian Creed). God became one of us. God experienced in a body those things we experience in the body, yet He was without sin. Only a perfect sacrifice could atone for the sin of the whole world. Only God Himself could offer such a perfect sacrifice, which He did on the cross in the person of Jesus. The incarnation is a miracle. Thanks be to God for such a miracle.
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What is God's “glory”? It's actually a difficult question. The word glory often refers to ideas of beauty, majesty, or splendor. For a human being glory could refer to that person's dignity, wealth, power, or position. The glory of someone consists of those things which make that person unique or important in the eyes of others.
But what about the glory of God? In the Old Testament the Hebrew word usually translated as glory has the idea of weight or heaviness. God is glorious because He deals with matters much weightier than what we humans deal with. His presence is much more significant than ours. In the Old Testament most often God's glory describes the form in which God reveals Himself to people or is the sign and manifestation of His presence. In Exodus Moses asks to see God's glory (Ex. 33:18). The Lord tells Moses that no person can look at His face and live (Ex. 33:20). Instead, God chooses to reveal Himself, His character and essence in a different way, by showing Moses His goodness (Ex. 33:19). The Lord also promises Moses that He will allow His glory to pass by Moses, but the Lord will cover Moses’ face with His hand. Once the glory of the Lord passes by Moses will see the "backside" of the Lord's glory (Ex. 33:21-23). We often would like to "see" God's glory, to be given some supernatural sign of God's presence with us or his favor with us. We too would might like to peer into the mind of God to understand His nature to gaze upon His complete beauty. But such things are too weighty for us. Instead, God shows us His goodness by providing for our daily needs and forgiving our sins. He also shows us the backside of His glory, revealing His character, saving power, and mercy to us from the behind, as we look backwards. That is, we realize God's glory as we look backwards in time, at Jesus death and resurrection, at the preservation of His word for thousands of years, at our own baptism and faith. John tells us that the glory of God is seen most clearly in the person and work of Jesus (John 1:14). God is glorious because He has saved us through His Son! We all need water to live. On average a person cannot live more than three days without drinking water. This is not to mention all the other uses we have for water such as cleaning and bathing.
Is it any wonder then why our Lord instituted baptism using water? The water of baptism is spiritually life-giving, just as plain water sustains our physical life. The water of baptism cleanses us from sin, just as we use water to bathe our bodies. Since water is so basic to human existence it's almost always readily available for baptism. When the people of Israel left Egypt they had difficulty finding drinking water out in the wilderness on more than one occasion. So, God had to provide water for them. This He did through Moses. God made the bitter waters of Marah sweet (Ex. 15:23-25), and miraculously made water gush out of solid rock (Ex 17:6, Num. 20:8-11.) The people of God needed this water to live. You and I need the water of baptism to live. St. Peter says "Baptism now saves you" (1 Peter 3:21). St. Paul says baptism is, "the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit" (Titus 3:5). And Jesus says, "Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved" (Mark 16:16). Thanks be to God that he gives water to sustain our earthly lives, and the water of baptism to grant us eternal life. Thank the Lord and sing His praise; tell everyone what He has done. Let all who see the Lord rejoice and proudly bear His name. He recalls His promises and leads His people forth in joy with shouts of thanksgiving. Alleluia, alleluia.
These words are sung after communion in Divine Service setting 1 and 2, but I think they have a lot to say about our thanksgiving. Note first of all that singing accompanies thanks. We show our thankfulness to God by singing His praises. We praise and thank the one who gives us all things. We praise God by proclaiming what He has done. Secondly, we tell others about the great things God has done, those things for which we are thankful. As we have just "seen" the Lord in, with, and under the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper, we rejoice. We can be proud, in a good way, of the name of the Lord that we bear. We bear the name Christian, the name given us in our baptism. We go forth into the world with this name, telling others what Christ has done, and thanking Him for His saving work. Why are we able to give thanks? Because the Lord recalls His promises. He keeps His promise to forgive our sins. He promises to lead us through this life, through the valley of the shadow death, into eternal life with Him. For all this we thanks and praise Him. INRI (11/14/22)
You may have seen these letters in a church somewhere, INRI. If you look at the crucifix hanging above the literature table in our fellowship hall or the one hanging in the entry way to the sanctuary, you will see this printed above the head of Jesus. INRI is an abbreviation for the Latin phrase, Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum, or in English, "Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews." Recall that when Jesus was crucified, Pilate had this inscription placed on Jesus' cross written in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin so all could read it. (John 19:19-20). Why would Pilate write such a thing? The Gospels of Matthew and Mark tell us that this was the charge against Jesus (Matt. 27:37). The Romans would sometimes indicate the criminal charge against the person being crucified by writing it on the cross. This was the best that Pilate could come up with. He asked the Jews if he should crucify their king. They replied, "We have no king but Caesar" (John 19:15). The Jewish authorities didn't like the placard. They told Pilate, "Do not write, ‘The King of the Jews,’ but rather, ‘This man said, I am King of the Jews.’” Pilate answered, “What I have written I have written" (John 19:21-22). There are various ways to think about these words. On the one hand, the inscription rings true. Jesus was the king, the Messiah, that the Jews were promised in the Old Testament. Yet, most didn't recognize Him. On the other hand the statement doesn't go far enough. Jesus was also Pilate's true king. He is The King of all humanity, though the world does not recognize His authority. As God's children, we recognize the Jesus as The King and give thanks that we are citizens of His kingdom. As Paul writes, "He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son" (Col. 1:13). Praise God that in Jesus we have a merciful and powerful king! As a congregation we have "worship" every Sunday at 10am. But what do we mean by that word, "worship"? The word is used in a variety of ways even within the church. In a sense, our entire lives are lives of worship. As God's people, we are His witnesses in our daily lives through our words and deeds. Our daily prayers, reading of Scripture, and serving our neighbor are acts of worship. But more specifically, we come together to worship as God's people gathered physically in one place at the same time on Sunday morning. This worship service, or Divine Service, is primarily a time when God is giving something to us. God is acting. God is serving us. God is feeding us His Word in our ears and the very body and blood of Jesus in our mouths.
In his book, The Fire and the Staff, Pastor Klemet Preus has this to say about the Divine Service, "If the Divine Service is viewed primarily as our praising God, then you can do that just as well at home. In fact, once we have looked at the topic of vocation, you will see that we can serve God better in the world than in the church building. But if the service is understood as God giving us the forgiveness of sins, then you've got to be there. It is very possible that the low attendance at Sunday services seen in so many churches today is a reflection of how we define the service. If I am acting, then I can do it at another time. If God is acting, I better be there." We do not need to make God happy with us. We cannot manipulate God by what we do. Through faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus, the Lord already delights in us calling us His children. God wants us in worship for our benefit not His, so He can serve us. Worship starts with God. He comes to us with His gifts. We respond with our thanks and praise, our tithes and offerings. The opportunity to come together as God's people on a Sunday morning to receive His gifts is a great blessing. Let us not give up meeting together! You may be familiar with the "solas" of the Reformation. Sola is Latin for "alone" or "only." The three most familiar solas are sola scriptura (scripture alone), sola gratia (grace alone), and sola fidei (faith alone.) Which is to say, we teach that scripture alone is the basis for what believe. We believe that we are saved solely by God's grace, through faith in the saving work of Christ alone and not through our own works.
There are a couple other solas that were prominent during the Reformation that you may be less familiar with. The first is Solus Christus, or Christ alone. In a sense, this is the most important sola. We are saved through the atonement that Jesus made when he died on the cross. "There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6). The last of the five solae comes to prominence about a century after the Reformation. Soli Deo Gloria means to God alone be the glory. J. S. Bach wrote the initials S. D. G. and the bottom of all his sacred compositions, short for soli deo gloria. Bach understood that his vocation was God-given, and he hoped that when the music was played and sung, it would point toward God. The truth of Scripture rediscovered during the Reformation is that according to Scripture alone, we are saved by God's grace alone through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone. To God alone be the glory. The world has many euphemisms for death, some of which are a bit crass, phrases like, "kicked the bucket," "pushing up daisies," "bit the dust." I could go on. Sometimes we use such phrases so we don't have to speak about the reality of death. Death can be an uncomfortable subject of conversation. Often, we avoid the topic so we don't have to confront our own mortality.
But Christians speak about death differently. We are much more realistic about death. First, we recognize that all people die because all are sinners. Physical death is the consequence of sin, both inherited sin and the sins we commit. Christians also recognize the eternity of the soul, and that although we were spiritually dead the Christian has been crucified and raised with Christ in our baptisms. Though we die, we know that our souls go to be with the Lord, and our bodies will be raised to eternal life on the last day. Thus, we have different ways to speak about the death of the believer. Scripture provides us with mortis dulcia nomina, Latin meaning “The Sweet Names of Death”. These ways of talking about death reflect the reality of what we believe. Here's a list: “Gathered to one’s people” (Gen. 25:8, 17), “Departure in peace” (Luke 2:29), “Depart and be with Christ” (Phil. 1:23), “Taken from evil” (Is. 57:1), “Sleep” (Matt. 9:24; John 11:11; 1 Thess. 4:13; Daniel 12:2), “Rest” (Rev. 14:13; Heb. 4:11), “Passing from death to life” (John 5:24), “Deliverance from evil” (2 Tim. 4:18), “Gain” (Phil. 1:21). Luther writes: "Scripture has a lovely manner of speaking of death and the deceased,” and then proceeds to set forth this 'lovely manner' ... We must henceforth learn a new speech and language in speaking of death and the grave.… That is not a human, earthly language, but a divine, celestial language. For the like you find in none of the books of all learned and wise on earth.… But among Christians this should be a familiar, common, and current speech.” As God's people let us have confidence that for us death is but sleep, and our Lord will return in glory to awaken us on the last day, to live forever with Him. God allowed His people living in Judah to be taken into exile by the Babylonians in judgment over their idolatry and their abandoning of the Lord and His ways. Some remained in Judah of course, but some of these fled to Egypt in fear of further Babylonian conquest. While in Egypt, the people once again began worshipping false gods, including "the queen of heaven." So, Jeremiah was sent to call the people to repentance and to remind them that their idolatry is what put them in this situation in the first place. If they did not repent and change their ways, they wouldn't survive in Egypt or ever be able to return to their homes in Judah. (Jer. 44).
It was a stern warning and based in historical fact. The exiles responded to Jeremiah's words by saying, "As for the word that you have spoken to us in the name of the LORD, we will not listen to you. But we will do everything that we have vowed, make offerings to the queen of heaven and pour out drink offerings to her, as we did, both we and our fathers, our kings and our officials, in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. For then we had plenty of food, and prospered, and saw no disaster" (Jer. 44:16-17). Stunning. The people not only ignored Jeremiah, they doubled down on their idolatry! They were determined to serve their false gods, which were really no gods at all. How does such idolatry look in our day and age? Our idols are perhaps not as obvious or "in your face" as those of the Israelites. We don't typically say that we will make offerings to some false god. Yet we do it. We commit time and money to things that don't matter, things, people, institutions that we put our trust in over and above God. We may know more about our favorite sports team or celebrity than we do about God's word. We may prioritize time on Sunday morning for family, fun, or sleeping in over hearing God's word and receiving His sacrament. As God's chosen people, we should respond to God's rebuke concerning our own idolatry not by saying, "we will not listen to you," but "Lord, have mercy on me a sinner." In Genesis 4 we find the chilling account of Cain killing his brother Abel. After Cain is sent away, Moses gives a summary of Cain's apparently numerous descendants (Gen. 4:14-24). One gets the impression that some of these are very impressive people. They are inventors of music, they learn how to raise livestock, they develop the means by which to forge iron and bronze, and they build cities. They seem to be the movers and the shakers the important people of the day. There's just one problem, their hearts are full of evil. One of Cain's descendants, Lamech, writes this poem, "I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. If Cain’s revenge is sevenfold, then Lamech’s is seventy-sevenfold” (Gen 4:23-24).
Adam and Eve had another son, Seth, (along with other sons and daughters). We learn of Seth's descendants in Genesis 5, but at the end of Chapter 4 we read this, "To Seth also a son was born, and he called his name Enosh. At that time people began to call upon the name of the LORD" (Gen. 4:26). That is the great accomplishment of Seth's line, "they began to call upon the name of the Lord." What a contrast with the descendants of Cain! In the eyes of Scripture, Seth's descendants are most notable because they called on the name of the Lord. Of course, the patriarch Noah is a descendant of Seth. Humanity would be saved from the destruction of the flood through Noah and his family on the ark. "Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord." Of all the people of the earth, only Noah and his family were found to hold fast to the mercy and promises of God. The great men of Genesis 4 were destroyed in the flood, while the family who called upon the name of the Lord was spared. It is not for greatness in this life that we strive. Fame and riches pass away. Rather we are to be those who call upon the name of the Lord. We are those who are to gladly hear the Lord's word, attend the Divine Service to receive His gifts, and lead lives of repentance and faith in God's mercy for Jesus' sake. The world may not be impressed with us, but God will keep us secure in the ark of His church unto eternal life. |
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