The Only Way to God

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]

John 10:1-10
There’s a common belief held by many in our culture these days. You hear it all the time, whether in barber shops, on TV talk shows, or at church meetings. It’s the belief that all religious convictions are equal in their ability to lead people to God. You don’t need to give your sins or your life to Jesus exclusively, some people assert. They say, “All religions are headed to the same place.” Is that true?

Not according to Jesus! And in today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus uses two illustrations to point us to Who He is and to the relationship with God that you and I…and every person on the planet…can have only through Him.

But before considering what Jesus has to tell us today, we should set the scene. How is it that Jesus came to speak the words we find in John 10:1-10?

It all started when Jesus gave sight to a blind man in John 9. That caused a controversy because Jesus dared to do this loving deed on a Sabbath day. Jesus’ action made some of Jesus' fellow Jews--the Pharisees--so angry that when the blind man He healed said that Jesus must be from God, they threw the man out of the temple, no longer considering him a faithful Jew.

Of course, at one level, the Pharisees were nothing like people today who claim that all religious beliefs lead to God. The Pharisees believed that only by abiding by their extensive lists of religious rules could one be right with God. But, based on what God has revealed of Himself in both the Old and New Testaments, both the advocates of anything-goes spirituality in the twenty-first century and the Pharisees of the first century have one big thing in common: They are equally wrong. Accepting the assertions of either group will lead us away from God and the life God offers only in Jesus Christ.

Over the centuries, starting with a people to whom God gave a land and a promise, God has revealed Himself and His plan for the human race. From the beginning, the plan for a right relationship with God and for a life with Him that lasts forever has been the same. We are to give our lives back to the Giver of our lives and give our lives only to Him.

Genesis says that Abraham, the patriarch of Biblical faith, believed in God and God’s promises and that God “reckoned it to him as righteousness.” Abraham was right with God because he entrusted his life to God. He believed in God.

The New Testament book of Hebrews tells us that through the centuries, God revealed Himself through the prophets of Israel, but in these last days, God has revealed Himself definitively in Jesus. If we want to live with God, we need to listen Jesus.

All who turn from sin and believe in Jesus, God the Son, have the same blessings enjoyed by Abraham: rightness with God and life with God.

It isn’t because God is an egomaniac or because God wants to establish an exclusive club that the first commandment is, “You shall have no other gods” or that God commands exclusive fidelity to Jesus Christ.

It’s that God wants to give us life and only He can give it. Indeed, He will only give us life and, as Jesus puts it in today's Gospel lesson, life "abundantly," through Jesus Christ and our faith in Him.

All other roads are dead ends, literally dead ends.

So, in today's lesson, Jesus says that He is the shepherd of God’s sheep. Only Jesus can lead us into God’s sheepfold. People who try to get into the kingdom of God by other means are—whether through good works, other religious beliefs, or all manner of cosmic niceness—are, Jesus says, thieves and bandits. Look at verses 2 to 5 of the Gospel lesson printed on the Celebrate insert:

The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.

In this illustration, Jesus is the shepherd. God the Father is the gatekeeper.

For just a second, think of God’s kingdom as a show everybody (including you and me) wants to see. The problem is that the gatekeeper—God the Father—will issue tickets to only one kind of customer: People who are absolutely clean and clear of sin.

That would leave us all on the outside, pining for a relationship with God because, as the Bible says, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

Standing there in our sins, we would be without hope except for one thing: Jesus, the shepherd of the sheep, tells the gatekeeper, “It’s OK. She’s with me. He’s mine. You can let them in. I paid for their sins on the cross, the sacrifice of a sinless human being who didn’t deserve death on behalf of all other sinful human beings who deserved death.”

All who repent and believe in Christ are ushered into God’s eternal kingdom—long before their lives on this earth have ended, if they dare. Even now--even today--if you dare to trust in Him, you are living in Christ's eternal kingdom. As our second lesson from Peter reminds us, until we rise again, we live in a fallen world where suffering and challenges happen. But if suffering is a reality that can and does come to any of us, it's better to go through this life with Jesus leading us than to try to go it alone.

Those who heed Jesus’ voice live each day knowing that whatever our sins, deficiencies, and shortcomings, we belong to God forever! He is our ticket into eternity!

Like sheep attuned to the shepherd’s voice, when you dial into God through a relationship with Christ, you begin to know His voice. It brings incredible comfort, hope, and energy, straight from God, into your life!

Sometimes that voice will come with direction we'd rather not hear or will call us to do things we'd rather not do. I was the first person in my seminary class to interview for a call. It was for an associate pastor's position. There was another candidate who would be interviewing. Her candidacy made mine a long-shot because she had done her internship at that congregation. But my interview went well and, before Ann and I headed back to Columbus, the senior pastor told me he would be in touch in a few days. Days turned into weeks and weeks turned into a month, and still no word from the senior pastor or the congregation.

More than a month after the interview, I was scheduled to be at the district convention, where, along with all the recently graduated seminarians, I would be trotted onstage to be introduced. In the evening, a service of Holy Communion was held in a college auditorium. We had just finished confessing our sins when I looked to see that senior pastor. "Mark," he said, "God wouldn't let me take Holy Communion until I came to apologize to you. I'm so sorry I never contacted you to let you know that the other candidate received the call. I didn't want to tell you that, so I kept putting off contacting you. Would you please forgive me?"

You see, that senior pastor was known by the Shepherd of the sheep, Jesus. And he knew Jesus. So, when Jesus called on him to make things right, that's exactly what he did.

The Shepherd speaks to His children in other ways too.

A member of this congregation recently told me that after her husband died, she was sobbing in her bed one night, seeking comfort, when she sensed a hand on her shoulder. So real was the touch she felt, that she reached around to feel for the unseen hand. No hand was felt, but the touch was no less real. In that quiet exchange, one of Christ’s sheep heard His voice of comfort and healing. She was comforted because she is one of Jesus’ sheep. Jesus knows His own and His own know Him!

A friend of mine has pastored a Lutheran congregation for decades. In spite of his faithfulness and innovative leadership, the congregation hasn’t grown. It’s actually declined in membership, attendance, giving, and activity. Day after day, year after year, he has prayed and worked faithfully, sharing Christ, leading people to deeper levels of faithfulness. But things have only gotten worse.

Then one day last year, after a long time in prayer, he sensed God asking him, “You pray for this renewal to happen, for new people to come to faith in Christ. But have you prayed that all the evil in the world that conspires against that happening be kept from this church, kept from its people, kept from the places where worship and education and planning happen?” No, my friend told God, he hadn’t done that in prayer. “Do it now!” God seemed to tell him forcefully.

And so, my friend went all through the church facility, praying in every room, asking God to take control of all that happened there, to displace Satan and all evil from every inch, and to fill the building and the people of the church with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with the power and truth of the Word of God!

Things haven’t yet changed in that congregation. But my friend now knows they will change. That’s because after he had prayerfully surrendered himself and his congregation and prayed that God would prevail over all evil that assailed them, the good shepherd assured him that all he had prayed for would come to pass.

God gave him a vision of a sanctuary filled with joyful people excited to be in God’s presence, excited to give themselves in worship to God on Sunday morning in anticipation of using their whole lives to worship God through the week. The voice of the shepherd spoke to my friend and he was filled with comfort, renewed hope, and holy energy!

But Jesus uses another image in our lesson to describe Who He is; He says that He is also the gate to eternity.

Years ago, Ann and I went to a party and realized after we got back home that we’d locked ourselves out of the house. Long story short, with Ann’s help I was able to push myself through a first-floor window that we had left partially opened. I was halfway into the house by this route, my arms and torso inside, my legs still hanging outside, when a thought crossed my mind: How would I explain this to a policeman? After all, if you belong somewhere, you don’t have to break in. You go through the front door.

Jesus is the front door, the only door—the only gate—to life with God, to the abundant, everlasting life that God wants to give to all people. You can't get into God's kingdom in any other way! “No one comes to the Father except through Me,” Jesus says elsewhere. “If you know Me, you will know the Father also. From now on, you do know Him and have seen Him.”

The real quest of the Christian life is to get to know the God revealed in Jesus Christ. This “quest” isn’t an onerous task. It’s a joy like falling in love.

That’s why I hope that every member of Saint Matthew will not only regularly worship and receive the Body and Blood of our Lord, but also join us, even belatedly, in reading the Bible in a year.

I hope that every member will be in Sunday School. (Yes, every member.)

I hope that we’ll all make prayer a daily habit.

I hope that you’ll help us share Christ in a very practical way when we collect those filled grocery sacks next Saturday during our PPSST! Food Drive.

These are all ways to follow the voice of Jesus, ways to enter more deeply into a relationship with God that only comes through Jesus.

This past week, at the graveside of our friend Betty, we heard her confirmation verses. Betty chose them sixty years ago when she was confirmed at the age of 23. They're words of Jesus from Matthew 10:32-33:

"Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.” 

Freedom from sin comes only to those who turn away from the dead-end ways of the world and trust the only One Who can give us forgiveness and new life, Jesus, the good shepherd and the gate—the front door—to eternity.

Let yourself get to know Him better.

Trust in Him and in His Word alone.

As you do, you’ll hear His voice over the din of an often-confusing world and He will lead you to a life prepared for you, a life that here will sometimes bring inexplicable challenges, but also a life that never ends, a life filled with the presence of God, today and always.

The Shepherd is calling you today. Follow Him…and live!

Don't Judge a Book By Its Cover

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, on Sunday, April 3, 2011.]

John 9:1-41
“Don’t judge a book by its cover.” We’ve all heard that advice. It warns us to avoid making judgments based on outward appearances and to instead, see life and people at deeper levels.

This theme is seen in our first lesson for today, 1 Samuel 16:1-13, which tells the story of when a shepherd boy, David, was anointed to be king of Israel.

The theme is carried forward in the Gospel lesson. In it, we catch up with Jesus nearly midway through John’s gospel account of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Already, by this point in John’s narrative, there have been groups of people laying in wait for the chance to have Jesus executed.

Then, on a Sabbath day, Jesus’ disciples make a mistake. They judge a book by its cover. They see a blind man and decide that somebody has to be to blame. “Rabbi,” they ask, “who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus tells the disciples that they’re looking at things wrongly. The sins of neither this man nor his parents were responsible for the man’s blindness.

Aren’t we prone to think as superficially as the disciples, though? We look at the cover and don’t bother to take a look inside.

Jesus repeats something He’d already said. It's something that John wrote about at the beginning of his gospel. “I am the light of the world,” Jesus says. Jesus here is pointing to the fact that He’s not only about to help a blind man see, but also has the power to offer all who repent and believe in Him, new life.

Mixing His spittle with some dust from the ground, Jesus spread mud on the blind man’s eyes. He then told the blind man to wash his eyes in a nearby pool. The first miracle in our lesson took place: Jesus gave sight to the blind man.

But another miracle is in the offing.

Other people in the rest of our lesson will prove to be the real  blind ones. Not only don’t they see the blind man for who he is and the miracle of his recovered sight for what it is, they also, most tragically, can’t see Who Jesus is. They refuse to see Jesus for Who He is!

The reason for their blindness is that they’ve turned the faith revealed to Israel and chronicled in the Old Testament into a legal system they could control.

Those of you who have been participating in Read the Bible in a Year know that in Old Testament times, God laid down a lot of laws for His people. As I pointed out last week, only the moral law—or the Ten Commandments—and the laws that issue from them, like Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount or the apostle Paul’s explanation of the commandments in 1 Timothy 1:8-11, remains valid today.

But there are limits to what God’s moral law can do. In the book of Romans, Paul says, “The law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good” (Romans 7:12). But the most that God's holy, just, and good law can do is show us our need of the forgiveness and new life that comes only to those who repent (turn from sin) and believe in (that means, entrust their lives to) Jesus Christ. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” Paul writes later in Romans 8:1. No condemnation! That’s good news! When you and I surrender to Jesus Christ, our sins are covered over, Christ has paid our debt for sin, and we belong to God for all eternity!

But there are always people who want to turn the gospel of new life for those who rely completely on Christ into some religious or political system they can control. This was true of some of Jesus’ fellow Jews whose reaction to the blind man’s returned sight wasn’t happiness or celebration.

They became upset because Jesus, Who had restored the blind man’s sight, had, according to their rules, worked on the Sabbath day. Kneading (k-n-e-a-d-i-n-g), which Jesus had done when He mixed His saliva with dust, was one of thirty-nine activities which Pharisaic Jews saw as a violation of the Sabbath day.

Never mind that a man born blind could now see. Never mind that, as the newly-sighted man said, such a sign could only have been done by someone sent by God. Jesus wasn’t playing His culture’s religious games. That’s why His opponents couldn’t see Jesus for Who He was (and is) and why a blind man, open to the promptings of God could see Jesus for exactly Who He was (and is).

Toward the end of our lesson, Jesus asks the man to whom He'd given sight, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” This is a consequential question, the most important question any of us will ever be asked.

The term “Son of Man,” first appears in the Old Testament book of Daniel. In Daniel 7:13-14, for example, Daniel records a vision he had of a Son of Man Who would one day come to set things right in the world:

I was watching in the night visions,
And behold, One like the Son of Man,
Coming with the clouds of heaven!
 He came to the Ancient of Days,
 And they brought Him near before Him.
 Then to Him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom,
 That all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him.
 His dominion is an everlasting dominion,
 Which shall not pass away,
 And His kingdom the one
 Which shall not be destroyed.

Son of Man is a designation Jesus uses of Himself 84 times in the New Testament's four gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Jesus clearly saw Himself as the fulfillment of Daniel's vision of the Savior sent from God.

“Do you believe in Me?” Jesus is asking the man. “Do you entrust your whole life to Me: all your past sins, all your dreams for the future, your whole destiny in this life and in the next? Are you utterly surrendered to Me? Will you live each day in repentance and renewal as you follow Me to eternity? Will you let My Holy Spirit empower you to confess and live out your faith in Me? Do you believe in Me?”

Jesus had already made it abundantly clear in His conversation with Nicodemus, which we talked about a few weeks ago, just how much is at stake when anyone is asked if they believe in Jesus: “For God so loved the world,” Jesus said, “that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”

When asked if he believed in Jesus, the newly-sighted man had just one question, “And who is he, sir?” That's when we read about the second miracle in our lesson. When Jesus said that the One he was looking at was the Son of Man, the blind man worshiped Jesus. He saw what others—what many today—refuse to see: that Jesus is God the Son, the only way to forgiveness and reconciliation with God, the only means by Whom you and I can become all that we were made to be by our loving God.

If we only look at the humanity of Jesus, we need to ask Him to open our eyes and see Him as the only God and Lord we need to believe in and worship. The miracle of faith in Christ can happen in us…and in anybody!

We who have been called and commanded by Jesus to share the Good News of new life for all who repent and believe in Him must ask God to use us as His agents in helping to dispel the blindness that keeps so many of our neighbors from knowing and following Jesus.

We must share Jesus’ call to repent and believe in Him lovingly and unapologetically. Otherwise, people with whom we live, work, and play—people we like and people we love—will be separated from the life Jesus so desperately wants to give to all people.

I’ve cited it often, but it’s worth mentioning again that Jesus has made it as clear as possible, when He said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me”  (John 14:6).

If our neighbors, family members, or friends see Jesus as anything less than the God Who has conquered sin and death for all who believe in Him, we must pray that God will help them see…and that the Lord Who gave sight to a blind man will use us to share a true vision of all that Jesus is and all He can be for those who call Him Lord and God.

But this means that we also must ask the God we know in Christ to help us see others not by their “covers,” but for who they are as children of God.

At the end of an Easter evening service at the Brooklyn Tabernacle in New York, Pastor Jim Cymbala sat exhausted close to the altar area. He wanted to relax and unwind a bit. But then he caught sight of a man dressed in shabby clothes. His hair was matted. He looked awful.

He stood about four rows from Cymbala, awaiting permission to approach. Cymbala nodded, but thought how horrible that this was how his festive, if tiring, Easter was going to end. “He’s going to hit me up for money,” Cymbala thought.

As the man approached, the odor—a mixture of alcohol, sweat, urine, and garbage—took Cymbala’s breath away. It was so bad that he instinctively turned his head to inhale while he spoke with the man.

"What’s your name?" Cymbala asked. “David,” he said. “How long have you been homeless?” “Six years.” “Where did you sleep last night?” “In an abandoned truck.”

Cymbala said that he’d heard this story many times before. He reached into his pocket for some money he could give to David and send him on his way.

“No, you don’t understand,” David said. “I don’t want your money. I want the Jesus that red-haired girl talked about [during the service].”

Cymbala says that he felt “soiled and cheap.” He silently asked for God’s forgiveness. “I had wanted…to get rid of [David],” Cymbala writes, “when he was crying out for the help of Christ I had just preached about. I swallowed hard as God’s love flooded my soul.”

David seemed to sense this change in Cymbala's view of him. He moved forward and fell on Cymbala’s chest, burying his grimy head against the repentant pastor's clean clothes.

Holding David close, Cymbala told him about Jesus’ love, how Jesus had died and risen to give David new life. “I felt love for this pitiful young man,” he says. And the foul odor? “I don’t know how to explain it,” Cymbala writes, “It had almost made me sick, but now it became the most beautiful fragrance to me.”

In this moment, he sensed Jesus telling him, “Jim, if you and your wife have any value to Me, if you have any purpose in My work—it has to do with this odor: This is the smell of the world I died for.”

When Jesus looks at us, He doesn’t see us as the world does. He sees prodigal children worthy of the sacrifice of Himself on the cross. 

May we see Jesus as our Lord and God and, seeing others with the same love, passion, and concern He has for us, may we tell the whole world about Jesus. Amen!