Temptation and the Only Way to Handle It

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

Matthew 4:1-11
We know the story of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness almost by heart. It comes up every year on the First Sunday in Lent.

Fresh from the amazing moment of His baptism in the Jordan River, when a voice from heaven had said, “This is My Son, the Beloved, with Whom I am well pleased,” Jesus, goes into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

There’s comfort to be found in this incident. It reverberates with a truth to which the preacher in the New Testament book of Hebrews points when he says of Jesus: “…we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.”

As we go through the season of Lent, it’s good for us to remember that Jesus endured the wilderness and the Garden of Gethsemane and Good Friday and the cross—times of temptation, testing, and terror—not because He had to, but because He wanted to. He chose to endure these things for the same reason that He underwent John the Baptist’s baptism of repentance even though Jesus had nothing for which to repent. Jesus did all these things “to fulfill all righteousness,” to connect with us at the deepest and most intimate level, to go through all that we go through, so that having endured even death itself, He could be raised to life again and share His resurrection with all who turn from sin and trust in Him to give us new lives!

All of that is implied in the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. And it’s incredible!

But today, I want to ask you to try to look at this incident with fresh eyes. As you do, I’d like to ask you to keep two questions in mind:

• What is temptation? 
• And, How can temptation be handled? 

Jesus confronted three temptations from the devil: to turn stones to loaves of bread; to throw Himself down from the top of the Temple, betting that God and His angels would prevent Him from being hurt; and to take control of all the nations of the world simply for bowing down and worshiping the devil.

There’s nothing inherently wrong or evil in what the devil tries to entice Jesus into doing in these temptations. Jesus would, in fact, at different times later in His ministry, do things very similar to what the devil prompts Jesus to do in the wilderness. Jesus would later turn some fish and bread into a feast for a crowd of 5000. He would walk on water, something at least as amazing as levitating in the air after throwing oneself from the top of a temple. He would also be the one to bring the kingdom of God into the world.

So, what’s the difference between temptation and a harmless suggestion? Two things: Motivation and timing.

• When Jesus later fed the 5000, He didn’t do it for Himself; He did it for a crowd that He could see was hungry and Who needed to know Who the real bread from heaven is. 
• When Jesus walked on the water, He did it to foster and encourage the flagging faith of apostles to whom He would soon entrust the mission of sharing the gospel with the world. 
• When Jesus brought the kingdom of God to the world, He did so unencumbered by any debt to the evil from which He came to save a sinful, needy world. 

Jesus’ motivation was never to serve Himself, but us. Temptation is the enticement to do otherwise good things for the wrong reasons or at the wrong times or in the wrong ways and for ourselves.

But how do we handle temptation when it comes to us, as it does every single day? There are, I think, three ways we can choose to deal with temptation, only one of which works.

One of the wrong ways is logic. (We sometimes call this “common sense.”) If Jesus had used logic or common sense to resist temptation, He might have told Himself, “My mission is to live and die without sin. Only a sinless sacrifice of Myself on behalf of the human race will fulfill that mission. Therefore, I must withstand temptation.”

How do you think that would have worked? When you’ve been without food for forty days, logic doesn’t cut it. You want to eat! Jesus might well have become so desperate with hunger that He could have built an equally logical argument for caving in to the devil’s temptations. “After all,” Jesus could have thought logically, “My ultimate aim is to take control of the world’s kingdoms. What difference does the method make?”

Of course, had Jesus followed logic, the jig would have been up for us all. Sin and death would have kept their power over us and God, mired in sin Himself, would have been made powerless to help us. If we rely on common sense or logic to get us through our temptations, we will not stay true to God.

Another method people use to try to deal with temptation is to follow their hearts. We hear this advice all the time. “Follow your heart,” we’re told. Jesus could have tried this, but he didn't. Listen: Following your heart when it comes to life’s tests and temptations may be the quickest road to hell you can find.

Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse—who can understand it?”

Ecclesiastes 9:3 says, “the hearts of all are full of evil; madness is in their hearts…”

Our emotions are afflicted by sin. Had Jesus relied on His emotions when the devil tempted Him, He would have caved into the temptations in a heartbeat! Hunger and other desperate experiences affect our emotions and when we rely on our “heart” to guide us, we make really bad choices.

How might Ohio State’s football coach Jim Tressel have reacted to the emails sent to him by attorney Christopher Cicero if he had chosen not to let emotions (or logic) get in the way? I’m not picking on Coach Tressel. We’ve all tried dealing with life’s tests and temptations by following our hearts or our logic. The difference is that the media isn’t around to report when our bad decisions blow up in our faces.

There’s a third way to handle temptation and Jesus exhibits it in our lesson today. Please go to our Gospel lesson on the Celebrate insert and look at verse 4. To the devil’s suggestion that He turn stones to bread, we're told:

But he answered, "It is written, 'One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'" 

If you have a pen or pencil handy, you might want to underline those words and take the insert home with you to consider during the week.

First spoken by Moses to the Israelites just before they entered the promised land, those words tell us how Jesus handled temptation and how we can handle temptation. Jesus knew that only the word of God gives us life! God’s Word that spoke creation into being also fills the pages of His book, the Bible. And so, to deal with temptations to diverge from God’s clear commands for human beings, commands that we can see clearly in the Ten Commandments, we steep ourselves in God’s Word. We spend time each day reading it, praying about it, discussing it with Christian friends. We consider it in its entirety and not just individual verses or aspects of it that please us or that we can use to justify doing the wrong we want to do. Emotions will lead you astray. Common sense will too. But the Word of God will never let you down!

A prominent southern California preacher told about a conversation he had with a young man about a night that changed the young man’s life.* Bored, he went to a bar and started drinking and flirting with a good looking woman. He was unmarried. She was divorced. “Let’s go to Las Vegas,” the woman suggested.

The young man immediately put his glass down, paid the bartender, took the woman’s arm, and headed for her car. She told him to drive and snuggled closely to him as they roared through the night.

But then, maybe remembering what he had been taught as a child, the thought crossed the young man’s mind that this was a pretty cheap thing for him to do. He caught sight of himself in the rearview mirror and remembered that he was, as the Bible puts it, “fearfully and wonderfully made,” a child of God with incredible potential for good. He began to feel disgust and self-loathing for what he was about to do, something he had done with other women many times before. He couldn’t do this.

He pulled the car off to the side of the road. "What are you doing?" she asked. “I’m getting out,” he told the woman. “It’s your car. Go on to Vegas if you want to…I’ll thumb a ride back.” He shut the car door and watched the woman speed away angrily. “Suddenly,” the young man told the preacher, “I felt ten feet tall! I never felt so good in my life!”

Folks: God wants to help you have moments of triumph like that, moments when you opt for the dignity that goes with being a citizen of God’s kingdom instead of just another hopeless sinner looking out for number one on the highway to hell.

Jesus Christ went to a cross for you. He rose from the dead for you. He did this so that you can share in His victory over sin and death. He gives those who believe in Him the same power to resist temptation that He had in the wilderness, the power of the Word of God.

He also promises to those of us who, unlike Him, aren’t perfect, the opportunity for second chances for godly living like that young man took when climbed out of that car and walked away from sin. (I've been taking Jesus up on second chances for over thirty years now!)

But Jesus offers even more to those who, through the power of God’s Word, face down temptations and evil. Please pull out a pew Bible and turn to page 557. Look at a single verse there, Matthew 10:22. Jesus says:

And you will be hated by all for My Name’s sake. But [the one] who endures to the end will be saved.

Persevere in trusting in Jesus. 

Read His Word and be ready to face all that life throws at you. 

Read His Word and walk more intimately with the God Who wants to save you from all that would destroy you, Who wants to give you life as God designed it to be lived. 

Hold onto Christ and His Word and you’ll hold onto life. Amen

*Retold here.

The Call to Honest Surrender

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

Matthew 5:21-37
As we begin this morning, I'd like to warn you that we are going to cover some uncomfortable topics--uncomfortable for all of us. As we do, remember the love and the desire to bring you forgiveness and healing that God bears for you.

Now, please pull out one of the pew Bibles and turn to page 565. We're going to look at a parable told by Jesus that relates to our Gospel lesson for this morning. Look at Matthew, chapter 21, and starting at verse 28, please read along with me silently:

[Jesus asks:] “But what do you think? A man had two sons, and he came to the first and said, ‘Son, go, work today in my vineyard.’ He answered and said, ‘I will not,’ but afterward he regretted it and went. Then he came to the second and said likewise. And he answered and said, ‘I go, sir,’ but he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said to Him, “The first.”

 Jesus told this story to demonstrate that it’s possible for someone to appear to obey God’s commands and yet be far from God. Jesus wants our hearts, minds, and lives to be aligned with the faith we confess.

Where are your heart, mind, and life oriented this morning?

Every Lutheran Catechism student has been taught that the Ten Commandments, God’s inviolable law for the whole human race for all time, is divisible into two tables.

• The first three commandments command us, as Jesus sums it up in the Great Commandment, to love God completely. 
• Commandments 4 through 10 command us, as Jesus also sums it up in the Great Commandment, to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. 

In our Gospel lesson for last week, Jesus said that He had come into our world not to abolish these commandments, but to fulfill them. He went on to say that unless our righteousness exceeds that the of the Jewish sects known as Pharisees, none of us will even get a whiff of the kingdom of heaven.

The Pharisees of Jesus’ day, you’ll recall, looked at the commandments and tried to discern what it was they absolutely had to do in order to obey them. They reduced relationship with God down to a list of dos and don’ts, effectively putting God on the same level they would put a street vendor with whom they might negotiate prices in the marketplace. The Pharisees, though claiming to revere and honor God, in effect, thought they that they could force God to bless them as they self-consciously adhered to the strict letter of God’s commands.

In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus challenges us to move beyond Phaisee-like religion to a trust relationship of love with God, our fellow church members, and the world around us.

Please pull out the Celebrate inserts so you can scan our Gospel lesson as we explore the passage. Jesus starts by saying: “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire…”

We should note that Jesus’ version of the Fifth Commandment is the accurate one. In the original Hebrew, God doesn’t say, “You shall not kill,” but “You shall not murder.”

Yet Jesus’ explanation of the commandment hardly gets us off the hook. Evangelist Billy Graham’s late wife, Ruth, was once asked if, in their long years of marriage, she had ever considered divorcing her husband. Her reply: “Murder yes. Divorce no.”

She understood the reality to which Jesus is pointing us today: Physical murder is only the outward manifestation of a sin that occurs inside of us first. That sin is to be so angry with someone that we want to murder them, to take away a life that is only God’s to give and take.

Don’t be confused, though. Anger in itself is something that happens to us. It’s a basic human trait. Even God gets angry. Remember Jesus in overturning the tables of the extortionists in the Temple. (What I call His "temple tantrum.") The New Testament book of Ephesians tells us, “Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil.” In other words, don’t allow your anger to cause you to dehumanize the person at whom you’re mad and always seek reconciliation. Otherwise, we will have committed murder without raising a fist.

Slip down to verse 27 in our Gospel lesson. Jesus says: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

As in the earlier verses, Jesus is telling us to look at more than the letter of God’s commandments, to their intention.

God has created sexual intimacy for one man and one woman in a lifetime covenant known as marriage. Lust, like anger, isn’t a bad thing in itself. In fact,  it’s the mechanism God invented to foster intimacy in marriage.

But, irrespective of the popular romantic myths of our world, lust need not be in control of our behavior. No one should be able to say with a straight face, “I couldn’t help myself.”

Jesus says that we are to be in control of all our impulses, not the other way around. In this, He echoes the words of God, when he told Cain, the son of Adam and Eve, “Sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it.” 

Lust outside of marriage is a sin that can happen in more than just the sexual sphere. We can allow all sorts of desires to lead us away from being a committed married person. There are literally thousands of ways for husbands and wives to be unfaithful that don’t involve sex. Scholar Amy Oden writes that “we can create primary relationships with work, sports, or even the internet, rather than our spouse.” That makes sense to me. In fact, in every instance of adultery I’ve encountered as a pastoral counselor through the years, the adultery—the splintered loyalties, the lack of trust, the end of intimacy—occurred long before the physical adultery ever happened.

Please look at verse 31. Jesus says, “It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”

These are hard words. They were even harder in Jesus’ day. In that sexist society, a man might come home and find a burnt dinner or no dinner and feel justified in divorcing his wife on the spot. Divorce was even more common then than it is today.

Here again, Jesus is pointing us to something deeper than the letter of the law. Ancient Jews thought that a person must be married. God’s kingdom only grew when couples had children. Singleness and barrenness were regarded as curses from God.

But Jesus ushered in a more eternal understanding of God’s kingdom. The Church truly grows not through the birth rate, but when people hear Christ’s call to repent and come to believe in Him. Marriage isn’t a necessity for Christians.

But if we do feel called to be married, Jesus says that it’s to be undertaken with seriousness. A woman once told me that when she married her husband, he was hardly the man of her dreams, and she figured that, if things didn’t work out, she could always leave him. But, over the course of the years, God worked in their relationship. In them both, God cultivated the kind of self-giving love that He gives us in Christ. To break that bond became unthinkable to them both. That's the kind of fidelity to love for God and love for neighbor to which God wants us to aspire each day of our lives, in every relationship of our lives.

Of course, we know of tragic situations in which divorce becomes the only option. Situations of abuse, adultery, or spiritual abandonment come to mind. And I’ve never known a spiritually healthy person who had been through a divorce who couldn’t also enumerate some things they brought to their former marriage that contributed to its demise. God understands and God can forgive our relational failures, just as He understands and can forgive all our failures. The Bible says that God remember that we are dust, created beings filled with frailty and sin.

But, in this teaching on divorce, as in today’s entire Gospel lesson, Jesus commands us to take the call to love our neighbors—even the neighbors with whom we have shared a marital bed—with utmost seriousness and respect.

Look now to verse 33. Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.’ But I say to you, Do not swear at all…Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one.”

And really, these final verses from our lesson, with their call to unswerving authenticity and openness, will do as a good summary of everything that Jesus is getting at in today’s lesson.

Remember that these words come to us as part of his Sermon on the Mount. It was directed not so much to the crowds who thronged around Jesus, but to His disciples, people like us who seek to follow Jesus. In it, Jesus is telling us about what it means to live in His kingdom here and now. We are to be authentic in our openness to Him and to others. Listen: This sermon explains the radical ethic of a people who know that they cannot keep God’s commands by their own strength or resolve, yet know that God is implacable in His demand that we keep those commands.

But we don’t despair! We come as imperfect sinners to a gracious God committed to healing our every ill and, if we will be honest about who we are and who we are not, will help us to become the people He calls us to be.

At another point in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus says that it will be harder for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. The disciples are befuddled. They think that wealth is a sign of blessing from God. “Who then can enter the kingdom?” they ask. “With people, it’s impossible; but with God all things are possible,” Jesus says.

A committed Christian hopes to live with the kind of inner authenticity and commitment to love of God and of neighbor that Jesus describes in today’s Gospel lesson. But the point is that none of us will ever live like this if, like the Pharisees, we strive to prove ourselves spiritually.

Jesus has fulfilled God’s implacable law for us. Jesus’ call and command is to simply, day in and day out, surrender to Him. This is what He means when He says, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” Jesus’ kingdom has come. He died and rose to make it so.

Surrender to Christ honestly and you will do the impossible: You will be a citizen of the kingdom of heaven in the midst of this world. The love of God will live in you and, even in a world of conflicts and challenges, you will be right with God, right with your neighbor, at peace with yourself. Amen

Nevertheless Blessed

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

Matthew 5:1-12
It was Lent and the congregation I then served was holding joint midweek worship services with another Lutheran congregation. We were spending forty days talking about why bad things happen to faithful people and how we, as followers of Jesus, cope with that reality. I preached at the first service. But I looked at the pastor of the other congregation and didn’t feel good about our topic.

You see, he had already gone through so much: the untimely deaths of his mother, a daughter, and his wife, amid other sorrows.

“I don’t feel qualified to even talk about this subject,” I said, “because, compared to many of you, I have had little pain or adversity in my life.” The next week, my colleague responded to my confession in his sermon by saying, “Don’t worry. You will.”

Those were wise words. The reality that none of us is exempted from pain and adversity causes many people to give up on trusting in God. What does Jesus say to that?

Our Gospel lesson for this morning, Matthew 5:1-12 contains the opening words of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, including the few verses we call the Beatitudes. It’s a bit dangerous to preach on this text. Most Christians are so familiar with these words that they may think they have no need of hearing any more about them and so, are apt to mentally check out before the preacher even starts.

But there’s another danger in looking at the Beatitudes. That’s deciding just exactly what Jesus’ intent was in giving them. Martin Luther said that in these verses, Jesus is laying down a law so formidable that none of us can keep its provisions and so, we will be driven to Jesus in repentance and so receive new life. Some have said that these are ideals for which we’re called to strive as Christians. Others say that these are the principles that Christians must manifest when taking over the reins of political power, striving to bring the kingdom of heaven into the world by the force of our wills. And there are other interpretations of Jesus' intent. Who’s right?

In spite of the danger, let’s take a look at this passage together. Please pull our your Celebrate inserts and turn to Matthew 5:1-12. Now, to get something from an individual passage of Scripture, before we look at its content, we have to look at its context: What happens in the Biblical book before the passage in question appears? And how are some of the key words in the passage usually used?

In Matthew, chapter 4, preceding the verses of our lesson, Jesus begins His ministry, John the Baptizer is arrested, and from that time, Matthew says, “Jesus began to proclaim, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’” There are two words Jesus uses in that line that can help us make sense of the Beatitudes: Repent and Heaven.

Some people hear the word “repent” and automatically think that they’re being knocked down or judged. The call to repent is a call to all of us to examine ourselves and confess our sins to God, of course. But to repent also means to simply turn to Jesus, away from whatever might be distracting us from Him. When Jesus calls us to repent, He is calling us to turn to Him for the grace and new life only He can give.

Jesus also says that the “kingdom of heaven has come near.” We’re inclined to think of heaven as a place up in the sky where we’ll live in the sweet by-and-by. But that’s not how Jesus or most of the Bible used the word, “heaven.” In the Bible, heaven is the place where God is and God can be with us anywhere, anytime. In Jesus, heaven has invaded our world and He invades our world whenever we call His Name.

Later in Matthew, chapter 4, Jesus calls the first disciples from their fishing nets and then, to show them what the kingdom of heaven looks like, Jesus proclaims the good news and heals people.

Always a great teacher, Jesus begins by showing His students—His disciples—what His kingdom looks like. When we reach chapter 5, where this morning’s lesson is found, Jesus is ready to describe it to them, to help them to better understand not only what they have seen, but also the way of life to which they’ve now been called.

Look at verse 1 of our lesson, please. It says that Jesus went up the mountain and His disciples came to Him. In the Old Testament book of Exodus, God called Moses to the top of Mount Sinai to give Moses the Ten Commandments, the substance of the covenant God was making with His people. The people of Israel didn’t ascend the mountain. Moses was an intermediary between God and His people. But Jesus is the bringer of a new covenant from God. He invites those who want to be in a new and everlasting relationship with God to come to Him. The disciples take Jesus up on His invitation.

Jesus then gives a series of statements about who is “blessed.”

• Blessed are the poor (or humble) in spirit. 
• Blessed are those who mourn; they will be comforted. 
• Blessed are the meek (that is, those who repudiate the world’s power trips and instead boldly follow Jesus); they will inherit this earth. 
• Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness (that is, for a right relationship with God); they will be filled with good things in a feast of love and plenty that Jesus will serve His followers for all eternity. 
• Blessed are the merciful, the pure in heart, those who bring the reconciliation of God available to all through Jesus Christ—the peacemakers, for they will be in Jesus’ kingdom. 
• Blessed are you when you are spurned, rejected, rebuffed for your faith in Christ. 

The word in the original Greek of our text that’s translated as “blessed” can also be translated as fortunate or the recipients of wonderful news. But not everything Jesus talks about here seems blessed, fortunate, or wonderful.

Who wants to be poor in spirit, to mourn, or to experience the world turning against us for our faithfulness to Christ?

And do we have to attain certain heavenly levels of mercifulness, purity, and disciplemaking to get into Jesus’ kingdom?

I have some bad news and some good news for you this morning, what Luther and the Lutheran Confessions might call some law and some gospel.

The bad news is that, yes, these words do have the force of God’s law. God expects us to be merciful, pure in heart, and people intent on enacting reconciliation between God and others. We’re to be God’s middlewomen and middlemen, what the New Testament calls “ambassadors for Christ.” That’s not always a comfortable position. But God wants us to occupy it.

Compounding the bad news is something all of us, in the waning days of January, our New Year’s resolutions likely already a shambles, should be able to understand: We cannot muster enough will power to be the kinds of people Jesus says are the ones who occupy the kingdom of heaven.

But, here’s the good news. Jesus isn’t telling us to shape up and act right. One author asserts that: “[Jesus’] sermon is not a list of requirements, but…a description of the life of people gathered by and around Jesus…”

People who are living the life Jesus describes in the Beatitudes are often the last to know it. I’ve mentioned before my friend, Sig, who passed away some years ago now. Sig was an engineer at Cincinnati Milacron. So was a man who was part of the church in the Cincinnati area that I served for seventeen years, Bill. Their paths crossed just a few times because they worked at different plants, on different projects. But when Sig learned that Bill had joined the congregation I pastored, Sig told me, “He had a major influence on my faith years ago.” When I told Bill, he said, “I have no idea what I might have done.”

I wasn’t surprised by that. In another part of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus talks about the final judgment of humanity. He pictures Himself telling one group of people that they made their choices in this lifetime; when they ignored the needs of others, they were ignoring Jesus. They would live with their choices for eternity. Jesus says He will look at another group of people and say, “When you fed the most overlooked of the world, or clothed the naked, or visited the imprisoned, or gave water to the thirsty, you were serving me. You were paying attention to Me.” This group—the righteous—Jesus says, will be baffled. They won’t remember doing any of the good things Jesus extols.*

Through Jesus, the kingdom of heaven gets inside of us and we hardly know that as we keep returning to Jesus day in and day out, in

• prayer, 
• worship, 
• the reading of Scripture, 
• receiving the Sacraments, and 
• serving and witnessing in Jesus’ Name,

we are being changed from the inside out.

When the kingdom of heaven gets inside of us, we’re not conscious of our mercy, purity, or faithfulness. We’re not making lists. We're not tracking our good deeds.

This fact is hidden in plain sight at the very beginning of our Gospel lesson, verse 1. Look at it again: “When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after He sat down, His disciples came to Him.” You might want to underline the last five words of that verse: His disciples came to Him.

The kingdom of heaven enters us,

• we are changed from the inside out, 
• we are fitted for eternity with God, 
• we enter the process of transformation to become the people God made us to be, 
• we are able to face anything this life brings, 
• we are blessed forever by one simple thing: 

By coming to Jesus, the Savior Who comes to us.

We all fall short of the glory of God; nevertheless, those who turn to Jesus Christ and who keep turning to Jesus Christ in spite of humiliations, grief, and adversity, are filled with God’s glory, now and in eternity.

A few mornings ago, Sarah told us about an acquaintance, a capable and caring manager, who was downsized out of his job in a large corporation. This was after other major setbacks in his life. Sarah asked if Ann and I would join her in prayer for this man. So there, in her bedroom, huddled together, we did just that. I don’t know how God is going to answer that prayer. But I do know that when we draw close to Jesus, the kingdom of heaven comes to us!

Here's a secret none of you probably know: Life in this world is not fair. Jesus acknowledges as much in the Beatitudes.

But when we keep turning to Jesus, we will be blessed!

And, no matter what happens in your life, you can always believe that!

*The two groups will experience very different ends, too. In Matthew 25:46, Jesus says that those who ignored others and so, ignored Him, "will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." This shouldn't surprise us. In Matthew 10:32-33, Jesus says, "Everyone who acknowledges Me before others, I also will acknowledge before My Father in heaven; but whoever denies Me before others, I will also deny before My Father in heaven."