Sermons

Before King Ahab and King Jehoshaphat joined forces to take back Ramoth Gilead, Ahab summoned four hundred prophets who were on his side and told him only what he wanted to hear, and asked them whether he would win. Jehoshaphat was not satisfied with that and sent for Micaiah, who, despite the messenger’s prompting, declared that he would speak only what the Lord said to him. He delivered the word exactly as it was given: if Ahab went to war, he would die. Ahab, in his anger, had him thrown into prison.

Micaiah already stood as one dead to the world, and so even before the king he did not plead for his life. Everyone wants to hear only what pleases them, but a word of blessing must come to pass just as it is spoken, while a word of judgment must be proved wrong through repentance. Only those who, when rebuked, look not at themselves but at the God who speaks can receive such a word.

Ahab went into battle in disguise, trying to have it both ways, and was struck by a stray arrow, dying just as Micaiah had prophesied. David, too, took God’s word alone and believed it as it stood: that the people of Keilah would forget the kindness of his defending their city and betray him, and that Saul, who had not yet even set out, would march against it. So he left the city without regret. Unless the cord that binds one to the world is let go, faith only snaps back further than where it began; to stand as those dead to the world, to speak only what the Lord says, and to obey it just as it is given is the way of life for God’s people.

After losing all his children and possessions in a single day, Job tears his robe and worships God. He confesses, “Yahweh gave, and Yahweh has taken away,” and offers praise instead of complaint.

Satan assumed that Job served God because of what he had, but Job’s roots ran deep into God, not into his possessions. Like a tree that does not die even when its leaves and branches are cut off, Job’s faith came from his relationship with God, regardless of whether he prospered. His friends insisted that his suffering was proof of sin, but that was only the human wish that people reap what they sow, not the truth.

Suffering is where believers are confirmed as God’s children, and it is training that refines faith more deeply. Passing through suffering, Job met God with a far more mature faith than before, and in the end he received back a blessing that could not be taken from him.

The world God created fell under a curse through Adam’s sin, and like a car whose brakes have failed, it is racing toward judgment. God saw that the whole earth was filled with violence, and he commanded Noah to build an ark.

The ark is not a church building, nor is it simply going to church; it is believing in Jesus Christ and living a life in keeping with his word. Even as people mocked him, Noah set his own life aside to build the ark, and until the very moment the door was shut he kept calling out to them in anguish. Those left outside the ark had no faith in God, and so they dismissed a judgment they could not see; yet that judgment came all the same, whatever they believed.

Even after the flood, Noah had to endure emptiness and loneliness, and he once became drunk and fell, yet God did not rebuke him but waited for him in silence. In this harsh world Jesus Christ alone is the true ark, and the Christian life is to obey as Noah did and bring even one more soul on board.

Lazarus falls ill and dies. When the news reaches Jesus, he stays where he is two days longer, and arrives in Bethany only once Lazarus is well and truly dead. Martha reproaches him for not coming before her brother died, and when he tells them to take away the stone, she protests again that after four days there will be a stench.

Jesus came late to show that not Lazarus alone but every human being is powerless to escape death. By raising a man who was utterly dead, he meant to teach that he himself is the Lord of life. Martha, doubting and objecting to the smell, is a picture of humanity itself, bound by sin and shut up in the tomb.

At Jesus’ call to come out, Lazarus walked from the grave, his hands and feet still wrapped in strips of linen. Faith must rest not on a God who will supply one’s needs but on Jesus, the Lord of life. When their own righteousness dies and the precious blood of the cross releases them from sin, people receive new life and go free, just as Lazarus did.

Haman’s decree goes out to every province. On a single day, the thirteenth of the month of Adar, the Jews are to die without even knowing why.

Mordecai would not bow to Haman, because he could not acknowledge Haman as a god. On the surface it is one man’s defiance, but behind it lies a scheme of Satan, in which a descendant of Amalek seeks to wipe out God’s people. God knew of that scheme beforehand and had already set Esther in the place of queen.

Esther fasts for three days, resolved that if she perishes, she perishes, and then goes in before the king. She has already taken her stand as one who is dead to the world, and so she has no fear. That resolve won the king’s heart, and with it came victory: her people, once in peril, were delivered, and Haman himself was brought to judgment instead.

One of the cherubim, whom God had fashioned with great care and loved, grew proud, coveted the throne and rose in rebellion, and together with a third of the angels he was cast out from the mountain of God. The one who had been driven out then appeared in the form of a serpent and led man to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and from that day he set about hunting down the woman’s offspring to destroy them.

The murder of Abel, the children born to the daughters of men to corrupt the human line, and the attempts to kill the Hebrew baby boys and the infants of Jesus’ day all served this one purpose. When he tempted Jesus in the wilderness, he was trying to learn whether this really was the offspring of the woman. He believed that putting Jesus to death on a cross would make him one who is cursed, but the resurrection had no place in his calculations. Even now Satan draws people into pleasure and entertainment, and he borrows the language of human rights and public health to stop worship and keep the church from gathering.

Satan’s plan to destroy the woman’s offspring failed then, and it is failing still. Unless God permits it, Satan can do nothing. When God’s people live by faith, unshaken and unafraid, the victory is theirs.

When gratitude for salvation fades, the world begins to look larger, and joy can no longer be held on to. Grumbling and strife within the church arise for the same reason: its work is no longer treated as God’s work, and people want to put themselves forward.

To believe in Christ is to give one’s life wholly to the Holy Spirit and obey him. Anyone who tries to do God’s work in their own strength, without such faith, grows proud, and that pride leads to the sin of judging and condemning a brother. And if someone comes through hardship because a brother interceded for them, yet becomes arrogant again, the one who prayed is blessed while the other falls under rebuke.

When God’s people walk humbly by the Spirit, God is glorified in the name of Christ through their faith. Only those wholly changed by a circumcision not of the flesh but of the heart can show the glory of God. To look to Jesus Christ alone while the world is in turmoil, and to stand unshaken in the truth: that is the message preached today.

While Paul was with them, the Christians at Philippi held firmly to the faith, but once they had to stand on their own, they began to lose their footing. Pride had crept in among them: they quarreled over who should be greater and sought to be honored. Paul pulls them back with the charge to work out their salvation with fear and trembling.

Salvation is a work Jesus has already accomplished in full, yet connecting that current to the switch and turning on the light is the labor that falls to his people. As time given over to worldly concerns piles up and worship comes to be treated lightly, a person is in the end pushed outside salvation, and that is the very moment Satan finds his way in, the most dangerous time of all. The disciples were told beforehand that they would betray him, yet they dismissed it as unthinkable and in the end deserted Jesus. In the same way, a heart grown dull after hearing the warning is like tearing down God’s hedge with one’s own hands.

Paul confesses that if the believers went astray, he would gladly die, if only they would turn back. When someone offers counsel that is hard to hear, it is in fact a sign of being blessed. Such words are to be treasured, and God’s people must obey the Word and guard their faith with their very lives.

In the church at Philippi there were some who exalted themselves and took it upon themselves to instruct others because they had wealth and held office. Paul had opened his letter with praise, but faced with this division he rebuked them, urging them to take on the mind of Christ and turn back.

Because the church is made up of the members of Christ’s body, there is no higher or lower place within it. When human righteousness, the conviction that one is in the right, becomes the standard, quarrels follow; only when the Word is the standard can there be humble exhortation and obedience. God the Son taking the form of a servant and becoming obedient to the point of death is the very pattern of that lowliness.

In the world, recognition goes to those who win and rise above others, but the church is an altogether different place. When people keep to their own place, count others better than themselves and humbly obey, God lifts them up. To lay aside human righteousness and have the mind of Christ Jesus is the way to a life without shame.

Paul tells the church in Philippi that he is not ashamed for them to know he is in prison for the sake of the gospel; far from it, he is glad. There are some who preach Christ in order to add to his distress, yet he confesses that if people come to hear the name of Jesus through them, he rejoices in that.

When a Christian who has grown through hardship turns those painful seasons into a means of helping others, God sees the wisdom in it and commends it. People judge by outcomes, but God sees the road that led there; and so true devotion is the humility that seeks not to display its own righteousness but to let Christ alone be seen.

Paul confesses that to go on living and bring the gospel to more souls is gain, and that to die and be with Christ is gain as well. Those who seek to live for themselves will die, and those who are willing to die for God will live: this faith is what gives the strength to live boldly, unafraid even in the face of the world’s scorn and persecution.

From his prison cell, Paul remembers the believers of the church at Philippi and prays for them with thanksgiving and joy. Ever since their church was founded through Lydia’s devotion, they had stood with him steadfastly, with their giving and their prayers, both when Paul himself was suffering and when the church in Jerusalem was in hardship.

Of this love Paul says that he longs for them with the heart of Jesus Christ. Just as Christ gave his life, they loved one another with a heart ready to give life, and this love sprang not from their circumstances but from hearts sincerely turned toward God.

When love abounds through the Word and the Holy Spirit, the wisdom to discern good from evil follows, and that wisdom establishes faith in its fullness until the day of Christ. Like Paul and the Philippian church, who served one another with unshaken faith, believers must bear the fruit of righteousness and live lives that bring glory to God.

A man with leprosy comes to Jesus and falls on his face before him. “If you are willing,” he cries, “you can make me clean.” Jesus reaches out his hand, touches him and says, “Be clean.” In that moment the disease left him.

This is the faith God desires: a confession that knows the world holds no hope at all, and still clings to Jesus, pleading with him for life. People live by hope, but despair is the heart giving way when a soul once held in love chooses the world in the end. Like Samuel when he was told to pray for Saul no longer, there comes a point where one sees that placing hope in people was itself despair.

The last step God’s people must climb is the step of despair. Only when Christians accept that the world has already been judged, and that no one changes unless born again of the Holy Spirit, can they share the gospel without losing heart. Knowing that despair, they come to see all the more deeply that Christ alone, shining in the darkness, is their hope.