Marvel at God's Gifts to You!

16th Sunday after Pentecost, 9/20/09
James 1:17-27

Marvel at God’s Gifts to You!
I. He gave birth to us through his word.
II. He gives opportunities to listen to his word.
III. He gives the power to obey his word.

What do you do with the gifts you receive? Probably without thinking very long or hard you respond, "I enjoy them. I open them and I tell the giver how much I appreciate the gift. And then I take that gift and use it as the giver intended."

And I’m glad that’s how you are likely to respond to my question. But now that you’ve had a little more time, is that always what you do with the gifts you receive? Let me ask you another question. Have you ever re-gifted a gift? To be sure, re-gifting is better than discarding, but both of those actions say quite a bit about your opinion of that gift. You didn’t need it. You didn’t want it. You’ll never use it. You can’t stand the color. It’s far too small or too large. It’s the ugliest thing you ever laid eyes on. In fact, you may have even received a gift that insulted you. Imagine that! For whatever reason, the gift you received from a friend, a loved one, a co-worker, or your boss was an indication to you of just how little they thought of you.

So, to summarize, I shouldn’t take for granted that we’re always thrilled when we receive a gift.

And sadly, that’s also true when those gifts come from none other than the holy, eternal, almighty God who has saved us from hell through the life and death of his Son.

The writer James opens our text with the truth that our God is the best gift-giver ever. He gives perfectly and he gives the perfect gift. Does that impress you? Maybe not so much. So let’s take the time to study what James says and to marvel at the gifts God gives us. Marvel at God’s gifts to you!

Part I.
There are several gift-giving and receiving times of the year. The biggest one is probably Christmas. The other one that comes to mind is your birthday. Most of us celebrate our birthdays with a special dinner, cake, ice cream, and gifts. It’s especially children that look forward to the birthday gifts. They may talk about them for days leading up to their birthday.

The writer James speaks about your birthday in this morning’s text, although it’s not the birthday we usually think of. He speaks about the day that our God gave us the gift of spiritual life. He says, "[The Father] chose to give us birth." He’s talking about the day we came to faith in Jesus as our Savior. That’s the day that spiritual life began in us. Do you recall that day? Many of us were far too young to recall it. But do you celebrate it? Some us can’t even recall what day that was. The fact that we don’t celebrate it and perhaps can’t even remember the date doesn’t reflect very well on what we think of God’s gift to us, does it?

Have you ever noticed how an adult who comes to faith in Jesus seems to be on fire for the Lord? They so appreciate their new relationship with Christ that you can see it on their faces.

Contrast that with you and me. We struggle to recall the day we came to faith. We tend to take our spiritual life for granted. So what can we do about it? Recall what you’d be if the Father hadn’t created spiritual life in you. We’d be headed for our worst nightmare—eternal suffering in the life after this one.

But our God saved us from it and gave us spiritual life. James says that came to us through the word. As an infant the word of God attached to the water of baptism brought you to faith in Jesus. Or, at some point in your life someone shared with you the good news that Jesus is your Savior from sin and that word created faith in your heart. That’s God’s gift to you. Please don’t take that gift for granted! Instead, marvel at God’s gifts to you! He gave birth to us through his word.

There are many troubling phrases about life. One of them is "separated at birth." That phrase indicates a break in the relationship of a child with its mother or with its twin. And while our hope is that the child is placed for adoption and receives loving care, there’s still pain in that phrase. It’s not the way things were meant to be.

Our God created us to have a relationship with him. Sin ruined that, but our God did not give up on us. He sent us his Son to be our Savior from sin. And by his grace our God has given us spiritual life through faith in that Son. He has re-established a relationship with us. What a blessing that is! And he doesn’t want to be separated from us ever again. It’s his deepest desire to sustain and nurture that relationship through his word. But is that feeling mutual? Do our desires and actions speak the same way about our end of the relationship with him? Would others get the impression that we would rather die than lose our relationship with our loving God? We have much for which we need to repent and a "take or leave" attitude towards our God is one of them. How eternally grateful we can be that he is faithful to his promise to forgive us and to renew our relationship with him through his word! Marvel at that, my friends! Marvel at God’s gifts to you.

Part II.
I’ll bet you’ve heard this saying before: "God gave you one mouth but two ears for a reason. He wants you to listen more than you talk." Maybe someone has even spoken those words about you.

James repeats that same thought in another way here in our text. He says, "My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry." He urges us to listen more than we talk. There’s nothing more irritating than listening to someone who talks incessantly. They often don’t say much of anything. A wise person once said, "No one ever learned anything by talking."

It’s obvious we should listen more. To what? In the context of this portion of his letter, it’s obvious James wants us to listen more to God’s word. That’s the way God gives us his gifts. First and foremost, listening to God’s word nurtures our saving faith in Jesus. Your faith in Jesus is never static. It’s either increasing or decreasing. One way to increase it is to listen to his word.

And when that happens, it produces the fruits of faith, one of them being the righteous life that God is looking for. He wants what we want: we want to be more like Christ every day. James mentions one practical aspect of it. Our anger is diffused. No one likes being an angry person or being with an angry person. The way to deal with anger is to listen to God’s word.

In fact, when we listen to God’s word we are helped in every facet of our lives. James posts a short list of things in our lives to leave behind, a list that covers an enormous amount of our lives. "Get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent." It’s too easy for us to live like the rest of the world, to accept its humor, its entertainment, its way of doing business. Getting rid of it isn’t easy, but James tells us how. "Humbly accept the word planted in you." God’s truth lives in us by faith in Jesus. He’s giving us the opportunity right now to hear that word and thereby to grow in our faith and godly living.

Marvel at that gift! Marvel at God’s gifts to you. He gives you the opportunity to hear his word.

When our God asks us to hear his word, he’s not robbing us of our time. He’s not keeping something from us. Instead, he is giving something to us. Jesus said, "Blessed…are those who hear the word of God" (Lk. 11:28). Your forgiveness and eternal life are in that word. Your guidance for life is in that word. Your help in trouble and your comfort in death are in that word. You won’t find those gifts anywhere else. Marvel at God’s gifts to you. He gives you the opportunity to hear his word.

Part III.
Before he was crucified, Jesus told his followers what to expect on Judgment Day. He will separate Christians from unbelievers, like a shepherd separates sheep from goats. The sole basis for that separation will be faith in Jesus as the Savior or the absence of that faith. But since no one can see faith but God alone, Jesus will point to our deeds of love as evidence of our faith in him. In Matthew 25 he speaks about giving food to the hungry and water to the thirsty, giving clothes to the needy and visiting the sick. Those good works don’t save us, but they are the visible evidence of saving faith in Jesus.

James spends much of his letter encouraging such good works. One of the reasons for it is that God despises hypocrisy. How can we say we love Jesus but refuse to help those who need it? How can we proclaim that we trust in Jesus as our Savior but fail to show it in our lives? Thus James writes, "Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says."

That’s James’ way of urging us to live as Christians, to show our faith in Christ by the way that we serve one another and reach out to others. It’s one of the reasons that our congregation exists—to share the saving love of Jesus with everyone.

And don’t forget that the power to produce those fruits comes from Christ through his word. Your God is not asking you to do the impossible. He’s not even asking you to find the power in yourself to live as a Christian should. Remember, he is the giver of every good gift. What he asks us to do he gives us the power to do.

Friends, the word of God is not a collection of lifeless words on a page of paper. They are living and active. They have power—the power of Christ’s forgiveness won on the cross and the power of his resurrection. That word is the power for Christian living. Don’t take that power for granted. Marvel at it. Marvel at God’s gifts to you. He gives you the power to obey his word. Amen.

Go in the Strength of the Lord!

15th Sunday after Pentecost, 9/13/09
Ephesians 6:10-20

Go in the Strength of the Lord!
I. That’s necessary, considering your opponent.
II. That’s possible because the Lord supplies it.

Of all the stories about victory in the face of insurmountable odds, perhaps the story of Alexander the Great is the greatest. Right around 330 BC he defeated the Persian army, the greatest army in the world at that time, not once, but three times and always with far fewer soldiers and cavalry. In his third victory his forces were outnumbered 600,000 to 40,000. But the Greeks easily won.
Do you suppose, prior to that battle, Alexander told his men, “We don’t have a chance. We’re outnumbered 15 to 1 and we’re on their turf, not ours”?
I doubt it. I think it’s safe to assume he told his men that victory belonged to them because they were the best trained, best equipped and best led army in the world.
In this morning’s text from Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, Paul informs us that we’re in a battle. Do you recognize it? And the problem we face is that we’re simply overmatched on our own. Our own weapons are useless against this enemy. No one would ever bet on us winning.
And yet Paul tells us to go forth into battle and to do so confidently because we have the strength of the almighty God on our side. So let’s go! Let’s go in the strength of the Lord. May the Lord use these words of our text to inform us not only about who our enemy is but also about the weapons he gives us.

I.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about an opposing sports team, an enemy nation or just the business competition that you face. One of the key elements of success in taking on the competition is to know the opposition as thoroughly as possible. That’s why sports teams scout their next opponent. They want to know their opponent’s strengths and weaknesses. That’s why businesses spend untold amounts of money and time understanding as much as possible about how the competition produces their product and what the strengths and weaknesses of that product are. That’s why any intelligent nation desires to be overwhelmed with military intelligence before it makes its first move. In another part of the Bible Jesus makes that very point about analyzing your opponent before going into battle.
Paul’s words to us this morning assist us in doing that very thing. He helps us understand our opponent. So, who is your opponent? Well, if I were to ask you that question as we were casually enjoying a cup of coffee at some local coffee shop, you might tell me that your opponent is a co-worker who seems to have it in for you. If you’re a student, you might tell me it’s the class bully. On the other hand, maybe your opponent isn’t a person at all. It might be financial stress, unemployment, or a chronic health issue. Those are the “enemies” we think of most because we seem to deal with them every day.
But those are not the enemies Paul is talking about. The enemy Paul speaks about is none other than Satan himself. Listen to his description: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” Our opponent is not something physical or of this world. It’s not even human. Our opponent operates out of the spiritual world. It’s none other than Satan and all his evil angels. You see, when Satan fell away and rebelled against the holy God, he didn’t do it alone. He led an uncounted number of angels with him. Satan and those angels now live as the enemies of God and every human being. As an angel he’s not all-powerful as our God is but he’s vastly more powerful that we are.
And to make matters worse, he’s exceptionally clever. Paul mentions that he schemes against us. We’re often completely unaware of it. Look at how he schemed to cause Adam and Eve to fall into sin. He got them to believe that he was their friend. He convinced them that God was their enemy because he was withholding something good from them. He claimed to offer them true happiness. And within minutes he had them hooked. Paul tells us that Satan is doing that all day long every day against you personally and us collectively.
But at other times, his attacks aren’t so subtle, they’re over-whelming. Paul speaks about “the day of evil.” Bible scholars disagree on just what this day of evil is, but I think it’s best to understand this term as a reference to those times in our lives when crises occur and our faith is tested right to the brink of failing. Just as he did with the ancient believer Job, Satan may send one catastrophe after another into our lives to cause us to curse God and fall into despair. Have you experienced that kind of spiritual attack? We all have. And Satan is the evil general behind them all.
So, if we’re going to have any chance of surviving these attacks, let alone winning the battle, we’re going to need a strength that isn’t found in us by nature; it’s going to have to come from the Lord.
That’s why Paul tells us to go in the strength of the Lord. That’s necessary, considering your opponent.
Long ago someone told me, “My memory is good, it’s just short.” The statement made me chuckle but there’s some truth to it. I don’t think I’ve shared anything new with you in the past few minutes. We’ve talked about Satan and his attacks on us. I don’t think that’s news to any of us. But our memory is short. How long will it be before we don’t even recognize that Satan is attacking us? How long will it be before he’s leading us to think that sinning is actually what we want to do and need to do? How long will it be before he convinces us that listening to him and not to our loving Lord will make us happy? I’ll bet not that long. Probably before the sun sets tonight. And when we do realize we’re in a spiritual battle, somehow we think we can overcome it ourselves. We’ll handle it without hearing what God says in his word. We can manage this without the encouragement of our fellow Christians. We can separate ourselves from our God, his word and his sacrament and everything will still be OK. And that’s when Satan has us right where he wants us. We’ve lost the battle and our souls are in danger. We can do nothing on our own to overcome Satan. That’s why our God sent us a Savior, a Satan-crusher. He overcame Satan by living a holy life for us, perfectly resisting every temptation, and then suffering and dying for our sins. His resurrection is the proof that he defeated Satan for us. By faith in him now we can go. Go in the strength of the Lord. That’s necessary, considering your opponent.

II.
Do you mind if I share another war analogy with you? A critical consideration in waging any battle is being able to support your troops as they advance. If those troops run out of food, ammunition and fuel as they advance, they’re sunk. The enemy will soon reverse, surround, and overwhelm them.
Our God is sending us out to face a foe much more powerful than we are. That would indicate that we don’t have a chance. But it’s been said, and it’s true, that our God never asks anything of us that he hasn’t already given to us. Let me repeat that. Our God never asks anything of us that he hasn’t already given to us.
So, if we’re going to defeat a foe much stronger than we are, we’re going to need troop supplies—some added strength. And true to his word, our God supplies it. Paul talks about that spiritual strength in the terms of military equipment.
The first piece of equipment he mentions is the belt of truth. An ancient soldier’s belt was much more than the thin pieces of leather we might wear. It actually protected the area from his upper legs to the middle of his stomach—an area that was often the target of a sword. Paul calls it a belt of truth. Satan is a liar and the father of lies. To defeat him we have none other than the absolute truth of our God. We can confidently proclaim as Jesus did when defeating Satan’s temptation, “Thus says the Lord” and then quote his saving truths.
The next piece of equipment is the breastplate of righteousness. The breastplate protected the soldier’s most vital organ—the heart. Satan not only lies, he accuses. He often reminds us of our sins to get us to despair, to make us feel that we are not loved by our God. But the truth is that we wear the righteousness or holiness of Jesus. God imputes the holiness of Jesus to us by faith in Jesus. We’re forgiven of all sins. We’re holy in God’s eyes.
Next Paul speaks about what’s on our feet. It’s been said that a soldier is only as good as the boots he wears. If he can’t move over all sorts of terrain because his footwear is inferior, he’s useless. As Christians, we stand firm on the truth that we have peace with the holy God because Jesus won that peace for us. Our God has nothing against us. He’s on our side and thus we can stand against Satan and all his attacks.
The fourth piece of equipment is the shield. The soldier used a shield to defend himself against spears and arrows. Satan is constantly shooting the arrows of temptation at us. Our faith tells us what we believe about our God who has saved us. With that faith we can deflect every one of Satan’s temptations and lies.
Next Paul refers to the soldier’s helmet. Again, that’s a critical piece of armor. Our salvation by Christ has won forgiveness and eternal life for us. That’s where we’re headed. Satan can’t take that from us. We have that protection no matter what Satan throws our way.
Having listed five pieces of the soldier’s protective equipment, Paul now turns to his weapons. First, he calls attention to the sword. For the Christian, our most important weapon against Satan is the sword of the Spirit. That’s the Holy Spirit and his sword which he places in our hands is none other than the word of God. It’s the very same word of God Jesus used in defeating Satan’s temptations.
And finally, Paul reminds us of the power of prayer. Jesus often spent days in prayer. He asked for his heavenly Father to strengthen him for his battle with Satan. As God’s people, we have the same weapon to use against every temptation and attack of Satan.
Paul lists all this equipment to convince us that we are more than adequately equipped to battle Satan himself. So go! Go in the strength of the Lord. That’s possible, because he supplies it.
As a Christian you never can make the excuse that you couldn’t help it. You had no power to resist temptation. The truth of the matter is we often leave unused the weapons God gives us. So soak up God’s word! Take eat and take drink of your Lord’s body and blood! There’s your forgiveness won for you by Christ. There’s your power to battle Satan. Go in the strength of the Lord! Amen.