Reborn Free!

2nd Sunday after Pentecost, 6/2/24 Colossians 2:13-17 Reborn Free! I. Free from sin’s debt II. Free from Satan’s power III. Free to live for Christ The movie “Born Free” was a 1966 box office and cultural hit. I imagine that those of you living 60 years ago might even recall the hit song that accompanied the movie. I can still sing the opening lines, but I won’t do so this morning. I’m guessing that will be one of the many things you’re thankful for today. The movie featured a husband and wife who “adopted” an orphaned lion cub and raised it to adulthood. Eventually, they returned the lion to its native Africa and set it free. In the midst of the turbulent 1960s here and in Great Britain, the movie, the novel, and the TV spinoffs enjoyed a good measure of success. It’s a compelling theme for many people—especially animal lovers—that humans and animals alike are born to live free. You can defend that premise from a social and anthropological stance, but it doesn’t hold water with humans spiritually. In spite of Christians who believe and think contrary, we are not born spiritually free. The Bible makes it perfectly clear that we are born in sin and unbelief, that we are natively members of Satan’s kingdom, and would remain so if it weren’t for the saving plan and work of our God through his Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. And that’s the truth that God’s freedom spokesman—the Apostle Paul—shared with the ancient Christians in the city of Colosse nearly 2,000 years ago. Their faith in Jesus as their only Savior from sin was being threatened by legalism—the false teaching that God has established rules or laws which we must follow and obey if we want to be saved. It was the same false teaching Jesus battled during his ministry on earth as we heard about in today’s Gospel reading. Paul battles that false teaching in these words before us from Colossians 2. And we pick up his verbal assault in the heat of the battle. Paul fights that battle with the truth—God’s truth. He wants us to recall what I stated a few minutes ago—that we were not born free. We were born enslaved: enslaved to sin and Satan. But we’ve been reborn and, and on the basis of that rebirth, he urges us to live free. Reborn free! That’s the headlines of Paul’s message to us today. And what good news that is! What good news that is for people like you and me who struggle taking hold of that freedom by faith in Jesus and living in that freedom out of love for Jesus! I. The economy is already a US presidential campaign focus. I’m sure you’ve heard reports that people are finding it harder to make ends meet. One indicator of that is the rising average balance per person of unsecured debt; in other words, credit card debt. Last January it was just a smidge under $12,000. For some people, that’s hard to imagine. For others, it’s become a way of life. Think of the monthly required minimum payment and the interest on such a debt! It’s staggering! And that’s just the average! There are millions of people whose monthly balance is $0. You might not have caught it, but Paul speaks of a different kind of debt in this morning’s text. One that’s still staggering, but different in a most important way. Listen to what he states, “He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.” He's talking about the debt of sin. Like unsecured debt, the numbers are staggering. You don’t think so? Try counting your daily sins some time. Every sinful emotion or feeling, such as greed and lust and discontent and pride. Every sinful thought, such as revenge or making sure you get the good things you think you’ve earned. Every sinful word, such as being sinfully critical or judgmental of others as well as words that reveal sinful anger or impatience. Every sinful deed, and not just the sinful things you do, but also the good things you fail to do. Care to reveal out loud what your daily total is? Me neither. And the Lord knows it better than we do. You talk about a staggering debt of sin! And what makes that debt paralyzing is that we have absolutely no ability to pay it. Not for a single sin. Not all the money in the world could pay for even the sinful way you might have thought about that other driver in the lane next to you this morning on your way to church. Paralyzing debt! But listen again to what Paul states, “Jesus canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness.” That sounds rather technical, and it is. The picture in the original Greek words is the action of a merciful creditor who simply takes the legal document indicating the amount of debt and writes “CANCELED” in large, upper case, red letters over the entire document, and then signs and dates it, and has it notarized if required. At that moment, the debt no longer exists. And you, as a Christian, know and believe it. That’s what makes you a Christian—you have faith in Jesus as your Savior who gave you rebirth as a child of God and canceled your debt of sin. It’s gone. You’re sin-debt free! That’s what it means to be reborn free. Speaking of debts you can’t pay, have you ever had to deal with a repo agent? I hope not. It’s bad enough that a person can’t make the required payments. It’s even worse when they lose their possession and all the money they’ve paid for it so far. And then there’s the huge hit to the person’s credit report. II. It's bad enough admitting the debt of sin we all owe; it’s even worse when hell’s repo agents assault us because of it. What do I mean? Well, hell’s agents are none other than Satan and his hellish demons. They know the concept of our sin-debt all too well. In fact, they can take a good guess at the numbers and they have experienced what debtor’s prison involves—it’s hell. And their hellish goal is to imprison every sinful soul with them. To accomplish that goal, they have two deadly weapons. The first is sinful human pride. Sinful pride has many facets to it, but the deadliest, the worst, is to convince a sinful person that their debt of sin doesn’t exist. After all, they’re good people. They do good things. They try to be compassionate, respectful, loving, and law-abiding. And that devilish tactic works all too well. Just consider the billions of people living right now who feel no need for a relief from their sin-debt which Jesus paid in full. The devil’s other weapon is the exact opposite of sinful pride. It’s faith-killing, life-killing, heaven-forbidding despair. It’s the personal opinion that there is nothing that can be done by anyone about the mess they have made of their lives with their sin. Often it leads to substance abuse and suicide. Worse—it leads to hell. Sinful pride. Hellish despair. What hope do we have? Listen! “And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.” Recall that at several times during the church year we celebrate the truth that Jesus is the Satan-crusher. Paul describes that very truth in these words. Jesus disarmed Satan. He blew up his power source. He severed his lifeline. He obliterated his domain. Jesus vaporized Satan’s power. That’s what he did on the cross when he paid the debt for every sin and removed the guilt for every transgression. Satan is now powerless before the almighty Son of God, your Savior. Satan is powerless to hold you. You are reborn—free from Satan. III. As reborn children of God by faith in Jesus, you are now also free from trying to have to appease God with your holy life. Instead, you’re free to live it out of thanks for what Christ has done for you. That’s what Paul meant when he wrote, “Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.” Just what is Paul talking about? Well, recall that the Jews in the Old Testament were forbidden to eat pork. Do you enjoy eating it? Here God says that’s fine. Do you celebrate the Passover by roasting a year-old male lamb without defect on the 14th of Nisan very year? You don’t? God says that’s fine. Do you ever mow your lawn on Saturday? You couldn’t in Old Testament times, but if you do this coming Saturday, God says that’s fine. So, what’s this all about? In the Old Testament, all these laws were meant to point the people forward to the Savior who was coming. Paul calls that effort a “shadow.” It was a reminder of what the Savior would be and do, but it wasn’t the Savior. Observing those laws never saved anyone. God never intended them to do so. And no one could keep them perfectly anyway. But Jesus could. Jesus did. He lived perfectly and he died to cancel our sin-debt. He rose from the dead to guarantee that his work is finished. There’s nothing left for us to do. We’re free! We’re reborn free by faith in Jesus. And now we have the glorious opportunity to live for him out of love and thanks. There are no laws we must obey or even can obey to save ourselves. We are reborn free—free to live for Christ! But there are two competing motivators for living this life. One is guilt and the other is obligation. Tell me, how long has it been since you’ve decided to do something because you felt guilty? And here’s another one: How long has it been since you did something out of sinful obligation? What I mean by that is that you did it to spite others, or out of anger because no one else would do it. Do you really want to live like that? No one does and you don’t have to because you’re reborn free. Your guilt and sins are gone, forever forgotten by the Lord who forgave them by the work of Jesus, his Son. There is no more condemnation for those who love Jesus. You’re free! Reborn free! May the Holy Spirit through his word of love in Christ empower you daily to enjoy that life all to the glory of Christ! Amen.

Understand the Mystery of the Triune God!

1st Sunday after Pentecost, Holy Trinity, 5/26/24 Isaiah 6:1-8 Understand the Mystery of the Triune God! I. His righteousness condemns. II. His righteousness saves. III. His righteousness motivates. The unknown has always compelled humanity. For instance, what lay beyond the horizon compelled Columbus to set sail under the assumption that the earth was round, not flat. And, why climb a mountain? The easy answer is, “Because it’s there,” but the compelling answer is, “To know what the world looks like from there.” Why travel to the moon and walk on it? Why send the world’s most powerful telescope on a mission to the “ends of the universe”? Why send an exploratory vehicle to the bottom of the ocean at its deepest point? Because humanity doesn’t yet know what’s there, and it’s compelled to find out. In that same vein, humanity has always been compelled to know and understand God, however that deity is defined by the person who wants to know. The easy answer is, “God is whomever and whatever you want him to be.” That’s both a very ancient answer and a very modern answer at the same time. But it’s woefully inadequate, lacking all objectivity. It doesn’t really arrive at a definitive answer; it allows anyone to devise one. As Christians, we know that God reveals himself to us in his word, the Bible. And the God of the Bible is the only true God, which only makes sense. The idea that there is more than one god, or many gods, is logically preposterous. The Bible tells us in no uncertain terms that the true God is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And yet he is only one God, not three gods. How can that be? The world will never understand it. But we can understand who he is (not fully; only partially) by what he does. And we have a vivid account of what the triune God does here in the account of the Lord calling Isaiah to be one of his prophets. We know our God by what he does. We hear about it and “see” it in this account. So, by the working of the triune God, understand what you can’t know about God on your own. Know it by what he says about himself and what he does. Understand the mystery of the triune God! That’s exactly what our triune God calls on you to do through his word this morning. I. I’m sure you’ve heard or spoken the advice, “Be careful what you wish for.” Throughout history there been countless people what want to see God, to have an audience with him, to ask him some pointed questions in order to receive his honest answers. The biblical character Job is among them. He demanded to have a session with God. It didn’t go well for him. Isaiah could have told him, “I told you so.” Isaiah didn’t ask for a session with the triune God, but he received one, and it scared him to death. We read, “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.’ At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. ‘Woe to me!’ I cried. ‘I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.’” Not exactly a warm and welcoming encounter. Isaiah wasn’t expecting this vision, but he understood what he saw. First, he realized he was seeing the Lord, the King. He rules over all things. Nothing can oppose him successfully. He uses his almighty power to direct all things. He also saw the train of the Lord’s robe fill the temple. That was a figurative expression of his majesty filling all things. He’s omnipresent. And he’s holy to boot. In fact, three times holy. This is an obvious reference to the fact that the true God is three persons. Three is the biblical number for God. It indicates, among other things, his transcendence above all things. In other words, his holiness exceeds all other holiness. In fact, it’s an integral component of this essence. What a glorious vision of the triune God! But it mortified—literally mortified—Isaiah. “I’m ruined!” he exclaimed. In other words, I’m done for. I am about to cease to exist. Why? Isaiah admits the obvious. He was a sinner, and sin cannot stand in the presence of the holiness of God. God’s holiness not only cannot tolerate sin; it destroys what is sinful. Period. And that assists us in understanding what is ultimately a mystery to us—the triune God. Understand that mystery! Understand this: His righteousness condemns. It’s easy for us to reply, “Indeed it does, and our world needs to realize it.” I agree with that, to a point. We live in a morally upside-down world. What God calls good, our world calls bad, and what God calls bad, our world calls good. And he won’t stand for it. His righteousness condemns it. But it also condemned Isaiah, and he was painfully aware of it. It’s not that Isaiah was an open sinner. By the world’s standards, he was a “good” person. But that was only before the world. Before God, he was a sinner, and he knew it, painfully so. And so do we. As much as we want other people to think we’re pretty good, the truth is we can’t stand in the presence of the holy God on our own any more than any other sinful human being can. It’s not possible. His righteousness exposes our sinfulness in all its ugly colors. That’s the first truth we need to understand about ourselves and the triune God. II. What Isaiah experienced at the outset of his vision of the holy God is what some biblical scholars call the “foreign activity of God.” His holiness condemns sinners. But that’s not his highest will. That’s not what he wants to do. What he wants is to save sinners. And that’s exactly what we hear happening. “Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, ‘See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.’” Isaiah’s ugly “near death experience” is immediately followed by the triune God’s glorious response. I’m sure you caught the symbolism. One of the seraphs took a live coal from the altar of the temple, touched Isaiah’s lips with it, and cleansed Isaiah. You and I immediately see our Savior on the cross. His sacrifice on the “altar” of Calvary’s cross washed away the sins of every sinner. Because of his death and resurrection, God has declared the whole world full of sinners to be not guilty. What a glorious, saving truth! And, as God’s New Testament people, we know how our triune God accomplished it. That work of saving the world full of sinners was planned in eternity by God the Father. That work was fully and completely carried out by God the Son. And the blessings or the results of that saving work become our own possession by the work of God the Holy Spirit who works saving faith in Jesus in our hearts. And if that’s all you understand and believe about the triune God, that’s all you need to know. That’s everything. There you go. Understand the mystery of the triune God. His righteousness saves. If we know and believe that the triune God’s righteousness saves us, that’s all we need to know. That’s everything. But, too often, that isn’t enough, is it? We have questions for God that go a lifetime unanswered. “Why did this happen in my life, Lord? What are you going to do about what I’m facing? You don’t seem to care. Why?” And those questions lead to despair, impatience, and anger. Most often, those questions go a lifetime unanswered. But this question does not: Lord, what are you going to do about my sins and the eternal judgment that awaits me?” That question he answered on the cross of Jesus, where Jesus took our sins upon himself and gave us his righteousness in exchange. That’s the truth about the triune God which saves us. And, in the end, that’s all we need to know. What remains a mystery to literally billions of people, the triune God, in his grace and mercy, has revealed to you. Understand the mystery of the triune God. Understand that his righteousness saves. III. And, once Isaiah understood that amazing, saving truth about the triune God, here’s what happened. “Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I. Send me!’” Isaiah willingly accepted the Lord’s call to share the news of God’s saving righteousness with God’s people. He became one of the greatest of Old Testament prophets. The words he spoke and wrote have been heard and memorized by billions of people in our world. What a glorious ending, right? But we know how difficult Isaiah’s ministry was. God’s people, the Jews, refused to listen to him. In fact, legend states the king ordered him to be sawed in two. That’s what Isaiah received for boldly speaking the truth and living in that truth. But that’s not the end of his story. In fact, his story doesn’t end. It’s eternal. He died in the faith and now enjoys eternal life with the Savior whom he proclaimed. Can it get any more glorious than that? By the grace of God, that’s your eternal story as well. And it’s all due to the working of the triune God. God the Father planned your salvation. God the Son accomplished your salvation. God the Holy Spirit brought you to faith in Jesus and conveyed to you all the eternal blessings that Jesus won for you. I can’t know and believe that on my own. No one can. But you and I do. And now the rest of the world needs to know and believe it. Here am I. Here are you. Here we are! Lord, send us and use us to share who you are and what you do with everyone. Amen.