2 Corinthians 3:7-8 “Now if the ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone, came with glory, so that the Israelites could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of its glory, fading though it was, will not the ministry of the Spirit be even more glorious?”

Moses brought his people a message engraved on stone. That is how his “ministry” was given. You might say it was “monumental” from the beginning, these two tombstones he carried down the mountain with the commandments carved on them. The process of receiving the law required Moses to meet with God very nearly face to face, and standing in God’s presence like that made Moses’ face shine with such an unearthly glow that the rest of his people were afraid to go near him when he first came down the mountain.

But for all their glory, these commandments, and the ministry they represented, were easily broken, both literally and figuratively. You remember that when Moses came down the mountain with the two stone tablets the first time, the people were involved in worshiping the golden calf idol. In his anger Moses threw the tablets down and broke them. After he had dealt with the idolatry issue, he had to go up the mountain again to receive two more from God.

Since then, we still chisel them onto stone monuments and fight about where you can put them, but the commands themselves are as fragile as if they had been chiseled on egg shells. Everyday good people break them. Bad people break them. Powerful people break them. Ordinary people break them. Consider how common cussing has become in our time. I can’t figure out why the television censors bleep the words they do anymore, because the ones they allow are plenty obscene. People seem to forget that God had something to say about the words you pair with his good name.

Look at social media and the things people post about celebrities, politicians, and other public figures, like God never had anything to say about your neighbor and false testimony about him. What ever happened to honoring your parents, and others in authority? When did God ever say it was okay to replace being happy your neighbor did well, and made a lot of money, with envy, resentment, and coveting his good fortune?

By contrast, the ministry of the gospel–the ministry Paul was given, the ministry we have been given–may not look so glorious in how it is given. Yet Paul suggests, “…will not the ministry of the Spirit be even more glorious?” When we deliver our message, there are no lightning and peals of thunder. The ground doesn’t shake. Our faces don’t shine like we got too close to a nuclear reactor.

You don’t know my friend Regan. One day when she was in grade school she began talking to her friend about Jesus, and then explained baptism to her, and then baptized her friend right there in the backyard swimming pool. It didn’t make the news.

You’ve never heard of Jill McKinley. She grew up in a Jewish family, and when she got to college she didn’t like many of her Christian classmates, who made her feel like a target. But her roommate treated her like a friend. After several months of giving her respect and love, the opportunity finally came to talk about faith. Today Jill is a Christian, an evangelist, and a leader in her congregation, but there was nothing flashy about her roommate’s Christian conversations.

Neither you nor I know what will happen if we show up at a new neighbor’s door and invite them to church, or talk a little about what we believe. But we know Jesus and the way to heaven. Maybe we could say something about him. We may not look or sound like much. My voice doesn’t rumble when I speak. My face may shine a little from sweat on a hot day, but I wouldn’t call it glorious. Yet with simple words the Spirit has all he needs to capture another heart for God.

Our ministry, our words, are more glorious than you think, not because of our stuttering, stammering attempts to talk. The very Spirit of God, the third person of the Trinity, is at work invading hearts, wooing and winning souls, in a miraculous way that goes beyond all investigation. They are glorious, because of the saving message they contain.

Luke 6:37-38 “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

“Judge” is one of those words that can mean a number of different things. Hundreds of people bring their animals, their crafts, their garden produce to the county fair each year to be judged. No one takes any offense that judges grade their work and pick a winner. Parents try to teach their children to use good judgment when evaluating situations and making decisions. They encourage their children to judge wisely.

Jesus told his disciple that on the last day they would sit on twelve thrones with him judging the twelve tribes of Israel. Paul wrote the Christians in Corinth that they ought to judge disputes between believers in their congregation without taking the issue to the secular courts. All of these involve making an evaluation of some sort, but each one takes a slightly different slant on “judging.”

Jesus makes clear his concern here when he further says, “Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned.” He isn’t urging us to stop recognizing sin in others, to stop discerning between right and wrong. He is saying, “Don’t judge others as though they were vastly inferior to you, as though they were no longer worth your concern and your love. Don’t write them off as though they are beyond redemption. You are a sinner, and you weren’t.”

He is taking us back to how our heavenly Father regards us, isn’t he? If anyone has the ability to judge between right and wrong, good and evil, it is him. If anyone has the right to condemn us, to write us off, to conclude that we are no longer worth his time or effort or love, it is him. We have given him ample reason to do so, if we are honest. We know right from wrong. We know what God expects. We know how much he has given up to have us, how much he paid to make us his own, how patient he has been with our stubbornness. We still sin.

“But my sins are little sins,” someone might object. Maybe they are. But if they are so little, then why don’t we give them up? And honestly, don’t they expose the same spiritually sick heart that afflicts everyone else? Isn’t that why the Apostle James says, “Whoever keeps the whole law, yet breaks it at just one point, is guilty of breaking all of it”? Isn’t that why Paul warns, “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the book of the law”? Our Father sees our sin. That he certainly can judge. But he hasn’t given up on us and condemned us.

He has forgiven us. “Forgive, and you will be forgiven.” It’s not as though we are waiting for him to forgive us for the first time. We have been forgiven many times. We live in his forgiveness like it’s the atmosphere we breath as Christians. Even if we aren’t breathing it in at the moment, it’s there. It’s how we know he will keep forgiving us tomorrow. We live in this stuff.

Can we receive such grace, such a charitable, patient regard from our Father, and not be changed? Can we have so much forgiveness from him and not extend the same to others. It’s not as though we have anything to lose by doing so. “A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

When you live in the United States, you use the English system of measure: cups and pints and quarts, and inches, feet and miles. When you live or travel in most other countries, they use the metric system: grams and liters and meters and such. Where you live or spend your time determines the measure you use.

When you live in God’s kingdom, when you are at home in his family, there is a system of measure based on his love and grace. That’s how our Father and his family operate. When you live and work by the world’s standards, it is a severe measuring system of personal performance, strict judgment, and stiff punishment that rules. Why not live life in God’s family, “for with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

Luke 6:35-36 “But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”

Love may be the most celebrated thing in the world. I have never met a person who was against it. Music, books, movies, art–all of them sing the praises of love. Celebrities, politicians, and holy men call for more of it. The Woodstock generation made it the theme of a movement, together with peace. Advertisers and Marketers sloganize it. “Love. It’s What Makes a Subaru, a Subaru.” Here’s a quote on love from a famous person: “Act with a boundless and all-embracing love for the people and, if necessary, even to die for it.” Sounds good, right? That’s Adolph Hitler in a speech in 1922. So you don’t necessarily have to be a nice guy to think that love is grand.

The question is, “What do you mean by love, and whom do you include in it?” That’s where it gets interesting. Jesus does not limit it to those who are easy to love, the kind of people who please you and manage to win your affection. That was where people commonly drew the line in his day. In another place he observes, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’” And a lot of people would say, “That sounds about right to me.” Anton LaVey, whom you may recognize for his associations with Satanism, has condemned “Love your enemies” as “the miserable philosophy of the spaniel (the pet dog), who roles over when his master kicks him. When someone strikes you on the cheek, punch him in the mouth.”

This may be natural, but that’s not like our Father. It’s like his enemies, the ones who oppose him, the ones who are allies with hell. Jesus describes love like the Father’s this way, “But love your enemies…” Note that “love your enemies” is more than warm feelings for them. “Do good to them,” Jesus says. Love them in the way you treat them. Maybe you will soften their hearts and change the relationship.

But we don’t love our enemies for the sake of getting something in return. “Lend to them without expecting to get anything back.” Love like our Father’s isn’t looking to get something. It is looking to give something. This isn’t a shrewd trick for getting a better return on your investment. It is looking to be someone different, someone better and more, and that itself is a reward. “Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.” Our reward does not come from the enemy we love. It comes from the Father who loves us. He can claim us as his own Sons, members of his own family. Suddenly, there is a family resemblance.

But weren’t we the same people who would be happy to see our enemies suffer, and maybe stick it to them ourselves, given the opportunity? What happened? What changed? We discovered our Father’s mercy, or better, he showed it to us. “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” He hasn’t treated us as our sins deserved. He didn’t destroy us for rebelling against him. Even before we returned to him in faith, he fed us everyday, and let us experience the beauty of his creation, and gave us another day, and then another day, to seek him. He let the guilt of our rebellion fall on his Son, and then let it kill him as the payment for crimes against him. He sought us, and found us, and made us his own. He showed us mercy.

There are currently at least 5 billion people on the planet living in a state of rebellion, without faith in God. But our Father does more than tolerate their existence. He actively supports it. Maybe today is they day they will repent and believe. Maybe tomorrow is the day they will repent and believe. So even now he feeds them, and clothes them, and extends their lives and delays their judgment, even though they may oppose him in everything that is good and decent. He is kind to his enemies because he loves them. He loves us all.

We were once those enemies, too. Love like your Father does, in the way you treat others.

Jeremiah 17:7-8 “But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.”

There is more than one word for “blessed” in the Greek and the Hebrew. In many of the psalms, or Jesus’ beatitudes, the word “Blessed…” means something more like “happy.” We feel uplifted and elevated when we are enjoying God’s word and the good things that come from it.

Here we have a word  for “Blessed” that describes us as people who have received a great gift. That’s what happens when we trust in the Lord. We possess good things. Those things may not make us happy in the material sense, but they are still good to have. They’re still a gift.

Some people turn this around. They make it seem as though when we trust in God, we are the givers, and he is the receiver. And we may speak of giving God our trust, or giving him our hearts. But that is no great prize, is it? I once heard a talk show host and a political guest joking about the heart of a particularly hard-edged politician. If you received his heart as a transplant, would it be a good thing, because it had never been used, or would it be a bad choice, because it didn’t work?

Spiritually, our hearts don’t work right. “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure,” is the very next thing Jeremiah observes in verse 9. Some great gift for God that is when we offer our love and trust.

So we are the blessed ones, the receivers of God’s gifts. And the prophet describes that blessing with a picture: “He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.”

Note that the tree in the picture doesn’t have life easy all the time. The heat comes and makes it suffer. The drought comes and dries up much of the moisture on which it depends. Life is like that for those who trust in the Lord. About now we are at the peak of the annual flu season. Millions have gotten sick. We can expect that the percentage of Christians with the flu matches the general population. When prices rise, we have to pay what everyone else does. When tornadoes come, they plow through Christian homes the same as unbelievers’. We live in the same world as everyone else.

But God has planted us by a stream of water. Under the surface, our roots tap into the streams of his promises. We know the love of a Savior who went all the way to cross and death to make us his own. Disease may make us miserable. It may even take our life. It has no effect on the streams of love and forgiveness flowing to our hearts from Jesus’ cross.

Our earthly fortunes will almost certainly swing wildly between plenty and scarcity, if they don’t just hover between “can’t quite make ends meet” and “can’t get the bill collectors off my back.” But God’s grace is always free, and no one can come and repossess the kingdom that he has already given us.

As people who trust in the Lord, we are always cleansed, always safe, always rich, always free, always treasured, always prospering, always at peace with God, always filled with his presence, always destined for glory, and no one can ever take these gifts away.

Jeremiah 17:5“This is what the LORD says, ‘Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength and whose heart turns away from the Lord.”

The people of Israel in 600 B.C. thought that they were clever. They had survived as a nation for over 700 years. They watched the rise and fall of other nations around them. They weren’t the super power they had once been in the days of David and Solomon, but they were convinced that they could continue to get by on their wits. Their shrewd manipulation of the political powers around them would save them. All they needed was the right mix of diplomacy, military strength, and well-chosen allies, and they would be secure.

There is nothing wrong with shrewd politics, careful diplomacy, or a strong defense and allies. But you see the weakness they all have in common: they all depend on fallible human beings. You realize we have similar issues of misplaced trust in our time. Have you watched the Disney movie The Incredibles 2? Both the original and the sequel play on society’s longing for superheroes with super powers to come to the rescue. Yet people fear those powers, and they disgust when the same superheroes make a mess of things.

Outside of The Incredibles movies, we see the fascination with superheroes easily enough. Hollywood churns out movie after movie about Superman, Batman, Spider-man, Wonder Woman, and The Avengers, to name a few. For all their super powers, these characters sometimes make a mess.

Now here’s our problem: We actually put our trust in superheroes. Only, our real-life superheroes don’t have supernatural powers. They have political powers. Our nation is very divided about the kind of politicians and political systems they like. A little historical study can point out the relative strengths and weaknesses of the various political theories, if we are honest enough to do a sober study. But they all have this in common: they are human inventions created, promoted, and utilized by sinful, selfish human beings. They are bound to be riddled with moral holes and blind-spots. They are open to abuse and corruption by the people who use them.

This problem is only compounded as more and more individuals idolize these superheroes. They become the kind of person Jeremiah curses: “who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength and whose heart turns away from the Lord.”

That last phrase is the real nub of the issue, “whose heart turns away from the Lord.” Jeremiah’s Israel still went through the motions of worshiping God. They observed the major holidays. They brought the required sacrifices. But their hearts weren’t in it. The people showed their true colors by their moral degeneracy. Materialism, sexual promiscuity and deviancy, hard-heartedness toward the poor, substance abuse, corruption in the courts–that is the lifestyle embraced by these people whose hearts had turned away from the Lord.

The Christian faith in our country looks eerily similar. Europeans, oddly, consider us a hyper-religious people because so many Americans still go to church. But that is changing fast. Across our country, seven out of ten Christian congregations are growing smaller, two out of ten are holding steady, and only one out of ten is growing. In most cases that one is taking in Christians from the others.

But the clearer evidence that our hearts are turning away from the Lord can be seen in the lives of the people who still go to church. Did the list of sins I cited from Jeremiah’s day sound uncomfortably familiar? A friend of our family recently gave me a book called Gods at War. It categorizes our modern idols under three “temples,” the “temple of pleasure,” the “temple of power,” and the “temple love.” Under pleasure he lists food, sex, and entertainment. Under power he describes success, money, and achievement. And under love he identifies romance, family, and “me.” All of these things become rivals to the God of the Bible for the love and trust of our hearts. They offer people, and the things people produce, as a substitute. This is defiance of the very first commandment, “You shall have no other gods.”

Jeremiah’s warning is not intended to hurt us, but to warn us. The Lord is seeking to turn us back to himself. He is waiting with grace for those who do.

Matthew 26:40-41 “Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. ‘Could you men not keep watch with me for one hour?’ he asked Peter. ‘Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.’ ”

Was it so much to ask, to sacrifice just a little sleep for the love of the Savior who was about to suffer what no other person ever has, who was about to bring all history to its climax and save a fallen world? Jesus had been teaching them for three years. He had spoken to them for hours this very night about the things that were about to happen. Did they still have no sense of the importance of the night or of the sacrifice it would require of him? Did they have no sense of their friend and Master’s burden? Keep watch for Jesus? They needed to watch for themselves and their own weakness. Their loveless slide into tempting sleep only made Jesus’ heavy load heavier, his sorrow deeper, his prayer more difficult.

What is our great temptation regarding Jesus, his suffering, and his sacrifice? Is it not our own failure to appreciate the magnitude of what he did, our own neglect of the centerpiece of his saving love? We don’t fall asleep, at least not usually. It’s worse. Jesus’ suffering and death bore us. We get all excited about a bunch of grown men chasing a ball around a field or across a court. Our heart rate soars, we scream, we cheer. We will watch for hours and hours.

Our attention is riveted to the news when people are senselessly or tragically killed in the latest crime or catastrophe. The news anchors can give the same five-minutes worth of details hour after hour, and yet it’s hard to pull away from the TV. Perversions of God’s good gifts of sex and beauty are like magnets that would pull our eyes right out of their sockets if they weren’t attached.

But when the eternal God makes himself a mortal man, and he stands in our place, and he lets himself be abused by the very people he came to save, and he submits himself to outrageous indignity and injustice, and for me he lets himself be nailed to a cross, and for me the blood pours from his body, and for me he endures wages of my sin, and for me he breathes his last, we yawn. It’s an old story. It’s a familiar story. “Tell me something new, something upbeat with a little more action.” No, watch your Savior. Watch him all the way to the cross and death that saves you.

Then pray, like he does, for the Father’s will to be done. “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”

“May your will be done.” Jesus prayer for his Father’s will makes it a true prayer, a prayer prayed in faith. This is not an attempt to push God off his throne. It’s not an attempt to change the changeless God. Jesus will not an attempt to dictate terms to the Almighty. He asks, and he submits. True prayer trusts God’s will, and accepts that God’s will is better than my own even though it may mean pain, discomfort, disappointment and apparent defeat.

Jesus so embraced his Father’s will earlier in his ministry when he accepted 40 days without food in the wilderness, and did nothing to change that until God’s angels came and attended him. Paul embraced the Father’s will in his parting words to the Ephesian elders, “I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me. However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me.”

There are worse things than suffering. God often does his best work through suffering. We might be so bold as to say, he usually does his best work through suffering. “We also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope,” Paul wrote the Romans. Jesus’ suffering was the salvation of the world. The things we suffer often serve the salvation of our own souls. “May your will be done.”

Matthew 26:36-39 “Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, ‘Sit here while I go over there and pray.’ He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, ‘My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.’ Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, ‘My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.’”

When ever in his ministry do we hear Jesus ask his disciples for help, as though he is the one in need of strength and comfort? He sends them on an occasional errand to pay a tax, fetch a donkey, or prepare a meal. He called them to serve in his mission. But he was always the pillar of strength offering comfort and assurance to them. He was the one who stood calm, cool, and collected in the face of danger. They are afraid they are going to die in the storm at sea, but Jesus sleeps through most of it, until they wake him up. Then he calms the storm with a word and takes them to task for their little faith.

Now Jesus is so filled with sorrow over the grim task ahead of him, so troubled by what he is about to suffer, that he asks these three closest friends for help. It isn’t a great thing he asks of them. Could they stay up with him for a little while? Could they just watch while he prays, could they see if anyone is coming, so that he may pour himself into this prayer, and pray without distraction? In the face of his fear, in his battle with temptation, he is the one asking them for help.

To be sure, no one ever before or ever since, has carried a burden like his. We sometimes say that a man who is overwhelmed by his responsibilities is carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. With Jesus, it was worse. He was carrying the weight of the world’s sins, the responsibility for them all, literally, on his shoulders, and it was going to crush the life out of him in just a few hours. Everything inside of him longed to escape.

He takes his desire to abandon his mission and escape the cross to the Father himself.  He offers no perfunctory prayer, politely prayed before supper or bedtime. His whole body is involved, not just his mouth. There he lies stretched out on the ground, his sweaty, tear-streaked face pressed against the Judean sand. The words pour out from the depths of his soul.

Who is this praying, pleading, so? Who is this asking, begging for some way, any way, to be delivered from the suffering he is about to face? This is Jesus, the Son of God, heaven’s Prince, the King of Kings! For all his divine power and heavenly glory, how utterly, truly human he had become. How inconceivably awful the agony he had to suffer must have been.

In the whole history of Jesus’ sufferings and death, without a doubt the most frightening words we hear him cry come from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” There he suffers the fate of the damned and forsaken, an eternity of torment for the sum of all souls packed into few hours on a cross one sad Friday. But next to that, is there anything more frightening than this scene: the very Son of God, so overwhelmed with sorrow at his coming death, so troubled, that at this late moment he is seeking any possible way to avoid it all?

Yet Jesus doesn’t give in to his temptation. He takes it to his Father in prayer. And so he faithfully battles temptation while his closest disciples stand watch.

Romans 10:15 “And how can they preach unless they are sent?”

How can preachers preach if no one sends them? No true messenger of God is an independent contractor. He understands that he is sent. I didn’t just show up one day and start my own church, or apply to become its pastor. I was called. The Holy Spirit used the members of my congregation to bring me here. In this way I have been sent to them, and they are sending me to others in this city who need to know Jesus, or need to know him better.

When you join me in this work, you are sent. Through your home church, God invites you to participate in outreach activities such as door-to-door canvasses, or educational work such as teaching a Sunday school class, or promotional work manning the booth at the County Fair. God sends you to invite your friends and neighbors to come and see. Even when you are sharing the gospel with a friend or family member in the privacy of your own home, you are doing so sent by Jesus. No Christian merely acts on his own, because the message we speak is his, not ours, and the person to whom we introduce them is him.

This isn’t God trying to limit our freedom or cramp our style. This is empowerment. This is confidence that the Lord himself is backing us up. This is the privilege and honor of representing the great God and Savior of the Universe, not just doing our own little spiritual thing. I mean, I am not that much to get excited about. Neither are you. But the Lord Jesus Christ we represents always is.            

There is just one question left: What are we waiting for? Let’s go and tell someone the good news that saves us!

Romans 10:14B “And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?”

How can you hear about God without a preacher? In God’s plan to save people, preachers are a necessity, too.

Don’t think that is limited to people like Paul, who was writing these words, or people like me, who preach and teach for a living. “Preaching” isn’t limited to formal speeches delivered in front of groups of Christians on Sunday mornings.

Preaching is what happens when people deliver God’s good news. Preaching is going on when a college student defends or explains their faith to a roommate or friends in a college dorm room. Preachers are in action when the next-door neighbor gets cancer, or suffers a loss in the family, and the Christian next door not only drops off a meal, but gets up the courage to talk about Jesus and life that never ends.

Here’s the amazing thing: God has chosen to create a plan to save the world that needs people, people like you and me, to tell others about him. It’s true that we can hand out pamphlets, and distribute Bibles and mail flyers and postcards that have the gospel on them, too. But in almost 30 years of ministry, I can count on one hand the number of people I know who ever got to know God that way–because they read about him.

I know hundreds, personally, who got the gospel from a person. Generally speaking, our Lord wants us to meet him through a warm, living human being, not a cold piece of paper, though he will sometimes settle for the piece of paper if he has to.

Which would you prefer: if your pastor just wrote the sermons and let you read them? Isn’t it better to have him preach them from the heart? Maybe that is a dangerous question for me to ask.

When I was at conference several years ago, a number of people asked me to give their personal love and greetings to my wife. Of course, they are free to text or email her anytime they like, and some do. But there is something warmer, more intimate and personal, about getting a message through a live person.

When you call customer assistance, do you like the automated voice system, talking to the robot: “To make a purchase, press one; for help with installation, press two; for technical support, press three; to make a return, press four”? As often as not, you are just waiting to here, “to speak to a live operator, stay on the line and your call will be answered in the order it was received.”

So God wants people to hear about him through a warm-blooded, moving and breathing preacher. And sometimes that’s not me. Sometimes, that is you.