Romans 8:35-37 “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble, or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written, ‘For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”

Sometimes God’s love feels a little theological, a little theoretical, like a set of abstract principles in mathematics. It works on paper, but is it real? Oh yes it is! Look at how God’s love intersects with our lives.

In order to open our eyes and help us see God’s love more clearly, Paul gives us a list we might call “Love’s skeptics” or “Love’s deniers.” So often experience seems to contradict the idea that God loves us. Ancient life was not so different than our own. Behind words like “trouble” and “hardship” in Paul’s Greek are experiences we know all too well. “Trouble” literally has the sense of “pressure.” We feel the “squeeze.” We feel pressure to compromise our morals or our integrity from the people we work for, or from our peers at school. “Hardship” puts us in narrow place, a tight spot. The walls are closing in. The options are running out. Finally, we are cornered and trapped.

Why, if he loves us, does God let us be persecuted? How come I can’t just fit in and be accepted? Why should they others make jokes behind my back when I try to live my faith? Why should my job, my reputation, my safety be threatened because of what I believe?

If I am God’s child and he loves me, then why should I suffer famine or nakedness? Or to put it in more 21^st Century American terms, why should I be living on the edge of poverty? Why should I be struggling to make ends meet? Doesn’t God promise our daily bread? What gives?

What about danger or sword? My house has to be a little fortress–dead bolts and alarms and tornado shelters–to keep me safe. And even these offer no real guarantees. Has God stopped loving us?

“No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” In support, Paul brings a second list. Here are the leading candidates for getting between us and God’s love for us. Every one of them is destined to fail.

“I am convinced that neither death nor life…” Death can’t do it. Although death was at one time the penalty for sin that cut us off from God, now it is the gateway to life. It is our last step on the way home. It brings us into the direct presence of God and his love. It never moves us farther away.

Life can’t do it, either. More than death, people fear the things life throws at us. We don’t want to suffer. But the worst that life has to offer is just temporary, and God promises to love us through it all.

“Neither angels nor demons…” Spiritual powers, whether good or evil, cannot do it. We should respect them because their powers greatly exceed our own. But they are no match for God and his love. Even if the good angels were to turn against us (which they would never do) God’s love remains the same. It always protects us. It always says to them, “You may go this far and no farther.” These most powerful spiritual beings (other than God himself) cannot separate us from his love.

“Neither the present nor the future nor any powers…” Nothing in time can do it. We may not like the times we live in now. They feel like evil times. Christianity and Christians seem to be in retreat. We may fear the future with all its unknowns even more. But present or future, from now until the day Jesus returns, we will be the objects of God’s love, every minute, every moment, until the clock ticks its final second and time is over.

“Neither height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Build a space probe and travel to the farthest edges of the universe. Dig a hole and keep digging until you come out in China. God’s love for you is bigger and more powerful than anything else that exists. You will never find anything anywhere that can separate us from God’s love.

How do we know? In his Son, on a cross, and at an empty tomb God has loved us and loves us still.

Psalm 136:1 “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His love endures forever.”

Giving thanks from the Biblical point of view is more than letting God know we appreciate what he has done. It’s more like what I learned to do in grade school English class with a thank-you card. The thank-you card was supposed to have more than the word “thanks.” You were to mention the gift by name. Then you were to write something about what the gift meant to you: how you were going to use it, why you needed it, how it would make a difference for your life. The thank-you card became a little historical review of and commentary on the kindness that someone had shown to you.

That same idea is behind the Hebrew words the psalmist uses when he writes, “Give thanks to the Lord.” This is an invitation to give our own little historical review of the kindness the Lord has shown to us. It gives our thanksgiving something of a testimonial flavor. If you read the rest of Psalm 136 you will see that this is exactly what the author of the psalm does. He thanks God for his work of creating us, and delivering his people from Egypt, and taking care of them in the wilderness.

But our personal thanksgivings don’t have to be about such grand events. I once read a missionary story about a woman in Africa who was eager to have her entire congregation join her in thanking God. The occasion for her gratitude: she had received a simple pair of shoes. She couldn’t get over how good God had been to her. In our land of plenty you and I may not be filled with such a sense of appreciation over a pair of shoes. I can’t think of a time when I specifically thanked God after purchasing a pair. I know I have never requested my entire congregation to join in giving thanks for such an event. That’s not because our shoes are any less an undeserved gift from him, or because we owe him any less appreciation for them. For us, too, “clothing and shoes, food and drink, property and home, spouse and children, land, cattle, and all I own,” are examples of God’s goodness and mercy and reason to give him thanks.

God’s goodness, then, can take many forms. Good can mean “beneficial.” This is “good” as in, “Eat your vegetables. They’re good for you.” Or “Lady bugs eat aphids. They are good for the garden.” And no one or nothing has done more good for us than our Lord. Psalm 103 summarizes them nicely when it says, “Praise the LORD, O my soul, and forget  not  all   his   benefits — who forgives  all  your sins  and heals  all  your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit  and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things  so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.” Forgiveness of sins and physical health are just a few illustrations of the fact that the Lord is good– a God whose goodness benefits us in every way.

Good can also mean “attractive” or “pleasant.” We enjoy reading a “good” book. When the sun is shining, the air is dry, and the temperatures are warm, we consider it “good” weather. When we like the way something looks or how it makes us feel, it is a “good” one.

Haven’t we all experienced the goodness of God in this way, too? “Taste and see that the Lord is good,” Psalm 34 urges us. If you have ever felt the relief of your sins forgiven and your guilt lifted, if you have ever known the comfort that God was holding you up in troubled times, if you have ever experienced the joy of God answering your prayers or blessing your efforts with success, if you have ever been filled with the hope for the future and the longing for heaven God’s promises inspire, then you, too, have tasted and you have seen that the Lord is good.

Behind such goodness of God is the other thing the psalmist celebrates in this simple prayer: “His love endures forever.”

God’s gifts fill our need. We could not live without them. But the Lord doesn’t give them merely because they are useful. His gifts are still tokens of his affection for us. Those gifts, whether spiritual or physical, express the love in his heart that never changes. Such giving is not a cold, unfeeling function he performs. He does not supply us with food, family, and friends like some cosmic paymaster, some other-worldly company bookkeeper, disinterestedly, dispassionately processing the payroll for the millions and billions of employees here on earth. These are God’s personal expressions of love and mercy.

That love and mercy extends back through the centuries. It gave Noah reason to build an altar. It gave David and Solomon reason to build a temple. It gave Jesus’ disciples reason to spread a message. It still gives us reason to set aside some time as we sit at the table, or when we recognize God’s blessings, and offer the Lord a prayer of thanksgiving. This love and mercy, which have always been there for us in the past, and are present with us now, will endure forever. Thankfully.

James 2:1 “My brothers, as believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, don’t show favoritism.”

We are believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ. Consider what we know about the way that he has treated us. Doesn’t Paul tell us in Romans 5, “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Were we likely candidates for God’s favor when we were powerless, unrighteous, and still sinners? Did we have anything to offer to God? And yet, “You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes become poor, so that you, through his poverty, might become rich.”

But this grace and forgiveness that our glorious Lord Jesus Christ freely offers for all sin, including our discrimination, and the eternal treasures of heaven he has given us as a result are not just for some select group that we have formed. James continues, “Listen, my dear brothers: Has not God chosen those who are poor in this world to be rich in faith…” God has a way of choosing people for the faith, and building them up to serve him in that faith, that bursts all our stereotypes. Biblical examples abound: David started out as just a simple shepherd boy. Moses was the son of slaves, and God had to make him poor again after he wound up in the Egyptian royal family before he could use him. Most of Jesus’ 12 disciples were working class men. Paul described the first congregation in the city of Corinth this way: “Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things–and the things that are not–to nullify the things that are.”

Are our own congregations that different? Some of us may have grown up in homes of privilege, and perhaps most of us weren’t born into abject poverty. But by and large we were very ordinary people from very ordinary backgrounds. And yet, God has taken some very ordinary men and women and made them rich in faith and raised them up as leaders in his Church. The children of farmers and ranchers and factory workers, who come from single parent homes, or broken homes, or had to be raised by other relatives, whose parents or grandparents had no more than a grade school education–God has raised up people like these among us, and filled them with faith, and turned them into church presidents, and council men, and teachers of the faith, and even inspired some to prepare for full time ministry in his kingdom.

Is that not ample encouragement to throw out our stereotypes when God leads someone whose dress, or color, or mannerisms don’t quite match our own to walk through our doors on Sunday morning? When I look at not only the faith he has given to me, but the faith he has given to others around me, then I begin to share the urgency of James’ command, “Don’t show favoritism.”

Genesis 32:9 “I am unworthy of all the kindness and faithfulness you have shown your servant.”

It is time. It’s time to stop obsessing about all our economic woes. It’s time to stop worrying about our financial futures. It’s time to stop paying attention to all the negativity we hear about from our nation’s political divide. It’s time to stop pitying ourselves for the monetary mess we are in. I am not saying all these problems have been solved, or that they are merely mythological. I am not saying that good people and responsible leaders in government and industry should stop trying to fix what’s broken. But at Thanksgiving, at least, it is time to see that there is another side to all of this. Especially God’s people know God’s promises to supply everything we truly need. Nearly half the Pilgrims, the founders of our day of Thanksgiving, starved to death before they could celebrate the first one. But those who lived still set aside time to thank God for the food that they did have, and for those who had survived, and for giving them another year to live and work in this new land they had found.

It is time. Like Jacob it is time to acknowledge God’s kindness and faithfulness.

You can’t argue with Jacob’s view of his situation. You know how he had behaved. He tried to turn everything in his life to serve himself. If ever there was a man who had lived his life under the theme, “It’s all about me,” and “I did it my way,” that man was Jacob. He had dealt dishonestly with his own brother and father to cheat his brother out of the rights of the firstborn. He ruptured his own family just to get what he wanted. When he started a family of his own, he adopted the heathen practice of polygamy. He created a family more dysfunctional than the family from which he had come. As much as his father-in-law Laban labored to take advantage of Jacob, Jacob was constantly scheming to take advantage of Laban. No matter whom he hurt, Jacob looked out for number one.

Living a life that tries to turn the whole world into a device to serve ourselves, using other people for our own advantage, is not a lifestyle that began or ended with Jacob. On some scale, from the time we get up in the morning to the time we go to bed at night, we are involved in the game of trying to bend everything in life to serve me. We import it into our families and friendships. People who should work together like partners end up acting like competitors. We aren’t so interested in serving and protecting the people closest to us. We want what’s “fair” for me. And what’s “fair” for me isn’t based on some objective formula. It is what involves the least work and the most gain. It turns out that even my love for family or friends is sometimes based on “what’s in it for me.” We deserve no better than Jacob, neither in this life nor the one to come. Like him we can pray, “I am unworthy of all the kindness and faithfulness you have shown your servant.”

And how has God responded in light of our unworthiness? With kindness and faithfulness, as Jacob says. We are still here, aren’t we? How does the author of Psalm 103 say it? “The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.” The God of our fathers, who has given us this country, and has made us prosper, showed us the ultimate kindness by giving up his only-begotten Son and making him a sacrifice for our sins. He doesn’t treat us as our sins deserve, nor repay us according to our iniquities, because in Jesus Christ he does not see those sins anymore. He has completely erased them from our records. Of all the kindnesses he has ever shown, none is greater than this: that he has removed our transgressions and declared us innocent of all our sins. In doing so he has made sure that there is a far better country waiting for us than any we or Jacob ever knew. In doing so he has been faithful to the promises he has been making to his people for thousands of years.

Sometimes, when life is painful or difficult, we are inclined to ask, “What did I do to deserve this?” The implication is that we think we deserve better, and we want God to treat us as we deserve. But that would be a foolish request. God doesn’t treat us as we deserve. He treats us immeasurably better. He gives us salvation. He lets us live another day. In light of our unworthiness, it is time to acknowledge God’s kindness and faithfulness.

Proverbs 9:8-9 “Do not rebuke a mocker or he will hate you; rebuke a wise man and he will love you. Instruct a wise man and he will be wiser still; teach a righteous man and he will add to his learning.”

There are many different ways a person can improve himself intellectually today, and many different reasons for doing so. Some go back to school to pick up that college degree they never completed, or they take classes to earn their master’s degree. Extra years of schooling, additional alphabet soup behind your name, can be an advantage in some fields. It may make it easier to find jobs or get promotions.

But does additional schooling make us wiser? Wisdom, in the Biblical sense, means more than just packing our heads full of information. Just because a person would excel on the game-show Jeopardy doesn’t mean they are wise. Wisdom is the ability to take what we know, especially those things that have to do with our faith, and apply them to our lives. It’s a gift our Lord holds out to more than a few chosen geniuses. He makes it available to his children by faith.

The Lord’s kind of wise man knows that he doesn’t know it all. That why you can rebuke him and “he will love you.” We man not feel like giving a hug and a kiss to the person who just pointed out what a nasty, mean-spirited thing we have done.  But when others rebuke us, what do we have to lose? We aren’t losing face. All we really lose is the spiritually deadening poison of our sin. We are released from the stupidity and the danger of our own immorality. The wise man loves rebuke because it gives him the opportunity to repent, and to receive forgiveness. That sets him free. He is free from his guilt. He is free to avoid that sin with all its nasty side effects. His wisdom grows, his faith strengthens, and he is better equipped to live his life. None of this would be possible if he were the know-it-all who refused to admit his mistakes. The wise man knows this.

And the wise man is always ready to learn even more. “Instruct a wise man, and he will be wiser still; teach a righteous man and he will add to his learning.” Wise people appreciate the value of opportunities to be taught by others. They know class time is never wasted time. Even the very old can become “wiser still.” Even if the teacher is covering old ground, the wise recognize that there is value in being refreshed in what we have already learned. We will not always see immediate use for what we learn of God and his word. But none of us can predict what we will face in the future. It is better to be prepared ahead of time. What we learn today may well help answer tomorrow’s question, or solve tomorrow’s problem. So wise men and women attend Bible class. They pay attention to sermons. They are not too proud to admit that they don’t know it all.

And what we do know is always worth hearing again. Isn’t everything God says to us in his grace worth repeating? Is hearing about love, or forgiveness, or a Savior’s sacrifice, or a future life of glory one time ever enough? We watch favorite movies over and over again. Millions of people will tune in to watch the same holiday classics on TV this year. We tell our husbands or wives, our children or parents, our friends and family, “I love you,” many, many times. No one complains. Perhaps some gem, some nugget of spiritual gold, is waiting to be discovered in God’s gracious promises by the people who are wise enough to listen again. Let’s be the wise ones who aren’t too smart to find out.

 

Romans 2:3-4 “So when you, a mere man, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment? Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you toward repentance?”

A biblical sense of right and wrong has fallen out of fashion in many places. Gossip is celebrated as a form of entertainment on a half-dozen or more TV shows dedicated to exposing every celebrity’s most private moments, or it is defended as the public’s “right to know,” whatever that means. Fornication is embraced as a right of passage, a harmless pastime, or a necessary experience to prepare for marriage. Obscenity is nothing more than a way to say it with an exclamation point. Defying authority is cool. In some circles, even violence earns you “street cred.”

But when Jesus says, “Judge not, lest you be judged,” everyone’s head nods in agreement. And how can we argue, if Jesus said it? “Judgmentalism” is something everyone condemns, mostly unaware of the irony of the position they have taken.

The first two and a half chapters of Paul’s letter to the Romans is merciless in attacking human pride and rebellion with God’s law. This is God’s judgment, not Paul’s. Chapter one has just concluded with a rapid fire expose of humanity’s crimes: willful and knowing rejection of the truth, idolatry, homosexual perversion, envy, murder, malice, slander, arrogance, inventive evil, heartlessness and ruthlessness to give just a sampling. As we watch Paul’s assault on immorality, anyone with any moral sense is tempted to stand in Paul’s corner, cheering him on. “You go, Paul! Let ’em have it!”

But we aren’t getting Paul until we see his fingers pointing at us. I complain about a relationship, “I can’t get a word in edgewise. All he wants to do is talk about himself.” Why do I complain? Because I want to talk about myself. We complain about our coworkers: “No one has any work ethic. Everyone sits around gold-bricking. Laziness is epidemic.” Why do we complain? Because we don’t like to work so hard. Survey after survey shows that we Christians are almost indistinguishable from our non-Christian neighbors in behavior and attitudes. We destroy our marriages at the same rate as the world around us. We watch the same trash on television that everyone else does. We abuse alcohol and drugs at about the same rate as the unbelieving world. Research by Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith suggests that there is little or no difference between the belief system (the belief system!) of a typical American Christian teen and his non-Christian counterpart.

The point is not to let us breathe a little sigh of relief because we aren’t worse than everybody else. The point is not to excuse or defend ourselves. Chances are that, if we take an honest inventory of our own lives, we don’t come out smelling so pretty. “Ignorance of the law is no excuse,” the saying goes, and the same thing is true in God’s court. But at least my non-Christian neighbor could plead ignorance in certain cases. I can’t. “So when you, a mere man, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment?”

Romans 2 convinces us that our sins deserve one thing: God’s judgment. But that’s not the life we have experienced. “Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you toward repentance?” The kindnesses of God in our lives are impossible to enumerate. When I take a breath, it is not the burning, sulfurous atmosphere of hell I inhale, but air that is pure enough and rich enough to sustain my life a few moments longer. I am surrounded by friends and by family that care for me; I am served in a society filled with people who watch out for my safety, and assist with my health, produce the products I need to survive. I am not alone among jeering demons celebrating a misery I share with them. I have lived in a smallish, one bedroom apartment as well as 2000 square foot houses, but both were comfortable and pleasant enough places to live. Neither one was the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels Jesus describes as the final fate of the lost.

Just for the sake of argument, take all of that away, and still God has been tolerant and patient with me in the extreme. Each new sin is still forgiven, accounted for in the infinite payment for sin that Jesus provided by his sacrifice on the cross. I am a believer by God’s grace, but getting my heart and mind in line with God’s own has come slowly, and improvement is unsteady, and eruptions of anger, pride, lust, doubt, impatience, worry, greed, and envy are far more common than I care to admit. Still, God forgives. Still, he works with me. Still, he isn’t too disgusted or frustrated to claim me as his own child and let me claim him as my own Father. It seems as though his patience is inexhaustible! I can’t help but share David’s observation in Psalm 103, “He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.”

When I compare these two things then– the judgment of God against sin, and the goodness and forgiveness he continues to show me–there is only one conclusion I can reach, one “judgment” I can make about myself: I have been the recipient of a love I don’t deserve, God’s remarkable grace, and so have each of you. This is the repentance to which Paul says God’s kindness wants to lead us–not just regret over our sins, but an awareness of the great grace we have been shown and an unshakable confidence in the God who has shown us such love.

Isaiah 55:10-11 “As the rain and snow come down from heaven and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”

Water is a fascinating substance. It is one of only a handful of substances that expand when frozen. This means that ice floats when a lake or river freezes, insulating the waters below it and keeping them liquid. If it sank it would destroy all the living things below. Those same expansive properties are the reason water seeping into cracks and freezing can split the concrete in our roads, bridges, and buildings. Water has also been called the universal solvent. It dissolves more substances than any other liquid, making it the best of all cleaners. And wherever water goes, whether through the ground or through our bodies, it carries valuable minerals chemicals, and nutrients (see: http://water.usgs.gov/edu/qa-solvent.html).

This is why, when we were in grade school, you could grow a bean in plastic cup with nothing more than a paper towel and some water to moisten it. It is why the Bermuda grass in my lawn has managed to establish itself on the hard rubber expansion joints in my sidewalk, and even, apparently, on the concrete in a corner of my driveway–two places you might not expect to be capable of supporting any life at all. It is why those who are looking for life in other corners of our solar system are so hopeful that they will discover water where they search.

The Lord uses the power of simple, humble water as a picture of the power of his word. Even in the desert it has the power to bring life where apparently none existed before. If water can establish life there, don’t be surprised at the power of God’s word to establish life in the hardest of human hearts.

God’s word is a powerful tool, then. Sometimes you have to be careful with what your tools can do. The sculptor’s chisel makes it possible for him to break off pieces of stone to create something beautiful. But if he isn’t careful, the chisel may remove more stone than he wants, or crack the block on which he is working. Maybe the entire block will have to be thrown away. The carpenter’s saw may cut the board to short, and his hammer may bend the nail and split the board instead of fastening it.

But the power of God’s word is not like that. It does not fail. “It accomplishes what I desire and achieves the purpose for which I sent it.” We don’t always see it. Sometimes it looks like God’s word was a flop, a failure. But you know what we don’t see? We often don’t see the effect it may have on a person years after they first heard it. I personally know people on whom it worked its magic decades later. We often don’t see the collateral effects. Maybe it didn’t convert a person today. But maybe it moved them in directions that were important for someone else to hear and believe. Maybe there were others listening we didn’t realize were listening, and faith came to life in their hearts.

Even when it’s just you or I telling God’s word to another person, don’t forget that there are two people hearing the word. Many an evangelist can tell you they got far more out of sharing God’s word with someone than the person listening to them. God’s word is powerful. We have experienced its power to work on our own hearts. We can trust its power to bring life to others.

Isaiah 55:8-9 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

I’ve noticed what the Lord is saying here. I’ll bet that you have, too. If God thought and acted the way that I would if I were God, he would have made me a couple of inches taller, a lot more athletic, and with a better memory than I have now. I wouldn’t need glasses. I wouldn’t have occasional pain in my back and my knees. In fact, I wouldn’t be aging at all. I would be young in body and mature in mind.

That’s a rather self-centered way of looking at things. We can do better than that. If God thought and acted more like us, then scores of people would not have died in mass shootings in Texas and Las Vegas these past weeks. We wouldn’t have all this racial tension in our country. We wouldn’t be so divided politically, economically, and morally. As a species, we would all get along.

If God’s thoughts and ways were like ours, then hurricanes would not have slammed Texas and Florida and destroyed millions of dollars in property; wild fires would not have raged across California’s Napa Valley, killing forty-two; little children would not go to bed hungry in any part of the world for any reason. If God’s thoughts were our thoughts…

Now here’s the problem with all that thinking. We are putting the blame on the wrong set of thoughts and ways. This is the world we humans have refashioned for ourselves against God’s thoughts and ways. He planned a perfect paradise for us to enjoy. We spoiled it with our fall into sin. We keep making it worse with our selfishness. It’s true that if we had our way we wouldn’t have to suffer the consequences of the mess we have made. But what good would that do? That would only teach us to be content to be separated and estranged from him in this poor counterfeit paradise we try to construct for ourselves. That would only encourage us to continue on the path of rebellion. The way that we think apart from God ruins everything now, even when we think we are making progress. Eventually it leads to death and hell.

Because God is a good Father, he doesn’t go with our ideas. He has better ones. His idea is to let us feel the consequences of our sinful mess. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” I should probably visit the doctor or the dentist on a regular basis, whether I am feeling well or not, just to get a check-up. More often, I don’t go until I am feeling some kind of symptoms. There is a pain somewhere that tells me something isn’t right.

People tend not to seek the Lord until they feel some kind of discomfort–an uneasy conscience, a broken relationship, a nagging illness, a personal tragedy. Author C.S. Lewis explained that, “Pain is God’s megaphone.” It makes us aware of sin, a broken relationship with God, and leads us toward repentance. That’s not necessarily because the pain is the result of some specific sin in our lives, though sometimes it might be. Rather, it wakes us up to our brokenness. It alerts us to our neediness. It sends us looking for God until we hear him speaking in his word.

But here is the real reason his thoughts, his ways, are better: He is the God who saves. The whole context of this chapter of Isaiah is God’s invitation to the feast of salvation. First he pictures the gourmet banquet the Lord has laid out for his people, the finest food and drink. He offers it “without money and without cost.” He promises that if we listen to him, “your soul will live.” Then he explains the picture. Even if we have been wicked and are guilty of evil, he invites us to turn to the Lord “and he will have mercy,” and “he will freely pardon.” Mercy, pardon, forgiveness freely given: This is the promise God makes when we listen to his word.

This is how our Lord thinks: He is looking for whom to forgive, not whom to blame or who should pay. He has already blamed his Son, and Jesus paid everything for everyone with his death on the cross. God wants to reconcile with us, not punish us. He wants to be our friend, not our Accuser and Judge. He has made receiving his grace effortless and free. That’s not how we think. That’s not our way. But it’s better, higher than the heavens are above the earth. It’s an invitation to trust, to trust the God whose ways are full of such grace.

Luke 3:14 Then some soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?” He replied, “Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely–be content with your pay.”

Some might find it strange for Christians to honor veterans, former soldiers, men and women who have been called upon to wage war, people who may have been involved in the death of others. Isn’t the Christian faith supposed to favor peace? Does God really approve of those who serve as soldiers?

In a perfect world there would be no need to raise an army, train people to fight, arm them with weapons. We wouldn’t have soldiers, or veterans. But our world has become far from perfect. Sin has infected all people and made them evil. Neighbor has turned against neighbor. Nation has turned against nation. Worst of all, humanity has turned against its God.

Because he still loves us, God sent his only Son into the world to reconcile us to himself. Jesus fought the devil who led us into sin and defeated him. Jesus laid his own life down at the cross to pay the penalty for our sins. As a result, we have full forgiveness for our rebellion against God. Jesus has established peace between heaven and earth. Those who have faith in Jesus have been made citizens of heaven. They have been received into God’s own family once again. That war is over.

Unfortunately, evil still infects the people of this world, and many will not receive the grace that Jesus freely gives us. Men who are thirsty for power, people who envy and covet the rightful possessions of other people, still turn to violence to take what does not belong to them. We still suffer crime and war as a result.

What if no one was willing to stand up and fight against injustice and oppression? Then evil would become stronger. Its power would grow, and our world would become more dangerous place, not just for ourselves, but for our neighbor as well. It would become more difficult for us to spread the gospel and share the knowledge of God’s mercy and love. That is why the Apostle Paul urges us to pray for rulers and government in his first letter to Timothy, chapter 2. In general, this is why the Scriptures urge us Christians to obey and respect the earthly governments that rule and protect us.

That is also why John the Baptist spoke to the soldiers who came to him the way he did. John the Baptist preached a message of repentance and forgiveness to the people of his day. He called them to turn away from their sins and turn to the Savior who followed him. He called those who received God’s grace and forgiveness to live a new life, filled with the fruits of repentance.

When some soldiers came to John and asked him, “What should we do?” John did not tell them to desert their posts, resign their commissions, or find some other way to end their military careers. He did not suggest that there was anything wrong with the service they offered as soldiers.

Instead, he urged them not to abuse the power with which they had been entrusted. “Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely–be content with your pay.” As defenders and protectors of their neighbors, as servants of their government, these men had a useful and honorable calling. They could continue to serve as soldiers and know that in doing so they were serving both God and their neighbor. God asked them only to be faithful soldiers as they carried out the responsibility they had been given.

That is true of the men and women we honor on Veterans Day. They risked their own lives to protect us, and our country, and our freedoms. As faithful soldiers they filled an honorable and God-pleasing calling that has served us all. We thank God for the sacrifices they have made to protect us and to enrich our lives.

May God enable each of us to live as faithful citizens who make good and godly use of the peace and freedom we have been given.