1 Corinthians 3:16-17 “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple.”

Church politics is a destroyer. It attacks the very thing God is trying to build. From time to time some church still uses the word “temple” in their name, but our church buildings are not temples in the biblical sense of the word. The Old Testament temple built by Solomon was a place where God promised to live with his people in a special way at all times. No one imagined that the temple contained God with limits and boundaries he could not escape. They knew God was everywhere. But at the temple God promised to hear their prayers, receive their sacrifices, and give them his grace and blessing. The temple was a place where God could say to his people, “We are a family. I am your Father. You are my children. Here is the place where we can meet together. This is the place where I live with you.”

God doesn’t have a building like that on earth anymore. He doesn’t use a building to be present with his people, not in the way he used Solomon’s temple. He uses our bodies. Every believer is God’s temple, the place he lives with his people, the voice where God can be found with his grace and blessing.

You are God’s temple, and isn’t that a humbling and encouraging expression of God’s grace to us? What does it say about the depth of his love?

When we are hurt, and someone apologizes to us, we may genuinely forgive them. We don’t dwell on the pain or loss we suffered. We don’t live with a more or less constant grumble against that person haunting our inner thoughts. Still, don’t we sometimes end up with a distance between us that wasn’t there before? Maybe we hold them at arm’s length, not because we hate them, but because we have lost some trust and we aren’t eager to get hurt again. It is even better when our forgiveness leads to a friendship completely restored, and we find each other together again on a regular basis.

God’s grace to us goes further still. He doesn’t stop at spending a little time with us now and then. So complete is his forgiveness that he makes our bodies and souls a permanent place to live. He makes us his temple, his home, even though he knows where these bodies have been, what they have done, and the sinful foolishness they are going to do in the future. He is along for the ride through good and bad because “you yourselves are God’s temple, and God’s Spirit lives in you.”

Church politics destroys that temple. It wounds the faith of young believers, sometimes wounds that faith to death. And where faith is gone, the Holy Spirit is missing, too. God’s temple has fallen.

An article on young atheists ten years ago in The Atlantic magazine recalls an interview with a college student named Phil who was president of his church youth group, loved his pastor, and especially loved his youth leader. But during his junior year in high school the church wanted to attract more young people by asking the youth leader to teach less and play more. The youth leader disagreed with this strategy and was dismissed. He was replaced by a younger and much more attractive youth leader who, according to Phil, ‘didn’t know a thing about the Bible.’ But the youth group grew. It also lost Phil, who ended up an atheist.

There are thousands of wounded former Christians whose faith has fallen victim to this sort of thing. “If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him,” Paul warns. That’s not to say this sin can’t be repented and forgiven, but like all sin it can destroy our own souls as well as the souls of those we offend.

Acts 13:39 “Through him (Jesus) everyone who believes is justified from everything you could not be justified from by the law of Moses.”

When God revealed his law to Moses, he never intended it to be some kind of self-help book. Endless lists of things that made people ceremonially unclean, and purification rights to go with them; detailed instructions about some of the most minute details of how they lived and worshiped; this was more than any reasonable person could do. It should have led them to see the futility of working your way into God’s graces. It should have led them, like Paul, to realize “everything you could not be justified from by the law of Moses.” It should have led them to seek help, not to self-help. But this is just the way that Moses was misused.

Why? For the same reason we find ourselves doing the same thing today. Rather than coming to grips with sin’s hold on us, we choose to live under the illusion of personal goodness. The name on the laws we are trying to follow to a better life may not be “Moses.” But the law of Osteen, Warren, or Lucado—or Oprah or Dr. Phil, for that matter—will not be able to justify us, either.

Go to your own pastor for counseling, and he may be able to apply God’s word to your situation. He may be able to tell you where you have broken God’s commands. He may help you with applications that improve your lives and make it tolerable to continue. He may have insights into what to do. It may be a good and wholesome thing for you to make those changes.

But all by itself, this will not draw you closer to God. It won’t cancel out your sin. It won’t justify you. I’m not saying, “Don’t try to do your best,” but we find no peace that way.

God has provided a better way. “Through him (Jesus) everyone who believes is justified.” Jesus is superior to Moses, because Jesus actually provides what Moses could only describe–a perfect life.

Justification, and its companion word righteousness, aren’t everyday words for us, at least in the way they are used here. When we think of “justify,” we are defending something or making a case for it. When Jesus justifies us, he is not defending us based our own good behavior. He is defending us based on his good behavior. He isn’t looking for perfect performance (that isn’t there). He is pushing us off the performance treadmill. He is giving us credit for his perfect performance from the stable to the cross. He pronounces us righteous. He declares us free from sin through the forgiveness he has led us to believe.

You see, what Jesus wants more than that you try harder is that you repent and give your sins to him. Lay your burdens down in front of him, stop trying to save yourself, and Jesus will do what all your efforts could never do, what the law of Moses could never do. He will make your very real sins disappear. He will give you relief from all your guilt. He will give rest to your troubled soul.

Jesus is infinitely superior to every other avenue to peace, because his way is the only way that actually works.

Matthew 5:3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

“To be poor,” Jesus says, “is to be blessed.” Note that he does not say the blessed are poor in cash or wealth, though that often goes together with what he means. They are poor in spirit. You won’t catch them bragging about their prayer life, how many people they have converted, how much they have given up to serve God, or how much they have grown and matured in their walk of faith. Whether they can quote Isaiah 64:6, or even know the passage exists, they agree with the prophet: “All our righteous acts are like filthy rags.” Not much of value there.

Imagine a homeless, jobless person millions of dollars in debt. If he dumpster-dived for aluminum cans and had 10 lifetimes to do it, maybe he could scrape enough together to change his situation. But he doesn’t even collect recyclables. All he has gathered together are scraps of cloth, and grimy, smelly ones at that–soiled by ripe, wet garbage, further spoiled by dust and dirt. Would he present those to his creditors at the bank, or send them in to satisfy the Visa bill? Would he show off his pile of rotting rags to impress you with his wealth? Would you?

Now, convert his soiled and spoiled collection to a life of thoughts and attitudes and activities soiled and spoiled by selfish motivations, false pride, deceitful cover-ups, and self-indulgent lusts, and you have a picture of the poor in spirit Jesus calls blessed here.

But how can Jesus call such people blessed? It’s not because their hearts and lives are such a mess. In that they are just like everybody else. No, it is because they are in touch with reality. They don’t mistake their filthy rags for gold bullion. They have come to grips with their true situation and stopped pretending it is better than it is. Once they admit their spiritual poverty, they stop trying to impress God with their garbage. They come to him with their hands empty. Before God, they know that they are only there to receive.

And God does not disappoint. “Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” With Jesus they go from penniless beggars to shareholders in Paradise. They own their own piece of heaven, literally. God does not hold their spiritual poverty against them and wait for them to pay. He forgives it, and he pays for it with the blood of Jesus, and he replaces it with his own eternal home of endless pleasures.

All of a sudden it is as if these spiritually bankrupt street people have won the billion-dollar Powerball. This is what it looks like to be blessed. They lack any great spiritual valuables of their own, but God has given them the deed to heavenly real estate. Maybe it’s just a promise now, God’s word on the matter. But he never, ever reneges on a promise, and possession is as certain for the poor in spirit on earth as it is for the saints in glory in heaven.

1 John 2:9-10 “Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness. Whoever loves his brother lives in the light, and there is nothing in him to make him stumble.”

 You know the number one complaint about Christians. It’s the same complaint people give as the number one reason for not going to church. “They’re all hypocrites.” Just where do people get that idea, anyway?

Sometimes it’s because prominent Christians have fallen into the very vices they condemn. A TV preacher preaches sexual purity but gets caught at a brothel with a prostitute. Another promotes being a teetotaler, but ends up checking himself into rehab.

A retired pastor once told me about serving a Lutheran church in a small town in Texas. There was one liquor store in town, so that is where he picked up the communion wine. After he had lived there a couple years and made several purchases, the store owner told him, “You know, you don’t have to park in front. I have parking spaces and an open door in the back.” My friend gave him a quizzical look, and thanked him, but asked him why he was sharing this information. “Well,” said the man who owned the store, “that is where all the ———– preachers come in.” You can fill in the blank yourselves. They preached against drinking, but didn’t mind having a little themselves sometimes.

Nothing gets people more upset with Christians than when Christians act mean. They talk gossip. They look down on other people. They are stingy and won’t help someone who has a need. Even the Apostle John admits this is a problem, not just for our reputation with others, but for the condition of our hearts, the state of our faith. “Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness.” A dark heart is not a believing heart.

Love defines the difference here. It’s the change you can see. God’s forgiving grace produces faith. And hearts full of faith produce love. And “whoever loves his brother lives in the light.” You know that God’s love has won in someone’s heart, and the light of truth is shining there, when that love comes spilling back out in acts of love for others.

Then another evidence appears, “…and there is nothing in him to make him (that is, his brother) stumble.” When we love, we aren’t putting roadblocks to faith and life in the way of other people. Instead, love can draw them closer to salvation.

 Our world is dark, and cold, and uncaring. Just watch the evening news. But do you sense in John’s words the rise of hope, hope that makes eager hearts swell as they see the old message become a new force and the light of God’s love pushes back the darkness to win even more hearts for the truth? Love is powerful stuff. It worked on you. Put it to work with those you know.

1 John 2:8 “Yet I am writing you a new command; its truth is seen in him and you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining.”

I once bought a cell phone on eBay. Despite being three generations behind the latest iPhone, it was listed on eBay as “new.” Sure enough, it arrived in the original box, still shrink-wrapped, with no evidence any human had ever touched it since the day it first went into that box in China.

 New doesn’t always mean “new in time.” New can also mean “new in quality.” That’s what John is trying to say when he says, “Yet I am writing a new command.” Love hasn’t lost any of its luster. It hasn’t lost any of its power either. That’s clear in the two places we see it at work.

“Its truth is seen in him,” that is, in Jesus. If we want to understand Christian love, there is no better place to look than Jesus. Later in this book John will write, “This is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” What do you call it when the people God created, the most gifted and privileged of all his creatures, completely turn against him and abandon him, and though he has the power to do so, God doesn’t wipe them out and start over?

Instead, he promises to rescue them. For millennium after millennium he holds out his hands to them and invites them to come home. One day he comes and he takes their shape, actually adopts the same sickened and weakened material they had made of the bodies he once gave them, and he lives in the garbage dump they had made of the perfect planet he once fashioned as their home. For thirty years he serves them. When they are sick he heals them. When they are hungry he feeds them. When they criticize him and attack him, he sits down to teach them.

Finally, he shoulders the guilt for all their violence, and all their selfishness, and all their lack of self-control, and he suffers hell on a cross to make it all go away, like none of it had ever happened. He forgives them. What do you call that? That’s love. It’s not the attraction of a man for a woman or the comradery between close friends. It’s love freely given, just because Jesus chooses to love us.

That all happened two thousand years ago, but it is still as perfect and as shiny as that iPhone in the shrink-wrapped box. It’s lovely to look at. It’s powerful to take in and consider. It’s new.

And here’s how it’s useful: John says love’s truth is seen in him. There is something here that is hard to deny, isn’t there? There is something that is just right, and winsome, and convincing, and magnetic, pulling us in.

You can debate with people about all sorts of spiritual trivia. You can try to answer all their objections to what the Bible says on a thousand different topics. But in the end, this is what is going to win them: the truth of God’s love, the truth we see as love emerges from the life and death of Jesus.

Now, here’s the surprising part. “It’s truth is seen in him and you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining.” Jesus’ love isn’t the only love that enables people to see what is true. It is not the only love with the magnetic power to change hearts and minds and draw people toward God. Your love, our love, may only be a poor reflection of his. Only his love may have the power to pull people all the way home to faith.

But still, love’s truth is seen in you. Your love may well be someone’s introduction to Christ’s love. That’s why Jesus says, “Let your lights so shine before men that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” Love triumphs, when it emerges from our hearts and lives and leads people closer to God’s truth.

1 John 2:7 “Dear friends, I am not writing you a new command but an old one, which you have had since the beginning. This old command is the message you have heard.”

The “command” about which John is writing is the one-word command that sums up and covers everything God ever told his people to do: love. Unlike other kinds of love, it is not based on some attractiveness in the object of our love. That is why Jesus can tell us to love our enemies. It is why the apostles can expect us to love our husbands and wives even if time isn’t kind to their appearance, and their behavior changes in ways we find irritating. It is why a church full of flawed and broken people can hold together and form a genuine bond of respect and care for each other. This love works like God’s own love for us.

This is not something new. A thousand years before Jesus, Solomon wrote “love your enemies” this way: “If your enemy hungers, feed him. If he thirsts, give him something to drink” (Proverbs 25:21). Five hundred years before that, Moses commands not only that we love our neighbor, but even the stranger: “The alien living among you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself…” (Leviticus 19:34). And, of course, “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18).

Hasn’t this love been part of our own faith from the beginning? Long before my parents ever took me to the pastor for confirmation class; long before they sat me down in front of my first Sunday School teacher; love was part of the Christianity they were teaching me at home.

But it is more than a rule I was taught, written instructions I was supposed to learn and then put into practice. The kind of love the Bible teaches is the product of a Christian faith. It is what faith does.

I once owned a home with two fruit trees in the yard–a fig tree and a pomegranate. We planted both of them. We wouldn’t have expected figs and pomegranates to spontaneously appear before we planted the trees. You need the trees for that. After we planted the trees, we didn’t have tell them what to do. We just had to keep them healthy. Making figs and pomegranates is what those kinds of trees do.

 My parents couldn’t expect me to spontaneously produce a life of Christian love any more than figs and pomegranates could spontaneously grow out of the grass in my back yard. They had to plant faith in me. This they did when they brought me to baptism, and taught me Bible stories, and took me to church.

From the moment you first believed in Jesus as your Savior, Christian love started growing in you, and coming out of you. It has always been a part of your faith. That is another reason John can write: “I am not writing you a new command but an old one, which you have had since the beginning. This old command is the message which you have heard.” This is how faith-born love works: It begins where our faith begins, and it has been growing, and spreading, and taking over in our lives ever since.

Calling this an “old” command or message isn’t a knock against it, either. John isn’t saying that “love” is like an athlete at the end of his career. You know, he used to be a brilliant point guard with electrifying moves and the ability to score from anywhere, but now he is just a washed-up-has-been who’s too old to compete and needs to retire.

We may feel that way about Christian love sometimes, especially when it asks us to give up something we wanted in order to help someone else…again. But love is not worn out or discredited. It hasn’t stopped applying.

Love is a “classic.” The older it is, the more valuable it becomes. It has stood the test of time. It is tried and true. Old, faithful Christian love is authentic. It really cares and it’s here to help because it wants to be. It’s consistent. It doesn’t flip-flop in how it regards or treats the objects of its affections. It’s been that way since the beginning.

John 1:31 “I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel.”

 What do you want to do when you grow up? I know that that’s a hard question for many people. My children wrestled with the question. I don’t believe that any of them ended up in exactly the positions they once envisioned for themselves. I changed my own career plans during high school. Even in my adult life I have received calls that made me wrestle hard with what I should do. Did I want to teach at our college or seminary? Did I want to work as a synod administrator? Or should I remain a parish pastor?

John the Baptist’s career had been chosen for him before he was born. An angel told his father Zechariah what his life’s work would be before John was even conceived. Long before that, the Old Testament prophet Malachi had foreseen his career path. Simply put, John came so that “he (Jesus) might be revealed to Israel.” John was here to announce Jesus, explain him, and introduce him to the world.

Not all of us have been called to preach and teach full time. But if you believe that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes your sins away, the eternal Son of God who existed before all things, then you are here for a similar reason. Your career, your life, your path (no matter what it is) has been woven into Christ’s cause.

God has made you parents and grandparents to lead your children and grandchildren to know Jesus from the baptismal font and Sunday School. He has called you to live a godly life where you live and work, because your relationships and friendships may become an opportunity to share your faith. Your gifts and offerings help reveal Jesus to people all around the world.

The time you volunteer at your church helps to make him better known and understood in the community where you live. Whether you are conscious of the fact or not, everything you do, every moment you are awake, is part of your own mission project, because you see who Jesus is, and your life and faith reveals him to others.

When I became a homeowner, I became intrigued by the TV shows about real estate: House Hunters, Love It or List It, Property Brothers. Not everyone looking for a house has the “vision” to be able to see a home’s potential, to see past old carpet, unusual colors, and the current owner’s clutter. People who can see often get a good deal.

Not everyone perceives the value behind Jesus’ humble exterior. You see it by God’s grace. He takes away your sins. He is the God who loves you. Share the vision.

John 1:30 “A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.”

This is how John the Baptist described Jesus. How does Jesus “surpass” John? He was John’s younger cousin by six months. He came from a less prominent family. Jesus’ stepdad was a simple carpenter from a small town, while John’s dad was a priest who worked at the temple in Jerusalem. At this point in time Jesus was practically unknown to the world. John had a ministry that was drawing large crowds and had caught the attention of the top leaders in Israel. John could have been tempted to put himself ahead of Jesus. After all, his ministry came first.

Tons of people didn’t see Jesus as any greater than themselves. They still don’t. He’s a great man, they may believe. But history is littered with great men. You can take your choice which ones to pay attention to, and which ones to push off to the dusty corners on the outer fringe of your memory. They may feel safe, we may feel safe, neglecting Jesus or ignoring him, because we don’t really see him. But it isn’t safe. We need John the Baptist to help us see Jesus, and to see his place compared to ours.

“He has surpassed me,” the Baptist says, “because he was before me.” I will admit that John doesn’t come right out and say, “Jesus is the eternal Son of God and Creator of all things.” The people weren’t ready for that. But he is implying it. In what way was Jesus “before” John? He was born six months later. Jesus himself later says of John that “of those born of women, there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist” (Matthew 11:11).

Still John insists that he isn’t even worthy to tie Jesus’ shoes. Jesus was “before” John in the sense that he existed as the God and ruler of heaven before the beginning of time, and so, long before any human beings were conceived and born. His place far surpasses John, when we see Jesus as he really is.

Where do we stand? In his book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis addresses the people who want to reduce Jesus, who pronounced himself the forgiver of sins, to the status of “Great Moral Teacher.” “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. … Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

Obviously many people either ignore Lewis’s logic, or they simply don’t care about it. They insist on seeing Jesus as something less than he is. That is the nature of unbelief. It is as much (or more) a problem of the heart as it is a problem of the mind.

See Jesus, and see his place, especially see his grace, and you see that he is not someone for us to neglect or ignore. Trust the one who far surpasses us all.

John 1:29 “The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”

Jesus is a lamb. Nothing very spectacular about that. We could interpret John’s metaphor to mean a number of different things if he called someone a lamb today. You could be as gentle as a lamb, or as soft and cuddly as a lamb, or as easily led astray as a lamb. But there is only one point of comparison, one picture, “Lamb of God” would have raised in the minds of a 1^st Century Jew. Jesus was a Lamb of sacrifice. This was a man destined to die. And a lamb died as a sacrifice for only one reason: “…who takes away the sins of the world.”

That’s not something many people want to look at. The problem isn’t with the blood and the gore. No, it just doesn’t interest them very much. They don’t see the need. If John had said, “Look, the motivational speaker of God, who inspires the hearts of the world,” now we’re talking. That’s something I can use. Or maybe, “Look, the life coach of God, who mentors the behaviors of the world.” We’re headed in the right direction. Inspiration, direction–maybe I can get my act together. Or try this one: “Look, the role model of God, who shows the world how the job’s done right.” I need an example I can imitate. Then there’s always, “Look the therapist of God, who makes everybody feel better about themselves.” Bullseye!

If John the Baptist had announced Jesus this way, the priests, Pharisees, and leaders would have beaten a path to his door. They would have embraced him as prophet, promoted him as a celebrity, maybe even hailed him as some sort of savior. But people wouldn’t see Jesus. They wouldn’t see his main purpose. They wouldn’t see the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world.

 There’s another reason some don’t want to see this Jesus. They don’t want to see their sins taken away. They kind of like them. Sometimes we like the four letter words we use to pepper our speech. We don’t see a need to give them up. The world around us certainly doesn’t.

Maybe we like getting physically intimate with someone we practically just met. Waiting for marriage has become so old fashioned.

Maybe we think our parents are kind of idiots. “Honor” isn’t something we intend to give them. Maybe we just don’t want to work so hard, and sacrifice so much, to live the kind of life the Ten Commandments tell us to live. It’s easier to get comfortable with our sins than to repent and let Jesus take them away.

 Still, John calls out to us, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!” Have you ever read John Bunyan’s classic story The Pilgrim’s Progress? It is an allegory of the Christian’s journey of faith through life to heaven. In the early chapters, the hero, Christian, is troubled by the heavy burden he carries. It is tied to his back and shoulders, and nothing he tries gets rid of it. It gets heavier, and more uncomfortable, and he is desperate to find relief.

One day he finds himself at the foot of a cross alongside the road, and there his burden finally falls off. It rolls down a little hill into an empty tomb, where it is never seen again.

When a person is in great discomfort or pain, and they are desperate for help, they will try almost anything to find relief. I’ve known victims of nerve pain ready to amputate a limb. I’ve known cancer sufferers who traveled half way around the world to inject untested poisons into their bodies.

For those whose burden of guilt and sin is too heavy to carry themselves, John doesn’t propose anything so outlandish. He simply says, “See this man. He is here to remove your burden and carry it for you. He will let it kill him so that it doesn’t kill you. He takes away the sins of the world, and the world includes you.” Let him have your sin. It’s the reason he came. It’s his purpose.