1 Thessalonians 1:5b-7 “You know how we lived among you for your sake. You became imitators of us and of the Lord; in spite of severe suffering, you welcomed the message with the joy given by the Holy Spirit. And so you became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia. The Lord’s message rang out from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia– your faith in God has become known everywhere.”

There is something different about Christian joy. Worldly joy comes in the context of some great success or benefit. Your team wins the championship. Your wife has a baby. Your lottery ticket matches all the numbers on the TV screen. Your dear one survives the surgery and recovers. Your application is accepted.

But look at the context of the joy Paul describes. “You became imitators of us and of the Lord; in spite of severe suffering you welcomed the message with joy.” When we are suffering severely, we are like Jesus, and we are like Paul, aren’t we. Maybe we forget that about being “Christ-like” sometimes. No student is above his master. It is enough for the student to be like his master (See Matthew 10:24-25). Jesus suffered. So did Paul. If we are like Jesus, so will we.

But that does not squelch Christian joy. Christian joy isn’t joy in our circumstances. We are aliens in a foreign land (Hebrews 11). It isn’t joy in our accomplishments. Like Paul, we consider them all rubbish or dung (Philippians 2). It isn’t joy in our possessions. They are subject to rust, and moths, and thieves (Matthew 6). It isn’t joy in our relationships. With Jesus, a man’s enemies are often the members of his own household (Matthew 10).

Christian joy is joy in the gospel message we have been given: Heaven is my home, Jesus won my victory, Forgiveness is my possession; and God is my dear Father, Jesus my dear Brother–the family who loves me without conditions and without limits. That joy never goes away, and no one can ever take it from you and me.

That joy also makes our faith infectious. “And so you became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia. The Lord’s message rang out from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia– your faith in God has become known everywhere.”

Some place in his book Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis has a chapter entitled, “The Good Infection.” “Good things as well as bad,” he tells us, “are caught by a kind of infection. If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them.” The thing that has them, he tells us, is the Holy Spirit, as Paul has also made clear to these Thessalonians. The way that we get close to the Holy Spirit, and he gets into us, is through the message of God’s Word that gives us joy.

Our joy in that message helps to make our faith contagious. We become models whom others want to imitate. We attract attention to the difference God’s Word makes in a believer’s life. Through the Word some can catch the good infection from us, and they in turn can pass it on to others. The influence of our joy and faith is then felt in places far from where we first lived and shared it.

Christianity is not an easy faith. But it isn’t a gloomy one either. Catch the joy.  Then pass it on.

1 Thessalonians 1:2-5 “We always thank God for all of you, mentioning you in our prayers. We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not simply with words, but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction.”

Why did Paul offer such thanksgiving and prayer when he thought about these Christians in Thessalonica? He was moved by three evidences that the gospel was working in their lives. First, we hear a whir of activity. “We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith.” Good works may not belong to the equation of salvation. But they are still an indispensable evidence that saving faith is genuine. This is not that restless, driven kind of religious busyness produced by feelings of guilt, or fear of the law, or insecurity about what God or others think about me. These flow from faith like water from a spring. These grow on faith like fruit on a tree.

The next thing we hear is a sigh of weariness. “We remember…your labor prompted by love.” Labor here is not exactly the same thing as work. Labor refers to the kind of hard and tiring activity that sometimes is full of frustration and disappointment. You know what I am talking about? We toil away at some church program only to see it flop. We make sacrifices to help others only to find that we are being taken advantage of. We suffer through personality conflicts, poor decision making, and inept, uninspired service because we are trying to get God’s work done.

Genuine Christian service is not always “fun,” or necessarily even “fulfilling.” Sometimes it may hurt. That does not mean it is not valuable. That certainly should not be used as excuse to bail out or sit on the sidelines. Paul simply offers a realistic view of service in God’s kingdom. Sometimes it’s hard. Sometimes we’re guilty of making it hard for others.

Who wants to volunteer for that? What could move us to subject ourselves to that kind of experience? This, Paul says, is “labor prompted by love.” We must keep someone else in mind when we get our hands dirty and faces sweaty in the hard labor of God’s kingdom. Love for the Lord who so loves us, love for the lost souls around us, and love for the dear children of God with whom we serve prompt us to labor on.

Paul’s third evidence even exposes us to groans of suffering. “We remember…your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.” Some promote the idea that Christianity makes everything in your life suddenly wonderful. The Thessalonians knew that it gave you just as much need for patient endurance. The plain teachings of Scripture invite rejection, even persecution, from the people around us. It can cost us friends. It can cost us respect. It can put us in danger. It can make us the targets of attack.

But we don’t endure all this for nothing. We are inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. Have you ever seen news stories of people camped out in front of the ticket office when some popular show or sporting event is coming to town? Reporters go through the line and interview people about how long they have been camped out and how hard it has been to endure the elements to keep their place. But you don’t ever hear of anyone going through the ordeal without expecting something at the end. People don’t wait in that line in the cold just for the experience. They hope to hold a ticket in their hands at the end.

When our convictions lead us to endure insults, accusations, and maybe even physical abuse for our Lord Jesus, we don’t do so for nothing. We have hope. We have certainty that we will be holding something in our hands at the end: the ticket to get us through the gates of heaven, the deed to our own heavenly home.

Where, then, does such conviction come from? Listen to Paul again, “For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not simply with words, but also with power, with the Holy Spirit, and with deep conviction.” Do you hear the strains of love? The gospel is not just a collection of nice-sounding, religious words. It is more than information about the way to heaven. It is the powerful, creative message by which the Holy Spirit works a miracle change in our hearts. Through it he convinces us the things Paul says about us here are true.

We are loved by God. How could it be any other way if he still wants us as his own, fully aware of all our sins? How could it be any other way if he was willing to sacrifice his only Son to remove our sins and purify us for himself?

He has chosen you. Do you hear the welcome of an adoptive family? Our place in God’s family is not due to natural forces beyond his control. He specifically sought us and chose us. He directed all of human history to make sure that your sins were paid for, and you heard the gospel, and you were brought to faith, and you could be certain that God had made you his own and surrounded you with a loving family of brothers and sisters.

That’s the powerful gospel we have believed. That’s the powerful difference it makes.

1 John 4:19 “We love, because he first loved us.”

When  children get into a fight of some sort, they often defend their actions by objecting, “He started it.” Somehow, we have the idea as children that this makes our actions defensible. Of course, that way of thinking doesn’t disappear when we become adults, does it. When others treat us badly, that motivates us to respond in kind.

“We love, because he first loved us” is more than a holier and godlier version of “he started it.” God’s love for us doesn’t get us to love purely by winning our appreciation and good will. It is more than “he was nice to me, so I’ll be nice to him.”

Nor does God’s love lay it on thick with a guilt trip or a sense of obligation. God is not like Danny Kaye in the movie White Christmas. Are you familiar with my analogy? Every time Danny Kaye wanted to get Bing Crosby to do something in the movie, he would rub his arm. That was a reminder of how he once risked his life and injured himself to save Bing Crosby’s life when they were soldiers in World War II. It was a classic guilt trip. That’s not how God gets us to love. He doesn’t show us the cross, or Jesus’ wounded body, to make us feel guilty and manipulate a response.

No, God’s love works more by transformation. When we are at home in the grace and forgiveness of God, and the gospel saturates our lives, then that love begins working wonderful changes inside of us. By faith we become more loving people. God and his love actually take up residence in our hearts. They start expressing themselves through our mouths and through our hands. As the Apostle Paul told the Philippians, “It is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose” (2:13). That’s the kind of love that would not be possible for us if God had not first loved us at Jesus’ manger, his cross, his empty tomb, and now his heavenly throne.

That love not only leads us to love God. It leads us to love the other members of his family. It’s not so easy to show your love directly to someone you can’t see or touch. There are only so many things we can do. God doesn’t need anything from us. After we worship him and pray to him, after he has first place in our hearts, our options for showing him our love are limited.

But there are all kinds of ways we can show love to the people he has put around us. They are the ones who really need our love. In the last verse of this chapter John urges, “Whoever loves God must also love his brother.” This is how God wants us to love him: by finding a person who really needs our love and taking care of what he needs. Tell him about his Savior. Help her with her bills. Volunteer for the relief efforts that will clean up their storm-ravaged neighborhood. Give them a hand with the things they can’t do for themselves.

That means the really difficult people, too. God loves the world. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. If God loves difficult people like you and me (and he does), that love won’t work any differently when it is working through you and me. So long as his love is finding a place in our hearts, it will lead us to love them all.

 

What would you consider “Plan A” in God’s plan to build his kingdom and call hearts to faith? That’s an easy one. All of us would look to the great commission, and we would say something like, “Preach the Word,” or “Preach the Gospel.”

What would you consider “Plan B”? Again, that’s an easy one. We would say something like “there is no ‘Plan B’” or “‘Plan B’ is to go back to ‘Plan A.’” Only God’s word can create and sustain faith. Only God’s word can give people life.

But we have all thought of some “Plan B’s” at some time or other, and there are hundreds of them out there to try. If “Plan A” doesn’t seem to be working, it’s awfully tempting to develop a “plan B.” Maybe we could develop more interesting activities and outings to lure them back in. Maybe we could provide them with more opportunities for meaningful service. Maybe we could give them modern music to sing or a gymnasium to play in.

There is certainly nothing wrong with interesting activities, and meaningful service, and modern music, and church gymnasiums. All of these can be a legitimate part of a church’s ministry. But if Jesus was telling the truth when he said, “If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead” (Luke 16:31), then we certainly can’t rely on activities, music, or buildings– all far less impressive than a resurrection– to create or sustain their faith. These things have value only if they incorporate “Plan A” and don’t stand alone as a “Plan B.”

Isn’t that what Jesus is saying when he says, “The Spirit gives life, the flesh counts for nothing”? Appeals to the flesh may be attractive, but they don’t give life. Perhaps a clearer way of translating “counts for nothing” would be something like, “it contributes nothing whatsoever,” or “it is of no benefit or help at all.” This is not the sinful flesh, the power of original sin within us. Jesus would hardly have had to say that that has nothing at all to contribute to spiritual life. This is the flesh that makes up our visible, tangible body–the senses and sensations we experience because we are physical beings. However, appeals to the flesh become appeals to the sinful flesh, and they do not create or sustain faith. “Plan B” jeopardizes souls and exposes our lack of trust in God.

“Plan A” isn’t just a command or a method. It’s a promise. The Spirit gives life. The words Jesus has spoken to us are Spirit, and they are life. This is where God has met each one of us and given us life. The Spirit came to us in word connected with water and washed our sins away. The Spirit comes to us in words that promise us forgiveness and mercy and peace and security and new life and eternal life and he sustains the faith he has given us. The older I get, the more I hear or read the bare words of Scripture that tell the same old stories I learned in Sunday school of God delivering his people or Jesus showing mercy, I don’t find them becoming dull or stale. I find them ever more moving and compelling. I find Spirit and life. Why should we assume it will be any different for others who hear those words?

Not everyone will believe. Even Jesus’ audiences turned away from him. Charles Spurgeon once commented on this fact, “I do not hear him (Jesus) say, ‘Run after these people, Peter, and tell them we will have a different style of service tomorrow, something short and attractive with little preaching. We will have a pleasant evening for the people. Tell them they will be sure to enjoy it. Be quick, Peter, we must get the people somehow.’ Jesus pitied sinners, sighed and wept over them, but never sought to amuse them.”

On the other hand, all those who do believe will believe for the same reason. The Spirit gave them life, the Spirit and life that came to them in Jesus’ words. May sharing that word always be our plan.

 

 

 

 

 

Galatians 6:15-16 “Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything. What counts is a new creation. Peace and mercy to all who follow this rule, even to the Israel of God.”

Just what is the Christian life all about? It’s not about my body. That was the mistake of the people Paul was writing against here. It was not about whether you had had a procedure to remove a little skin. Paul had been circumcised, just like his opponents. Most of the members of the congregations in Galatia had not been. Neither way made a bit of difference to God. Neither way made a bit of difference for their salvation. It didn’t mean anything.

It’s not about my body. That’s the world’s way of thinking. It’s not about denying my body in fasting, or beating it to try to make amends for my sins. It’s not about caring for my body with just the right balance of diet and exercise to make it as healthy as could possibly be. You can follow the book “The Jesus Diet,” but that’s not the part of his life Jesus has called you to follow, and even the Jesus diet ends with a dead body, just like every other diet ever invented. It’s not about how you cover the body, so long as you are wearing enough cloth to keep someone else from falling into sin. But it is not about your taste in fashion, or lack thereof, because you can be saved in cut-off shorts and sandals as well as a thousand-dollar business suit with gold cuff links and a silk tie. Clothes may make the man, but they don’t make a Christian. It doesn’t mean anything.

It’s about the faith God gave me. “What counts is a new creation,” the one on the inside. The “new” about the Christian is his faith. The good news about Christ communicates such grace, such love, such promise, such hope, that it changes us and makes us entirely new and different sort of people. It changes us from God’s skeptics and doubters, his critics and deniers, his opponents and accusers, into people who trust his every word, who accept his every decision, who appreciate even the strange twists and painful disappointments he allows into our lives. A new creation doesn’t torture itself with great questions like “Why does God let bad things happen to good people?” “Why does God allow evil and suffering?” “Why does God save some and not others?” A new creation marvels at just one question: “Why did God have mercy on a sinner like me, and sacrifice the only Son he had to make me his own?”  Only one thing can change us like that and create a new me: the preaching of Christ’s cross that gives us faith.

Living as Christians is about our gifts as God’s new creations. Paul concludes, “Peace and mercy to all who follow this rule, even to the Israel of God.” A new creation, a new me who trusts God, has peace. It is the normal condition of the person who knows that the Lord does not have anything against us. He cherishes us like a son or daughter, and not because we have stopped sinning, but because he keeps on forgiving. If that is the case, then what could possibly be wrong or go wrong?

A new creation is confident of God’s mercy. Sparing us from sin and relieving us in our misery isn’t just a duty our Lord performs so that he can check it off his task list. It’s not an incidental part of the “Higher Power” job description. He forgives us and he delivers us because he genuinely cares. It’s not our worthiness, but our misery and helplessness, that receives such mercy. We are confident because the mercy isn’t produced by us. It lives in him.

“Creations,” whether new or old, don’t produce themselves. They are made. Thank God for his grace that went to work and produced the new creation in you and me.

 

 

 

 

Galatians 6:14 “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”

What makes a restaurant like McDonalds, McDonalds? It’s not the ambiance of their dining room, or the quality of their straws or napkins. It’s the taste of their food: the Big Mac, the fries, the chicken nuggets. And you see that in their advertising. That’s what their commercials boast about. What makes a luxury car like a Lexus, a Lexus? It’s not the emergency jack in the trunk, or the owner’s manual in the glove compartment. It’s the features of the vehicle itself: the power of the engine, the comfort of the passenger cabin, the styling of the vehicle’s body. That, again, is what their commercials boast about.

What makes the Christian faith the Christian faith? It’s not a superior set of rules to follow or more stimulating and entertaining worship to attend. It is the central message of our faith, the chief thing that distinguishes it from all others: the saving death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is the message of the cross. There may be many other things that are true about Christianity and Christians. But there is really only one thing to boast about: the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.

That was Paul’s message to the Galatians who were being led to think that Christianity was about something else. Paul’s own faith had been on a different track at one point in his life. As a Pharisee who opposed Jesus and persecuted his people, he was building a religious career for himself that promised him prestige, power, and plenty of money. Now he had discovered the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that other world had been crucified to him.

There are many forms that the world can take in our own lives, and many of them are hard to recognize. We, too, can pervert religion from being God’s means to save us, and a sincere matter of faith, and turn it instead into a way to give me what I want here and now. We can turn church into an entertainment venue, a place we go to get our grins. That’s worldly, not spiritual. It is a wonderful thing for friends to invite friends to church to introduce them to Jesus. It is a worldly thing to choose a house of worship for the chance to be popular with certain people, because it makes me look good, because it means I will be accepted by my peers, or because it puts me in contact with potential customers for my business. There is no “love God” or “love your neighbor” in that, certainly not a single-minded focus on the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. All of this is also a kind of worldliness, a sinful focus on tickling my fancies and getting my heaven on earth, in addition to the more traditional descriptions of worldliness like materialistic greed, sexual indulgences, and the pursuit of personal power.

Now, Paul says, due to the cross of Christ, that world has been crucified to me. It hasn’t just been assigned a lower place in my life, a demotion in which it gives up part of the time and attention it used to demand. The world and I did not merely come to a mutual recognition that this relationship wasn’t working out very well, and so we politely broke up and went in different directions. The world has been crucified to me. It met a violent, painful death by execution. It is the evil criminal in my life that had to die before it took my life instead.

The irony is that the world is crucified to me by means of another crucifixion, but this one is a crucifixion that makes me boast. That is a striking concept. The cross was an instrument of shame and humiliation. It is not something one would boast about. No one wants a relationship with a criminal, especially one on death row. It’s an embarrassment. It’s the kind of thing that families keep secrets about–the old uncle that no one ever talked about because he lived his life behind bars, or ended it prematurely in an electric chair.

But this criminal and this cross are my pride and joy, because the crimes for which he dies are mine. The cross of our Lord Jesus Christ is the only thing that has real value because it is the only thing that can free me from the penalty for my sins. The cross of our Lord Jesus Christ is the one thing in which I boast because it is the one way I am sure my poor life is not going to end in shame and failure in this world, but will find eternal joy and fulfillment in God’s presence in heaven. Wonder of all wonders, the cross, an instrument of death and punishment, does what I could never do: it removes all sin from my record, reconciles me to God in heaven, and gives me a life that will last forever and ever. Compared to that everything the world offers is just so much stinking garbage that I should be happy to carry to the curb. I should hurry to get it out of my house and out of my life before its stink has time to corrupt the real treasure I have in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. That’s our only boast. And what that cross has done for me crucifies the world to me.

“So I will always remind you of these things, even though you know them and are firmly established in the truth you now have. I think it is right to refresh your memory as long as I live in the tent of this body, because I know that I will soon put it aside, as our Lord Jesus Christ has made clear to me. And I will make every effort to see that after my departure you will always be able to remember these things” (2 Peter 1:12-15).

As you listen to sermons and Bible classes, does it seem like the preaching and teaching is out of touch with the reality of everyday life? Does it seem as though the same issues are harped on too much? What are moral failings and false beliefs that most threaten God’s people today?

According to a Gallup Poll in May, over 70 percent of Americans see no moral issues with divorce, almost 70 percent see no moral issues with premarital sex, over 60 percent think it is just fine to have a baby even if you aren’t married, and nearly 60 percent accept doctor-assisted suicide.

Here are some other statistics: Over 50 percent of Christians now believe that Christians, Jews and Muslims worship the same God. According to pollster George Barna, more than half of all adults in this country believe that if a person is generally good, he or she will earn a place in heaven. Over half of all Americans and about one third of conservative Christians believe that Jesus was a sinner. More than 50% of born again Christians do not believe the Holy Spirit really exists or that the devil really exists.

What’s the point? God’s people need constant reinforcement of the fundamentals of their faith! Of course, God wants his people to become familiar with everything that he has to say to them. He wants them to find in him the answer to their deepest individual needs.

But we can never take the core truths of the Christian faith for granted. The statistics above reveal that unbiblical views on what is right and what is wrong are espoused by a large percentage of the population. The Biblical view of morality seems to be losing ground in the hearts and minds of Americans. We would be foolish to assume that Christians, even conservative Lutheran ones, are immune to the forces of popular opinion and current trends.

The real danger is not that Christians will sometimes be guilty of various illicit sexual behaviors, broken marriages, or other selfish practices. We know they will. The real danger is that they will stop calling it sin, stop repenting of it, and start considering it acceptable.

If that happens, can a proper understanding of who God is and what he came to do for us long survive? The less we can see our sin and feel its guilt, the less we feel the need for a perfect Savior. The more the God of Christianity will look like the gods of all the other religions who expect their people to try hard and be nice. The more we will think that we deserve a place in heaven because we are nice people.

The Apostle Peter knew that he could never spend too much time talking about who Jesus is and what he has done to save us. He was convinced that there was nothing more important for people to know. He preached a God who was unique, a God who became man and lived with us, a God who did everything for our salvation. He was convinced that constant review of these things was the right thing to do.

God grant that we not only remember what the Bible says. God grant that we believe it, see its daily value, and gladly promote it against the current of popular opinion.

“Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses” (Proverbs 27:6).

Who is truly your friend?

We all look to our friends to support us when we are down, to back us up when we are in trouble, to understand us when no one else does. We want our friends to express their care and concern and build us up with their kind words.

But since genuine love always seeks our good, not necessarily our happiness, sometimes true friends also have to perform the unenviable task of telling us the truth–at least to the best of their ability to tell it. That means that some of the things they say will hurt.

Someone who is less concerned about our welfare but more interested in how we can be used isn’t so concerned to tell us the truth. Such people butter us up with nothing but good things to say. And you know why we slather things with butter—it’s only to improve the flavor before we sink our teeth in.

Living with the truth of Proverbs 27:6 requires a loving atmosphere in which we learn to accept such friendly wounds as well as inflict them. In order for such wounds to be truly friendly, they must also be limited to times when we genuinely have someone else’s welfare at heart. Wise King Solomon did not mean to open the door to arbitrary meanness. Other proverbs warn against spouting off every stray thought that happens to come to mind.

This is a practical lesson for life in a Christian congregation. There are likely to be more opinions than people, opinions that are passionately held. We do well to check ourselves as we respond to each other. Every viewpoint is welcome, but not every rebuttal we are tempted to make is suited for a public forum.

And not every contradictory viewpoint, no matter how strongly expressed, should be taken as a personal attack. We are friends, teammates, working toward a common goal. If a friend perceives some weakness in our thinking, his wound can be trusted, even if we still don’t share his point of view.

As Christians, we have already learned how to adopt this way of looking at the deepest wounds that come from our dearest friend—our God and Savior. His points of view are always correct, but they don’t always coincide with our own. God’s law has some painful things to say to me.

But he never says them just to hurt us. His wounds ultimately aim to heal. They cut less like a “stab in the back” and more like the skilled surgeon carefully removing the cancer.

And our God is no enemy when he multiplies his kisses. His words of love spoken in the form of forgiveness are always sincere, always friendly, and always spoken with our best interest in mind.

Isaiah 42:3 “A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.”

We live in a throw-away society, people say. We drink from disposable cups, shave with disposable razors, dress our children in disposable diapers, even purchase things we don’t need with our disposable income.

This “throw-away” mindset also affects the way we treat things which were never intended to be disposable. If your toaster stops working, do you bring it in for repair? Or do you throw it out and get a new one? When I lived with my grandmother, she still “darned” the holes in my socks. Most of our children probably know that word only as a mild expletive.

Does our “throw-away” attitude also affect the way in which we treat human beings? I am not here thinking chiefly about the great societal problems of our day, though the thought certainly has application to neglect of the starving, murder of the unborn, or the extermination of the suffering and terminally ill. Many people are willing to dispose of human life as easily as a bag of Doritos. “Munch all you want…we’ll make more.”

But what about our concern for the spiritual care of the spiritually bruised and broken? Across America, almost six out of ten church members are absent on Sunday morning. Some will be back next week, but how many are nursing some sort of spiritual wound? How many are languishing at home while the heartbeat of faith steadily declines towards total heart failure?

Are such people as disposable as used plastic silverware–they served their purpose once, but there is a big box full of new ones which don’t require so much work to make them useful again? Or do we, like Jesus, take seriously the work of spiritual repair?

Jesus described his own ministry as coming to “seek and to save what was lost” (Luke 19:10). While he sent his disciples to find them throughout the world, he himself spent the majority of his time working among the “lost sheep of Israel,” the people who, at least in name, were already “God’s people.”

The prophet Isaiah described Jesus’ approach to ministry this way: “a bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out” (Isaiah 42:3, see Matthew 12:20). Jesus didn’t cut off the penitent tax collector or prostitute. He didn’t tolerate or overlook their sins, either. He steadily applied the strong medicine of law and gospel to heal their spiritual wounds. He persistently preached sin and grace to fan faith into flame again.

When our faith is at a low ebb, Jesus does not dispose of us as so much broken junk. “Whoever comes to me, I will never drive away,” he promises (John 6:37). He is in this with us for the long haul. His word is full of the fuel that will light our fire again.

But that word needs to be applied to work. If our own fires are burning brightly, let’s share some of the warmth and light with the smoldering wicks the Lord has placed within our reach.