Matthew 13:33 “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough.”

Sometimes things don’t look good for the Christian Church today.

We are all familiar with statistics that tell us society is becoming more and more ungodly–no need to repeat the litany of gloom here. Christian denominations are declining in membership. Cults and false religions of various kinds grow like weeds.

Are we losing the battle? Sometimes we may think so. But Jesus’ parable of the yeast assures us that that is not the case.

God’s kingdom works like yeast. Years ago our family received a bread maker as a gift. For a time, fresh home-made bread was a regular part of our diet.

Yeast was not the largest ingredient that went into the machine before we made our bread. In fact, it is one of the smallest ingredients. Yet, without it, our bread-maker would have been a brick-maker.

Even a little yeast has the ability to influence and change much larger amounts of flour, water and oil that surround it. It spreads and infiltrates and permeates until everything has been changed. The dough rises, the bread is soft, and we enjoy a nourishing treat.

Jesus says that God’s kingdom works like that yeast. As it works in this world, it may not be the biggest “ingredient.” There have always been more unbelievers than believers. Outwardly the Christian Church may look rather small and weak.

But our Savior’s kingdom is always at work. Its influence is always being felt. The Gospel message spreads that kingdom throughout the world. Its promise of God’s love and forgiveness captures one heart after another. It changes those same hearts. It moves them to spread the message along to others.

Hearts captured by the gospel make the presence of God’s Kingdom known in other ways. They love the people around them. They love each other. They show kindness to their neighbors. They do what they can to ease the suffering of others. They defend, protect, and support those less fortunate than themselves. In love they may do so even for those more fortunate than themselves.

Not everyone touched by such love will listen to the gospel and be saved. But even in such cases, God’s Kingdom has made its presence known. Like the yeast which spreads throughout the whole lump of dough, God’s kingdom has changed things. And where the Gospel has been at work, we trust that at least some will be joining God’s Kingdom, too.

Jesus does not intend this “kingdom of heaven” to bring about a heaven on earth. Sometimes churches give up the message of forgiveness which leads to the real heaven and eternal life. In its place they substitute a mission which merely seeks to make people happier. Then the yeast-like power of God’s kingdom to bring lasting spiritual change is lost.

But wherever the Gospel is being shared, the “kingdom of heaven” is coming to the hearts of people, and the kingdom of heaven always makes a difference. Things don’t look so bad for the Church after all.

Psalm 139:7-10 “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?  If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.  If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.”

You don’t have to be all by yourself to feel alone. If you have ever been at a party or other social event at which you didn’t know one other person, you know you can feel alone even surrounded by people. If you have ever had to take an unpopular position because it was the right thing to do, and it seemed as though everyone else was against you, you know what it is to feel alone. Joseph, Elijah, the Apostle Paul, Martin Luther — all of them knew what it was like to feel alone. Faithful confessors of God’s word often feel alone still today.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said, “He who is alone with his sin is utterly alone.” When we cover up our sins, when we try to carry our guilt by ourselves, that is a lonely and miserable place to be. Hell is going to be a crowded place,  Jesus tells us.  In spite of the many souls there, every one of them will feel very much alone. Misery may love company, but no one experiencing that misery will be able to enjoy the company of those who share their fate. Thank God Jesus spared us from that loneliness when he endured it in our place. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” he cried out from the cross. He suffered the separation our sin created (Isaiah 59:2) so that all we might know is God’s presence.

King David knew all kinds of loneliness throughout his life. He lived life alone on the run from King Saul. He made the lonely stand for what was right when his own men urged him to kill Saul. He lived as a lonely stranger in a foreign land among the Philistines. He lived long, lonely months with the burden of his guilt for committing adultery with Bathsheba and killing Uriah the Hittite.

But David also came to know that the believer is never truly alone. Even if, in our guilt, we tried to get away from God, like Adam and Eve hiding behind the trees in the garden of Eden, there is no place that we can escape from his presence. David takes us every direction in Psalm 139. From the edge of the universe above us to the deepest trenches at the bottom of the ocean, from the points of the compass where the sun rises in the east or sets on the far side of the Mediterranean Sea in the west, God is there.

David had also come to appreciate God’s promise to be there. Far from a frightening thing, David describes God’s promise to be with us as a tender and comforting truth. “Even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.” I can’t help but think of Don Matzat’s comparison of the Christian life to the relationship between a little boy and his father sitting in the waiting room while the car is being repaired. In order to get his little boy to behave, the father could give him a list of rules to keep, and then scold him when he breaks them. Or he could say to his son, “Sit right next to me here and hold my hand.” As long as the little boy is holding his father’s hand, he is staying out of trouble. And as long as he is holding his father’s hand, he gets to enjoy an intimate relationship with his father. Christian sanctification is more like the second scenario. As long as we stay close to our heavenly Father in faith, he is holding our hand and enabling us to keep out of trouble.

Likewise, in his promise to be with us, there is our heavenly Father, holding our hand and keeping us safe. He isn’t somewhere far across the room keeping an eye on us while we fend for ourselves. He has taken a place right beside us. His right hand, his strong hand, has taken ours in a grip that won’t let go. That ever-present hand guides us through trouble. It carries us when we are tired. It pulls us to safety when we are in danger. It constantly assures us our Father cares about us and wants to be close to us. As long as God is with us and holding us with his hands, we can be sure that we are safe.

Our Lord’s “omnipresence” is not abstract theology. It is part of God’s warm and living relationship with his people. Sometimes we may feel lonely, even in a crowd. But we are never alone. God is with us, holding us with his hands, and letting us know that we are always safe with him.

Daniel 6:7, 10 “The king should issue an edict and enforce the decree that anyone who prays to any god or human being during the next thirty days, except to you, Your Majesty, shall be thrown into the lion’s den… Now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to God, just as he had done before.”

“The numbers don’t lie.”

Many people in our highly technical and mathematical world trust the numbers. Before they believe something, they want to see how it “all adds up.” They prefer careers in accounting or computer science or engineering because they don’t have to deal with gray areas or ever-changing human beings. “The numbers don’t lie.”

It is true that 10 is always 10, and 6 is always 6, and Π is always Π (though the decimal point may run on forever). There is something reassuring about knowing that such numbers or “integers” don’t lead a double life, with a secret identity or hidden set of alternate values waiting to surprise us.

If only people were the same! Our word to describe such “number-like” people who are always the same, whether in public or in private, whether with family and close friends or people they have never met, comes from the word “integer.” We call it “integrity.”

Integrity also happens to be a Christian virtue. God desires that we live our lives with a certain sameness. Language which is inappropriate to use around church is inappropriate at home, work, or play. Behaviors which are unacceptable if someone else is watching are unacceptable even if I am the only person in the room.

We all fall short of true integrity. All of us lead something of a double life because of the struggle between the Christian spirit and the sinful nature within us. The world in which we live places constant pressure upon us to give up our integrity–to confess one thing on Sunday and live something else the rest of the week.

No one in the Bible knew this better than Daniel. Daniel had not achieved perfect Christian integrity, but his life was a model of integrity to those around whom he lived. He didn’t try to live by two sets of standards–following one set for his home and worship life, and another set for his career in the halls of governmental power. Even in the presence of pagans, the standards by which Daniel lived remained the same.

Such integrity does not always win one friends, however. “They could find no corruption in him, because he was trustworthy and neither corrupt nor negligent. Finally these men said, ‘We will never find any basis for charges against Daniel unless it has something to do with the law of his God’” (Daniel 6:4-5).

You remember how the story continues. Daniel’s jealous co-workers convinced the king to pass a law. For one month no one was to pray to any God except to King Darius himself. But Daniel was a man of integrity, and law or no law, “Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before” (Daniel 6:10).

For his integrity Daniel received a free night’s accommodations in the lions’ den. It was a small token to show how much our world appreciates Christian integrity.

The point here is not to discourage us from striving for integrity. Remember, God vindicated Daniel by rescuing him from the lions.

The point is to remind us that striving for such life will always require a stiff, stout battle. Often it becomes a test of our faith.

But faith in the God who delivers his people not only from the mouths of lions, but also from the wages of sin and the jaws of hell is the sure way to win this battle. He gave his one and only Son to forgive our divided hearts, our two-faced behaviors, our duplicitous lives. He gives us his Spirit to replace our sinful actions and attractions with “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control” (Galatians 5:22-23). “I can do all things through him who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:13).

And we can trust that, like the numbers, our God doesn’t lie.

Luke 10:16 “He who listens to you listens to me; he who rejects you rejects me; but he who rejects me rejects him who sent me.”

What did Jesus look like? Some portraits depict him as a light-haired, fair-skinned European. Some depict him as a curly-haired, dark-skinned African. Others reflect other nationalities. Jesus’ Jewish heritage suggests we can dismiss some of the artists portrayals. The truth is we don’t know what Jesus looked like.

What did Jesus sound like? Was he a bass or a tenor? Was his voice soothing or would it cut glass? It is hard for us to say what his voice sounded like to people 2000 years ago. Today it sounds just like the person who is speaking his words to you at any given moment.

Isn’t that what Jesus was telling the disciples when he said, “He who listens to you listens to me…”? As long as they were saying what Jesus’ said, those who heard them were listening to Jesus. The disciples’ words were not their own. They spoke with the full authority of Jesus. The Lord was speaking through them.

That truth delivers an urgent warning. We ignore those who are speaking God’s word to us at our peril. Though the person may be no more important, no less sinful, than we are (whether pastor, family member, or friend), it may as well be Jesus himself standing in front of us when that person is speaking God’s word. Rejecting those who bring us God’s word is the same as rejecting Jesus and his Father. Those who reject the Savior’s words now will themselves be rejected on the Last Day.

But what great comfort to know that Jesus is still speaking to us today! We have more than vague impressions in our hearts that some interpret to be God communicating with them. We have the clear, powerful, certain words of Jesus speaking to us when they are preached from the pulpit, or taught in Bible class, or shared between Christian friends. We still have Jesus’ own word that he has forgiven our sins and guaranteed us heaven. When we are listening to such precious promises, Jesus speaks today.

And what a privilege that sometimes Jesus sounds just like you and me, because we speak for him, too. May his promise to speak through us give us confidence to speak for him often.

Matthew 15:8 “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.”

A famous churchman once said, “You may consider immoral thoughts in the heart sins if you like. I don’t.”

That is a surprising statement when you consider the space Jesus himself devoted to just this topic in the Sermon on the Mount. “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not murder’…..But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment” (Matthew 5:21-22). “You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:27-28).  Jesus certainly considered immoral thoughts sins against God.

Indeed, the Lord is often more concerned with what is going on inside our hearts than he is with our outward actions.  He quoted the words the Lord spoke through Isaiah, “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me” (Isaiah 29:13).  The people were doing the right thing on the outside. They were showing up to worship God as he commanded. They said the right things. But their hearts were not right, and that makes all the difference as far as God is concerned. His own conclusion? “They worship me in vain.”

The Lord did not overlook sins of thought and attitude when he gave the ten commandments, either. The last commandments forbid us to covet any person or anything that we cannot have.  Our neighbor’s husband or wife, for example, is off limits to us. To take them as our own is committing adultery. Our neighbor’s possessions can be had only if we get them honestly by working for them, paying for them or receiving them as a gift. Anything else is stealing. When we continue to want what God has said we can’t have, or what God has not given us the ability to afford, then we are guilty of coveting.

Even if we never act on our desires to do or have what God has made off limits, sinful desires reveal a heart opposed to God. They deny that God is lovingly and graciously providing the very best for us at all times. They suggest that we, God’s creatures, know what is good for us better than the Creator. Worst of all, they make an idol of what we want, one that competes in our hearts with our love for the Lord.

This, of course, is one of the hardest sins to avoid. No one but God himself can see it. Everything around us invites us to do it. Every commercial you or I see on television, every advertisement we see on billboards or in magazines, tries to convince us we need something more. Every new gadget our neighbor purchases suggests to us that we need one, too, even though there must be a limit to how much junk we stockpile for ourselves somewhere.

Jesus took just the opposite view about having things. “You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9). Jesus had it all, but he gave it all up just to help us and just to please our heavenly Father. Jesus’ great desire was to express his love and make others rich.

And the riches which Jesus freely gives–forgiveness of sins, friendship with God, a home in heaven–are riches our hearts may desire as much as they want.

Philippians 4:19 “My God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.”

What do the following Biblical accounts have in common?

The Feeding of the 5000 (Matthew 14:13-21).

The Trip from the Red Sea to Sinai (Exodus 15:22-19:2).

Gideon’s Defeat of the Midianites (Judges 6-7).

Israel’s Defeat of Moab (2 Kings 3).

Peter Walking on Water (Matthew 14:22-32).

The Missionary Journeys of the Apostle Paul (Acts 13ff).

The Conquest of the Promised Land (The book of Joshua).

In each case, the Lord gave an assignment to one or more of his people. In each case the Lord did not reveal up front how he was going to provide the tools necessary for them to carry out what he asked. In each case these people began their tasks with nothing more than God’s commands and God’s promises. In each case the Lord made it possible for his people to do what he asked of them.

These were not merely special cases from the distant past. To some degree all of life works this way. Who of us would have ventured to have children if we had waited until we could guarantee we had all the resources necessary to raise them? Who of us would venture to buy a home, or a car for that matter, if we had to wait until we knew we had all the money up front?

We cannot guarantee that we will have the resources necessary to carry out the most basic responsibilities of life tomorrow. In an instant the Lord could snatch away business, home, wealth, or health. Just ask Job.

Nor does Jesus expect us to have the future all worked for years in advance. “So do not worry saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them….Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.” There is a reason that Jesus teaches us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.” He wants us to trust him to provide for us each day. His way of providing for our needs may change tomorrow.

In all of this our Savior is teaching us trust. He is teaching us not to rely upon our own resources. He wants us to depend on him instead. Ultimately, he is the one responsible for taking care of us enabling us to serve him. He taught Israel the same lesson in the wilderness: “He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord” (Deut. 8:3).

These lessons also have application to our church life. When Jesus commissioned 12 apostles, and about 500 other followers, to go out and preach the gospel to all creation, they weren’t much more than a single congregation of believers with the whole world as their mission field. They weren’t spectacularly wealthy. They weren’t the world’s most naturally gifted people.

But they had the Lord’s command. “Make disciples of all nations.” And they had his promises. “I am with you always.” “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you.” “I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles.”

We are the heirs of those commands and promises. Our congregations enjoy many opportunities to share the message of salvation–so many that our resources seem overtaxed. Manpower and money are perennially in short supply. We find it difficult to keep up the ministry that we have already made our concern.

However, our greatest resource is not to be found in our own money or manpower. It is in the Savior who promised to be with us always and empower us with the Holy Spirit. It is his mission we carry on. He will not let his work fail.

“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen” (Ephesians 3:20).

2 Corinthians 2:15-16 For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing.  To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life. And who is equal to such a task?

 

An internet add I once received asked the question, “Do you have O.O.O.?” The accompanying picture showed a woman with her nose wrinkled. Curious, I clicked on the link (always a dangerous thing to do on the internet) and it revealed an article on “Offensive Office Odor,” or “O. O. O.” It offered advice for dealing with people who introduced, among other things, smelly foods, smelly feet, too much perfume, body odor, or cigarette smoke into the office.

As Christians, we introduce a distinctive odor wherever we go, according to Paul. We smell like Jesus Christ, metaphorically speaking. “We are to God the aroma of Christ among those are being saved and those who are perishing.” Objectively, that is a good smell, a fragrance, an aroma because it is the smell of the gospel. Jesus dying love, the forgiveness of sins, the certainty of the resurrection and life eternal all go into “Eau de Jesus.”

But to some, even these things give off an offensive smell. “To the one we are the smell of death; to the other the fragrance of life.” Ever had a mouse or a rat die in your walls or in your attic?  Few things smell worse than a rotting corpse. Death smells nasty. For some, when we preach the gospel, the message is so repulsive, so horrible to them, that it more than offends them. It kills them. It is the smell of death. But it is also a smell that leads to their death when they will not receive God’s grace and believe in Jesus. The Greek more literally reads here, “we are the smell of death leading to death.”

This is not a rare experience for anyone who has ever been involved with evangelism. I don’t remember anyone dropping my Bible information class over some disagreement about morals. But I have lost them when they couldn’t swallow ideas like “Jesus is the only way to be saved,” or “God is working powerfully in baptism to save us.” Those teachings are saturated with the sweet smell of the gospel! As good as forgiveness ought to sound, it means admitting that we have something that needs to be forgiven. We aren’t good people. And people don’t want to hear that.

Because of that, we who smell like Jesus face a temptation. When our faithful sharing of God’s word is rejected, we fear odor. We would like to cover up the aroma of Christ, or at least tone it down a little bit. We may even tell ourselves that it is for a good cause. Maybe we can win these people yet.

But there is no perfume, no deodorant, no air freshener that can cover up the full impact of the gospel without, at the same time, preventing us from being the fragrance of life. To do this, to cover up some unpopular or unlovely aspect of God’s word, will not spare more people from spiritual death. It will only make sure that we spare no one from spiritual death.

To be confessional Lutherans means to let the sweet smell of the gospel invade the senses of the people we serve and the people we seek with its full potency, and leave the outcome to God. But this is hard. As Paul says, “Who is equal to such a task?”

We find our courage when we are breathing deeply of the aroma of grace and forgiveness ourselves. And who has the privilege of spending time in that atmosphere more than we do? We need to look no farther than the absolution, the sermon, and the Lord’s Supper each Sunday for the grace and love that saves and strengthens us, too. We have our Bibles, access to e-mail devotions, Meditations, devotional articles in Forward in Christ magazine, and mid-week Bible class opportunities to soak in the gospel’s sweet smell all through the week.

They say that nothing makes a more lasting and powerful impact upon our minds and memories than things that we smell. What a fitting picture for the gospel of Christ that saves us.

Psalm 119:50 “Your promise preserves my life.”

As an occasional “shade-tree” mechanic, I know how frustrating it can be to work on cars. Sometimes even simple things like changing oil can raise your blood pressure if the oil filter is hard to reach or screwed on too tight to remove.

Car troubles can make you frustrated and angry. Maybe you would even like to get rid of the vehicle. But I would never actually consider blowing it up or tearing the engine to pieces just because it gave me trouble. My car is too valuable for that.

Do we value human life so much? Some children aren’t wanted by their parents. Some elderly people become hard to care for as their strength fails.  Killing them seems like a strange solution to their problems.  We fix the car.  Shouldn’t we at least try to do the same for people?

Society’s cavalier attitude toward human life is not something new. Almost 1800 years ago a Greek historian wrote about the Jews: “The Jews are a strange people. They raise all their children.” The attitude of the Jews toward the value of their children’s lives stood in stark contrast to the Greeks and Romans, who took their unwanted babies to the town dump and left them there to be eaten by wild animals or collected by slave traders.

The list of things people value more than human life is endless: personal freedom, expensive tennis shoes, someone else’s car or jewelry, a neighboring country’s land or oil wells, the affection of someone else’s spouse, even our own wounded pride. Maybe it shouldn’t surprise us that the car gets better treatment.

God’s word places a different value on human life. Nothing we have on earth can compare to a single life. “The ransom for a life is costly, no payment is ever enough,” the psalmist tells us (49:8).

God values each one of us so much that he paid the ultimate price to take possession of our lives. “For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect” (1 Peter 1:18-19).

Of course the day comes when the car can’t be fixed anymore. There is nothing to do but haul it to the junkyard.

The same thing happens to our earthly existence. The time comes when these broken bodies can’t be fixed anymore. But we are not the ones who determine that time. God reserves the right to decide when that day has come. We confess with king David, “My times are in your hands” (Psalm 31:15).

And our Lord doesn’t just haul us off to the junkyard.  Because he values us so much he “brings us safely to his heavenly kingdom” (I Timothy 4:18). Things get better, not worse, when our heavenly Father hauls us home.

Life is God’s gift. He not only first gave it. He redeems it, and he protects it until he has us safe with him.

Colossians 3:13 “Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another.”

Any church concerned about right teaching and holy living easily comes under suspicion of a “better-than-thou” attitude at work. I have assured guests and visitors, “I can tell you from experience that all the members of my church (including its pastor) will have to be saved by grace alone.” A deep concern for the truth of God’s Word doesn’t make us better people.

I need to take no time demonstrating to active Christians that we are all sinful. Every one of us has been hurt by a Christian brother or sister at some time or another. An honest inventory of our own behavior reveals that we have been just as guilty of dishing it out as we have been imposed upon to take it.

This is not “good,” but it is “normal” for a Christian congregation. That we can expect this kind of behavior teaches us something about the way we relate to each other. The Apostle Paul encourages us in Colossians, “Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another” (3:13).

You and I have no choice but to belong to an imperfect congregation. There is no congregation of perfect saints on earth (at least not apart from the forgiveness we receive from Jesus). If we were to find one, our own presence there would spoil it.

That means that, all our lives, all our fellow members will be afflicted with the sickness of sin. That does not mean God wants us to accept sin. He doesn’t. Nor do the sins that others commit against us give us an excuse to “pick up all our marbles and go home.” Rather, it is an opportunity to “bear with each other.” It calls for us to practice our love for each other even more fervently. We need to apply the antidote to the sickness—gently and lovingly confronting sin and applying large doses of forgiveness.

Consider how we might treat a sick friend or child. His or her sickness may impose upon us in some way. It may be so debilitating that this friend or child was unable to do anything kind or good for me. But is this a reason to abandon our dear one? Isn’t it at such times that our love and help are needed most of all? Wouldn’t we be moved to try to take care of the person in time of weakness?

When others have sinned, especially when they have sinned against us, they need our love most of all. “Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another” is the Apostle Paul’s prescription.

Don’t forget that this is the same medicine God has graciously given to you. “Forgive as the Lord forgave you” is how verse 13 ends. God isn’t happy with our sins, but he hasn’t turned his back on us either. He has patiently born with us time and time again. For as many times as we have hurt him, he has come to us to lead us to repent, to forgive us, and to win us for himself.

May God’s grace to us make our neighbor’s shortcomings a bit more bearable.