Proverbs 30:4 “Who has gone up to heaven and come down? Who has gathered up the wind in the hollow of his hands? Who has wrapped up the waters in his cloak? Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is his name, and what is the name of his son? Surely you know!”

If you are like most people, you keep a list. You probably don’t have it written down. You keep it in your head…or in your heart. It is the list of the things you intend to ask God when you get to heaven.

Generally speaking, that list does not speak well of our faith, because generally speaking, that list is a list of ways in which we think God got it wrong. If we were running the world, we would do things differently. And just between you and me, we think that our way would make the world a better place.

But before we ask our questions, the Lord has a few for us–questions that might help us think twice about our own list. “Who has gone up to heaven and come down? Who has gathered up the wind in the hollow of his hands? Who has wrapped up the waters in his cloak? Who has established all the ends of the earth?” People make big claims about what they have done and what they can do. Mere mortals running for president will promise that they can fix the economy and get everyone working again. Frankly, even if they were running for dictator or king I would be skeptical of such claims. The economy is bigger than one politician, or even thousands of them, it seems to me.

But controlling the economy is a far smaller thing than making a trip from earth to heaven and back, or controlling the wind and the rain, or determining the size of the earth and then building it! “What is his name, and the name of his son?” the writer asks. “Tell me if you know!” And we do. His name is God, and his Son’s name is Jesus.  The hurricanes and the storms are his playthings. The earth and the universe are a project he put together one week, and he even got it done in time to take a day off that weekend.

It puts us in our place, doesn’t it? Hundreds, thousands, and even millions of us working together can’t get control of one little feature of life on this planet God made–like the economy, or the weather. And we think we are going to lecture the one who designed and developed the vast universe in which we live, as if we think we know something. The only reason things don’t work perfectly all the time, and we aren’t all happily enjoying life in paradise, is our past meddling in God’s business. It rightly makes God furious that we stand before him with our false claims about what we have done or could do with his universe, and question him about the way he runs the show.

But this list of questions isn’t merely, or even mostly, confrontational. It is a reminder of where true help lies. It is an invitation. Fix the world’s problems? I can’t even fix my own! They are so much bigger than I am. No human source of help is any better. Then God asks us to remember his power. As Lutherans, we generally emphasize God’s grace, and rightly so, because that is the emphasis of Jesus’ ministry and that of his apostles. Above all things we need to know that God loves us, that he forgives us, that he is on our side.

But God isn’t a sympathetic weakling. When he hears our prayers, he isn’t like the counselor with lots of questions, lots of patience, and very few suggestions about what to do. He has power to change our circumstances. When he saw our sins, he didn’t pat us on the head and say, “There, there now. It will be okay.” He didn’t give us advice. He used his power to turn himself into a man, to live a perfect life, and to shoulder the responsibility for our sins. After he let himself be killed he walked out of his grave alive and glorified. He saved us. When my life is out of my control (and when isn’t it, really?), he has control of everything from the orbits of the planets and the stars in our galaxy to the orbits of the microscopic electrons in every little atom. “Remember my power,” he tells us. And in doing so he is making it clear he is the one to whom we turn for help.

1 Peter 5:8-9 “Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of suffering.”

Peter’s description of the devil gives us an interesting picture of what we are up against. He uses a word for “enemy” that is not the soldier someone faces in a war. This is a courtroom adversary. I don’t mean to slander the legal profession, but lawyers can be shrewd when they are on the attack in court. They know how to turn a person’s words against himself. That is the kind of craftiness we expect from the devil. If you belong to a Biblically faithful church, then perhaps he tries to make you feel self-righteous and superior. If you have had to fight attempts to change Biblical teaching in your church, he may tempt you to elevate traditions (which may be wholesome in and of themselves) to the level of doctrine. If we realize that we have been falling into a trap of self-righteousness, he may lead us to consider approving behaviors we ought not accept. If we received an upbringing in a pious, godly home with pious, godly discipline, he tries to convince us that we have been deprived in some way. We needlessly missed out on some of the fun, and we have a right to bend God’s commandments. If he can’t turn us against our pious upbringing, he turns us into moralists and legalists, people more concerned with others’ external behavior than our own hearts.

One thing is obvious. He does not have our good in mind. He wants us, he wants all of us, but he doesn’t want to play with us or help us. He wants to satisfy his own appetite for souls. He wants to devour us whole, and he never stops prowling, circling, hunting, and looking. He is never far.

This enemy deserves our sober respect. He will try to turn every trouble into a wedge between us and God. He thrills to see us in misery, because he knows the kind of strain it puts on our faith. When our life is troubled, he is looking for just the opportunity to push us over the edge.

That is why Peter encourages us to be “self-controlled and alert.” We live in a society that places a high value on emotion. The more we “feel” something, the more real it seems to us. Even Christians are tempted to equate faith with a certain emotion or “feeling.”  Sometimes it seems as if people consider it a good thing to be swept away by emotions.

When we deal with the devil, we have to place the emotions aside. Think of the bull fighter in the ring, calmly letting danger pass within inches as he plots his next move. He doesn’t run around the arena in a wild panic. When Satan stirs up trouble for us, we are tempted to panic, to lose our cool, and to do something radical or reactionary. To avoid one evil we thoughtlessly fall into something worse. But if we have gained a sober respect for the enemy, and understand his craftiness, then we will “be self-controlled and alert.”

If it were just us against the devil, there would be little hope for us. But we don’t face the enemy alone. The Lord urges us to stand firm in the faith. Our trust lies in someone else, another lion. “The Lion of the tribe of Judah…has triumphed” (Revelation 5:5). By his death on the cross and resurrection from the tomb Jesus has declawed the devil and broken his teeth. Even when the devil manages to get us to fall into temptation, he enjoys no lasting victory. By the forgiveness of our sins we slip through his paws. God’s grace picks us up, dusts us off, and strengthens our hearts against the next attack that comes our way.

Resist the enemy. Stand firm. But don’t do it alone. Stand firm in the faith, “And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm, and steadfast.”

1 Corinthians 13:13 “Now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

What is the difference that leads Paul to conclude that love is the greatest of these three? It is not that love is the only one that is eternal. Unlike gifts like prophecy and speaking in tongues, gifts which will pass away, Paul asserts that these three remain. They keep on going. They continue.

It is true that when we get to heaven we will see the evidences which support our faith with our own eyes. Faith won’t be based on promises alone. But saving faith is essentially trust in God. It’s not as though we will stop trusting God when we get to heaven. It’s just that our reasons for trusting him will be clearer.

It is also true that heaven will provide us the fulfillment of so many of the hopes to which we cling today. But that does not mean that heaven will be one everlasting monotony which leaves us without anything new to anticipate. Hope remains as God continues to unfold the glories he has prepared for us. Hope remains as the discovery of one new heavenly gift gives way to the discovery of another right behind it, and another one after that. Hope remains as we explore the inexhaustible and unbounded treasures of our eternal home. Like love, hope never fails.

In fact, we might even ask, “How can you top that? How can Paul put love at the very top of the list?” And Paul does not go into detail here. But I don’t believe the Scriptures leave us without an answer, at least in part. There is nothing our Lord wants for us more than that we should be like him. In the perfection of Eden he created us to be like him, in his image. All of world history since the fall into sin has been driven by his desire to bring us back to that state, to recreate his image in us once again. It is why he sent a Savior. It is why he died for our sins. It is why sent his gospel and called us to faith. It is why he will raise us to eternal life.

Faith and hope are tools by which God brings us to this point. They are the means to an end. By them we receive the gifts our Lord wants to give to us. Without them we have nothing.

But nothing is nearer the essence of God himself than love. “God is love,” John writes in his first epistle. To love– to be ever serving, to be ever giving–is to be like God. And to be like God would be the greatest thing of all.

1 Corinthians 13:8 “Love never fails.”

Is that true? Don’t we see love fail? I fail to love all the time. It is unbelievably difficult to resist the impulse to try to bend, twist, and shape the entire universe around me into my own little kingdom, one whose sole purpose is to serve me and make me happy. It seems as though I have been pre-programmed for this. It is a feature of original sin. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that if my own comfort and convenience is the goal of my existence, love is going to suffer. Then people are no longer the objects of my service, the recipients of my kindness. They are little more than a means to an end. They become the objects of my lust, the targets of my greed, the enablers of my laziness, the victims of my anger, the justification for my self-pity. Do we “love” others then? Only in the sense that a famished person loves the steak dinner he is about to devour to settle his hunger. Only in the sense that demons love to control the people they possess. That is hardly the love Paul has in mind. That is sin.

All of this is not the failure of love, however. It is the failure of me. As a redeemed child of God, it is my failure to live in the love that he has shown to me. His love certainly never fails. It was love that led our Lord to leave his heavenly life of luxury and live here like us in a fallen world. It was love that led him to sacrifice food and sleep to serve the suffering souls who sought help for their sickness and disease. It was love that made Jesus the Lamb of sacrifice, who stood in our place, suffered for our sins, delivered us from death, and secured for us life that never ends. His continuing love for you and me has preserved his saving word for us. Love serves us his sacraments, and in this way sends his Spirit into our hearts, so that we believe and receive his forgiveness and know his love. Love makes this all a free and complete gift, so that any response on our part is not a self-interested attempt to purchase what he freely gives. It is truly an expression of thankful love.

So long as God’s children are receiving this grace by faith, he continues to fill them with his love, so that they may love as well. The Apostle John picked up this theme in his first letter. “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God…. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us” (1 John 4:7,12). You and I may fail, but God never does, and neither does his love. Long after the last curtain has fallen on the story of this world, and we have lived through many scenes in the eternal story to follow, God will still love us. His love will still fill us with love for him and for each other.

Truly, then, love never fails.

Psalm 78:”O my people, hear my teaching; listen to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter things hidden from of old—what we have heard and known, what our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from our children; we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord…”

The psalmist says he is teaching parables, things that are hidden. You remember that Jesus often spoke in parables. For believers, they illustrated and explained what God and his work were like.  Unbelievers were left in the dark. To them, Jesus was only speaking in riddles. To them, the truth about God was hidden.

The problem was not with God, or his word, or the way that Jesus explained it. The problem was with the people. The truth about God had been available to people for thousands of years.  But people aren’t born with this information. It has to be taught to them. And people don’t naturally want to hear. They are not inclined to agree. Even when they are convinced it is true, they don’t always accept it.

Is that true of us to a degree? Sometimes we know what God’s word says. But we don’t want it to say that. Instead, as foolish as it might seem, we do things our own way, guided by our feelings or our own twisted reason. Then, after we have made a mess of the situation, and everyone is miserable, we pretend to wonder what went wrong. Even as adults we are like children who very clearly heard mom and dad say, “Don’t play with that! Don’t go in there! Don’t listen to him!” But even after getting hurt, or breaking something, we don’t want to believe it was our own fault. In that sense the psalmist can say these teachings about God are “hidden from of old.”

Still, the psalmist says, we have known these teachings. And isn’t it interesting HOW he says we have known these things? “Our fathers have told us.” There are many things my father told me. He was the one who showed me how to hold a bat and how to throw a ball. He taught me how to bait a hook, and when I got older he told me how to change the oil on my car. I suppose I have learned from him more than I even realize about how to be a husband and father and how to get along in life.

But these are not the things the psalmist means. The one thing a Christian Father has which is really worth sharing with his children is his Savior from sin. It is the word of his God.  Evangelism work is good, and mission work is good, and pastors and teachers and sermons and Bible classes are good. But from the Old Testament to the New the Lord makes it clear that he wants the next generation to hear God’s word from their own fathers. Then they, too, will have this something worth sharing with their children.

Is this the way we are doing it? As we hurry around trying to give our children all the things we never had, the education we never had, the standard of living we never had, do we forget to give them the one thing we did and do have: the message of forgiveness and eternal life in Jesus Christ? Do our own lives and priorities speak louder than our words, and do they betray that the Lord is not really first in our lives, either? Can we, do we, communicate to our children why God’s word and attending church are so important to us?

“We will not hide them from our children,” the psalm writer asserts. But there is more than one way to hide them from our children. Rarely have Christian parents tried to hide their Bibles from their children. They don’t whisper about Jesus behind their children’s backs. More often these saving truths have been buried under an avalanche of material wealth or lost in a sea of secular and social activity. Each of us can now say the grace of God that saves us is something we have known. May we not forget that it is also something worth sharing with our children.

James 4:7-8 “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you.”

The people in the congregations to whom James was writing felt a need to protect their own interests. But their way of going about getting it wasn’t working. The fought and quarreled among each other to get their own way. They were filled with envy for the things that others had, things they couldn’t have themselves. They may have thought they were looking out for themselves, but all their fighting and coveting accomplished was to make them feel miserable.  James had a different solution: “Submit yourselves, then, to God.”

James was telling them that in order to go up, they needed to go down. Real joy and peace would return when they stopped pushing themselves forward. Real joy and peace would return when they got their priorities straight and put themselves, their lives, and their desires, in line behind the Lord. They needed a humble approach to God.

This is what “submit” means when it is used in the Bible. Take your place in line behind someone else. Let someone else be first. It’s not an idea that enjoys much favor today. Every special interest group feels it needs to defend its territory and grab for more, whether democrats or republicans, conservatives or liberals, blacks or whites, males or females, labor or management, employees or ownership, one percenters or chronically poor. People in general view submitting as only a sign of weakness and inferiority. This very old, very Christian, very noble idea of putting others before yourself, of living a life of service, sometimes looks like it is disappearing even inside the Church.

But this humble approach to God, putting yourself in line behind him, getting your priorities straight and putting him first, is basic to receiving his lift for your life. To rise higher we must go lower. When we do, the Lord promises his blessing. “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” Submitting to God turns out to be a wonderful help with temptation. If we try to resist the devil all by ourselves, he has no reason to give in. We can’t stand up to temptation alone. Someone has wisely said of the “lift yourself up by your own bootstraps” approach: “When you try to lift yourself up by your own bootstraps, you either break the bootstraps or strain your back.” But when we are living in submission under God, then this promise is true. When we are in line behind the Lord, he is out in front. And when the Lord is out in front, fighting for us and with us, the devil is overmatched. Resist him, and he will flee.

Another blessing is having the Lord near to us. You can’t see what’s behind you very well. It’s so much easier to see what’s up ahead. When we submit to the Lord, when we get in line behind him, then we can see him near. We can realize the promise, “Come near to God, and he will come near to you.”

People who make the Lord number one in their lives want to get close to him every chance they get. They come to hear him speaking to them in his word. They sing about him and receive his own body and blood in his supper. Submitting to the Lord like this is a wonderful thing, because when we come close to him, he comes close to us. We know better and better each day God’s love in Christ, that he didn’t spare his own son, but gave him up for us all. He did it so that MY sins could be forgiven, and MY place in heaven could be sure. Then the Holy Spirit lives in our hearts by faith. Then we can live a life which is truly uplifted, confident that the Lord is near and with us and helping us every step of the way. Shortly before he died, Moses reminded the people of Israel: “What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the Lord our God is near us whenever we pray to him?” God is near us, listening, answering, blessing when we are under him.

“Submit” may not be a popular idea. But there is no surer way for peace and joy to rise than to find ourselves under God.

Isaiah 44:6 “”This is what the Lord says–Israel’s King and Redeemer, the Lord Almighty:  I am the first and the last; apart from me there is no God.”

Maybe you and I have never tried worshipping something made out of a dead tree or lifeless chunk of marble. But we have dabbled in the search for a better god. Where do we think the solution to a world problem like AIDS is most likely to be found? In the Gospel of a crucified and risen Savior? In a science lab on some university campus? Or in the sessions of a state or national legislature? Where is our ultimate source of security as we prepare ourselves for old-age and retirement? A government Social Security check?  An individual retirement account?  Children who understand the responsibility of caring for their aged parents? Or in the God who assures us that not even a sparrow falls to the ground without him knowing, a God who promises that we are much more important to him than sparrows? Anytime we become discontented with what we have, or how healthy we are, or how we are being treated, you and I are sorely tempted to join in the search for a better god. Certainly he wants us to use the resources he has given us to make things better. But he demands that our trust remain in him, not what he created. He asks us to go to him for help first and not attempt to leave him out of the solution. He expects us to accept his will for our lives, whatever that may be, not set ourselves up as the final judge of what is good for us and what is not. Israel’s idolatry led them right out of a relationship with God. It led them right into famine, war, exile–more problems than they knew how to handle. Our idolatry, hidden as it might be, can do the same. Ultimately it leads to death and hell.

Through Isaiah, the Lord promises there is no one else like our God. In the very names the Lord uses to describe himself, we are reminded of the wonderful care he provides. He says he is Israel’s King. The concept of “king” may not be so clear to us today. The Lord does not mean the powerless figurehead of some weak European nation. Nor are we talking about a Kim Jong Un who lives in senseless luxury while his people starve and die. A king has important responsibilities toward his people. As our king the Lord provides for our defense and protection.  He gives us his own armor: truth, righteousness, the gospel, faith, salvation, and even the Holy Spirit to protect us from Satan’s attack. We became his own children, citizens of his kingdom, when we were baptized. Now God promises we belong to him, and if anyone else tries to get us, they are going to have to fight him for us.

And hasn’t the Lord always been fighting for us?  When you read the Old Testament, you see that he was always fighting to protect his chosen people.  Even when they chose to defect to other gods, he wasn’t satisfied to say, “Goodbye! See you! Have a nice time over there!”  Nor did he wipe them out in his fury. He fought Satan for them. He loved these people and kept dragging them back. He does the same for us. As our King, the Lord is our protector.  He will do whatever it takes to protect our faith, to protect our salvation.  When we are teetering on the edge, when Satan is sinking his claws into us, our King fights for us with his word, with the power and comfort of his Gospel.  You can’t find another God who protects us like our King.  There is no one else like him.

We know his care even better in his role as Redeemer. Nothing distinguishes our God from all the others more than this. Former missionary to Zambia Ernst Wendland used to tell about the sheer terror the Africans in Zambia and Malawi felt toward their native gods. These were not gods they loved and trusted. They were constantly afraid of what their gods might do to them if the people didn’t keep them happy. But our God is our Redeemer. Not only has he done everything for our salvation himself, he has made it clear he doesn’t want us even to attempt paying for it on our own. He loved us enough to give his own life in place of ours. He loved us enough to give us heaven as a free gift. There is no one else who takes care of us like this. There is simply no one else like our God.

1 Peter 2:6 “I am laying in Zion a Cornerstone, chosen and precious, and the person who believes in Him will never be disappointed.”

Our cornerstones tend to be strictly ceremonial parts of the building. They tell us when the building was made, fill a hole in the wall, and maybe hold a few trinkets, but do little more.

A cornerstone in Bible times was an all-important part of the building. It was carefully chosen because all the lines and angles for the rest of the building would be measured from its sides. If you didn’t want a lopsided building, it was important that the cornerstone be cut just so.  The quality and strength of the building often depended upon the choice of cornerstones.

For his spiritual house, God has chosen Jesus Christ himself as the cornerstone. Everything in that house must come into line with what Jesus taught and did.  But not everyone agrees with God’s choice of stones. When God presented ancient Israel with the cornerstone for his spiritual house, they didn’t simply accept it on faith. They tested Jesus out to see whether he met their own standards, and it didn’t take them long to decide that he did not. You know the stories of how they constantly challenged Jesus, resented it when he exposed their self-righteousness, and whined when he ignored their man-made rules. They had been trying to build a spiritual house of their own, but its lines ran in an entirely different direction.

The same thing happens today. Not everyone is interested in being lined up with the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. Some reject him because his moral standards seem too strict.  What goes on in a person’s bedroom or private life shouldn’t be any concern of his they feel. Others find him much too exclusive. “No one comes to the Father except through me,” Jesus told his disciples. That sort of thinking doesn’t wash in a “tolerant” society that thinks all roads lead to heaven.

Hardest to swallow, the assertion that Jesus has done everything for us, that we are saved by faith, is too much for many people to choke down. Inside each of us an Old Adam objects that we are really not that bad. We want to believe that we do have something worth contributing to our salvation. When Martin Luther was accused of making salvation too easy, he pointed out that believing we are saved by faith in Jesus is the hardest thing to do in the world. Every fiber of our natural self fights against it. In the end only a miracle of the Holy Spirit can bring us to accept it.

Many may try to replace God’s cornerstone, but it won’t budge. And everything in God’s house must line up with him. As we are built into its walls, not a single one of us lies outside the lines of Jesus’ life and work. The same way of salvation applies to every single member of God’s spiritual house, the Christian church. The lines we follow from our cornerstone intersect to form a cross, and it is our connection with that cross of Jesus Christ and the forgiveness he won there that make us living stones in God’s spiritual house.

That is what makes this cornerstone which is so precious to God precious to us as well. Peter promises, “the person who believes in him will never be disappointed.”  How many things can you say that about in this life? How many guarantees promise you will never, never, be disappointed? Yet that is the unqualified, absolute, emphatic promise of God. We have complete confidence in everything Jesus has done, said, or promised. When we trust him with our salvation, that trust is never misplaced. We will never be disappointed. When we trust him with our lives, that trust is never misplaced. Perhaps we can’t understand everything he reveals to us. Maybe we won’t always see what he is trying to do with our lives. But he promises that the person who believes in him will never be disappointed, and we can take that promise to the bank.

Mark 5:24 “So Jesus went with him.”

Not so long ago a poll was taken to determine which Bible passage Americans know best.  Do you know which one won?  “God helps those who help themselves.”  The problem, of course, is that this proverb is not found in the Bible.  There may be a proper sense in which the statement can be understood, but the more Scriptural idea is: “God helps those who ask him for help,” or even “God helps those who need his help.” And who doesn’t need his help?

Far too often we want to tough it out, fight through the situation on our own, find our own solutions. All the while Jesus stands ready to help. He is delighted to have us ask.  How many times don’t we wring our hands over something that is simply best taken to the Lord in prayer and left with him?  That’s the solution to crises which come in all shapes and sizes.  We can ask Jesus when nothing less than a miracle will solve the problem. But don’t wait for a problem which needs a miracle.  The solution to your life’s problems, my life’s problems, our nation’s problems, and our church’s problems, starts with asking Jesus.

That’s what Jairus did. His daughter was dying, but he knew what Jesus could do.  Jairus knew that, if Jesus wanted to, he could certainly heal his daughter. This worried father did not hesitate to ask Jesus for help.

“So Jesus went with him.”  What an important thing to note!  That is more than a phrase to move the action of the story along.  When Jesus went with him, Jairus had his answer!  Jesus was not going to see how bad the situation really was, to see whether he could help or not.  Jesus was not leading Jairus and his family on.  He was not going to get to the house and say, “I’m sorry, but I don’t heal little girls who are deathly ill.”  When Jesus went with him, that little girl was as good as healed.

Perhaps we sometimes wonder whether Jesus really is interested in helping us when we ask.  How can we know?  If Jesus weren’t interested in helping us, would he have bothered to spend 33 years on earth loving our neighbor for us, keeping God’s law, putting up with all the attacks on his ministry and his work?  Would he have sacrificed his own life and suffered our hell on the cross, and then not care about those faith shaking things that happen to us, or happily stand aside while we fall from grace?  The Apostle Paul says, “He who did not spare his own Son, but graciously gave him up for us all–how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”  The cross of Jesus Christ, where our sins have been forgiven and eternal life has been given, is as far as we need to look to know he still cares when we ask.  The cross tells us the solution to life’s problems still starts with asking Jesus.

That’s how we know he still goes with us.