2 Corinthians 13:14 “May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”

Paul is not merely repeating himself when he adds, “and the love of God” to “the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.” While this love is just as unearned, just as unconditional as his grace, the emphasis here is upon the deep and infinite concern and affection God has for you.

Maybe that is not difficult for you to believe right now. But times are certainly coming that will challenge that faith. A number of years ago I received a phone call from a man who was part of a Bible study group in another church. He was desperate for some assurance that God loved him. It seems that whenever this Bible study group got together, the other members were always celebrating the latest successes with which God had blessed their lives: promotions, raises, engagements, new children, new homes, etc. It seemed that they were marching triumphantly from one victory to another. This gentleman, on the other hand, had a life that seemed to be falling apart. He lost his job and couldn’t find another. His wife left him. He was behind on his bills. “Why doesn’t God love me?” he wanted to know. Or at least, how could he find some assurance that God did love him?

Did God ever say he didn’t love this man? Did he say he loved him less than anyone else? Where is that written? No, God never said that he loved this man any less. But sometimes we get the idea in our heads that God must love us less when it looks like he blesses the lives of other people more. If you haven’t experienced this already, there will be plenty of times when you will be tempted to think that God has turned his back on you because you aren’t as popular, or healthy, or rich, or talented, or happy as someone else.

Do you know that there is nowhere in the Bible where it says we should judge how much God loves us by how happy we feel? The only thing you need to know to know that God loves you is his promise. And we have that promise right here! “…the love of God… be with you all.”

God goes with you with his love. This is the love of the God who reveals himself to us as our true Father in heaven. As a human Father I know love sometimes required me to make my children unhappy. It would have been easier, but I would have loved my children less, if I let them get away with their naughtiness. I needed to make them unhappy when they sinned. It would be easier, but I would love my children less, if I solved all their problems for them immediately. They learned and they grew when they had to live with some things for a while. They also came to appreciate my help more. The very things that make us unhappy are often our heavenly Father’s tools to correct us and draw us closer to himself in a relationship of love.

Of course, that doesn’t mean his love is all hard-nosed and practical. He loves you passionately as well. Do you suppose that he isn’t moved when you are suffering in some way? Remember his words to Moses at the burning bush, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them…” Do you suppose that God is anything less than genuinely joyful to have you belong to him? Then remember the forgiving Father in Jesus’ parable of the lost son: “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.”

Whether or not you think you can see it in your lives, God loves you all the time. Whether or not you can feel it inside, the love of God is with you, because that is what he promises.

2 Corinthians 13:14 “May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”

What God has done for us, he does not because we’ve got it coming. He owes us nothing. Everything he does for us is a gift. That is “grace.” Even the concept of “gift” we hold in our heads may not fully do justice to the word “grace.” At Christmas, on our birthdays, at celebrations of milestones such as weddings or graduations, we expect to receive a gift. Maybe we don’t think of these as a direct payment for something we have done. And yet, isn’t there sometimes a sense that we are owed a gift because of the occasion?  They may not be a direct payment, but they feel like an entitlement. After all, haven’t we been good this year? Didn’t we achieve something by getting to this special day?

God’s grace is not that sort of a gift. It’s not for special occasions. It isn’t based on long standing customs or traditions. He in no way connects it to our good behavior, like the parent threatening to take away the birthday presents when Junior is being naughty. I would compare it to a random act of kindness, but there isn’t anything random about it. He knows exactly whom he is loving and forgiving. He knows how little we deserve it. Still he loves us, still he is gracious to us, anyway. Our Lord wants you to be sure he is with you with his grace.

Why should you need such a reminder? The fact that we can remember how the word is defined doesn’t mean that we will live with a day to day awareness of the good things it brings us. Even we can be tempted to try to have God on our own terms. We would like to stand before God on our own record. I must admit that I can hardly keep from wincing when I hear otherwise Lutheran Christians protest, “But I am a good person!” They may be decent citizens from the world’s point of view, but do any of us really think that the all-seeing, all-knowing God is going to buy such a claim from any one of us?

Over 900 years ago St. Anselm warned people who took pride in their own shallow morality, “You have not yet considered how great your sin is.” We do well to take that warning to heart. We face constant propaganda for a more positive view of ourselves. The advertising industry keeps pumping us full of messages that say, “You deserve more!” “You deserve better!” Dozens of talk show hosts reaffirm the myth of basic human goodness. If it were true, you wouldn’t need the Lord Jesus to promise you his grace.

Many would say that I am terrible for denying you such a sense of personal pride. But that approach to God and to life is a terrible merry-go-round to get on, and hard to get off. There is no peace there, only a life that is relentlessly driven by the quest to be good enough. There is no freedom there, only slavery to a set of expectations that is always beyond our reach, if we are honest. There is no confidence that God loves you there, only a nagging fear that you are falling further behind on his demands.

I want to spare you of this. I want you to know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Look at how Jesus gave! Was there ever a person, whether heartless Pharisee or public sinner, for whom Jesus ever wanted anything but the best and the kindest? Was there ever anyone he didn’t love with his whole heart? “While we were still sinners,” Paul assures us, “Christ died for us!” He fully intends to show that kind of favor to you for the rest of your life— no matter what you do! You cannot commit a sin so serious that he would no longer be willing to forgive it, or even wanting to forgive it. God has set his heart on you. In the life and death of Jesus that heart showed that no cost was too great to make you his own. Today he wants you to know that that same grace, that same gift, that same favor belongs to you without end.

John 14:27 “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”

It’s an interesting word Jesus chooses to tell us we have his peace: “Peace I leave with you.” It communicates not only the transfer of peace to us from Jesus, but also says that he is going away. This is peace he is leaving behind for us because he himself is leaving this world, at least in a way that we can see him anymore.

You know that path of his departure. Just hours after he said these words he let himself be betrayed even though he knew about the plot against him. He let himself be arrested though he was guilty of no crime. He did not defend himself against false accusations, or unprovoked beatings and mocking. He did not object to his death sentence or his crucifixion. And after he suffered the full penalty for the sins of the world, not a single one of which was his own, he commended his spirit to his Father and gave up his life. Three days later he rose again, and over the next forty days he made visits to those who believed in him, but this world was no longer the place where he lived. He had left, and on the fortieth day he demonstrated that by his Ascension into heaven.

Thus, Jesus has not only left us peace. His leaving, his way home through all he suffered for us, is our peace. It’s the reason we know that God isn’t some cold, celestial banker about to foreclose on our bodies and souls, taking away our spiritual life and freedom for all that we have failed to pay or do. Jesus has already paid off all we owed. We are forgiven. It’s the way we know that God loves us, really loves us, so much that there is no sacrifice too big for him to make if it will rescue us. No sin is left on our record, no strain is left in our relationship with God. All that’s left is peace, the peace that Jesus gives.

Perhaps it goes without saying that Jesus doesn’t give peace “as the world gives.” It’s not a peace where everyone gets a long because they have hammered out a compromise and a truce, or because people are forced to get along by the iron fist of heartless government, or because grandma’s here and everyone is on their best behavior. It’s not the peace that ends war, crime, or family squabbles.

It’s the peace we have in Jesus in spite of all that stuff. When the people we love die, we still mourn, but not like those who have no hope. When our relationships come apart, we may have plenty of heartburn and indigestion over it. But we still have a solid relationship with Jesus, and that makes it possible for us to keep going forward. When we mess up because of our own selfishness, or mean streak, or immaturity, we may feel genuine shame and guilt. But we can confess our sin and know that it is all forgiven. Jesus has left us his peace.

So do not let your hearts be troubled. Until Jesus returns he leaves us his peace to settle our hearts.

John 14:25-26 “All this I have spoken while still with you. But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.”

Sometimes I’m a little dense, and my head is a little too thick to get what God is trying to say to me in his word. I understand all the words in a passage, but not what the whole group of them taken together consecutively is trying to say. I could tell you the details of a Bible story, but at the end of it I’m not sure what the point is supposed to be.

Didn’t the Twelve Disciples often need that kind of help? Jesus teaches them, “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat…” And later on his disciples have to come to him and say, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field.” They heard the story. They just didn’t get it. Now, Jesus promises, they will have the Holy Spirit to teach them what things mean and what they need to know.

Sometimes we may understand what the words say. We just don’t want to accept it. Here, too, the Holy Spirit is our teacher. Remember the disciples on the Road to Emmaus, or in the upper room the night of Jesus’ resurrection? They have all the evidence that Jesus has risen. But in the upper room, even with Jesus standing there in front of them, they are struggling to believe it. So Luke tells us, “Then he opened up their minds so they could understand the Scriptures.” There are things I believe from the Scriptures, not because they seem so right to me, or I like them, or my experience confirms them, but because that’s what the Bible says. Jesus gives us his Spirit, not just to break through hard heads, but hard hearts as well. The Counselor, the Holy Spirit, “will teach you all things.”

Then Jesus promises, “… and will remind you of everything I have said to you.” How do we know Jesus? How do we know what he did and what he teaches thousands of years later? Isn’t it because these men in the room with him that night wrote it down and taught it to others? But how could they remember the details of three years of Jesus’ ministry, and keep it all straight, so that today we have four gospels, four separate biographies of Jesus’ life in our Bibles, that fit together like this? It wasn’t plagiarism. It wasn’t the exceptionally gifted memories of the writers. It was the Holy Spirit, the Counselor, who reminded them of everything Jesus said to them.

You and I won’t be writing new books for the Bible anytime soon. But the Spirit has planted the words of Jesus in our hearts and minds. Maybe some passage has come spilling out of your mouth at an opportune time, something you didn’t even know you knew by heart, and you wondered, “Where did that come from?” You are comforting someone who just lost a loved one, and you find yourself reciting the words of Psalm 23, “The Lord is my Shepherd,” not just a verse but the whole thing, or Jesus words to Martha before he raised Lazarus from the dead, “I am the resurrection and the life.”

Maybe you are beating yourself up, struggling with your own guilt, finding it hard to believe that God can forgive you this time. Suddenly you find yourself thinking about Luke 15, and Jesus’ parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son. You remember Jesus saying that there is more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent. You think of that anxious Father looking down that road, waiting for his wayward son to come home, and then wrapping his son up in huge, forgiving embrace even before he can get out his words of apology. You recall Jesus’ invitation, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” You are comforted and convinced that you are forgiven.

So do not let your hearts be troubled if you and I can’t see Jesus and go to him visibly now. He has sent you his Holy Spirit, the Counselor, who teaches you and reminds you of everything that Jesus said.

Acts 5:31 “God exalted him to his own right hand as Prince and Savior, so that he might give repentance and forgiveness of sins to Israel.”

Political candidates campaign on promises they make to the voters. Once elected, many of them seem to lose interest in keeping their promises to the people who voted them in. Jesus is installed at God’s right hand in heaven as rightful ruler of the universe. Does our Prince and Savior have anything to offer us today?

Peter’s words answer that question. Today Jesus is at God’s right hand so that he can give us his gifts. The first of those gifts is “repentance.” Jesus doesn’t spread the Christian faith by adhering to the old marketing principle, “The customer is always right.” I have been a part of paid market research focus groups in the past. Companies interviewed me and others to learn our opinions. Then they tried to tailor their products to our tastes. They assumed the customer must be right, and they changed to suit us.

No, Jesus does something that seems counter-intuitive if you want to develop a following. He starts by telling you your ideas are all wrong. You and I have developed tastes and preferences that need to change. Our behavior and treatment of others is inappropriate. Our ideas about right, and wrong, and often God himself are backwards. He calls us to repent. He calls me to recognize that I am selfish, prideful, bossy, manipulative, dishonest, two-faced, ungrateful, lazy, lustful, greedy, impatient, and discontented. He calls me to stop defending it and rationalizing it, to feel genuine sorrow and regret for it.

But he does more than call us to repent. He gives repentance as a gift from God’s right hand in heaven. He exposes our sinfully wrong-minded notions in his word. He accompanies his word with his Spirit to convict us. He directs the events of our lives so that we are forced to come face to face with our true nature, to know ourselves in ways we never, ever wanted to know ourselves. He gives repentance to his people as a gift.

“Some gift,” we might think. But it is a gift, a gift of inestimable value. We will pay a doctor a great deal of money to uncover the physical deficiencies that are causing us pain and threatening our lives. Only then can we get the medicine right that puts us on the path to health again. How much more valuable is the diagnosis that uncovers the spiritual deficiencies that have condemned our souls!

Then we are ready to receive the other gift he gives from God’s right hand, “the forgiveness of sins.” However we have offended God, however we have hurt each other, however we have twisted God’s good gifts like sex or money and made them sick and grotesque, he does not hold against us. He does not say that it was okay. It wasn’t. But he does not hold them against us. He does not let our past determine how he will treat us in the future. Every day, every moment, we start off with a clean slate–as though we were as pure and as holy as an angel in heaven.

This, too, is more than an offer. It is a gift he gives–the gift he thought so valuable that he suffered death by crucifixion to make it happen. It’s more than a neat idea, a happy concept. Jesus’ sacrifice forms the real historical basis for God to forgive our sins.

Now from his Father’s right hand he distributes it to us. He sends it around the world as he spreads his word through preachers and laymen alike. He washes us in it at our baptisms. He feeds it to us in his supper. His Spirit fans the flames of this good news so that it grows in our hearts and catches on in the hearts of more and more people. All this he does with the power and authority he enjoys from God’s right hand in heaven. Truly it is a gift to us that Jesus occupies such a place!

Acts 5:31 “God exalted him to his own right hand as Prince and Savior.”

After a team wins the Superbowl, where does the Most Valuable Player from the winning team get to go? Cue the music for When You Wish Upon a Star.  “I’m going to Disney World,” right? When a college or professional sports team wins a championship, there is usually a trip to the White House involved, too. Some place where you can enjoy a little R and R, a place of honor in the spotlight–those are the right places for the victors.

If you have worked your way to the top of your field, if you have proven yourself the best person to lead in your area of expertise, what do you get? A corner office? A chair in the boardroom? Again, those are the right places for those who have distinguished themselves in their careers.

If you have redeemed the entire world from their sin, if you have drained all the fear and all the power out of death, if you sacrificed your life to do so but then took it back again, where is the right place for you? Of course, only one person has ever been able to pull off a feat like that. And there is only one appropriate place for him to be– at God’s right hand in heaven.

That’s where we find the one we call our “Savior.” That title–Savior–isn’t just a badge of honor. It is a term of endearment. It says such wonderful things about him. Before I need to know anything else about him, I need to know that his unfathomable love for me led him to rescue me from hell and save me for all eternity.

The Apostle Peter, the man who said this about Jesus, often referred to him as “Rabbi, teacher,” while he was on earth. And Jesus was that. He still is. He has much to teach us about life and love, and God and our future. But we do not follow him primarily as the wise sage or guru who shows us some superior philosophical system of living. He is our Savior.

The crowds of Jesus’ day sought him out as a Compassionate Healer, a miracle-working troubleshooter who could make sickness go away, settle the weather, and feed their empty stomachs. And Jesus still has the power to make our earthly existence a little less painful. We still pray for his merciful intrusion into our physical needs. We pray for health. We pray for rain. We pray for enough money to cover the bills and put food on the table, and rightly so.

But for us, Jesus is not mainly the distribution manager of heaven’s warehouses. He is our Savior. When you come to understand how utterly helpless you are to make amends for all your sins; when you come to realize how spiritually poor and penniless you are to pay for their guilt; when you come to see how relentlessly death is pursuing you, is there anything else you want him to be but your Savior– the one who rescues you from the eternal doom from which you cannot rescue yourself?

There is no higher pedestal on which our Savior could be placed than God’s right hand in heaven. There is no one who deserves it more. There is no one we could possibly prefer to rule our world.

Acts 5:31 “God exalted him to his own right hand as Prince and Savior.”

No Christian doubts that Jesus is royalty, royalty of a sort that far surpasses all the nobility in all the world.

But Peter’s understanding of the term “Prince” in his day does not include some of the notions that word may suggest to us nearly 2000 years later. The stress is not on making and enforcing of laws. That Jesus does this is, of course, true. But that is not his main concern with us. When we Christians see Jesus mainly as heavenly law enforcement, we wind up with all kinds of distortions in our relationship to him and our service to him. We feel less cared for and more watched. We experience less peace and more fear. We serve less freely, less joyfully, and more driven. A big, threatening, otherworldly cop tapping his billy club in his hand is not the picture of Jesus Peter wants us to see as we look to God’s right hand.

Nor Peter does not choose the term “Prince” to suggest that Jesus is something less than the King. He is not junior royalty, royalty in training, something less than the Ruler of heaven and earth. Many times we would be happy to demote Jesus to that kind of figure head position. Then we feel free to take issue with him on some pet desire of ours or another. I have heard otherwise sober Christians challenge a direct quote from Christ when they didn’t want to give up some selfish practice or let go of some cherished misbelief. It’s as though we would presume to be Jesus’ teachers, instead of his students; to explain to him how things really work and what is really right.

No, Peter’s description of Jesus as Prince wants to bring to mind another function of royalty that has been mostly forgotten in our time. In medieval times people believed that God had created three estates on earth: the clergy to pray, the nobility to fight and defend, and the peasants to produce food. The idea that the nobility had the responsibility to fight for and protect the people they ruled was not unique to that time, but stretches at least as far back as the Kings and Judges of Israel. Every year King David went to war to protect his people against attackers.

It is in this sense that Jesus is our “Prince,” a hero or champion who will fight to defend and protect his people. He didn’t leave us in the struggle with sin alone. He didn’t even give us a part in overcoming the debt created by our guilt. He took the whole battle on himself when he took responsibility for our all our sin and let it kill him in our place.

He didn’t sit back and watch the futility with which we attack death. The whole human race puts their collective heads together. They gather all their technology and medical know-how, and what do we accomplish? We drive death back a few months here, a couple of years there. Over the last ten years, the life expectancy for an average American has grown from 76 and a half years to just shy of 78 years. Most recently they say we have even lost some ground. When he rose from the dead, Jesus didn’t merely extend our life expectancy. He destroyed death altogether. Now the life expectancy of the average Christian is infinity, because our Prince defeated our enemy and gives us life that never ends.

Can you think of a better place to see Jesus as our Princely Protector than at the right hand of God’s power, where he has all the weapons he needs to continue to defend our faith? With Jesus at God’s right hand in heaven, we can see the Prince who is fighting on our side.

Psalm 67:5-7 “May the peoples praise you, O God; may all the peoples praise you. Then the land will yield its harvest, and God our God will bless us. God will bless us, and all the ends of the earth will fear him.”

Do you like farming, or gardening? If you do, you look forward to a harvest. You expect a harvest. It is why you started this whole process in the first place. But the harvest is the one part of the process we don’t directly control. We can choose good seed. We can plant at the proper time. We can water and weed and fertilize. But after that we wait. Like Jesus said in the parable, “A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain–first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.”

Jesus wasn’t interested in farming so much, and neither is this psalm. Our harvest is a harvest of souls. We can plant the message of God’s grace in people’s minds and hearts. We can pray for God’s grace to give them faith. After that it is up to God to give the harvest.

Though we don’t control the harvest, that doesn’t mean we don’t expect one. Notice how this part of the prayer reads: “Then the land will yield its harvest.” More souls saved, a bigger family of faith, more and more children of the heavenly Father is God’s will for our mission work, not just ours. When the Lord himself teaches us to pray for something, we expect him to give us what we ask.

Those souls, those people, those family members in faith are the reward for our work. They are the content of the promise that “God, our God, will bless us.” My sins were forgiven, and heaven became my own, over a half a century ago when God claimed me as a child by faith through baptism. That was a settled issue long before I ever thought to tell anyone else about the Jesus who has done so much for me.

But since that time through the preaching of God’s grace the Lord has given a harvest. He has grown the family of faith around me. I am sure that my houses haven’t loved me, especially the way they have treated me. My last home spit sewage all around under the crawl space and made me crawl on my hands and knees underneath to clean it up.

My cars don’t love me, either. When I get old, and weak, and move into a nursing home someday, my cars won’t care about me enough to come and see me. They won’t call me and see how I am doing. They will just sit in the driveway and ignore me, or worse yet, abandon me to drive someone else around town.

But the people, the people who have become my brothers and sisters by faith, show their love for me every day by supporting my ministry, and working alongside me in God’s mission. They are my friends in the ups and downs of everyday life. Someday they, and other members of the family I have never met, may care enough about me to come and see me when I am sick, or old and weak. And all of us are going to share an eternal home with Jesus where we will love each other perfectly without end.

The people are God’s harvest. They are God’s blessing to me. They are an answer to our prayers.

Psalm 67:1-4 “May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine upon us, that your ways may be known on earth, your salvation among all nations. May the peoples praise you, O God; may all the peoples praise you. May the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you rule the peoples justly and guide the nations of the earth.”

The psalmist is seeking a very specific application of God’s grace when he asks God to be gracious to us. Here we are, able to cope with life now, and on the last day we will rise to live forever, because we have this gracious God who loves and saves us. Can we keep this secret to ourselves? We aren’t in a competition with the rest of humanity. Letting them in on the secret takes nothing away from us. How can we let them be lost?

So we pray like a missionary. We pray for God’s grace and blessing so that his ways–his loving, saving way of dealing with us– can be known everywhere, among all nations. We pray for God’s grace because this task is bigger than us. There are billions of people to reach. We seem so few. We get distracted by all the other things we think are important. But is anything more important than the eternal fate of souls Jesus purchased with his own blood? We pray like a missionary when we pray for God’s grace to reach all the nations.

Once that word is out, we don’t want it to fall to the ground with no effect. We pray some more. We pray for God’s praises to come from the nations. “May the peoples praise you, O God; may all the peoples praise you.”

Do you see the implication that is sitting between God’s salvation becoming known among all the nations, and all the peoples praising this same God? You don’t praise God for something you don’t believe in. You don’t praise a God whom you don’t believe in. Praying for the peoples to praise God assumes that the message of grace has given them a living faith.

Faith and praise are the responses that fit God’s saving grace. I suppose that it is possible to force words of praise from people without faith, but is that really praise at all? Maybe you remember the character Max from the movie The Sound of Music. He is the family friend who helped the Von Trapp family escape the Nazis. After Austria falls to Germany, the whole nation is expected to take up the greeting “Heil Hitler!” The true converts do it with gusto, but not Max. He weakly raises his hand to say it, and the words barely stumble out of his mouth. He has no real praise for his new dictator.

Jesus does not conquer the nations with a military machine. He does not force the peoples into subjection. He wins them with his grace. He overwhelms them with his love. Every word of praise, then, oozes with sincerity and joy.

And why shouldn’t it? Why shouldn’t the praises be sincere and come straight from a heart of faith? “…for you rule the people’s justly and guide the nations of the earth.” Jesus’ brand of justice has no hint of graft or corruption. We sometimes call our elected officials “public servants,” but Jesus truly is. He rules and leads as the one who made himself our servant. Everything he does is about us–our forgiveness, our salvation, our life, our eternity. We pray like a missionary, then, when we pray that the peoples will see it, and believe it, and then God’s praises will come from the nations.