Proverbs 4:13 “Hold on to instruction, do not let it go; guard it well, for it is your life.”

Solomon would not give us this warning if he did not know how easy for us it is to let instruction from God’s word slip away. When we have had his word for a long time it is easy to take it for granted. Over time we begin to forget that its call to repentance isn’t only for the people “out there.” It is calling you and me to repentance every day. We grow weary of studying the word, weary of hearing it. Our interest wanes, our grip on its content loosens, our hands become slack, and eventually it slips away.

As you hear the word, be on your guard so that you don’t let it go! Don’t lug it around like it is only so much baggage, and your arms ache to set it down. Don’t let it go! Embrace it like a dear friend! Hold it like the one great love of your life! Grip it like the action hero clinging to the last shreds of some rope, realizing that if he lets go a hundred foot drop and hungry alligators wait for him below.

If we let go of God’s word, there is no guarantee we will get it back again. Martin Luther once warned: “Buy while the market is at your door; gather in the harvest while there is sunshine and fair weather; make use of God’s word and grace while it is there! For you should know that God’s word and grace is like a passing shower of rain which does not return where it has once been.” If we are not diligent about learning that word and teaching it to the next generation today, we have let our guard down, and it could be lost to ourselves, our children, and grandchildren who follow forever.

Holding on means only blessing. What greater blessing can we have than life itself? Sometimes when people are are passionate about some interest, or when they really love their job, they say, “It’s my life.” “Football is my life.” “Building houses is my life.” “Raising my family is my life.”

For the believer, God’s word deserves to be just such a treasure: “God’s word is my life.”

But Solomon means much more than that God’s word is a favorite hobby. It really is our life! You and I would have no spiritual existence, no spiritual life, no relationship with God, no faith in Jesus, no forgiveness of sins, no promise of heaven without the instruction of God’s word. God’s word has breathed life into these spiritual corpses. God’s word has created a living faith in these stony hearts. In the word we eat the bread of life. In it we drink the living waters by which Jesus promises us forgiveness and grants us the Spirit who sustain our life of faith in this world. Apart from his word, it is only a matter of time before faith fades and finally fails.

There is only one textbook for the kind of instruction Solomon has in mind in this proverb. It is God’s own word in the Bible. Hold on to it for dear life!

Luke 17:3 “If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him.”

No part of the Christian life is harder than the part Jesus describes here. First, he asks us to rebuke sin when we see it. Do I have the moral authority? After all, I have been guilty of the same things at some time. But Jesus doesn’t want us to rebuke sin because we are better. He is not condoning a better-than-thou attitude. We rebuke sin because we love the person. Only when our rebuke comes from love is it likely to be accepted.

What if we lose our relationship with those we rebuke? That is a real possibility. But then let’s not pretend we are keeping our mouth shut because we love them too much. That kind of love isn’t love for the others. It’s only a love for what we might lose, a relationship we enjoy.  That amounts to a love for myself. Jesus’ words remain, “If your brother sins, rebuke him.”

As hard as it can be to rebuke sin, forgiveness can be even harder. When someone hurts us, we get mad. We get bitter. Our sense of justice kicks into overdrive. “That’s not fair.” “That isn’t right.” “What did I ever do to deserve this?” When someone hurts us more than once, it may be more than we can stand. “That’s it. I’m through. See if I ever talk to him again.”

To understand what a horrible sin it is to be unforgiving, it helps to review what horrible things unforgiveness does. Look at the damage it causes. How many marriages haven’t been ripped apart because a husband, or wife, or both refuse to forgive the little irritations or the inconsiderate behavior of their companion? They keep dredging the same old hurts and resentments up over and over again. How many families don’t live in perpetual bickering and complaining because brothers and sisters and in-laws turn every slight or criticism into a personal attack for which they refuse to forgive? How many churches don’t work under a cloud of gloom, tension, and suspicion when brothers and sisters in Christ won’t confront each other in love, and forgive from the heart. Perhaps they imagine their pain somehow makes holding a grudge defensible. Isn’t unforgiveness a miserable way to live? It makes us sour, sullen, short-tempered and sharp-tongued. Our sinful flesh might find some kind of twisted pleasure in it, but unforgiveness is a sin which wreaks havoc on our human relationships as well as our relationship with God.

On the other hand, is there any blessing like forgiveness? That God should make you or me a little ambassador of his grace, who can forgive my friend when he sins, because Jesus forgives him when he sins, may be the most joyful service he has given us. That others should love me so much that they will forgive me even when I have been a dunderhead, or just plain mean–because Jesus loves me so much that he forgives me, and even suffered the punishment that I deserved in my place–is one of the sweetest gifts we will know this side of heaven. When you and I are offering each other forgiveness, in our own little way we are sharing the gospel with each other. What a blessing if we should have the opportunity to assure someone, “Jesus forgives you and so do I.”

Hebrews 10:11-12 “Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God.”

Where did the idea behind the Old Testament temple sacrifices come from, these sacrifices the priests of Israel offered? These were commanded by God himself! In the daily worship at the temple God established several kinds of sacrifices for different situations or occassions, but there was one thing they all had in common. They had to be repeated over and over again. None of them was a lasting solution for the problem of sin.

If that is true of the repeated sacrifices which God himself had commanded, what does that say about the ongoing sacrifices of service, or time, or money that people keep on offering to God, day after day after day? If even the repeated sacrifices, which God himself has invented, can’t take away sins, can all the kindnesses of a little nun do any better? Can all the charitable donations of the world’s richest billionaires? Can all the endless peacemaking of the world’s greatest humanitarians? Can all their combined busyness do more than the sacrifices prescribed by God himself?

The answer is obvious. “No, they can’t.” Sometimes Christians have been accused of a “graceless imperialism” when we say that only believers in Jesus will go to heaven. Some people view such claims as a claim that we are better than everyone else in every other religion. But is that what we are really saying? If even the Old Testament sacrifices of God’s chosen people couldn’t make them holy, if our own good deeds and our own charity, repeated day after day after day, can’t attain forgiveness, will those done by anyone else be able to? The answer must be “No.”

Only one thing can take away sins. Only one thing can make people holy. “But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God.” If we want to be saints, if we want to be holy people, the place to look is not to ourselves. It’s not a matter of trying harder. The place to look is to Jesus and to his perfect sacrifice. Jesus’ sacrifice does make us holy. It has taken away sins, and we have good reasons to be sure.

First, there is the matter of how many times Jesus offered himself as our sacrifice. He “offered for all time one sacrifice for sins.” His sacrifice was an instant and complete success. “If it aint broke, don’t fix it,” people say. Since Jesus’ sacrifice paid for sin and repaired our relationship with God on the first try, there was no need for him to keep on offering sacrifices to fix it.

We can be all the more certain of this because Jesus has returned home. He “sat down at the right hand of God” in heaven. When Jesus came to earth, he wasn’t coming to stay. He had a job to do, and now his job is done. His work here is finished, and he didn’t stick around as though he would continue to offer sacrfices for sin. He has returned home, not for retirement, but to do his other important work: ruling and protecting us, and preparing our place with him there.

We often hear, “Nobody’s perfect.” Generally we are inclined to agree. If somebody claimed to be perfect, we would think that they are guilty of the height of arrogance. But this is not entirely true. In Jesus, everybody’s perfect. In Jesus you are perfect because by one sacrifice Jesus made us perfect forever. This is how God sees you now. Christians aren’t better than others, but Jesus’ sacrifice has made them saints.

Proverbs 25:6-7 “Do not exalt yourself in the king’s presence, and do not claim a place among great men; it is better for him to say to you, “Come up here,” than for him to humiliate you before a nobleman.”

We all would like to claim a place among the great men. George Banks says it clearly in the movie Mary Poppins. He laments, “A man has dreams of walking with giants…” after losing his job as a bank officer.

The humble Christian knows his place. Instead of prideful self-promotion, he is content with his position. But that humble contentment is a difficult thing to practice. It’s difficult because everything around us screams at us not to be content. Every television commercial we see, whether good or bad, tries to convince us that we don’t have enough, that life could be better, that we deserve more than we have. And we tend to agree.

Its difficult because humility is something that you can’t work on by focusing on it. Pride can be pointed out and confronted. But humility is practically unaware of itself. It doesn’t want to be noticed. It’s not the sort of thing you achieve by resolving, “This year I’m going to be humble,” and then checking yourself periodically to make sure you are. If a humble person becomes truly aware of his humility, it is almost impossible to resist taking a certain pride in becoming so humble.

Someone once said, “A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.” Proud hearts don’t acknowledge God above, not sincerely. If they come to him at all, they come to him with their hands full of their own good works, their own mystical experiences, their own superior beliefs, to impress him. Pride leads us to exalt ourselves in the presence of The King of Kings. But God doesn’t have anything to offer us if our hands are already full. He certainly isn’t impressed with what we have to bring. The only proper way for me to approach him is as a beggar. The humble Christian knows that this is his place, and he is content with his position.

A humble position is not a bad place to be. There is no place to go but up. The humble Christian knows that when he is in his place, he is also in a position to be honored.

That’s not to say that humility is an absolute guarantee of earthly honor. A proverb is not the same thing as a promise. Solomon says it is better for the king to say, “Come up here.” He doesn’t say that it always happens that way. We know from experience that sometimes the wrong people get all the attention. But if humility has truly taught us our place, and if we are content with our position in life, that won’t matter. We will be happy with the status and the things God has decided to give us.

And we’ll know that when we are humble before the Lord, we are in a position in which God does promise to honor us. “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up,” the apostle James reminds us. There is nothing more humbling than admitting, “I have sinned and I need to be saved.” Then we are coming before God with empty hands, begging him to forgive us.

God lifts us up. Like the king in Proverbs he says to us, “Come up here.” “Come up here. My Son Jesus Christ has traded his life for yours. He lifted you out of your sins and set you free.” “Come up here. You’re one of my children now, a child of the Great King, a prince or princess in the Kingdom of God.” “Come up here. Your home and your citizenship are in heaven.” “Come up here. I have given you an honor that nothing can surpass, a position that no one can take away, a place by my side, where you will know my eternal care.”

There is no higher position than to be one of God’s humble little children.

Luke 16:9 “I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.”

Jesus tells us two things to consider about the future as we use worldly wealth. The first is  this: the day comes when it is gone. Jesus doesn’t say “If it is gone.” He says “When it is gone.”

We all know this is true. Not only do we know “You can’t take it with you.” So often it doesn’t even last until we are ready to leave. None of our possessions, money, hobbies, investments, titles, or offices have truly lasting value. That car you were so proud to be seen in just a few ears ago suddenly has the water pump, alternator, and transmission all go at once, and the trim on the outside is falling off. The home that was your dream house needs new shingles and paint, but the greater concern are the cracks starting to appear in the foundation. The doctor tells you they could operate, but this is a problem you probably have to live with. All the worldly wealth we throw at our problems can’t keep up with them. Some day the money is gone, too. By and large, our investments in this world and this life are an exercise in futility.

There is one investment that has lasting value. The second thing about the future to consider is that the friends we make in Christ, the people we lead into the family of faith, will some day welcome us “into eternal dwellings.” The investment of our worldly wealth we make into spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ to others is something that we can enjoy forever in heaven.

In other words, the money you put into driving through rush hour traffic Monday through Friday, and the time you put into your job through the week, gives you a little cash that isn’t going to last. But the money and time you put into driving yourselves and your children to worship and to Sunday School, and the time you put into telling them about Jesus, has benefits that last for all eternity. The money you put into mortgage payments, and the time you put into decorating and maintaining your home, may keep you safe and comfortable for a few decades–if your company doesn’t transfer you somewhere else sooner. But the money you invest in world missions, and the time you give for your church at home, make it possible for hundreds, or even thousands of people to share eternal mansions with you where there is no more danger, no more pain, and no more tears.

The gospel is forever. Forgiveness is never used up. The cross will never become obsolete. Consider what the future holds if you want to invest your Savior’s gift of wealth for returns that never end.

Ephesians 4:17 “So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking.”

Ordinarily I don’t like to dwell  upon the sins of the world around us when I preach or teach. They aren’t here to be confronted. It’s more important that we hear what God’s word has to say about us. But in order to help the Ephesian Christians better understand themselves, the Apostle Paul began by describing the way of life of the non-Christian Gentiles around them.

The basis for their problem can be found in their way of thinking. Paul tells us that they live “in the futility of their thinking.” The problem of living the wrong way never starts with the things that people do. It goes back to the way they think and believe. It is a matter of the heart and mind.

Paul calls the Gentile way of thinking, the unbeliever’s way of thinking, “futile.” It is empty, worthless, and backwards. Those things which are truly valuable are eternal and spiritual–faith and forgiveness, God and heaven, worship and prayer. Yet the unbeliever values these things least of all. Instead, he gives the highest place in his life to those things which are merely material, only earthly. Jesus says of food, and drink, and clothes, “The pagans run after all these things.” The unbelieving often value most  those things which aren’t even necessary for earthly life, things which are here and gone, things which serve no one but themselves–merely pleasure, merely recreation, merely luxury. Some of these may have some small legitimate place in life, but in the long run obtaining them is only meaningless, vanity, a chasing after the wind, as the writer of Ecclesiastes says. Thinking which enthrones earthly pleasure and ignores God is futile.

The Ephesian Christians knew that unbelieving way of thinking and living well. It was their former way of life, and they still carried it with them in their old self, the sinful nature. The old self hadn’t changed. It was still full of deceitful desires. It still desired all those sinful pleasures which promise more than they can ever deliver. No matter how long you and I have been Christians, we have that old self, too. Every honest believer must admit that he struggles with him every day.

But we don’t have to live under the same cloud of darkness as the rest of the world. That is not because you and I are so smart. It is because God has been so gracious. He has shown us we are more than talented animals that can taste and touch and hear and smell and see. We are more than consumers of what life has to offer, and we do not belong to just ourselves.

God has shown us we are responsible, moral human beings he created for himself. And though we have rebelled against him with our sin, no less than the unbelieving Gentiles, he has paid an aweful price to cancel the guilt of our sin and purchase us for himself once again. God’s one and only Son has sacrificed his life in place of ours, taking our futile thinking and futile living upon himself, and making his perfect life of love our own. He did this so that he might present us to his Father without any sin, pure and holy. He set us free from the darkness and power of sin.

Since God has brought us to repentance and faith, he has replaced our futile thinking with a new outlook on life. The Greek word for repentance simply means to change your thinking. God changes our minds about sin and leads us to find our sinful desires and actions as disgusting and repulsive as he does.

Then he takes a hold of our hearts and minds through the power of his word,  especially through his words of promise and forgiveness in the gospel. Every time we go to worship, every time we sing a hymn, every time we listen to Christian music, every time we meditate on the word, every time some Christian piece of art leads us to ponder and believe in God’s forgiving love, God’s power is present to change our minds and make us new in faith and life.

Change is never easy. God’s daily call for us to change in repentance and faith is by far the hardest of all. But he has given us his gospel to get our thinking straight, and rescue us from the futility of the faithless way of life.

Matthew 26:27-28 “Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, saying, ‘Drink from it all of you. This is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.’”

Do you own a collection of old family videos on VHS? Do you have videos of family events stored on DVD, or thumb drives, or some other digital format? We had a camcorder for a number of years, but I didn’t remember to bring it along as often as I should. And I found that I didn’t like watching life’s major events through a viewfinder. I would rather see things happen live. We rarely watched the tapes we have made of our family anyway. I never even watched my wedding video.

The idea of reliving some of those times, however, hasn’t lost its appeal. When I was growing up my dad used to drag out the slides of family vacations once a year or so, and he never had to twist our arms to get us to watch them.

Slides and videos don’t actually recreate our happy past, though. What’s done is done. But sometimes they do extend the enjoyment we get from life’s milestones, or favorite vacations, or best performances. And they make it possible to share them with friends or grandparents who weren’t there to see it when it happened.

There were no video tapes running or cameras flashing on Golgotha on Good Friday. Christ died for sins once for all. What’s done is done. We can’t relive, or rather Jesus won’t relive, the central event of the Christian faith, and for that we can be thankful.

But in the body and blood of his Supper our Savior does extend our enjoyment of the blessings that flow from his crucifixion and death. This is more than just a video replay of happy feelings. Jesus calls it his “blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” This is a covenant, a testament, a promise from him. Jesus does more than take our minds back to Golgotha in memory. Under the bread and wine he has contained the real forgiveness of our sins that his genuine body and blood bring forward from the cross to us. For those precious moments before his altar we can smell and taste and feel the unconditional love of God, no less present than it was when he spilled his blood two thousand years ago.

Sin occupies entirely too much of our time and attention. When we think we are having a good day, we need to look no farther than our thought life to realize how constant this companion has been.

Here and there God’s spoken Word breaks into this enduring affliction with its promise of grace. But in the Lord’s Supper God’s forgiving love blessedly lingers and loiters on our lips and mouth, and we have time to savor the grace that makes us his own.

For me, one of the highlights of attending a pastors’ conference is singing a communion hymn. At home I’m usually caught up in the distribution on Sundays, making sure I don’t drop a wafer, helping communicants get their cups out of the tray without spilling. Rarely do I get to sing the truths that make this Supper so special. Martin Luther once said, “This sacrament is the gospel.” May we find it to be so, too.

1 Peter 5:6 “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that me may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

I’m not aware if you ever knew,

There’s an author I like, his name Dr. Seuss.

And of all of his tales I have come to adore,

There has never been one that I ever liked more,

Than, I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew,

The story about a young carefree chap who,

One day was attacked by his very first trouble,

Events that would burst that poor carefree man’s bubble.

A quail bit his tail, a rock stubbed his toe,

A Skritz stung him high, a Skrink bit him low.

And in all of this trouble he joined someone who

Was off on a journey to Solla Sollew

On the banks of the beautiful river Wah-hoo,

Where they never have troubles, at least very few…

Spoiler Alert! The mythical city of Solla Sollew didn’t provide our young hero relief from his troubles, either. But Peter reminds us we know someone who can, and does.

Do we recognize the kind of temptation involved with our inevitable suffering? None of us likes it. Perhaps no experience more tempts us to doubt God’s goodness. If the pain becomes severe enough, we might even be tempted to call God evil. Certainly he must know better than this! Or it can make us arrogant. Obviously we are wiser than the Lord, because we would never allow something like this to go on!

God’s strategy for coping with trouble must include humble trust. And the Lord provides us with the loving promises that create that trust. “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” Is that hard to believe? Does a God who loves us let our classmates ridicule us? Does a God who cares about us let pain linger on, and on, and on? Does a kind and compassionate God let our hearts be broken when we lose someone we care about, or when someone we love rejects us? Does a loving God leave us hanging in endless, agonizing suspense about our future?

The answer to those questions is that, even in all such experiences, God still cares for you. And underlining that promise, driving it home and making it real, is one reason that the preaching of the cross is always practical for life everyday. Remember, we are not the only ones who know about suffering. Jesus suffered, too. Would Jesus suffer for our sins on the cross if God didn’t care for you? Would the Lord graciously forgive all our sins if he didn’t care for you? Would our Lord have bothered to call us to faith and give us his word if he didn’t care for you? Even the worry and the anxiety and the cares are things he invites us to take off our shoulders, and give to him so that he can bear them for us. Humble trust in him will never be disappointed. His mighty hand has all the strength needed to lift us up at just the time he knows is right.

Galatians 2:19-20 “For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

The law, even God’s law, can’t give us the power to live for God. It can’t give us the power to stop sinning. It doesn’t give or build faith. Instead of leading us to trust God, it makes us fear his punishment. It makes us realize that we are powerless to do what God wants on our own. The better we know the law, the more we know we can’t keep it.

That’s why using God’s law to stop committing sin is an exercise in frustration if we don’t have something else. Sometimes people feel you can use it like I use my daily planner. Every day I make a list of the things I hope to accomplish. I check them off as I do them. When they are all checked off, I know I have accomplished my goal.

You can’t do the same thing with the law of God. God requires more than the external acts. You can’t check off the items in the ten commandments and feel that you have really kept them. When you know them well, you know they are just as concerned about your attitudes and motivations as they are about the acts themselves. The more I know the commandments, the more ways I can see that I am not keeping them. My check list never gets shorter. It only grows. The law keeps accusing me of failure. It shows me what to do, but it can’t give me the power to do it.

That is why Paul can say “through the law I died to the law.” God is accomplishing something with the law, but it isn’t giving me faith. It isn’t giving me life. It isn’t giving me power to stop sinning. He is showing me I can’t do it myself. He is showing me how much I need him–not only for grace and forgiveness, but also for strength to stop sinning. Only when I have died to the law can I live for God.

So justification by faith–God taking our sins, forgiving them, and declaring us perfect—has as much to offer for day to day living as it does for dealing with our past. Paul continues, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” I have been crucified with Christ. Jesus death on the cross is my death. My sins are gone. But he doesn’t leave me hanging there. I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. When Jesus takes away my sins, he also gives me something wonderful. He puts to death my old, sinful self. He comes and lives in my heart and lives his life through mine. We don’t have the power to do what the law says, but Jesus does. When we say that Jesus makes our own hearts his home, that means more than thinking of him alot or having warm feelings for him. It means Jesus himself actually lives in us, and with his life he gives us power to live a life of love.

Where does this life and power of Christ in us come from? “The life I live in the body, I live by FAITH IN THE SON OF GOD, WHO LOVED ME AND GAVE HIMSELF FOR ME.” We call the life we live as Christians “sanctification.” But this always has its source in our justification. It is a life we have by faith in God’s own Son Jesus Christ, faith that Jesus loves me, faith that Jesus gave himself for me. As I continue to sin and confess it to Jesus, he keeps on loving me and forgiving me. He draws me closer to himself in faith. Faith in God’s grace is the thing that makes his life in us grow, and it fills us more and more with love for God and for each other.