Deuteronomy 8:18 “Remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth.”

In the movie Shenandoah, Jimmy Stewart utters a table prayer that goes like this: “Lord, we cleared this land, we plowed it, sowed it, and harvested it. We cooked the harvest. We wouldn’t be here, we wouldn’t be eatin’, if we hadn’t done it all ourselves. We worked dog-boned hard for every crumb and morsel, but we thank you just the same anyway, Lord, for the food we’re about to eat. Amen.”

The Lord knows that such an attitude is easy to fall into. When the Children of Israel were about to enter the promised land, he gave them this warning: “When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you….Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God….You may say to yourself, ‘My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me’” (Deuteronomy 8:10-17).

What’s wrong with thinking we are “self-made men” if we have worked hard to achieve our goals? The very term “self-made” is a contradiction! Can anyone or anything “make” itself? Everything we have and everything we are comes from God.  This is not limited to the bodies we inhabit. There is not a thing we have ever done or accomplished for which we deserve the ultimate credit. Even the talents and abilities which produce such things come from God.

While this truth may confront us for our conceit, it is also a wonderful source of comfort, isn’t it? It assures us we can trust the God who loves us to take care of all our needs. The burden doesn’t fall on our shoulders. Just as he has promises to supply us with the necessities of life, we can be sure he will either give us the ability to obtain those things ourselves, or he will provide them through others or through his miraculous power.

Elijah once learned that lesson. When Israel came under a three-year famine, there was no possible way for Elijah to care for his own needs. What did he do? He trusted the Lord to take care of him. The Lord sent ravens who brought him food every day. Later the widow of Zarephath was able to provide his daily bread when the Lord miraculously multiplied her little supply of oil and flour (1 Kings 17).

Living in a ravine and eating scraps of food, or eating the same meal of bread every day, may not be our idea of living “high on the hog.” But Elijah had all that he needed. Elijah was not wealthy, but God was faithful to his promise.

Jesus repeated these same promises in the Sermon on the Mount. He assured his disciples, “So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matthew 6:31-33).

All these things will be given to you as well. We can trust our loving Father to provide for us and preserve us for as long as he needs us in this world. It is a natural consequence of his saving grace. After all, “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all–how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32).

The One who sacrificed his only Son to redeem us from sin will not fail to take care of every other genuine need we have in this world. He made us. He has every intent to care for the work of his hands.

Acts 17:25 “He himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else.”

To me, having four children doesn’t make for a shockingly large family. It wasn’t so long ago that such a family would have been on the low end of average. To many people, however, the number of people in our little tribe comes as quite a surprise. “Haven’t you figured out where those things come from yet?” we used to hear.

The answer is, “Yes we do. They come from God.”

When we hear of creation, no doubt we think first of the first chapters of Genesis. God spoke the words and new material objects, new phenomena, and new forms of life suddenly burst into existence. But God’s work of creation still has as much to do with why you and I are here today as it has to do with the origin of our world. “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb,” King David confesses in Psalm 139. “I believe that God has made me and every creature, and that he has given me my body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my members; my reason and all my faculties,” we learned to say in the Small Catechism.

In the Bible, creation is the special work of God. The Hebrew language even has a special word for creating which is used only of the creating work which the Lord does. You and I might sometimes think of imaginative ways to rearrange the “stuff” of which our world is made. We refer to people who are gifted at such rearrangements as “creative.”

But only God himself can literally make something out of nothing. Only he has the brilliance to produce something absolutely unique and original. You and I are living examples of his originality, brilliance, and power.

That God is the maker of all things, that some intelligent being is behind this wonderful and complex world of which we are a part, ought to be obvious to everyone. “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from has been made,” the Apostle Paul once wrote to the Romans.

And yet, there is no way of proving God’s creating work to someone who doesn’t want to recognize it. “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible” (Hebrews 11:3). We can point out that evolutionary theory is more the product of naturalistic philosophy than scientific investigation, but those who have not come to trust Jesus or his word may still prefer to believe that they have apes in their family tree.

While others continue to believe that they are the children of chimps, however, we can revel in the reality that we are the children of God. Not only has he made us the very crown of his creation, but he has also created us a second time. He bought us with the blood of his Son. By water and the Word he not only washed away the sins of our old creation. He made us a new creation—people of faith and the Spirit. The Gospel of Jesus Christ has the power to create us all over again, answering the question, “Where do God’s children come from?”

They come from the same place our children do. They come from God.

Isaiah 55:10-11 “As the rain and snow come down from heaven and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”

Water is a fascinating substance. It is one of only a handful of substances that expand when frozen. This means that ice floats when the lake or river freezes, insulating the waters below and keeping them liquid, instead of sinking and destroying all the living things below. Those same expansive properties are the reason water seeping into cracks and freezing can split the concrete in our roads, bridges, and buildings. It has also been called the universal solvent. It dissolves more substances than any other liquid, making it the best of all cleaners. And wherever water goes, whether through the ground or through our bodies, it is carrying valuable minerals chemicals, and nutrients (http://water.usgs.gov/edu/qa-solvent.html).

This is why, when we were in grade school, you could grow a bean in plastic cup with nothing more than a paper towel and some water to moisten it. It is why the Bermuda grass in my lawn has managed to establish itself on the hard rubber expansion joints in my sidewalk, and even, apparently, on the concrete in a corner of my driveway–two places you might not expect to be capable of supporting any life at all. It is why those who are looking for life in other corners of our solar system are so hopeful that they will discover water where they search.

The Lord uses the power of simple, humble water as a picture of the power of his word. Even in the desert it has the power to bring life where apparently none existed before. If water can establish life there, don’t be surprised at the power of God’s word to establish life in even the hardest of human hearts.

God’s word is a powerful tool, then, and sometimes you have to be careful with what your tools can do. The sculptor’s chisel makes it possible for him to break off pieces of stone to create something beautiful. But if he isn’t careful, the chisel may remove more stone than he intends. It may even crack the entire block on which he is working, making it useless. The carpenter’s saw may cut the board to short, or his hammer may bend the nail and split the board instead of fastening it.

The power of God’s word is not like that. It does not fail. “It accomplishes what I desire and achieves the purpose for which I sent it.” We don’t always see it. Sometimes it looks like God’s word was a flop, a failure.

But you know what we don’t see? We often don’t see the effect it may have on a person years after they first heard it. I personally know people on whom it took decades for the word to do its magic.

We often don’t see the collateral effects. Maybe it didn’t convert a person today. But maybe it moved them in directions that were important for someone else to hear and believe. Maybe there were others listening we didn’t realize were listening, and faith came to life in their hearts.

Even when it’s just you or me telling God’s word to another person, don’t forget that there are two people hearing the word. Many evangelists can tell you that they have gotten more out of sharing God’s word with someone than the person listening to them.

God’s word is powerful, and in that power we find an invitation to trust the God who gives it.

Isaiah 55:8-9 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

If God thought and acted the way that I would if I were God, he would have made me a couple of inches taller, a lot more athletic, with a better memory than I have now. I wouldn’t need glasses, wouldn’t have occasional pain in my back and my knees. In fact, I wouldn’t be aging at all. I would be young in body and mature in mind.

That’s a rather self-centered way of looking at things. We can do better than that. If God thought and acted more like us, Ukraine and Russia would not be at war. Neither would Israel and Gaza. There would have been no assassination attempt on former President Trump. Our country wouldn’t be so divided politically and economically and morally. As a species, we would all get along. If God’s thoughts were our thoughts…

Now here’s the problem with all that thinking. We are putting the blame on the wrong set of thoughts and ways. This is the world that we humans have refashioned for ourselves against God’s thoughts and ways. He planned a perfect paradise for us to enjoy. We spoiled it with our fall into sin. We keep making it worse with our selfishness.

It’s true that if we had our way we wouldn’t have to suffer the consequences of the mess we have made. But what good would that do? That would only teach us to be content to be separated and estranged from him in this poor counterfeit paradise we try to construct for ourselves. The way that we think apart from God ruins everything now. Even when we think we are making progress, it eventually leads to death and hell.

Because God is a good Father, he doesn’t go with our ideas. He has a better idea. He lets us feel the consequences of our sinful mess. I should probably visit the doctor or the dentist on a regular basis, whether I am feeling well or not, just to get a check-up. More often, I don’t go until I am feeling some kind of symptoms. There is a pain somewhere that tells me something isn’t right.

People tend not to seek the Lord until they feel some kind of discomfort–an uneasy conscience, a broken relationship, a nagging illness, a personal tragedy. Author C.S. Lewis was fond of saying, “Pain is God’s megaphone.” It makes us aware of sin, a broken relationship with God, and leads us toward repentance. That’s not necessarily because the pain is the result of some specific sin in our lives, though sometimes it might be. Rather, it wakes us up to our brokenness. It sends us looking for God until we hear him speaking in his word.

But here is the real reason his thoughts, his ways, as contained and explained in his word, are better: He is the God who saves. The whole context of this chapter of Isaiah is God’s invitation to the feast of salvation. Even if we have been wicked and are guilty of evil, he invites us to turn to the Lord “and he will have mercy on him,” and “he will freely pardon.” Mercy, pardon, forgiveness freely given–This is the way God thinks. This is the promise God makes when we listen to his word.

This isn’t the way that we naturally think. When someone has done wrong, we want to see them pay. Especially when someone has done something wrong to me, we want to see them pay. We intend to establish blame. We demand justice. Somebody has to take the blame.

That is not the first thing the Lord looks for. He is looking for whom to forgive, not whom to blame. He has already blamed his Son. Jesus paid everything for everyone with his death on the cross. God wants to reconcile with us, not punish us. He wants to be our friend, not our Accuser and Judge. He has made receiving his grace effortless and free.

That’s not how we think. That’s not our way. It’s better, higher than the heavens are above the earth. It’s an invitation to trust, to trust the God who offers such grace in his word.

Romans 7:22-25 “For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God–through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

When Jesus came to rescue us from sin by paying the debt with his life, he was not a team player. He was more of a lone wolf. His disciples all said that they would never leave him the night he was arrested. They were even willing to die with him. But Jesus didn’t want them to stay with him and die with him. He wanted to die alone. This was not a project to which they could contribute. This was not a situation where they could be any help. He, and he alone, could pay for the sins of the world. He is the Savior from sin, the one who rescues us, not the leader of some other worldly special ops unit, not a divine project manager overseeing a team of heaven’s employees. Rescue is something he does by himself.

When we are wrestling with our own sinful flesh, trying to pin down our thoughts and feelings, trying to get a grip on our behaviors and hold our reactions in check, now Jesus is happy to fight side by side with us. He wants us praying for help, growing in his word, resisting the devil, actively putting faith and love into practice. He is the real power in our fight all the way. But we are with him in this war against our own sinful flesh for control of our body and soul.

It’s a long war. Along the way we lose a lot of battles. We will experience a lot of misery in the struggle. In the end, we will need Jesus to rescue us again and give us the final victory. Only he can take this body, so infected with sin, pull out the soul at our death, strip it of all evil, and put it all back together at our resurrection renewed and perfected and ready for eternity. That, again, is a rescue job. Jesus does all the work. That is what he promises to do.

I really want to be good at this holiness and godliness thing. Even though I don’t have a shred of natural talent, and the struggle gets dark and desperate, God has given you and me a Savior. So don’t be surprised that our struggle ends free from sin.

Romans 7:18-20 “For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do–this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin living in me that does it.”

I want to love other people. I really do. That’s good. It generally makes them like me in return. It makes it pleasant to be around them. Everyone is happy when we all get along.

Then Jesus comes along and says, “Love your enemies, the people who use you and persecute you and say bad things about you.” You know that cousin who dragged you into court over grandma’s will and kind of ate up the inheritance in the process; you know that ex who doesn’t pay child support or who is always defying the judge’s custody orders; you know that coworker who is always throwing you under the bus and setting you up to fail because she doesn’t want you competing for the next promotion–love them.

“Why? Why should I love them?” we may ask. “What do I get out of if?” And Jesus answer may come back, “Your relationship will improve.” But his answer may also come back, “You get nothing. But this is how I loved you all the way to the cross even when you didn’t love me. I loved these morons, these destroyers of your happiness, so much that I died to save and forgive them, just like I died to save and forgive you. You signed up to follow me when you took my forgiveness and became my disciple. So love your enemies.”

The new me gets it. I believe that this is the right thing. “I have the desire to do what is good.” It’s more than feeling guilty because Jesus loved me when I was his enemy. It is not a matter of feeling coerced. It’s the kind of person I want to be. I want to be that guy, the one who loves even the people who have spent their lives making my life miserable. This is the new me, the real me, the person Jesus says I am by faith.

But so often “I cannot carry it out…the evil I do not want to do–this I keep on doing.” We still struggle with sin because we are torn between two wills, two sets of desires living in us. And too many times, it seems like the wrong side wins. “Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.”

Do you see the silver lining in this dark cloud? Do you see the positive sign in our struggle with sin? It’s a good thing that we are torn between two wills. The presence of that no-good sinful flesh in us is a given. If we had only one will, one set of desires, the sinful flesh would be it. The fact that we fight, we struggle inside, says that there is a second thing, something new and good inside. As long as there is a fight, there is faith. As long as there is faith, we are still living in God’s grace.

Romans 7:18 “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.”

Everyone wants to be considered a “good person.” I was once talking to another minister about a difficult counseling case. He didn’t like the problem person very much. After going on about his negative qualities, he checked himself and said, “But, of course, no one is all good or all bad.” Well, sort of. Paul explains it more carefully here.

When Paul says, “Nothing good lives in me,” he isn’t referring to himself alone, as though he were an exceptional case. While he speaks from personal experience, he speaks for us all. These same thoughts can be found in the words of Jesus, the prophets, and the other apostles as well. These same words apply to us all.

When he talks about “nothing good,” he isn’t denying that sometimes people do nice things to each other, especially the people they love. Even terrorists and evil, mass-murdering dictators do kind things for their own families. Our experience tells us that people, even non-Christians, are often helpful and polite. Paul would not disagree. In chapter 2 of this same letter he acknowledges that even the heathen have a conscience. They do things that agree with God’s law part of the time.

When Paul talks about “nothing good,” he is talking about our broken relationship with God. The human race fell out of love for God and divorced themselves from him when our first parents fell into sin in the Garden of Eden. It was and is a nasty, hostile, messy divorce, not one of these “mutual consent” kind you sometimes hear about. We don’t want him as a partner. We want to run our own lives our own way. Nothing good remains between us.

This is how each new human being enters the world. Paul further explains, “nothing good lives in me,” by stating, “that is, in my sinful nature.” More literally, he says in Greek, “in my flesh.” This is what we are before faith. This is all we are before faith. In John chapter 3 Jesus explained in his secret meeting with the Jewish Pharisee Nicodemus: “Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.” In order to be anything else than flesh, we have to be born again, a second time, by God’s Spirit.

Even after we have been born again, this no-good sinful flesh doesn’t go away. It doesn’t get better. It just has competition. It is the same self-centered, God-hating package of attitudes and desires it has always been. That’s why Paul can say nothing good “lives” in it, present tense, today, even though I am a Christian. In light of the fact that each of us is lugging around this no-good, sinful flesh, it should not come as a surprise that we struggle with sin.

Paul’s description of our condition may feel like an exaggeration at first. It may seem to contradict our experience. If you can remember a time before being a Christian, you may remember desiring to do good things, and even doing them. But there are long lists of reasons people, ourselves included, may do kind things that have nothing to do with loving God. Self-interest is not incompatible with enjoying human relationships, or finding satisfaction and a sense of self-worth in helping others.

Thank God for giving us the Spirit-birth that makes us more than our sinful nature inside. We have new life, and new powers, living inside by faith. With a new person of faith living in us, our sinful nature is in for a fight. And that’s a good thing!

1 Timothy 6:12 “Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses.”

Sometimes the Bible uses military imagery for the Christian life, but that is not the kind of “fight” Paul has in mind here. This isn’t two guys slugging it out because they don’t like each other, either. This is “fight” like we fight the other side in an athletic contest. It is competing the good competition of the faith. It is contending for the prize.  Living out our Christian faith is never an easy thing we can coast through passively if we want to make it to the finish line. There is a struggle, something that takes intense effort and makes you sweat.

And the whole Christian team wants to win. There will always be competing forces proposing alternative ideas about God, promoting other ways of salvation, suggesting other standards of right and wrong. We struggle, we contend, to push the Christian faith forward, to advance it and defend it. We fight this fight door to door when we canvass in our neighborhoods. We fight this fight in Sunday School rooms and Bible classes. It’s not a violent attack. On the outside it might look quiet and gentle. But there is a strenuous push of ideas and teachings and beliefs moving Christian faith forward, into more and more hearts that believe, and overcoming the darkness of unbelief.

What are we fighting for? “Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses.”

Instead of loving money, which is all about your life here, take hold of eternal life. The idea is not that we have to go out and get eternal life ourselves. Everything Paul writes everywhere makes it clear that eternal life is God’s gift, purchased for us by Jesus when he paid for our sins at the cross, brought to us by his word and sealed for us in our baptisms. Timothy’s own baptism seems to be what Paul has in mind when he refers to Timothy’s good confession. There, Timothy was already called to eternal life. There he already had received it by faith.

Now he is urging Timothy, and us, not to let it slip through our fingers. Don’t take it for granted. Don’t let competing interests like money or earthly success, get in the way. This is no small gift to lose. When my wife and I visited Rome a few years ago, I kept my wallet in my front pocket, or in a belt underneath my shirt. The city had a reputation for pick-pockets. My hand often went to my pocket or my belt to make sure everything was still there, especially in crowded quarters. I didn’t want to suffer the fate of other tourists who lost their money, credit cards, and passports.

The “pocket” in which eternal life sits is the faith in your heart. Keep it strong. Check it often. Protect it from thieves. Tend to your faith and take hold of eternal life by living in God’s word.

1 Timothy 6:11 “Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness.”

This list of virtues is the alternative to loving money. They seem to work in pairs. First “righteousness and godliness.” Sometimes Paul uses “righteousness” to refer to our guilt-free condition after God has forgiven our sins. He sees us as sinless for Jesus’ sake. It’s not really something to pursue. It is something he gave us as a gift. Here he is referring to behavior that actually lines up with what our Lord says is good and avoids what he says is bad. Telling a child, “you’re a great athlete or musician,” moves them to want to become that more and more. God telling us, “You’re my righteous, holy child” makes us want to match that description with our way of life more and more.

“Godliness” is very similar. The Greek word behind it describes “good religion,” “piety,” a lifestyle that is interested in honoring God more than pleasing myself. Together with “righteousness” Paul is saying to us, “You want to know what to do with your life other than obsessing about money? Why don’t you occupy yourself with learning what God says is good, really make it a fascination and a study, and pursue that?”
Next come “faith and love.” Paul is not suggesting that Timothy has yet to come to faith. But in as much as faith is trust in the God who saves us, it is something to deepen and grow our entire lives. The more we trust and love God, the less we will trust our “stuff” to take care of us and make us happy.

So how do we “pursue” these things, and make them stronger? What if it were your boyfriend or girlfriend, you husband or wife? How would you build the trust and love then? I believe you would spend time together. You would communicate. You would talk some, but you would also listen. You would do things for each other, find ways to express your love. It is much the same in this case. Faith and love grow when we spend time with God, listen to him, pray and serve him to express our love, yes, but especially see his love expressed to us in the way that he has served us. Where is that going to happen? When our nose is in a Bible, and our bottoms are sitting in church.

The last pair Paul urges us to pursue are “endurance and gentleness.” Doing things God’s way comes with its own set of challenges. It introduces us to all kinds of challenging people. We don’t have to go looking for trouble. If we are pursuing a life in line with his commands because we trust what he has to say and want to show real love to him and others, not just float along with the tides of popular opinion, then trouble will find us. People will criticize us, like they criticized Jesus, like they criticized his apostles. Timothy understood by now that where Paul preached the gospel, some mob of people who didn’t like it eventually drove him out of town. That’s an opportunity to become more and more patient, and a chance to learn how to treat others with gentleness.