Philippians 3:8-9 “I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish that I may gain Christ, and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ–the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.”

My father is the quintessential “do-it-yourselfer.” I remember going for a walk with him once and meeting one of our neighbors for the first time. As my father tried to describe to him who we were and where in the neighborhood we lived, the man remarked, “I know who you are. You’re that guy who always has the piles of dirt, sand, or gravel in your yard.” He was right. There was always a project going on at our house.

When it comes to home improvement, there is nothing wrong with being a “do-it-yourselfer.” If you are any good at it, you can make sure things get done the right way. The same holds true for many other areas of life. Maybe you can sew your own dresses, or grow your own food, or manage all your own investments, or fix all your own cars, and make sure it gets done the right way.

But there is one area of life for which this never works, and that is in our relationship with God. Here we are all tempted to believe that we have to do it ourselves. But as long as we are trying to do it ourselves, we will never be sure where we stand with God.

The true Christian faith is not a moral philosophy about how we must live. It is “knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” It is not just studying about Jesus like studying about some historic figure in a book. It is actually meeting Jesus in his word, being introduced to him, and living life with him as our Savior, our friend, and our brother.

When we know Jesus, then we truly know God. When you sit down on the hillside and listen to Jesus preach his sermon on the mount, then you see how high God has set his standards for keeping his law, and how far short of his perfection we have fallen. But when you follow him down from the hillside, and you see him actually reach out and touch the unclean leper to heal him, you know the depth of his concern for your suffering, and the extent of his power to fill your needs. When you stand with Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus, and you see the tears burning down his cheeks, and you hear his voice commanding Lazarus back to life, you know the intensity with which he feels your pain, and the authority with which he controls your world. When you kneel at the foot of his cross, and the blood running from his hands and feet carries his life mingled with your sins away past your knees, and his dying breath cries out, “It is finished,” you know that in his unsurpassed love for you he has left nothing more for you to pay or do.

Do you want to be sure, really sure, that God’s love and grace are yours, that your sins are forgiven, that you will live again after you die? Then you need to be found in Jesus, wrapped in the righteousness of his holy life, cleansed in the blood of his innocent death. A righteousness of our own that comes from our own keeping of the law is only a so-called righteousness. We never live our lives completely guilt free, and as long as we are still producing sin, we aren’t righteous at all.

Then God comes and gives us a righteousness of his own making. He gives us an innocence that comes to us from the outside. He takes and he hides our sinful selves in the perfect love of Christ. He so covers over the content of our lives with Jesus’ life and death that he can no longer see us at all. We are all little Christ’s to him. Lutheran Christians celebrate this truth in the Reformation this time of year. A more well-known October celebration will see little children walking door-to-door with hidden identities, hidden behind costumes and masks. By bringing us to faith, the Lord has dressed each one of us up as Jesus, only our new identity is more than a flimsy costume, and we wear it every day for the rest of our believing lives.

This is our great find, not only to find and know Jesus, but to be found in him with the righteousness that comes from God. In Jesus we are the precious, holy, dear, innocent children of God himself.

2 John 1:4-6 “It has given me great joy to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as the Father commanded us. And now, dear lady, I am not writing you a new command but one we have had from the beginning. I ask that we love one another. And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love.”

Some things make classic combinations. They just go together: Peanut butter and jelly, macaroni and cheese, bread and butter, shoes and socks, suit and tie, shorts and t-shirts, hugs and kisses.

Other combinations are famously incompatible or problematic: oil and water, cats and dogs, politics and religion. Often the best practice is to keep these things separate.

Where would you classify “truth and love?” They often appear together in the Bible. But there is a temptation to see them as somehow incompatible. Love gets confused with “being nice” or “making people happy.” Then people run into some unpopular truth in the Bible that calls for sacrifice or repentance, and they feel like they need to put the truth aside to be consistent with the principle of love.

Some obsess so much about defending truth that love for people doesn’t seem to matter anymore. They feel no concern about damaging feelings, relationships, or even souls as long as the truth is preserved. Which will you follow, truth or love? Sometimes it feels like you need to make a choice.

But truth and love are a match made in heaven, literally. In these verses, John sees them both guiding our behavior.

Love, you may already know, is the great summary of everything God commands. He wants our words and actions to benefit the people around us. Everything he does serves and benefits us. His love is contagious, like a good infection. Once you catch it, love starts to take over inside. It rearranges our hearts and our minds, and God’s love starts producing love in our lives as well.

Sometimes we don’t understand what our neighbor really needs. He may want something that isn’t good for him at all. So God gives his revealed truth as a guide. We can march right through the ten commandments, and with each one our world would tell us that love is something else if our Lord did not make his will clear.

Sometimes love even involves pain, self-denial, or sacrifice. The movie Hearts in Atlantis portrays three childhood friends, two boys and a girl, who become friends with an elderly man named Ted. Ted has mysterious powers. Near the movie’s end the girl has been beaten up by a neighborhood bully who dislocates her shoulder. One of her friends carries her to Ted, who recognizes the dislocation and determines to set it back in place.

But while correcting the dislocation will reduce her pain in the long run, the procedure itself will be even more painful. So he talks up her courage, and gives her something to bite on while he pops the bone back in place.  

Spiritually, sometimes love requires us to inflict pain to relieve it. We can’t just go on feelings. We need to be guided by God’s truth. When we keep love and truth together, together they direct our lives.

2 John 1:3 “Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Father’s Son, will be with us in truth and love.”

If you know a little about the books we call “Epistles” in the New Testament, you know that the writer usually begins by wishing grace and peace to the people he is addressing. This is also why so many pastors begin their sermons with this greeting. Grace and peace are two of the most fundamental blessings God’s people can have in their lives. John adds mercy as a natural companion, one Paul also adds in his letters to Timothy, and Jude uses in the greeting to his short letter.

You can wake just about any lifelong Lutheran in the middle of the night and ask him to define what “grace” is, and he will tell you it is God’s “undeserved love.” It is the attitude God has when he looks at us in our rebellion and sin, and he chooses not to destroy us. Instead he saves us. He sends his Son. He dies in our place. He forgives all our sin. He sends someone with his word. He leads us to faith. He takes us to heaven. None of this is deserved. It is all a gift. If this is how God feels about you, if this is how he treats you, then there is nothing better you or I could have from now until eternity.

Mercy is similar, but it emphasizes that God’s love isn’t just a cold principle, an impersonal operating procedure. He feels for us. He genuinely cares. This care extends far beyond a solution for our failed behavior. He looks down on our lives, and when he sees us in any pain of any kind, it moves him. When our hearts break, his heart breaks. When sickness or injury give us pain, it troubles him. If he were a human father with a human body, he would get a lump in his throat to see us in our pain. At all times he is filled with a real concern for what is going on in our lives.

If this is how God treats us, if this is how God feels about us, then that naturally leads to peace. We live with the awareness, with the relief, that all is well between us and our Lord. My sin may be fresh; my pain may be immediate; but I live under my Lord’s grace and mercy, and that gives me peace.

I don’t think there is any trouble seeing the connection between this and love. As far as love goes, there could be no greater.

But why the emphasis on “truth?” If there were ever characteristics of our God his enemies hated, none have ever been hated and attacked more than these. This is what all the cults, all the sects, all the false teachers ultimately want to deny. “You want God to love you? You want him to accept you? You can’t make it so easy. You have to do something. You have to be better, different, than everybody else. You have to deserve it. You have to prove that you are sincere.”

Maybe they get there by watering down his commands so far that anyone could keep them. Maybe they get there by trying to motivate you to live like some super saint. But it’s all garbage. Grace, mercy, and peace are free. We need God’s truth, the promises of his word, to assure us again and again, because these blessings are contained in truth and love. They belong together.

2 John 1:1-2 “The elder, to the chosen lady and her children, whom I love in the truth–and not I only, but also all who know the truth–because of the truth, which lives in us and will be with us forever.”

Our Lord often refers to his church on earth in feminine terms. At various times in the Old Testament God described his people as a virgin, a married woman, a mother, and even a widow.  Jesus calls himself our bridegroom and his church the bride. Paul picks up this same picture. It seems that John is using a similar way of speaking here.

The term he uses, lady, doesn’t emphasize the special relationship with God. It emphasizes the relationship the church as a whole has with its individual members, whom John calls “her children.” In John’s day, “lady” wasn’t just a polite term of respect. It was a way of referring to the leading woman of the household, the one who wielded some authority in the family. The “lord” of the house was the man in charge. The “lady” was the woman in charge.

How did this humble, motley gathering of outcasts and misfits, simple people with perennial faults, wind up with such a title, “lady”? From God’s point of view she is the “chosen” lady. This is the group, these are the people, that he set his heart on for reasons that are all his own. It’s not because we, the members of the church, had some special spiritual beauty that made us attractive. God chose his church anyway. And having chosen her he called her to faith, washed her in Jesus’ blood, and clothed her in Jesus’ love. He made her the chosen lady as a matter of his grace and love.

The “Lord” is not the only one who loves “the chosen lady and her children.” John says of her, “…whom I love in the truth–and not I only, but also all who know the truth–because of the truth, which lives in us and will be with us.” John regards the church with love. So does everyone else who knows the truth, and they all do this because of the truth. To be honest, the church as a whole hasn’t always given us reason to love it. Money scandals and sex scandals have shown her uglier side. They have filled a lot of people with disgust. On a personal level, maybe you have been a victim of church cliques or politics. How can we love an organization with faults like that?

Don’t forget this truth: the church isn’t a cold, faceless corporation. It is a body of people just like us. It’s the body that includes each of us. Our faults, my faults, are part of the church’s problem. The truth teaches us that God doesn’t treat people the way they deserve. He always treats us better. Forgiveness is the key to his love for us, and it will be the key to our love for the people he has gathered as his “chosen lady.”

Godly love, Christian love, is not a response to beauty or kindness or talent. It is a choice we make, a gift we bestow, on the object of our love. This love is the way things operate in God’s family, the chosen lady and her children. God’s love determined how we are regarded by him. It is the reason behind our own regard for God’s people, our love for the others who belong to this body.

2 Kings 2:13-14 “He (Elisha) picked up the cloak that had fallen from Elijah and went back and stood on the bank of the Jordan. Then he took the cloak that had fallen from him and struck the water with it. ‘Where now is the Lord, the God of Elijah?’ he asked. When he struck the water, it divided to the right and to the left, and he crossed over.”

Did Elisha get what he needed for the work that lay ahead of him: the spirit of Elijah, the presence of God to give power to his words and ministry?

Elisha didn’t hear some inner voice telling him that everything was going to be okay. He didn’t feel a sudden surge of electricity running through his body, filling him with confidence. In spite of the demonstration of God’s power he had just seen, he wasn’t overwhelmed by an experience of the Lord’s presence. In fact, for a few moments, experience seemed to tell him that God was absent. His heart cries out to God, “Where now is the Lord, the God of Elijah?” For a few moments, Elisha felt uncertain.

But Elisha had a promise: “If you see me when I am taken from you, it (the double portion of Elijah’s spirit) will be yours.” And in spite of any uncertainties, Elisha acted on that promise. Then God confirmed that he was with Elisha in an unmistakable way. “When he struck the water, it divided to the right and to the left, and he crossed over.”

God works the same way with us. At times our personal experience may suggest that God is absent. We don’t feel waves of spiritual energy washing over our bodies, assuring us he is here. But God is more than a feeling. He may inspire some wonderful feelings in us at times, but he doesn’t disappear just because we feel as though he is gone.

What, then, do we have for our times of uncertainty? Like Elisha, we have God’s promises. Feelings change, but God’s promises do not.  And God promises us, “Surely I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I with them.” “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” We can confess with David in the psalms, “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.”

Since God is for us, God is with us, and God even lives in us by his Spirit, we can be sure that Christ will continue to do his work through us in spite of our uncertainties.

2 Kings 2:11-12 “As they were walking along and talking together, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind. Elisha saw this and cried out, ‘My father! My father! The chariots and horsemen of Israel!’ And Elisha saw him no more. Then he took hold of his own clothes and tore them apart.”

Nothing scares people more than death. It is the one thing that seems to be lurking behind every other fear. There are few places we invest so much expense and effort as we do in death prevention, from hiding air bags in every spare inch of our vehicles, to investing billions in medical research each year, to supporting vast armies, police forces, and fire departments to keep us safe. We do so in spite of the fact that death is inevitable. John Jeske observed that the death rate has remained almost constant since the world began: one per person.

“Ah,” you think to yourself, “but here we have an exception, because Elijah didn’t die.” And you are correct. Elijah was translated to heaven without tasting death. But whether God swept Elijah to heaven in a storm, or whether the prophet had keeled over in front of his friend, the effect was the same for Elisha, wasn’t it? He was separated from the spiritual father and friend he cared for so deeply. At least part of Elisha’s reaction was the same as those who mourned a death in the family: he tore his clothes.

We may fear death and the separation we suffer. That is all the more reason God’s work needs to continue in the face of death. Toward the end of the movie “Hook,” Captain Hook challenges Peter Pan to a duel to the death. Peter Pan replies, “Death would be a great adventure,” and Hook agrees, “Death would be the greatest adventure.”

I doubt whether Peter Pan or Captain Hook were thinking about the same thing that I am thinking, but I can agree that death is at least the start of the greatest adventure. That’s not just because there is a sense of mystery about what happens. Rather, the child of God knows that heaven is waiting for him on the other side. That’s where Elijah went: “…and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind.” That’s the promise of Jesus’ resurrection for each one of us after we die. “The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and bring me safely to his heavenly kingdom” (2 Timothy 4:18).

Isn’t that the ultimate meaning of our Lord’s work for us? He has been running the world’s largest and longest rescue operation: to get people off this spiritually sinking planet to safety in heaven. Each child of God who dies in faith is a success story. In their case, it’s “mission accomplished.” This one has finally reached safety, and now we can turn more efforts to reaching someone else.

In spite of our sadness at parting, in spite of our fears, we can be certain that God’s work carries on at death, because he has transformed it into the ladder to safety in heaven.

2 Kings 2:9-10 When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, ‘Tell me, what can I do for you before I am taken from you?’ ‘Let me inherit a double portion of your spirit,’ Elisha replied. ‘You have asked a difficult thing,’ Elijah said, ‘yet if you see me when I am taken from you, it will be yours–otherwise not.’”

Elisha was the heir apparent to Elijah’s ministry. God had told Elijah to anoint Elisha to succeed him as prophet. When he asked for a “double portion” of Elijah’s spirit, he wasn’t asking for twice as much as Elijah had. He was asking for the first born son’s inheritance. In ancient times, since the first born son would take his father’s place in the family, he received twice as much as any of the other heirs. If Elisha was going to inherit Elijah’s position as spiritual leader of Israel, then he wanted the spiritual gifts from God that were necessary to carry it out.

Do you see what Elisha is thinking? He sees that the task in front of him is greater than he is. He is aware of his spiritual poverty, his spiritual neediness, in the face of his responsibility to lead God’s people. He knows that he is not a super-spiritual, great man of God, but an ordinary man, a simple sinner in need. He needs to lean on someone other than himself if he is going to be of any use to God.

Is that hard for us to admit? We are no different than Elisha, but that doesn’t go down easy with our pride. Even in purely secular matters we find it difficult to admit our neediness, our weakness, our dependence on others. Isn’t that why I insist that I can fix the car myself, or assemble the gas grill without reading the instructions, or lift the heavy box without someone on the other side to help? And what does our pride get us in such cases? Costlier repairs? A dangerous explosion? A wrenched back?

In spiritual matters, the stakes are higher still. Perhaps we are tempted to think that we came to God with empty hands when we first became believers: we could not pay for our sins, so we freely received his forgiveness. But since that time it has been up to us to make our commitment and show what we can do. We develop a false sense of self-confidence that we can do God’s work on our own. We are afraid that if we keep coming to him with empty hands, we will develop a welfare mentality. We forget that sin is a permanent disability, at least this side of heaven. Even the ability to serve is a gift of his grace. The Apostle Peter was once too proud to receive Jesus’ help when Jesus washed his disciples’ feet. Do you remember Jesus’ response? “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.” Persistent refusal to depend on God and receive his gifts not only guarantees that our service will flop. That kind of pride cuts us off from God.

Only when we come to the same realization as Elisha do we have the confidence that Christ’s work will carry on, in spite of our neediness and dependence. The same grace of God who did everything to save us gives us every power to do his work. The Apostle Paul once said of his suffering, “When I am weak, then I am strong.” To be honest, I am always weak. But when we recognize this, then we are able to see God’s strength at work. Then we are in a position to see his will fulfilled through us.

1 Corinthians 8:1 “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.”

There is no virtue in being spiritually ignorant. It is God’s will that we grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Knowledge about God’s word helps us to get to know him better. It feeds our faith. It guides our lives. Bible knowledge is good and necessary.

But all by itself, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. God does not want us to study the Bible as an academic interest, or to keep us entertained. Its purpose is not to stretch our minds and challenge our intellect, though it may do so. Bible class serves a higher purpose than preparing us to be contestants on Jeopardy.

When Bible knowledge makes us feel superior to all the Biblical ignoramuses, it merely “puffs up.” It’s the same picture we use when we say someone has a “swelled head.” In that state we become no use to the people around us and absolutely intolerable to God. We need someone to let the air out, to insert a release valve, so that we channel all that knowledge in a useful direction, before we burst and spiritually destroy ourselves.

That release valve is love. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. Christian love is not so concerned about self. It cares for others. It is not looking for ways to be superior. It wants to be a servant. It does not seek ways to make me look good. It seeks ways to make God look good, and it seeks ways to do good to others.

Love like this also does some enlarging, but what gets bigger is not my swelled head. It’s my heart. Love builds up. It is a servant. It builds up the kingdom of God. It builds up brothers and sisters in their faith. It builds by humbly sharing knowledge about Jesus with others. It does not waste time trying to build some sort of monument to myself.

Where do we get such love? Not in that know-it-all knowledge that inflates our egos. “The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know. But the man who loves God is known by God.” The most important thing is not how much we have come to know about God, but that we are people God knows as his very own.

And what kind of people does he know as his very own? Jesus said that he came to call not the righteous, but sinners to repentance. He told Simon the Pharisee that the sinful woman who anointed his feet loved him much, not because she was so good, but because she had been forgiven so much. Jesus called Peter to discipleship, not when Peter was the know-it-all fisherman, but after the miraculous catch when Peter fell at Jesus feet and admitted that he was a sinner. The prodigal son was welcomed home not because he had spent his inheritance so wisely, but when he came home with empty hands to a forgiving Father. Jesus says that the tax-collector, whose only prayer was “God have mercy on me, a sinner,” went home justified by God, not the super righteous Pharisee bragging about his victorious life. Those who are known by God know that they are sinners, but they also know by faith that God forgives them.

Are you ready to have your spiritual pride and puffed-up knowledge crushed under God’s holy condemnation? We are never ready, but when he does so, he also assures us he forgives our sins. He pick us up in faith. He claim us as his own. Then it can be true of us that “the man who loves God is known by God.” This is also something we know from God’s holy word. But when that word convinces us God has so loved and forgiven us, our knowledge will no longer be a dangerous thing, because knowledge will be tempered by love.

Ezekiel 17:24 “All the trees of the field will know that I the Lord bring down the tall tree and make the low tree grow tall. I dry up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish. I the Lord have spoken, and I will do it.”

Several companies who have leased our church a photocopier have made strong promises about how fast their customer service works. “If your machine breaks down, we guarantee a service tech will show up the same day,” or even “We will have a man on site within the hour.”

I have sometimes wondered, “What happens if you fail to get a repairman out in the time you guarantee? Do we get a new machine? Do we get a month free on our lease?” As it turns out, there is no consequence for them not keeping their promise. It may be their honest intent, and they may keep it most of the time, but otherwise their promise is nothing more than words.

God gives us proof to back up his promises in many places throughout the Scriptures. We have one in words he gave to the prophet Ezekiel. He uses the picture cedar tree. He takes a sprig off the top, plants it, and it grows into a great tree that produces fruit and provides shelter. This is a picture of the Messiah, the Christ, he had been promising for centuries.

Now the Lord makes this application about the thing he has done: “All the trees of the field will know that I the Lord bring down the tall tree and make the low tree grow tall. I dry up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish.” This is the kind of God he is. He has a way of reversing things, especially when it serves the salvation of his people. He takes those who think they are above the rest–the rich, the powerful, the influential, the intellectual–and he humbles them. He hasn’t limited himself to ancient history. We still see dictators rise to pillage their own people and terrorize their neighbors, only to have their power collapse and their regimes fail. The Lord brings down the tall tree and dries up the green tree. The gospel of Christ often finds new opportunities to expand God’s kingdom in the void they leave behind.

The other side of God’s promise is true as well. He takes those who have nothing going for them– the weak, the poor, the simple, the sorry–and he lifts them up and fills them with new life. He takes a David, the youngest in his family, nothing but a shepherd boy, and he makes him king. He helps him win a small empire, and he gives him a place in family tree of the Savior of the world. He took you and me and adopted us as his own sons and daughters by faith, so that we could be called the children of God.

Since Ezekiel wrote this prophecy his words have been fulfilled. God has planted his Messiah on earth in the person of Jesus. His ministry fulfilled all God’s prophecies and purposes. He purchased forgiveness and secured eternal life. His church has grown and spread to feed and shelter the hearts and souls of people all over the world. “I the Lord have spoken, and I will do it,” God promised. He hasn’t given us empty promises. He has given us proof.