Romans 8:36 “For from him, and through him, and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.”

Everything is from God. When my children were little, there were sometimes gifts under the Christmas tree from them for me or my wife. How did that happen? The money with which they paid for the gift–that came out of our pockets. We took them shopping and guided them in the selection. They were only giving us back what we had provided to them, and they needed a good deal of our help to make it happen. An old commercial features a little boy dumping out some change and a few dollars on the jewelry store counter to get his mom a gift. Behind him stands his father, making sure the sales lady sees the credit card he is holding in his hand. You know who is really paying for this.

It’s the same for us with our Lord. Everything we have, everything we are, everything we give comes from him. Nothing about my life or existence isn’t a gift. He is the source of all things. Such generosity, far beyond me and my humble ability to give, deserves my adoration.

Even more, “through him… are all things.” Our Lord makes everything happen. I may think that my careful diet, supplements, and exercise program are keeping me healthy. The Lord may genuinely use those things in the process. But unless he touches it all with his blessing and power, it’s useless.

For most of human history, people have been bent on climbing into heaven on their own power. They believe they can qualify on their own good record. It’s not possible. Only through God’s work can any of us be reconciled with God. Only his life pays for sin. Only his blood washes it away. Only his Spirit can change doubters and deniers into believers in our Lord Jesus Christ. All of this lies far beyond me and my meager efforts. Through him are all things, especially salvation, and that makes him worthy of praise.

Finally, “to him are all things.” Everything that is, everything that happens, is for God and his own purpose. He intends all of it to lead us home to him. That is the goal of all history.

It is easy for us to lose sight of this. We may think the world is all about our present happiness. We are here to make the world a better place or enjoy ourselves for a while. But that’s not right. We are here so that he can gather us and others to faith in him now, then come home to him when our short life is done. The purpose of this world, this life, extends far beyond me. But it sure serves and blesses me, and that makes God and his ways worthy of my thanks and praise.

We don’t always need to understand something to benefit from it. I don’t understand how long strings of zeroes and ones in computer code become the beautiful music that comes out of my iPhone or music system. But it wouldn’t sound any better if I did. I don’t understand exactly how water, dirt, and sunlight become the food that nourishes my body. But it wouldn’t taste or feed me any better if I did. I don’t understand all the why’s and how’s of God’s love that rescued and redeemed me. But I would be no more loved as his child, no more bound for heaven if I did. Sometimes, many times, his ways are beyond me. That’s just reason to praise him all the more.

Romans 11:34-35 “Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Who has ever given to God that God should repay him?”

We know very little compared to the Lord who assembled this whole universe out of nothing and devised a way to redeem his fallen creatures from their rebellion against him. Let’s talk about ways we have been blessed by this difference.

Maybe you are the kind of person who had a severe crush on someone when you were in school, only to have that person turn around and crush your heart later on. “Why do I have to go on living?” you think to yourself. “How can I ever be happy without him, or without her?” “Why did God let this happen to me?” Years later you meet the real love of your life, the mother or father of your children. You realize that the happiness of that relationship would not be possible if you had gotten what you thought you wanted.

We don’t know what the Lord has planned for our future, how everything fits together in the end, so we aren’t qualified to question his ways or give him advice. Those issues are above our pay grade as his creatures. He is above our interrogation.

Let’s raise the stakes. A three-year-old girl cuts her finger, and the cut is so bad that she needs stitches. Instead of an emergency room, her parents take her to one of these “doc-in-a-box” places, an “urgent care” center, one of those emergency rooms without a hospital attached. It so happens that they have run out of Novocain on this day. So as the doctor begins to stitch, the little girl begins to sing “Jesus loves me this I know.” The tears roll down her cheeks, but she bravely holds still while the doctor finishes up his work. The attending nurse is so impressed by the little girl’s faith and courage that she just has to visit the church and find out about the Jesus the little girl was singing about. This actually happened according to an article in Forward In Christ magazine several years ago.

Now if you were running the universe, would you have been able to figure that out–how a severe cut and a shortage of Novocain could make it possible for a little girl to introduce her nurse to Jesus? The Lord has millions and billions of these interactions worked out across millennia of history. And I think that I am going to give him my wise counsel? Who do I think I am? Time after time the Lord proves that he is above questioning by someone like me.

Nor does he owe us any explanations. “Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?” These words seem to be a reference to words the Lord spoke to Job near the end of his story. Yes, God had made Job’s life miserable for a while. He let the devil take away just about everything–his wealth, his health, his family. But once Job started to suggest that maybe he would like his day in court with God, maybe he would like to put God up on the witness stand and cross examine him about the way he treated Job, the Lord shuts that kind of suggestion right down.

The Lord wasn’t in any debt to Job. He isn’t in debt to us either. He owes us nothing. We owe him everything–our existence, our salvation, our eternity. It has all been his gift. Trust him. Let him do his work. But don’t think we are in any place to question his decisions.

Romans 11:33 “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!”

The human race thinks it’s smart. You know what name the scientists have given to us? Homo sapiens, Latin for “man, the wise.” Give us enough time, and we will figure out the cure for every disease. We won’t just predict the weather. Someday we will control it! There is no secret of the universe we won’t expose, from the farthest star to the inner workings of the tiniest particles. Do you know that right now there are people who seriously believe that in our life times we will be able to transfer our personality and consciousness, what you and I might think of as our soul, from our bodies to machines? One of Google’s leading minds has been desperately pumping his body full of supplements, because he is getting older and he wants to live to see the day when he can experience this kind of “eternal life.”

Are we really so smart? The universe God created is so complicated, so challenging, that the bests minds in the world devote their lives to studying just one minuscule feature of it and never get to the bottom of it. Science is constantly changing. The ancient Greeks said the atom was the smallest solid particle. We thought we were smart when we could split the atom into protons, electrons, and neutrons. Then someone discovered that you could break protons down into quarks. Now some question exists whether there is anything solid about the atom at all–possibly just a bundle of energy! Did you know that ten or more new laws are developed to explain the boundary layer of our atmosphere every year? One theory breaks down, and another is already waiting to take its place.

That’s just the physical world, the “easy” part of God and his ways. We haven’t even touched on the really hard questions–If God is all powerful, and all-loving, why does our world have evil, or pain? Why does one person suffer much, and another person hardly at all? Why do some people believe the gospel and others reject it? Why do wicked people prosper?

Or better yet, try some of these: How can God be three persons and one God at the same time? How can a holy God love sinful people? Just what is a “spirit,” and where is heaven located? Do you know the answers? Or are we forced to agree with Paul? “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!”

What God knows is certainly bigger than my little brain. Sometimes we don’t know the answers because he has kept the information to himself. Where is it written that he is obligated to tell us everything? Sometimes we seem to be staring all the information in the face, but we just can’t manage to put it together. We are like the scout tracking some animal or person in an old movie. All of a sudden the footprints come to a stream or solid rock and there is nothing to follow anymore. God’s ways are beyond me because so much of who he is and what he does are beyond my investigation.

How, then, are we going to react to the God who knows so much and can be so hard to follow? We are tempted to respond with frustration and anger. We don’t like being on the outside of his insider information. Sometimes our world just turns its back on God in denial. “Keep your secrets from us will you? Well, we’ll show you. We will figure it all out without you. We will even deny that you exist at all!”

Such foolishness on our part! Paul’s words don’t criticize God for ways that are beyond our investigation. They praise him for it! They call for us to repent of our tantrums and denials. Why not rather find comfort in a God who is so much bigger than we are, and knows so much more. Do we really want a little God who knows less than we do? Is that who you want to go to for help?

Who of us would have thought of asking God to sacrifice the only Son he had to pay for our sins and save us from them? Who of us would have come up with that plan? Who of us would have thought of making forgiveness and eternal life a free gift? Who of us would have asked God to just give it away? But that’s what God did. That’s the Lord’s way, not the way that I would have thought to do it. Thank God, then, that his ways are beyond me!

Isaiah 56:6-7 “And foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord to serve him, to love the name of the Lord, and to worship him, all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it and who hold fast to my covenant–these I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar, for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.”

Do you hear the sense of special privilege in these words? If someone of a different race visited our services, we would simply welcome them. We would work to lead them toward membership. During my seminary years, I visited an inner city church of another denomination once. I was treated like a celebrity. It wasn’t that way in ancient Israel.

If a non-Jew visited the Lord’s house of prayer on his holy mountain, the temple in Jerusalem, they were permitted to enter one little area called the Court of the Gentiles. This is the area Jesus had to cleanse of the animal salesmen and money lenders during his earthly ministry. The Jews had so little respect for the Gentiles. If the noises and smells of business interfered with their worship, what did they care? They were just Gentiles. They probably weren’t going to be saved anyway. That’s how the majority of the Jews felt about it.

If a Gentile tried to enter the other areas of the temple, especially the central court where the sacrifices took place, he was taking his life into his own hands. The Apostle Paul almost lost his life once because they suspected him of bringing Gentiles into this area.

The Lord had a different idea about all of this. It’s true that he segregated Jew and Gentile until Jesus came. But he had always intended to usher in a day when all people would have full access to his worship. That is the promise he is making through Isaiah here.

Since Jesus came, God’s temple isn’t a building. It is any place you have believers gathered. The room in which we gather for worship may not look so special. But the privilege to gather is so valuable you can’t put a price on it.

When I lived in Dallas, there were country clubs with initiation fees of $100,000. Annual dues exceeded $25,000. That just bought your membership. You still had to pay for all the services a la carte. But you had access to the most exclusive gatherings. You could hang out with the richest of the rich.

Gathered around God’s word, we receive something far more valuable. Jesus himself promises to be where two or three are gathered in his name. He completely forgets that we are sinners. He himself washed every sin away in his own blood.

As a result, we have access. He listens when we pray–genuinely listens with attention and concern. He is present in his word. In his Supper, he–the only God of the universe and Savior of your souls– comes to you personally, intimately, under the roof of your own mouth. All is forgiven and every barrier between you and God has been removed.

You can’t buy access like that. But it has been freely given to you. Don’t miss the privilege and blessing waiting in God’s house today.

Isaiah 56:6 “And foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord to serve him, to love the name of the Lord, and to worship him, all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it and who hold fast to my covenant…”

People who are bound to the Lord serve him. Serving the Lord is more than cleaning up your bad habits. It includes purity and self-control, but it isn’t all about me. It’s a life that loves and serves.

It is the difference between two people I used to serve, Jerry and James. Jerry grew up in a Lutheran church, but he always seemed a little bored and restless. His whole life was a quest to find fulfillment. He was always looking for things and activities that served himself. For a while he collected movies, then video games, then computers and cars. Sadly he ended up seeking women other than his wife.

Even if he had settled on something wholesome, his whole life still revolved around the things that tickled his fancy. Some have suggested that American Christians are particularly susceptible to his disease. We may turn even wholesome family activities into an attempt to have our little slice of heavenly bliss on earth. Obtaining our piece of the American dream and living for self is never the same as binding ourselves to the Lord to serve him.

James didn’t grow up in a Lutheran home. He didn’t even grow up in a Christian home. But the Lord gathered him in with the gospel. He went on to live a simple life of faithful service. When I met him he was fighting cancer and taking chemotherapy. Many men would have excused themselves from regular service to the church at that point. Not James. He continued to lead as a church officer. He rolled up his sleeves and got his hands dirty with church cleaning and maintenance. Some of his family members made messes of their lives with bad choices, but James didn’t write them off. He didn’t compromise his beliefs for them, either. He patiently but firmly confronted their foolishness. Great things happened when God gathered him to himself by faith. His life was dramatically changed from what it would have looked like without his Lord.

Isaiah mentions another service that may be the most distinguishing difference in the people who belong to the Lord: “…all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it and who hold fast to my covenant…” Keeping the Sabbath is a little different for us today than it was for the Jews. We have New Testament freedom about time and place.

But that doesn’t mean God is pleased if we neglect word and worship altogether. Even some Christians complain that worship is a “drag.” “You don’t have to go to church to be a Christian,” they will say. That may be true so far as it goes. You don’t have to go to eat to be a human, either. But you won’t remain one very long without eating. Regular attendance at worship is a key change in the lives of the people God has gathered for himself.

Is there anything that so distinguishes a Christian as attending church to hear the gospel and receive the sacraments? Muslims feed and raise their children. Atheists have marriages that last as long as Christians’, on average. Mormons are honest and make good neighbors. People from all kinds of religions live sober lives and volunteer in their communities.

But only Christians go to church to worship Jesus and listen to his word on Sunday. Only Christians want to, because Jesus has changed their lives with his grace. Maybe we don’t always think about church this way. But it is one of the distinguishing features of those bound to God by faith.

Isaiah 56:6 “And foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord to serve him, to love the name of the Lord, and to worship him, all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it and who hold fast to my covenant…”

Not all good behavior is the same. Martin Luther once called the good works of unbelievers “the glittering vices of the pagans,” glittering because they did things that looked good and kind, but still vices because there was no true love for God or faith in God behind them.

That’s not the kind of changed life the prophet Isaiah describes here: good behavior without any real love or faith. These people who came from outside the people of God–foreigners, non-Jews–had now bound themselves to the Lord. Isaiah is describing the first response of faith.

One of the first things you do after you realize your own sin and weakness, and trust in God for grace and help, is hold on to the Lord for all you are worth. We stop pretending that we have it all together. We stop depending on our own know-how and hard work to get through life. We embrace God’s forgiveness. We lash ourselves to his love and strength like the little kid who has a choke hold on mom or dad’s leg. You can’t pull him off.

Can there be anything better on earth than to be bound to your Lord and Savior this way? Sometimes we describe marriage as the “marriage bond.” In marriage God binds a husband and wife together in a bond that is meant to last for life. I know that sometimes people aren’t so happy with their marriages. They joke about the “ball and chain.” Some may regret how permanent the arrangement is supposed to be.

But doesn’t just about every romantic ideal still celebrate the idea of being tied to that special someone for life? The God who gathers people to himself by faith doesn’t disappoint. His love is unwavering. His strength is beyond measure. He is completely committed to you, and you will never have a reason to regret binding yourself to the Lord.

Matthew 13:47-50 “Once again, the Kingdom of heaven is like a net that was let down into the lake and caught all kinds of fish. When it was full, the fishermen pulled it up on the shore. Then they sat down and collected the good fish in baskets, but threw the bad away. This is how it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

The Church’s nets drag in all kinds of people. Not all of them are “keepers.” Not all of them become true believers in Jesus as their Savior.

When you go fishing with your pole, you can sort out the “keepers” as you catch them. With a net, the sorting process has to wait until the end, and it can only be done by qualified personnel.

For the most part, you and I are not qualified personnel. Because the gospel is intended for sinners, people broken and wounded and full of faults and failures, it can be difficult to distinguish the believers from the pretenders. You and I have had our moments when we didn’t talk or act so Christian.

So God leaves the sorting to the angels on the last day. Until then, don’t be surprised or offended when people who say they believe in Jesus don’t always act like it.

When the last day comes, it will become clear just how good and gracious God has been to us. On the one hand, there is the fate from which he has rescued us. Sometimes people think that hell was some Old Testament teaching, while Jesus came to talk about love. But do you know that hell is actually mentioned very little in the Old Testament? No one in the Bible talks about it more than Jesus. Almost everything we know about the place comes from his lips. In his grace God has spared us from “the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

An even dearer example of God’s grace is that the “good fish,” those fully cleansed of sin through faith, are collected in baskets. In other words, God intends to keep us for himself. Already now we belong to him. But in the end he gathers us and takes us home.

There are many things you can say about the joys of heaven. None of them is greater than getting to spend forever in the visible presence of God, claimed and loved by him forever and ever. That wasn’t always the eternity we should have expected. But by bringing us into God’s Kingdom, Jesus has changed our eternity for the good. We can be grateful to be regarded as keepers.

Matthew 13:44-46 “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.”

Ask my son oldest son what’s his favorite color, and he will tell you, “I don’t have a favorite color.” He resists the whole “favorites” trend in general–no favorite food, TV show, game, or team. My other children have a running joke about which of them is our favorite child. Our third even added, “a.k.a. not the favorite child” next to his name in his mother’s cell phone, and “a.k.a. favorite child” next to his brother’s name in the phone.

It’s not written anywhere that you have to have a favorite color or food. As long as we don’t actually show favoritism to any of our children, there is no harm in joking around about it in the family.

But there is an area of life in which favorites make a spiritual difference. What is our favorite of all things? What tops the list of all the things we love? What is our greatest treasure?

Both of Jesus’ little stories tell us, “God’s kingdom is worth so much it is worth more than everything else you have put together.” But people come to discover that in different ways.

Some people stumble upon God’s kingdom and what it is worth. They weren’t on any sort of quest or search. The man in the first parable wasn’t going through the fields with his metal detector and a shovel, thinking he was going to find a treasure. He found it completely by accident.

That’s not because God tried to make his kingdom hard to find. Often it is right there in front of our nose. Tons of people go stomping through the field and don’t see anything at all because sin has made us spiritually blind. It’s not a detail that fits into the parable as Jesus tells it, but God has to guide our path to the treasure, and then open our eyes, so that we can see it when we trip over it.

Other people find the gospel when they have been on a search, “like a merchant looking for fine pearls.” Maybe their family isn’t working the way it is supposed to, and they are searching through the religions and philosophies of the world to find some help. Maybe their career has hit a roadblock, and they have some idea that a little religion might be what they need to inspire them to take their game to the next level. Maybe they just sense an emptiness in their lives. “Is this all there is? There has got to be something more.” So they go looking.

Because they don’t understand their true need, they don’t really know what they are looking for. “The customer is always right” some salesmen will tell you. Discover someone’s felt needs, and then give them what they want. That won’t work in religion, though. God needs to show us what our true needs are before he can fill them. Looking for fine pearls is not the same thing as looking for the one pearl of great price.

So here we are, members of God’s Kingdom, staring at the great treasure and priceless pearl of God’s grace. What is Jesus saying to us? An honest man who professed to be a Christian once told me that his priorities went like this: Business first, family second, God third. I’m sure you know in your head that isn’t right.

But if in our hearts God doesn’t make it to the very top of our list, if he isn’t so far above family and possessions and work and education that we would be willing to give it all up for him, then Jesus’ words are calling us to repent. If we have lost all of the excitement about our place in God’s Kingdom, like the two men in the parables, the old self has been gaining ground in our hearts and needs to be crucified again.

Then we need to spend some time enjoying our great treasure and gazing at our priceless pearl. Before we got engaged, after I bought the ring, I would take the ring I bought my wife out from time to time, turn it in my hands, and just enjoy the sparkle.

Get the gospel out of its box, open up your Bible, and enjoy the sparkle. Listen to your heavenly Father’s “I love yous.” See the sacrifice Jesus made to forgive you. Let the promise and the peace and the hope sink in, and God’s Kingdom will be your greatest treasure, so much so that you will know that it’s worth everything.

1 Corinthians 1:12-14 “My brothers, some from Chloe’s household have informed me that there are quarrels among you. What I mean is this: One of you says, ‘I follow Paul’; another, ‘I follow Apollos’; another, ‘I follow Cephas’; Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized into the name of Paul? I am thankful that I did not baptize any of you except Crispus and Gaius, so no one can say that you were baptized into my name.”

If we are agreed on God’s Word, if we are united and share the same beliefs, then we can see the foolishness of elevating one leader over another. Did Paul, Apollos, and Cephas (which is the Hebrew for Peter) teach something different? Peter has two letters in the New Testament. You can read them for yourself and see that Peter taught the same morals that Paul did. He taught the same way of salvation: Christ crucified in payment for all our sins, received by faith and faith alone. What sense could it possibly make to say that you followed one man or the other when they believed and preached exactly the same thing?

A number of years ago a couple with whom I was counseling got upset when I told them they shouldn’t be sleeping together before they were married. So they made an appointment with the other pastor at our church because they wanted a different judgment on their lifestyle. Did they get it? There are over 1000 pastors in the church body I serve. I am confident they would get the same response from all of them. We have all agreed to agree with what God says in his law, and what God says in his gospel. That’s a defense against the rise of competing parties in our churches.

I skipped over one statement about “following” made by these people in Corinth. “I follow Christ.” On the surface, that would seem to be the right answer. We should all follow Christ. That’s what it means to be a Christian.

But funny that Paul doesn’t complement them for getting their allegiance right. He just goes on to expose the divisions. It seems that these people, too, were forming their own party in the church. Theirs was not based on following a person but on personal pride. They didn’t encourage everyone else, “We follow Christ. We all do. Let’s not separate ourselves this way.” No, they said, “I follow Christ,” as if to say, “I’m just a few degrees holier than the rest of you.”

Let’s agree that we are all equally sinners who have been equally rescued and freed from our sin by our Savior. Then we won’t fall into some of the more recent ways Christians are tempted to put themselves into a special class above the rest. “I’m not just a believer,” they say. “I’m going to be a disciple of Jesus.” But you can’t be one without the other. It’s always a package deal. The Bible never distinguishes believers from disciples.

“I’m a born-again Christian,” some people say. But there is no other kind. It’s like saying, “I’m a Christian Christian.” If you are a Christian, you have been born again. If you haven’t been born-again, you aren’t a Christian.

“Jesus is not just my Savior. I have also made him the Lord of my life.” Of course, we don’t make Jesus anything. Every heart he enters as Savior, he also enters as Lord.

If we agree with his word, we won’t try to create special parties and classes within God’s church. We will all confess that we are helpless sinners saved by the grace of a loving God. We will follow our Lord and any leader who faithfully teaches his word.