1 Peter 5:5 “All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.’”

Does the name “Stuart Smalley” sound familiar to you? He is a character that comedian Al Franken invented for a Saturday Night Live skit about 30 years ago. Stuart Smalley was the host of a mock self-help show called “Daily Affirmation with Stuart Smalley.” The purpose was to help people develop better self-esteem. Stuart would look into the mirror and say, “I’m good enough. I’m smart enough. And doggone it, people like me.” It was all poking fun at the self-esteem movement.

Perhaps we laugh at Stewart a little nervously. Deep down inside we don’t feel so confident. We aren’t so certain of our worth. We would like to feel better about ourselves.

Here’s a radical approach to our self-esteem. What if, instead of trying to convince ourselves of our value, we just gave up on it? We let it go? We ignored it?

What if we embraced our weaknesses, our oddities, our quirks? What if we accepted that, in some things, we are less gifted, even, dare we say, inferior? What if we befriended our reality like that?

I’m not saying that we should deny the gifts and abilities we do have. They are God’s good creation, after all. But what if we stopped caring about how we compare?

The Apostle Peter is leading the people to whom he is writing in this letter in that direction in these words. “Be submissive,” he writes. “Clothe yourselves with humility toward one another.” He wasn’t encouraging them, or us to feel bad about themselves. He wants to promote the good, old-fashioned virtue of humility. Not everything in life has to be a competition. Nothing requires that we promote ourselves above others. Honesty requires that we admit we are merely average on some measures, even below average. Like everyone else, our natural spiritual condition is an utter mess.

Owning up to our humble circumstances only makes sense when you consider the consequences God promises. He opposes the proud. Life is hard enough as it is. We already have too many battles to fight. We suffer from unsteady, uncertain health. We struggle to make a living. We have neighbors, coworkers, even family members who make it their business to make interacting with them difficult. Who needs God’s opposition on top of all that? No proudly independent sinner has ever come out on top of a confrontation with him.

He gives grace to the humble. Grace is what we need, not a self-image based on make-believe strengths and virtues. Grace brings God’s very real forgiveness and power. Grace builds our lives on his divine help and mercy. Grace makes us people who are loved and valued even through our failures. Grace means that God treats us as good even though we aren’t good enough. He offers his wisdom to compensate for our foolishness. He likes us, he loves us, though we have given him no reason to do so.

Humility before a gracious God offers us genuine security in place of pride’s counterfeit “self-esteem.” “Clothe yourselves with humility.” You will find that it makes us more attractive to other people, too.

John 14: 18-19 “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live.”

An orphan is someone who has lost both parents to death. It is an irreversible situation. Obviously, the parents are never coming back. Jesus did not say he was not leaving the disciples. He said he wasn’t leaving them as orphans. It’s true he was going to die, but he wasn’t going to stay dead. “I will come to you.”

Orphans have always been a picture of the weakest, poorest, most vulnerable people in the world. They are mistreated, neglected, abused. Think of the orphans from literature and the movies: Cosette in Les Miserables, Oliver Twist, Little Orphan Annie and the other children who shared her orphanage, Hugo Cabret (from the movie Hugo), Cinderella, Harry Potter, Mowgli, Tarzan, even the young Bruce Wayne who becomes Batman. Little children deprived of their natural protectors and providers will struggle to survive.

Have you ever felt like that as a Christian, when you had to take the lonely stand for what is right; or when your faith has been mocked? All but one of these men in the room with Jesus were going to die for their faith, and tens of thousands of people a year still do around the world according to the organization Voice of the Martyrs. While we wait for Jesus to return, we can look alone and abandoned.

But we aren’t orphaned, because Jesus will come. More than that, “Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live.” Note that Jesus doesn’t say, “Because I rise, you also will rise,” although that is true, and it is part of what he is promising here. Jesus’ resurrection from the dead is a promise and guarantee of our resurrection from the dead.

But beyond the resurrection there is life, life worth living, life lived in the full experience of God’s love, life lived in the full realization of our potential, life lived in the full glory of what each of us was individually made to be. Even now, by faith we live under his love in the comfort of his grace and the hope of his return. He hasn’t left us as orphans. He has left us as heirs of glory and owners of life that never ends.

John 14:16-17 “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever–the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.”

The very fact that we believe in Jesus is evidence that he has kept this promise. “No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit,” Paul later wrote to the Corinthians. We have the Spirit, and we believe in Jesus, but that is the one thing the world cannot do.

Jesus doesn’t want us to be surprised that the whole world doesn’t embrace our Savior and his teachings. It neither accepts, nor knows, nor sees the Spirit who would make that possible. Remember how the Pharaoh of Egypt reacted when Moses brought the miraculous plagues? When his own sorcerers were not able to imitate some of them, they told the Pharaoh, “This is the hand of God.” But he would not see the power of God working right in front of his nose.

Remember how the Pharisees reacted to Jesus during his ministry? They heard the same good teaching that everyone else heard. They saw his many miracles. They had to admit that some of them were no trick, and nothing a mere man could do, like healing a man born blind or raising Lazarus to life four days after he died. But they would not hear and they would not see what everyone else did. It was all so clear, so undeniable, that Jesus warned them that they were toying with sinning against the Holy Spirit, who was tugging at their hearts through Jesus’ ministry.

Sometimes I hear Christians today speak as though they are befuddled by the world in which we live. How is it possible for people to reject common decency in so many areas of life? Why do more and more people abandon Biblical beliefs accepted by nearly everyone for thousands of years? How do some people believe such outlandish things about Jesus, rejecting his virgin birth, or claiming he was sinful, or denying his body came back to life and left his tomb? Remember, they lack the Holy Spirit. “The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him.”

But you do. “But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.” The Holy Spirit lives with us. We are exposed to him constantly. He inhabits the room whenever we are gathered around God’s word and sacraments. He lives in our Bible studies, the Christian books and magazines we read, the Christian music we listen to. He has set up shop in our hearts. They may be dilapidated old fixer-uppers that should have been condemned by the building inspectors long ago, but the Holy Spirit has moved in anyway. He went right to work setting things straight in there. He opens the Scriptures to us, if not so that we can fully understand them, then at least so that we can accept that what they say is true and is God speaking to us. He maintains our faith.

The Spirit continues to do for us the kinds of things Jesus was doing for his disciples when he was with them, which is why it is good that we have him with us while Jesus is away.

John 14:15 “If you love me, you will obey what I command.”

Keeping Jesus’ commands reflects the very nature of our relationship with him. “If you love me, you will do this,” he says. He is not trying to manipulate or pressure us, like the young man who wants to have his way with a young woman, and calls her love into question if she doesn’t give in. “If you love me, you will let me do this with you.” Jesus is simply describing a fact of our relationship. Love changes the way we behave.

You see, we love him because we trust him. We trust him, because he so loved us. He gave up everything in order to save us. He suffered pain we cannot imagine, not because there was any advantage to himself, but because it served us. He took the rap for our sins and let us go scot-free.

If he loved us enough to do that, then we know that he has only our good in mind. We can trust whatever he says. More than that, we are genuinely grateful, and our hearts come to love him. Love never wants to be a secret thing hidden in the heart. It wants some way to show itself. What can I do, what can I give, to return the love that has been given to me?

For the believer, then, keeping Jesus’ commands is never a matter of obligation. These aren’t things we do because we feel pressured, or have been threatened. Nor are we just checking items off a list because they have to be done. They are expressions of love. If we do them, it is because we love him. If we do not do them, it is because we do not love him, or we love someone else even more.

It should go without saying that “obeying what I command” does not include “ignoring what I command,” or “altering what I command,” or “re-writing what I command.” It means doing these things, because we love him. That is in spite of the fact that sometimes we may find his commands hard to understand. Why should I give something up? Why should I control my desires? Why should I love those who don’t love me?

When I was five years old my parents bought our first pet, a dog. They told me, “Don’t try to play with the dog while it is eating.” But I was excited to have a new dog, and I wanted to play with it, and I didn’t see what the harm would be in giving it some love and attention while it was eating. So I did, and it bit me. My parents knew better.

When Jesus says, “Do this,” or “Don’t do this,” perhaps we can give the all-knowing, all-powerful Lord and God who made us credit for knowing a little more than we do. Perhaps we can trust that he loves us. Perhaps we can love him enough to do what he commands.

Sometimes that can even mean doing things that are unpleasant, or even painful. If we love him, we will obey his commands. Have you seen the movie Unbroken? It is the story of Louie Zamperini, an American soldier in World War II, and his harsh treatment in a Japanese prison camp. At one point the Japanese offer him the opportunity to leave the camp and live in a plush hotel if he will read propaganda statements for them over the radio. Refusing means going back to the camp and facing even harsher treatment. He chooses the camp and its tortures. Why? Love for his country, love for the family and people he was fighting for. It did nothing positive for him.

Because we love Jesus, we keep his commands, whether we think we are getting anything out of it or not. (The truth is, we are). That is what love does.

John 14:4-6 “You know the way to the place where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know the where you are going, so how can we know the way?” Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

No one comes to the Father except through Jesus. Many people criticize Christians for saying that Jesus is the only way. But it’s not our idea. Isn’t that what Jesus’ words say? Christians who take Jesus’ words as they read are accused of being narrow-minded and better than thou. They are suspected of wanting certain people to be lost, of wishing that some people don’t make it to heaven. I know of a pastor who made his congregation cover up the words of this verse painted on the wall in the front of his church. “Would God really condemn a person just because he’s Buddhist?” he once asked them in a Bible class.

The problem is that people don’t understand the nature of our human problem. They misdiagnose the human condition. They look at the standards of right and wrong in Christianity and other world religions, they note that the morals are similar if not altogether the same, and they wonder how Christians think they are better.

But we don’t believe we are better. The issue isn’t getting the right set of rules and keeping them well enough to satisfy God. No one lives good enough for God, not even Christians. That’s the problem. All of us should be lost. No one should make it home. No one–not a Christian, a Jew, a Buddhist, a Hindu, a Muslim, an Atheist, a Rastafarian, the member of some flying saucer cult–none of them can pay for their sins themselves. None of them can live and love so perfectly that God would say, “Okay, good enough. You’re in.”

It’s not that we are better than everyone else. It’s that we know that everyone else is just as bad as us. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. No one is righteous, not even one. What we need is not someone to show us what to do. What we need is someone to rescue us himself. What we need is a Savior who will pick us up in his arms and carry us home.

So that is what Jesus does. He doesn’t tell Thomas here, “I will show you the way. Watch me and see how it’s done.” He says, “I AM the way.” Jesus is as much the car as he is the road. He isn’t a swim instructor giving lessons to drowning people. He is a lifeguard pulling them to safety. He is the way that gets us home, he is the truth of our rescue from sin and hell. He is our life in all that he has done to save our souls. No other prophet in any other faith even claims to do this. They are all guides, teachers, examples. Only Jesus is a Savior, a Rescuer, a Deliverer who does the work for us. That makes him the exclusive route for getting home.

Isn’t this what he was inviting the disciples to believe earlier? “I am going to prepare a place for you.” He isn’t telling them that he is in housekeeping at the hotel, making the beds and putting out clean towels. He isn’t telling them that he has a construction or decorating project to do.

Jesus is in accounting. This is the night before the cross. In the next 24 hours Jesus went and paid our bill in full. He died the death our sins deserved. He satisfied God’s every demand, settled every account. It all secures our place in our Father’s house and guarantees our reservation there.

John 14:1-3 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”

Jesus has prepared a place for us in the house of his Father. Some of you may remember the King James Bible saying, “In my Father’s house are many mansions.” From this verse the phrase “mansions in the sky” has even worked its way into pop songs of the past. I know people who don’t like the translation “rooms.” It seems such a huge step down from having a whole mansion to yourself. They were dreaming of having their own estate in heaven, with all the luxuries and comforts we associate with multi-million dollar homes.

But rooms, places to stay, in our Father’s house (not a separate place a few miles down the road) are a more accurate way of translating what Jesus says in the Greek. And the idea itself is just better. There are many rooms, which is to say that our great, extended family of faith will all be together. A big, empty mansion down the road would be cold and lonely. A place with others in the greatest, most luxurious home there will ever be is the ultimate destination, a place we can feel at home in every way.

Jesus promises there’s a place for you. He has prepared a place for you. Your place in your Father’s house is going to fit. I have lived in six houses in my life, three apartments, and almost ten dorm rooms. Two of the houses, and two of the apartments, I had a say in choosing. The hunt can be sort of exciting, but there are always compromises you have to make–layout, style, number and size of rooms. Even billionaires have limits to their budgets and what’s possible.

But your home in your Father’s house is a perfect fit. It has been prepared for you. We don’t know all the details. What we think we want now changes with time and age. The heaven I envisioned in my childhood is outfitted quite differently than the heaven I imagine in my head today. This much we can say for certain: if you need it in heaven to be happy, you will have it there.

This much we know we will have: a place with Jesus. “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.” Are you the kind of person who gets excited to meet famous people? If you shook hands with your hero or idol, would you decide not to wash it for a week? An old friend of mine has an uncanny ability to get his picture taken with celebrities. His house is littered with pictures of him and rock stars, athletes, and politicians. Another friend collects autographs. Though most of them come from face to face meetings with the signature’s owner, sometimes he will purchase a rare one. Both of these men practically collect encounters with famous people.

Meeting famous people is one thing. There is not a remote chance my friends will ever be invited to dinner at the homes of the famous people they have met. However, with the most influential person in all of world history, the man whose birth determines how we number our years, the founder of the biggest religion in the world, the Creator of the universe and Savior of mankind, we get more than an invitation to dinner. “You also may be where I am.”

He is taking us home. He is moving us in. “Mi casa es su casa.” Jesus is our way home to the ultimate destination, the house where he and his Father will live with us, face to face, forever and ever.

John 10:9 “I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. He will come in and go out, and find pasture.”

The person who becomes part of God’s flock by going through Jesus is a person who is saved. Do you know what it means to be saved? Have you ever had someone ask you if you were?

There are those who put a big emphasis on the overpowering emotions they experience when they come to realize the love and forgiveness Jesus gives. I don’t deny that can be an emotional experience. But being saved has more to do with the condition of being safe than our reaction to it.

Matt Dyer went hiking and camping with friends in the Canadian Arctic in July of 2013. On the third night of their outing a polar bear tore through his tent, clamped its jaws around his head, and began to drag him away. By the time his companions managed to scare the animal off with a flare gun, it had crushed his jaw, lashed open his neck exposing his carotid artery, left a puncture wound into his esophagus, and broken a couple of vertebrae.

Matt was airlifted first to a base camp, then to a small town where a team of first responders could work on him, then to another town with a hospital, and finally to a major hospital in the city of Montreal. He was safe from the bear’s attack the moment his friends scared it away. He was safe from any further threat of the animal when he reached the base camp. He wasn’t really safe from the wounds he suffered until he reached the hospital in Montreal.

Jesus is our door to spiritual safety. He saved us when he died on the cross in our place. He dealt with our enemy the devil, and he paid the penalty for all our sins. Still, we weren’t personally in the safe place, where all of this could do us any good, until he gave us the gift of faith, and his death and resurrection became our own personal protection from the death and hell our sins deserved. Now we wait for the day when he will come again, and he will bring salvation with him, our final rescue to the safe place in heaven where all will be restored, and we will never see another danger to our souls.

Jesus makes us safe. And as we wait for the absolute safety of heaven, he feeds the faith that keeps us safe in his forgiveness and grace. “He will come in and go out, and find pasture.” Do you know what faith feeds on? Do you know what builds trust? Faith and trust feed on love.

That’s what builds human relationships. I grow closer to my wife, I trust her more and more, the more she tells me she loves me, and the more she shows me she loves me.

That’s what keeps me close to my Savior. The more I see his unconditional love–yes, he forgives this sin, too; yes, he has a place for someone just like me–the more I trust the one who loved me and gave himself for me. It keeps my faith fed and growing. It keeps me safe, and saved.

John 10:7-8 “Therefore Jesus said again, ‘I tell you the truth, I am the gate for the sheep. All who ever came before me were thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them.”

Thieves and robbers use a different way to get in than the people who belong in some place. The first year we were married, my wife and I came home one afternoon to find three men walking out of our neighbor’s home with the TV and a bag full of goodies. In that case they used the door, but they didn’t unlock it and turn the knob. They kicked it in, splintering the door itself and forcing the deadbolt right through the door frame.

In Jesus’ picture of the sheep pen, the thieves and robbers avoid the door altogether. They climb over the wall. They don’t come to the sheep through the door, through the gate, which is Jesus himself in his picture.

Here is what Jesus is trying to show us: The only legitimate way to God’s people–to lead them, to teach them–goes through him. That’s what all the Old Testament prophets did. It is what Jesus’ apostles did. It is what every true and faithful Christian pastor or teacher still does today. They go through the gate, which is Jesus.

That means they come with the kind of message of God’s law that exposes our sin and convicts us and shows us our need for Jesus. Then they follow with the message of God’s grace that shows us the cross of Christ, and forgives our sin, and relieves our guilt.

The people who climb over the wall come with do-it-yourself religion. They may even come with the Bible. They just don’t come with Jesus. That’s what the Pharisees did. They developed a system of principles for living, a sort of instructional manual for every facet of life. Most of it was drawn from the Old Testament Scriptures. If you followed the system, they claimed, you became good enough for God. He would accept you on your own terms. You didn’t have to mess around with repentance, admitting your sins, or saying you were sorry.

In that system, there was really no need for a Savior to deliver you from your sins. There was no price for sin that needed to be paid, no justice to be served, and no forgiveness to be received. You could just feel good about yourself for the life you were living. Of course, it was all built on self-deception. No one does everything God wants, and many of the things in their system weren’t things God cared about, anyway.

Every world religion outside of Christianity is a repackaged version of this do-it-yourself religion. They have teachers. They have prophets. But they have no one to save them, to deliver them from their guilt.

This kind of faith even spooks around in certain corners of Christianity. It may present itself as “conservative.” It makes much of the Bible. It just doesn’t make much of Jesus, at least not as Savior. In some cases, it takes the religion of the Pharisees even further. It not only gives you the system to live by. If you work the system well enough, you can practically achieve heaven on earth. God will heal your disease. You will never have problems with money. You can climb your career ladder to the top with supernatural help. All your relationships will be wonderful.

If this is all the preacher, teacher, or prophet brings, he isn’t coming to the sheep through the gate. He is climbing in over the wall.

Here is the problem with the one who climbs in over the wall: “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.” When the message isn’t about sinners redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, saved by the grace of God, we end up with dead sheep.

And let’s be honest. The thief’s message is easy to listen to because it is positive. It makes me feel good about myself. It tastes good. I once had a cat who thought that antifreeze tasted good. It almost died of kidney failure when it found some that had spilled in the garage.

Jesus wants to spare us of the poison to our souls. Listen to the teacher who always goes through the gate. The sheep are safe when listening to that familiar voice.

Luke 24:27 “And beginning with Moses and all the prophets he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.”

This is Luke’s summary of the sermon Jesus preached on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus the first Easter afternoon. I have often wished that Luke preserved this for us.

But then, he didn’t have to, because Jesus was simply walking these men through words that actually are preserved for us in the pages of the Old Testament. He began with Moses. No doubt that means he began with the very first gospel promise in Genesis 3:15. “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers. He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” Jesus is the offspring of the woman. He would suffer when Satan struck him. It would be painful–heel pain can be crippling. But Jesus is the one who would do the crushing.

From there he likely went on to the promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; Moses’ promise of a future prophet like himself (Deuteronomy 18); the many Psalms of David that describe Jesus’ person and work; the suffering servant in Isaiah 53; the many descriptions of Holy Week in the Prophet Zechariah.

So Jesus opened the eyes of these men. He turned their lives upside down. All their old hopes and dreams were crushed. But in their place they found a God and Savior who loved them almost beyond belief or imagination. Every sin was forgiven. Every demand and requirement of God was fulfilled. Their relationship with God was fully reconciled. The journey back to God’s good graces was complete. Life would never end. Heaven was guaranteed. No wonder they asked each other after they recognized Jesus at the end of the evening and he disappeared, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”

Do you know what happens when God opens our eyes and we see our risen Lord in his word? We trade the garbage we have created with our lives, and the garbage we have planned for our lives, for real treasure. We see that an impressive education, perfect family, successful career, healthy life, and happy retirement aren’t all that important. Whether I travel the world, or develop a stellar reputation, or build great wealth doesn’t really matter.

To borrow a phrase from Paul, “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.” To borrow a picture from C.S. Lewis, we stop acting like the little children at the beach playing in the trash fascinated by the broken pieces of glass, when God has placed before us the golden sands and magnificent ocean of his grace in the kingdom of the Son he loves.

This is worth seeing. This is worth having. Jesus still makes it possible for us to see it, and own it, in his word.