Luke 9:28-29 “About eight days after Jesus said this, he took Peter, John and James with him and went up onto a mountain to pray. As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning.”

There is nothing else like this in Scripture. We are told that the face of Moses glowed after he met with God, but that was a fading reflection of the glory of God. This light was emanating from Jesus himself, bright like flashes of lightning. Matthew tells us that his face shone like the sun. Mark tells us that the clothes became whiter than anyone could bleach them. What was this all about?

For a few blessed moments Jesus was enjoying the glory that belongs to him as the Son of God. This was the glory that he ordinarily kept concealed behind his human skin and hair and clothes. This is the glory that today makes the sun obsolete in heaven, “… for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp” (Rev. 21:23). This is the glory that gives us a fuller and truer picture of who Jesus is: the eternal God, Lord of heaven and earth, Master of the universe and rightful Master of our own hearts.

Traditionally this event in Jesus’ life has been celebrated on the last Sunday before Lent. Before we spend the next 40 days remembering just how human, how weak, how vulnerable, how mortal Jesus had made himself, we have this reminder that Jesus possesses all the power and glory of God in heaven. The severity of his suffering should not rob us of our confidence that he is in control. It should not weaken our faith that he is the living Son of God. In the time line of his earthly life, this is also about where this glimpse of his glory fits. No doubt it served to fortify Jesus for the painful and frightening work ahead of him. It also offered Peter, James and John something to hold on to as they watched the events leading to his execution unfold.

But we don’t need to be entering the season of Lent to find challenges to our focus on who Jesus is– God clothed in human flesh. The challenges come from without and within. I once read an article by a rabbi complaining that Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion of the Christ was going to close the hearts of many Jews to Jesus. Now what did he mean by that? He wasn’t interested in Jewish people coming to faith in Jesus as their Savior and God’s Son. He wanted a depiction of Jesus that would leave him at the level of a wise sage. He wanted a depiction of Jesus that would acknowledge historical inaccuracies in the gospel accounts. He wanted Jesus sanitized of both his divine glory and the depths of his human suffering for us.

Maybe that doesn’t sound like it has much to do with us. We don’t want Jesus stripped of his divine glory, do we? Actually, we struggle with this every day. In our hearts we would like to reduce Jesus to advice columnist or radio talk show host: people we generally respect for their opinions but feel free to pick and choose from their ideas. We would like to take Jesus a la carte.  Against Jesus’ warnings we freely indulge our lusts because no one can see into our hearts anyway. We rationalize and defend our angry and hateful feelings, convincing ourselves that it is okay because, “I’m the victim of an injustice.” Maybe we don’t have the gall to address him about it out loud, but in our thoughts we complain about the way he is running the world. We object to the things he lets into our lives. Does that sound like people who acknowledge his glory as God and admit that they are beneath him? It is soul destroying sin that cannot coexist with trust and love.

Now look at Jesus on the mountain. If Jesus’ glory helps to keep our focus on him and his divinity, we get so much more than an earnest correction to our broken moral compass. Many world religions call for us to follow them. Jesus’ divine glory gives us the confidence that we are following the right one. Jesus isn’t just an expert on the subject, like so many other prophets. He is the subject. You see, if you want to get to know someone you could interview his friends, research his achievements, inquire about his tastes and preferences. That would be fine if all you wanted to do was hire him for a job.

But if you really want to get to know the person, don’t you have to give the individual your attention and focus? Jesus’ transfiguration assures us that Jesus is God. Get to know this individual, Jesus, then, and you’ll get to know God. And when we get to know him, we learn such wonderful things about him, if only we’ll remember to keep our focus on who he is.

1 Corinthians 3:10 “By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as an expert builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should be careful how he builds.”

As Paul built with God, he did not mean to boast when he describes himself as an “expert builder.” After all, he did so only “by the grace of God given to me.” But Paul does provide us with a pattern or example that we can follow.

The key is in that grace of God by which Paul himself built. God’s overwhelming love for Paul, in spite of his murders and persecutions against God’s people, changed the man. Now that same grace, the forgiveness of all his sins, the love of God for him that could not be exhausted became the focus of his life. It moved him to share that gift with others. It bestowed on him the gifts he needed to share that gift with others.

It also gave him the message, the tool by which he would share that gift with others. How does one lead other people to Jesus and attach them to his church? When putting together a structure, there are always shortcuts you can take. At best they weaken the structure. At worst they doom it.

In God’s kingdom, there are many false methods that may appear to gather a large number of people together and build a church. But sometimes the “building” that appears is only an illusion. I have listened to sermons that didn’t make mention of Jesus from start to finish, not to mention his saving work for us. You probably have, too. Every word of the sermon may have been true. But the preacher was not building with God or using his tools. How could he be when the gospel was missing? Paul called the gospel “the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes” in Romans 1. He told the Corinthians earlier in this letter, “I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” Where there is no gospel there is no progress on the house God is building. Everything God builds has to be built with his grace.

            Paul urges us to give special attention to this: “…I laid a foundation as an expert builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should be careful how he builds.” Every Christian today builds on a foundation that others have laid down in the past. Many things about ministry have changed over the years. Some of these changes are legitimate as God’s church faces new challenges and works in new contexts. We worship in a different (earthly) building. We sing and pray from different books in different languages led by different men. The faces of those sitting in the pews change across the years.

Only let this be the same: that we build using the gospel as our tool, and on the sure foundation God himself has laid.

1 Corinthians 3:9 “For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building.”

Paul describes people like himself, and Peter and Apollos–the men who preached and taught God’s word– as God’s “fellow workers.” That term is especially true of those who have been called to serve full time in the Ministry of the Gospel. It also has application to others who teach God’s word to his people. Those who do so have been invited by God to work next to him on his building project.

But what are they building? Paul reveals the answer when he says, “You are God’s field, God’s building.” You and me, the people of God, whether living in Corinth, Greece 2000 years ago or Twenty-first Century America, are the project God is building. The Lord once had his people build a temple worth billions in Jerusalem. But he is not so interested in literal buildings anymore. He lives in people. The houses of worship we build aren’t important for their own sake, but for the people they serve. They are a tool for the Lord to use for what he is building, but they are not the structure itself. The building is you and me, and the other people the Lord may add to our church family.

As God’s people, let’s realize that we are constantly under construction. We are a work in progress. If we are honest, we must admit that it is amazing the Lord would use us as the raw material to make a place where he himself chooses to live. The sin that infects us is more than a mere idea we confess on Sunday morning or learn about in Bible class. It is a thorough corruption that infects us. It makes us unfit for contact with God, much less a place for him to stay. If the Lord had gone shopping for us at Lowe’s or Home Depot, we would have been a severely warped and knotty piece of pine, already so rotted and full of splinters that we would be good for little more than kindling.

Thankfully our good Lord Jesus is a master carpenter. He works miracles with such useless raw materials. In spite of our condition, he loves us. He bought and paid for us with his own blood. He regards us as the most exquisite and flawless piece of walnut or mahogany for the home he is building. He bought us and took us home to build himself a place to live.

Now that he owns us, he has gone to work on us. It is true that, by the forgiveness of sins, Jesus has received each of us “just as I am.” But he has no intention of leaving us that way. We are God’s building, and he is fitting us together for himself. That means change. He is constantly reshaping us, straitening us, boring out the rotten places and filling them in, polishing and refining us. Sometimes his work of cutting, shaving, and straightening is painful. At all times it ennobles and beautifies us. At no time this side of heaven does that work ever end. Jesus will continue to shape and form us into his dwelling place on earth until we join him in his dwelling place above.

1 Corinthians 11:26 “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” 

What better way to assure us that Jesus’ own body took our place on the cross, that his own blood was spilled to wash away our sins, that all of this was real, that it truly happened, than to give us that very same body and blood in our time? The Lord’s Supper is more than just a bite to eat. It is a preaching of Jesus’ death on our behalf thousands of years later. It is a particularly vivid way in which he preaches the Gospel to you and me.

Someone might be tempted to ask, “Isn’t God’s word enough for that? Doesn’t God’s word preach all the Gospel I need to know?” Of course it does. God’s word contains all that we need for faith and life. But that doesn’t mean God wouldn’t give us more, or that we couldn’t benefit from having more. Consider how intimately, how personally he applies his promise of forgiveness in Jesus’ supper. Here we receive a personal promise from God, given directly to each of us.

“This is my body, which is for you…” Jesus says. Those two little words “for you” are as important as any Jesus spoke on the night when he instituted his supper. Hours later Jesus died for the sins of the world.  He reconciled the world to God. God wants all people to be saved.  I know that.

But sometimes I need to be assured that all of this applies to me.  Jesus died for my sins.  He reconciled me to God. God wants me to be saved. 

When we receive Jesus’ very body and blood in the Lord’s Supper, we receive that personal assurance in a way in which nothing else does. Here my Savior is coming to me directly with his body and blood. He applies all that he lived for, all that he died for, immediately to me. He gives me a personal promise from God.

Perhaps we can better understand why the Lord does it this way when we look back to the customs involved with Old Testament sacrifices. The Lord once made a covenant with the children of Israel at the foot of Mt. Sinai. There he made them his chosen people. In the ceremony formally marking this relationship, sacrifices were offered for the whole nation. God assured the people that they were included as a part of his covenant with them. They were reconciled to God, he loved them, and he had nothing but good intentions for them. 

Then, in addition to his word, he gave them something more. Moses took some blood from the sacrifices and he sprinkled it on all the people. As that blood showered down on the people, each person who was spattered received the individual assurance that they were included in all that those sacrifices stood for. They could be sure, “God’s promise counts for me.”

Future fellowship offerings throughout Israel’s history offered a similar assurance. Part of each sacrifice was burned up to the Lord. But a part of that same sacrifice was also eaten by the person who brought it. This made the sacrifice a meal between the worshiper and the Lord. Again, the person who participated in the sacrifice could be sure, “This all applies to me. No sins stood between me and my God. We have eaten from the same table and the same food today.”

You and I were not able to be there when Jesus first hung on the cross. Jesus had no intention of offering himself for sin over and over again, nor did he need to. His one death paid for them all. But we can still say with all confidence, “This applies to me,” because Jesus continues to gives us that same body and blood in this supper. It is our personal promise from God.

Isaiah 40:31 “But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”

If we think of weariness and exhaustion pulling us down until we collapse in a heap on the ground, then soaring on wings like eagles is as near to the opposite as anyone could relate in Isaiah’s day. For all their impressive size, wing spans as great as 8 feet across, eagles are able to lift themselves into the air without any hint of strain or effort. They soar at speeds up to 45 miles per hour, and dive at speeds up to 100 miles per hour, which were particularly impressive before the days of planes, trains, and automobiles. They do it all without betraying any weariness. Who ever saw a tired eagle?

God’s promises provide a similar lifting power, a power we don’t fully realize until life has laid us low. I can think of no better example from my own life than a number of years back when our son was just a few months old. We had to rush him to the hospital one evening because a virus known as RSV had made it almost impossible for him to breath. After a sleepless night spent in two different hospitals, we were exhausted. The devotion our pastor brought us the next morning on Joshua 1, “Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified, do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go,” was a simple one. But it had an incredible lifting power on a couple of weary souls. Those same promises can give us strength to soar like eagles as well.

And after they have lifted us up, they empower us for the race ahead. “They will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” Do you remember when you were a little kid, and running was just fun? There was the exhilaration of the speed, and wind in your face, the joy of being free to let your little limbs carry you as fast as they can? I suppose that we got tired even then, but it seems that it is when we get old that we feel the burn in our lungs. Our joints ache. Our legs grow heavy. Our faces flush, and it all makes running a drag. Few things tire us as quickly as running.

But those who hope in the Lord “will run and not grow weary.” The race ahead of us may take us through family problems, work problems, health problems, or even church problems. But when we are living in God’s promises, trusting and hoping in the gifts he has promised to give, then the Lord renews our strength. Then we can run through all the tasks and challenges ahead of us with a childlike sense of exhilaration, because the Lord himself will be the breath in our lungs, and the power in our stride, because he has also been the rest and the nourishment for our souls that makes us strong.

Maybe it all sounds too good to be true. Is Isaiah feeding us nothing more than pleasant platitudes, refreshing fantasies, nice sounding words to fool us into feeling better? I’ll let him answer our doubts himself. “Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom” (Isaiah 40:28). The promise comes from the One who has always been there, who made us and all we know, whose power and wisdom knows no limits. He can’t make a promise too big. He won’t make an offer he is not good for. You will run, and not grow weary. You will walk and not be faint.

Isaiah 40:30-31 “Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall. But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”

In our health conscious world many people have the mistaken notion that hard work and exercise make us stronger. Actually, the opposite is true. Hard work and exercise make us weaker. It is the food we eat and the rest we receive that allows our body to build back stronger after exercise has torn our muscles down. Exercise is a healthy and necessary part of the process, it just isn’t the part that, properly speaking, makes us strong.

From time to time life makes this truth clear to us. We hear of entertainers collapsing on the stage and having to be hospitalized for exhaustion. We instinctively realize we need a vacation after months and months of slugging our way through a grueling schedule. On any given day we can say that we have spent ourselves just to get this far. But tomorrow it all starts all over again. Where will we find the strength to go on?

Isaiah is writing these words for the weary, for those who have nothing left to give. At some point in life, just about everyone finds himself at the end of his resources. Isaiah points out, “Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall.” These young men are the men who were old enough to serve in the army. Picture your well-muscled, physically fit Marine or Navy Seal, ready to face whatever the enemy throws at him. But eventually even such tough and hardened soldiers grow weak, and stumble and fall under the strain of battle.

Whether or not your life has brought you to the very end of your strength at this moment, I’m betting that something in your past has tested the limits of your endurance. Maybe it was something in your family. Maybe it was a health issue. Maybe it just has to do with your overstuffed schedule. You spend too many hours at work. You have too many responsibilities for which you have volunteered at church or at school. You have too many projects that need to be done on the house. You’re stretched too thin to do justice to any of the things that need to be done.

As difficult as these things are to deal with on a purely earthly level, there is a spiritual dimension to this as well. That weariness we know as despair is a great danger to our spiritual health. That’s why, when Luther explained “And lead us not into temptation” in the catechism, he mentioned “despair” by name. “We pray in this petition that God would guard and keep us, so that the devil, the world, and our flesh may not deceive us or lead us into false belief, despair, and other great and shameful sins…” This is one of our toughest spiritual battles. We may so want to repent – literally, “have a change of mind” – of our despair, but our weary sinful flesh won’t let us. God seems more and more distant. Where can we find the strength to go on?

Isaiah promises that the Lord will renew our strength. “But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.” This is not a “self-help” approach to finding strength for a weary soul. Isaiah is not a motivational speaker trying to pump us up with a new attitude, leading us to reach down deep inside ourselves to draw on some untapped spring of optimism. That well went dry a long time ago.

Instead, Isaiah is leading us to draw on the promises of God and his word. Those who hope in the Lord do so because God has given them something real to hold onto. He has demonstrated a love that delivers his people from trouble time and time again.

When sin and guilt threatened to crush us, he sent his only Son to push us out from underneath them, and to be crushed by our sin and guilt instead. Now forgiveness fills us with hope.

When we are afraid that we are not going to have enough– enough to pay the bills, enough to put food on the table, enough to survive– he promises, “Seek first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” And the fact that we are still here today is proof of his faithfulness. We have enough, and God gives us hope.

When death comes knocking and seems to present the ultimate proof of God’s failure, the indisputable rationale for despair, Jesus promises, “I am the resurrection and the life. He that believes in me will live, even though he dies.” He converts death into the doorway to an even better life, and we have hope.

These promises are like a bungee cord connecting us to God. Though we may feel like we are falling headlong to our doom, and the cord stretches further and further, and it looks as though we are about to splatter ourselves on despair, the promises snap us back up before we reach the bottom. As long as we stay attached to the promises, we have hope.

John 17:13 “I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them.”

If you read through chapters 13 to 17 of John’s gospel, you will see that Jesus understood the thief that threatened to rob his disciples of their joy. It wasn’t the general stresses and disappointments that come with life. By themselves, those things don’t have the power to take away our joy.

The real thieves of our joy are things that rob us of Jesus himself. In the context of Jesus’ last supper with his disciples, the disciples were grieving because Jesus kept talking about the fact that he was going away. He was returning to his Father. He didn’t go into detail about how horrible the next day was going to be, but he made it clear that his time with the disciples–visibly, at least–was about to end.

The disciples’ joy was stolen by the thought of losing Jesus. We lose ours by removing him ourselves. The blame has less to do with our external situation, more to do with misplaced priorities and lack of faith. Things have taken Jesus’ place. You know that even when we have plenty, things offer such little satisfaction. Within days children tire of new toys. Adults also fail to fill the emptiness inside with the purchases they make.  All the hopes for joy pinned on material things rob us of the real joy of having a Savior.

The source of this problem lies within our own hearts. This theft of joy turns out to be an inside job. Nothing from the outside takes Jesus or his promises away from us. We replace them ourselves. Hearts fail to value Jesus properly. They let down their guard and ended up giving his place to someone or something else.

Stop thief! It doesn’t have to be this way! The truth remains: Jesus gives us reason for joy!

Remember that Jesus was praying at this very moment, praying on behalf of his disciples. He still prays for you every day. He never stops praying, even for a moment. John says in his first letter, “If anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense–Jesus Christ, the Righteous One” (1 John 2:1). Do you still sin? Jesus doesn’t hold those sins against us. He is constantly praying for us, reminding his Father of the sacrifice he made to take those sins away. His unending prayers for our salvation are effective. He has saved us completely, and that gives us reason for joy.

The things Jesus said to give his disciples the full measure of his joy aren’t limited to prayer, however. During these hours at the last supper and on the way to Gethsemane he gave them words and promises specifically aimed at removing their grief. He promised to prepare a place in heaven for them. He promised to give them whatever they asked in his name. He promised to send them the Holy Spirit, the Spirit who would give them comfort and peace.

We have those words from Jesus and more. Because Jesus has come we have redemption, forgiveness, the light of the gospel, eternal life, and peace. If we will only listen, if we will only believe, these all combine to give us the gift of joy.

We Christians can have such joy even in the worst situations. James urges us, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance” (James 1:2-3). Pure joy James says. Paul writes almost the same thing to the Romans: “But we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance…” (Rom. 5:3). Peter takes up the same theme in his first letter. “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering…But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ…” (1 Peter 4:12-13).

If you come to your pastor with some grief, what do you expect he will do? He will take some time to listen to your problems, and he will listen with a sympathetic ear. If he hears any sin that need to be confronted, he will confront it so that he can promise you forgiveness. That is what pastors do. If he has any solutions to offer, he will propose them, though he knows that often what you seek isn’t solutions so much as a chance to get things off your chest.

In the end he will close with a word of promise, a devotion on Jesus’ words, a reminder of our joy. Then he will lead you to God’s throne to lay your grief before him in prayer. In those words and prayers, we can still find the full measure of Jesus’ joy.

Romans 8:35-36 “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble, or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written, ‘For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.’”

In order to open our eyes and help us see God’s love, Paul gives us two lists. We might call the first one “Love’s skeptics” or “Love’s deniers.” So often our experience seems to contradict the idea that God loves us. If God really loves us, then why? Why does this list exist? Why is my life full of trouble and hardship? Ancient life was not so different than our own. Behind the words “trouble” and “hardship” in Paul’s Greek are experiences we know all too well. “Trouble” literally has the sense of “pressure.” We feel the “squeeze.” The weight of our responsibilities is crushing us. We feel pressure to compromise our integrity from people for whom we work or peers at school. “Hardship” puts us in narrow place, a tight spot. The walls are closing in. The options are running out. Finally we are cornered and trapped.

Why, if he loves us, does God let us be persecuted? How come I can’t just fit in and be accepted by everyone else? Why should they be making jokes because I try to live my faith? Why should my job, my reputation, my safety be threatened because of what I believe?

If I am God’s child and he loves me, then why should I suffer famine or nakedness? Or to put it in more 21st Century American terms, why should I be living on the edge of poverty? Why should I be struggling to make ends meet? Doesn’t God promise our daily bread? What gives?

What about danger or sword? My house has to be a little fortress–dead bolts and alarm systems, maybe even a weapon–to keep me safe these days. Even these offer no absolute guarantees. Has God stopped loving us?

“No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” Notice that Paul doesn’t deny these things happen to Christians. But in all these things, we are still the conquerors. God is still loving us just the same. Faith learns to trust that God’s promises are more real, more true, more certain than all we see or experience, because nothing stands between us and Christ’s love.

In support of that assertion, Paul brings his second list. Here are the leading candidates for getting between us and God’s love for us. Every one of them is destined to fail.

“I am convinced that neither death nor life…” Death can’t do it. Although death was at one time the penalty for sin that cut us off from God, now it is the gateway to life, and it is the last step in bringing us home to him. It actually brings us into the direct presence of God and his love, not farther away.

Life can’t do it, either. Maybe more than people fear death today, they fear the things that life can throw at us. We don’t want to suffer. But the worst that life has to offer is just temporary, and God promises to love us through it all.

“Neither angels nor demons…” Spiritual powers, whether good or evil, cannot do it. They deserve our respect because their powers greatly exceed our own. But they are no match for God and his love. Even if all the good angels were to turn against us (which they would never do), God’s love would remain the same, always protecting us, always saying to them, “You may go this far and no farther.” These most powerful spiritual beings (other than God himself) cannot separate us from his love.

“Neither the present nor the future nor any powers…” Nothing in time can do it. We may not like the times in which we live. They seem evil. Christianity and Christians seem to be in retreat. We may fear the future with all its unknowns even more. But present or future, from now until the day Jesus returns, we will be the objects of God’s love, every minute, every moment until the final tick of the clock and time itself comes to an end.

“Neither height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Build a space probe and travel to the farthest edges of the created universe. Dig a hole and keep digging until you come out in China. God’s love for you is bigger and more powerful than anything else that exists. You will never find anything anywhere that can separate us from God’s love in Jesus Christ.

Romans 8:33-34 “Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died–more than that, who was raised to life–is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.”

You know that you are constantly being accused and condemned. Job was a man famous for the terrible tragedies he suffered. The Bible tells us that behind those tragedies were the Devil’s accusations. “Job’s faith is shallow and untested. Job is a fair-weather Christian. Job loves God out of selfish interest, but make his life a little uncomfortable and he will curse you to your face,” he told the Lord. He wanted to turn Job against the Lord, and the Lord against Job. He picked on the weakest thing he could find in the man to do so.

The last book of the Bible, Revelation, says that the devil is still “the accuser of our brothers.” He is still trying to turn God against us by reminding him of our sins. When he gets no satisfaction with God, then he turns on us and goes after our own consciences. He plays on our guilt. He whispers in our ears, “Look at what you have done.”

Did you ever see the Disney movie, “The Lion King”? The young lion Simba is playing in the canyon where he doesn’t belong. His jealous uncle Scar starts a stampede of wildebeests that threatens to trample the future king of the beasts. When Simba’s father Mufasa rescues his son, Mufasa barely escapes the canyon himself, only to be thrown back in by the evil Scar. He ends up stampeded to death. But Mufasa’s murder takes place beyond Simba’s view. Scar then plays on Simba’s guilt. “What have you done, Simba?” Look, it’s all your fault your father died rescuing you.

That’s what the devil does to your heart. “What have you done? Look at the mess you have made. You can’t fix this. And God certainly isn’t going to love you anymore.” He charges you with sin. He condemns. He does everything he can to drive us away from God.

But look at the way God defends us. “It is God who justifies.” It would be one thing if we weren’t really guilty of our sins. Then it would make sense for God to defend us. But our guilt is real. It would be one thing if our sin were really only a matter of ignorance. But more often than not, we knew what we were doing. It would be one thing if our sin were really only directed at other people, and didn’t involve God. But no matter whom we hurt, the commands we break are always God’s. Still, he justifies. Still, he defends. Still, he does not hold our guilt against us. How can he defend us this way?

“Christ Jesus, who died–more than that, who was raised to life–is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.” God justifies us because justice for our every sin has already been carried out in the death of Jesus Christ, our substitute. God has raised him from the dead as proof that he accepts Jesus’ death in place of ours. God justifies because he cannot escape the evidence that our debt to heaven has been paid.

Two thousand years may have passed since the cross, but there at the Father’s side in glory is the living Lord Jesus. It’s a little hard to miss him, the one who paid for our sin, in that condition. We may continue to sin, but Jesus continues to intercede. He pleads for us. He goes to his Father on our behalf and demands, not asks, that our sins not be held against us. He has paid the price!

Now you can ignore the devil’s accusations, because your God in heaven certainly does. Jesus sits at his Father’s side, defending us to this day.