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.

Matthew 14:15-16 “As evening approached, the disciples came to him and said, ‘This is a remote place, and it’s already getting late. Send the crowds away, so that they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food.’ Jesus replied, ‘They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.’”

Asking Jesus to send the crowd away wasn’t really asking Jesus for help. It was an attempt to excuse themselves from having to help. When Jesus looked at the crowds, he saw an opportunity for ministry. He saw a chance to serve and to love. When the disciples looked at the crowd, and their location, and the lack of food, they saw only a problem. And it wasn’t a problem they wanted to deal with. I mean, why help people when you can just let them try to help themselves?

Since the disciples weren’t getting this ministry thing right away, Jesus turned around and gave the problem back to them. “Jesus replied, ‘They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.’” He was interested not only in feeding these people. He was interested in growing his disciples into better leaders, and better servants. He didn’t want them to duck responsibility. He wanted them to take it. But he wanted them to do so leaning on his assistance.

That’s why this ministry he gave them was so much bigger than their resources, humanly speaking. “We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish,” they answered. In one of the other gospels we hear Philip blurt out, “Eight month’s wages would not buy enough for each one to have a bite.”

Really, how much would it cost to feed more than 5000 people? Let’s say you got a great deal on the catering, and it cost between eight and ten dollars per plate. That’s forty or fifty thousand dollars! Let’s say you decided to prepare the food yourselves. Maybe you get by for ten or fifteen thousand dollars. Then there’s the logistical problem for 12 men–that’s mostly fishermen, not professional cooks or chefs– having to prepare that much food that quickly. Jesus gave them a ministry far bigger than they could afford or staff, humanly speaking.

What is Jesus teaching us here? He isn’t teaching us to be irresponsible. He doesn’t want us to bite off more than we can chew. That would be tempting God. He still expects us to be good stewards of the resources he has given us. He wants us to live within our means, both as a church and as individuals.

But Jesus doesn’t want to teach us that we can get by entirely on our careful and clever planning, either. Sometimes he himself will drop a bigger mission into our laps than we can hope to afford or accomplish on our own. He intends to leave us no choice but to seek his help. Then we would be trusting God. We already know we can’t solve the problem of our sin ourselves. We have no choice but to rely on his grace and forgiveness. Apply that here. Apply that to the rest of life. He wants us to find his power and love hidden in our helplessness and need.

He even teaches us how it’s done. “‘Bring them here to me,’ he said.  And he directed the people to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people. They all ate and were satisfied…” First, Jesus takes the food the disciples have and puts it to work. God doesn’t give us our resources to hoard and save. He intends us to use them up and put them to work.

Next, he prays. He teaches us to look to heaven for our help, and with an attitude of thanks for what we have, even if it seems very little. Let God make it stretch to cover our needs.

Finally, he doesn’t tackle this project alone. He makes use of his human resources. All of the twelve are pressed into service distributing the food. God’s work gets done best when all his people find a way to be involved.            

Jesus mercifully fed the multitudes, but he gave these twelve men something more. Perhaps they grew as much as the bread and fish on this day. The crowds received their healings and food, but the twelve received grace for their souls and strength for their hearts. Here our Savior demonstrates his grace and forgiveness in continuing to involve us in his mission, though we might prefer to do something else. Here he proves his promise to provide all we need for body and soul, faith and life, though we may forget to seek his help.

Jesus is still giving us gifts, even when he gives us work to do.

Matthew 14:13-14 “When Jesus heard what had happened, he withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place. Hearing of this, the crowds followed him on foot from the towns. When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick.”

What “happened” was the beheading of John the Baptist. John’s death couldn’t help but remind Jesus of how his own life would end, and that the time was getting short. He needed a little time away, time to mourn, time to catch his breath. He couldn’t have made his intentions clearer. Usually he was seeking a crowd. Now he withdrew. He did so privately. He got in a boat and sailed away to a place where there were no people. For once in his life Jesus wanted to be left alone.

The crowds didn’t care. They pursued him like the paparazzi. All they cared about were solutions for their own problems. They wouldn’t wait a few days. They wanted relief now. It doesn’t even enter their minds to give Jesus a breather.

None of the gospels give the impression they pursued Jesus so hard to answer their spiritual questions, to relieve the agony of their souls, to escape the burden of their guilt and sin. All they cared about was the temporary needs of this life. Some of them may have been managing their diseases for years. Would it have killed them to wait a few more days?

Do we show a similar level of concern for the people we want or expect to serve us? When we want help from someone, we can act a little pushy and entitled. We do not stop to consider, “I wonder how he is doing.” If we leave a message with the doctor about some issue, and a couple hours go by without a response, do we think only, “What’s wrong with that guy and his staff?” Do we stop to consider, “I wonder if everything is okay with the doctor and his family? I hope nothing is wrong.” Like the crowds pursuing Jesus, we are inclined to think only of ourselves.

Then marvel at Jesus’ mercy when people seek his help. “When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick.” Note that it doesn’t say, “When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he rolled his eyes at how inconsiderate these people were;” or “When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he was irritated about the way they were changing his vacation plans;” or “When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he bit his lip and grudgingly gave a few people some help.”

No, “he had compassion on them.” He was genuinely moved by their condition. When my son was less than a year old, he caught a virus called RSV. He wouldn’t stop crying. Then we noticed that there weren’t any tears. We had to rush him to the hospital in the middle of the night because he was struggling so hard to breath. We weren’t irritated that he interrupted our sleep and kept us up all night. Our hearts were filled with concern. Jesus’ heart was filled with concern for the crowd that chased him down in that deserted place.

Then he did something about it. “He healed their sick.” With Jesus, compassion immediately leads to action. He rolls up his sleeves, and he goes to work giving these people relief. And all this in spite of the fact that he had come here to be alone, and he needed time for himself.

Shouldn’t we be seeking his help, too? We know Jesus’ mercy better than these crowds from Galilee. Mercy led him to look down on us in all our sin and not turn away in disgust. It’s the reason he was there on that day instead of enjoying himself in heaven. This was just one stop on his way to the cross, where mercy led him to give up his life to save the millions and billions who have given him every reason to abandon them. But he came and he stayed. He suffered and he died to relieve us of our guilty consciences and revive our sin-sick souls.

We know the supreme demonstration of Jesus’ mercy. Don’t be afraid to seek his help for a thousand lesser issues as well.

Matthew 10:39 “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

Many people are on a quest to find themselves. “Who am I?” “What am I here for?” Sometimes that quest has a very spiritual flavor to it. But more and more Americans prefer to go searching without the help of “organized religion.” Through personal meditation, private prayer, time dedicated to volunteering and helping others, limitations on their spending to accumulate things, sensitivity to the ecology of our planet (you know, concerns about things like recycling and pollution and sustainability), they are trying to become “a better person.” The pot of gold at the end of their rainbow is to get to the place where they can say, “I feel good about myself. I like myself. In fact, I love myself. If there is a god I have to stand before someday, I think I am ready to face him on my own.”

For others, “finding life” is all about material success. I want to be rich. I want to be famous. I want to have a great career. I want to travel all over the world. At the very least, I want to have a happy, decent middle class family. The pot of gold at the end of their rainbow is simply to enjoy the good things the world has to offer.

It may sound cruel, but we need to hope that none of these people is successful in their search. “Whoever finds his life will lose it,” Jesus says. A life without Jesus at the very center is always lost in the end.

 “And whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” Maybe you never made enough money to get your picture in the society pages. Your “15 minutes of fame” doesn’t interest the tabloids, or never happened at all.

Perhaps you didn’t get to spend all your time pursuing your favorite hobby or interest. You were so busy serving, and being treated like a servant, that all your strength and energy were used up loving others and spreading the gospel.

Sometimes the “golden years” do not turn out so golden. You spend your money and your health taking care of others and serving at church. Maybe life itself is being shortened in some way from putting your Savior first. Some Christians face martyrdom, but the wear and tear of a hard life lived sacrificially also takes its toll. The cumulative result of late nights and early mornings and little time for the doctor and a not-so-careful diet because of time given to the kingdom, and to the Savior, results in fewer years on earth.

You have lost nothing. “Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” With Jesus there is always grace, always forgiveness. That means heaven is always waiting with a life there that will never end. There we will find more love than we ever dreamed possible. There each of us will find who I really am, what I am really here for, because there we will find the God who made us, and then made us his own a second time by the blood of his Son.

Along the way between here and there we discover that the life of serving and sacrificing has more positive things than we might have imagined. Lose your life following Jesus, and you will find the only life worth having.

Matthew 10:38 “…anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.”

Following Jesus means carrying a cross. This is unavoidable for the Christian. In order to follow Jesus, we give up certain things, and that always pinches a little, sometimes a lot. We pass up some opportunities for pleasures. Sometimes they are sinful. Sometimes they simply fall down the Christian’s priority list and we don’t get to them. We may give up business advantages at times because we are no longer looking out only for ourselves, but for what serves my neighbor.

Depending on where they live, Christians may not get to be popular. Others may not accept them. Those who are open about their faith on university campuses may find themselves accused of bigotry or ignorance. Those who live their faith at work may jeopardize their careers. A friend of mine was criticized, and eventually let go from his job, because he “wasn’t making an effort to be a part of the team.” His employer’s issue with him? He didn’t join his coworkers in visiting strip clubs each night after work.  

One Christian blogger shared some of the hate mail he received in a blog post. While accusing this blogger of being hateful, the emails expressed a desire for the man to be dead, hurt, or sexually brutalized. Some wished for him to burn in Hell for all eternity. A few threatened to kill him for his ideology.

Jesus is worth it. When he says that those who refuse the cross are “not worthy of me,” he is not saying that we “earn” something by our suffering. God’s grace is still free. But you can’t “have” Jesus, you can’t believe in him and follow him, without there being consequences. If I gave you some free food, you can’t eat the food without also ingesting the calories that come along with it (though we may wish that were possible). The food was free, but the calories come along as a consequence. The only way to avoid the calories is not to eat the food.

If I had a swimming pool, I could let you swim in it for free, but you can’t swim in it without getting wet. The swimming is free, but you get wet as a consequence. The only way to avoid getting wet is not to swim.

If two countries were at war, you may be free to pick a side. But you can’t pick sides without making the other country your enemy. You get the picture.

It is possible to avoid the cross that comes with following Jesus. But you have to give him up in order to do it. It’s a package deal.

Jesus promises he is worth it. Crosses come into our lives as a consequence, but that is not the only consequence. Your 70, 80, or 90 years of earthly trouble will be replaced by an eternity of heavenly bliss. That’s a no-risk guarantee. Even now he promises freedom from carrying your guilt with you everywhere. You have been justified. He promises relief from the uncertainty and frustration of trying to work your way into God’s favor. Forgiveness is free. He promises peace in knowing that all of life is lived under the umbrella of God’s love. Angels are always protecting and watching. Prayer gives immediate access to God at all times. The Holy Spirit permanently resides in Christian hearts to help with resisting temptation and understanding God’s word.

            These things, too, belong to the package deal, so value your Savior. He is worth all your crosses.