Here my Lord

Here my Lord

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Okay, here we go. Dad asked me to do a podcast and a short excerpt from Luther. Happy Father's Day. It's fitting we're doing this on Father's Day because this is a passage that teaches us to look at God as a heavenly Father who loves us. So the passage is here my Lord has given me his body and blood and the bread and wine, in order that I should eat and drink, and they are to be my very own, so that I may be certain that my sins are forgiven, that I am to be free of death and hell, have eternal life, and be a child of God and an heir of heaven. Therefore, I go to the sacrament to seek these things. I am a poor sinner with death before me, I must go through it, and the devil threatens me with all kinds of trouble and danger. Because I am in sin, a captive of death and the devil, because I feel that I am weak in faith, cold in love, wayward, impatient, envious, with sin clinging to me before and behind. Therefore, I come hither where I find and hear Christ's word that I shall receive the gift of forgiveness of sins. So hopefully many of you remember this passage. We used to read it before communion, and it's just a concise explanation of what we believe. It makes me think of Gabriel. Gabriel just got a Bible and he's excited to read it. And Joy shared with me that she used to think that the Bible was Luther, that Luther's books were the Bible. And so now Gabriel's excited to get to read the actual Bible, but I told Gabriel, Luther's works are the Bible. This passage here contains the entire Bible. If you were to understand this passage, you would understand the entire Bible, everything from Genesis to Revelation. So I wanted to go through this with just as a meditation. Share with you how I read this, what I'm thinking about. And just like the Bible, every word is pregnant. So we could go word by word through this. Just like we would go word by word through a psalm. Okay. So we start out with here, my Lord. Here. Right here. Isaiah 55 says, seek God while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near. Well, it says, seek God while he may be found, but I would say seek God where he may be found, while he is near. Where is God? Right here. Right here in the words I'm speaking to you. Right here in the meal that he gives us. What does it mean to seek God? A lot of people think that means you have to run out and look here and there. Think about Michael. If I tell him to go get a tool, I say, Michael, go get my drill gun. So Michael goes and seeks my drill gun. Well, if Michael disappears for a week seeking my drill gun in Egypt, and he comes back, am I going to be impressed with the effort he made to go seek my drill gun? No. He knows exactly where I keep my drill gun. I expect him to go seek it where I keep it. God wants us to seek him where he is. And he is here in his word. So here, my Lord has given me. My Lord. Who is this God that we're seeking? Again, people go seek God, but what are they seeking? They're seeking their own idea of God. Luther talks about the idea of an absolute God. You know, this is the God that everyone believes in. Everyone believes there's a God. Everyone believes that there's someone up in the sky who's rewarding good and punishing evil. You know, Obama used to talk about being on the right side of history. Well, that's the idea of doing the right thing. You're going to be judged, if not by an actual God in the sky, then by the people who come after you in history. If you're in the army, our family, I don't understand how our family has been so connected to the armed forces, but if you're in the army, they say there are no atheists in the foxhole. There are no atheists once a bomb start dropping. When your life is on the line, then your conscience comes alive, and you either have to justify it and convince yourself that you're good, or make amends and and accept that you've fallen short. Okay, but this God in their mind that rewards good and punishes evil is not the God that we serve. Okay. We serve the revealed God in the Bible, my Lord. Who is this Lord? So if you were to believe in an actual God, the God we believe in sent his son. The Bible talks about serving the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This is the one that was promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and David, and Adam and Noah. This is the God who is revealed the seed who would crush Satan's head. So this is my Lord Jesus Christ who was promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And reveals himself here in this meal. So here my Lord has given me his body and blood. This is our God, the God who gives. A God who gives out of love. John 3.16. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. This is the God that we serve and love. What has he given us here in this meal? He's given of his body and blood. This is what all the writers, all the great preachers from the Bible through Luther call the mystery of Christ's Passion. The mystery, the wonder that God would lower himself and sacrifice his son for man. This is an inexpressible mystery of God's love for us. John 151 says, You will see heaven opened and the angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man. God is descending to man and man ascends to God. Luther couldn't, in one of his meditations in Christ's Passion, he couldn't express the mystery of God lowering himself to the level of man, of dispossessing himself, in a sense, of his godhood and becoming a man and dying and taking our sins. So Christ says about himself, you'll see heaven open and the angels ascending and descending. This comes from Genesis 28, Jacob's dream, when he was running away from his brother who wanted to kill him, even though he was the heir of the promise. He's running away and he came to a certain place and stayed there that night because the sun had set, and taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and laid down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached the heaven, and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. Exclamation. And behold, the Lord stood above it and said, I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father, and the God of Isaac. The land of which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring. Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Okay, this is the promise. This is where Christ is promised to Jacob. All the families of the earth will be blessed through Jesus Christ. You know, this picture of the angels ascending and descending, that the angels, the angels are just as mystified by this as we are, that God, the God who created them, again lowers himself to man's level. It's like they're inspecting this ladder. They're in wonder at it that God would do this, that God would have this love for man. Peter thinks about things into which angels long to look. This mystery. And on the other hand, Satan despises it. You know, Luther conjectures that this is the reason that Satan fell, that he that he resented God's plan to become man, to unite himself with man instead of the angels.

SPEAKER_01 11:02

Satan hates this.

SPEAKER_00 11:09

So my Lord has given me his body and blood in the bread and wine. Why? Why did he put his body and blood in the bread and wine? So that I may eat and drink. Why? Who are we to ask why? But because it's the most basic way we have to take things into ourselves, that that we take the spiritual gift, the spiritual mystery, and God makes it real and concrete for us, something that we can taste and touch, and he gives us a way to bring it into ourselves in a way that makes it real for us. Why? Because his word says so. You know, it does a baby when he's nursing on his mother's breast look up at his mother and say, Why are you feeding me this way? No. He just accepts it.

SPEAKER_01 12:10

He receives it the way that the mother gives it to him.

SPEAKER_00 12:22

So the bread and wine are to be my very own. So this bread and wine that God gives us through his son Jesus Christ are to be my very own. Christ died for you. Luther has a in volume 42, it's something that many of you have read. He has a meditation in Christ's passion. So there's value in just thinking and considering how Christ suffered for us, how he died for our sins. But what's the key that makes this consideration and meditation on Christ's suffering fruitful for us? Well, it's that he suffered for you. Satan believes that Jesus Christ suffered on the cross. He put him there. Satan knows Jesus Christ rose from the dead, but he did it for you. This bread and wine is for you. Why? So that I may be certain that my sins are forgiven. What does it mean to be certain? That's our my new car telling me to do something. Sorry about that. What does it mean to be certain? What is Christian certainty? It's a strange thing because it's in a way a weak certainty. Am I certain of what I believe? Yes, absolutely. But do I have doubts? Absolutely. And Matthew Christ says, if you have faith like a mustard seed, you will move mountains. So just a little bit of this faith, of this certainty, goes a long way. There's a story in the Bible where a father has a sick son and he comes to Jesus Christ and asks Christ to heal a son. And Christ asks him, Do you believe? And the man says, I believe, help my unbelief. That is our certainty. That's a picture of our certainty. We believe, but of course we're hampered by doubts. But it's that that kernel, that core of belief that's always there, that dimly burning wick. Where the weaker our faith is, the stronger it is, because we learn to rely on Christ. The daily sentence from a day or two ago I thought was very fitting for this. You know, it the first part was uh talking about uncertainty, being patient. You know, this meal is working on us. We can't see or feel it working in us, but little by little it does, and you know, we have to be patient.

SPEAKER_01 15:26

But the second part was we're immovable. Thanks to God. So we are weak but immovable.

SPEAKER_00 15:40

It's a a contradiction, but it's a Christian life. Yes, we're weak. Yes, we have doubts, but when that gun is held to our head, we are immovable.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

Where else are we gonna go?

SPEAKER_00 15:56

The words of eternal life are here. There's no there's nothing else out there for us. We if we give up God's word, we there's nothing else for us. So we have no choice but to hold on.

SPEAKER_01 16:15

So what are we certain of?

SPEAKER_00 16:17

That my sins are forgiven, that I am to be free from death and hell, have eternal life, and be a child of God and an heir of heaven. And that's what that's what this meal is. It makes us heirs. It's Christ's last will and testament. It's his will that makes us an heir to everything that he has, that makes us fellow sons of God with his Father, God the Father. We become heirs with him. Everything he has from the Father, we will have too. Alright, so this first half is is what we get from the meal, what we're promised. In order to receive it, we have to accept what it says about us that we're sinners, and so we have to receive Christ's forgiveness. This next part says, Therefore I go to the sacrament to seek these things. What are the conditions in which we go to the sacrament to seek these things? Well, I am a poor sinner. With death before me, I must go through it. Okay, we're we're poor sinners. This is this is the background, this is the day-to-day life in which we receive the meal as sinners. If you're not a sinner, you don't need this meal. Hunger makes a good cook. If you're not hungry, you have no desire for this meal. But our sins drive us to this meal. And what is the result of sin? Death. Romans 6 23, the wages of sin is death. I always struck me just how simply Luther puts it death is before me, I must go through it. It's like being on a roller coaster where you're you're you get on and you go to that first big hill, and it's just click, click, click, click, click. Death is coming. And we're afraid of death because we understand by nature in our conscience that death is the just wages of our sin. You know, it what is this world, how does it try to treat treat death? Well, it tries to remove the fear through, you know, you know, mental gymnastics. Gary and I worked for an older woman a couple weeks ago. And she was just the bitterness of how disappointed she was at the lies she'd been told about getting older. You know, telling us about all of her friends who are dying one by one. Our friend group is down to you know just two or three people. And they said, somebody told me these were the golden years. You know, you get old and you're just content with your life, you just enjoy the fruits of your life. But it's a lie. People are just dying. You're just getting weaker and frailer. You know, the world tries to paint death as just something natural, something not to be feared, just a part of life, the circle of life. You live, you help other people, and you go back into the universe to be recycled or to rest and repose and be one with the universe, whatever that is, they they try to take the fear of death away. Okay, but but this woman, too late probably, is understanding that death is certain and brutal. When Alora's, well, no, I'm not gonna blame Alora, my favorite singer, Olivia Rodrigo. She has a song called Brutal. She says, They say these are the golden years, but I wish I could disappear. Ego crush is so severe, God, it's brutal out here. That's an accurate portrayal of life. It's brutal, and it ends in death.

SPEAKER_01 20:44

But not for a Christian.

SPEAKER_00 20:46

Yes, we're going to die, and yes, our death is a judgment for our sins. But we have this meal which saves us from the real judgment of death, which is a final absolute punishment. Our death is just an entry into what we're waiting for, where we receive what we've been promised. Paul says in 1 Corinthians the sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the law. We still have to die, but this meal removes the sting. The real sting of death is the fear of death. You're going to die, but if you understand and believe this meal, you don't have to be afraid to die. In fact, your fear of death is gradually replaced if you're patient and wait with a desire to die. Just a disgust with this life in an eagerness to enter into the next life. Grandpa is eager to die. I would not say that I'm eager to die, but I'd say I'm neutral. I'm re I'm ready. I can go I can go either way. If God gives me another day, I'll take it and enjoy this nice fancy van I'm sitting in for another day. But if if he takes me, I'm ready to go. So I'm a poor sinner with death before me. I must go through it. And the devil threatens me with all kinds of trouble and dangers. So we have two dangers in our life, two things that make our life miserable. One is our own flesh, which is sinful. And the second is the devil who is out there prowling around like a lion looking to devour you. How does he devour you? By making you question God's word. Okay, but he's real. And this line struck me this time through this passage more than it did in the past because there's just a general sense and realization that the devil, who is already real, already presents a very real trouble and danger to Christians, is in the not too distant future going to become incarnate. So just as Christ was promised in the Old Testament, and the fathers, the patriarchs believed, and then Christ in the New Testament became incarnate, actually came, became real in a physical sense, in the way that he was spiritually promised. Well, Satan is going to become and walk around in the purse of Antichrist. He's going to become incarnate. Satan is going to come to this earth and chase us. Well, you know, that picture in Revelation of the dragging, chasing the church through the wilderness, trying to swallow it up. He's coming for us. Also reminded me of our family Psalm, who talks about our fight with Satan, Psalm 64. Preserve my life from dread of the enemy. Hide me from the secret plots of the wicked. So preserve us from Satan. Hide us from Satan and his plots, from the scheming of evildoers, who wet their tongues like swords, who aim bitter words like arrows, shooting from ambush at the blameless, shooting at him suddenly without fear. How does Satan attack us? By attacking God's word, by trying to make you question and doubt, by attacking that certainty we have that Christ died for us, for you. They hold fast to their evil purpose. They talk of laying snares secretly, thinking, who can see us? Think of all the snares that are being laid right now, in secret and not so secret, thinking, Who's going to stop us? They've got a plan. They search out crimes and have thought out a cunningly deceived plot. But God will suddenly shoot his arrow at them. They will be wounded suddenly, because of their own tongue he will bring them to ruin. All who see them will wag their heads, they will tell what God has wrought, and ponder what he has done. Let the righteous rejoice in the Lord and take refuge in him. Let all the upright in heart glory. Who are the upright in heart? Those who believe properly and understand and value and cherish this passage, this explanation of the Lord's Supper. So the devil threatens me with all kinds of trouble and danger, and we're sinners. So what do we do? Well, because I'm in sin, a captive of death and the devil. So there's a temptation to use our situation in life as sinners and pursued by Satan as excuses not to come to God's word because we're not, we don't deserve it, right? We're not good enough. No, because of our situation, our situation drives us to this meal because I am in sin, because I'm a captive of death, because I have to go through death, because the devil pursues me, because I feel that I am weak in faith, cold in love, wayward, impatient, envious, with sin clinging before and behind. Again, this is a description of God's law. God's law that reveals to us how far we fall short of his standard. But what does it do? It drives us to this meal because I feel these things. And again, this is just such a wonderful summary of my own personal feelings when I come to the meal. I feel that I am weak in faith. Cold in love. This is things that we should feel for other people that that is just dead. You know, we're contaminated by this world we live in. We can't help it. Yeah, 2 Timothy chapter 3. Understand this that in the last days there will come times of difficulty, for people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving God, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. Well the problem is every single one of those describes me. Except I don't deny God's power. I accept and wholehearted affirm what God says. And so everything that comes before, I'm forgiven for. Impatient, envious. Envious is, you know, when the kids recite the Ten Commandments, those last two commandments, don't covet your neighbor's wife, don't covet the house, don't cave the horse, manservants, maidservants, wife, everything. You know, Luther explains those last two as really the background of the other commandments. We do all these things, we break those commandments because we're envious, we're not content. In the same way we break them because we're breaking the first commandment, where we don't really believe God is our God. If we believed God was God, we wouldn't have to break the Ten Commandments. We would just be content to wait for Him to give us whatever we need. Anyone who steals is saying, I don't believe in a God. Anyone who's envious is saying, I'm not content with what God has given me. With sin clinging before and behind. I mean, just what a way to put it. Sin clings to us like mud and dirt. Like when Josie's dogs come in from the backyard, the mud clings before and behind. That's that's a picture of us swimming through this disgusting world, and yet this meal protects, it keeps the mud on the outside. It keeps it where it can be washed off and dealt with a little bit at a time. Again, therefore I come hither. I come here. Hither means here. I come here where I find and hear Christ's word, that I shall receive the gift of forgiveness of sins. So the all these last three, therefore, is because, because, therefore, I come to this meal where I find and hear Christ's word, that I shall receive the gift of forgiveness of sins. It truly is a gift. And the hungrier you are, the more you you see and feel the sin that clings to you before and behind, the more you run to this meal and just receive it the way Christ gave it to us. His body and blood shed for you, for your sins, given to you in his body and blood.

SPEAKER_01 31:19

Happy Father's Day.