September 26, 2021                            Text:  Mark 9:38-50

Dear Friends in Christ,

    Ten women were in a book club.  One day at lunch one of the bolder women asked, “How many of you have been faithful in your marriage?”  Only one raised her hand.

    That evening one of the ladies told her husband the story and admitted that she didn’t raise her hand.  The husband turned away from the football game in shock.  The wife was quick to reassure him, “I have been faithful to you.”  “Then why didn’t you raise your hand?” he asked.  She answered, “I was ashamed.”

    Is this what it has come to?  Ashamed of being faithful?  Ashamed of the truth?  Even Christians are accommodating themselves to the world’s attitude.  If this continues Christians lose their affect.  They are no longer salt.  Nothing is different in walking as a follower of Christ. 

    Do you want to be different from the world?  Then join me in . . .

“BEING SALT – NOT SALTY”

    Things on a Sunday morning tie together.  Look at the Old Testament lesson.  The Israelites were a little salty.  “Manna again?  Where are the melons and onions and garlic and fish?  Come on Lord, we are your people.”  God is feeding and leading and it is never enough.  Do you ever get salty like that?  Take stock of your blessings but you stand in front of your closet with hundreds of pieces of clothing and go, “I have nothing to wear!”  

    We can be minute focusers and petty complainers.  We join right in.  Instead of being salt we are salty.

    Even the disciples led by John are a little salty in our text.  “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” (v. 38)  This guy didn’t have the credentials.  He didn’t have the tribalism card.  Oh by the way, I did learn that word this week – tribalism.  This idea that we are divided into tribes in the US of A and our tribes views are always right.  The disciples were a tribe and didn’t like this interloper.  But Jesus calls out their prejudice.  “Do not stop him, for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me.” (v. 39)  Are you getting saltier?

    Now Jesus really goes after them and after us.  He wants us to cut off body parts.  Hands and feet and eyes, oh my!  What is the Savior talking about?  He isn’t really advocated this, is He?  No.  He is trying to save us from hell.  Trying to lure us back from the depths of fire and devil.  Trying to turn our saltiness into salt.  He knows these body parts sin and are motivated by the sinful self.  We need some genuine change in our lives.  We don’t want to live as salty people in an ever -increasing salty world.  We want to be different in a God-pleasing way.

    There is a reason to be God-pleasingly different.  It is God’s favor for us through Jesus Christ.  It’s Romans 5:7, 8:  “Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man though for a good man someone mighty possibly dare to die.  But God demonstrates his own love for us in this:  While we were still sinners Christ die for us.”  It’s 1 Peter 2:24:  “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sin and live for righteousness.”

    Absorb God’s love.  Let it flavor all that you do.  Face each day in the knowledge that you are eternally loved through Jesus Christ.  Go to bed each evening, even if frustrated in some salty behavior, knowing that your sins are forgiven for Jesus sake.  The blood stained Cross is our assurance.  With this flavor enhancer clinging to our being we can then be salt.

    “For everyone will be salted with fire.  Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you make it salty again?  Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.” (v. 49, 50)  

    This can be a challenge because of what we have for salt today.  Salt is sodium chloride – a stable molecule.  Buy a can today put it in your pantry, come back in 50 years and it’s still salt.  It might be a little chunky, but still salt.

    When Jesus teaches the disciples, they didn’t have pure salt.  Salt was harvested from the surface of salt marshes flowing from the Mediterranean or Dead Seas.  It had impurities from the rocks it was scraped off of, and from the algae, sand, and sea life that flowed in with the seawater.  That is how the salt lost its saltiness.

    Salt has no power in itself.  Our holiness, our forgiveness, our power come from Christ.  The salt in us only has power because it is from Christ.  The salt of his sweat in Gethsemane.  The salt-laced blood He shed for us.  These won our forgiveness.  Filled with the salt of Christ, we can battle the powers of evil.  We can control our sinful appendages.  We are purified and cleansed.  We can flavor and preserve others.  We can forgive one another.  

    The salty world can dry us up, but Christ salts us with His Word and Spirit so we can have peace with one another.  Live that out today and always.

                                        Amen.  

September 12, 2021 – Christian Education Sunday          Text:  Philippians 4:10-13

Dear Friends in Christ,

            Martin Luther wrote:  “How rich a God our God is!  He gives enough, but we don’t notice it.  He gave the whole world to Adam, but this was nothing in Adams’ eyes; he was concerned about one tree and had to ask why God had forbidden him to eat of it.”

            Do we recognize ourselves in these words?  We are given so much but we tend to focus on what we don’t have.  We can be awfully spoiled.  God our Father would probably like to sit us in a corner but He continues to bless us.  The beauty of God’s Word today on this Christian Education Sunday.

“WHY IS CONTENTMENT SO ELUSIVE?”

            Philippians is a missionary thank you-letter.  Paul writes, “I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that now at length you have revived your concern for me.” (v. 10a)  Paul was close to this congregation.  He and Silas had started this church after release from prison.  Now as he writes encouragement to them he is in prison again.  This time in Rome. 

            Again our text, “Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.”  Astounding.  Paul is confined and he is lifting up the Philippians.  Have you ever been in prison?  Have you ever been in a prison?  In my years of ministry I have been in three different prisons, three types of security, two different people.  Two visits were less than an hour.  One was twenty minutes.  When I was in there I didn’t look around and think, “I could be content here.”  That’s foolish talk.  So how does Paul do it?

            We labor and sacrifice so much for this world.  Everything we gain at each stage of life goes away.  People in the closing stages of life reminisce about their childhood.  They talk about jobs, and children and vacations and where they lived.  They get nostalgic about goals met and friends gained and the high and low moments of living.  One thing is certain – in that closing stage of life – if one is given the time – without Christ all that’s left is the reminiscing.  It is all going to pass away…forever.  The Greek word for content is translated “self-sufficient.”  Therein lies the danger.  If we live as if everything is from our hand or our hard work or our inner strength then we have lost our way.  We fall into the abyss.

            Paul was content because he belonged to Jesus.  He knew his daily bread came from the gracious hand of his Savior.  His will is done in our lives regardless of this world.  “I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.”  And the only way we can that is if we can say with Paul . . .

            “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”  (v. 13)  How does He strengthen us?  Here’s an answer from God’s Word:  “God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved – and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” (Eph. 2:4-6)

            You can either look forward to your last moments on earth getting chatty about things that were and never will be again – or – you can look forward to the fact that your sin is forgiven, you have eternal life and you will be raised to Christ in unending comfort and joy.  Christ strengthens us in every way through His Word.

            It has been stated:  “Those who are chosen in Christ are the special objects of God’s providence and loving care.  They have the promise that He will never leave them nor forsake them.  He will supply their needs, not simply out His glorious riches, as a millionaire throws coins to a beggar, but richly and daily in accord with the all-surpassing riches of the One to whom the whole universe belongs.”

            Why is contentment so elusive?  Because we listen to other voices than the One who created us.  You can’t positive away your moments of conflict with others, or the tragedies of life, or take away that last breath which opens entrance into eternity.  You can listen to a lot of voices or you can listen to Jesus:  “I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.” (Jn. 14:3)

            Today is about the Word.  Confidence in the Word.  The Word in the flesh.  “I am content, my Jesus ever lives.”

                                                            Amen.