October 8, 2023 Text:  Philippians 3:4b-14

Dear Friends in Christ,

Nada . . . Nil . . . Nothing . . . Zero.  In our lives usually these words are not positives.  But are they always negatives?  In baseball, as a batter you don’t want a zero batting average.  But as a pitcher you would love an ERA of zero.  You don’t want nil in your bank account.  But we all pray to have nil in our church mortgage account.  You all want something.  But isn’t it nice when you have nothing to do? 

God wants to give you the nothing that is everything.

“NOTHING OF SELF – EVERYTHING OF HIM”

We strive to have it all.  Years back that was the tag line for a beer commercial.  “Who says you can’t have it all?”  Is beer having it all?  No, of course not, but it shows where the human heart is.  It looks for the fulness of life in the stuff of this world.

In our text, in the Apostle Paul’s world, the ones trying to have it all were the Judaizers.  They took great “confidence in the flesh” and in their achievements under the law.  But Paul even goes behind them with his diatribe on his ethnicity.  He throws in there that he was a persecutor of the church.  “You think you had it all under the law.  I had the zeal to take it even further.  You can’t outdo me.”

In Paul’s world the focus was not so much on material possessions but on one’s accountability to God’s Law.  You “had it all” if you were “right with God.”  If you kept His Law, then surely the material blessings would follow.

Our secular world sees no need to be accountable to God.  Our things have become our gods.  Our experiences are the idols we worship.  “I did this.  I did that.  I went here.  I went there.”  “Having it all” in our world is less overtly religious.

But what these two worlds have in common is this.  They are both focused on self.  The Judaizers were self-righteous.  How could they earn God’s favor.  Our world focuses on gratifying the self through our things and our experiences.  In both instances it is never enough.

Where are all the toys you just had to have as a child?  Where are the latest fashions that you needed to impress your high school classmates?  We live thinking “if I just have this car, or this house, or take this vacation,” then I will really have it all.  But does it ever work that way?  You know it doesn’t.  Our contentment is fleeting.  Somebody is working right now in our world to make you the latest something because they know something about you – that you can’t wait to have it.  Self always gets in the way.

We go on our self-fulfilling way until God’s Word gets through to us.  What makes Christianity so unacceptable?  We are sinful and cannot win God’s love and favor.  The Judaizers thought they were keeping God’s Law.  We think we are doing right with our tolerance and personal merit before God.  Paul knows that these things are “rubbish” and that true righteousness comes not from the law “but that which comes through faith in Christ.”  

God brings us to nil, nada, nothing so that in our nothingness we can know the all-sufficiency of Christ.  We know the power of the resurrection, we share in His suffering and death.  In our Baptism, dying and rising with Christ, we are united with the power of His resurrection.  When the Holy Spirit allows us to empty our self and the claim that things are “mine”, grace fills us with “the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”

In God’s grace, our nothingness of self becomes everything in Him.  We “press on toward the goal of the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” (v. 14)  That goal?  An eternity with the Trinity.  Perfect peace and rest and a resurrected body that will be in the presence of our blessed Jesus in eternal heaven.

In the TV show “M*A*S*H” the character B.J. Honeycutt gave this reason for not giving in to the temptation in the midst of the Korean War.  “I live in an insane world where nothing makes sense.  Everyone around me lives for the now, because there may not be a tomorrow.  But I have to live for tomorrow, because for me there is no now.”  For B.J. his hope was defined in seeing his family again. 

Let’s transpose that to our Christian lives.  Someday, we will each be called into eternity.  Isn’t our hope for the future defined by what Christ has in store for us . . . in heaven?  In light of Jesus’ love and what He has done for you isn’t this a better way to face the future:  Nothing of Self – Everything of Him.  

Amen.

Oct. 1, 2023 – Friendship Sunday Text:  Luke 11:5-13

Dear Friends in Christ,

During World War I a soldier wanted to go into “No Man’s Land” where one of his buddies lay seriously wounded.  “You can go,” said his captain, “but it’s not worth it.  Your friend is probably dead, and you may throw your life away.”

But the man went.  He managed to get to his friend, hoist him on his shoulder and get him to the trenches.  They tumbled in together.  The captain looked at the would-be-rescuer, and said, “I told you it wouldn’t be worth it.  Your friend is dead, and you are mortally wounded.”  “It was worth it, sir,” he said.  “How could it be ‘worth it’?  Your friend is dead.”

“Yes sir,” the young man answered, “but it was worth it, because when I got to him he was alive and he said, ‘Jim, I knew you’d come.’”

Wouldn’t it be nice if all friendships were that way?  Jesus came into our world to rescue us from our sin.  He provided what we needed most:  a right relationship with God the Father through the forgiveness of sins.  He reminds is in the Bible in John, chapter 6, “whoever comes to me I will never drive away.”  

This is Friendship Sunday, and we are once again privileged to hear the Word of God.

“JESUS – OUR FRIEND INDEED”

I looked back to a sermon I preached in the 1990’s on this text.  It was mentioned in there how loneliness was a problem.  We still have that situation today and probably even worse.  During the time of Covid, many people got isolated.  There were some very sad stories especially at it related to people’s death and having no one there for them.  Man and woman still have a need for friends and friendship.  Too many times, we go looking in the wrong places and there are consequences to our bad choices.  

There is good news today.  Jesus is here for you, even in your bad choices.  Our text and the words of Jesus, “Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him;’ and he will answer from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed.  I cannot get up and give you anything’?  I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of impudence he will rise and give him whatever he needs.” (vs. 5-8)

Fascinating, isn’t it?  He wouldn’t get up because they were friends, but because of the man’s persistence he got up and gave him what he needed.  We read this wrong if we think that if we pray hard and long enough God will give us what we want.  

In the story a friend goes to a friend.  When we go to God we go to our perfect Father in heaven.  In the text, the friend goes at midnight, an inconvenient time.  With God there is no inconvenient time.  The need of bread is small.  Our needs before God are greater.  The friend offers a selfish excuse for refusing the request.  Our Father in heaven, who is perfect and kind, offers us the most wonderful promises.  

Sometimes we think God doesn’t hear us or listen to us.  That He is far away.  We think because of our hurt and sorrow that are almost unbearable at times that God doesn’t care.  But that couldn’t be further from the truth.  If we knock the door will be opened.  

We can be afraid to be persistent because our life of rebellion is too great or our sin too heavy.  That should never be a discouragement, because the Lord asks us to come.  He encourages us to knock, to search His Word in the Bible.  For any sinner, nothing is too great to bring before God.

Don’t let change frighten you.  It’s like the two caterpillars who were crawling across the grass when a butterfly flew over them.  They looked up, and one nudged the other and said, “You couldn’t get me up in one of those things for a million dollars.”

If you say “I can never change” then you don’t know Jesus.  In Christ, God opens closed doors, bring resurrection, reveals possibilities, reclaims the lost, liberates the cursed, and changes the unchangeable.

This friend Jesus offers more than a change of attitude.  He offers a transformation of life.  Jesus works His transforming power in the lives of all who hear the Good News of salvation.  Jesus – Our Friend Indeed.

Our earthly friendships sometimes let us down.  Jesus is always here.  Jesus suffered for you, Jesus died for you, and Jesus rose again from the grave for you.  He exchanged our self-centeredness for His selflessness.

Jesus is a Friend For life.  Jesus the Savior is our friend . . . indeed!

Amen.