Monday, November 4, 2013

November 3rd, 2013 Reformation

God Is Our Refuge And Strength, A Very Present Help In Times Of Trouble.
Jeremiah 31:31-34
God Has Given You A Reformation Day Present
I.                   We Wrecked His First Present.
II.                God Gave Us A New Present With Jesus.
In the name of Jesus, God’s new covenant, dear fellow redeemed children of God,
     Did you spend quite a bit of time decorating Reformation Day cookies this week?  Did you make hot cider and sit in front of the Reformation Tree?  Make your own calligraphy copy of the 95 theses?  Or did you exchange names to exchange Reformation Day presents.    I’m guessing that you probably didn’t.  We didn’t at our house either.  But God got your name for Reformation Day and he gave you a present. It’s a present we celebrate not just on Reformation Day but everyday.   God has given you a Reformation Day present.  I.  We wrecked his first present.  II.  God gave us a new present with Jesus.
     I saw a picture this week with the title “determination.”  It was a picture of  a  tree but this tree was growing just on the lip of a steep cliff. There wasn’t much room to grow anymore. That’s a pretty good picture of what things were like in the Promised Land at the time of the Lord’s spokesman to His people, Jeremiah. The Civil War in Israel had already taken place. The Northern Kingdom had already been gobbled up by the Assyrian Army.  All that remained was the little area around Jerusalem. Sad to say, the wickedness and rebellion against God  that brought God’s judgment on the North remained too.  God had a sad message for His prophet Jeremiah to bring.  The sad song would remain the same because of the rebellion of God’s people-God’s judgment was coming. The prophet Jeremiah became known as the "weeping prophet."
     Like father like son, the people at Jeremiah's time were doing what their forefathers had done who also rejected the Lord despite the kindness God showed.   But along with the judgment there would be a present. "The time is coming," declares the LORD, "when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.  It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD.
      Can you hear the disappointment in God’s voice?  Remember that God rescued the Children of Israel from their slavery in Egypt by forcing Pharoah to let Israel go. Remember how God protected his people from Pharaoh 's army by parting the water of the Red Sea,. Remember that when God gave his ten commandments from Mb. Sinai, the people all responded in one voice, "Everything the Lord has said, we will do." But before Moses had even cone down from the mountain with the tablets of stone, God's people were being unfaithful to him by worshipping the Golden Calf they had made. This whole sad story was played out again and again in Israel's history.  Like an unfaithful spouse, Israel's unfaithfulness to God caused problems, hurts and heartaches only God could ever mend.   Israel's unfaithfulness had ruined God's first covenant with his people.
     Unfortunately unfaithfulness runs in the human family.  Unfaithfulness to a loving God runs through my family history and my life history and in your family line and the record of your life.  We have shown ourselves to be just as unfaithful to God and His commandments as Israel was.   How do we get out of this mess?   We could not do a thing to get out of this mess.  But God did.  He got you a present.  It was a present bought and paid for long before the first reformation day.   We we're powerless to save ourselves. But God did it himself.  God replaced His Old Covenant of the Law with Jesus, the New Covenant.
       Let's take a look at God's new covenant. God told his people through Jeremiah, "This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time," declares the Lord. "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts." During the time of the worst of Israel's kings, the book of the Law was lost in the palace library and nobody knew where it was. God was going to be sure that that did not happen with his new covenant. God was going to write this new covenant, not in tablets of stone but rather in human hearts like yours and mine. Through the power His Word, the Holy Spirit imprints the message of the Gospel co our hearts.
      "I will be their God and they will be my people," Did you notice that the new covenant which God set up was a covenant where he does all the work.? God did not say," I will be their God if they will be my people." God said, "I will be their God and they will be my people." God replaced the Old Covenant of the Law with Jesus. Under the new covenant or agreement, God sent Jesus to do what we could not do. Jesus came to live a perfect life and die a perfect death as the substitute for the whole world.  Jesus is the one who brings healing for sin.   In South Africa there is a new orphanage for baby rhinos.  Hundreds of little rhino calves have been brought there stilling calling out for their mothers after their mothers were killed by poachers.  The poachers hunt down the rhino parents to kill them and cut off their horns.  Rhino horn is thought to have healing powers and is sold for much more than gold on the black market.  Through the years there have been poachers in the church.  Some have made up their own way of getting right with God.  Others have been trying to buy and sell God’s forgiveness.  Add to that,  the time of the reformation, it was thought that the details of God’s forgiveness were to be handed out by only a select few who were members of the clergy.  But one of the reasons we celebrate the reformation is that God made it possible for you and me to hear and read the details of God’s plan and promise- that Jesus died and rose for you and me and now out of thankfulness we  let that truth shine forth in their lives.  "No longer will a man teach his neighbor or a man his brother, saying, "Know the Lord," because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.”
     I remember a man who belonged to the congregation I served in Michigan.  His name was Steve. He always said he was a shirt-tale relative of President Reagan.  He told me one time that he like to come to church on reformation day because he said that he felt like Reformation Day was a “Bash the Catholics Day.”  Maybe I didn’t always do a good job of pointing to God’s grace while pointing our false teachers and false teachings. He didn’t see the joy that God gave him and us a present.  In His grace, God made sure that a sinful flesh and blood monk in Germany had a front row seat with unobstructed view to see that gift in Jesus Christ.  We thank God that by His grace he has given sinners like us a front row seat in his word and cleared away the obstructions to show us Jesus, the only way to heaven.   
     We pray that God will continue to give us a view of the present he gave us in Christ Jesus.  It is a present that we don't ever have worry about God taking back or  renegotiating this new covenant.  It is a covenant which stands forever by which as Luther says "God daily and fully forgives all sins to me and all believers. Amen.


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