“Jesus--Our Faithful & Loving God” Jer. 31.3; Rev. 2.10; Matt. 21.22, Elnor Behm’s funeral sermon 1-4-17

1.             Grace, mercy, and, peace to you from God our Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Dear family and friends of Elnor.  At a time of grieving like this, those who are present, and I on behalf of this church, offer your family and all who were close to Elnor our deepest sympathy.  May our Lord, who knows your needs, comfort and give you strength to uphold each another.  Today we’re going to look at Elnor’s confirmation verse from Jeremiah 31:3, which says, ““³the Lord appeared to him from far away.  I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore, I have continued my faithfulness to you.”   And also, the verse from Revelation 2:10, where John the Apostle writes, “¹⁰Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and for ten days you will have tribulation. Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life.”  The message is entitled, “Jesus:  Our Faithful & Loving God,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.   

2.             Having been Elnor’s Pastor for the past 2 ½ years, I’ve found how much he deeply loved his family and cared for them.  He was always faithful and dedicated to providing for them.  He farmed, drove truck and school bus, and tended bar to care for them.  He especially enjoyed driving the school bus for the Christ Lutheran School children here in West Bloomfield.  He loved taking care of the animals, especially the birds around his home.  He also loved to walk and bike as well, he wasn’t prone to sitting around too much.  He deeply loved his grandchildren too.   Elnor liked to fix and make things as well.  Though he was deeply hurt when his son Terry passed way, the Lord was faithful and saw him and his family through that difficulty with the message of His faithfulness and love through His Son our Savior Jesus Christ.  He reminded Elnor and his family that because Jesus lives we too shall live and have eternal life (John 14), that message was for Terry as well.  Elnor loved to read his Bible early in the morning and that was what he was doing the day that he died.  In fact, he was reading through Barb’s confirmation verse just before he passed away, Matthew 21:22 says, “22And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.”

3.             In case you didn’t notice there’s a theme to all three of these passages from Revelation 2, Matthew 21, and Jeremiah 31.  One of the things that Elnor wanted was that he didn’t want to undergo a long, slow death.  He didn’t want to be a burden to his family, and on last Thursday Dec. 29^th, 2016, the Lord saw fit to call him to his heavenly home.  God was faithful to Elnor’s request.  But, what does it mean to be faithful? When someone is faithful, he or she is someone who can be trusted. Specifically, faithful individuals keep their word.  When we consider faithfulness, we must realize that this truth applies absolutely to God. By God’s grace we can then be faithful to our confession. When we’re faithful unto death, we, in Christ, receive a crown of life.

4.             Faithful individuals are those whose word can be trusted. So, when we think of being faithful, we should first think of God. God is faithful. The apostle Paul said that God is faithful, “for he cannot disown himself” (2 Tim 2:13). God can be completely trusted. God’s Word is completely reliable.  Consider each person of the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—and realize that God is faithful. When God the Father promised that he would send his Son Jesus to save mankind, then the faithful Father had to do just that. In the fullness of time, God the Father had to send his Son, born of a woman, born to purchase us from sin and death with his holy, precious blood. When the Son of God says, “I will give you a crown of life,” such a promise is a certainty. To make this promise a reality, the faithful Son of God had to die our death and rise from the grave. Because of such work, he can and does give a crown of life to you and me if we believe in Him as our Lord and Savior.

5.             The question is, then, are we faithful?  Are we keeping our word in relation to our God? “Be faithful unto death,” Jesus declares, “and I will give you a crown of life.”  Since God is the faithful one, all faithfulness must begin and end with him. So it was with Elnor. On December 20^th, 1936, our faithful God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—put his name on Elnor Behm in Baptism. And when his name was put on Elnor, Elnor became a child of the heavenly Father. Elnor also became a redeemed one, united with the death and resurrection of Jesus. Baptism is a covenant. In Elnor’s Baptism, God’s side of the covenant was to freely bless him with the gifts of salvation in Jesus. God wouldn’t break the covenant agreement. Elnor’s side of the covenant was to remain faithful to the triune God. Could Elnor be faithful on his side of the covenant?

6.             In preparation for his confirmation, Elnor was taught the Chief Parts of the Christian faith, beginning with the Ten Commandments. He knew that God’s Ten Commandments were to be obeyed and that they expose our sinfulness and need for Christ’s forgiveness, that without Jesus we all rightly deserve God’s condemnation. Consider this verse from Revelation: “And the unbelieving and abominable, and murderers and the sexually immoral persons and the sorcerers and the idolaters and all liars—their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death” (21:8). The second death is hell. Elnor has now experienced the first death. His body has died. But he’s been delivered from this second death!

7.             He’s been delivered because of what he learned and believed as the second chief part of his confirmation instruction: the Apostles’ Creed. The creed teaches that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the God in whose name Elnor had been baptized, created, redeemed, and sanctified him. At the heart of the creed, Elnor learned of the loving Savior. Speaking of faithfulness again, Revelation 1:5-6 says: “Jesus Christ [is] the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood . . . to him be glory.” Elnor believed this—that Jesus rose from the dead for him. Elnor believed that Jesus released us from our sins by his blood. He believed that Jesus loves us so much that he was condemned in our place, so that we would be completely delivered from that second death, from hell. God, our faithful God, has done these things.

8.             Elnor Behm wasn’t a perfect man. You who knew him best fully realize that he sinned, even against you, his dear family. To remain faithful unto death, Elnor—and I and every Christian—need repentance. God deeply desires that we repent of our sins, but Rev 9:20 tells us, “The rest of mankind . . . still did not repent of the work of their hands.” Elnor realized that as a faithful Christian he needed constantly to turn from sin toward forgiveness in our Lord and Savior. He learned in catechism instruction that this was how we daily use our Baptisms: to repent, to daily drown the sinful nature, and to have the “new man” come forth in the forgiveness of Jesus. He knew that he could come to church and hear and receive joyfully the pastor’s pronouncement of Christ’s forgiveness for his sins, and Elnor did that regularly by coming to worship with his wife Doris.

9.             Finally, Elnor learned in catechism that he could personally receive this much-needed forgiveness through Holy Communion. In constant repentance, Elnor and his wife Doris often dined with and upon his forgiving Savior in the Sacrament of the Altar.  Yes, by the grace and power of God that he received through the means of grace, Elnor remained faithful unto death. And now he has the crown of life. Elnor’s spirit is now with his Lord in joy and peace, and he knows that on the Last Day his body will rise victorious as well. Then he will experience the crown of life in its fullest sense, for in physically rising from the dead, Elnor will have eternal life as God intended—as body and soul together.  Picture Elnor experiencing this crown of life, Revelation 21 says, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is among men, and he will dwell among them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be among them, and he will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.” And he who sits on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” And he said, “Write, for these words are faithful and true.” (21:3–5 NASB)  Yes, these are faithful words because they are God’s Word. Thanks be to God today that we, in reviewing Elnor’s Christian upbringing, can say, “Elnor was faithful—faithful unto death.” In his Lord and Savior, Elnor has received the crown of life!  Amen.

“Christians, Be Alert!” Luke 12.35–40, Sermon for New Year’s Day 2016

1.       Please pray with me.  May the words of my mouth and the meditation or our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock, and our Redeemer.  Amen.  A Happy New Year to all of you!  As we gather together today to mark the change of the calendar, we’re aware not only of the passing of time but also we take note of our use of that time. We may observe that in this world one year is pretty much the same as another. Conflict, disaster, illness, funerals, the effects of sin in our world and even in ourselves tempt us to fear or even despair that anything will change for the better. Fortunately, we who are baptized into our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, look to the God who loves us. By faith in Christ we confess and bury the sins of the past and are raised to new life and hope, the certainty that nothing “in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:39).  The message today is entitled, “Christians be Alert,” and it’s taken from Luke 12:35-40, dear brothers and sisters in Christ. 

2.       The message from God’s Word for us today is taken from Luke 12:35–40, which says, “³⁵[Jesus said:] “Stay dressed for action and keep your lamps burning, ³⁶and be like men who are waiting for their master to come home from the wedding feast, so that they may open the door to him at once when he comes and knocks. ³⁷Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will dress himself for service and have them recline at table, and he will come and serve them. ³⁸If he comes in the second watch, or in the third, and finds them awake, blessed are those servants! ³⁹But know this, that if the master of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have left his house to be broken into. ⁴⁰You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”

3.      Notice in our text from Luke’s Gospel that Jesus gives to us two parables.  The first parable Jesus teaches us uses the analogy of servants waiting for their master to return from a wedding.  In ancient times Jewish weddings were held at night, and a bridegroom’s servants would have to wait for their master to come home with his bride. The new husband would certainly not want to be kept waiting at the door with his bride! But the servants had to be sure they were ready to go to work, with their robes tucked under their girdles so they were free to move.  But, the remarkable thing in this story is that the master serves the servants! In Jewish weddings, the bride was treated like a queen and the groom like a king. So you wouldn’t expect the “king” to minister to his staff. Here Jesus tells us that He as our King will minister to us His faithful servants when He greets us at His return, and He’ll reward us for our faithfulness.  We as Christians are to be alert for our Master Jesus to return.

4.      Luke reminds us twice in a short span that the coming of the master is a blessing to those who are prepared. The Greek word behind “blessed” is the same as the one we find in the Beatitudes. But though the coming is a blessing, it’s also a disruption. Luke introduces another image & parable to describe the coming of the Lord, the sudden arrival of a thief. This striking image appears a number of times in the New Testament (cf. Matt. 24:43; 1 Thess. 5:2–4; 2 Pet. 3:10; and Rev. 16:15). The use of this image certainly reinforces the call to readiness for Christ’s Second Coming. But it also complicates our understanding of the nature of the coming. We’re given in this reading two images, one encouraging of the Master returning home from a wedding, and the other threatening, with a thief coming to steal. Are Jesus’ words a threat or a promise? The answer is “both.” To those who claim Jesus as master and who are prepared for his Second Coming, they are blessed.  The Lutheran scholar Lenski writes about this text, “This lord does not seek his ease and retire for the night… He makes as grand a feast for [his servants] as was the one from which he came, he has them recline to dine and—wonder of wonders—he does not order other slaves, to serve them but makes himself their slave and ‘ministers’ to them. Many waiters and helpers are needed at a great feast, but this lord needs none . . . letting the reality peep through, that this is the almighty, heavenly Lord himself. . . . Yet in a way, this heavenly act need not surprise us. Did not Christ humble himself unto death for us (Phil 2:7, 8)? So, then, without laying aside his divine glory, he will gird himself and serve us” (Lenski, Luke, 703–4).

5.      But, Jesus reminds us in Luke 12 that this act of Jesus our Master serving isn’t so with those whose lives center on their possessions and the things of this world. It’s no accident that the image of the thief appears in a chapter in which so many words are devoted to worldly wealth and possessions. Repeatedly here in Luke 12 Jesus warns against centering our lives on our possessions. To those who fail to heed the warning and whose hearts are with their earthly treasures, the coming of Jesus will indeed be “as a thief in the night.” “So you also must be ready.”  Christians, be alert!

6.      So how are we to take what Jesus says to us here in Luke 12 about us as Christians to be alert and ready for His Second Coming?  Does the idea of Jesus’ return on Judgment Day strike fear in you or does it give to you as sense of comfort and hope?  As I said earlier, we regularly experience fear, don’t we?  For personal safety.  For safety of family members and friends.  Of illness and injury.  Of any unexpected tragedy.  Of financial uncertainty or setback.  Of the consequences of sin in our life past or present.  And, as we start a New Year, many of us may fear the unknown, what this New Year will bring to us.  We also fear the fact that we’re not always alert and watchful, we often can grow tired and weary and we may not be ready for something unexpected to happen in our lives.

7.      Fear is a natural result of sin.  Sin separates us from a loving, caring, protecting God.  Sin separates us from the people to whom we’re the closest.  Sin results in the very real fear of loss of protection, loss of safety, loss of security, loss of connectedness.  But, sin and its resultant fear are conquered by the Father’s love in Christ.  Jesus tells us earlier in Luke 12, “Do not be afraid, little flock.”  “Your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.”   The giving of the kingdom is a gift of love, earned by the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

8.      As we begin this New Year, we as Christians can continue to be alert for Jesus’ Second Coming.  But, that means we shouldn’t be foolish.  Foolishness is the result of sinful pride.  The temptation for us is to let the assurance of no fear produce complacency and apathy.  Extended periods of waiting can tempt one to foolishness.  Since apostolic times, for about 2000 years, there have always been some Christians who think they know the specific day of the Lord’s return.  There’s temptation to put our faith in these predictions about the Second Coming of Jesus.  That same kind of foolishness can produce a mind set of “it will never happen to me.”  We’re all inclined to believe that only other people will be the victims of illness (especially major or life threatening illness, which is not supposed to happen to us).  And, we never anticipate our lives being shattered by trauma or tragedy.

9.      But, Jesus tells us in Luke 12 that this kind of foolishness can be avoided.  We as Christians can be alert for Jesus’ return by heeding our Lord’s admonition to “be ready for service.”  By immersing ourselves in his Word and Sacrament.  By regularly receiving His Word, which assures us that our sins are forgiven through Jesus who was crucified on the cross for our sins and by receiving Christ’s body and blood given and shed for us for the forgiveness of our sins.  By regularly receiving Christ’s gifts of Word and Sacrament, we as Christians can be alert for Jesus’ return.

10.  A number of years ago a very devastating tornado struck central Texas, killing an estimated 30 people in Jarrell, with a population of 1,000 people.  Even with some advance notice, residents responded in a variety of ways.  Some jumped in cars and trucks, trying to escape the path of the storm, one quarter of a mile wide.  Some hid in closets or bathtubs, seeking protection.  Some school children huddled in hallways or under tables, singing and praying for protection.  Being alert and ready for such a storm consists not in trying to avoid such indescribable power and fury, but to know that, whatever happens, we’re safe in the arms of our loving Heavenly Father through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  As we begin this New Year, we dedicate our lives to the task of helping people, throughout the world, attain that state of readiness through Christ our Savior and Lord. “Whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord” (Rom 14:8).  “Have no fear, little flock; Have no fear, little flock, For the Father has chosen to give you the kingdom; Have no fear, little flock!” (LW# 410, St 1).  Through our Lord Jesus, we as Christians can be alert and ready for His return.  Amen.