"The Thirteenth Apostle" - Text: Acts 1:26 (ESV)

 “THE THIRTEENTH APOSTLE”

The Seventh Sunday of Easter (Mothers' Day)

May 13, 2018

Bethel Evangelical Lutheran Church

Glenshaw, Pennsylvania

TEXT:

They cast lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthias; and he was numbered with the eleven apostles. 

Acts 1:26 (ESV) 

            It's been said that everyone needs to be needed, and I sincerely believe that that is true.  Perhaps on Mothers' Day especially the moms among us know how rewarding it can be to be needed.  I’ve seen evidence of the need to be needed so many times and have even experienced that feeling myself.  Whenever a pastor receives a call, for example, he is flattered, whether it's an attractive call or not.  There is a certain sense of affirmation that he gets from knowing that somebody wants him.  But when he investigates and gets the whole story, he may not be all that flattered.  Since graduating from the seminary thirty-seven years ago, I have received a total of seven calls.  But what I learned after some research is that in none of those situations was I the first choice of the calling congregation or agency.  In fact, in my very first call (as an assistant pastor) the decision to call another pastor at all was made only on the basis of a minority report made at a voters’ meeting by two elders of that congregation.  How’s that for a little dose of humility? 

            Knowing all of this might give us a little sympathy for poor Matthias, the thirteenth apostle.  He wasn’t called by Jesus directly--not in the same way that the others were; his call came much later.  Matthias wasn’t called because he had a great reputation and a host of impressive qualifications; he was called because the first choice, Judas Iscariot, had proven to be unfit for the job.  And Matthias wasn’t called as the result of a long and intricate process designed to locate and commission the best man for the job; his call came about as the result of what appears to us to have been pure chance.  And yet the calling of Matthias is important to us even today, because it has a lot to teach us about how the Holy Spirit calls servants for the kingdom of God--not just pastors, but all who are called upon to use their God-given talents in the cause of proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ.  In particular we can see in the call of Matthias the means by which God calls and the reaction that He desires from His Church. 

            Through the centuries there have been countless different methods that the Christian Church has used to choose and install its workers.  Jesus Himself simply walked up to people who were otherwise engaged, many at their jobs, and said to them, “Come, follow Me” (Matthew 4:19; Mark 1:17; Matthew 19:21; Mark 10:21; Luke 18:22).  The process employed in the passage before us this morning is most unusual by our standards.  At the seminary we used to joke about the placement committee using a map and darts to decide where we were going, but we realized that these people went about their task in a much more careful, prayerful, and deliberate manner.  But here in the book of Acts they cast lots.  They threw dice!--to find out who the Lord had chosen to replace Judas.  There are, of course, many other methods of choosing the Church’s servants as well.  In some religious traditions clergy and other church workers are appointed by other leaders.  In other traditions those who are to serve are elected.  In some situations everybody just waits around for somebody else to volunteer. 

            In the Lutheran tradition we are accustomed to having our pastors and other leaders elected by the people among whom they are to serve.  There’s more to this than it just being a matter of our having chosen to be democratic about it; we believe, on the basis of Scripture, that the ministry of the Gospel (that is, the pastoral office and whatever other offices the Church may establish to supplement it) was given by Christ to the whole Church, not just to a select few.  We believe, therefore, that it is the prerogative of the entire congregation to call pastors and elect officers for the purpose of carrying out the Church’s work.  But whatever particular method may be used in calling workers in the Church, the purpose of each method is always the same: to try to discern and carry out the will of God in these matters.  Thoughtful Christians desire to choose their leaders not on the basis of politics or popularity, but on the basis of what the Lord wants for His Church.  We determine this by listening very carefully to what God the Holy Spirit has revealed to us in the Word. 

            In our text we notice something significant also in the reaction of the rest after Matthias was chosen.  You don’t hear anyone questioning the final outcome or demanding that it be done over again or casting doubt on the method that was used.  The selection of Matthias was accepted by all.  Christian congregations and conventions today do the same thing when they vote to have a particular election declared to be unanimous. In doing this they are, with one voice, accepting the results of the election, thereby expressing confidence that this is the will of God and is consistent with the teachings of His Word.  Those who voted differently than the majority are falling in line to support the decision of the body.  No matter how much of a longshot the elected candidate may have been at the beginning, that candidate is now acknowledged as the one chosen by the whole Church in accordance with the will of God. 

            So what became of Matthias after he was chosen and accepted?  The text tells us that “he was added to the eleven apostles.”  You might even say that they had a little installation service right then and there.  The lesson for us in this is that the Church of Jesus Christ not only accepts the Lord’s will in these matters; it celebrates the Lord’s will.  After his selection there was no doubt among the believers that Matthias was to be counted among the Lord’s apostles.  There was no dissention about his call.  Neither do we see any evidence of doubt or dissention on the part of Matthias.  We don’t hear him making excuses as to why he cannot assume this responsibility.  We don’t hear him insisting that he is not as well-qualified as others might be.  We don’t hear him complaining that he wasn’t the Lord’s first choice.  And we don’t hear him contending that he’s too busy with other things to take on this additional work.  God’s choice of Matthias, revealed through the action of the Church, was accepted and celebrated by all. 

            It may seem that all of this talk about Matthias, the thirteenth apostle, is merely an academic discussion.  After all, what could this possibly have to do with us?  What it has to do with us is this: that thirteenth apostle--the one who seems to have been chosen by chance, apparently as an afterthought—could be you.  As I have already mentioned, I have been that thirteenth disciple in every pastoral position in which I have served or been invited to serve.  The Lord of the Church, who knows all and sees all, makes His perfect decisions in His own time and in His own way.  He does it through His Church--people who are by no means infallible but are nevertheless armed with the power of the Spirit, which is evident in the means of grace.  And He often chooses people who in the wisdom of the world would never have been chosen--people like you and me.  And  He gives us the grace and the wisdom to follow the example of Matthias and the earliest Church, submerging ourselves in His Word and prayer as we listen intently for His will for us and accept it with humility, confidence, and joy. 

Amen. 

May the God of peace, who brought again from the dead that great Shepherd of the sheep, our Lord Jesus, by the blood of the everlasting covenant equip you thoroughly for the doing of His will.  May He work in you everything which is pleasing to Him, through Jesus Christ, our Lord, to whom be honor and glory forever and ever.  He who calls you is faithful, and He will do it.  Amen.

"Praising His Judgment" -Text:Psalm 98:1; 9 (ESV)

"PRAISING HIS JUDGMENT"

 Sixth Sunday of Easter

May 6, 2018

Bethel Evangelical Lutheran Church

Glenshaw, Pennsylvania

TEXT:

Oh sing to the Lord . . . for He comes to judge the earth.  For He will judge the world with righteousness and the peoples with equity.

Psalm 98:1; 9 (ESV)

            When we think of all the things for which we should praise our God, His judgment is not usually anywhere near the top of the list.  It's not exactly one of the things that we enjoy hearing about or talking about.  As far as the Christian message is concerned, the judgment of God is something that we are more likely to admit than to proclaim.  We talk about it, of course, just like we talk about hell.  We have to because it is taught in the Scriptures.  But we only talk about the judgment and about hell to point out how wonderful forgiveness and heaven are.  And yet the psalmist invites us to join him in praising the Lord for His judgment.  What is he talking about?  Surely we aren't supposed to gloat over the fact that the outcome of judgment is better for us than it is for many others.

            The Lord's judgment is to be praised, first of all, because His judgment is unlike the judgment of anyone else.  We have gotten to be very cynical about judgment in our society.  I guess we've just seen too many high-profile cases where the judgment that was handed down was not just at all--cases in which everything became an issue except what was supposed to be the issue.  Add to this the countless other cases that we've never even heard about.  As a result of all of this, we long for real justice--justice in which the good guys are vindicated and the bad guys are punished--justice where crime is not excused and where compassion is shown toward the innocent.  The perfect Judge, who is God, comes as a welcome relief in the midst of what is passed off as justice in this world.  As we listen to the psalmist singing the Lord's praises this morning, let's join him in giving thanks to the Lord for the fact that He judges "with righteousness" and that He judges "with equity."

            I suppose before we get too excited about the Lord judging "with righteousness," we ought to give some thought to what that might mean for us.  The Lord's justice is perfect in every respect.  His Law is absolute and universal--a perfect standard requiring that we be perfect even as He is perfect.  His judgment is righteous and perfect also in the sense that He knows everything: every sin, every fault, every evil desire and intention that lurks within us.  Luther's Small Catechism tells us that before God we must plead guilty of all sins--even those that we aren't aware of (Small Catechism-explanation of the fifth petition of the Lord's Prayer).  Why? --because His judgment is infinitely more perfect than our memory.  The fact that God's justice is perfect also means that no sin can or will go unpunished.  Nobody gets away with anything.  In God's court there is no plea bargain, no insanity defense, no tugging at the heartstrings of a gullible jury.  Because God is perfectly holy, His justice is perfect and absolute.

            Lest we fall into despair and begin to curse God rather than praise Him for His perfect judgment, we need to know that God's perfect, universal, and absolute standard of justice has been met.  That's what the Gospel of Jesus Christ is all about.  The Lord Jesus--the perfect Son of God--stood in our place under the perfect Law of God.  The perfect obedience that the Law demands has been met by Him on our behalf.  The perfectly just punishment for sin has been executed.  That's why the cross of Christ was and is so important.  The cross was a curse for our Substitute so that it might be a blessing for us, since it is for us that He suffered and died.  His resounding cry of victory from the cross, "It is finished!" (John 19:30), says it all.  God's righteous judgment has been satisfied.  And this atonement that the Savior made is a universal atonement.  He bore the penalty of all sin of all people for all time.  No one is kept out of heaven because his or her sins aren't covered.  People are kept out of heaven because they prefer to continue to live under God's judgment, rejecting the perfect merits of Christ in favor of their own righteousness, which Scripture accurately describes as "a polluted garment" (Isaiah 64:6).

            According to the psalm before us the Lord not only judges "with righteousness"; He also judges "with equity."  In other words, He judges with mercy.  The absolute justice with which He judges sinners is matched by His absolute grace.  Since the Lord knows us inside and out, He is well aware of the fact that we cannot in any way stand up to His standard of perfect justice.  Instead of condemning us according to our works, He forgives and accepts us according to the perfect merits of our Savior.  This justification, as the Scriptures call it, applies to all:  "There is no distinction," Paul writes to the Romans, "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus" (Romans 3:22-24).  It is not our faith that actually saves us; it is the grace of God in Jesus Christ.  Faith is necessary, to be sure, but not as the basis of our salvation.  A rescued person is saved by the actions of his rescuer, not by his willingness to be rescued.  Faith is the hand that grasps the salvation that God has accomplished for all sinners in the perfect life and innocent suffering and death of His Son.

            In sending His perfect Son into the world, God the Judge has identified with sinners, the accused, in the most intimate way possible, for in the incarnation of His Son, God has become One of us.  The writer to the Hebrews encourages us with these words:  "We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.  Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need" (Hebrews 4:15, 16), and John writes in his First Letter:  "If anyone does sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous.  He is the Propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world" (1 John 2:1, 2).  The damned are not damned because God has no mercy on them; they are damned because they will have no part of His mercy.

            So what are we to make of judgment?  There's an old saying that "rules are made to be broken."  Such thinking is faulty, to be sure, but that's the way the imperfect justice of imperfect humans works.  As soon we humans set a hard and fast rule of any kind, we are almost immediately confronted with a situation that challenges it and, more often than not, forces us to amend it.  But the perfect justice of God doesn't work that way.  We are forgiven not because our sin isn't serious or because we really try hard or because extenuating circumstances led us to sin.  We are forgiven and saved only because Jesus, standing in our place offered to God the perfect righteousness that His Law demands and the perfect atonement for human sin.  For this reason we can join the psalmist in praising the Lord's judgment--not because of any morbid desire to see others get their due, but because His perfect justice and perfect mercy make it possible for us to see both the seriousness of our sin and the value of His salvation.

Amen.

May the God of peace, who brought again from the dead that great Shepherd of the sheep, our Lord Jesus, by the blood of the

"It's All About The Gospel" Text: Acts 8:34,35, (ESV)

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE GOSPEL”

 Fifth Sunday of Easter

April 29, 2018

Bethel Evangelical Lutheran Church

Glenshaw, Pennsylvania

TEXT:

The eunuch asked Philip, "About whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?"  Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with the Scripture he and told him the Good News about Jesus.

Acts 8:34, 35 (ESV)

            Quite a number of years ago a member of one of our congregations shared with me an article that appeared in the Easter issue of a national news magazine.  The title of the article was "Why Jesus Was Killed" and it was supposedly a report on all of the various factors and motivations that went into the crucifixion of our Lord some two thousand years ago.  As usually happens when I read this kind of article in a secular magazine or newspaper written by their religion editor or one of their staff "religious experts," I became frustrated and pretty close to being infuriated.  The article talked at great length about the jealousy of the religious leaders of Jesus' time, the Romans' sensitivity to political opposition and their insensitivity to the religious issues of their subjects, the unfair accusation of "deicide" made against the Jews throughout history by some Christians, and a host of other matters, but nothing at all was said to even suggest that Jesus was the sacrificial Victim who suffered and died as a result of the judgment of a perfect God against the cumulative sin of all humanity.

            This experience points out something that we need to remember always in our own study of the Scriptures as well as in our sharing of the Scriptures with others, and that is the simple fact that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the key to understanding God's Word.  The Holy Spirit Himself is the Author of the Bible, and therefore He is the only One who is able to interpret it correctly.  A person has understanding when he reads Scripture as the Spirit interprets it for him--that is, only if that person has faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.  Without a knowledge of the Gospel, the Word of God makes no sense at all.  That is why, in the text before us, the Ethiopian eunuch who was reading the famous fifty-third chapter of Isaiah (which speaks very graphically about the suffering Servant of the Lord) couldn't quite understand what the prophet was saying.  Let's seek the Spirit's guidance this morning as we remember that the Gospel of Christ is indispensable for understanding the prophets and for understanding the Law.

            The eunuch who was reading Isaiah in his chariot certainly isn't alone in not being able to correctly understand the prophecy that he was reading.  The people who rejected Jesus in His own time read the words of the prophets but they didn't really understand either, even when the Fulfillment of what they had read many times and supposedly believed was staring them in the face.  Even the disciples of Jesus didn't make the connection.  They believed that their Master was the promised Messiah, but His frequent reminders to them that His mission would find its ultimate fulfillment only through His death and resurrection seemed to fall on deaf ears.  They were devastated when Jesus was put to death and they were incredulous when they heard that He had risen from the dead.  It's not that the prophecies weren't clear; it's just that the light of the Gospel had not yet illumined their eyes and hearts and minds to the real meaning and significance of the prophecies that they knew so well.

            Does anyone doubt that many in our own time are likewise unable to understand what the prophets have written?  Many of God's ancient people in our day are still waiting for a Messiah who has already come and are seeking a deliverance that He has already accomplished for them.  Likewise many modern-day Christians misinterpret prophecies because they fail to read and study them in the light of the Gospel of Christ.  They are looking for things to happen in our day that won't happen because they have already happened in the life and ministry of Jesus.  They are seeking the fulfillment of promises in our day that won't be fulfilled because they already have been fulfilled in the life and ministry of Jesus.  They wander about aimlessly because they fail to see the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the heart and center of all the Scriptures--the light in which all of Scripture must be interpreted and applied.

            And it's not just the prophets that need the Gospel of Christ for their proper understanding.  The Law of God--another major division of the Old Testament Scriptures--is also frequently misunderstood because it is not seen through the window of the Gospel.  Most Lutherans are at least somewhat familiar with the threefold use of the Law:  It is a curb to discourage coarse outbreaks of sin in society; it is a mirror to expose the sin of the person who looks into it; and it is a guide or rule to tell believers how to please God in their lives.  The first use is merely a civil one, not directly connected to the Gospel, but the other two need the Gospel as an absolute necessity or else they will be misinterpreted and the Law will consequently be misused.

            The Law can be used as a mirror only in preparation for the Gospel.  Without the Gospel the only message you get from the Law is that you are a miserable sinner who has rejected God and His will and is therefore condemned to hell for all eternity--not exactly the kind of message that's going help people deal with life.  Judas Iscariot committed suicide because he heard the Law without the Gospel, and I suspect that countless others throughout history have experienced similar despair.  The Law by itself works like a mirror does:  It exposes the problem but offers no solution.  Likewise the Law can be a guide only to someone who stands before God already convicted by the Law and acquitted by the Gospel.  A person who doesn't know, understand, and believe the Gospel and yet tries to use the Law as a guide or rule will find himself in the futile and pitiful position of trying to earn his way into heaven.

            We are told in the verses that follow our text that, after Philip "told him the Good News about Jesus," the Ethiopian understood not only the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, but everything that he needed to know for spiritual life.  He was baptized and, after Philip was miraculously taken from him, he "went on his way rejoicing" (Acts 8:39).  It's amazing how the Gospel of Jesus Christ can give people a new perspective--the correct perspective.  The Law and the prophets--indeed all of the Scriptures--are about Jesus Christ.  He is the One who came to fulfill the Law and the prophets and He did it perfectly.  He took the place of sinners in obeying the Law of God perfectly and in suffering God's just punishment for sin.  Because of this, the Holy Spirit has given to sinners like us the forgiveness of sins, New Life in Christ, and the sure hope of everlasting life.  That is the Gospel.  The same Spirit of God who makes these things happen blesses us always with the understanding to see our Savior as the heart and soul of God's Word and to share Him with everyone who seeks the truth.  And He does this in and through that very same Gospel.

Amen.

May the God of peace, who brought again from the dead that great Shepherd of the sheep, our Lord Jesus, by the blood of the everlasting covenant equip you thoroughly for the doing of His will.  May He work in you everything which is pleasing to Him, through Jesus Christ, our Lord, to whom be honor and glory forever and ever.  He who calls you is faithful, and He will do it.  Amen.