A, Good Shepherd Sunday, Easter 4 - John 10:7,9 "Identity Under The Good Shepherd"

John 10:7,9 (ESV) “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep.  If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.”

Good Shepherd Sunday is full of rich language of a shepherd faithfully leading his sheep and his sheep, having heard his voice, willingly following.

In Acts two we hear the consequences of the Holy Spirit coming at Pentecost, after Peter preaches a sermon of Law and Gospel that brings three thousand to baptism and faith.  After which, the newly baptised into Christ, persevere and endure under the Apostles’ teaching, holy fellowship, breaking of bread (as both, Holy Communion, and as sharing their earthly gifts), and to prayers.

These were special times and those who believed, full of the Holy Spirit, lived to praise God for what the ascended Jesus had done.

We also hear of the providence our Heavenly Father, likened to a shepherd, in Psalm twenty-three.  King David, the shepherd made king of Israel, knew that to lead he needed to be led by our Father in Heaven.

He identified within himself the need to be cut off from trusting in himself, which was without trust and fear in God, living to writhe in its own desire for pleasure.  Left with himself he was acutely aware of his weak human spirit.  He knew he needed the Holy Spirit to give him a new spirit.  His experience in life was that of the enemy of the self within, aligning itself with the external enemy without.

In a strange irony, the enemies he fought against, were his sinful nature’s greatest allies within, leading him into worry and doubt, then therefore, misusing his authority to pleasure himself as his own god.

Therefore, against this, David claims the Lord as his shepherd.  He has no want.  He lacks nothing in having the Lord as his shepherd.  He does not fear the evil within, nor the evil without, over which he has no control.

In fact, King David’s Lord, his Shepherd, makes him lie down in green pastures, beside peaceful waters!  He knows the Shepherd’s goodness and steadfast love and mercy is constantly hunting him down to bestow upon him common life together with God.  Joyfully returning him to the house of the Lord repeatedly, then eternally, despite the dangers David and others, present to himself.

This  is a picture of restored paradise.  The house of the Lord on earth, even this church, is an image of the eternal, despite all its shortcomings, and its eventual destruction, just as the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed.

But Jesus is our true temple in which we now have access into the Father’s presence.  The curtain  has been torn asunder and through his suffering and death we have common life together with God our Father. 

In the Gospel reading for Good Shepherd Sunday, Jesus tells us, he is the door, through which one enters into God’s presence.  No one comes to God the Father except through this door.  Jesus Christ is the way, the exodus; the truth, the unhidden reality; the life, the revolving door of faith.  Having been brought to Jesus by the Holy Spirit, one’s sin is uncovered and nailed to the cross.  Those who retain this faith, walk in and out this door on the way of eternal life.

This is the same goodness and steadfast love to which King David refers in the Twenty-third psalm.  This is the same faithfulness with which God is pursuing you, so you might share in the common life of peace and holiness, having been led on the exodus from the self, into the community of God’s pleasure.

Jesus is the Good Shepherd as well as the door to salvation.  Many doubt this though and need encouragement as a result of suffering and the hopelessness that comes from being seduced by the spirit of this age. 

God the Father’s church gathered by the Holy Spirit into Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection, the family, historical tradition from the democracy of those who’ve died, all these forms of authority, are looked on with suspicion by society today.  This feeds one’s doubt and disbelief! 

Unfortunately, with this suspicion of all authority, the spirit of the age is believed, and one is encouraged to seek happiness within the self.  But once there, seeing the ugly reality of the unhidden self, the mirage of happiness just seems to move further away.

Like King David, our inner sinful self, our human spirit, allies itself with the spirit of the society in which we live, even though we know it’s completely corrupt.

Those in Peter’s day struggled under persecution and hopelessness of that age as well.  He proclaims, “By his wounds you have been healed.  For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.”  (1 Peter 2:24b–25 ESV)

Our Good Shepherd watches over all who have been baptised, he has underwritten the assurance of our salvation with his own resurrected life.  The resurrection of Jesus is the hope that surpasses all other hopes because all other hopes lead to hopelessness!

The essence of this Good Shepherd comes from God the Father, and from the Father together with the Son, the shepherding of our souls continues today, as the Holy Spirit is sent to shepherd those who identify as the Good Shepherd’s sheep.

Jesus, as the Lamb of God, committed no sin, spoke without hiddenness or trickery, did not abuse or repay abuse, and bore pain without revenge. 

We his sheep know we need this Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, because of our sin!    Isaiah proclaims the unhidden truth of Jesus, when he says, “We all like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” (Isaiah 53:6)

Peter picks up Isaiah’s thought from Scripture, and from his witness adds, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.  By his wounds you have been healed.”  (1 Peter 2:24 ESV)

Like King David, Peter knew by experience that he needed the Good Shepherd to bring him to the door of salvation.  Peter knew his sinfulness conspired with the sinfulness of all others to put Jesus on the cross.  It was Jesus alone who walked the way of the cross, who bore the unhidden truth of every person’s inner self on the cross, and lived the life that pleased our heavenly Father, despite the cross.

We now have the door open to confession, where we can have the deathliness of our sin, daily nailed to the cross, without costing us eternal death.  This is the true door that is Jesus Christ.

We steal and plunder God of his goodness by seeking to enter God’s kingdom through any other works, either good or evil.  But those who enter by the door that is Jesus Christ, have done so by the Good Shepherd.  He leads with the word of his rod, this is the Law, and his saving staff, which is the Gospel.   

Therefore, having been unhidden by his word of Law, are cleansed in his blood, through the work of the Holy Spirit who gives us the holy identity as God’s own Son. 

This cleansing is good news for those who believe it and receive it.  This is the Gospel of salvation for those who identify under the Sonship and subordination of Jesus Christ!

Jesus says to you, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep.  If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.” (John 10:7,9 ESV)

Let us pray: Triune God you are three Shepherds, but one loving God.  Because you lead us, because you became one of us, and because you gather us, surely goodness and mercy will follow us all the days of our life, because you dwell here within the temple of our body, your body, so we might live with you forever in the paradise of your pleasures, your eternal body.  Amen.

A, Resurrection of our Lord, Easter Sunday - Acts 10:34–43 "No Partiality"

Acts 10:34–43 (ESV) So Peter opened his mouth and said: “Truly I understand that God shows no partiality,  but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.  As for the word that he sent to Israel, preaching good news of peace through Jesus Christ (he is Lord of all),  you yourselves know what happened throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee after the baptism that John proclaimed:  how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.  And we are witnesses of all that he did both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree,  but God raised him on the third day and made him to appear,  not to all the people but to us who had been chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.  And he commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead.  To him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.

God shows no partiality over humanity.  God shows no partiality over sin.  God shows no partiality over forgiveness.  God shows no partiality over unbelief.  This is the message of the blood stained cross.  This is the message of the empty tomb.  This is the good news of Jesus’ death and resurrection. 

In dealing with humanity’s sin and death God showed no partiality, but in his work of salvation he is very bias with whom he chose to work.  This was the work of blessing all humanity through God’s favoured few.  God couldn’t associate with unholiness,  he could not show partiality to sin.  If God did show partiality to sin, or unholiness, the purity of his holiness would be desecrated, and he would prove himself to not be God.

God could have destroyed humanity, but God would have place himself in a dilemma if he did so.  God is a God of faithfulness; faithfulness is the substance of his divinity, he is faithful to himself, in himself, and towards those with whom he exists, in his eternal realm, visible and invisible, as it were.  This faithfulness manifests itself as love.  God is love!  God’s love shows no partiality.  God’s love expects no partiality.  God is a jealous God, a protective God.

God shows no partiality.  God believes in himself, there is nothing in his being he does not know, nothing in what he expects that cannot be done.  He is faithful and generous and shows no partiality in his desire to be faithful and compassionate, jealously expecting all things exist under his protection and love.  

God chose Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  He chose Joseph and Moses in Egypt.  He chose Joshua and the Judges, Samuel, and David.  He favoured the tribe of Judah over the other tribes of Israel.  In God’s favouritism towards the Jews and Jerusalem God showed no partiality, for through them God was seeking to bless all nations, to love all people through one  nation.  To favour all people, by favouring his chosen people.  So, through them, all people might come to favour him above all things. 

By reconnection to humanity through the Law, God showed no partiality demanding everyone to: “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” (Matthew 22:37 ESV, Deuteronomy 6:5)  And: “love your neighbour as yourself.” (Matthew 22:39 ESV, Leviticus 19:18)  But they failed in the Law, and chose to love themselves in the Law, knowing that God shows no partiality.

So, God sent Jesus.  In Jesus Christ the Kingdom of God was near.  Jesus Christ was sent to do what Israel could not do, to do what we could not do, to do what humanity could not do.  In doing what Israel could not do, the Son of God took on the servant role as the Son of Man.  God showed no partiality to his Son, Jesus Christ, Son of Mary, Son of man.

Jesus became the new Israel to save Israel.  God promised to Abraham, “in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” (Genesis 12:3)  Now that promise is fulfilled in Jesus Christ.   Jesus Christ became the new Adam to save all of Adam’s offspring.  Jesus Christ is Lord of all, all Israelites, all Gentiles, all of humanity, all of creation.  Jesus Christ gave us back our connection with God our Father!  In restoring us to God, God the Son showed no partiality!  Not even to his own divinity.

So faithful to the Father of Heaven was Jesus Christ, this Created Creator became so low, being shunned by all humanity as unholy.  He claimed no majesty, he claimed no beauty, through our desire we beat the Servant of Man black and blue.  God the Son showed no partiality, not even to himself, putting aside his divinity, so God the Father could show no partiality to the sins of Israel, and the sin of Adam.  

Jesus Christ, lay aside his divinity, he chose to put off his partiality of being God the Son, and serve as the Son of Man.  In showing no partiality to humanity, our Heavenly Father sent God the Holy Spirit into his Servant, the Son of Man.  The Holy Spirit showed no partiality in his work of helping the Son of Man be the Servant of many.

When Jesus put aside his divinity, his human spirit showed no partiality towards anything or anyone but our Father in Heaven.  He loved our Father above all things and the Holy Spirit rested on the Servant of Man, showing to humanity the source of power to do the good that leads to eternal life.

God shows no partiality.  He believes in you so much he sent his Son to bear the brunt of his impartial hatred against humanity’s sin and your death and placed the Holy Spirit within you so you might have the power to believe and receive his Son.

When you were baptised, God showed no partiality, he did not waver in condemnation of sin, nor the forgiveness of it.  You were baptised into Jesus’ death.  God shows no partiality in sending the Holy Spirit to you in your Holy Baptism.  God the Holy Spirit shows no partiality in filling those who hear the Word of God with faith in the forgiveness of sins.  God shows no partiality over your sin!

God shows favouritism to those who are perfect; those who are holy as he is holy.  Therefore, God raised Jesus Christ from the dead, having been the perfect and blameless Servant of Man, but at the same time being the sacrifice to put our sin right. 

God shows no partiality in daily raising sinners from death, when they trust in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sin, just as God the Holy Spirit together with God the Father raised the Son of Man from the dead.

God the Father has raised the Son of Man to his right hand, the Son of Man is the Son of God, in all his risen glory.  God the Father and God the Son, show partiality and favouritism towards those who believe that God shows no partiality over condemning sin and his work of forgiveness, when they confess sin and believe they are forgiven for Jesus’ sake.

You are acceptable to God.  He shows no partiality, he shows no partiality towards unbelief in the Son of Man, no belief in the Son of God, in the forgiveness of sin, in the work of the Holy Spirit within you, and in the resurrection to eternal life.

He does not judge you and me with shallow judgement.  He has no part with those who are apart from him!  But he judged Jesus Christ, setting him apart, and shows no partiality to those who are partial towards him and do not believe.

Let us pray.  Lord God, we believe, save us from our unbelief.  We know you show no partiality towards sin, and therefore show no partiality against those who believing in Jesus Christ and  confess their sin.  We believe Lord, save us from our unbelief by sending the Holy Spirit, inspiring faith within to continually confess sin and believe in Jesus Christ throughout all our trials in this life, Amen.

A, Maundy Thursday - John 13:15–17,34 "Holy or Hardhearted Passover"

John 13:15–17,34 (ESV)  For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you.  Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him.  If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.  A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.

God always seeks to save humanity.  His focus is on life.  God’s intention to bring life to us, is his work of redemption.  For his work to be effective in the lives of those called as his church, it depends on one’s response to the salvation he seeks to give! 

Having been made holy by the blood of Jesus spilt on the cross, for the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation, if one responds with holiness, this is allowing the Holy Spirit to generate faith within.  So, the person humbles their heart and lives a life of repentance.   This life gives the freedom to confess one’s sin and forgive others knowing this pleases God our Father. 

All these are a participation in the good works of holiness, as the Holy Spirit wills within each the desire to be what God has recreated his reborn to be.  “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:10 ESV)

Those who know this, allow the Holy Spirit to bring them to confession, believe in their absolution, and are blessed.  Forgiven, one can forgive!  Loved, one can love as Jesus loves!

However, some do not respond positively to God’s work of salvation in sending Jesus to the cross.  They reject it outright, claiming they are good, not evil, and don’t need God’s work.

Then there are those who appear to hear and believe God’s work of salvation, but when push comes to shove, they do not allow the Holy Spirit to bring their human spirit to repentance in the blood of Jesus Christ. 

These two groups, those who reject Jesus Christ completely, and those who reject the Holy Spirit bringing them to Jesus Christ, participate in the works of hardheartedness and are not blessed. Without receiving forgiveness, one cannot forgive.  Without receiving Jesus’ love, one cannot love as Jesus loves!

In the lead up to the initial Passover in Egypt, Pharaoh stands as one whose heart is hardened. 

God gives room for Pharaoh to change his mind and repent.  But each time the hardness returns Pharaoh back to his original state of being. 

But Pharaoh, who stubbornly considered himself the earthly representation of the Egyptian sun god Ra, was no match against God our Father, who spoke through the seemingly weak and flawed mouth of Moses.

In fact, in Moses, God was using the weak things of the world to shame the wise and powerful, so God’s almighty glory would shine all the more.

God made Moses like God to Pharaoh.  (Ex 7:1)  But God also makes Pharaoh hardhearted so he would not listen to Moses.  Moses spoke with “uncircumcised lips”.  (Ex 6:30)  In other words, he did not speak with eloquent ability so Pharaoh might be persuaded by gifted rhetoric. 

God made this inarticulate Israelite like God to Pharaoh, so that God’s glory would shine all the more brightly over the hardhearted Pharaoh as Egypt descends deeper into darkness.  Each time Moses approached Pharaoh, Pharaoh’s retreat to hardness became easier and stronger. 

Like Pharaoh, all who resist God, do so each successive time, with greater ease and increased hardheartedness.  The stakes become so high, one completely rejects God in favour of one’s own goodness and godliness.

Judas Iscariot, unlike Pharaoh, believed in God.  However, he believed for his own advantage.  Like Pharaoh he too was hardhearted.  Over time, as Jesus neared Jerusalem and the cross, Judas became more distant from Jesus Christ.  Like the increase of Pharaoh’s heart being hardened in each successive plague, so too was Judas’ heart, as Jesus did less and less in being the Messiah Judas expected. 

Jesus washed the disciples’ feet, of which Judas was one.  And after dipping the morsel of bread and giving it to Judas, Satan enters him and Jesus says,  “What you are going to do, do quickly!” (John 31:27)  After Judas took the bread and ate it, he left to betray Jesus.  The Gospel of John records after he left, “It was night.”  (Jn 13:30) 

Judas, like true believers, knew, but unlike true followers, did not want to do what the Master was doing.  In his hardheartedness, he sought to bless himself in what he was doing and entered the darkness of eternal death in doing so! 

Judas and Pharaoh stand together in their hardheartedness and life passes over them.  Their love was for themselves, and not as the love God had for sinful humanity.

Thousands of years apart, these events begin and end the old covenant Passover!  The alpha and omega of Passovers.  The first and the last of effective Passovers!  Now, Jesus Christ has absorbed the Passover in his death and gives us life in the Holy Spirit by his resurrection.

Death did not pass over Pharaoh, Judas, and Jesus.  Whose love out of the three is worth following to receive life?  The new mandate from where we get the name, Maundy Thursday, is to love as Jesus has loved us.  For us to love as Jesus has loved us, we need to be washed and forgiven!  Unless Jesus washes us and gives us his Holy Spirit we have no share with him – no salvation and no ability to love as Jesus loves!  (Jn 13:8)

Jesus’ mandate is a clear warning to all in the church to continue allowing God the Holy Spirit to bring us to God the Son, so what was won on the cross does not pass over us!

God our Father is patient with us, but testing his patience is dangerous.  Do we wish to place ourselves in a position of hardheartedness, where we have passed the point of no return, and contribute to our final destruction?  As did Pharaoh and Judas?  Just as the Lord made a distinction between Israel and Egypt in the Passover, those who persist in their defiance and pride in resisting the Holy Spirit will be plagued with death and won’t be passed onto eternal life with God our Father.

God seeks to glorify Lutherans in Australia who follow and listen to him.  He wishes to bestow upon all believers in Jesus Christ, life.  Because of our sinful human nature, we would return to being like Pharaoh or Judas, if, after receiving Jesus Christ we did not receive the Holy Spirit, to engender faith within and continually gather us and return us to Jesus Christ.  God wants to pass over us with eternal death, so we are passed onto eternal life, this is why we receive the Holy Spirit.

The Lutheran Church of Australia and New Zealand is an organisation in which God’s church exists as a part of God’s kingdom.  But it depends on how those in the Lutheran Church of Australia and New Zealand (LCANZ) respond to his work of love, which saves and makes each individual holy.  In short, you need Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, for you to be at peace with God the Father.

For the best part of twenty years the LCANZ has been asking if we should ordain women along with men.  Five times we have prayed and voted.  God has said,  “No”, through the vote, upholding what he says to us in his Word.

After each vote there has been increased hardheartedness towards God saying, “No”!  With ease new motions are put to synod, with increasing desire and deception, God’s love is being redefined to that of the world’s definition of love and equality.  In equalling ourselves to God, we have not humbled ourselves, confessed, received forgiveness, and sought to love others as Jesus has loved us.

Plagued by renewed motions of disobedience against what God has intended through our prayerful votes, the LCANZ is now in a dangerous position as we gravitate the way of hardheartedness, grieving the Holy Spirit, and putting our holiness in jeopardy.  If we walk out on God’s will, we can expect the night of darkness just as Judas did!

Jesus is our example, despite not having a hard heart, he put his divinity aside, and entrusted his human spirit to the Holy Spirit.   We are understudies of his humility, so we might receive and live in his holiness.

The men who wilfully allow disobedience to happen in our church do so to their detriment.  God cuts to the core of our existence, dealing with life and death.  When Pharaoh was judged by God, it was the oldest males who died in the Passover.  If God was about equality as the world defines it, the oldest females would have died too. 

So too called male leaders will be judged who seek to subvert the male office of Christ’s love and servanthood, with a love that is self-centred and hardhearted.  Just as throughout history all men called into the ordained ministry in God’s church have been accountable to the Son of God, Jesus Christ.

Pray for the LCANZ, “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account.” (Hebrews 13:17a ESV)

Let the Holy Spirit bring us all back to the foot of the Cross, and live peacefully in God’s forgiveness, with God’s words of caution, “For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.  It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”  (Hebrews 10:26–27, 31 ESV)

Let us pray.  Lord God Holy Spirit soften our hearts, help us receive forgiveness, believe forgiveness, and share Christ’s forgiveness with each other, so we might not only receive your bread for today, but having passed over death, receive it from you at the table of the Father’s eternal feast forever.  Amen.