C, Midweek Lent 2 - The Lord's Prayer #3 - Matthew 6:9b,13b Luke 11:13 "Deliver us from Evil into Holiness"

“If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:13 ESV)

Hallowed be your name… But deliver us from evil.

We have an Almighty God, who is our Father in heaven.  He transcends all of creation and the earth.  He is more powerful than the power humanity can collectively muster on earth.  Those who have had opportunity to see his glory, and that of his risen Son, fall down in reverence and fear in his presence.  Yet he wants nothing more than to be in fellowship with us.  He has created us out of his power and glory, to join him in his kingdom, and worship him in his power and glory.

But how can we who are evil come into his glorious kingdom without repercussions?   This Almighty God—who is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving, present everywhere, inside and outside of time, perfect in every way, in patience, generosity, and sinlessness—is holy.

Jesus died to bridge the gap between evil and holy; he is the Christ, the Messiah who redeems us through his death.  But how can he deliver us into the Father’s holy kingdom and presence when our being is embedded in evil? 

When the disciples got a glimpse of the glorified Son of God at transfiguration, they were afraid and perplexed; they did not understand or know how to approach Jesus’ holiness. 

When Saul was confronted by Jesus on the road to Damascus, he too recoiled and was blinded by the glory of the risen Christ. 

So too was the Apostle John.  He shared a special relationship with Jesus in his ministry and is call “the one whom Jesus loved”.  But we hear in Revelation, he fell at the feet of Jesus as though dead when Jesus appeared to him on the island of Patmos.

If Paul and the Apostles react this way, those who knew and walked with the man from Nazareth, how are we to come into God’s presence?

The Introduction of the Lord’s Prayer, the Our Father and the doxology form the outer layer of Jesus’ prayer.  The Holy Spirit teaches us that God the Father is transcendent and present inside and outside of time.

Now the Holy Spirit leads us from this heavenly eternal transcendent reality and teaches us how Jesus joins the great divide between his holiness and our sinful nature and deeds, which Jesus rightly says, “makes us evil”

The essential nature of God’s Spirit is holy, so the Holy Spirit works to bring us to the glorified holy Son of God and our holy heavenly Father.  This work is spelt out by Jesus in the Lord’s Prayer and fulfilled in his death and resurrection.

The Holy Spirit makes us holy, by delivering us from evil into the holiness of Jesus.  Like a courier the Holy Spirit delivers us.

Martin Luther says it best in his explanation of the Third Article of the Apostles’ Creed.  He says, “I believe that I cannot by my own understanding or effort believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to him. But the Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, and sanctified and kept me in true faith. In the same way he calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth, and keeps it united with Jesus Christ in the one true faith. In this Christian church day after day he fully forgives my sins and the sins of all believers. On the last day he will raise me and all the dead, and give me and all believers in Christ eternal life. This is most certainly true.” 

The Holy Spirit is the great doer and shaker of the Trinity.  He has been sent by God the Father and God the Son, to bring us to the Son so we can receive and believe the Gospel.  This gift makes you and me holy and keeps us, keeping on in Jesus. This gift is God’s Holy Word and hearing it creates faith.  In Romans ten we learn, “faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.”  (Romans 10:17 ESV)

The Holy Spirit works faith so we as individuals and as the collective body of Christ remain in Jesus, pray his prayer and other prayers in his name.  The Holy Spirit also fights against all evil within us, and that which works from outside us tempting us to reject God and his holy gifts and live without him.

Living without God or making ourselves God is the evil that leads to all evils.  And the Holy Spirit works tirelessly to deliver us into the bosom of God’s mercy and the holiness of Jesus.  

Jesus was clothed in the weak flesh of humanity with all its desires, he resisted the devil, and pressure from those around him to please them rather than the Father.  He was weak as we are weak, yet without sin.  But despite his perfect life, bore the evil of our flesh on the cross, and was delivered into death.

So, the Holy Spirit leads us to pray, “deliver us from evil”.  We can be reassured we are being delivered from the evil of ourselves into the holiness of God’s kingdom, power, and glory.  We are being delivered from the powers and principles that demonise us within from day to day.

We are being delivered from the evil of this world that comes to us through others, and the many gods we have created for ourselves. These are the evils to which our sinful selves naturally gravitate towards because of the Old Adam within.

And we are being delivered from the devil and his entourage of powers and principalities, that are overcome and completely powerless to the name of Jesus and the work of the Holy Spirit in which we pray, deliver us from evil, into the holiness of Jesus’ name.

After Jesus teaches his disciples how to pray the Lord’s Prayer, he continues encouraging them to be consistent in the power of prayer.  He says, “…I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.” (Luke 11:9–10 ESV)

Then he says, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:13 ESV)

If God the Father would send his Son to die for you on the cross, and he wants you to be with him in his kingdom, so you can worship him and glorify him, he will certainly give you all the assistance your need to be delivered from all evil into the holiness of Jesus’ name! 

Pray for the Holy Spirit, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to deliver us from all evil. Amen.

Next week we continue the series on the Lord’s Prayer, “Your kingdom come… Lead us not into temptation”.

C, Lent 2 - Genesis 15:1-15,17-18, Psalm 27, Phillippians 3:17-4:1, Luke 13:31-35, "Forsaken House - Forgiven House"

Luke 13:31–35 (ESV) At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.”  And he said to them, “Go and tell that fox, ‘Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I finish my course.  Nevertheless, I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the day following, for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem.’  O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!  Behold, your house is forsaken.  And I tell you, you will not see me until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’ ”

Two of the readings today speak about a house. 

First there is Abram.  He saw his house would be inherited by a servant of his household and not a born heir.  Then, in the Gospel reading, Jesus speaks about Jerusalem and its house being forsaken.

Saint Paul’s epistle to the Philippians, speaks of the body of a person being transformed into a glorious body by Jesus, to be like Jesus.  He teaches the listener to imitate him and others who set an example, as those who have been made Christ’s own (Phil 3:12) through the righteousness of faith (Phil 3:9).

There is no mention of a house in this text per se,  but the body of a person houses one’s understanding, feelings, and desires.  Paul laments over those who have let their bodies become houses of unrighteousness, just as Jesus laments over Jerusalem becoming a forsaken house, that no longer was willing to allow God to gather its people from danger.

These two examples of unwillingness and rejection to follow God’s will, are warnings for us as individuals and church who wish to be of the house of God.  Do we above all else seek God, and want to be with God?

In Psalm twenty-seven it reads, “One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple.” (Psalm 27:4 ESV)

Is your ultimate goal to do as the Psalmist does?  To dwell in the house of the Lord, ALL the days of your life!  Is God the most beautiful of all beauty to you?  Do you wait for the Lord?  Or rather, do you trust in your own efforts? 

Those Paul speaks of as putting their understanding, minds, or feelings in earthly things, will be misguided, and will not be transformed from our lowliness into the glory God wants for us.  He says their end is destruction.  They’re unwilling to stand firm in the Lord, and therefore, are enemies of Christ.

Jerusalem is the centre of Jesus’ attention, and he says of those who should be the children of God, but have rejected the prophets, “your house is forsaken”.  If God’s house in Jerusalem can be forsaken, then so too can the house of your body, if you or I push away God’s protection and the transformation, he seeks to perform in all of us. 

This makes us more like King Herod than King David.  Have we become sly cunning foxes, parading  as people of God, justifying ourselves in a princely lifestyle and seeking Jesus for our entertainment only as Herod did? 

Should we be more like King David who trusted in the Lord, even though he was the highest in the land?  Who allowed God to confront his sin as an adulterer, and murderer, and confessed his sin to the Lord?  Who despite being king of Israel, allowed God to make him increasingly aware that his greatest enemy, was not the foreign countries around him, but rather the very core of his own sinful being?

If all this makes you feel uncomfortable and uneasy, good, it should!  If you feel like a fox that has been caught in the spotlight of God’s glory, and your life has been one of secret doubling back on yourself to hide your tracks in the darkness, this too is good.  If you feel, understand, and realise your situation as caught out, with impending doom as a result of your activities, it’s not a bad thing.  And if this hasn’t happened in your life as of  yet, it will.

When your death is put on your agenda, when the end of your life is imminent, if you haven’t beforehand realised what the consequence of sin is, death will show you.  How does the thought of death make you feel?

Abram saw his house was dead, because he had no heir onto which he could pass on his inheritance.  In his old age he was as good as dead, and an heir seemed impossible.  But it’s when we are as good as dead, that the power of God can be realised, and we’re called to put all our understanding, feelings (good and bad), and trust in him.

With Abram God first takes him outside and shows him the stars, then after this he makes a covenant with him.  But this is a covenant like no other in the Old Testament.  Covenants require both sides to make a promise.  Here though there is only a promise made by God.  Abram was in the state of deep sleep, a stunned, or deathly state, and is solely the recipient of God’s covenant.

When the severity of God’s law comes upon us, it causes death within us, and although it makes us feel woeful and as though we are dead, it’s a good thing.   We need to see what the house looks like if God vacates and leaves the house empty.  Here I am speaking specifically of the house of your body.

Jesus declares Jerusalem forsaken, dead, rotten, and off.  Like a piece of rancid meat, he rejects its house.  Yet Jesus returns to Jerusalem to die and be cast out, as if he was the cunning and sly fox that we have become in our sinfulness.  He becomes our rottenness and is cast out!  He dies because of the deadliness we bear.  That which he wishes to expose in us, he covers with forgiveness.  He also casts out feelings of guilt and gives us his blessing.  We are blest because he comes to us in the name of the Lord!

When we allow the Holy Spirit to expose our sin, so we can confess it, it gets covered by Jesus’ death.  When we allow the Spirit to invoke the death of our sin, we allow him to raise us with Jesus Christ to life eternal. 

When God does this, he out foxes the fox within us, he out cunnings the cunning within us, he shrewdly uses fear of eternal death to save us from our second death.  We are reminded in baptism eternal death is now deceased in those who hold onto faith in God and reject faith in oneself.

We also know of the deadliness of our house and the life Christ brings to it, and in this we continue in hope for those who have become dead to God’s church, and to be restored in love.  So we pray, doing the work of God, asking they be once again given the desire to be in God’s presence, and receiving his gifts of life, that will take all who seek God to death and through it into God’s eternal presence.

Saint Paul holds out hope for the Jewish people, despite their unbelief.  He knows, he was made dead by Christ but was graciously grafted into him through his death on the cross.

We too, stand before God with the same hope as Paul, having been grafted into Christ, despite being as good as dead…

Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness.  Otherwise you too will be cut off.  And even they, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again.  For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be grafted back into their own olive tree.  (Romans 11:22–24 ESV)

If God can sever his chosen people, the Jews, and graft them back in, he can also revive the faith of those who have become dead in the faith.

Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ,  despite the deadliness within.  In fact, we can thank God for showing us our deadliness, in just the same way Jesus knew Jerusalem was the place where others died and he would die, yet declared, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”

Let us pray.  Heavenly Father let us die to self, pick up our cross and resolutely walk with Jesus.  Protect us from all that can sever us from eternal life, and hear our prayers for those whose faith has died, so they might be grafted back into the life-giving blood of Jesus Christ. Amen.

C, Midweek Lent 1 - The Lord's Prayer #2 - Matthew 6:9, 1 Chronicles 29:10b-13, Psalm 145:10-13 "We join with Jesus in his Prayer"

Our Father in Heaven… for the kingdom and the power and the glory are yours now and forever.  Amen. 

Last week at the Ash Wednesday service, we began learning about Prayer.  Throughout this Lenten Season and on Maundy Thursday we look at the Lord’s Prayer and its petitions.

While Jesus was on earth, he spent much of his private time in prayer.  Full of the Holy Spirit, Jesus was led out to quite places to pray.  When we peruse the Gospels, we hear that he prayed.  Sometimes, he prayed in public, to demonstrate it was not his power healing the person, but rather he was submitting to the power of God.

We too can submit to the power of God in prayer.  And when we do, we judge correctly the three realities of prayer…

1) We were originally created to be in fellowship with God.

2) Since the fall we are weak and helpless.  But, because of Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension to the right hand of the Father, we are now “blessedly helpless”.  

3) All our right prayers are Holy Spirited prayers. 

Although Jesus was the Son of God, he gave up his authority as the Son and took on the weakness of humanity.  In doing so, he became the archetypal Son of all humanity, the Son of Man.

Jesus glorified God in his fellowship with God the Father in prayer.  In his healings, those around him also glorified the Heavenly Father.  And, when others sought to glorify him, he avoided the opportunity for them to do so, not letting it happen.

But Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit throughout his ministry.  He joyfully praises God when the seventy-two disciples returned praying, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.  (Luke 10:21ESV)

All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” (Luke 10: 22 ESV)

Hear how this prayer of praise becomes teaching.  A little later on he teaches about the Holy Spirit and how he teaches, saying, “And when they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not be anxious about how you should defend yourself or what you should say,  for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.”(Luke 12:11–12 ESV)

The Holy Spirit teaches us what to say and what to pray.  Jesus full of the Holy Spirit taught the disciples what to pray.  Through his word to the Apostles, in the Written Word of God, he teaches us who have been filled with the Holy Spirit what to pray.  In our weakness we need the Holy Spirit to lead us in what to say and what to pray.

Today, we focus on the first thing and the last things the Holy Spirit teaches us and leads us to pray in the Lord’s Prayer.

Our Father in Heaven… for the kingdom and the power and the glory are yours now and forever.  Amen. 

The introduction comes straight to us from Matthew 6:9.  The Lukan equivalent begins simply with, “Father”, in Luke 11:2.  However, the doxology of the prayer is nowhere to be seen in the prayer that Jesus gives. 

Before we go discarding it from the prayer, we need to realise, what this doxology is, and from where it comes.  We must first return to Jesus’ prayers and ponder the heart of Jesus.  It has long been held that the Lord’s Prayer summarises the entire Psalter of the one-hundred and fifty Psalms.  The psalms that were written down by Kings David and Solomon, other temple authors, and the prophets, are the prayers of Jesus inspired in these men and written down long before Jesus was incarnate in flesh.  But once in the flesh he prayed the very prayers he inspired them to write.

Prayer fulfills God’s desire to be in fellowship with humanity, and we glorify him in that fellowship.  The Holy Spirit leads us in glorifying the fellowship of Trinitarian love with us, and within us.  We glorify God with praise and thanksgiving. 

We find this language of glorification right the way through the Psalms, and we find it in the words that come from Jesus’ lips.  We also hear it come from the lips of those who praise God, when they witness the acts of Jesus, while he moves amongst the people of Judea, Samaria, Galilee, as well as the gentile surrounds, he visited.

To narrow the doxology to one place in the Psalms, we hear the Lord’s Prayer doxology, most clearly in Psalm 145:10-13…

All your works shall give thanks to you, O LORD, and all your saints shall bless you!  They shall speak of the glory of your kingdom and tell of your power,  to make known to the children of man your mighty deeds, and the glorious splendour of your kingdom.  Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures throughout all generations.  The LORD is faithful in all his words and kind in all his works.  (Psalm 145:10–13 ESV)

Outside of the Psalms we also hear a similar doxology recorded in First Chronicles chapter twenty-nine.  First and Second Chronicles are the historical record of worship events including the building of the Temple, so it is no surprise to see a similar doxology here.   King David prays these similar words, when he charges the assembly prior, to Solomon’s anointing as king, and his death.

“Blessed are you, O LORD, the God of Israel our Father, forever and ever.  Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours.  Yours is the kingdom, O LORD, and you are exalted as head above all.  Both riches and honour come from you, and you rule over all. In your hand are power and might, and in your hand it is to make great and to give strength to all.  And now we thank you, our God, and praise your glorious name.” (1 Chronicles 29:10b–13 ESV)

These words of glorification are prayed by an assembly.  Even if Jesus is to pray by himself it is within the assembly of the Triune God.  He prays in a Trinity of Love, together with angels and archangels.  But even on earth King David leads the congregation before God and calls on his name in prayer.

So we come the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer.  We pray “our” Father not “my” Father.  Why?

Firstly, because Jesus teaches us to do so.  But he does so because of the greater reality of what we are called into.  This greater reality is not just the hidden reality of the Trinity, the angels ands archangels, but also the whole company of heaven. 

Secondly, this reality is a catholic reality.  Lutherans tend to recoil when we hear the word catholic, thinking we mean Roman Catholic.  But believing Romans like us who believe in the Lutheran Church are all a part of the catholic church.  As we confess in our creeds, we are apostolic and catholic in faith.

Thirdly, we adhere to the words of the apostles, and therefore we are gathered by the Holy Spirit into one holy congregation around Jesus Christ. 

This includes those who have gone before us, and now worship in the company of heaven. 

And it includes all who worship in the realm of time on earth, in our congregation, parish, denomination with others around the world. 

It also includes those still yet to be born, baptised, and abide in the faith given to them.  These are our unborn children, and the generations to come.  All these are the catholic church gathered by the Holy Spirit before Jesus, inside and outside of time.

When we say, “Our Father”, we pray as the body of Christ, and we join in the fellowship of God’s kingdom, glorifying him for his power and his kingdom, which is a kingdom of love that extends to us here on earth through forgiveness.

This introduction can be prayed as a perfectly succinct prayer in itself, “Our Father, the kingdom and the power and the glory are yours now and forever.  Amen.”  This prayer stands on its own and honours God in his eternal realm. 

But we are given petitions to pray here on earth by Jesus.  And these petitions teach us how the Holy Spirit moves us from evil to holiness.  The Holy Spirit does this so we might join Jesus, our ascended Great High Priest, in his petitioning the Father of love in heaven.

Next week, we continue on our journey of joyful discovery, examining the Lord’s Prayer and its petitions as prayer worked in us by the Holy Spirit.  But also, as a teaching or doctrine of the Holy Spirit, how the Holy Spirit practically bridges the divide between evil and holiness.  Amen.

C, Lent 1 - Luke 9:28–43 & 2 Corinthians 3:17-18 "Wealth in the Wilderness"

Romans 10:11–13 (ESV)  For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.”  For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him.  For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

When Jesus was confronted by Satan in the wilderness, Jesus knew of a greater reality than Satan.  We might think, “Yes, he knew because he was the Son of God!”  But if it was because he had higher power as the Son of God, he could not be the Saviour of you and me, or any other person.  There would be an unbridgeable gap, between the greatness of the Son of God, and the weakness of humanity.

However, the greater reality to which Jesus was akin, was not his relationship to God as the powerful Son.  But rather, his human weakness and perfect trust, allowing him to put aside his divinity, and wander in the wilderness, knowing his Father in heaven would hear him in his human weakness.

Jesus was no less hungry than any person would be, having been wandering in the wilderness for forty days.  His desire for food would have made his stomach wrench in pain. 

As he wandered alone without kingdom or someone to talk to, the human desire for partnership and property, a place to call home, would have been made all the more painful by the searing heat of the sand and loneliness. 

And when Satan took him to God’s temple in Jerusalem, and challenged him with the Word of God, the temptation to justify the evil inclinations of Satan and listen to him rather than trusting God would have been just as enticing to Jesus as they would be for you and me. 

In all three temptations, Satan temps Jesus with the question, “If you are the Son of God?”  He tempts Jesus to reveal his power as Son of God, so Satan could use it against Jesus, and those Jesus calls through the Gospel.  Satan wants to demonstrate a divide between the divinity of God and the weakness of humanity.

But Jesus repels Satan, and because he does, we can too!  Like Jesus we need not tap into the wealth of our works, the abundance of our intellect, or the power of a higher lived life.

No!  Instead, we are called to “not” let shame, desire, or a need to prove ourselves worthy, lead us into temptation.  Rather, we are called to trust God with the wealth of weakness, just as Jesus bore his weakness as wealth in the wilderness.

After all, just like Jesus, you and I are travelling with the riches of God through this life.  Just like Jesus you carry his wealth of weakness in the wilderness.  How can this be?

When Jesus enters the wilderness, we hear he didn’t go by his own effort, but was led there by the Holy Spirit.  Mark’s Gospel says it even stronger, saying, “The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.”   (Mark 1:12 ESV) Literally, the Spirit threw him out into the wilderness.

Jesus works with a greater reality, and we are called to do the same, even unto death.  He knows the suffering that this will bring to us. 

He says, “I know your tribulation and your poverty (but you are rich) and the slander of those who say that they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan.  Do 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.  He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.  The one who conquers will not be hurt by the second death.”  (Revelation 2:9–11 ESV)

Just as Jesus entered the wilderness, led by the Holy Spirit, you have been given the Holy Spirit and he will lead you in your weakness.  This is the richness of God’s wealth working for you, despite your human spirit desiring and scrambling to save face from the shame of being seen weak in the world.

Saint Paul tells the persecuted church in Rome, “For the Scripture says, ‘Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.’  For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him.  For ‘everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’”

So, what are the riches of God?  And how do we get them?

Firstly, Jesus himself, the perfect human man, submissive in weakness to our heavenly Father, is the greatest gift to all of us.  He is our wealth in the wilderness of our lives.  His love for the Father, trusting solely in him, and not in himself being the Son of God, is his gift to us.  However, because he is the Son of God who humbly submits in weakness and trust, makes this gift forever more profound and great!  

Similarly, as Jesus trusted in the Father, we are called to daily trust Jesus for giving us the gift of faith, and for the perfecting of faith within us, even as we have been made holy Sons of God in baptism.  We literally trust Jesus by calling on his name, and in calling on him we are saved.

Calling on Jesus’ name allows us to look to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.  (Hebrews 12:2 ESV)

Secondly, the great wealth or richness we have is the Holy Spirit.  When we call on Jesus’ name the Holy Spirit is given.  The Holy Spirit and Jesus are inseparable and when we call on Jesus, we get the Holy Spirit as well.

Jesus was led into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit after receiving the Spirit in baptism, we too have received the Holy Spirit in baptism.  In fact, we not only receive the Holy Spirit, but also God the Father and Jesus Christ, God the Son, in all his risen power and glory.  Therefore, just as Jesus is the founder and perfecter of faith, the Holy Spirit is the worker of faith within us.

When the Holy Spirit works faith within us, he is working holiness in us.  If we were to work faith, we would work faith in ourselves and work our way out of the weakness Jesus worked beating all the deeds of the devil and his evil entourage.  In fact, we would work Jesus and the Holy Spirit out of ourselves.  Ultimately, we would do what the devil sought to do to Jesus when he sought to tempt him in the first place.

Thirdly, the great wealth we have is the richness of the written Word of God.  Paul tells us in Romans chapter two verse four, the riches of God are kindness and forbearance and patience, and are meant to lead to repentance. (Romans 2:4 ESV)

This gift is not to lead us to shame and hiding but repentance through confession.  Shame is replaced by belief and trust in Jesus.  We too, endure in weakness, with the wealth of the cross, and despise its shame, looking with trusting joy to the Lord our God. 

The gift of the written Word keeps us from becoming delirious in the wilderness.  The richness of the Word stops us from becoming transfixed on any mirages of fleeting earthly wealth.  All this kind of wealth will vanish the moment we leave this worldly wilderness and stand before the Father, on the day of judgement.

Hear how Jesus both disciplines and loves us in his Word, so we can be saved.  He says, “For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.  I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see.  Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent.” (Revelation 3:17–19 ESV)

What is this gold, refined by fire, which we are to purchase?  It's the wealth of his weakness where he trusted his Father, all the way to death on the cross, descent into hell, and resurrection from the dead to the right hand of the Father.  This gold of God is the forgiveness of all our sins.

How much does this gold cost?  It costs you nothing!  This gold makes us rich in the righteousness of Jesus, and it opens our eyes in this wilderness to the wealth of love God has for us.

Therefore, be zealous for the weakness of Jesus!  Covet his weakness and call on his name!  It will not lead to shame!  Instead, you will be saved by his wealth in the wilderness. Amen.