Sermon in Outlook 27.03.2016

From the Epistle of Jude, in the last portion of that letter, beginning with the 20th verse, we hear these words in Jesus' name. Amen.

Along with our dear brother, I also want to thank you. It's been good to be here in your midst. It's always nice to visit in this congregation. Sometimes with fear and trembling, I've been in your congregation this weekend. But nevertheless, again, we find in the fellowship of God's children strength to continue the journey. Amen.

These types of weekends and events are so precious to a child of God. It always seems like they just get started, and then they're done. And we go home to our daily endeavor of faith. And in some sense, when I've been here this week, I was telling one of the brothers that, boy, it would have been nice to have one of you vocal guys take a turn in the middle of all that. But it's gone by fast. And here we are. We've reached the end of these precious services. And what have we heard this weekend? Amen.

During this Passion Week, God in His wisdom has set aside this type of occasion, these types of services where we do pause to consider the foundation of our faith: Jesus' suffering and death and His resurrection. And that's the beginning point of our faith. That's what everything is based on. And in some sense, we build our lives on that.

The Apostle in another place asks us to think about what we build on when we think of that foundation. That we don't want to build on it with sticks or hay, or anything that's perishable. Nothing of ourselves. Here the writer says that, but ye beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost.

So he begins this part of God's Word by saying that this is how we can build on our faith: pray in the Holy Ghost. What kind of things could we pray for? As parents, I'm sure a lot of you have similar prayers as I do. And there's lots of them. And isn't it the case that so many times those prayers are related to temporal life? That my job will go well. My kids will behave at school. Little things sometimes. We'd be able to find strength to help our aging parents, for instance.

But isn't it the case though that first and foremost, we have that prayer that we would be kept in living faith, in our own personal faith, until the end. Sometimes we're given those kinds of examples of people. And it seems like they always come after. They've passed on. We never realize what kind of example they've left us.

A year ago, in February, my brother Alan passed away. He was a bachelor all his life. He was in his 50s. And sure, I've had discussions with him. But I guess if you would have asked me before he passed away what I have learned from him, I would have said, in my life of faith, maybe I couldn't have put a finger on just exactly one thing. But afterwards, we were at his house. We were cleaning out his things. One of my brothers found something on his desk. And it was a note. It looked like some kind of a motto for his life. And this is what it said. It had three sentences:

If you lose your money, you've lost a lot.
If you lose your friends, you've lost a lot more.
If you lose your faith, you've lost everything.

Isn't that how we want to build our lives? Isn't that the type of thought that we can build upon? It's not then us. It's set with a goal in mind: Heaven's home. And we can pray that God, the good Heavenly Father, would allow us to continue in faith.

And it's not such a sure thing, is it? We battle in ourselves with our own lusts and desires. The enemy is so close. And the world entices us with so many things. And we can fall. And we do fall. And again and again, we come to the footsteps of repentance. Repentance.

Sometimes it may seem like those falls are greater than others. And we may begin to tell others about our struggles and how we've overcome them. I remember another one of my brothers once telling me, this was when we were maybe late teens, early twenties, that range. He had a difficult time in his life at that point. And some of the things he told me were the places where he would go. There were arcades and movies that tempted so strongly at that time. And he found himself going to those kinds of places and never seemed to bring joy. Never seemed to fulfill those things he thought he would get from them when he went there. And he prayed that somehow, someway, it could stop.

It did stop one day when he returned home and my father spoke with him. And he told me he used the words of the Song of Zion to explain what he went through. Isn't it that way that the Songs of Zion are stories of our lives? He remembered it this way:

That I walked in blindness.
My soul was dying.
The Prince of Darkness held me in His power.
In pain I turned to my father crying.
He broke my chains and saved me in that hour.

God hears prayer. He hears the words of prayer. And He finds a way to soften our hearts and keep us within the flock of God's children.

The writer here continues that keep yourselves in the love of God. How do we keep ourselves in the love of God? I'm sure you could perhaps explain better than I what that means. For some reason, in my mind, I don't have any kind of example to tell you what I think. But keeping ourselves in the love of God, isn't it that we beg for, as our brother already stated in the previous sermon, beg for the Gospel as often as we can? As often as we need it? Sure, we may have the struggles of our daily lives, but if again and again we can trust in the Gospel of the forgiveness of sins, it is keeping ourselves in the love of God.

As he continues, this is looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ onto eternal life. And that's what we do. We look for mercy. Not just for this time, but for eternal life.

For some reason, an example came to my mind from the time when I was at the Epistle, so many years ago, at one of the bigger services at the Yamsa area-wide services in the summertime. One of my servants during those services gave an example that stuck with me all these years. And his point by using the example was to show how sometimes as people, we can see in others that they live every day with that knowledge, that they're on the way to heaven.

And this example actually was an example of a little girl. He had gone to this particular congregation for the very first time. He'd never been there. He kept the services and afterwards this little girl, he said she was just going to school. Whether it was kindergarten or first grade. About that age. And after the services, she came up to him. And at first he didn't even realize that such a little girl wanted to talk to him. He was surprised. But what came out of her mouth was this: that can she believe all of her temptations for heaven? And he blessed her and he thought, what kind of temptations does a six or seven year old girl have that troubles her that way? And he kind of forgot about that.

And then a year or two later he again returned to that congregation. And for some reason, many remembered her. And he kept the services. And afterwards the same girl came back. And she told him, now she's been in school a few years and there's kids that make fun of her. All she really wants to know is can she believe her sin is forgiven? And he blessed her.

He says it was only a few short months later he heard that she had meningitis and she was taken home. He says he could tell from her appearance, the things that she talked about that she wasn't living for this time. None of this mattered. She was living for heaven. That was her goal. And each and every day that was what mattered. It didn't matter what happened otherwise. She would lament but she didn't care about that. She wanted to know how she could make it to the destination. And she did make it there. She was looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ onto eternal life.

So many times we as believers of this time, we look for the mercy of Jesus Christ for a good reason. It's to help our endeavor today and now. To remove the burdens that press us down. And to help us to the next day. But that same gospel helps us onto eternal life. It will bring us all the way to the destination.

But then here this writer continues saying that it's not just the way we live our lives. It's how we help one another on the way. And it says, And if some have compassion, making a difference.

Making a difference. You make a difference in someone else's life when you have compassion. How does that look? To have compassion on someone. We already heard from our dear brother about not gossiping or those types of things. That's not having compassion. It is having compassion though when you ask your brother or sister, your sons or daughters, how is it going? How is the journey going?

On the other hand, the writer here also says though that, And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire. Actually when I read this earlier, I was, I didn't know what to think about it. It actually bothered me. How do you save someone with fear? And what came to my mind was an English class that I had when I was in high school. And there we had to read different books and writings. And one of them was an American writer. I think at that point we were focusing on American writers. And it was a guy that wrote a story. And it was called, As Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.

Is that how you save someone with fear? Showing them that, or explaining like he did in that article that we are like sinners in the hands of an angry God? Or we are sinners in the hands of an angry God. And he has us in his fingers. And he is holding us over the fire. And at any moment he could drop us in there. Is that saving someone with fear?

As I thought about that though, I could only come to this conclusion that we see things from different perspectives. When we speak to our beloved friends and relatives who wander in darkness about the way that leads to heaven and that there is only one way, when God awakens them, it truly is fear that they receive. But we don't need to try to concoct some type of fearful message for them to believe. Their conscience will tell them. It will lead them to that. But in so doing dear brothers and sisters, we pull them out of the fire. Sometimes from very grievous things.

I haven't experienced it myself but other brothers have explained how good it feels to bless someone who has made repentance from God, has made repentance from the world. But it can also be even further than that.

Our brother Randy Harlow was explaining once how it seems so out of our control even. He was down there in Africa with, I don't remember which other brother he was there with. But they had a schedule that they were supposed to follow for the day. They had I believe three places to go to. And on their way to the first place, the car broke down. And they needed to try to fix it. And then they fixed it after an hour or two. And they made it to the first place and had their services.

And then they went to the second place. And when they got there, it wasn't like it was planned. They couldn't find the person they were supposed to meet. And they met an official of the town, who started questioning them. Why are you here? So they tried to explain. And he went and got other town's officials to almost interrogate them. Why are they here? And so they sat there and explained to them why they were there. And so that took time.

And then after that, they finally were able to hold services in that locality. And the day just seemed to go worse. The schedule just didn't hold. The day just seemed to go worse. They were going to the last place that they were supposed to visit. And it was already supper time. They were supposed to have been done before supper. And one of the guides was telling them that, well, we should probably stop and eat.

And so these brothers, now I remember the other brother's name was Mikko Kinonen from Finland. And well, they were convinced that they'd stop at the side of the road anyhow and have their supper. They were already late a few hours. And there they stopped anyhow. And they stopped by a building that looked like it was almost abandoned. And Randy said they didn't even know what that building was.

But as they're sitting there eating, this motorcyclist pulls up and goes past them. And the man jumped off and went into the building. And Mikko, if any of you know him, he's kind of a curious sort of person. He has a lot of questions, especially if there's anything education involved. And when he had been looking at the sign, it was kind of faded. He thought it looked like it meant it was a school maybe. But he didn't know.

So he wanted the translator to come with and go talk to the man. And so he went and talked to the man. And he said, well, I'm going to go and get the man. And the translator said, well, no, we're already late. We're just going to finish our supper and we're going to go. But Mikko didn't care. He went by himself then. Went wandering into the building. And the translator decided, well, he better go and follow him. Make sure everything's all right. And so he left.

And they were gone for a little while. And Randy and the other brother were wondering, why is it taking them so long? And we do really have to go to the next place. They're waiting for us there. And so they went to find them. And they found them in the, they had like a little office there, in the door there. And Randy said it was actually really apparent what had happened immediately.

As soon as they walked in the door, they could tell what had happened. He says he's sure that this is what had happened. They went into that office. And Mikko had made all kinds of questions to this man about what this building was. And the man had answered. And then when Randy and this other brother walked into the front door, this man was just presenting them with a question, why are you here?

And so Mikko began to explain, we've been called to preach the gospel to penitent sinners. And as he said a few words, Randy saw that the man's head began to hang lower and lower. After Mikko was done, this man said, I've been praying for three months to God to show me the way. And he said, angels. And they preached the gospel.

You tell me dear brothers and sisters if the time schedule is wrong. God showed them that we can make all the plans we want. But his ways are so much greater than our ways. And he does what he wills. And we will follow his time.

It doesn't mean that we don't make schedules and try to do things the way we think best. But isn't it the case that God does what he wills and pulls them out of the fire? That's the kind of kingdom we live in.

The writer here concludes with two verses that seem to pull this all together. That when you think about having that type of God, having that type of Lord and Savior, what can we say? He says:

Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling,
And to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy,
To him be glory and majesty.

What a remarkable thing to think about on this Easter Sunday. That we have a God and a Lord who can keep us from falling. And not only that, He presents us as faultless before the presence of his glory. And not only that, He does it with exceeding joy.

There is joy in heaven over believers on earth. Have you thought of that dear brothers and sisters? That there is joy in heaven? That we are still on the way to heaven.

We can thank God here as the writer says, to the only wise God, our Savior, to him be glory and majesty. First to him be glory. He is that good, he is that great. To him does belong all the glory, not any to us. But to him is the glory. To him is majesty. It's above our comprehension, more than what we could ever think. To him is dominion. He governs our lives. It's not some kind of a democracy where we can try to do as the majority does. But we are in a kingdom. A kingdom of grace. With a king. And he is powerful. He is powerful now. And he is powerful ever. And he is powerful now in the gospel.

Dear brothers and sisters, you can't even at the end of these services lift up your heart to believe. All your latest doubts and sins forgiven. In Jesus' name and precious blood. Believe it unto peace and freedom and joy.

It's not only for now though, dear brothers and sisters, it's forever. To God be the glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever.

Let's trust in God's grace until that day when faith changes to sight. Or like my father used to so many times conclude his services. He said, today we are one day closer home than ever before.

In Jesus' name and blood, sins are forgiven. We are truly dear brothers and sisters one day closer. A very safe journey home to heaven's home. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Can I still hear the gospel for my sins? Let us close in closing prayer.

Dear Heavenly Father, this weekend you have been so good to us. You have called us to the hearing of your word. You have comforted us with the gospel. You have kept us in the fellowship of the believers. And you have shown us that yes, we are still on the pathway to heaven.

Dear Father, we cannot thank you enough. But still we pray to you that you would give us strength to continue to pray. Give us strength to continue the journey. Give us strength to do our temporal duties. Give us strength to teach our children. Give us strength to do the work of the kingdom. Above all, give us strength to keep personal faith until that day when faith changes to sight.

We say the Lord bless us and keep us. The Lord make his face shine upon us and be gracious unto us. The Lord lift up his countenance upon us and give us peace.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.