One time when Jesus was off praying by himself, his disciples nearby, he asked them, "What are the crowds saying about me, about who I am?"
[19] They said, "John the Baptizer. Others say Elijah. Still others say that one of the prophets from long ago has come back."
[20] He then asked, "And you—what are you saying about me? Who am I?"
Peter answered, "The Messiah of God." [21] Jesus then warned them to keep it quiet. They were to tell no one what Peter had said.
[22] He went on, "It is necessary that the Son of Man proceed to an ordeal of suffering, be tried and found guilty by the religious leaders, high priests, and religion scholars, be killed, and on the third day be raised up alive."
[23] Then he told them what they could expect for themselves: "Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat—I am. Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how. [24] Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self.
Luke 9:18-24, The Message
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
“What kind of things are people saying about me? Who do people say that I am?”
Private conversations produce amazing insights. Do you know what a conversation is, a good clean conversation? Some of you do, but you also know what a bad conversation is. The kind where people gossip and make false accusations against a person.
Jesus had long endured false accusations. He had been accused by some of being in league with the devil. Hard to imagine, I know, but some made that accusation stick. They said, “How can someone have authority over demons, unless he himself is a demon too?”
The last thing that was on their minds was God.
Others had said that Jesus was of less than genuine offspring. They had rubbed it in his face. “We’re sons of Abraham.” His family lineage was questionable from the very beginning. It was as if they had heard the stories of this carpenter’s son’s birth, HA, and they didn’t believe that either.
Then came his message. “Repent, be baptized, and believe the Gospel for the kingdom of God is at hand.”
Who was this itinerant preacher from this back country village of Nazareth? He lacked the sophistication of the city life. He didn’t get the chance to go to the best schools or study Torah under the tutelage of the most learned scholars. And he hung out too frequently with sinners, eating with them.
No this Jesus had to be watched. His miracles demanded attention. They captivated everyone, and made them listen to his teaching and then talk afterwards.
It is sad and curious to me how people will talk and question the Gospel after they have heard it. Satan’s attack to try and destroy that Gospel is often to challenge the teacher himself, questioning his credentials or authority to teach something like that.
Jesus after all was not a formally trained rabbi. His schooling was far less formal. We know much about him, but we do not know everything. Born in Bethlehem, spared death by an escape to Egypt, raised in Nazareth with occasional trips to Jerusalem, he was raised in a devote Jewish home where the Torah was observed. He spoke Aramaic and Hebrew, probably not Greek, the language into which his message was translated into the letters and writings that became our New Testament. Think about that next time someone tries to sucker you into an argument about the validity of one translation over another. Even the words of Jesus in the original Greek is in primarily a translation.
I say that not to induce doubts, but so that you will be able to see the forest and not just the trees. The message of God’s love in Jesus Christ still gets through clearly in all Scripture. Never doubt that.
Jesus was not highly educated by the standards of his day or any other. And yet the message of God’s love and mercy which he proclaimed was nothing less than the Word of God.
How do you properly study God’s Word? First you have to take a look into the heart of God our Father. His Law is a stern teacher, but at its core is the heart of a loving God who wants the best for us and in his mercy helps us to find it through his grace and kindness.
To study God’s Law properly in Jesus’ time, you had to attend classes, not unlike those attended by a young man named Saul who from a very young age benefited from a strict religious education. Even those of us who attended a Lutheran parochial school couldn’t match his resume of learning or piety. We would lose that competition.
However, piety never saved anyone. Why? Because no one can keep the Law of God perfectly. Try as you might, you will fail and end up at arms length from God. Only the Gospel saves.
And what is the Gospel?
It is nothing less than the message of God’s love in Jesus Christ, who although he kept the Law perfectly, he too was made its victim.
Our choice in the Christian faith is therefore a simple one in many respects. We can be Gospel people or Law people. People who say no to this and that, or people who have learned that in faith God says yes to us in Jesus Christ.
We have a choice of wallowing in the Gospel or wallowing in the Law. One way leads to freedom and salvation, the other to more laws and more restrictions that come on the heals of every shortfall.
A family bought two cats that were about six months old. When they brought the cats home, they kept them inside the house all of the time. They were afraid that the cats would stray from their house and get lost. After the new pets had lived with them for several weeks, they let them go outside to enjoy the yard and neighborhood. By then the cats knew where their new home was. They could go out and come back on their own.
God uses the Law to protect us until we know how he has loved us through Jesus Christ. The Law keeps us from hurting others and ourselves because it puts limitations on us. This is the first use of the Law. It is a curb designed to keep us on the right path. It governs us outwardly and inwardly in a stern and strict fashion.
In our Epistle lesson today, verse 24 in the NIV says, “So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith.” Then Paul goes further in verse 25. “Now that faith has come we are no longer under the supervision of the law. You are all sons of God through faith in Jesus Christ.”
Here the NIV is weak in its translation. It isn’t wrong, just not thorough. The first phrase says “So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ…” The word in Greek for put in charge to lead us is paidagwgo;. We get the word pedagogue from that word. It means a teacher of small children. Usually it was a slave who enjoyed this position in elite well to do families. They had the task of making sure that the children in their charge learned their lessons, and they could be, as you might imagine, stern about it.
Listen to how the Message translates this passage. It is from Galatians 3:21-25.
Until the time when we were mature enough to respond freely in faith to the living God, we were carefully surrounded and protected by the Mosaic law. The law was like those Greek tutors, with which you are familiar, who escort children to school and protect them from danger or distraction, making sure the children will really get to the place they set out for. [22] [23] [24] [25]
After reading this passage, I wonder if young Saul ever had a pedagogue. Or maybe Paul was simply utilizing a common every day concept that was clear in everyone’s mind in order to make clear the distinction between the law and the gospel.
Have you ever had a stern taskmaster? Someone whose discipline and authority you were forced to respect, even subjugate yourselves to.
This week I saw a TV show about people being indoctrinated into the US Army. It was another dose of real life TV that followed a few young women through basic training or boot camp as it is often known. From the very first, the women had to come to term with what looked to them like an adversary, their drill sergeants. Every moment of every day from the time they arrived until they graduated, their drill sergeants were there.
Have you ever had that experience? That of having someone yell in your face, all for the purpose of trying to teach you something.
Most people don’t learn well at first under that kind of discipline. It makes them cringe, even though drill sergeants today are not what they once were. They can’t touch a soldier. They can’t make them eat dirt, but they can yell at them all day long if they want to in order to get their point across. I once made the mistake of smiling at a drill sergeant. He made me drop and give him 50 push ups. I understood the game being played — build a person down and then rebuild them again.
A stern teacher can get the truth across, but before he can, something has to change in a person. The rebellion has to stop. And when the rebellion stops, when the questioning of authority ceases, then the real learning can begin.
In Christ we need the Law, but not to save us. Only to drive us to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He has saved us and we now know where our home is. It is in Him. We still do wrong, but we come back to Him for His love and protection. His love makes us want to follow His will.
Therefore we can say, properly as David said, “I love the Law”. For the law of God is designed to make us turn to God to ask for his mercy. That is what repentance is all about. It is saying to God and those around you, “I am sorry for my sins.” It is a step of faith whereby we learn that what God directs is for our own good and benefit.
Some people like to question everything. They question God. They question his Son. They question their pastor. They question the Word. They question their church. They question the wisdom of others, even to the point of causing offense along the way towards everyone who doesn’t agree with them.
But how can you question faith when faith trusts in God through everything.
Paul knew that faith was more than just correct doctrine. It is first and foremost trusting God to do what he said he would do and did do in Jesus Christ, namely to forgive our sins which are so numerous that none of us I dare say could keep count of them if we tried. Still there is wisdom in learning to trust God and His directives.
The third use of God’s law is as a guide. It is an appropriate use of the law because it puts us back on the right track, but our motivation to use his law at all ought to always be the exclusive result of the love of God in the Gospel.
A lamb and its mother passed a pigpen each morning on the way to the pasture. Watching the pigs wallow in the mud seemed like fun. On an especially hot day the lamb asked its mother, “May I jump the fence and wallow in the cool mud?” She replied, “No.” And the lamb asked the next question, “Why not?” The mother just replied, “Sheep do not wallow.”
This did not satisfy the lamb. He felt his mother had no reason to refuse. As soon as she was out of sight, the lamb ran to the pigpen and jumped the fence. He felt the cool mud on his feet, his legs, and his stomach. After a while he decided he had better go back to his mother, but he could not—he was stuck! His thick wool was weighed down with heavy, sticky mud. His pleasure had become his prison. He was a hostage of the mud. He cried out and the kind farmer, his owner, rescued him. When he was cleansed and returned to the fold, his mother said, “Remember: sheep do not wallow!”
Sin is like that. It looks so inviting, and appears easy to escape from whenever we wish. But it is not so! Pleasure becomes our prison. By nature we are all hostages stuck in the mud!
But God in his love and mercy does not want us stuck in sin and isolated from him.
That is why the Gospel, the message of God’s love and mercy in Jesus Christ, is so important. For without that message, we remain at best on the path of the Law of God, struggling vainly to try and keep ourselves worthy before him, but learning at the end of every day how much further we still have to go.
Next week at this time, our church body will have elected a new president, probably having concluded the election shortly before our worship begins.
I don’t know who that person will be. But I am praying that it will be someone who has fallen in absolute love with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I hope that he is totally smitten by it and turns our church again in the right direction of service in sharing that Good News with the world. Amen.
