Above All Other Names

[00:00:00] Please be seated. [00:00:04] Grace, mercy and peace be to you. From God our father and from our lord and savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. [00:00:12] Those last words that we just sang, all the glory never ending, be to God. All the glory that is, all the attention that is, you know, be lifted up so that everyone can see you and everyone pays attention to you, right? You're the one deserving of attention. [00:00:31] From verse two. Eternal is the gift he brings. Therefore, our heart with rapture sings. Rapture is like this well being brought out of ourselves. [00:00:44] God's giving this eternal gift to us from above, and it lifts us up beyond ourselves. [00:00:52] Fill us, Lord, with dauntless love, set heart and will on things above. [00:00:58] All right, this is beautiful. Christ is risen. Is risen indeed. Alleluia. And he is reigning as king above all things, having been given power and authority by God over all things, having been given the name that's above every name, right? So that at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow in heaven and on earth, and under the earth and every tongue. Confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father Jesus lifted high above everything, having the name that's above every name. [00:01:35] And he says in our gospel reading, Holy Father, keep them in your name. [00:01:43] Keep them in your name. [00:01:47] Brothers and sisters in Christ, our Father dwells in heaven. Our Father is above all things, and he's been. He's given. [00:02:03] He's given his son all power and authority, lifted him up above all things, and he is our king and our brother. Looking for my bulletin. If I keep searching, searching. Okay, I found it. [00:02:21] All right. So our prayer of the day, our collect of the day, said, o king of glory, Lord of hosts, uplifted in triumph, far above all heavens. You see a theme here. [00:02:34] Leave us not without consolation, but send us the spirit of truth whom you promised from the Father. So he's high and lifted up, right? Exalted above, far above all heavens. God of gods, Lord of lords, that kind of language. There he is up there. But send us your holy spirit. You see how there is a downward movement there? Send us your Holy Spirit. [00:02:57] But think about it like sending his Holy spirit down. Does that degrade the Holy Spirit? Like, now it's come down and now it's lesser than it was? No, it's not like sending his spirit down actually brings it down. [00:03:09] It actually, actually lifts the world up. [00:03:14] You see that? [00:03:16] It's the same thing with the word becoming flesh. At the beginning of the gospel of John, the word was in the beginning with God. The word was God, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us. It's like by coming and dwelling among us, it didn't degrade Jesus, the son of God. The word of God, son of the Father, didn't bring him down. [00:03:43] It just meant that, well, the highest was living with us, right? And that's what a temple is and that's what his body is. It's the temple that sort of mediates the presence of the most high. [00:03:58] He remains the most high, but he's come to dwell among us. And what that means is that he lifts us up, he brings heaven to earth. [00:04:10] He brings heaven to earth in order to lift earth up. [00:04:15] Now, in the gospel of John, there's a contrast between, well, between heaven and earth, okay? But it's between God and the world. [00:04:29] So you can be of one or the other, as we heard. Right? Jesus says, they're not of the world, but I'm not asking you to take them out of the world. They're in the world, but they're not of the world. [00:04:42] In chapter one of John, he talks about, well, he says that. John says that everyone who believed in Jesus was given the power to become children of God as opposed to children of the world, the world that didn't receive him. In chapter one, there born of God. And then in chapter three, you have Jesus saying, if anyone wants to see the kingdom of heaven, that is belong to it, you must be born again from above. Anathema from above must be born again from above by water and the spirit, the spirit coming down and making things heavenly, right? The word coming down, becoming flesh and making things heavenly, uniting earth to heaven. [00:05:42] So Jesus says, these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. [00:05:54] You see that these things I speak in the world, here I am in the world in order to transform it. [00:06:02] These things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. [00:06:09] Well, when you're down and out and then comes joy, aren't you lifted up? I mean, that's just the way it works, right? Jesus comes into the world in order to lift the world up. [00:06:25] Now, okay, so what is it about the world that's not already lifted up? Like, why does it have to be that the world's so low and God's so high? Didn't God create the world? Didn't he care about the world? [00:06:40] But yes, right, so we're not talking about just creation in general, like, things as created things are lowly, okay? But that actually God created everything by his word and he made it good. [00:06:54] What is that other than to lift it up into his glory? To call something good? He made us good, but we rejected him, right? We said, forget your word. [00:07:07] Adam and Eve did said, we're going to come up with our own plan. [00:07:13] By doing so, they made themselves earthly. It's like mere earth without heaven is what they made themselves, because the word of God is what makes something heavenly. [00:07:26] He says these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. To lift them up into my joy, I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world. You see that? I mean, he's saying there, I've given them your word, so they're not of the world. [00:07:48] I've given them your word. That's why the world hates them, because they're not of the world. So you see, we have the world. You could say humanity apart from God's word, and then you have the world that has God's word and has received it by faith. That's why faith makes the difference. [00:08:11] You've got humanity without faith, without the word. And you've got humanity that receives the word and is transformed by it, is made holy by it. And who is the word? It's Jesus Christ. [00:08:25] So I've given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. [00:08:36] His people who have received the word are where he is because he's taken them up into himself. [00:08:44] He's made them heavenly. They've been born again by water and the spirit from above. They have this new birth from above, so that they're born of God and not of the world. And so that's why they're in his name. That's why they're in the father's name, because that's what happens when you're in a family. [00:09:03] You're given a name. You're born into that family. Well, that's your name, whether you like it or not. [00:09:10] Just kidding. No, but it's true. Also of organizations like maybe you're a part of Trinity Lutheran Church or Trinity Lutheran School, or, or citizen of the United States, or maybe you're a member of a club, or maybe you're a, and then you have that name and then you belong to that and things are given to you according to that name. [00:09:32] And maybe you even have authority to do things in that name. Maybe you can write checks, or maybe you can go and form, go and network for that organization or something like that, right? You can do things in his name. So all the time, Jesus apostles are saying, you know, in the name of Jesus, I heal you, or something like that. And it's like they're part of, well, they're in the family, they're in the organization. They're children of God and sent by him with his authority. [00:10:05] Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me. [00:10:14] Now we can walk away from that name. We could give it up. [00:10:21] We could forget the blessings that God has given us in, well, forgiving us for our rebellion, for our lack of attention to God's word and maybe our apathy, not caring so much about what he thinks and just going about our lives, our own way. But, I mean, he's taken us up into this new identity, this life. [00:10:47] In Jesus, we have his word. We have the spirit of truth, making us holy, taking us out of the world, making us heavenly. They're not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth. [00:11:11] Make them holy. Set them apart. Lift them up into heaven by the truth. Right in the truth. [00:11:19] Your word is truth. Again, there it is. So that's why, I mean, coming here together, this is heaven on earth, because we hear God's word and we're lifted up in Jesus, the word made flesh. [00:11:33] As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. [00:11:38] Okay, here we are. We're still in the world. We're sent into the world, and for their sake, I consecrate myself that they also may be sanctified in truth. Consecrate, make myself holy, set myself apart so that they also may be set apart in truth. [00:11:58] Brothers and sisters in Christ, we are in the world. We are not of the world. That doesn't make us not care about the world, but it does maybe change the way that we interact with the world. [00:12:11] We have, well, a different family name. We have a different allegiance. It changes where we're going to look for wisdom. It changes where we're going to spend our attention, changes how we're going to guide our family and our family's attention. What makes the difference. It's God's word and faith in God's word. And remembering that Jesus Christ is the word of God, right, he's there at the center, the source. We look to him, we can get tangled up in the world. [00:12:48] And I think the most helpful way to think about that is attention. [00:12:51] How do we spend our attention if we're, if we're just sort of, you know, absorbing, we always are, right? We're always absorbing things and they're transforming us. [00:13:02] And, and our children, our children are absorbing things too, and they're being transformed maybe more radically than, than adults are because that's just the way, you know, children are sponges and, and this is their time of being molded into what they're going to be more concretely. [00:13:25] But all of us, we're all children and we all are being formed by what we pay attention to. [00:13:33] And so we ought to be careful to be in the world, but not of the world. How do we become of something? Well, by faith, right? We're born of God by believing in Jesus, that is, by looking to him for every good thing, by trusting in him in all situations, by paying attention to him. That's faith. Faith has an activity and that is attending to something. [00:13:59] So we live by faith in the son of God. As we look to him, we're always looking to things. So we should be careful where we spend our attention and where we guide our, those under our care in spending our attention. The word of God is what makes things heavenly. It's what lifts things up into God's life. We're born of God by faith in Jesus. [00:14:29] The stakes are high, but Jesus Christ has won. [00:14:37] As we're sent out into the world, we might become intimidated by what we see insofar as the Holy Spirit reveals to us that, like, whoa, this is undermining God's word, this is undermining the way God has created things, or this is drawing me, this is wanting to draw me out of my identity. Christ, Christ has overcome the world. [00:15:11] The one to whom we look in faith is above all things. [00:15:16] He has power and authority, all power and authority in heaven and on earth. The name that's above every name. And he's defeated Satan. [00:15:25] There's nothing that can harm you, nothing that can separate you from his love that is in Christ Jesus. [00:15:35] In that name you are safe. [00:15:39] Don't leave that name. [00:15:43] It's by faith. So look to Jesus. Trust in him. He gives you everything. He gives you forgiveness, life, salvation, kingship. With him, nothing can touch you. [00:15:57] He lifts you up, seats you in the heavenly places. You have been seated in the heavenly places by faith in Jesus so that you can go into this world with confidence and make a difference. [00:16:10] Not because you decide, like, I'm going to make a name for myself, but because you look to Jesus, the name above all names, and live by faith in him. And he will bless you. He will bless those around you, through you, as you live by faith. In Jesus name, amen.