Image of God

[00:00:00] In the name of jesus, amen. [00:00:07] A mighty fortress. [00:00:10] That hymn is based off of Psalm 46, which we said responsively a little bit earlier. God is our refuge and strength, our fortress. That's the same word, fortress, refuge. [00:00:28] God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. [00:00:34] Therefore we will not fear. [00:00:37] Though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, though everything be flipped upside down, mountains being moved into the heart of the sea, we will not fear. Why? [00:00:49] Because God is our refuge and strength. [00:00:56] This is election season. [00:00:59] Do we fear for any reason either way, like God is our refuge and strength? [00:01:10] Maybe your situation in some sphere of your life, your housing, your job, your family, your health, your something might be flipped upside down. Does it feel like the mountains are being moved into the heart of the sea? [00:01:25] Why fear or not fear? [00:01:28] God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. [00:01:34] Therefore we will not fear. [00:01:36] Though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea life, why not fear? [00:01:45] Because God is our refuge and strength. [00:01:50] There are other things to find confidence and security in. [00:01:54] They just don't last. [00:01:57] They disappoint. [00:01:59] So in the Gospel reading, Jesus points to his word as the thing to look to and to find refuge to take refuge in. If you abide in my Word, you are truly my disciples. [00:02:17] And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. [00:02:23] Whatever it is binding you, the truth will set you free. And how do you have that? [00:02:29] Abide in my word, remain in my word, be in my word. [00:02:37] The Pharisees react, saying, well, I mean, this is what they're saying. [00:02:45] We don't need your word for that, Jesus, right? We're children of Abraham. [00:02:52] We've never been a slave of anybody. [00:02:55] They're looking to their lineage. [00:03:00] We are Abraham's children and therefore God's people. [00:03:07] And so we're safe. [00:03:09] There's a little bit of a parallel there with Luther's day. [00:03:16] In Luther's day, the church hierarchy and the Pope were saying, we've inherited the Church from those who came before us. [00:03:28] The ministry of Jesus Christ has been handed down from the apostles, from bishop to bishop, a succession of bishops being appointed, ordained by the previous bishop who was appointed by so and so, by so and so, right, all the way back to the first bishops, the apostles. [00:04:00] And that's really cool. [00:04:04] But they were hanging their hat on that and saying, and so we have authority to judge doctrine and to interpret Scripture because of that succession, because it's been handed down to us. Not all that different from saying, we're children of Abraham, and so we don't need to get it from you, Jesus. [00:04:31] But Jesus is the Word himself, The Word of God who was in the beginning with God, through whom all things were made, who became flesh for us and for our salvation. And here he is speaking to the Pharisees, saying, if you abide in my. Well, he's speaking to the Jews in general. But if you abide in my Word, if you remain in my Word, which is God's word, then you are truly my disciples. And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. This is how you are. Free from what? [00:05:07] From sin. [00:05:09] This is how you know the truth. [00:05:13] By abiding in my Word, nothing else. [00:05:17] And so Martin Luther said, the church is indeed holy. This is the holy church, but it's only made holy. Anything is only made holy by the Word of God. [00:05:34] The Word of God that comes down from heaven and makes things holy. [00:05:40] The Word of God, which shapes things according to God's will. [00:05:52] Are you in charge of anything? [00:05:55] Like, maybe, or have you ever been. Have you ever been the chair of a committee or the mother of children or the father of children or the head of a household or a boss? Have you ever had your own business or, I don't know, think of that pattern. [00:06:23] And you shape things by your words. [00:06:27] You say, this is what you should do, and this is what you shouldn't do to your children, or, here's what this business is about to employees, whatever it is. But your Word goes and shapes the actions of the people under your care. I was teaching a woodworking class on Wednesday, and I said, okay, now stay at this table. [00:06:50] And I went over and I started explaining about tools. [00:06:54] And some of the students wandered off, and I came back and I said, whoa, whoa. [00:07:00] Here's what happened. [00:07:02] I spoke my word. I said, stay at this table. [00:07:07] And I was hoping that it would come through your ears, into your hearts, and you would hold onto it, and that would then shape your actions. I thought that you were going to stay here. [00:07:19] I really said all that because it is the same pattern. [00:07:25] And by teaching them, you know, then they can learn like they become accustomed to. Like, this is faith in God's word, right? [00:07:34] This is what God's word is meant for. [00:07:38] It's not just like an abstract concept, something holding meaning for whoever might want goes and it accomplishes things. Just like the word of a CEO then gets embodied in the company, and things get built, and the whole body is aligned in a mission insofar as it pays attention to and listens to the word of the CEO. [00:08:08] This is what God's word does. He created everything by His Word and it took shape. [00:08:19] He spoke everything into being and it took the shape of His Word, of His will. [00:08:27] God's word gives everything its proper shape, including you and me and sin. [00:08:40] Sin messes up the shape of everything. [00:08:48] By listening to the serpent. [00:08:50] Eve was shaped by something else than God's word. [00:08:56] Sin for us is deformity. We no longer shaped by God's Word. We're shaped by our own desires. And it messes everything up. It messes relationships up. [00:09:09] It turns us to serve ourselves and our own interest instead of the interest of others. [00:09:17] It curves us in on ourselves and we make a mess of things. [00:09:24] And that's slavery. [00:09:26] Jesus says anyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. [00:09:34] Now that's not the way it looks from the outside, with a certain perspective. A perspective that looks a little bit like what sometimes looks like our American mindset, right? Like nobody's going to tell us what to do. [00:09:52] We're in charge, you know, no taxation without representation. [00:09:59] Not to. [00:10:01] Not to say that wasn't right in its own context. I don't know. But sometimes it seems like freedom would be freedom from constraint. [00:10:11] No one telling us what to do from the outside. [00:10:15] We get to determine our own destiny. [00:10:21] But freedom from constraint is not the way that that freedom truly works because it assumes that we're free to do what's good for us, that we're free to know what's good for us. [00:10:37] We've been shaped. [00:10:40] We've been shaped by sin, by disobedience, by something other than God's Word. [00:10:46] And how can we who have been misshapen by sin, who've looked away from what properly shapes us, how can we know the proper shape? [00:10:57] How can we pursue it? [00:11:00] It's above our heads. It's above our pay grade. [00:11:04] We were made to be shaped by the word of God. [00:11:08] Looking to God and receiving his word, his will, being shaped by him. Just like he formed us in the beginning. Just like he formed everything in the beginning. And that was Jesus mission. [00:11:22] That's why Jesus, the man from heaven came and in the womb of Mary, shaped for himself a perfect human being. Do you ever think about it like that? [00:11:34] All things were made through the word Jesus Christ, including Jesus human nature. [00:11:46] Jesus formed for himself a human being in the womb of Mary and became man, but without sin. [00:11:56] A human being escaping the cycle of sin. He wasn't a slave. [00:12:01] He was a son. [00:12:03] Is a Son, of course, Jesus is the man from heaven who is perfect. He is a human being and also God, sinless, truly made in God's image, having the proper form, the proper shape. [00:12:27] And he came for us, to set us free. [00:12:30] So there he is speaking to the Pharisees, saying, if you abide in My Word, you are truly my disciples. [00:12:38] You are my students, my learners. The ones who abiding in My Word are hearing My Word and My Word is coming in and shaping you. [00:12:50] Students become like their teachers. [00:12:52] Disciples become like their master. [00:12:56] And that's what Jesus has come to do. By his grace, to make you and me like Himself, to shape us according to his will. [00:13:07] And sin and the deformities of sin remain in this life because it's not complete. [00:13:18] But that's what he's doing. He's conforming us to himself. [00:13:22] And Paul says at one point, I know that God, who has begun a good work in you, will bring it to completion. And in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ, when Jesus comes back, he's going to make you new. [00:13:39] He's going to shape you as you were meant to be in the beginning, in God's image. [00:13:48] Jesus, the image of the invisible God has come to remake you and me in God's image. And he does it through His Word. [00:13:59] So we abide in His Word. [00:14:01] In Luther's day, the church, by divine fiat, you know, was just saying, this is how it is. [00:14:14] Luther was saying, it's not aligned with God's Word, though. [00:14:19] Like, this is not. It's not God's Word, it's just your Word. [00:14:26] There needs to be some reform. [00:14:29] It needs to be reshaped by the Word. Because just like you and I can start to think I've been part of this church for 30 years, or my parents and grandparents were Lutherans. [00:14:44] And so we are just because, right? [00:14:49] Or we start to look to ourselves and say, wow, I'm doing pretty well. [00:14:56] And something else becomes our refuge and strength other than God and His Word or that river, the Word of God that brings joy to God's city. [00:15:11] If we start to look somewhere else, then our trust is misplaced and our fortress is shaky. It's just going to get torn down. [00:15:23] Only God's Word remains forever. Only Jesus Christ, the Word of God in the flesh is the same yesterday, today and forever and can take us through death and shape us how we should be being Lutheran. [00:15:44] You could say this a bunch of ways, but this is how I'm going to say it today. Being Lutheran is about being receptive. To the word of God being ready to be reshaped by God's Word. [00:15:59] Now I have to say this. [00:16:03] There is another kind of Lutheran today. [00:16:07] So not all Lutherans are the same. In fact, I just met somebody a week or two ago who was like in a non denom church, but he's been learning a lot and knows a lot about different denominations and feels like he's probably Lutheran or close to Lutheran in terms of what he believes. [00:16:35] When he found out I was Lutheran, he said, okay, are you LCMS or are you elca? [00:16:41] And I said lcms. And he said, oh good. [00:16:47] Now I, you know, I don't say that to like tear down somebody else. [00:16:52] It's not like I actually hate the idea of saying like woo hoo. And I wouldn't do that with other Lutherans. [00:17:01] I mean, we have differences. [00:17:02] There are differences between us and Wells, for example, Wisconsin Lutherans. [00:17:08] And I think they're important differences, but I wouldn't say this about them. Okay, but you just need to know that the ELCA has a very different approach to Reformation. [00:17:21] The idea is God is always reforming his church, but the reform that happens is like, well, what shape is it going to take? [00:17:34] They hold on to God's Word kind of loosely. [00:17:39] And the reform that happens is. [00:17:47] According to what? According to, well, right now progressive ideology. [00:17:54] It's being shaped by the ideas of human beings that contradict God's Word. And it's just totally, totally different. [00:18:07] The thing that helps us in the lcms, like the thing that holds us firm, I would say the main thing is that we have, well, God's Word. But the Lutheran Confessions, it's a body of documents that we hold to. We say this is how we interpret scripture and we're not going to depart from that. [00:18:36] It helps us to not just read into God's Word whatever we want, whatever seems right and good according to cultural conventions, holds us steady in God's Word. It helps us to remain in God's Word. If you abide in My Word, you are truly my disciples. And you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. The Lutheran Confessions, they're not God's Word. [00:19:13] They help to hold us in God's Word. They help to hold up God's Word as the source of what we believe, as the only thing that will shape us and make us holy. God's Word is what makes the church holy. [00:19:31] God's Word is what shapes you and me as we repent daily and receive His Word. The Word of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. The Word in the flesh. [00:19:43] He is the church, he is the holy man, the man without sin. [00:19:50] God and man in one person. [00:19:53] And he's united us to himself by faith, not by lineage, or not by your parents faith, not by your works, your righteousness, not by anything you've done. [00:20:09] By his grace, by his word, in Jesus name, Amen. [00:20:18] Let's stand and confess our Christian faith with the words of the Nicene Creed. [00:20:28] I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. [00:20:37] And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God, light of light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made, who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary and was made man and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried. And the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures and ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father. And he will come again with glory to judge both the living and the dead, whose kingdom will have no end. [00:21:32] And I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets. [00:21:46] And I believe in one holy Christian and apostolic Church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins and I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. [00:22:00] Amen.