Springs of Water in the Thirsty Land

[00:00:01] Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our father and from our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ. [00:00:09] Amen. [00:00:16] I'm going to read from the psalm. We'll be kind of in each of the readings this morning. So if you want to pull out your bulletin, I'll try and say where I am. [00:00:28] So from psalm 146, verse five. [00:00:36] Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God. [00:00:46] Now, to find help in something else or to hope in something else has to mean that you don't have everything you need right now. [00:00:57] You're in a position that's not satisfactory and you want to be somewhere else or you need help. To put it simply, you're hoping, blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God, desiring something to come to help, hoping in something to help. [00:01:24] In a sense, that posture is an open posture, ready to receive something from someone. [00:01:32] When I teach in the school, I like to use the image of a seed going into soil to talk about the property posture of a student. I don't use it, you know, all those words, really. But I want students to ask questions, because if you're not asking a question, then you're not looking for more. You're not looking for something to come and answer a question. [00:02:01] A question is thirsty for an answer. [00:02:04] Kind of like ground. [00:02:07] Ground that doesn't have anything growing in it, receiving a seed. Come on in here. You know, if the soil is receptive to the seed, then the plant can grow. [00:02:17] And asking a question is the same. You know, if you're in class and there's something that you desire to know, or just if you're a curious person, if you have questions, then you can go and seek those answers. And the question itself is like an invitation. Come help me to understand better. [00:02:38] Now, the seed and the soil. Of course, this could call to mind the parable of the sower, where Jesus says, a sower sowed some seed, and then there are different kinds of ground and different situations. You know, some of the ground has already received seeds, and now it's weeds and there's no room for new seeds. Or some of the soil is compacted. So it's too hard to receive the. The seed, but some of the soil is fertile. I mean, it's just ready. Ready to receive. And then it does receive the seed. [00:03:12] Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord, his God that is. Blessed is he who by faith is turned toward God, looking for him to pour into our hearts his love by his holy spirit, looking to him to give us salvation, looking for grace. [00:03:36] In the confession of sins. This morning, we became that kind of soil. That's why it's there. We all together say we need help. [00:03:47] We need forgiveness, we need salvation. [00:03:51] Most merciful God, we confess that we are by nature sinful and unclean. [00:03:56] Forgive us, cleanse us. [00:04:01] And he does. [00:04:02] He forgives our sins. [00:04:07] During Bible study, we're going to talk about what it means to be Lutheran. And this is a lot of what it means to be Lutheran. It means to recognize that all good things, salvation, forgiveness, all of that is received from above and can't be. You can't grow it from below. You know, you got to receive the word of God from above, God's word and promises. [00:04:29] It's just by receiving, through faith, which is why salvation is by grace, just a gift through faith, faith alone, which receives the promise. [00:04:47] Now, sometimes, though, we can forget to be thirsty soil, or we can look to be fed or filled from somewhere else, say, from people boosting our reputation or gathering possessions for ourselves and building something, kind of in a tower of babble fashion, make a name for ourselves, build ourselves up. Like, yeah, I recognize I'm lacking something, and so I'm going to go get it. [00:05:18] Whether it's respite for a little bit watching the broncos this afternoon, or whether it's dedicating our lives to money or possessions or building up our reputation and so on, it matters what we're thirsty toward. It matters where we find our help. Blessed is he who finds his help in the Lord. [00:05:54] Now, James. [00:05:56] In his epistle. In our epistle reading from James, James paints a picture where there are two kinds of people. [00:06:14] He says, one is a poor man in shabby clothing. [00:06:19] Another is a wealthy man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing. [00:06:29] I want to talk about these in terms of soil and receptiveness. [00:06:34] The one, the poor man in shabby clothing, you could think of him as dry ground calling out for something. [00:06:45] So maybe he needs clothes, maybe he needs food. [00:06:51] He's dry, he's thirsty. He needs something. That's the kind of man that you give something to so that they can be warmed and filled. [00:07:00] The other man doesn't need anything. In fact, he has things. [00:07:05] He has more than enough. [00:07:08] You could think of him like a spring that's able to give more. [00:07:15] Not just ground that has enough to grow something, but ground that is actually putting forth water for somebody to come and put a cup under and drink from. [00:07:27] But James says, don't think of it that way. [00:07:31] When you're in church and somebody comes in who's shabby, you know, and essentially can't give you anything, their ground is dry, like they're actually looking for things, they can't give you anything. [00:07:43] Don't treat them worse than the person who comes in the door and you're like, oh, I might be able to get something from this person, right? If I become friends with him. I bet you he has something to offer me. [00:07:56] Now, we could think in terms of more than possessions, right? Maybe it's somebody who's educated, maybe, you know, somebody who's able to offer you something. [00:08:08] He says, don't pay more attention to that person. See, attention is how we receive. [00:08:15] You pay attention to somebody in a high position and they might sort of lift you up. You might receive some influence or some power. You pay attention to somebody who has possessions and that might spill over to you, right? So attention is how we receive. [00:08:31] It's also how we give. [00:08:36] If somebody pays attention to you and gives you what you need, gives you clothing and food or something like that, that's how they did it. They paid attention to you. [00:08:47] So attention is the way that we give and receive. James says, essentially, you're Christians. [00:08:58] You've been united to Christ. You have Christ living in you by faith. [00:09:03] You have the springs of water. Like Jesus said to the woman at the well, you have springs of water within you you don't need from anybody else in church where we're looking to God in worship and receiving from him. [00:09:20] You don't need to pay attention to those who can help you. [00:09:24] You are overflowing and able to give to those in need. [00:09:34] That requires us to have dry and thirsty ground first. [00:09:39] So here's kind of the order of things. We come to church and we confess our sins. We say, God, I am a barren desert, a wilderness, and I'm in need of your forgiveness and salvation. I need Jesus to come into me like a, like a seed into soil. I need Jesus to come into me like water into dry ground. [00:10:00] Waters break forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. The burning sand shall become a pool and the thirsty ground, springs of water. Jesus comes into our barren wilderness of a heart with water and life seed, and he creates a garden of Eden that doesn't belong to us, that we have. Because Jesus is living in us. I no longer live. Christ lives in me. [00:10:26] And so then we rejoice in the gospel, in his forgiveness and salvation, and we have, we are overflowing. We have something to give so what do we have to give? [00:10:39] Forgiveness, life, salvation. Jesus, who's in our hearts, therefore, on our lips. Jesus to share with one another. And we recognize this to be the most valuable thing, the highest good that we could receive, the best thing that we could offer somebody else. [00:11:00] No longer are we evaluating one another in terms of how much they can give us. Now we're simply looking and saying to ourselves, let's see, what does he or she need right now? Like, what do they need to hear? [00:11:19] Are they concerned? Do they have an anxious heart? [00:11:24] Say to an anxious heart, fear not. [00:11:28] We can tell them about Christ. [00:11:31] Are they concerned about themselves? Are they worried about things that they have going on? We can point them to Christ. You see, our whole mindset is different now. We're no longer thirsting just from anywhere. We've thirsted toward God, toward Jesus Christ, his son, who was sent for us and for our salvation and receiving him now our cup overflows. We have all that we need. We're able to look outward. [00:12:01] James says faith without works is dead. He says, you might say, show me, where is this? Someone will say, you might say, you have faith, I have works. [00:12:20] James says, show me your faith apart from works. I will show you my faith by my works. [00:12:29] So here's the relationship between faith and works. [00:12:33] Works without faith would be like trying to grow things from the bottom up in our own soil, looking to other things. [00:12:41] Faith looks to Christ, receives from him and receives growth, receives life, receives waters in the wilderness and a pool instead of burning sand, blessings with which we can bless others. [00:12:57] So then our own overflowingness, our own receiving of Jesus, the fact that he is pouring his love into our hearts by his holy spirit, then that becomes evidence of faith. [00:13:11] Not that it replaces faith, but that it, well, it's a consequence of faith. It's a result of faith. [00:13:22] So we might ask the question, why does it matter how I live if I'm saved by grace through faith? [00:13:33] Like if all I need to do is look to Jesus and receive forgiveness, then why does it matter how I live, what I do on a daily basis? [00:13:44] And, well, you might say, because Jesus Christ, as you look to him in faith, is pouring himself into you, himself with everything that he has, joy and peace and patience and goodness and kindness and faithfulness and gentleness and self control, and that by faith he's governing you. And so if we start to say, like, well, but it doesn't really matter, does it? Well, we might not be governed by Jesus right in saying that it's like, well, why am I asking that I might need to repent and look to Jesus and receive from him? [00:14:26] So it's never a self conscious kind of thing. It's not like, okay, great, now I've got all this stuff. Now I've just got to lift myself up by my bootstraps and have all these gifts. It's always looking outward to Christ and then as he comes through us, looking outward to those in need. [00:14:48] And that's incredibly important. [00:14:52] It's important that we tell the world. [00:14:57] Pastor Hesse mentioned to me, do we sometimes take, you know, take Jesus words like, don't share this with anybody and actually, like, follow them? You know, like, that was then. That was for a time. Like, don't tell anybody. Now's not the time. Right? That doesn't apply today. [00:15:17] That's not. That's not the way things are to. Jesus says, go and make disciples of all nations. Get the word out. [00:15:27] I've healed the deaf, made them able to hear and to speak. I've healed you, you know, able to hear, able to receive and to speak, so that you would proclaim the good news with your lips, so that you would share the gospel and share with those in need. [00:15:46] We have everything in Christ. We don't need to hold on to anything. We have everything to give spiritually, and we can give of our possessions and such as, well, we are free to do so, because in Christ, we have all that we need. In Jesus name, amen.