“Confessing Faith Saves” (Romans 10:5-13)

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Series: Unexpected Truths”

Pastor Nate Walther

13th Sunday of Pentecost (08/23/2026)

Confession feels like a dirty word.  Maybe it conjures up images of a child squirming before mom or dad with something broken in the background.  Maybe you think about that feeling in your stomach when you know you’re going to have to admit something to your spouse.  Maybe it’s even the kind of thing that can drive people away from church: they don’t like to confess their sins, it makes them feel bad, so they don’t come.  Why, then, do we have confession?  It’s because God simply tells us in his Word today that CONFESSING FAITH SAVES.  Confession is not the negative thing we often make it out to be.  It’s a positive thing that gets at the heart of God’s plans for us.

            In today’s sermon text from Romans, the Apostle Paul approaches this topic from the question of righteousness.  What makes us right in the sight of God that we might be saved?  He lists two possibilities. Verse 5 explains the first: there is “righteousness that comes by law”, which means you have to do all the things the law says to be righteous, as the remainder of the verse explains.  So how about that one?  Would you bank your salvation on it?  Keeping God’s law all the time? When he’s not just some cop where you can speed up again once you’re out of sight on the interstate?… Of course not!  That’s why it’s a good thing God has revealed a second possibility in verse 6: “righteousness that comes by faith,” which doesn’t require any heroic deeds, as the following verses demonstrate. It doesn’t mean going to places we cannot reach (like heaven, verse 6), or coming back from places we cannot come back from (like the grave, verse 7). All it requires is faith.  And let’s make sure we define it correctly.  This is faith that is about more than a feeling. This is faith based on something concrete and real. 

As an example of it, Paul describes faith that is grounded in God’s Word (verse 8).  That means it is ultimately accessible to all people—regardless of who they are or what they have done or any limitation—because anyone can pick up a Bible and read it.  Then, Paul additionally describes such faith going hand-in-hand with confession (verse 9).  The thing about confession is: there’s actually something real there to identify and, therefore, confess!…  But it’s not just sin.  Paul ultimately directs our attention to the message of Christ. This is about confessing what Jesus did for our sin. Jesus, who brought heaven down to us as the son of God. Jesus, who conquered death for us as a son of man.  And that’s why Paul concludes these verses (10-13) by making it clear that everyone who confesses Christ and calls upon him will be saved.

So… confession.  It’s true that there’s a “negative” side to confession.  Take the positive things we just heard. How can we be saved unless there is something we need to be saved from?  How can Jesus rescue us from death unless there’s something to kill us?  And today, even as we talk about the most basic topic of faith, we see such sin clearly.  1) We see it when people turn faith into an empty label, almost like a good luck charm.  As long as they can claim faith—as long as they’re on the membership roster at some church, somewhere—they may assume God is OK with things.  But they don’t really worry about what God says. They don’t worry about doing what he says is right, or believing truths he says are important in the Bible.  Do you realize that God condemns this viewpoint here?  It’s still about righteousness that comes by faith – you don’t just throw out what is right and embrace the opposite!  And faith still confesses the truth – it depends on real, quantifiable things!  But if faith becomes little more than a feeling?  It’s great when it feels great.  It’s not when it doesn’t.  And if that’s all your faith is—not based on anything real, right or true—it will fail you when you need it most… 2) By the way, that’s not the only pitfall.  Faith can become an empty label just as much in the opposite way, when people makes faith all about heroic deeds that ultimately reel salvation in.  Yes, they would agree that God saves them “by faith”.  But don’t you have to be good enough? God wouldn’t let some bad sinner into heaven, you have to clear some bar!  Except, where will it end?  No matter how high you climb, you still haven’t reached heaven, even if you clear every other human obstacle in the process.  And then you’ll still die, there’s still something inside of us that kills us and puts an end to the life God intended to last forever… Which of these two pitfalls do you struggle with?  Do you go back and forth between the two?… In our sermon text, God describes all needing to be saved from this sin.  So confess it!  We need to confess our sin!!  Not confessing it will not change the fact that this is a problem!!!

But don’t stop there.  Because although we do this every church services—although we make a big point of talking about sin in every Bible study and counseling session and in what we teach kids in our school—it’s never the last word.  It wasn’t in our sermon text.  That’s because the highlight of confession isn’t law but the gospel.  Now we can see what makes Jesus so good.  Jesus, who literally brought heaven down to us.  Jesus, who brought God’s presence to people in a way they could endure their Maker face-to-face.  Then he cleared the bar we could never clear.  Even confession: though he had no sin of his own to confess, Jesus always perfectly confessed his Father in heaven before others.  Then he went to the cross.  Jesus suffered for every time we have failed to confess our sin or failed to confess God’s truth before others when the situation called for it.  Then he went down to the depths.  And Jesus defeated the gravest consequence that sin would ever wreak on our lives: death itself.  It’s why Jesus could suddenly talk about the kingdom of God being near people when he was near them!  And it’s near to us too.  Jesus is the Word made flesh, and we find him in the Word as well, in this message of all that he does for us.

Finally, that’s what we confess.  Faith is not some passive thing where you are just taking in a performance.  It’s active and it claims something immense for oneself.  But we don’t swing too far in the opposite direction.  No strenuous heroics are required here, just standing on the already bold claims of Christ.  It’s why we end each confession of sin with an announcement of Christ as Savior from sin, because that’s what makes that confession complete.  It’s also why also why we confess our faith after the sermon, after hearing about the good things God has done for us.  Fittingly, we even stand for these confessions.  Think about that, the only other times we usually stand in the service are to honor Jesus himself: in the Gospel lesson which highlights his words and works, and in the Sacrament which gives us his very body and blood.  Confession isn’t about being left with sin.  Confession is about being left with Jesus who frees us from sin.  So confess that!  We need to confess our Savior from sin!!  Not confessing it will not fix the problem!!!

So now, let me ask you this: what does this actually look like?  I ask the question because the Apostle Paul isn’t describing Sunday morning worship in our sermon text.  Rather, he’s describing Christian living and righteousness as a whole.  Which means it’s not just about confession for one hour on a Sunday morning. Confession is for every hour of this life.  What does that look like?…  Take the example of Wisconsin sports teams.  They matter to me. I care about them, probably more than I should. So what goes hand-in-hand with that?  I talk about it!  I confess it!  (A few of you may have heard me talk about that 22-0 drubbing the Brewers gave the Marlins the other night!) That’s just it: if a sport or a hobby matters to you, you talk about it, you just can’t help it!  So also, if faith matters more to us than sports or hobbies, than our jobs or even our families—all things we quickly and gladly talk about!—talk about faith too.  Confess it…  What if we normalized that?  What if you’re struggling with a sin, so you went to your pastor and privately confessed it, all so that he could help you and personally assure you of forgiveness for that sin in Jesus?  Or, what if you know you’ve messed up with your family, so you didn’t just hide it or ignore it – you confessed that sin to your spouse or to your children, and then you made a renewed effort to live in the righteousness to which God has called you?  Or, what if you have a friend who’s caught up in a sin, or they’re struggling with some of the truly bad thing of this world, so you made a point to talk to them about how God addresses these topics in his Word?… If we don’t, it empties our faith and weakens it.  If we do, we’re so much better off. Haven’t we all experienced it?  Those times where the guilt is eating at you, yet you don’t want to confess your sin.  But then it gets out into the open always, and you are forced to confess it!  Except, that’s where somebody actually forgives that sin, and only then do we realize we’re finally move on. What better feeling in the world is there than that?  It’s exactly what God has designed our faith to do!  And it’s what he always offers us freely through the blood of his Son Jesus

Let me ask you again, does confession feel like a dirty word? I hope after hearing God’s Word today, we would all say, “No! We’re glad our church does this!”  Because confession is a hallmark of saving faith.  It’s faith’s fingerprint – faith’s indication that there is something real and consequential and transformative here.  To be sure, it can be hard.  But that doesn’t make it worth avoiding.  Not when confession goes hand-in-hand with salvation, with righteousness, with all the good God wants to give us.  That won’t come by holding on to our own sin.  It will only come by letting go of sin, letting Christ take hold of it, and then holding onto him.  That’s what confession is all about.  Sin is the lesser part of it.  And the moment we talk about sin, Jesus gets the last word.  It’s why confession is only good. Amen. 

“Christians Don’t Doubt What Happens Next”

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“Christians Don’t Doubt What Happens Next” (Romans 8:28-30)

Series: What Makes Christians Different?”

by Pastor Nate Walther

Eleventh Sunday of Pentecost, 08/09/2026

Do you like puzzles?  Some people do, some people don’t.  What’s interesting is that whether you do or you don’t, it may be for the exact same reason: puzzles are hard to figure out. Some people like that, some people don’t.

This relates to the Biblical topic at the root of our discussion today.  Predestination is a Bible teaching we were introduced to in our sermon text next week: that before time began, God chose people to be saved and go to heaven.  And many people think of predestination as a puzzle because it is a difficult teaching with a number of pieces that seem hard to piece together.  For example, some churches teach that only 144,000 are predestined to go to heaven because they take John’s vision in Revelation quite literally when he talks about 144,000 in heaven.  But are you one of the few who can reach this lofty standard?  There are well over double that amount of people in just the WELS alone, not to mention many other solid Christians!  (Don’t worry about that one too much.  We’ll see today in a clear section of God’s Word that this is about more than just meeting a quota, and God never meant Revelation to be interpreted so literalistically as a series of visions.)   Perhaps in reaction to that, other churches teach that predestination is more “open”, that God simply chooses those whom he saw would have faith in the future.  But why does the Bible so often make a big deal of what God chooses if it’s really just about what we choose?  That doesn’t make sense.  Perhaps that’s why still others say predestination is simply a matter of what God decides, it’s secret, and therefore it is a puzzle.   But with so much at stake, how can you be sure it includes you?  If you have committed a really bad sin, for example, is there any hope for you?

As we conclude our series today about WHAT MAKES CHRISTIANS DIFFERENT, God tells us something to address these concerns. CHRISTIANS DON’T DOUBT WHAT HAPPENS NEXT.  And if you appreciate a good puzzle, you’re going to love how these puzzle pieces come together.  But even if you don’t, you’re going to appreciate how God has already put this puzzle together so that you & I don’t have to.

Our sermon text has so much we could talk about.  It’s one of the most beloved sections of the Bible, and perhaps any number of these verses speak to you.  But let me just focus on the first few verses.  In verse 29, we’re told “those God foreknew, he also predestined…”  However, for as much as a puzzle as we can make predestination to be, it’s clear whom God is talking about.  The “those” mentioned in this verse?  We were already introduced to them in verse 28, it’s “those who love (God), who have been called according to his purpose.”  (In the language in which this was first written, the rules of grammar dictate that the people who love God in verse 28 are the same as those who are predestined in verse 29.  In the original text there’s essentially an equal-sign there!)  To put that in a tangible way, do you love the God who sent his Son Jesus for you?  If so, you are one of the elect, you are chosen.  If you think to yourself, “it can’t be that simple…” it is! That’s exactly how God talks about predestination here. 

Now it’s true this is still a “puzzle”, because there are several other pieces that must fit.  For example, in verse 29 we were also told “those God foreknew he also predestined.”  That’s where some people get the idea that God knew in advance people would be worthy or come to faith, so he chose them.  But that’s not how the first listener would have heard this. The word that’s used for “knowledge” here is not so much a word that denotes “head” knowledge but rather “heart” knowledge. i.e. This wasn’t just a matter of cold calculation of God’s part, this was God knowing us on a deeper, more meaningful level.  This is God knowing who we would be—knowing your hopes & dreams, your faults and failures also—and even with those ‘pieces of the puzzle’, still he predestined us, he chose us long ago in the past. 

Notice how that leads to subsequence ‘pieces of the puzzle’. Verse 30—now in the present as we think of it—the same “those he predestined, he also called.”  God did that when he called us to faith by the Holy Spirit as he worked through the means of grace, the Gospel in Word & Sacrament!  Then,the same “those he called, he also justified.”  God did that when he took away our sins and declared us ‘not guilty of sin’ through the work of His Son Jesus!  And finally, the same “those he justified, he also glorified.” The last of that sequence we may think exclusively in terms of the future, as the perfect glory awaits us with God in heaven. Certainly it is that, but it’s also something the Bible says we begin to experience already by faith.

            In conclusion, the so-called “predestination puzzle” we’re discussing today?  It spans across time. Some pieces we see clearly now, some we don’t.  But in the end every piece is connected to the next.  If we’re confident in any one of these pieces, we can be confident in all of them.  (Even such future-oriented glory is described with a past-tense verb!) And when we ask, “How can that be? How can we be so sure of it?” We’re simply told it’s because God pieces this all together, God controls every step—past, present, and future.  And finally for us, that means if we see Jesus now, we no longer have to doubt what happens next… If we have heard that calling of the Gospel, if we have heard in that good news the truth that God has justified us in Jesus, if we love God for that, if we have that one piece… then God says it’s connected to all the other pieces, then we can say just as surely that God chose us for glory and we’re going to heaven.  That’s not just my take on it as some pastor of some church with its own twist on this.  That’s precisely how God talks about it here in his Word!

            When you see how well this all fits together, it just illustrates the point.  I mean, here God basically tells us, “your eternity and your salvation are secure in my hands.”  That’s such a good thing!  Yet how quickly do we take matters into our own hands and think, “Am I really chosen if I have committed certain sins?  What must I do to be sure I will go to heaven?” As if we could ever do enough to supplement what God has perfectly decided in eternity, or what Christ has perfectly accomplished for us at the cross and empty tomb!… That attitude is sin.  We take beautiful things God has given to us and we ruin them.  Whether it’s something like good food or drink that we use to excess, or a meaningful friendship or relationship that we abuse, or we squander the good opportunities God provides to us through work or education – sin makes so many things in our lives less than they could be.  But then comes salvation, then comes eternity, and God says, “No. I love you too much to allow you to make it something less… I do this. I choose this.”  Predestination is the first piece of that puzzle.  It’s just not a piece we need to worry about.

            Which leads to the question, why even mention it at all if we aren’t responsible for this choice?  To be fair, the teaching doesn’t come up all that often in the Bible.  Furthermore, it’s interesting precisely where electiokn does come up.  Take our sermon text as an example.  The Apostle Paul is speaking to Christians in Rome know how they are saved, that much is clear from the rest of the book.  They had that one critical piece of the puzzle. Yet they were still struggling.  Their lives were hard and they lived in pain.  They were being attacked by others for their faith, and they faced the temptation to fall from faith.  And that’s precisely where Paul brings up predestination.  It’s intended to be medicine for such an ailment.

            Think of powerful medicine.  If you use it as prescribed, it can be such a tremendous blessing to help ease a medical condition.  But if you use it to treat something else, it will not help at all.  In fact, it very likely may hurt you in the end, and at worst it could even kill you!… Similarly, predestination was never meant to treat the concern, “how can I be sure that I’m saved?”  For that ailment, the Bible always points you to the cross.  If you want to know whether you’ll be in heaven, look to Jesus’ work.  Did he die for your sins?  Do you believe in him?  That’s the only answer you ever need…  But what if you have another concern, “how can I be sure my faith is strong enough?”  For that ailment (and really, only in that context) does the Bible ever brings up predestination.  If you are worried you’ll be able to hang on until the end—when your life is falling apart; when that person you love has abandoned you or been taken away from you; when you’re diagnosed with cancer or living with chronic pain; when you’ve messed up and you don’t feel worthy of anything good let alone heaven; finally, when you think you might just give up on faith—look to God’s strength.  He chose you.  It’s why you believe right now, and it’s why you’ll be glorified as well.  It didn’t happen because you were strong enough in your convictions.  It happened because God was.  Again, that’s predestination.  It’s God’s way of saying, “Even if you’re not strong enough, I won’t let go of you.”

            Dear friends in Christ, even if what you see now causes you to doubt, do not doubt what happens next.  Just keep looking at Jesus.  He’s the one thing you can always see, even in tough moments.  After all, when we look at Jesus we’re also looking at a cross.  Whenever we’re in pain, he always responds, “I know, I’ve been there too…” And that is finally coming from the same God who says in predestination, “Still, I chose you, and I won’t let go of you.”  It’s one more thing that makes Christians different.  It’s why, among all the other things we learn from God’s Word every week, our goal is still to see Jesus every week.  Because if we have that piece of the puzzle, we have it all.  Amen.

“God’s Blueprint to Bless Us” (Ephesians 1:3-10)

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Series: What Makes Christians Different?”

by Pastor Nate Walther

Tenth Sunday of Pentecost, 08/02/2026

How much life insurance should you have?  What should health insurance provide for your family?  How much should you have invested at a certain age?  What salary should you be making? Experts have varying opinions on these questions, insisting you should do this or not take a job if it fails to provide that.  And maybe you think about all these things often.  Or maybe you don’t.  But even if you don’t, is it only because God has blessed you with so much, and your mindset would quickly change if you suddenly lost your job, health, or savings? 

It all leads to another question today as we look to learn from God’s Word: do we trust God to provide?  We probably all struggle with that more than we would care to admit. But wherever we doubt him, God still has a BLUEPRINT TO BLESS us, and also to forgive that sin too.

Our sermon text from Ephesians 1 is so good…  If you wanted to go to just one place in the Bible to understand God’s “master plan” for life, salvation and really every blessing, it’s hard to beat this!  Again, 3 “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.” And what does that blueprint look like to bless us?  It boils down to two things:

1) Verse 4, “(God) chose us in Christ, before the foundation of the world, so that – which really indicates a “cause and effect” in language in which this was first written – so that we would be holy and blameless in his sight…”  This is why, if ever we begin to think, “You know what, maybe I have to do something to be saved. I mean, you have to be a good enough person to get to heaven, right?” God replies, “NO! ABSOLUTELY NOT!”; rather, verse 5, “In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons…”  We didn’t earn this.  We weren’t just born into it, with enough good in us to make it happen.  God loved us enough to make it happen.  Long before we ever came onto the scene or did anything, God says this was “his good will.”  That’s why in verse 6 he gets all “praise” and “glory”, ifwe make it about anything we must do, we are actually taking away from him and what he did for us. 

2) Which leads us to the 2nd part of the plan, how did God accomplish this? 7 “In him we also have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in keeping with the riches of his grace.”  That can only be talking about Jesus, who shed his blood for us.  Several times in the opening verses, God made this additionally clear when he said we’re “blessed”and “adopted” as “God’s sons”… “in Christ,” and “through our Lord Jesus Christ.”  Verse 8, this is what God “lavishes” on us.  Verse 9, he planned this good purpose “in Christ.”  And verse 10, it happened “when the time had fully come.” If those words sound familiar, it’s because the Bible uses them elsewhere to describe how Jesus came into the world at Christmas.

In summary, what is GOD’S BLUEPRINT TO BLESS US? Step one: he chooses us entirely by grace, not based on anything we do (right or wrong).  Step two: he sends Jesus to pay the price for sin, to earn what we could not…  It’s a great blueprint.  It’s the message we Christians cherish…  But did you notice one thing we didn’t hear?  There’s nothing here about God’s plans to bless us in this life. 

We didn’t cut it off either, the following verses don’t get into it.  And it’s not just that things were going so good for the Ephesians there was no reason to talk about it.  Very few Christians in the New Testament had much material blessing, and most struggled mightily.  Ephesus was no exception: in that city the book of Acts tells us people rioted against these Christians for their faith.  There’s nothing in the Bible to suggest they were living an easy life.  But instead of focusing on whatever problems they were facing at the time, God’s blueprint to bless them started and ended with something that superseded all earthly things.  God’s plans simply revolved around salvation, and everything else was meant to fall into place after that.

How quickly do we overlook that?  So many people in this world worry so much about what they must provide for themselves.  They even want to attribute some aspect of salvation to themselves: “Don’t I need to choose the right Savior? Don’t I need to be a good enough person for God to let me into heaven?”  And that’s where we may smugly think as Lutherans, “That’s not us, we’ve got this figured out!”  But what about all the other things we worry about providing for ourselves?… Do we really we trust God to provide?  Or do we ultimately look to insurance, to money, to ourselves to provide (and if it doesn’t work there, we don’t imagine things can work out)?… It’s a common theme in all hearts with sin.  Whenever we fall into that mindset, God says to us just as surely, “there’s no room for you to fit into this, my plans don’t depend on you to make them happen!”  Yet, when we live as though they do, how much might we actually be getting in the way of what God wants to accomplish for us?

That’s why it’s remarkable for as often as we fail to trust God will bless us – and for as often as we get in the way of God’s plans! – still, God provides.  In fact, God’s blueprint fully takes it into account!  Because he knew we would only mess things up.  I’m not trying to be a downer by saying that, it’s just that we’re ultimately talking about getting to heaven.   You know, the place we want to be perfect in every way: no trouble, no sickness, no sin at all, everything always provided. Can you really achieve something like that through the work of your hands?  I know I can’t!… So God carefully calculated and executed a plan that would work for us.  Way back in eternity before we ever lived or did anything or made any decision, God existed.  And God loved you.  So God chose you and he promised his Son in just the right way: to live the perfect life that we could never live ourselves, and to pay the price for sin on the cross we would never want to pay for sins we have committed.  Not only this, but God then sent his Son into the world at just the right time & place so that this message would perfectly spread before arriving at the doorstep of your heart & mine 20 centuries later… With that, should we ever doubt God or think we can provide better when he gives the most outstanding of blessings in the eternity to come, carefully planned over the course of eternity past?

It goes to show, there’s a better way to live life.  Let’s be clear about a couple things first. Today we are not saying that investment, insurance, healthcare, or good-paying jobs (or anything like that!) are bad.  But there’s a difference between being blessed by these things, and making these things themselves the blueprint for blessings. Along those lines, neither are we today saying that our needs on earth don’t matter.  In our other two readings earlier (John 6:1-15, 1 Kings 17:1-6), we heard that God will provide for our basic needs. After all, Jesus specifically tells us to pray for that in the fourth petition of the Lord’s Prayer, which we’ll pray later in the service!…  And yet, with that being said, that’s the only one of seven petitions of the Lord’s Prayer asking for material blessing, which kind of leads to the main point today…

Christians, you’re going to want good life, health, auto, or home insurance – that’s just good stewardship in a world like ours! – but realize you don’t have to max out every insurance for everything that could go wrong.  Otherwise, when will it stop?  No, you can trust God to provide!  Additionally, you’re going to want to work hard to provide for your family, earn enough money, save for retirement, and have an emergency fund – that just makes sense given bad things that do happen, plus the money God has given to us! – but you don’t need to have a plan for every last contingency the financial gurus say you need to have figured out.  Again, when will it stop?  You can trust God to provide!  Or how about this one: you’re going to want to raise your kids right, get them baptized, teach them God’s Word as they grow up, and continue to have a good relationship with them – God commands you to do these things! – but in the end you can’t believe for your kids or make every decision for them along the way.  No, you do what you can, and then you trust God to provide! 

If you live your life in this way, not only may it relieve some stress and anxiety, but think of how it will free up some of your time, your talents, or your treasure for other things God also says he wants you to do.  For example, in the Old Testament, God only told his people to give 10% of their wealth to offering, and he doesn’t even command a specific amount today!…  So what if instead of stressing over all the insurance we need, and what we should be investing, and how little money we earn, or how much we should have in our emergency funds – and you’ll still never feel like it’s enough! – what if we just made sure to give a small but generous portion of that back to the Lord, as I way of saying, “I trust you to get me through everything else that could happen… this is me investing in the best insurance policy there is!  Might God bless that? Provide more for us than we could ever provide for ourselves through that money? Help us find a little bit of peace along the way?…  Similarly, what if we gave up some portion of time we could be using to work overtime or on yet another DIY project, and instead used our talents to serve others, be more involved in our families, or get more involved in our church? (You read the same bulletin I do, there are needs that aren’t being met here!) Might God bless us and cause us to be even happier for it?

God. Will. Provide.  Believe it.  Better yet, live it.  Again, GOD HAS A BLUEPRINT TO BLESS US…  It just starts and ends with Christ. Start and end with Christ.  Then you will see that he has already taken care of the biggest and most eternal problems.  He’s going to take care of the little stuff that you and I face this day as well.  That’s the peace we’re missing.  Amen.

Let it flow!

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Look, how good and how pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity!  It is like the precious oil poured on the head, running down on the beard, the beard of Aaron, running down on the collar of his robes.  Psalm 133:1-2

Let it flow!

It was the perfect treat for a hot summer day.  I had a scoop of Culver’s Flavor of the Day, the Andes Mint Avalanche.  My wife had a scoop of their Lemon Ice with added raspberries.  We highly recommend them.  But because it was a hot summer day, as your family has undoubtedly learned, one needs to eat their frozen treats before they melt.  Otherwise ice cream has a way of flowing down over the hand and dripping down onto whatever clothes (or newsletter article) one happens to be wearing or working on at the moment.  It is a good problem to have.

In the same way, our psalm writer paints a messy sounding picture when describing the blessings found in Christian unity.  He speaks about the anointing of the High Priest, Aaron, and of how that precious oil flows off his head and down his beard and onto his robes in abundance.  And it’s a unity that the author, King David, did not always have the luxury of experiencing during his lifetime.  From his interactions with King Saul to his rebellious son Absalom, David did not always experience unity within the kingdom or within his own family.  Here in Psalm 133, he pauses to reflect on the pleasantness that comes from God and rejoices in the true peace he can bring to believers.  These moments were made extra special as the people gathered together in fellowship for worship in God’s house.

Such unity must begin with our God.  As Jesus is the head of the church, heavenly blessings originate through him and are thanks to him and to his saving work.  The devil despises our closeness to God and does all he can to disrupt Christ-centered fellowship.  And on our own, our sins would disqualify us from any unification with a holy and righteous God.  But thanks to Jesus’ payment for the cross, we have forgiveness.  Thanks to the Father’s plan we have a place with him now and eternally in his family of believers.  And thanks to the Holy Spirit’s work he helps us grow in our faith and better understand our lives within God’s kingdom.  

Such unity is ours thanks to a shared faith in Jesus.  We may not as a church have the same shared political beliefs, degrees of gifts, or opportunities for service.  But we do have the same faith based upon Christ.  And with him as our collective head, we the members of his body receive great blessings from our God in heaven as his love, help, and encouragement freely flow down to us from heaven.

What does such unity in Christ look like with his church?  As believers we find fellowship together in worship, we want to preserve God’s truth, and we look to apply his words in love so that more souls are saved.  While the church will not be perfect on this side of heaven, it means that as we have opportunities we will embrace grace over grumbling, forgiveness over frustration, and Christ over conflict.  It means that we celebrate the shared gifts and abilities in serving Jesus together.  Think of it!  You share in the work of the pastor who visits the precious persons in prison or who are hospital-bed-bound with God’s words of peace.  You share in the long hours of love and care that go into the service of parents and teachers as we value the gift of Christian education.  You share in the unique abilities and special opportunities of the many members who are active in serving Jesus.  Our service situations might be different, but in Jesus our faith is united, our abilities shared, and our mission is the same!     

So this summer, go ahead and enjoy that tasty treat or extra scoop of custard.  Let it flow!  And as you scramble to keep up with the melting goodness, think about the picture we are given in this psalm – and rejoice!  Thanks be to God who has unified us in the love of Jesus, given us the fellowship of faith, and causes his blessings in Christ Jesus to flow freely upon us.