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“The Only Requirement is Thirst”

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“The Only Requirement is Thirst” (John 7:37-39)

Series: What Difference Does It Make?

by Pastor Nate Walther

The Festival of Pentecost, 05/24/2026

            Happy Pentecost!  Today we celebrate the birthday of the Christian Church.  It’s a day that gets us thinking about the church growing with all those amazing events in our reading from Acts.  It’s a day that especially gets us thinking about the work of the Holy Spirit…  How does all of this compare to us and to our lives?  How does it compare to Eastside and whether our church growing like it should be?  Finally, how can we be sure we have the Holy Spirit, and that our faith is in the right place? 

            In answer to those questions, some churches pour everything into programs that promise to transform your life, or into numerical growth, or into miraculous signs like healings or tongue-speaking.  It’s a tangible way to say, “My faith is solid! We’re doing something right as a congregation! We’ve got the Holy Spirit!”  It’s why some of these churches even emphasize that they are “Holy Spirit”-driven, or “Pentecostal” churches.  But what’s really important for our faith?  What are the true requirements for faith? 

            Today in his Word, God shows us that faith isn’t really about what we see physically in our lives or in our church.  Nor is it even about some obvious, outward way we can see the Holy Spirit at work.  We certainly adore and worship the Holy spirit as a member of our Triune God—it’s why we have a special day like today to focus on him!—but at the same time, we don’t focus on him like some churches do, often to the exclusion of other members of the Trinity.  In fact, today we hear something curious from Jesus himself: the only requirement for our faith is thirst.

            That’s what Jesus effectively says in our sermon text from John chapter 7.  Like he often did in Parables, here Jesus uses physical images to describe spiritual realities.  Particularly, Jesus uses “thirst” as picture of spiritual need.  And did you notice how Jesus encourages us to resolve our thirst?  It’s not a matter reforming your behavior or doing things a certain way, nor is it a matter of how your life looks.  Instead, it’s simply a matter of drinking deeply from Jesus, and that’s where Jesus also says you can find the Holy Spirit is at work.  Granted, by this point Jesus hadn’t yet sent the Spirit to the Disciples—that’s because he was still with them at this time, and they didn’t yet require additional help from the Holy Spirit—but Jesus was prophetically looking ahead to that time after his Ascension when the Holy Spirit would come upon the church at Pentecost.

            As for us, we tend to think of thirst as a bad thing, because thirst is a lack of what you need.  It’s why we naturally long to resolve the thirst of our souls.  But how do we do that?  Some people look for “signs of the Spirit” – something big or powerful to assure them they’ve done so.  Others try to work harder to be better people and overcome their problems – all in an effort fill them up! But does that fill us with the right thing?  For example, when you’re thirsty there’s nothing quite like water to quench your thirst. Sure, you can get out of the heat and stop sweating, but you’ll still be thirsty.  Or you can have a drink of iced coffee or a cold beer as a substitute to quench your thirst, but you’ll only end up dehydrating yourself further in the end. Or you can try to work even harder to overcome your thirst and push through it, but you’ll just get thirstier… OR you can drink water and actually quench your thirst.

Don’t miss the simple lesson in that picture. Jesus offers the only thing that overcomes the thirst of sin.  Jesus once said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.”  We can be so quick to move past thirst that we don’t realize there’s blessing in it.   That’s what we mean today when we say the only requirement is thirst. Spiritual thirst leads us to the one thing that will satisfy our spiritual needs: Jesus, the “water of life.” Because you can have the biggest, best church yet still have problems.  Or you can avoid all sorts of sins yet still struggle under the burden of sin.  Or you can enjoy all sorts of gifts & blessings yet still face depression because it’s never enough…  That’s because you’re still dehydrated.  You still need forgiveness as only Jesus provides it from the cross, meaning that is uniquely found in the resurrection of the dead that will be ours someday as well, and a sense of contentment like no other that is found in Word & Sacrament in a restored relationship with the Lord Almighty of the Heavens. 

            That’s what Pentecost is all about. And that’s what the Holy Spirit is all about.  He’s all about leading people to Jesus as the water of life.  Or, to put it another way, think of the Holy Spirit like the operator behind the spotlight in a big Broadway production.  If he’s doing his job, he doesn’t want anyone looking at him–in fact, he doesn’t want anyone thinking about him at all!–he only wants people looking where he directs their attention. Similarly, the Holy Spirit intends to make a difference in our lives, just maybe not the one we think.  Sure, on Pentecost that resulted in tongues of fire and miraculously speaking in languages.  But if we read farther in Acts 2 we realize it was all about putting Jesus in front of others.  Peter used all these miraculous signs to call the Pentecost crowd’s attention to Jesus.  And today, the Spirit makes that same difference through whatever means ot may be–miraculous or mundane–all to connect more people to Jesus.

            Thirstis the only requirement.  You lack nothing if you have a thirst that drives you to Jesus as the water of life. As Jesus said in our sermon text, that’s where the Spirit is at work.  The Spirit is not found in those obvious things that fill our lives (that’s just the spirit of this world).  He’s found absence of something so important in our souls that we’re driven to the only one who can fill it (that’s truly a Spirit that comes from God).  Yes, he may be accompanied by other things too—the disciples were able to speak in tongues and perform miracles–but in the end it’s all about more people finding good news in Jesus.  Then, like Jesus said in our sermon text, we become springs of water: where these things in our lives point other people to Jesus as the water of life.  On the other hand, when the focus turns to those gifts and those signs and the measurables themselves, it’s no longer about Jesus and we’ve completely lost his Spirit.

            As we return to our sermon text once more, I want you especially to consider the background of these words.  Jesus is celebrating the Festival of Tabernacles for the last time during his life on earth.  It was a holiday that recalled how the Israelites wandered in the desert for 40 years after the Exodus, relying on God to care for them while they dwelled in tents.  Additionally, by Jesus’ time the priests celebrated each day of the festival by going down to the pool of Siloam in Jerusalem and drawing water, which they would then return to the temple and ceremonially pour out.  It became a powerful image of God providing for his people as they were about to enter the rainy season and prayed that God would bless the crops they had just sown…  Now, can you imagine Jesus watching all of that, then crying out—as our sermon text describes him doing on the final day of the festival—saying something like, “Don’t you see?  This is all a picture of me and what I can do for you!  I am the water of life!”  So also, Jesus cries out to us in his Word and says, “Don’t you see?  As you sojourn on this earth, as you thirst for something more, as you pray that the Lord to bless your labors as a congregation… it’s all about me and what I can do for you!  I am the water of life!”    Never forget that.  Your lives, the work of this congregation, everything about our faith… it’s about Christ filling us up.  If we have that, we’re doing everything right.  If we have that, we have the Holy Spirit in full measure.  Amen.

The Gateway to God

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Easter 4

John 10:1-10

Pastor Horton

The next time you are in Berlin, Germany, take a trip to the Pergamon Museum and marvel at the Ishtar Gate.  What is the Ishtar Gate?  It was one of eight gates that surrounded the ancient city of Babylon.  Even though it’s only the lower half of the gate, it stands about 50 feet high, and is made out of this glazed blue brick with gold trim, designed to make the gate and the giant walled entrance appear like shimmering jewels.  Lions, bulls, and dragons ordain its walls.  And the Ishtar gate protected a powerful city with its palace, temples, fortress, and famous Hanging Gardens (one of the 7 wonders of the world).  Can you picture this imposing gate in your head?  It would have been built during Israel’s 70 years in Babylon, and God’s people would have lived and worked in captivity under its shadow.  

Gates were critical points of access.  In Bible times they served as focal areas of trade and commerce.  Even kings would rule and administer justice at city gates.  And yet this morning we are introduced to a living gate, in the form of a shepherd.  Just as gates protected life, this shepherd protected his sheep.  And it was far from glorious work.  Here’s how a shepherd was described by a visitor to the Holy Land some 100 years ago.  “In such a landscape as Judea, where a day’s pasture is thinly scattered over an unfenced tract of country, covered with [misleading] paths, frequented by wild beasts, and rolling off into the desert, the shepherd and his character are indispensable. On some high moor, across which at night the hyenas howl, when you meet him, sleepless, far-sighted, weather-beaten, armed, leaning on his staff, and looking out over his scattered sheep, every one of them on his heart, you understand why… Christ took him as the type of self-sacrifice.”

So much for the warm and fuzzy Good Shepherd painting so many of us gazed upon in the Sunday School rooms of our youth.  This dedicated and determined shepherd is, in some ways, a more accurate description of Jesus and his work.  It is certainly true as we find Jesus in action in John chapter 9, right before our reading begins. 

John chapter 9 tells us about Jesus healing a man who was born blind – an incredible miracle.  And, this miracle was super frustrating to Jesus’ enemies, the Pharisees.  They had wanted to slander our Lord as some fraudulent madman….“but then how”, they wondered, “could he do miracles like that?”  So the Pharisees, this pack of wolves, hounded, not Jesus, but the newly-healed blind man.  They kicked him out of the Jewish synagogue for being made well.  And like a Good Shepherd, Jesus searched for and found this man.  Jesus announces that he is the promised Messiah.  And the former blind man bows and worships his Lord.  And then, at this tender moment, the Pharisees start chirping again in criticism of Jesus.  Jesus begins our reading with a double “Amen Amen,” calling attention to the sure and eternal truth he is about to say. 

Our verses: “I tell you the truth, the man who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber.  The man who enters by the gate is the shepherd of his sheep.. and the sheep listen to his voice.  He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out…and his sheep follow him because they know his voice.  But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.”  We are told that Jesus had some confused stares and that he clarified, hearkening back to God’s name for himself given to Moses at the burning bush.  The great “I am” is speaking.  Again and again in the gospel of John, Jesus calls attention to his connection with his heavenly Father and his role in our salvation (“I am the Light of the World, I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, I am the Resurrection and the Life, I am the Good Shepherd”).  And now?  ‘I tell you the truth, I am the gate for the sheep.”  

How could Jesus call himself both Shepherd and Gate?  Go back to the picture of the giant Ishatar gate preserving life behind its door.  That is more accurate when it comes to the world of sheep.  Shepherds with their flocks in Bible times would be a literal gate.  In the evening they would funnel their flock inside a cave, or through a crack in a wallface and then they themselves would lay out as the physical gate.  They would often turn themselves into a living wall as the only point of entry or exit.  And little sheep prone to wondering and wandering would bump into their shepherd at the door before getting themselves lost.  Any wolf or lion prowling around would have to cross the protecting shepherd before doing damage to the flock.  

Jesus emphasizes his eternal purpose in verse 9, “I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved,”  What a difference from the characters in verse 1: “The man who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber.”  Jesus is being very clear, not only before the enemies of souls then in the Pharisees, but calling out all false teachers of all time.  Jesus is announcing that he alone is the only way to God.  There is no salvation apart from faith in him.  Any teaching apart from this leads only to spiritual and eternal damage.  

And frankly our world disagrees with him.  “Well!”  The world objects, and you can almost hear the outpouring of disdain!  “But Jesus, aren’t there all these other worlds religions?  Who do you think you are!”  You can almost hear the current cascading objections from the world out there.  The devil also certainly lures us away from Jesus with his sweet sounding siren songs – temptations to follow our own desires instead of God’s will.  And our Old Adam, our sinful flesh, is intrigued by the false teaching of “my wants first”.  All others who lure do so at the expense of truth.  They come to do what they want, not what God wants.  You and I might even find them appealing in the way they dress or talk or sell, but they come to steal, to slaughter, to destroy.  Their teachings might even really appeal to my reasoning, but the devil’s lies hide in their words.

Jesus is unfazed and resolute.  He does not waver.  He does not flinch.  With tremendous care for the truth, and with boundless love to protect and save life, his answer remains the same “I am the Gateway of God.  If you want to live – you live eternally through me.  There is no other way.  I am here for you.”  

And what message from our Savior!  Jesus’s words stand out.  We long to hear him speak.  We wandering sheep are often like a lost child in a big crowd, and how good it is to hear that parent’s voice call us by name, “I’m right here.  Let’s go this way together.”  We long for the relief that comes from Jesus’ words.  And knowing what he says, we hear and recognize in false shepherds that which is not true.  

And how much more when it comes to our families as well?  God is compassionate in keeping his sheep and his little lambs close to their Savior.  It is a wild and wicked world out there.  Many messages fill the ears of our children and grandchildren with a devilish design to take them away from Christ.  How can we best help them in their walk of faith?  What messages are they hearing?  What is their world being filled with?  There is no way to keep all evil away from them…and so our job (the most important job we can do for the next generation of Jesus’ church) is to teach our family to hear, and to recognize Jesus’s voice.  We want them to know him by faith, and to long for his Word and to be in his Word, because there they will have what is true.  We want them to cherish Jesus as their own shepherd who loves them so much he even laid down his life for them.

Because we now get to have a special relationship with Jesus forever (so keep the warm picture of the Good Shepherd hanging up)!  By nature we should have been left outside in the cold.  Your sin and mine placed us there for eternity.  Instead, in great mercy, Jesus has gone to the cross to pay for each sin, including our wayward wants and the many times we turned to other sinful fleeting fancies.  He took his life back up as promised and has secured for you, God’s elect, a place inside the gates of heaven.  You get to be part of his flock forever.  He is the gateway to God.  And heaven is open to you through him.

He says that was his very purpose, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”  That is also a reality for you and me today.  In full and free ways our Good Shepherd comes to us and forgives hurting souls inflicted with guilt.  We are equipped in full and free ways with the saving message of the gospel – and are given a full and free life to live without fear, made “Dead to sins and alive to righteousness” in Jesus.  We are given a full and freeing faith through the Sacraments.  And we have a Shepherd who cares for us individually – fully and freely meeting our needs now and eternally.  Now with one foot in paradise we live as sheep of the Good Shepherd.  In Christ we have freedom, and we have purpose, and we have direction – looking forward to the eternal pastures of heavenly life.  Just as God promised and delivered his people from the Babylonian Ishtar Gate, God promised and will deliver us through Jesus, the Gateway of God.  Heaven is open through Christ.  New and eternal life is ours today.  Let’s go tell a future sheep of Jesus’ pasture about the great things our God has done in Jesus.  Amen.

“Doubt Your Doubts” (John 20:19-31)

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“Doubt Your Doubts” (John 20:19-31)

Series: What Difference Does It Make?

by Pastor Nate Walther

Second Sunday of Easter, 04/12/2026

            I don’t know if you pay attention to religious trends.  I do, it kind of comes with the territory as a pastor, and one I’ve heard lately is to essentially treat doubt as a good thing.  The idea is simply this: it’s not good to accept faith blindly, but to really think about what you believe.  As such, doubt has become a way to hedge against arrogance that assumes, “I have all the answers”, and embrace positive virtues like humility and repentance.  In that sense that doubt has also become a virtue for many people.

So how about it?  Is that a mindset we should adopt that will MAKE A DIFFERENCE in our lives?  Before we hear God’s Word on this topic today, take a minute to think about the doubts you’re facing currently.  Maybe you’re unsure where a relationship is at right now.  Perhaps it has something to do with your health.  How about job security, do you have it?  What’s your housing situation going to be like next year?  Forget next year, do you know how you’re going to pay that bill next month?  Will interest rates reverse so you can finally refinance or actually purchase a home?  Will the stock market recover from its recent slump so you can meet your financial goals?  What’s going to happen with the war in Iran – is it truly winding down, or will it worsen leading to pain at the fuel pump or perhaps even worse pain than we can imagine right now?   Is that problem with your vehicle going to turn into a big deal?  What about that sound your water heater is making?

Yeah… doubt is something we struggle with everywhere else in our life.  We feel so much better if we can get these issues resolved!  We naturally long for answers and certainty, it’s just how we’re wired as human beings. (It’s why we appreciate the sciences, it’s even why the athlete who has everything still wants the security of that next contract!)  And today in his Word, God confirms the same is true for our faith.  He wants better for us, so he simply tells us to DOUBT OUR DOUBTS.  What better place to see it than in the biblical account of “Doubting Thomas”?

 First of all, let’s be clear: when Jesus told Thomas to “Do not continue to doubt, but believe”, that’s Jesus calling doubt a bad thing.  In fact, when Jesus says “stop doubting”, he literally says in his first language, “do not be unbelieving”, which also literally makes doubt the opposite of faith.  Doubt is not some virtue for our faith.  Doubt gets in the way of saving faith.  That said, notice how Jesus approaches Thomas.  There’s a gentleness here.  There’s also a distinct invitation preceding it. “Put your finger here and look at my hands. Take your hand and put it into my side…” In that context Jesus lovingly says, “Don’t be unbelieving, but believe – i.e. Now that you’ve seen the evidence, Thomas, there is no room for doubt!” 

And how does Thomas respond to Jesus?  Well, he promotes doubt as a positive thing and says, “There’s no way!  It can’t be true you’re alive after you died, Jesus!  You must be an imposter!…”  No, that’s not some hidden meaning in the original language.  Instead, it’s simply the short, striking reply of faith that we see in our text: “MY LORD AND MY GOD!…” Have you ever noticed that nicknames often come from single incidents, and they don’t always describe a person well?  That’s “Doubting Thomas”.  Despite his doubts Thomas answered them with faith.  He does so here.  He also does so to a degree back in John 11. When Jesus there spoke about his impending death, we are told, “Thomas said to the rest of the disciples, ‘Let us also go to Jerusalem that we may die with him,’” Now I’m sure Thomas did not completely understand all that was about to happen to Jesus. (None of the disciples did!)  But it was a better response than Peter who chastised Jesus at the time for talk of dying.  Still, because of the event we’re hearing today, Thomas gets the nickname.

But anybody would have doubted like Thomas.  It’s no virtue, just an acknowledgement of our sinful shortcomings.  It’s why Jesus doesn’t just obliterate Thomas for his doubts.  But he does direct him to DOUBT HIS DOUBTS when confronted by God’s truth, which is exactly what Thomas did in the end…  As he did so, Jesus seems to prove that faith isn’t as blind as it may appear to be.  After all, he satisfied Thomas’s doubts by actually appearing to him!  But what about our doubts?  We haven’t seen Jesus appear to us, so are we just supposed to trust him blindly?

Or could it be that God satisfies our doubts more than we realize?  Just consider the great event we are celebrating this time of the year.  Do you realize there is absolutely no event in ancient history as well documented as the events of the first Easter?  That’s not just a point of dogma, it’s a cold hard fact!  As we think about the confession of faith we will again use today from 1 Corinthians 15, there are literally hundreds of witnesses who saw the risen Christ, many of whom comprised of the Bible writers who wrote about it: Matthew, John, Peter, and James saw Jesus alive with their own eyes – likely Mark & Jude as well.  Meanwhile, Luke carefully investigated many others who had seen Jesus alive.  Years later Jesus also appeared to Paul alive to complete the rest of the New Testament.  And we have copies of all their writings dating back to within a couple hundred years of Christ.  In some cases like John, we have examples of his writing just a couple of generations after he lived!  By that metric, if you’re going to doubt anything the Bible says about the resurrection, you’d really have to doubt everything we know from all of ancient history.  Seriously, throw out Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great – any copies we have of eyewitness accounts from their lives are from many more centuries (if not a millenium) later.  But who’s really willing to doubt all of human history? 

At the same time, how do we know Jesus’ earliest followers didn’t just steal his body and say he had risen, like the Jewish leaders claimed they did?  Because that introduces an entirely new level of doubt!  Why in the world would they do that?  Why perpetuate a lie which they had refused to believe possible after Jesus death, as the disciples & Thomas’s initial skepticism demonstrate?  Then, why would they risk their lives for a belief so contrary to human experience and expectation?  If they had not actually seen Jesus rise, why would they be willing to be killed for it – as most of them were? For example, we think Thomas was martyred in India!  There’s no reason for any of it unless these events actually happened.  From the pure perspective of history, which considers primary source material and an author’s purpose in evaluating the writing – without any bias against religion and allowing for the fact that if you actually believe there is a God, it’s not hard to believe he could do a miracle – the resurrection is the gold standard of historic credibility!  Jesus will satisfy our intellectual doubts, if only we let him.

More than that, Jesus satisfies our spiritual doubts.  Think of what Jesus told Thomas & the Disciples, “Peace be with you.” We primarily think of this word as peace among people, such as peace from war, but when the Hebrews heard the word peace, they primarily thought of peace with God.  And that’s what Jesus offers us, the kind of peace that we need to be true.  It explains everything about how we live and think.  Why else would anybody want to do any good for others if they get nothing out of it, or feel guilt when they have committed a sin?  Why else would mankind care about legacy and producing things that last after they’re gone?  If you just die and that’s it, none of this would matter!  But deep down in our souls we know we’re accountable to God and that more comes after death…  Yet the best any other religion offers is a blind faith, a wishful thinking that you’ve done enough good for what comes next. Which is precisely where Jesus takes the blindness out of that faith.  He clearly shows himself as a perfect substitute for us and a perfect sacrifice for our sin.  Far from hiding salvation, he simply offers himself on the cross – as proof that something real was done about our sin – then he offers us his empty grave – as proof that something real was done about death.  As we think about our sin, and the guilt we carry, and the evil in this world, and those we couldn’t bear losing (or those we have had to bear losing), where else are we ever going to find an answer like the resurrection of Jesus Christ?

Dear friends in Christ, DOUBT YOUR DOUBTS.  They’re not as solid as you think they are.  That’s true for every concern of body & soul. Whatever you face, look to see how Jesus has helped you in the past. Look at the cross and tomb. Look at your life personally, see how God has worked out things over the last year, or over the last decade for your good.  Then trust God will do the same in the future.  Trust those same words Jesus said about us in our sermon text, “Blessed are those who have not see yet believe.”  Whenever you have doubts about health or wealth, doubts that are relational or vocational in nature, doubts about your own value & self-worth, even doubts about mortality and eternity – trust that Christ will bless you, go to him in prayer, and take the hand he offers when life has you knocked to the ground – hands pierced by nails for you! 

Yes, we will still doubt at times,  It is a sign of sin in this world and of our own sin, yet it’s no unforgiveable sin.  But the key thought, how should us doubting Christians address such doubts?  Take page out of Thomas’s book.  Put your fingers in the side of his flesh.  You & I find that in Word & Sacrament, in the message of which he is the flesh incarnate, and in his own body & blood given for us in Lords Supper.  Then DOUBT YOUR DOUBTS.  Doubt is not the goal!  It’s not with anything else in our lives, so don’t allow Satan to get you to accept it as some virtue here, that it’s somehow OK not to have the answers with faith.  No, Jesus and his certain answers to us are the goal.  He lives to MAKE A DIFFERENCE for our doubts…  And don’t let anyone tell you it’s arrogant to know what God knows and listen to what God says.   At the same time, do be humble & repentant as you see how Jesus works patiently on you despite your doubts, just like he did with “Doubting Thomas.”  Amen.

“Salvation in the Flesh” (John 1:1-14)

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Series: Christ The Savior is Born

Pastor Nate Walther

Christmas Day, 2025

Have you ever met someone famous?  Maybe it was a president, or an all-pro athlete, or a famous singer.  But when you told someone else about it, perhaps you were immediately met with skepticism: “No you didn’t!”  That’s where you may have responded with something like, “I’m not kidding!…  I saw him with my own eyes. I saw her IN THE FLESH.”  Those final words are an appeal to the senses: this was so real that I could actually see, hear, and touch this person as I shook their hand.

It’s those same words that illustrate for us the blessing of Christmas.  Sometimes the things that religion offers can seem to be “pie in the sky”, too good to be true.  I mean, how can the divine and miraculous and transcendent actually cross paths with me?  Sure, God says he’s there for me, but how does that help me with the unexpected bill in my hand that needs to be paid, or the cancer in your body that is literally destroying it, or the sinful temptation in our hearts that keeps rearing its ugly head just when we think we’ve got it under control?  How can I be sure that I really will go to heaven, or that there really are good things waiting for me after I die, or that I really will see my loved ones again?

God’s simple, yet brilliant answer at Christmas is this: SALVATION IN THE FLESH.  i.e. Christmas is all about what’s standing right before us in skin & bone.  Through his birth into human flesh, Jesus offers the one place in all of time & space where the divine actually crossed paths with our human flesh, as unbelievable as it may seem. 

That’s exactly what God talks about in our sermon text today. Listen again to what we heard in verse 14 “The Word became flesh and dwelled among us. We have seen his glory, the glory he has as the only-begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth…”  It’s a special title the Bible uses for Jesus.  What we heard at the beginning of our reading is also repeated here: Jesus is the Word.  Somehow, miraculously, Jesus is the same Word we pick up and read as we gather around it at home and in church.  Somehow, Jesus is also the same Word through which God once spoke and all things were created, as we were told back in verse 3. But he’s not just Word: metaphysical & abstract. No, “The Word BECAME FLESH and dwelled among us.” That’s really interesting. The Bible doesn’t just tell us that Jesus became a human being or a man – there were other words they would use back then for that.  No, the Bible takes it a step farther and says Jesus became flesh.  It’s a gritty, dirty kind of word.  The Bible even uses this word flesh elsewhere to describe our sinful flesh!  Of course, as the Son of God, Jesus didn’t have sinful flesh himself.  But this inspired word choice does remind us that Jesus got his hands dirty – he entered into our universe and our lives (tainted by sin) in a very real way – as real as the flesh on our hands that we can hold right before us…

Do you realize how much that changes everything?  Now we can look at all the other things God promises that may seem abstract – divine power to help us, which created everything we see with just a word; warm light, which can drive out the darkness of the sin in our hearts and evil in our lives; new life, which gives us hope even when we’re staring into the hopelessness of a grave – and we can finally believe that these impossible things really are true.  How?  It’s SALVATION IN THE FLESH.  It’s as real as a child lying in flesh in a manger, whom those shepherds first laid their very eyes on.  It’s as real as that child beginning to grow up found in the temple, whose understanding of God’s Word blew away the sharpest minds of his day.  It’s as real as that child now a man, who offered a glimmer of light through his love & his teachings to those lost in darkness with nowhere else to turn.  It’s as real as that same man raising the dead to life, who gave back to a grieving father his daughter & sisters their brother & masters their servants…

Dear friends in Christ, your help and your hope in this world doesn’t rest on dead prophets who once said some thought-provoking things, but whose words now ring hollow and distant when you’re hurting and suffering.  Your help and your hope rest on a living Savior whose birth is as real as any other event in history. That also includes the end of this child’s story: he died on a cross, for your sin and for mine; he rose from a grave, to deliver us from death undo the very worst thing this flesh does to us!

Again, it’s the value of something actually being in the flesh.  Granted, maybe you and I haven’t seen Jesus in the flesh personally.  But the fact is that he was seen in the flesh by others.  Countless thousands saw him, many of whom wrote about him, including the Apostle John who penned the words of our sermon text.  That makes it no less real to us.  Finally, if Jesus was going to enter our time and space, this is just the reality of it.  He could only come at one time, like all real things that have happened, and he could only come in one body, like all real people who have lived.  That means that not all the world would see it. But that doesn’t mean all the world couldn’t benefit from what he did. Just like the Caesars or the Popes, Johannes Gutenberg or Isaac Newton, George Washington or Abraham Lincoln had a lasting impact on things after them, though we have not seen them… so also Jesus, only in a far better and far more lasting way, and for all people.  In particular, this child was born to bring salvation to all who believe in him. Today, on this festival celebration, find a simple joy in the fact that you have all of God’s power, you have light in darkness, you have new life – as unbelievable and impossible as these things may seem!  Where is it all found? IN THE FLESH.  In Christ.  Your SALVATION is as real as a warm baby lying in his mother’s arms.  Amen. 

It is Hidden in the Savior’s Rejection by the World

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Passage: John 18:33-19:21

Date: March 12, 2025

Pastor: Pastor Horton

Up and under.  Up to Jesus’ cross.  And under our own.  As we continue the Lenten journey, we consider the cross bearing that we share with Christ and that he shares with us: The cross always brings rejection, and to our astonishment, that rejection has glory hidden in it.  And tonight we find rejection from the world.  The world does not understand the cross and does not want to.  Listen to a portion of Jesus’ trial before the world in the court of the Roman governor Pontius Pilate: “‘You are a king, then!’ said Pilate.  Jesus answered, ‘You are right in saying I am a king.  In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.  Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.’  ‘What is truth?’” Pilate asked.”

Could there be a sharper contrast?  On the one side is Jesus.  He testifies that he is a king and  that all who are on the side of truth listen to him.  Yes, listen to him in the sense of hearing and holding to his Word, in the sense of believing him, trusting him, and following after him. 

But on the other side, what does the world see?  A pathetic sight!  Ridiculous claim!  This Jesus a king?  Handed over by his own people who scream for his death?  Jesus’ kingdom consists of those who love the truth—and yet there is not one person who defends him, or speaks out for him, or is willing to come forward and declare himself a follower of this King?  Not one?  The world even prefers option B for Barabbas, a rebel and a murderer.  After all, how is it that this king is captive to a petty Roman official?  Beaten and spat upon by his own people.  Soon about to endure far worse at the hands of Pilate’s soldiers.  “Some king!”  The world says.  “Some kingdom!  Some truth!”

And there stands Pilate, vocal representative for the world.  He views and judges this Jesus through his eyes of human reason.  Will he uphold justice?  He listens to Jesus.  But no, justice would lose out to his love of his position and convenience.  His reason rules, and it finds the whole message to be nothing but foolishness, and a nuisance, and bother, and inconvenient, and sparking a troublesome mob.  Pilate sees no criminal in Jesus and yet punishes him anyways with flogging, a gruesome and painful torture that often killed its victims, and then the execution of this king. 

Why such hostility?  Such anger?  Such violence against someone that on the outside seems so weak and frail, even foolish?  It all hinges on that one little word that Jesus spoke to Pilate, the word “truth.”  Jesus said that he was the King of truth, who had come into the world to bear witness to the truth!  Pilate, however, wanted no truth from this Jesus.  He had already made up his mind.  He was not going to hear this guy preach about truth.  He reasoned, “there is only me; there is only the moment.  My truth is that I already have my needs, my wants, my will, my goals, my ambition, my pleasure, my power.  And we understand Pilate, because by nature we want what he does.  Any other truth is bound to get in the way of those things.  Something else?  Something more?  Such a truth would challenge me to give up my single-minded devotion to me. 

If Pilate would have listened, would things have turned out different?  No.  For the message of Jesus and his cross always provokes hatred and hostility from the world.  The truth of the law calling out my devotion to myself was there in fallen Eden and every day since.  This truth is that even in our best works and on our best days, we still offend the holiness and justice of God.  That truth is irritating.  We recoil at it.  Because we want divine truth to be about me in the moment.  This is evident over the pages of history, evident when I look into the honest mirror of God’s law, and evident from the mouth of Jesus.  And I still don’t want to hear it.  You and I declare with Pilate: “Away with this truth and the King who proclaims it!” 

But wait!  Thankfully there is more to the message from the King of truth than the guilty verdict over all of us and all our works.  He comes chiefly and primarily with this greatest truth of all: that he himself is the solution to the problem of our sin.  He is our only solution.

And how will he solve the problem of sin?  Will he give us a new law to keep?  Will he tell us that our sin doesn’t matter after all?  Will he bid us to just do the best we can and God will be satisfied and overlook the rest?  Is that the great truth that he brings?  No!  If that were the truth that Jesus brought, the people would not have flogged and crucified him.  But the King declares himself to be the only solution to the problem of sin, of death and hell that all deserve.  Christ alone will embrace all the sin and guilt of the world as our substitute.  The solution is that salvation will be a free gift, won by the crucified, secured for us by the crucified, and given in the message of the crucified.  But, tragically, the truth of the gospel that saves is even more despised than the truth of the law that condemns.

So here is the great mystery and the profound truth: So depraved is mankind that by nature we hate to be told the truth that we are depraved; and so great is our corruption that by nature we hate still more the truth that the only solution to the punishment we deserve is Jesus, the King of truth. You would think that people would stampede to this Jesus who delivers from death and hell.  Not so.  Now if we offered them free gas or free health care or free money, we would be trampled in the stampede.  But free salvation?  Free heaven?  Free rescue from hell?  No, not that!  “Away with him!  Crucify him!  Give us Barabbas!”

Jesus’ cross alone saves.  Up we go to follow.  Yet those who follow to the cross must also follow under the cross.  That is the mark of the Christian, the sign of the cross.  For wherever the King of truth appears with the message of truth, there will be hostility, opposition, and at times even violence.  

As a cross has two beams, so the hostility to the cross has two beams as well.  The first beam is the one that we carry from our own nature.  Our own flesh, along with Pilate, dismissed Jesus’ truth.  By nature we don’t want an answer outside of ourselves.  “Right and wrong that come from God?  I already have me” we reason.  “I’m going to value this today and that tomorrow.”  People shouldn’t commit adultery; but if my children or my friends live together before marriage.  “But I’ll just look the other way.”  People shouldn’t hold grudges or gossip.  “But, God, you don’t know what was done to me!”  People shouldn’t steal or cheat.  “But the prices are too high and people have stolen from and cheated me!”  People shouldn’t be arrogant and self-righteous, “but let’s face it, we really are better than most, aren’t we?”

Then comes the confession in the liturgy: “I, a poor miserable sinner.” “No, no,” objects our flesh, “I don’t want to hear about that.  It’s so depressing!.”  Then comes the message of forgiveness: “In the cross of Christ you have all you need.  You are forgiven.  Your sin washed away.  You are redeemed by Jesus and restored as a dear child of God!’”  But the inborn flesh likes that news even less!  “Well, yea but I work hard.  I deserve what I get.  God is at least a little bit lucky that I’m on his side, and be at least a little flattered that I believe in him at all, given the world we live in today.  And if he doesn’t treat me right, I’ll show him and walk away from him, his church, and his truth.”

So the first beam of the cross that we Christians carry is the beam of our own sinful nature that hates the truth of the law and despises the truth of the gospel.  The second beam is the hostility of the world, who simply can’t stand the message of truth about Jesus.  Our world wallows in vice and wears corruption as if it were a badge of honor.  Perversions demand honor and respect in the world.  And woe to anyone who says, “But the Bible shares truth.”  And woe to anyone who says, “Jesus is the only solution and the only way to heaven.”  “No, no!  Away with such a one,” the world declares.  “Away with such a one from the earth!” 

So we see Jesus today in our reading.  The King.  The one who brings truth, the only truth.  His glory and the glory of the truth that saves is hidden under the cross.  The world wants no part of him.  And still, watch his reaction!  You might expect a lightning bolt from heaven to strike the crowd or earthquake under Pilate’s to make the world listen to the truth that Jesus has come to proclaim.  He endures it!  He takes it!  

Truth from the King is enough.  The time will come for his awe and wonder – for his exaltation and for judgment.  But that is all in his hands and not ours.  We journey under the cross as we go up to the cross.  We share the weakness and the humiliation until the Last Day.  And why is that?  Because our glory too is hidden under the cross of rejection.  Jesus works his Word  quietly in hearts creating faith when and where the Spirit wills it.  It is a miracle brought on by the gospel message, not by our theatrics, cleverness, might, or merit.  

The whole world may want to get rid of the cross and its truth – and the world has tried for almost two thousand years.  Yet gospel truth remains in the world, creating faith as God wills.  The truth still creates saints who lay their whole lives of sin and shame at the foot of Jesus’ cross.  Thousands still rise up while under the cross, to sing the praises of the Lamb that was slain and has redeemed us by his blood.  They rejoice in Christ.  They do not depend on a poll or public opinion or the views of human intellect.  No, their certainty rests on the Word of God and the work of God, even under the cross of hostility and persecution.  Heaven and earth may pass away.  But what Jesus gives will last forever!  Oh, may we always remain in the blessed number of those who know that glory hidden under the cross. Amen.

All We Need Is Love!

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The coach, with his cap on and his head down, starts out of the dugout and makes his way towards the mound.  You know the scene well if you’ve played baseball, softball, or watched any Brewers games. 

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From One Doubting Thomas to Another

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He and He Alone Finished Your Salvation!

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We yearn for the finish lines of life! When we are young, we want to be done growing up.

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Listen to the Forerunners!

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Isn’t it interesting how we often try to get people’s attention by being louder. We’ll shout someone’s name.

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