Audio recording Sermon manuscript: Our epistle reading today picks up where our epistle reading from last week left off. Last week, if you remember, Paul was talking about spiritual gifts. One and the same Spirit gives different gifts to Christians. Among the gifts that he mentioned were the word of wisdom and the word of knowledge. Faith is given by the same Spirit. Then he talked about gifts that were more common at apostolic times like miracles, prophesy, and speaking in tongues. In my sermon last week I mainly spoke about how we should understand these unusual gifts and not be led to false conclusions about them.  If you missed that sermon, you can look it up at the website listed in the bulletin. The reading today picks up where we left off last week. The final verse in last week’s reading was that the Holy Spirit distributes spiritual gifts to each and every Christian, howsoever the Holy Spirit might wish. One Christian is given certain gifts that are not given to another. The gifts that are given to another may not be given to one’s self. This is like the different parts of our body. The eye is a part of the body that has been equipped to do certain things that a hand cannot do. Likewise there are things that the hand is able to do that the eye could never do. With this discussion of how the different members of the body of Christ are necessarily different from one another, and yet members of one body, Paul is addressing a problem in the Corinthian congregation. The church at Corinth was very vibrant and energetic. God gave them many gifts. They were excited to use the gifts that God gave them. But it also appears that they were seeking after glory for themselves with the gifts that had been given to them. Thus they were especially coveting the flashy, unusual gifts that would bring them glory. With Paul’s discussion of how the members of the body are necessarily different from one another, and yet members of one and the same body, he would have the Corinthians understand that Christians are not meant to be in competition with one another. A body works together. A body cannot be made up of members that are all the same, otherwise that is not going to be much of a body at all. As Paul says, “If we were all an ear, where would our sense of smelling be?” Ears should not wish to be noses; noses should not wish to be eyes. The different members of the body are essential for the body to function because of the different abilities that are given to each member. Whether a member of the body is an ear or an eye is something that God determines. Paul says, “God has arranged the members in the body, each and every one of them, as he desired.” No matter how much an ear might wish to be an eye, there’s nothing that an ear can do to make itself into an eye. In a sense, this is what the Corinthians were trying to do. The ones who had not been given the gifts that had been given to others really wished that they had those gifts. They wanted the glory that would come along with that. But whatever gifts there might be, if they are genuine, are from God. His intention is that the gifts should be beneficial to the body of Christ, to the fellow members of the body. There are also parts of the body that God has put together that are thought to be weaker. Paul doesn’t specifically say which members of the body he is talking about, but he does contrast these so-called weaker members with the eye, the ear, and the nose. They eye, the ear, and the nose are sensitive members. They are very special. The eye, especially, is not only very useful, but it is also very beautiful to look at. What is some other slab of flesh compared to the eye? “But,” Paul says, “the members that are thought to be weaker are necessary.” Why? Because God made it so. He is the one who has put the body together the way he wants. Here I’d like to pause in my explanation of Paul’s words to point out something that I think is important. Paul is speaking here in a

 Audio recording Sermon manuscript: It is not uncommon for people to think that if the Bible is true, then there should be lots of miracles. The Bible records many unusual signs and wonders that God has performed. The way the thinking goes is that if the Bible is true concerning these things, then these miracles need to keep happening. It is understandable how a person could arrive at such an opinion, but it is not right. The Bible does, indeed, record unusual things that God did. But God does not just work through unusual means. In fact, he only rarely uses unusual means. All the other times he works through ordinary means. Ordinary means would be those ways that do not appear unusual. Adam and Eve, for example, simply told their children what God had revealed to them. Abraham told Isaac about the covenant that God had made with him. We tend to think that speaking is not a big deal. We do it all the time. It can seem as though God’s not involved in it at all, because he does not come with thunder and lightning and smoke like he did at Mt. Sinai. To illustrate God’s ordinary means we should say something about how God works in the Old Testament after the time of Moses. God gave the Israelites the tabernacle / temple. He proscribed priests and sacrifices for them. This was the way that God’s holiness was communicated to them. So it is also with the New Testament. Jesus instituted and commanded baptism as a new birth in the Holy Spirit. Jesus instituted and commanded us to observe the Lord’s Supper. He says that the Lord’s Supper is the New Testament in his blood for the forgiveness of sins. These, together with preaching, are the ordinary means for Christians to receive God’s grace and holiness. But, as the saying goes: “Familiarity breeds contempt.” These ordinary means that God uses to communicate his will towards us, his grace and favor towards us—they become boring. Our reason starts to think that they must not be that valuable because only rare things are valuable. The Word and the Sacraments are given out quite liberally and no bills get sent out for services rendered. And so Christians might go hankering after something a little more exotic, a little more uncommon. So when we read a portion of the New Testament like our reading today from 1 Corinthinans 12, we might think, “This should do the trick!” Paul speaks of “spiritual gifts.” Among these gifts are messages of wisdom, knowledge, and faith. He also speaks of some spicier gifts. He says, “And to another, the same Spirit gives healing gifts. Another is given powers to do miracles; another, the gift of prophecy; another, the evaluating of spirits; someone else, different kinds of tongues; and another, the interpretation of tongues.” As you well know, these gifts have not been given to me or to any of the other members of this congregation. I’m not aware of anyone who can heal. I don’t know of anyone who has performed miracles. None of us have been able to know the future. When we think we do know the future, we are often wildly wrong. No one has spoken in tongues. Since no one has spoken in tongues, there is also no need to have tongues interpreted. These were gifts that God gave to the apostolic Christian church. We hear of them not only here, but also in the book of Acts. God performed unusual signs through these earliest Christians, perhaps to confirm the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus. Since these signs were present among the Christians of the apostolic church, many people get deceived into thinking that there must be something deficient about the Christian church of today. We do not have these signs or we do not have them in like measure. This is a very dangerous and destructive deception. Although it has the appearance of being biblical, it definitely is not. There is a big difference between miracles happening and miracles being required. God is free to do miracles. The Bible tells us about them. Nowhere in the Bible do you ever hear him requiring his p

 Audio recording Sermon manuscript: We entered the season of Epiphany with the festival of Epiphany this past Thursday. The word “epiphany” means, “to be revealed.” So Epiphany and the season of Epiphany has as one of its main emphases the way that this person named Jesus was revealed to be something more than an ordinary person. The Epiphany festival itself is about the way that wise men came from the east. They gave gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to Jesus. What is of greatest significance is that they bowed down and worshipped Jesus. That is something that should never be done with anyone or anything that is not God, so by this activity the wise men are confessing their faith that Jesus is God. The festival that we are considering today, the Baptism of our Lord, is on the first Sunday after Epiphany. It is an appropriate thing to consider to kick off the season of Epiphany since this baptism is very revealing. Two very important things can be seen at Jesus’s baptism—the Holy Trinity and Jesus as the Christ. There are hardly any more important things that we could possibly know since the Holy Trinity describes God and Christ is our Lord and Savior. Let’s begin with the Trinity. Let me remind you about the simple reason why we speak of the Trinity. The word, “Trinity,” is a made up word. You won’t find it in the Bible. It is the combination of two numbers—three, tri-, as in triangle or tricycle; and one, uno, unity. So the word Trinity means “three-one-ness.” While the word, “Trinity,” is nowhere to be found in the Scriptures, the thing that the word is describing is very easily found in the Scriptures. The Bible says two things very emphatically. The Bible says that there is only one God. Deuteronomy says, “The Lord your God is one.” That’s the one thing the Bible says about God. The other thing that the Bible says about God is that he is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We call these the three persons. So we speak of the Trinity or the Triune God because the Bible very emphatically and clearly speaks of God as one. The Bible also very emphatically and clearly speaks of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The goal is speak of God as the Bible speaks of him. The goal is not to make this idea plausible or acceptable to our reason, otherwise we may very well decide to revise what the Bible says so that we can better understand it or convince others to believe it. The Baptism of our Lord is one of the many places where we hear of the three persons of the one God. The Son, Jesus Christ, is in the Jordan River with John the Baptist. The Holy Spirit took on the bodily form of a dove and descended upon him. The Father spoke from heaven. He said that this man Jesus is his beloved Son. He is well pleased with him. Here we see how all three persons of the Trinity are involved and approving of the ministry, life, death, and resurrection of the Christ. Some Christians, who already aren’t too big fans of the Trinity, will try to make better sense of what the Bible speaks about by talking about “dispensations.” By the word “dispensation” they mean a time of special prominence and importance. So they say that the Old Testament was the dispensation of the Father. Supposedly the Old Testament is full of wrath and violence, and it is imagined that this is the special area and expertise of God the Father. The New Testament times are the dispensation of the Son. Here, supposedly, we see a kinder and gentler side of God. Finally, supposedly, we are now, in our times, in the dispensation of the Spirit. So during our times we are supposed to be on the lookout for special and unusual miracles that are supposed to come from the Holy Spirit, but I suspect come from evil and deceiving spirits. This is a very dangerous false teaching. It strikes right at the root of the Christian faith. Our faith is in nothing else whatsoever except our God. This teaching goes about revising who our God is. To my mind there is almost the fabr

 Audio recording Sermon manuscript: Let me begin with a story that some of you will get and some of you will not get. A person went to a mechanic one day because their car wasn’t working right. They went into the waiting room while the mechanic looked over their car, high and low, left and right. The mechanic walked into the waiting room, wiping his hands on a rag, and said, “It’s the muffler belt. It’s shot. You need a new muffler belt.” Some of you are going to understand that this is a joke. Others won’t quite get it. Whether you get it or not has to do with how well you understand how cars work. You’ve probably heard of cars having mufflers. You’ve probably heard of them having belts. But if you know how mufflers work and how belts work, then you will know that there can’t be any such thing as a muffler belt. Mufflers are the pipes that carry the exhaust from the engine to the back of the car. Besides carrying the gasses, they also muffle the sound of the engine that would otherwise be much louder. That is why they are called mufflers. But basically a muffler is a fancy pipe. Belts run on pulleys or wheels. They transfer energy from one part of the machine to another part of the machine. Belts do tend to break or need to be replaced, so a mechanic telling you that you need a new belt isn’t that surprising. But there’s no way that there could be any belts on a muffler. That’s like saying you could get into your car and drive across the ocean. It’s not going to happen. It can’t happen. But you can’t know that without already having a good bit of knowledge going into it. Jokes are a pretty sophisticated way of talking. If you don’t know what is being talked about, then you probably won’t get the joke. Praising, giving praise, is another sophisticated way of talking. Let’s say that someone starts singing the praises of the Ford 5.0 liter engine. They start listing off thinks like torque and horsepower. Some of you are going to get that praise. A lot of us, including myself, might start to get a little glassy eyed. The praise is meaningful to some. To others is just a bunch of blah, blah, blah. You might need to learn some stuff in order to understand why someone might be excited. Our epistle reading this morning is a hymn of praise. That makes it one of these higher levels of talking. If you don’t know what Paul is referring to, then it is going to sound like a bunch of blah, blah, blah. Just as a car enthusiast won’t take the time to explain horsepower or torque while he is singing his praises, so also Paul is not explaining the different things that he is referring to in this hymn to God the Father, about his Son Jesus Christ. So we will have to do some work before we can begin to understand what Paul is saying. Even then, I think you should take this bulletin home and carefully read through it again later today. Let’s begin by talking about the main theme of Paul’s hymn before getting into the details. The main theme is that Paul is praising God the Father. He says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Three times in these verses he refers to God’s glory. God’s glory is to be praised. Praise and glory go together. It is the glories of the 5.0 liter engine that lead some to sing its praises. God’s glory provokes praise. Let me give you a couple examples of God’s glory, before going into the glories of God are specifically talked about in this hymn. God’s creation itself is an example of God’s glory. All the things that God has made—its strength, its beauty, the joy it gives us—these are God’s accomplishments that provoke praise. Another example of God’s glory is the way that God liberated Israel who was enslaved under Pharaoh. God twisted Pharaoh’s arm to let them go. Then he destroyed Pharaoh and his chariots, throwing them into the sea. This was God’s accomplishment that calls forth praise. So it is with all of God’s accomplishments in the Old Testament. Paul, however, is focused on one multiface

 Audio recording Sermon manuscript: It’s a little jarring, the day after Christmas, to celebrate the martyrdom of St. Stephen. Talking about a fiery man, who wouldn’t shut up, to the point where people pelted him with stones until he died—that stands in stark contrast with a certain view of the Christmas spirit. For many Christmas is a celebration of celebrating. Here we might ask, “What happened to the party?” Now we are talking about somebody who said such stark and stringent things that those who heard them screamed at the top of their lungs, dragging him outside of the city, bludgeoning him with rocks. Merry Christmas, right? But people’s popular conception of Christmas is quite lacking when it comes to the real content of Christmas. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is different than Santa Claus. Jesus is the king of righteousness. Santa Claus, contrary to what you have been told, doesn’t keep track of who is naughty and who is nice. What gets Stephen into trouble is not that he’s been telling everyone he comes across that they are all jolly good fellows. He’s told them that they’ve been naughty. This has ticked them off. They don’t repent. They get even. It is easy for us to forget how fundamental this kind of thing is to life. In our Gospel reading Jesus mentions the blood of righteous Abel. Abel was the second son of Adam and Eve. His older brother, Cain, killed him. Cain was the first human being conceived and born in the natural way. What is this first-born of the whole human race? He’s a murderer. Why does he murder? Because he is corrupt. He wants the good reputation of piety, but he’s not actually pious. God, who knows all things, knew this, and was not deceived by his sacrifice. God had regard for Abel and his honest sacrifice, but he did not have regard for Cain’s sacrifice. Abel was a living, breathing reminder of Cain’s inadequacy, corruption, unwillingness to do what is right. So Cain got rid of him. This kind of thing is archetypical for life on this sin-infested planet. It happens all over the place. There is shady practice after shady practice. We become conditioned to it so that we hardly notice it. If we do notice it and do something about it, we’ll pay dearly for it, so it’s in people’s best interest to ignore it. Let me try to explain the kind of thing I’m talking about. It’s a little hard to explain because it’s easy to think I’m just talking about one isolated thing here and another isolated thing there, when what I’m trying to get across to you is that this is thoroughly enmeshed into lives. But let me give you some examples of what I’m talking about. Let’s say there’s a business that bills by the hour. They start working for you a quarter to the hour until half past the hour. You get billed for two hours because time was spent during each of the hours of the day. Another example: You buy something at Kohls. You use it for what you need, careful not to damage it. Then you return it and get your money back. Another example: Mom or dad tell you to do something. You know what they mean, but you don’t do one iota more than what was literally said, because not each individual step was specifically laid out. Then you can plead innocence, “because you didn’t know.” Another example: Your friends say terrible things. Perhaps they say blasphemous things, but you keep your mouth shut because you don’t want to hurt the relationship. I could go on and on and on with these little things. I’ll spare you that, but let me point out one more thing: whatever your calling, your line of work might be, there is bound to be countless little tricks and lies and manipulations that happen day in and day out. Tiny dishonesties, even. They are assumed to be just the way that stuff gets done, so it probably doesn’t weigh heavily at all on anybody’s conscience. But it is crooked, corrupt, and when the light of truth shines upon it, people can see it unless they’ve become blind. Jesus says that we are to be salt and light in th

 Audio recording Sermon manuscript: The message that the Bible gives us is that God dwells with his people. In our Old Testament reading today we heard about God entering the tent that God had instructed Moses to build. For about ten chapter of Exodus there are very specific and elaborate instructions that are recorded. The tent had three parts. There was a curtain placed around the whole perimeter, kind of like a wall. The tent itself was to be inside this courtyard. There were two chambers in the tent. The ark of the covenant was to be in the most holy place in the back. That was where God dwelt. In our reading, the glory of God that was manifest in the cloud came to rest in that tent so that Moses could not go into it. When the glory cloud would go up from the tent the people would pack their things. They would follow God wherever he led. When he came to rest, they would unpack their things, including the tabernacle that God had instructed them to build, and they would stay there until the cloud of his glory would go up again. This was a new epoch for God’s people. With Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob God did not stay with them in such a way. God would appear to the patriarchs from time to time and speak to them by the Angel of the Lord. When he appeared he would give them promises to encourage them. But he did not dwell with them the way that he dwelt with their descendants as he led them out of Egypt with the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night. After the ark of the covenant and the tabernacle was built, that was the way that God dwelt with his people. Among all the nations of the earth that existed, it was only among the descendants of Jacob that God dwelt. This made them a holy nation. They were blessed by being in God’s presence, whereas those who were not holy were repelled by God’s presence. That’s the way it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. Those who have been prepared to be in God’s presence by being forgiven and sanctified find God’s presence to be healthy and life giving. Those who are unholy and sinful bear God’s holiness. The Old Testament, from Exodus onward, has this presence of God among his people at the heart of it. God is present with them first of all in the tabernacle, then later with King Solomon’s temple. Generation after generation God sanctified these people. They were blessed to know him and his Word in this life and were prepared to live with him in a yet more intimate and better way in the next. A new epoch for God’s people came with Jesus. The Apostle John speaks to this in the opening words of his Gospel that we heard this morning: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him everything was made, and without him not one thing was made that has been made… This Word that existed already at the beginning became flesh in the person who was named Jesus. God dwells among us in this Jesus. I mentioned last Sunday that there is nothing in the Old Testament that holds a candle to what the angel Gabriel said to Mary. The God of the Temple and the tabernacle, the God of Mt. Sinai, the God who created the world was going to take up residence in her womb. This is astounding almost to the point of being absurd. On the other hand, though, it is quite in keeping with the general way that God operates. When God chose a nation to be his own, he did not choose the most powerful or populous nation. He chose Abraham, and his wife, Sarah. He chose them when they were childless and already well advanced in years. They didn’t even have any offspring who could receive the inheritance that God was promising to them. With the new epoch of God’s grace that came through Moses, you see the same thing. This people hardly deserved to be called a nation. They were an enslaved people under the Egyptians. They didn’t have any autonomous government. They didn’t have a military. God fought for them and subdued the Eg

 Audio recording Sermon manuscript: The prophet Isaiah speaks about the coming Christ hundreds of years before he was born. Isaiah says in our reading tonight: “People walking in darkness have seen a great light. For those living in the land of the shadow of death, the light has dawned.” Walking in darkness is bewildering. You cannot see where you are going. You cannot anticipate problems or dangers. You might not get to where you are going because you don’t know the way. You might not even know where you are supposed to be going. This is a good description of us. What is life all about? You might get almost as many explanations for what life is all about as the number of people that you encounter. Everybody has different ideas of what happiness is. There are different goals for life. On good days people try their best to get to where they think they will be happy. On bad days people don’t even try. They make peace with the darkness, bide their time. Are they waiting for it all to be over? Since some people try more and other people try less, it might seem as though they should not be put into the same group. It might seem as though some people have their stuff together. They’re going someplace. But this is an illusion. We are all in the darkness. It’s like being in a cave where there is no light whatsoever. Whoever is in that place is in the darkness. It doesn’t matter if people are moving around a lot, or a little bit, or not at all. Perhaps it is nobler to be moving about. At least that’s trying. The thought is that if you keep trying, and you never give up, then maybe you will find the light. Maybe you will arrive at happiness. But this almost makes the situation worse. If everywhere you decide to go is necessarily going to be the wrong place to go, then you are always only busy getting to the wrong place. It’s like Sisyphus from Greek mythology. His punishment in Hades was that he had to roll an immense boulder to the top of the hill, only to have it roll back down to the bottom again where he’d have to start all over. Fighting against the darkness, looking for meaning and happiness, sounds like it’s the thing we should be doing. What good is it, though, if all the striving comes to nothing? In contrast to this dreary darkness, Isaiah’s claim, God’s claim, concerning the Christ, is just as stark and grand as it sounds. “People walking in darkness have seen a great light. For those living in the land of the shadow of death, the light has dawned.” There is darkness and there is light. All live in the darkness no matter how relatively successful each might be. The light—that’s Jesus. Jesus Christ is the light of the world. He is the light that no darkness can overcome. This sounds like it is automatically a good thing. Our problems are solved. In a place where everything is pitch black, to have the light suddenly appear, that’s marvelous. There’s no other way of getting out of the darkness than by this great light. This is true, but the light of Christ is not always welcome. Jesus says, “This is the judgment: The light has come into the world, but the people loved the darkness more than the light. They loved the darkness because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does worthless things hates the light, and does not come near the light, otherwise their works would be exposed.” This, at least, has to be said in defense of the darkness: Darkness seems to give us the freedom to pursue what we want. We do things in secret without really having to think about it, because nobody’s going to know. What isn’t known won’t hurt us. We learn this as little tikes. The darkness seems to give us the freedom to do what we want. So we should not think it is strange, that when this great light dawns upon us, that we can end up hating the light and loving the darkness. We don’t want to make a clean break with our life of doing what we want. There are things that we would like to continue to do in the darkness even after the light has come

 Audio recording Sermon manuscript: Let’s begin by setting the scene for our Gospel reading this morning. Earlier in this first chapter of Luke he speaks of the way that two baby boys were miraculously conceived. One of them was John the Baptist. The other was Jesus. John the Baptist’s father, Zechariah, was a priest. One day he had the honor of doing the priestly duties in the Temple when an angel of the Lord appeared to him. Zechariah was frightened, but the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid. Your wife Elizabeth will bear a son. You are to name him John.” This was astounding to Zechariah because he and his wife had been unable to have children. Now this angel was telling him that he would have a son when he and Elizabeth were old. Because he did not believe the angel, God made him mute. From that time until his son was born, and Zechariah wrote on a tablet that his name was to be John, he was not able to speak. When his ability to speak returned to him, he sang the song that we call the Benedictus. This is the song that we sometimes sing during the Matins service instead of the Te Deum. This baby, born to Zechariah and Elizabeth in their old age, was John the Baptist. His conception was miraculous because his parents were old and otherwise unable to have children. The other miraculous conception is what happened with Mary. Mary lived in Nazareth of Galilee. She was engaged to be married to Joseph. One day God sent the angel Gabriel to her. He said, “Hello, you who are highly favored by the Lord. The Lord is with you.” Mary was perplexed at his words, and tried to figure out what sort of greeting this was. The angel responded, “Do not be afraid. God is well pleased with you. You will conceive and bear a Son. The name you should give him is Jesus. He will be the Son of the Most High. God will give him the throne of his father David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and there will be no end to his kingdom.” As you can imagine, Mary had a hard time understanding this. She asked how this would be, since she was a virgin.  Gabriel answered that the Holy Spirit will come upon her, the power of the Most High will overshadow her. That is why the child who is born of her will be holy. He will be the Son of God. Mary responded in a wonderful way. There has never been a higher Word that has been spoken to a human being. There is nothing in the Old Testament that even holds a candle to what the angel just said to Mary. She doesn’t ask for any signs or wonders to confirm the word. She simply responded, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be done to me according to your Word.” The Gospel reading that you heard this morning is what immediately follows after this. The angel had told Mary that her relative, Elizabeth, was also pregnant, sixth months along. Mary went to visit her. She went from Galilee in the north down to the south, south of Jerusalem, into the hill country. Zechariah and Elizabeth were living in a town somewhere in this region. You heard how several unusual things happened and were said when Mary arrived at their house. When Mary said hello, John the Baptist leaped and stirred about in the womb of his mother. Elizabeth then is filled with the Holy Spirit and confesses her faith. She believes in the baby whom Mary is carrying in her womb. That baby would only be called an embryo in our medical terms. Jesus was only weeks old at that point, a tiny human being. Elizabeth, like Mary, believes in the Word of the Lord. This child is God’s Son, miraculously conceived by the Holy Spirit. Elizabeth is wonderfully comforting and encouraging to Mary. If people at that time were anything like they are at our time, then Mary would not have been treated very respectfully by everyone she came across. The way Elizabeth treated Mary must have been a nice reprieve for her. You can perhaps picture an older woman comforting a younger woman who otherwise might be treated quite roughly and rudely by others. I

 Audio recording Sermon manuscript: Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I say rejoice. Rejoicing is celebrating, being happy. We know how to rejoice. We rejoice when good things happen to us. We rejoice when we get some unexpected money, when we get a good deal, when it’s time to have fun with friends. Nobody has to tell us to rejoice. The circumstances prompt us to rejoice. We might not even be able to help it. There are two modifiers, though, to Paul’s command to rejoice. We are to rejoice in the Lord. That’s the one modifier. The other modifier is that we are to rejoice always. What does it mean to rejoice in the Lord? We know how to rejoice in good circumstances. How do we rejoice in the Lord? This can only be done through faith. There is no way for anyone to know the Lord God except if he reveals himself to them. Only those who believe in what he has revealed of himself can ever rejoice in him. What has God revealed about himself? He is your God. You are his people. In the whole Bible this is always what he has to say, no matter who he is dealing with, so long as they are his chosen ones. He says the same thing to all of them: I am your God. You are my people. Stay close to me. I am your rock and your castle. For you I strive and wrestle. I am yours and you are mine and where I am you may remain. The foe shall not divide us. Whereas the circumstances are what make us rejoice otherwise, what makes us rejoice in the Lord is what he has revealed of himself to us. He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. His mercy endures forever. Just as you might rejoice that you can put some new-found money into your pocket, so you can rejoice that God is yours and you are God’s. This good relationship is something to rejoice about. The other modifier is that we should rejoice always in the Lord. Nobody’s in the habit of rejoicing always. Nobody celebrates always. The party has to come to an end sometime. The circumstances that cause us to rejoice either get taken for granted or go away. We do not rejoice always. And Paul is not calling upon us to rejoice always in the normal way we use that word. We are to rejoice always in the Lord. This means that our rejoicing is probably going to look a little different than the rejoicing and celebrating that we might see or experience with Christmas presents, for example. Sometimes people get the idea that the Christian life is supposed to be uninterrupted happiness, never-failing victory, a charmed life. This is not what we see, though, when we examine the people who have believed in God before us in the Bible. We do not see this even with Jesus. He did not always skip around with a smile on his face. He didn’t look this way when he was being whipped or crucified. When he was looking ahead to the suffering that was coming upon him, he prayed that the cup should pass from him. And yet, we must say that Jesus rejoiced in the Lord always. Rejoicing in the Lord does not have to match up with certain looks on one’s face or even certain feelings or emotions. Rejoicing in the Lord is inextricably tied up with faith in him. To believe in him is to trust in his salvation. No matter what might come our way, no matter which cross God might lay upon us, we can rejoice in our salvation. We can rejoice always, because salvation is his business and not ours. Since it is his business, and not ours, we can rest assured that it will never fail. Consider Paul who penned these words. Earlier in the letter he says that he is writing while he is shackled with chains. He is in prison for preaching the Gospel. He is on his way to Rome where he will be tried and falsely found guilty. Since he was a Roman citizen it is thought that he was executed by having his head chopped off instead of being crucified. Being crucified was considered to be too shameful of a punishment for Roman citizens. Crucifixion was reserved for slaves and non-citizens. In the midst of all of this perhaps Paul’s r

 Audio recording Sermon manuscript: Last week’s reading was the first two chapters of Ecclesiastes. Our reading tonight is chapters 5 and 6. Our reading next week will be the last chapter of Ecclesiastes. So our reading tonight is from the middle of the book. It is a continuation of the theme that was established right away at the beginning. We talked about this last week: All is vanity. All is vapor, totally vapor. It vanishes in the wind. Nothing lasts on this earth. Our reading tonight brought up several topics. I’d like to focus on just one of them: work. A common reaction that people have when they hear that all is vanity, whatever we might work for is not going to last, is that we might as well just give up. We might as well not get out of bed in the morning. We certainly shouldn’t work. We should just live for pleasure—doing whatever we think is going to be the most enjoyable. These are usually all kinds of leisurely activities that we otherwise do not normally pursue because we are busy doing our work. This, we suppose, would be a lot better if it is vain to build towers that reach to the heavens or try to make a name for ourselves by becoming great. But this desire to escape into pleasure is also vanity. Living this way does not provide the happiness that it is supposed to. Leisurely activities are great as a change of pace. Special food and drink is delicious when it is a treat. When these things become standard fare, we become bored and restless with these just like we do with anything else. There seems to be a general law in life that we build up a tolerance to stimulants in our using of them. Very often the idea of doing something is better than the actual doingof it. For example, I have known several different people who have gotten a house on a lake. Going to the lake is a lot of fun. Boating, fishing, waterskiing, and what have you all sound like lots of fun, and they are. The whole reason why a person might buy a house on a lake is because they’ve engaged in these activities and like them. They’d like to be able to pursue them more often and more easily. But in the cases that I know of, where a person buys a house on the lake, they eventually quit doing these activities. They are all fun for a while, but then they quit being as fun. Maybe these activities end up only being done when there’s company. The company enjoys it, because it’s different and fresh for them, but the people who live there could take it or leave it. So it seems as though people should be happier if they are not working and can devote themselves full time to their leisure activities, but that is not the case. Often respectable people will look down at those who don’t have jobs with the idea that they are undeserving of any pity. It is thought that those without jobs must be living it up, having a grand old time. Generally speaking, I do not think that this is the case. Life for these folks appears to be a seeking after one escape after another. They are looking to escape their boredom and misery but they cannot. All is vanity. This dream of letting yourself go, indulging in one treat after another, is supposed to make a person happy, but it does not. It is in this regard that I think Solomon’s words about work are instructive as an alternative to how we naturally think. He says, “The worker’s sleep is sweet, whether he eats little or eats much.” He also says, “It is beautiful to eat, to drink, and to look for good in all a person’s hard work which he has done under the sun.” Here we have some positive thoughts about work that come from a man whose general theme otherwise is that all is vanity. The fact is that we human beings were created to work. Even before the fall into sin God put Adam in the garden. He was to look after it and tend it. He was to exercise dominion over it and give names to all the animals. God did not set him upon a couch where he could be fed grapes and fanned and massaged. These things are good in their place, b