June 17, 2001,
Vicar Rick Marrs
Second Sunday after Pentecost,

Grace and peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The text on which this morning's message is based comes from our Epistle lesson read earlier.

This week's VBS theme was "Jesus to the rescue!" We heard of how the God of the Bible, Father of Jesus, came to the rescue of people like Noah, Elijah, Shadrack, Meshack, and Abednego. We learned how God used Queen Esther to rescue his chosen people from destruction 400 years before Jesus came. Most importantly, and everyday, we learned that Jesus has come to our rescue. The Son of God came to earth for the purpose of sacrificing his life for ours. The Son of Man, Jesus Christ, rose again from the dead to guarantee our new lives with him through eternity. That is real rescue, greater than any other rescue in the history of the world. We are the ones who have been rescued. We are the ones who tell others of his rescuing name. We are the ones who proclaim to the world his rescuing reputation.

Perhaps not so ironically, our three assigned readings for today, the 2nd Sunday after Pentecost, have a similar rescue theme. Solomon, in the prayer of dedication to the new temple emphasizes the Lord's reputation of saving his people and keeping a covenant of love with them. Some 300 years earlier the Lord had saved his people out of Egypt, defeating the most powerful country on earth. This God had this reputation still some 300 years later at the time of Solomon. The surrounding countries knew of this reputation, of Moses, of Joshua, of Samson, of David. We sometimes here the joking remark "Don't mess with Texas." This God, Yahweh was his name, was a God with the reputation for rescuing his people from their enemies, and the enemies knew "Don't mess with Israel and Israel's God.

Now not all foreigners were enemies to his people. Anyone from a distant land who heard of this rescuing reputation, of the mighty hand and outstretched arm of Yahweh, was welcome to come and pray toward the temple Solomon had built. All the peoples of the earth could know His name and fear Him, (as Solomon said) "as do your own people Israel, and may know that this house I have built bears your Name." There are many examples of foreigners trusting in this God and influencing the course of Israel's history: Rahab was a prostitute in Jericho. Ruth the Moabite became the great-grandmother of King David. Elisha healed a Syrian general. The Roman centurion in our Gospel lesson knew of this rescuing reputation, and his valued slave benefited from the centurion's trust in Jesus.

Again and again we see examples of people who knew of the rescuing reputation of this God of Israel. Only those foreign nations who fought against and tried to destroy God's chosen people were themselves destroyed by this great God. Those who knew of His rescuing reputation could always turn to him in prayer.

Paul points his Galatian readers and us to this same Jesus, to this same rescuer, (vs. 4) who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father The God who reveals himself in the Bible made humans to be not simply human, but His own people. He imparted His own Spirit to Adam & Eve at creation and designed them to be his own image, a reproduction of His character and will. He intended human life not to be separated from God, but to live because God is alive.

Humans however, spoiled this plan; we sinned. This sin was that man disobeyed and distrusted the will of God. Influenced by Satan, the first human, Adam, and our natural selves, the Old Adam in us, proposes to sever us from God. This severing from God brought death, that is, the God of life was no longer the driving force and source of our actions. People in the state of godlessness and death are not simply neutral or zero in God's thought. They are a frustration to God, his design and purpose, an object of his wrath. The wrath of God is not simply anger on His part, but revulsion. He actively judges the godlessness of man and actively separates Himself from sinful man.

But the perfect God was not content to see humanity remain in this state of imperfection and death. God devised a perfect and unique plan of rescue. God's plan aimed at putting dead humans into such a situation that God, despite our death to him, could be for us and come to us with His kingdom. God accomplished this plan through His Son. His Son became a human being, shared human life, and took upon Himself the responsibility of human sin though He was sinless. God struck His own Son with His full revulsion for sin and thereby no longer attributes human sin to us. Thus Christ opened the way for God to reach out to man with his Spirit and His love. Christ opened up the way that man could again trust God and realize that our lives are in Him and Him alone. Christ gave up his own life in order to ransom us from death. All we need do is realize that His ransom has rescued us, realize it, trust it, be thankful for it.

It is easy to trust in other things, other gods. One Bible story this week in VBS was Elijah against the prophets of Baal. Salvation is not in the name of Baal, or Buddha, or Vishnu, or Allah, or Wicca, or any other self-chosen, human created version of God. God has revealed himself in Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone. To turn anywhere else is to deny God's saving reputation.

It is easy to trust in other things, other gods. It is easy for us to fall into the trap of most trusting in our material possessions, of trusting that our lives will be good only if we maintain or improve the level of income we now have. It is easy to fall into the trap of most trusting our political system, of thinking that our lives will be improved if we elect the right people or support the right causes. It is even easy to most trust in our families, hoping that if relationships improve then life will be happier and more fulfilling. Now don't get me wrong, God does want us to have a peaceful political system. He wants our families to be peaceful and loving. He wants us to be good stewards of our incomes and property, gifts that he has given us. But when we begin to trust in our incomes, families, political systems or anything else more than trusting in the God who created them all, then we have turned to a different Gospel.

God sent Paul to tell the people of Galatia about His rescuing Son. The people heard and began trusting in Christ. But then bad teaching started creeping into their congregation, people who were telling them that Paul's teaching about the forgiveness through Jesus Christ was a good start, but not enough. Now they needed to know about Jesus "plus other things." Jesus plus Jewish circumcision. Jesus plus good works. Jesus plus some human effort necessary for salvation. Paul reacts with passion in his writing: I am astonished (utterly shocked) that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel-- 7 which is really no gospel at all.

Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. 8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! Paul knew that the focus of God's rescuing activity was Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone. God's name and rescuing reputation now dwells in Jesus. Paul sought to passionately proclaim this message to the Galatians. Paul knew how easy it was for our sinful human natures to seek out different gospels, to trust in things other than Jesus. Jesus had given up Himself to rescue them. He, at just the right time, had given up Himself to rescue all mankind. Jesus has given up Himself to rescue you from death. Today, turn to Him and Him alone. Make Jesus the main source of your life, today, tomorrow, every day this week, every day of your life: Jesus to the rescue.

The grace and rescuing reputation of our Lord Jesus Christ be with us always. Amen.

Note: Portions of this sermon are indebted to the words of Dr. Richard Caemmerer in his 1949 book "The Church in the World".