Grace, mercy and peace be to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The text for our message this morning is the Epistle Lesson from Hebrews 12
Introduction: Rally Day – studying the Word of God
This morning our Sunday School teachers have worked diligently to put together a Rally Day program. Certainly this morning we offered a breakfast to all who came, which is always welcome. After today our Sunday School children will make the switch to their new classes and (for some) new teachers. The Sunday School classes will update their curriculum so that their lessons fit in with our worship services. Our teachers want to help our students and parents get excited about the program so that they take advantage of it.
Sunday School is an amazing blessing for children. Now that we are mentioning it, it's not such a bad thing for adults either. Sunday School or Bible Study if you prefer to call it that is yet one more opportunity to study the word of God. To have the bible taught to our children and to study the bible ourselves. Because – and this is the key – the Bible is the means that God has given for us so that we can know him. In Sunday School our children learn the bible and therefore they learn to know God. The same thing happens in Bible Study. As you learn God's Word, the better you learn, the greater the blessing.
Our text from Hebrews talks about the kingdom that is unshakable. It says, “Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe.” God's Kingdom is untouchable. It cannot be destroyed. For those who are a part of this kingdom they too are untouchable and indestructible. This Kingdom is ours. God gives it to us in his Holy Word. God's Word, reading and studying it and knowing it and believing it prepares us for that day when God, who our text refers to as “a consuming fire” will come with judgment. He will come, and he will destroy the things that are made, that is he will destroy this creation. But! Being solidly grounded in faith and in the Word of God preserves us in that kingdom that cannot be destroyed.
That is good news. It is good news for the future as we wait for the resurrection of the dead. But it is also good news for today. Today we are blessed to have the promises of God that do not fail that keep us safe during our day to day living, God's promises give me hope for today, right now, for what I am dealing with this month, this week or this hour. God's Word gives us hope as we deal with our struggles.
Our Struggle with Sin
Our text begins by saying, “In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.” It refers to our struggles as being struggles with sin. There are lots of different things that people struggle with. We don't always think of them as being struggles with sin.
For example, This past week I was asked to visit a young girl named Claire who had just graduated from college and was preparing to begin an advanced study program. Claire was in the hospital because she at 23 and otherwise healthy had suffered a stroke. We might not think of this as being a struggle with sin, yet it is. Every struggle that we might encounter -whether it be with your health, with some person or relationship, whether it be with stress or work or whether it be with the weakness of your sinful flesh, every struggle is a struggle with sin because every struggle is the result of sin. If there were no sin in the world there would be no strokes, no stress, no arguments, no belligerent or unreasonable people, there would be no occasion for struggle. Whether you are responsible for them or not, whether you bear some responsibility or guilt in their existence or not, All of those things are the result of sin.
And what is more, all of these things provide you with opportunity for temptation. You might be tempted to be angry with God for allowing something like this to happen. You might be tempted to be bitter. You might be tempted to try to seek revenge against the person you feel has wronged you. Your struggle is likely to become a struggle against your own sinful flesh and the temptation to sin.
God's Purpose for our Struggle
1. God Allows us to struggle. As much as we might not like our struggle and as much as we might wish that we could be without, our struggle actually is for us a blessing. In fact, our text reveals for us a remarkable (and also a somewhat surprising) truth. God allows us to be tempted. He has the power to stop temptation. He has the power to keep Satan far away. He could reduce these temptations to sin to an absolute minimum. You might wonder Why God would do that?”
Those of you who keep livestock know that you have to protect them against predators. If you have sheep, you look for ways to keep them safe from the coyotes. If you were in bed some night and you heard coyotes around your property, you might go out with a rifle to scare them away or even shoot them if you are able. Your would want to keep the predators away from your livestock because you want to be certain that they are safe and not disturbed. This is what makes sense to us. Why then would God allow the coyotes into the sheep pen? Why would God allow the devil and his evil angels to opportunity to disturb or harm us?
2. God uses our struggle to discipline us.
Our text gives us the answer – God allows us to be tempted and to struggle with sin, to struggle with the devil and his temptations because he wants to discipline us. Our text quotes proverbs chapter 3. “My Son do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord Disciplines those he loves and chastises every son whom he receives.” God allows us to be bothered by sin because he uses this testing to teach us and to chastise us. To remove sin from us so that we can grow in our faith and in our love for him. God allows these temptation to come because through them he provides for us a great spiritual benefit.
The devils role in our discipline.
One aspect of the struggle with sin and temptation that is amazing is that our struggle against temptation and suffering and even the devil himself can work out to be a great blessing. In this regard the devil and the world actually become God's servants. The Devil and all his slaves in the world who hate God and work their hardest to destroy what God loves actually serve God and help Him to accomplish His Holy Will as they go about tempting and testing Christians.
Christians are sinful people. Christians, even though they are redeemed by God and holy are sinners. Even though our spirits are made alive through faith and through Baptism our flesh is dead in sin and will remain dead until the day of the resurrection. We know this but we have short memories. We forget that we are sinners we forget that we so desperately need to be forgiven of our sin. We forget that we need to keep up the fight against our sinful flesh.
This spiritual amnesia can strike any one of us at any time. A retired pastor, yes, a pastor, told a friend of mine that he used to struggle with sin when he was younger man. But as he grew older he didn't have much of a problem with it. My friends pastor was struggling with spiritual amnesia. He had forgotten that he was a sinner, he had forgotten that his sinful flesh was still hanging on and sticking to him.
The blessing of Discipline
God our good and loving and gracious father wants to help us remember how pitiful and pathetic we are. He wants us to remember that we can do nothing about our sinful hearts and minds and bodies. So God in his love for us allows the Devil to unwittingly wage his war of temptation against us. He lays his best traps. He constructs his craftiest lies. And he places them in front of us to lure us into temptation. We in our foolishness stumble right into the trap time and time again. We struggle against it. We fight. We battle our hardest to keep the devil and our own sinful flesh at bay. We feel like we are going to be overcome, like the battle is more than we can handle.
And guess what has just happened. The devil, God's fiercest and most bitter enemy has just reminded you of your weakness. He has just reminded you of how much you need God. He has just driven you back to God. He has driven you to church, back to the place where God has promised to strengthen you in your fight with sin. Back to the place where God has promised to clean you from the filth that has stained during the battle. He has driven you back into the bible, so that you can draw strength during those times of struggle. The enemy has unwittingly acted as the servant of the one he most despises.
And what of those times that we actually give in? What happens when we realize that we have fallen into the trap and and lazily allowed ourselves to be taken? We repent. Yes! Immediately we repent and turn from the sin. We begin to struggle and fight and kick so that we will not be taken.
But even then we look to Jesus. Because while we have acted in our own best interest, while the pain and frustration of the fight has not been worth it to us, while we have looked to please our own skin rather than risk shedding our blood we thank God that he sent Jesus for us.
While our struggling has at times been painful and uncomfortable, while it has at times gotten the better of us, we are not dead yet. And thanks to Jesus we know that we never will be. Thanks to Jesus, who did shed his blood. Who was overcome. Who was killed and destroyed, our sin is forgiven. Jesus washes every sin away. And Jesus makes us clean.
The hope of the Unshakable Kingdom
As we struggle in our lives, the struggle can be intense and it can be frustrating. It can be stressful. But God gives to us hope. That while we struggle against these temptations they are struggles against things that are temporary. They are struggles against things that won't last. There is no struggle in this world that will last beyond this life. It doesn't matter what it is.
As we have been discussing things that people struggle with this morning, perhaps something has come into your mind that you struggle with. Something that is troubling for you that leads you into sin and temptation. Maybe it drags you down and overwhelms you. Maybe it there are times that it consumes you and is all that you can think about. Maybe you find yourself praying that God would just take it away because your life would be so much better and easier without it.
Maybe instead of worrying about it so much you should instead be grateful for it. Pray that God would give you his grace to help you endure it. Pray that God would keep you from being overcome by it. Trust that God has done and will do exactly what you have prayed for. And then, and this is hard, pray to God a prayer of thanksgiving. Thank God that he loved you enough to allow you to struggle. Thank God that he has blessed you with this thorn in the flesh. Thank God that he has not allowed you to be deceived by the illusion of your own strength. Thank God that he has reminded you of your weakness. Remember. This world is characterized by its weakness. Everything is temporary. Everything has its expiration date. Everything will come to an end. It will all one day burn up and be no more than a pile of ash. But not you. You have the promise of a kingdom that is unshakable and indestructible. You have the hope that because of the word of God you will live forever. You will not be overcome. You will not be overwhelmed. You will not be destroyed.
Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, [13] and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed.
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