Sunday Sermon (11/13/2022): Breathe in Jesus’ Promises
This is a sermon preached at Our Savior Lutheran Church on 11/13/2022. It is based on Luke 21:5-19, and the theme is Breathe in Jesus’ Promises. Enjoy!
Luke 21:5-19.
5 Some of his disciples were remarking about how the temple was adorned with beautiful stones and with gifts dedicated to God. But Jesus said, 6 “As for what you see here, the time will come when not one stone will be left on another; every one of them will be thrown down.”
7 “Teacher,” they asked, “when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are about to take place?”
8 He replied: “Watch out that you are not deceived. For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am he,’ and, ‘The time is near.’ Do not follow them. 9 When you hear of wars and uprisings, do not be frightened. These things must happen first, but the end will not come right away.”
10 Then he said to them: “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. 11 There will be great earthquakes, famines and pestilences in various places, and fearful events and great signs from heaven.
12 “But before all this, they will seize you and persecute you. They will hand you over to synagogues and put you in prison, and you will be brought before kings and governors, and all on account of my name. 13 And so you will bear testimony to me. 14 But make up your mind not to worry beforehand how you will defend yourselves. 15 For I will give you words and wisdom that none of your adversaries will be able to resist or contradict. 16 You will be betrayed even by parents, brothers and sisters, relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death. 17 Everyone will hate you because of me. 18 But not a hair of your head will perish. 19 Stand firm, and you will win life.
Breathe in Jesus’ promises!
Do you like looking at expensive houses? I mean like mansions? It’s kind of fun, isn’t it? You can marvel at the grandeur, the beauty, the expensiveness of such houses. That’s where we see our disciples today. They marveled at the temple in Jerusalem, the highlight of the city. It covered an area of 15 football fields, the wall was 15 stories high at one point, it had all these marvelous gems and stones, it was decorated with beautiful artwork. Then Jesus says, “This temple will soon be completely destroyed.” That sounded absurd to the disciples. The temple was the center of their culture and religion. It’s like saying to an American, “Hey, in a couple years the White house and Pentagon will be completely leveled by another country.” That would never happen… right?
You know, there is a lot in our lives to marvel at, isn’t there? We are blessed in so many ways: the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the houses that shelter us, the family we live with, the country we live in…. Jesus says here, all these things might not be there in a couple of years. Everything we know and are comfortable with could be gone. Jesus himself promises that here, and history itself proves how quickly prosperous countries and comfortable lives can fall apart.
Isn’t that odd? Shouldn’t believers be safe and protected from evil? We’re God’s children!? But Jesus gives us a whole lost of things that WILL happen, and these are more real than we might at first imagine.
8) False Messiahs will come, and not JUST individuals who claim to be Jesus. Whom do we trust for security and hope? As I write this sermon, the mid-term election is happening. It was Tuesday. I know there are people all over America who are so worked up over it. They are convinced if THEIR choice is elected, it’ll all be good. If THEIR choice isn’t elected, the sky will fall. So many things become false Messiahs for us, including politicians, when we trust in them for comfort.
9-11) This war between Russian and Ukraine? I don’t know how it’ll end. But I can GAURANTEE you that it is not the last war. Unless Jesus comes first, we will continue to see bloodshed, war, plagues, famine, pestilence. We got off pretty easy with Covid. About 1% of everyone who got it died. If something like the black plague happened, it’d be a 50% death rate. That very well might happen.
12 – Persecution will come. This is one of the bloodiest centuries for our world, Christians are killed every day in places like Afghanistan, Somalia, and Libya. But persecution come in ways we don’t even realize. “I will kill you if you believe in Jesus” has proven to be pretty ineffective, actually. Do you know what’s better? A lifestyle that puts God as #2, #3, or #4 in our life. A culture that doesn’t seek to kill Christians, put distract them from Jesus Christ.
16-17 – Then we come to the last of Jesus’ warnings in our reading, these are the most horrible of all: everyone will hate you. Imagine a life where every single person hates you, you have no friends, neighbors, allies, or people to rely on. Then, in the face of all this reckless hate, these wars and disasters… even our own family might betray us and kill us. And we are kind of seeing that in America, aren’t we? There is so much division and hate amongst people, and it only seems to be growing.
Wow, what is this world coming to? I’m not surprised that the rates of anxiety and depression seem to be rising. All we hear about these days is war, plagues, hate, killing, news raises our blood pressure. THEN we flip open the bible and expect to find some kind of comfort or assurance from Jesus, and all he tells us is this?!? “Yup, you’re right, life is pretty awful, and it’s only going to get worse. False Messiah, wars, plagues, killing, persecution, hate, and betrayal from your own family. It’s all coming!” If can be easy to see all this bad news, all these signs of the end times, and start hyperventilating, at least mentally. Not able to catch a breath, not able to calm down, not able to be still.
If you give someone the advice, “Just calm down,” it usually doesn’t help. “Just calm down, stop whining, just relax.” That’s not really the best advice. Do you know what’s better: Breathe. Having someone in trouble stop to take long, deep breathes. It stills the heart, relaxes the body, and calms the mind down.
In our reading, after telling us how it WILL be for us, Jesus gives us some really good help: breathe. “In all this trouble,” he says, “Not a single hair on your head will be hurt.” Breathe, Jesus says, breath in his promise. All these things, like wars, plagues, persecutions, hatred, will never truly harm us, can’t even destroy a single hair on our head. How is this possible? Jesus spoke these words, and a few days later he died on the cross, then he rose from the dead to life everlasting. Breathe in Jesus’ promise. On the cross, our sins were taken away, our guilt was paid for, the blood that Jesus shed on the cross makes us holy in God’s sight. Breathe in that promise: not a single hair on our heads will perish. We have eternal life.
So, breathe, and stand firm in that promise of life. This world of hate, suffering, even betrayal by those closest to us, will last only a short while. We have eternal life, paradise, and heaven waiting for us. Jesus doesn’t call us to fight, to go change the world, he doesn’t command us to some great and noble calling. He calls us to stand firm, to breathe in the promise of eternal life.
In Malachi chapter 4, there is this wonderful picture of what heaven, what judgment day will be like for believers, those who “revere God’s name.” “But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its rays. And you will go out and frolic like well-fed calves.” Have you ever seen a calf that enjoys the first rays of the sun’s warmth in the spring? They frolic, they jump around, the have the time of their lives. It’s a picture of absolute joy. That is the joy of heaven, that is what God promises to us. So breathe in this promise of God: not a single hair on your head will be burnt, you will have life.
But it is hard to stand firm, to breathe in these promises. And the biggest problem comes from our sinful hearts. I wondered, as I read this text, why does Jesus promise so much hate and betrayal from our friends and families? What causes such loathing? Christianity is a message of compassion, forgiveness, and humility… I think what causes such hate is one of the central points of Christianity: our teaching about sin. Christianity teaches that we are by nature sinful we can’t do anything to save ourselves, that this sinful world is doomed, and that we need a savior. People don’t like that. WE don’t like that. We love to rely on ourselves, and any message that points out our weakness or shortcomings to ignore or reject. So we preach and live a message of sin, people don’t like that. it causes them to hate us. It causes them to ignore and reject the message of life and forgiveness that we also teach.
The very thing our sinful hearts loathe… the very thing that causes so much hate… is also our source of biggest comfort. We are failures. WE can’t do it on our own. We can’t stop this world of sin from destroying itself, we can help those who are caught in it, but we can’t stop sin. And that’s ok. We have Jesus. He died for our sins, he rescues us from hell and Stan, he promises that no matter what we face in this world, not a single hair on our heads will be hurt, because we have eternal life. All he says is stand firm and breathe. Breathe in all the promises of Christ. Let your heart be still, let your body relax, calm your mind, and breathe.
