Rebukes
Grace to you and peace from God our
Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
God is not like
us. He does not submit to our ideas. His ways are not our ways. His thoughts
are not our thoughts. We live by faith, not by knowledge or understanding.
Unlike every other man, Jesus never considers appearances. He really doesn’t
care what people think. He is His own man in a way no one else can be. And
whatever He does, whether we understand it or not, it is the right thing.
Such an idea
requires faith, because Jesus doesn’t seem to us to be doing the right thing.
He seems to be sleeping. He seems to be ignoring us. Wars and disease, hatred
and greed, bigotry and addiction: these things don’t seem right. We are plagued
with crime and poverty. Families are falling apart. Babies are murdered in
their mothers’ wombs. American soldiers die in foreign lands. The government
lies. Children cheat. Schools can’t be trusted. Friends betray us. Pastors
preach false doctrine. And then, as if we weren’t already our own worst
enemies, nature herself comes swooping down on us in hurricanes and tsunamis,
in killing frigid temperatures, in ice and snow. And all our efforts against
them—our little programs with grief and debt and pregnancy and marriage
counselors, our engineering feats and government money—all seem of little
effect against the evil that lurks in the hearts of men and the brutal effects
of nature. Yet we put our trust in these false gods of flesh and concrete.
Repent. Your
answer doesn’t lie in engineered wonders or human ingenuity, in a beautiful
home or a perfect meal, not even in happy, healthy, well-adjusted children. You
won’t find salvation in human love. Spouses and children disappoint as surely
as parents and siblings, as surely as we disappoint ourselves. Repent. Stick to
your prayers. Submit in faith to the goodness of God. Be still and wait for the
Lord. Your deliverance will be revealed in time. The storms will cease. Jesus
is with you.
And what if He
rebukes you for your panic, for your desire for safety, for your desperate
little faith that thinks it is perishing? Thanks be to God! Thanks be to God
that you still have a smoldering wick of faith. Thanks be to God that you know
where to go, that you seek salvation in our Lord. Thank God that you are
weak, for it is then that you are strong. He will not let you become dependent on
your works. He will purify you with His holy rebuke; He will not let you ride
out the storm in false confidence. He will hold you close to Him. Be rebuked
again and again. Be broken by His Law. He uses these things to empty you of
yourself and fill you with His love. He breaks you to mend you. He kills you to
revive you. For His sake we are killed all day long. We are counted as sheep
for the slaughter. And His thoughts are not our thoughts. If we stop feeling
the Law, we lose the Gospel. First comes the rebuke; then comes the calming of
the storm. First comes the cross; then comes the glory.
Are we of little
faith, O Lord? Indeed. We are unworthy in every way. But He is our God. He puts
His name upon us. He delivers us from these present evils, for He has died
bearing our sins. We have no boast, no claim of our own upon His mercy. But we
have His Word and Promise. We have His name. We have His body and blood. That
is enough. He calms the storms—even the storms within us: the fear, the
heartbreak, the despair. He leads us to call upon Him in prayer. He gives us
the faith we lack. He saves us. In the name of the Father and of the Son (+)
and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The
peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in
Christ Jesus always. Amen.
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