Not a Hair on Your Head will Perish

Title: Not a Hair on Your Head will Perish By Pastor Lohn Johnson
Text:   Luke 21: 17 All men will hate you because of me. 18 But not a hair of your head will perish. 19 By standing firm you will gain life…. 27 At that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. 28 When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near."    INTRODUCTION: My dear friends in Christ, The family heard the tornado warning on the radio.  They went out on the front porch and looked at the sky. And then they saw it: a funnel cloud swaying along the ground like a hungry elephant's trunk sucking up everything in its path.   They made a run for it -- the father, the mother and two small children. They lay flat in a nearby ditch. They heard the roar of a freight train, which is the characteristic sound of a tornado. The rain came down in torrents. Small tree limbs rained down upon them. Then they heard a loud crashing noise as if something big was being torn apart.   In what seemed like an eternity, but was only a few minutes, the storm passed, the wind died down, the rain stopped, the sky began to clear, and an eerie silence settled around the huddled family. Slowly they climbed out of the ditch. They were shaken and soaking wet but, thankfully none of them was hurt.     "Where is the house?" six-year-old Amy asked. In place of the house there was a desolate empty space against the sky. All the family could see was a pile of bricks with not one brick left upon another. Wooden beams were piled helter-skelter like so many oversized matchsticks.   "It is nothing but a pile of rubble," mumbled the father. The family huddled together, hugged each other and cried.   "Where are we going to live? Where is all our stuff? This makes no sense," shrieked ten-year-old Andy.   Nobody offered an answer. Slowly they moved toward the wreckage of their home.  For a while they simply stood there. They had no words.   Then Amy cried out, "Where is Kitty Cat? I've got to find Kitty Cat!" Amy began to pick up small pieces of debris. She turned over broken boards. All the while she called, "Kitty Cat! Kitty Cat! Come here, Kitty Cat." Her mother watched sadly and thought to herself, "She will never find that cat. It is either crushed under all this rubble, or it has been blown away over the fields. Amy loved that cat. She will be devastated."   Just then Amy heard the faintest little mewing sound coming from among the rubble. "Kitty Cat! Kitty Cat! Where are you? Where are you?" Kitty Cat, wet and bedraggled, came struggling from under a broken board which was resting on some bricks. The board and the bricks had formed a little shelter which protected the kitten from being crushed or blown away. Amy was ecstatic. She picked up the dripping kitten and cradled her in her arms. Amy's tears turned to joy. For her there was good news among the rubble. A living being which she prized had survived the destruction of a terrible disaster.   The entire family shared Amy's joy. In fact, the father suggested: "Why don't we give that cat a real name? Why don't we call her 'Hope'?"
I. Rubble in abundance comes to mind as we listen to the words of Jesus from our text. And yet here among this rubble is “hope” even more so, than for that family.
A. Jesus was walking around the temple courts during what we call “Holy Week,” the week leading up to His death.
1. The temple was undergoing an extensive renovation under King Herod who was trying to curry the favor of the Jews, seeing as he wasn’t one of them but wanted to be their king.
a. The temple that had been built after the return from exile was built on a bit of a shoestring budget, you know how renovation projects can be, and so Herod was throwing a bunch of money at the temple to bring it up to Solomon’s specs, hoping the people would love him for it.
2. Remember that the temple was the national and religious center of Israel.
	a. It was the place where the glory of God had formerly dwelt. It once held the ark of the covenant with its mercy seat. It still was a place of sacrifice, though the sacrifices had become mechanical transactions. The temple was still the center of Israel’s religious life, it’s history, it’s dreams, hopes, expectations.   b. When Messiah comes, he will restore the temple, they thought. And Jesus says, “the days of this temple are numbered.” That’s a bit like saying the word “bomb” in a TSA line in the airport. It could get you crucified.
B.. But it happened just as Jesus said. The end of the temple was signaled on that upcoming Friday, when the curtain was torn in two from top to bottom as Jesus died. The time of the temple was over.
1. On that Friday Jesus is crushed under the rubble of our sin, a little like that kitten.  And on the third day He emerged from the rubble the new temple of God.
a. From that point on, God was to be approached through the death of His Son. No longer a building, now a body. No longer through the blood of bulls and goats, but now through the blood of His Son.
b. It took nearly forty years for God to dispose of the temple at the hands of the Roman army, but that’s how God works. He’s in no hurry; when God has spoken, it’s already done.
2. In a very real sense, all the events of the end have already happened on that one, dark death on a Friday afternoon when the Son of God in the flesh hung on a cross and cried “It is finished.”
a. There the world is judged and condemned by God under the Law for our sin. There the world is saved, atoned for, redeemed, reconciled to God.   b. So as you go about your days in these last of days,  remember that the One who comes in the clouds with power and glory is the same One who came by a virgin Mother and a manger and a cross to save you.
II.  Do you get the impression that end times living is not exactly a bed of roses? You’ve got it right then! The fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple are a picture, a type, a pattern, for the end of all things on the Last Day.  Jesus prepares His disciples for hardship and persecution. Don’t expect things to get better, just because the Son of God became flesh and dwelt among us. Things will get worse –End times living is not easy. Jesus never said it was. This universe is tumbling toward its death, and the death throes are never pleasant.
A. But we are in God’s protective ark, the Church, made not with human hands but by the hand of God Himself. Not being built from the earth, but coming down from heaven.
1. It occurred to me as I reflected on Jesus’ description of the final judgment, that in a sense, the Second Coming has already occurred.
a. Not the Final Coming, mind you, but a Second Coming where Christ identifies himself with His Church on earth.   b. I repeat, in a sense Christ has returned already, and he is now exactly where he spent his life — among those who need him the most. He is here among His people in Word and Sacraments to give out His blessings of forgiveness and life.
2. And so, when you see the signs of the end, this distress and darkness and destruction that mark the last days and foreshadow the Last Day, then “straighten up, lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
a. Notice that. Your redemption is drawing near. Not your destruction. Not your demise. Not your death. Your redemption.   b. He’s already gone down that Last Day road ahead of us, through the darkness, through the death, through the persecution and destruction. And He has come out alive, risen from the dead, glorified. And you, baptized into His death, are alive and glorified already in Him.
B. Although Jesus paints a stark picture of what the road to “the end” looks like, he did so not to stir up worry in his people but to do the exact opposite (Luke 21:9).
1. He told us the truth of what was coming so we could have peace.
a. It’s the kind of peace a child has when his father warns him ahead of time that thunder is coming or that the road is getting bumpy.   b. It’s the kind of peace that says to your soul, “Even though you have to endure, you’re going to get through it.”   c. It’s the kind of peace produced by the fact that when trouble does arrive, it proves only that Jesus is surprised by nothing and therefore capable of everything.
2. Finally, Jesus urges us to live with a constant focus on how this story will end. Admittedly, all of this is easier said than done.
a. So in His strength He calls us to live with our hearts and minds anchored in the fact that in the end, no matter what happens, we will be okay.   b. Sure, the things might get scary, but when all is said and done his people win, because He won. And in a way Jesus spoils the ending -- well, not really -- by promising that, "not a hair of your head will perish.”
CONCLUSION:   Maybe we can summarize what our end times attitude should be with this story: A man named John Wilson writes about his father‑in‑law. He says his father-in-law was a lifelong Bible teacher. However, his father-in-law found his faith troubled in his final years. A degenerative nerve disease confined him to bed, impeding him from most of the activities that gave him pleasure. Meanwhile, his thirty-nine‑year‑old daughter was battling a severe form of diabetes. Financial pressures mounted. During the most severe crisis, his father-in-law composed a Christmas letter and mailed it to others in the family. Many things that he had once taught, he now felt uneasy about. What could he believe with certainty? He came up with these three things. These were the three things he believed regardless of what life may send his way: “Life is difficult. God is merciful. Heaven is sure.” These things he could count on. “Life is difficult. God is merciful. Heaven is sure.” When his daughter died the very next week after mailing his letter, he clung to those truths ever more fiercely.   What he was saying was that though life sometimes gets tough, ultimately, not a hair on our head will perish. We are in God’s hands. He will not let us fall.

All Saints Day – What does “blessed” mean?

Title: All Saints Day – What does “blessed” mean? By Pastor Lohn Johnson
Text:  Revelation 14:13  13 And I heard a voice from heaven saying, "Write this: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on." "Blessed indeed," says the Spirit, "that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them!"   INTRODUCTION: My dear Friends in Christ, Some of you may remember years ago when the irreverent British satirist known as Monty Python produced a movie called Life of Brian. One thesis of the movie was “what would happen if some of Jesus’ teachings had been mis-heard?” [Video: There is a scene which begins with Jesus on a high rock surrounded. We hear his words loud and clear: Jesus says: “How blest are the sorrowful, for they shall find consolation. How blest are those of gentle spirit. They shall have the earth for their possession. How blest are those who hunger and thirst to see right prevail. They shall be satisfied . . .” Then the camera pulls back to the back of the multitude which is a long way off. An old woman shouts: “Speak up!” Her son tries to shush her. But she protests. “Well, I can’t hear a thing! Blessed are the what?” Another man tries to help: “I think it was “Blessed are the cheese-makers.” And the old woman asks, “What’s so special about the cheese-makers?” Another man interjects, “Well, obviously it’s not meant to be taken literally; it refers to any manufacturers of dairy products.” The Life of Brian portrays Jesus as a sincere teacher and leader, but it is the listeners who get it all wrong and they quarrel and squabble all through his sermon. That is often the case, is it not? The problem is not in the teaching. The problem lies in us as we try to understand and apply Christ’s teachings.
I. Case in point is the word “blessed.”
	A. When we say blessed, we usually think happy, healthy, wealthy, fortunate as we “count our blessings” and consider how “blessed we are.”
			1. When Jesus says, “Blessed.” It certainly doesn’t seem like the world’s idea of “blessed,” does it?  He uses words like: Poor, mourning, meek, hungry, thirsty, merciful, pure hearted, peacemaking, persecuted, none of them seem blessed to us.
				a. Where’s the Bentley, the vacation home, the Jacuzzi, the party life, the glamour, the celebrity?   b. But Jesus is describing God’s way of blessing – back-handed, upside-down, inside out, opposite, hidden. To be blessed from God’s perspective, is to be on the privileged receiving end of God’s good stuff. So God’s idea of being blessed is to recognize an existing state of happiness or good fortune that comes from Him.
			2. So from God’s perspective you are Blessed.
					a. You are blessed even when others revile you, make fun of you, kick you, exclude you, insult you, slander you.  Maybe you will feel a little like this: [Video]   b. But unlike our clip, it’s not you they are insulting, it’s Christ. And that’s cause for rejoicing, because you and Christ are one. Your trust will be vindicated.
	B. When Jesus stood on the mountain to teach His disciples, He was preparing them for the realities of living in the in-between time of the now and the not yet. When he pronounced His blessings over His disciples, they are all tied up in the now but He was looking toward blessings that have not yet come totally into fruition.
			1. The same is true of us. We are “blessed.” But we too are caught in the now.  Some aspects of our “blessings” have not come totally come to fruition yet.  Trouble that does not seem like a blessing still comes to us.
				a. You will be blessed. That is sure. But that blessing will come hidden in, with, and under trouble for now. b. Just as Christ appears in this world weak and crucified, so His church appears in this world as weak, persecuted, deluded losers.
			2. Don’t expect this life to be easy. Don’t expect a divine bailout for your problems. Don’t expect a miracle lurking around every corner.
				a. Expect to feel your spiritual poverty, expect to mourn, expect to be treated like a doormat by this world, expect to be persecuted in response to your mercy and peacemaking and purity of heart.   b. They don’t give Nobel Prizes for being a disciple of Jesus.  Expect trouble, now. In fact, be suspicious when things are going peaceful and well.
II.   But we have to understand one more thing about being “blessed.” Because to get the idea of “blessed” right you have to get Jesus right.
		A.. He alone embodies all the aspects of being “blessed” in Himself.
			1. You don’t, nor do I. We are anything but meek, merciful, pure hearted peacemakers. Not by nature. Not in ourselves.   2. Christ alone is all of this. He embodies these beatitudes perfectly.
				a. He is poor in spirit. Though rich, He became poor so that by His poverty you are rich. He mourns, weeping over our sin, our rejection, our death, as He wept over Jerusalem, and in His mourning we find our comfort and joy. He hungers and thirsts for our righteousness, and out of His hunger, we are fed. He is merciful, pure-hearted, peacemaking, showing mercy by laying down His life for the world, making peace by His blood. And now He offers His pure life as the sacrifice for our sin. He is the persecuted One, falsely accused, falsely convicted, yet in His conviction we are acquitted, justified, declared righteous before God.   b. Jesus extends the beatitudes to His own death, and by being baptized and believing in Him the beatitudes become yours as well. You are “blessed” to the fullest extent of that word in Jesus, and only as you understand that and cling to that, do you understand what it means to be “blessed.” From this we now know that we are “blessed” even more than the girl in this clip: [or Video]  In Christ we are more blessed than royalty.
	B. And Jesus doing the beatitudes brings us to the beatitude from Revelation, our text. “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord henceforth.” Yes, you heard it correctly. Blessed are the dead. And not simply any dead, because all indeed do die. But blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. The Lord Jesus has gone the way ahead of them. He has gone to death and the grave, and those who follow Him, trusting Him, are called blessed in their death.
			1. The wages of sin is death; make no mistake about it.
				a. Death is the intrinsic consequence of sin. We die because of sin. There is nothing “blessed” about death itself.   b. But Jesus has done something remarkable with Death. Christ has conquered. Christ has gone into death and became Death’s undoing. Like a fish swallowing a baited hook, Death swallowed up Jesus on the cross, but Jesus turned out to have the upper hand over Death and swallowed it up in victory. Like the great fish that swallowed up Jonah and held him for three days, the Death could not hold Jesus but had to spit Him out alive.
			2. You might say we Christians have a blessed monopoly on the whole business of death and resurrection.
				a. Jesus Christ is the only One to have died and risen from the dead. Moses and Abraham died; they didn’t rise. Gautama Buddha died at the age of 80; he didn’t rise. Mohammed died in 632; he didn’t rise, but Jesus died on a cross and three days later appeared risen from the dead! That’s why we believe in the “resurrection of the body,” because Jesus rose bodily from HIs grave and promised to raise us up from ours on the Last Day when it all comes to its completion.   b. It’s because of the death and resurrection of Jesus that we can use words like “precious” and “blessed” in reference to our own death and the death of all baptized believers. Blessed are those who die in the Lord. It’s not just any death, but “in the Lord.” Those who are united in baptismal faith with Jesus’ death; who have been buried with Him are blessed even in death.  Your death is precious and blessed to God. Not because of you, but because of Jesus. And not because of your works. That’s what it means to be justified by grace through faith.
III. The Spirit says those who die in the Lord rest from their labors. The blessing has come into total fruition.  Their work is done, but their works are not forgotten.
	A. Their deeds do follow them. Take note. The deeds of blessed dead “follow them.”
			1. They don’t precede them, as though they needed their works to get into heaven. That would not be the way of the “poor in spirit.” Instead, their deeds follow them like the long train of a bride in her gown.   2. In that train are found all the works that God had done through them, all the fruit the Spirit bore in them, all the good that Jesus worked as fruitful branches joined to Him.  These follow them in all their shining glory.
	B. In the reading from the Revelation, John is privileged to see the heaven side of things.
			1. He does not see the suffering that we see, but the glory, the triumph, the life that is ours in Jesus. He sees a great multitude, a crowd no one can number, what we refer to as “all the company of heaven.”   2. They are wearing robes washed white in the blood of the Lamb.
				a. They are baptized in blood and wear their baptismal robes as their righteousness before God.   b. As we remember the names of our faithful departed, and remember also those we love who have died in the Lord, bring this image of the Revelation to mind. They are there in that multitude.  Their “blessing” has come to total fruition.
CONCLUSION:  Maybe it will reinforce the real idea of blessing we have in Christ from the perspective of this story: In the church of St. Nicholas in Amsterdam, Holland, there is a wonderful chime of bells.  If you go into the tower of the church, you will see a man with wooden gloves on his hands pounding on a keyboard.  As you listen, you hear nothing but the clanging of the keys and the harsh, deafening noise of the bells over your head.  From that position the bells seem to have no harmony or meaning whatever.  But if you were standing out on the street a few blocks away, you would be entranced by the beautiful harmony of the bells.  So it is with looking at being “blessed.”  So often the way God sees being “blessed” seems less than what we would expect.  But from the perspective of Christ and heaven we see the perfect blessing; we see the beautiful music.  Then we will see the “blessing” without the trouble. Amen.