Overcome Evil with Good

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A Christian friend shared this story from his life. He was driving across town and irritated another driver on the roadway. That driver accelerated past him, yelled some choice words, made an obscene gesture, and sped on by. Not long after, the Christian man saw that same car stopped on the shoulder with car trouble.

What would you have done if that sequence of events happened to you? Would you have laughed at the other driver’s misfortune? Would you have said a prayer or even stopped to help?

Throughout our lives, people are going to say and do evil things that will cause us pain and hardship. Our sinful hearts will want to avenge these wrongs. Our sinful hearts will think that the best way to overcome evil is with evil. God tells us in his Word: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21).

This is only possible through a good God who alone can deliver us from evil and who has overcome the evil of our sin. This is only possible with a God of peace whose forgiveness allows us to live at peace with him and whose peace enables us, as far as it depends on us, to live at peace with everyone.

So, what did the Christian driver do? He stopped behind the other car. When the driver saw who had stopped, he feared that the man he had treated so poorly would now treat him poorly. But this Christian man hadn’t come to repay evil for evil. He came to offer help and assistance. He overcame evil with good. May our God equip us to do the same!

Romans 12:17-21
Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Blessing of Baptism

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Baptism…saves you—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a good conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. – 1 Peter 3:21

“Want a tough stain out?” That’s how the old commercial began. It ended by claiming a product that could get the job done. There are lots of sprays, foams, and cleaners that companies promise are the answer to our coffee, wine, and pet stain problems. But can any of those products deliver? If there actually was a stain remover guaranteed to deliver results as promised and was free…would you be interested?

God has one for you. He has provided a special “product” that has his faithful promise and almighty power behind it, and it is completely free. It’s not for coffee, wine, or pet stains, but for something far worse. It’s for guilt!

Guilt is what is left behind when we sin, and like an ugly stain it sticks in our hearts and minds. We want to get rid of it, but how? We can’t shout it out, even though guilt can make us angry and do lots of shouting. We can’t scrub it out, even if we try our hardest to clean up the messes we have made. So, what can get the tough stain of guilt out?

Baptism.

Baptism in a word that means to wash with water. God’s word together with water makes baptism a cleanser that God promises will bring results: “…not the removal of dirt…but the pledge of a good conscience toward God.” A guilty conscience comes from sin, and sin makes us unacceptable before our holy, sinless God. Baptism takes away our guilt because in baptism God connects us to Jesus and his work of salvation. In baptism God gives us the great gift of forgiveness through Jesus. His death was the payment for sin, and his resurrection is the guarantee that the stain of our sin has been removed. By our baptism God frees us from guilt. We are saved from the consequences of sin—death and damnation!

Think about your house with every single stain removed from your carpet and couch, and from your shirt and blouse. Even the toughest stains are eliminated. Baptism is a blessing of God that is much greater! Baptism is God’s amazing life-saving “product” to take out the stain of sin’s guilt from your heart. Jesus guarantees it.

Jesus - the ONLY way

The Way

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How do you get to heaven?

Are there many roads? Do they all lead to the same place?

Or are you just crossing your fingers, hoping you’re on the right one?

Jesus says there is only one road to heaven. “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

How arrogant! Arrogant?

You have a friend. Your friend asks you for directions to your home. Road construction has closed the normal routes. There is only one road which will bring your visitor to your house.

Is it arrogance to share the one open path with the one you love? You give your friend directions to the one open road because you don’t want your friend to be frustrated, confused, or lost.

Jesus doesn’t want you to be frustrated, confused, or lost. He doesn’t want you to live your life driving down a dead-end road. He doesn’t want you to live imagining that your good actions will be enough to earn life forever. God expects perfection, not a good try. Working hard to earn heaven by human action earns hell.

Jesus doesn’t want you to be frustrated, confused, or lost. He doesn’t want you to live imagining that anything calling itself “god” really is God. Any religion which denies that Jesus is true God is a false religion. It may be a road. The road leads not to heaven, but to hell.

Jesus loves you. He doesn’t want you to live imagining that all spiritual roads lead to the same place.

Only one road leads to heaven.

Arrogance? No. The ultimate in love. If there is only one way, we need to know it.

Jesus is the only way. Why? Because he is the only one who died to pay for your disobedience. Without Jesus, you will stand before God guilty. Without Jesus, you will stand before God afraid. Without Jesus, you will stand before God deserving punishment.

Covered by Jesus’ blood, you will stand before God innocent. Covered by Jesus’ blood, you will stand before God at peace. Covered by Jesus’ blood, you will stand before God certain of eternal reward.

Without Jesus’ blood, the road is a dead-end.

Through Jesus’ blood, the road leads straight to heaven.

“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Heaven Q&A Ask a Question

Truth

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Politics and religion. You just don’t talk about those things. With politics one can understand that perspective. It’s hard to know who’s telling the truth. So many have a reason to twist the truth.

With religion the devil wants you to think the same. That it’s so hard to know who’s telling the truth, because so many have a reason to twist the truth.

Have you wondered, “Maybe no one can ever know what is true?”

Or maybe you’ve become so frustrated with your search for truth in religion—all the different denominations—that you’ve concluded, “Well, maybe they’re pretty much the same, so it doesn’t matter.”

They’re not the same. And it does matter.

But still, how do you know what is true?

Jesus stood accused by powerful enemies of crimes he did not commit. Jesus stood before Pilate, a Roman governor. Jesus’ enemies said, “He claims to be a king,” suggesting that Jesus had designs on Caesar’s throne.

Pilate asks, “Are you a king?” Jesus answers, “My kingdom is not of this world.” Pilate says, “You are a king then!” Jesus answers, “You are right, [. . . and] everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”

You might imagine Pilate thinking, “That’s the problem, right there. You want me to listen to you, and your enemies want me to listen to them. How do I know who’s right?”

Frustration.

“What is truth?” Pilate asks.

Sometimes when we hear lies spoken to us again and again, we begin to wonder if there is anything true. We feel lost. We drift. We become afraid.

Frustrated. Like Pilate. He concluded, “Maybe no one can ever know what is true.”

Rejoice. Pilate’s frustration did not make Jesus’ words less true. Pilate’s frustration did not make the lies of Jesus’ enemies more true.

My friends, there is truth. Jesus’ words are always true.

It’s easy to become frustrated when so many lies are being passed off as truth. You need not be Pilate. You need not throw up your hands and permit lies to convince you that there is no such thing as truth.

There is truth. Listen to Jesus: “Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”

Unselfish Love

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All power is mine. May I wash your feet, please?

Not what you’d expect from the richest, most famous, most powerful person in existence.

“All power is mine. May I wash your feet, please?”

That’s servant work. We expect the wealthy and influential to hire ordinary people to wash cars, mow lawns, scrub bathrooms.

Yet the most powerful, Jesus, offers to wash feet. We shake our heads in confusion. Why?

Unless, of course, serving others is the ultimate honor.

Our human nature would disagree. We aim high, grasp for power, seek influence so that others can serve us. How can I get ahead? How can you help me? Our eyes so naturally see others as opportunities to exploit.

Our human nature is selfish. It thinks first about me. Though God says, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind.” Though God says, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Selfish. God punishes selfish people. Forever.

We rightly are afraid.

To the disobedient who recognize the justice of divine punishment, the Lord invites, “Watch Jesus washing the feet of his friends.”

Why did Jesus, most powerful, so humble himself? He did this in our place. We do not perfectly love our neighbor. We deserve eternal pain. God loved us and sent his son Jesus to love perfectly in our place.

To see Jesus washing the feet of his friends is to know that he did this as our substitute. Jesus, the Creator of heaven and earth, washes dirty toes and then tells us that as many as are baptized in the name of Jesus have been clothed in the perfect life of Jesus. You get credit for his perfect love.

Jesus didn’t stop with foot washing. Later in the week, he gave up his own life for his friends, you and me. He suffered the eternal hell we deserved. God put our sin on Jesus and treated him like he should have treated us so that in Jesus we are washed clean of all disobedience and made perfect in God’s eyes.

What love!

Why should a great God love sinners like us? I don’t know, but he did. The greatest served the least.

This is now your privilege. Serving others is the greatest honor that exists.

Let us love, as he loved us.

May I wash your feet, please?

Seen a Great Light - Jesus

Jesus is Light

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The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned (Isaiah 9:2).

Light is certainly one of the most precious things in our world. Without it, we can’t do much of anything. The simplest tasks become all but impossible when darkness envelopes us instead of light.

A lack of light can also strike fear into our hearts and be quite dangerous. If you have ever tried navigating your way through complete darkness, you know this to be true. When you can’t even see your hand two inches in front of your face, it is impossible to walk with purpose and confidence. That is what life is like without Jesus.

Without Jesus there is no purpose in life. Every reason our world produces for our existence comes up empty in the end. Without the light of Jesus, we would be forced to stumble our way through life, bumping into blessings without knowing where they come from and tripping over trials and problems. As we stumble we would always have the terrifying understanding that death could be right around the corner.

Thank God for sending Jesus to be the Light that illuminates our lives. He gives us hope and purpose. He came to remove the darkness of sin by shedding his blood and scatter the shadow of death by rising from the grave. Since our sins have been paid for by his blood, we have the sure confidence that every one of our sins has been removed – even the ones that weigh us down with the most guilt. Since he rose from the grave we have the rock-solid guarantee that death is not the end for us. We too will rise with him to live eternally.

With Jesus lighting up our lives we can live with confidence and purpose. The confidence comes from knowing that nothing can change the fact that our sins have been washed away by his blood and our eternal life guaranteed by his resurrection. Our purpose now is to live every moment to his glory.

Christian Confidence

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“Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him.” – Jeremiah 17:7

I have a vivid memory from the first grade. I was an awkward, chubby kid. Each day, my only hope was to get through class, and get through recess, so that I could get home without anything too embarrassing happening. But unfortunately, time stopped the moment I had to read out loud in front of my classmates. I knew the words on the page, but my mind raced passed them, leaving no time for them to come out of my mouth. I must have sounded like an old CD player that just keeps skipping. Finally, my first grade teacher had had enough and she blurted out, “What’s wrong with you? Do you have a bone for a brain?”

After that, I would shut down when I was asked to read. That is, until my fourth grade teacher treated me differently. She gave me special reading assignments to do on my own. Then we met together, and she treated me as if I didn’t have a reading problem. In fact, she treated me as if I were a good reader who had good insights. And you know what? I actually became one. I got my confidence back because one teacher looked at me differently.

That is essentially what Jesus has done for us. We have stuttered our way through life, giving into our sinful desires. God has every right to call us what we are: spiritual screw-ups who deserve to be separated from him. But like my fourth grade teacher, God looks at us as if we were good people who do the right thing. He sees us this way because we are covered with Jesus’ love and forgiveness. As our substitute, Jesus was treated like a sinner on the cross, so now we are treated like a saint. The more we realize that God looks at us as good people through Jesus, the more we will start acting like it.

Relying on the Lord Jesus, we gain the confidence to face the circumstances and challenges of life. God patiently teaches us in his word, “Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him.” Faithfully supported by God who loves us dearly, we can face the events of life, no matter how demeaning or difficult they may be.

Love of Money

Money Trap

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Godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. (1 Timothy 6:6-10)

The secret to an effective trap is to keep your prey from seeing the menacing end that lies ahead. Instead of seeing a mouse trap that should scream DANGER, all the mouse sees is the piece of cheese. By the time the trap is tripped, it is too late. The mouse is caught. Its fate is sealed.

In this portion of God’s Word a seasoned pastor named Paul is warning a young pastor named Timothy about the trappings of wealth and having a lifelong ambition of being rich. Wealth can be like a piece of cheese. We want it so badly that we don’t realize what we stand to lose in getting it.

Do you know anyone who has given up too much in an attempt to get rich? How about the woman who lost her marriage because she was working 60+ hours a week in an effort to get the big promotion? Or maybe it was the man who always had time for work, but never for his family. Now his children resent him and won’t even talk to him. Perhaps you know someone like this, or maybe you know this type of pain firsthand. As bad as these consequences can be, an even greater pain would be to have riches destroy one’s relationship with God.

Paul’s words to Timothy are meant to warn us. But they also are meant to encourage us. We are encouraged to fight greed with contentment. One way to pursue contentment is to count blessings. We do well to remember that God takes care of all of our physical needs. He gives us food and clothing and provides all that we need for our body and life.

As great as it is to have our daily needs met, an even greater source of our contentment comes from the spiritual needs that have been filled by Christ. Every day as we consider the wrongs that we have done, even the sin of being greedy, we know that Jesus has forgiven it. He took all our sins to the cross and paid for them there. On a daily basis we can count our blessings of love, care and concern that come from our gracious God.

Take the apostle Paul’s advice and save yourself from a lot of misery. Be content with the blessings God gives to you in your life. Give thanks for the physical and spiritual gifts he gives to you. Pursue godliness with contentment.

Confession of Faith

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If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised
him from the dead, you will be saved. – Romans 10:9

Did you ever wonder what made the early Christians willing to confess their faith in Jesus even when it brought persecution and death? Some Christians in the first century were stoned to death. Others were crucified. Still others were thrown to the lions. Yet they died praising Jesus, confessing him as their Lord and Savior.

In the centuries that followed, believers in Jesus continued preaching and teaching about him even at the threat of physical harm. One such man was Martin Luther who lived in Germany back in the 1500’s. Luther boldly preached and taught about Jesus and became one of the most prolific writers about the Christian faith who has ever lived. When the authorities pressured him to take back what he had written, Luther firmly replied, “Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen!” As a result, he was labeled an outlaw and it was open season for anyone who wanted to take his life.

How could Luther and many other Christians confess their faith so boldly even at the threat of physical harm and death? Because they knew that something much better was waiting for them after this life. They knew that Jesus died for their sins and rose from the dead. Jesus’ resurrection meant that God accepted his sacrifice for their sins and they too would rise to live forever in heaven.

Christians still have this hope today. We know this life is temporary. Nothing in this life is going to last. It will all eventually decay and perish. But those who trust in Jesus and confess him as their Lord and Savior will enjoy a perfect life with him that will never end. This changes the perspective and priorities of believers in Jesus. Confident in their eternal salvation through Jesus, Christians confess their faith in the Lord Jesus even to the point of death.

Mary with Jesus

Born of a Virgin

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“If you could pick the ultimate boss, what would that person be like?” We’d want our boss to be smart, to have clout. Additionally, we’d like our boss to be “one of us,” to have worked the job we have so that he/she could understand our particular challenges. Certainly we’d want a boss who “had a heart” for the employees, so that our best interests would be served.

Then we had suggested: “Wouldn’t we want our Savior to have similar qualities?” Of course! Since Jesus is truly God, we know that he’s smart, incredibly so. And talk about clout, wow!

But what about those other qualities—being one of us, having a heart for us—does Jesus have those qualities? Well he would … if he’s one of us. If he’s a human being, like us, then he would completely understand us; he would understand our challenges, stresses, hopes, fears, dreams, and goals. All of that would be true … if Jesus is a real human being.

Listen! “While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son” (Luke 2:6,7). Jesus was BORN! Like you were born, like I was born—he was born. Which means what? It means that Jesus is a REAL human being—like you, like me. And that’s great! Since Jesus is a real human being, he understands what it’s like to be human. He understands what it’s like to get hungry and thirsty, to get tired and stressed. He understands what it’s like to have friends turn against you, to lose loved ones, etc. He understands, because as a human being, he has experienced all these things!

But remember, Jesus is also true God, conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary. So put those two thoughts—that Jesus is both true man and true God—together. Since Jesus is truly human, he understands us. He has a heart for us because he’s one of us. But since Jesus is God, he can DO things for us! And since he’s God, he’s “really smart,” so the things he does will be the things which make sense for us. In Jesus we find exactly what we need—a Savior who is truly man, but also truly God. As a human being, he understands us. He “gets it.” But as true God, he can do something about it! Most importantly, he can do what we really need—he can save us from our sins!