(Sermon by Pastor Michael D. Schultz 10/14/07)

INTRODUCTION:

Randy Pausch of Carnegie Mellon University, 46 year-old father of three, has pancreatic cancer and only a few months to live.  His last lecture on the lessons he’s learned in life has caught the attention of millions, causing them to both laugh and cry.  It’s not a religious talk but it is rather moving.  In six years I’ve stood behind this pulpit somewhere between 425-450 times.  I hope I haven’t ever made you feel like, “Been here; heard that.”  As far as I know, I don’t have cancer or a call somewhere else, so this message may not have the same kind of touching, moving effect that a last lecture or sermon might have.

But the man who was talking in today’s second lesson was delivering his last address to a very dear friend.  His eyes could easily have misted over, his voice choked up.  The man we call St. Paul knew that he would very soon bow his head before the executioner’s sword.  Imprisoned in Rome, perhaps in his sixties now, the missionary to the Gentiles had not had an easy go of it.  Later in this letter he wrote, “Endure hardship with us like a good soldier of Christ Jesus.”  It was time for this old soldier to lay his armor down and go home to heaven.  Like the touching, moving message of a man who doesn’t have long to live, you and I get to listen to part of his farewell as if he were speaking it to us.

Listen To An Old Soldier’s Final Encouragement

[I’ll be Paul; you be Timothy.]

We all get busy with all of our this’s and that’s, so I’m sure I haven’t said it often enough, but before I’m gone, I would want to be clear about it.  Beyond the matters of “church life,” beyond opinions we have on various topics, beyond things that have happened and things that have been said and things that matter and things that don’t, I can’t thank God enough for what he’s done for you.  I’m grateful to God for the faith you have.  However it has come to you – through parents or grandparents who raised you to know Jesus or through a friend who told you about him or brought you to church – there’s trust in Jesus in you.  I thank God there is!

If I could add one additional thought to that before I’m not around to encourage you any more – don’t be complacent or cowardly.  The good Lord didn’t give you a real and living faith in Christ so that you can be a good Christian bump on a log.  Look closely at the gifts the Holy Spirit has given you and tell me what you see – glowing embers or a raging inferno?  Are you helping people and serving others or are you lost in the world of your own problems and busy hosting your own pity party?  My dear friends, life’s too short to be spent getting hung up on yourself.  Get over yourself.  God has better things in mind for you than that.

Some of you younger folks may have never seen a bellows.  It looks sort of like an accordion with handles and an air nozzle coming out the end.  It’s what you use to get a fire going.  Get the fire going!  You have faith from God and gifts from God to serve the people around you.  Light ’em up!  God has not called you to be lazy bums.  He hasn’t converted you into miserable cowards.  You’re his children.  You’re strong with his strength, loving because of his love.  There are things God wants you to do to help people, and after I’m gone, those things will still need doing.  Use what God’s given you to get them done.

Listen to this now – a last encouragement from an old soldier.  Soon enough I’ll be taking off my boots and laying down my sword.  But there’s something that must go on, something worth working hard for, something worth being committed to, something worth contributing toward and praying for, a cause worth suffering for, a mission worth dying for – the gospel! 

How can the love God has for you appear any more undeserved than when you put it on a timeline!  Long before the day of your birth, before Sola Fide was a church, before the Wisconsin Synod was a synod, before Jesus was born, before God brought Eve to Adam, before all of that the timeless, eternal God gave his undeserved love to you.  That takes earning/deserving God’s love and moves it outside the realm of possibility because it was given to you before you were you.  What was God thinking doing that?  Couldn’t he see the sinners we would be?  Yes, he could.  Yes, he did.  But he also knew and saw the Savior his Son would be.

And he let you see it, in a place called Bethlehem, in a temple in Jerusalem, in a town called Nazareth and a city called Capernaum.  He let you see his Son on a donkey on Palm Sunday, on trial on Maundy Thursday, on a cross on Good Friday, on a slab on Holy Saturday, but on a victory lap on Easter Sunday.  That was all for you and it was nothing but grace.

You and I haven’t been living the holy life to which we’ve been called.  We haven’t done anything to get ourselves rescued from hell.  We have done everything to qualify for being sent there and for watching God throw away the key.  On that Friday that Jesus was made guilty of all our sins, after he had been abandoned to hell to pay for our sins, he picked up that key and opened the door of hell and when he left his grave alive, he lifted us out of hell and set us next to his Father and said, “They are yours.  Ours.  Always.”

For our sins we deserved death and what did Jesus do but destroy death.  All these dark, depressing words that start with m-o-r… that’s morbid, the body is at the mortuary, the mortality rate has remained the same (one per person), we’re all just frail mortals – Jesus has shattered that darkness by putting an i-m in front of the m-o-r – immortality!  In Jesus you will not die.  Don’t worry about what your brain tells you when your eyes look at a cemetery or a casket or an urn.  Turn your reason off and listen – immortality.  Because Jesus died in your place and came back to life to live and reign forever, you will not die.  In Christ, the moment of physical death is the beginning of a heavenly life with God that does not have a hint of an idea of what it would mean to end.

No matter what it costs you (it may cost you everything), don’t think for a second that the gospel isn’t worth it.  When you know you’ve earned the opposite, life and immortality are invaluable.  So do not be ashamed to testify about our Lord.  Join with me in suffering for the gospel by the power of God.  I’m grateful to God for the faith you have and I’m reminding you of the power God has.  People can think what they will, say what they will, do what they will as you hold onto Jesus, and they will, from making fun of you all the way to doing away with you, but they’ll never loosen Jesus’ hold on you.  God is stronger than anyone/thing.

God-willing, I’ll share God’s Word with you next week.  But if that weren’t God’s will, I wouldn’t want you to remember me for much of anything.  I would want you to remember the good news you heard about the total absolution of sin that has come to you through Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light.  I would want you to wrap your arms around that treasure and to squeeze it tight and to know that the Holy Spirit’s arms are right on top of yours and to trust that he will keep you with the Lord.  If that were the only, single thing that came from our time together, that would suffice.

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