Harsh Words

Can one say what needs to be said about corruption without being harsh?

In the post below I struggled over using the words “cheated” and “lied” for the actions of the City Council. Even after posting it I wanted to restate it somehow. It sounds discouragingly harsh, even wrong, to say such things.

As a Christian who honors the 8th Commandment, who desires to speak well of my neighbor and to put the best construction on everything concerning my neighbor, who also honors the 4th Commandment and wants to honor all who hold the position of city father, how can I not ache when I say such things? How can I not feel that something is very wrong in this situation and even with myself?

Such is the terrible effect of these kinds of actions on the part of our parents and leaders. When they do not act honorably they force upon us a burden that we should not have to carry.

Sadly, these people were elected by the citizens. Much money was spent on the campaigns, and typically, those who spent the most won the election. Most people are not equipped to discover facts that extend beyond the advertising and media coverage. After all, how can the average citizen gain access to these facts?

I did invest time and energy researching what I could. I did learn what the big money was buying, and I voted for candidates whom I thought were not going with the flow of the money. As usual, they lost.

Does it do any real good to cry out against these things? Is there any real advantage, any real gain, to saying what no one wants to hear?

I often think of Jeremiah, the prophet of the Lord who was told even when the Lord called him to be a prophet that those to whom Jeremiah would speak would not listen but would fight against him. By Chapter 20 the poor prophet was weary and cried out:

For since I spake, I cried out, I cried violence and spoil; because the word of the Lord was made a reproach unto me, and a derision, daily. Then I said, I will not make mention of him, nor speak any more in his name. But his word was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay. (Jeremiah 20:8-9)

He was weary of crying out against the leaders and the people. He wanted to shut up and say no more of the harsh words. But he could not keep them in as they burned like a fire in his heart and bones.

I often have also wondered how Adam felt when his son, Cain, murdered Abel. It seems that the Lord spared Adam from having to confront Cain. The Lord Himself confronted Cain. I suppose that this really was to spare them both, for the punishment should have been to put Cain to death. Yet Cain was spared.

Surely there is a lesson in both of these examples. Confrontation with harsh words should always be with the intention of serving the good. Cain was confronted with harsh words and even with exile in order to work conversion/repentance. Adam before him was confronted for the same purpose. Centuries later Jeremiah was given harsh words to speak in order that the people and their leaders would be called to be converted, too.

Surely this is what is right and good today as well. Surely harsh words need to be spoken, but should always have the good as the goal.

The truly hard part of this is the unworthiness of the one speaking the words. For as I examine myself and as any other speaker examines oneself, who can stand blameless before those to whom one is speaking?

God grant that His grace prevail, first in the heart of the one speaking, then also in the hearts of those who hear.

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I can do all things . . .

“I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” (Philippians 4:13)

This passage from the letter of St. Paul to the saints in Philippi has been used throughout the centuries as words of comfort and encouragement by millions, even billions, of struggling people. St. Paul wrote these words for that very purpose. However, our translations change what the apostle actually says, and actually lessen the comforting power of these words by this change.

A literal translation of what he says is:

In/for all-things I am strong in the-one empowering me, Christ.

The apostle is actually saying something very different than what most translators presume. What the apostle shares is much more powerful than what most people hear, even more powerful than what most people want to hear. For most people do not really want to hear what he says with these words. They want to hear what most translators superimpose onto this text and interject into the meaning.

Consider this statement with the rest of what he says:

     But I rejoiced in the Lord greatly, that now at the last your care of me hath flourished again; wherein ye were also careful, but ye lacked opportunity. Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me. Notwithstanding ye have well done, that ye did communicate with my affliction. Now ye Philippians know also, that in the beginning of the gospel, when I departed from Macedonia, no church communicated with me as concerning giving and receiving, but ye only. For even in Thessalonica ye sent once and again unto my necessity. Not because I desire a gift: but I desire fruit that may abound to your account. But I have all, and abound: I am full, having received of Epaphroditus the things which were sent from you, an odour of a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable, wellpleasing to God. But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus. Now unto God and our Father be glory for ever and ever. Amen. (Philippians 4:10-20)

Notice his situation. He has been in prison. He has suffered the lack of many of the things that we daily enjoy and even count as necessary. He has been lonely. His freedom has been restricted. In the midst of this he says that he is content. Imagine that! He is content. How? He says it is because he knows the faithfulness of God in Christ. He extends this confidence to the saints in Philippi, saying, “my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by [in] Christ Jesus.”

Thus St. Paul declares that in all things he is strong in the one empowering him, Christ.

St. Paul most definitely does not say that he can do all things. He says that in all things or for all things he is strong. Strong for what? Strong to endure. Strong to look beyond himself and his circumstances to the promises of God in Christ. Strong to be content even though he is cold and hungry and lonely and imprisoned and hurting and abused and in many ways neglected and forgotten. He is strong to “rejoice always!”, as he said in verse 4.

The second and most important difference to notice from what our translations usually say is that St. Paul does not say that he is strong through the one empowering him, but IN the one empowering him.

The word for through is dia. But St. Paul here uses en, which means in.

Now it certainly would have been a true statement for the apostle to say that he is strong through Christ, for Christ is the means through which we have our strength. Christ is the one who empowers us and gives us strength. But St. Paul was saying something more than this. He was addressing more than the power of Christ to do for him what he needed.

With the word en, our word in, St. Paul was speaking of what the Holy Spirit worked for him in his baptism. Jesus explains this to Nicodemus in John 3 when He tells the bewildered Pharisee that only through water and spirit is a person able or powerful to enter into the kingdom of God.

To the Philippians St. Paul refers to the one empowering him with the word endunamounti. To Nicodemus the Lord Jesus says that “to be able to” or “to be powerful to” enter into the kingdom of God with the word dunatai.

The power is the Word of God, which is Jesus, the Christ. In Romans 1:16 St. Paul refers to the Gospel of Christ as the dunamis or power of God into salvation. This is the same language as the Lord Jesus uses with Nicodemus regarding Baptism as that which makes one able to enter into the kingdom of God.

This is how St. Paul tells the Philippians that he is being empowered and made strong for all things. St. Paul was not able to do anything. He was imprisoned. He could do nothing for himself. Yet he was strong for this in Christ. As one who had been baptized into Christ and had partaken of the body and blood of Jesus many times, he was strong in the Lord. He was strong to endure this time that made his own human weakness manifest beyond question. Yes, for all things he was strong in the one empowering him, Christ.

When we hear the apostle’s words as he actually says them, we, too, are strong in the one empowering us. Our hearts are then turned from any and all forms of self-reliance to trust in Christ. This means that even our own personal faith is counted as nothing. Rather we are directed to depend upon the faith that the Holy Spirit has worked through our being baptized into Christ, who is the one who continually empowers us to be strong in all things.

This understanding changes a person’s perspective from one that is doomed to fail to a perspective that cannot fail. For when Christ is our hope and our confidence and our strength, the one through whom all things were called into existence and through whom all things are preserved, the one who has redeemed sinful mankind and accomplished the reconciliation of God and Man in His own body and now calls us into the communion of His body through the means of grace, when this Christ is the one whom we trust as our strength, we truly are strong for all things.

This confidence cannot be known apart from being IN Christ and relying upon this holy communion for all things. If we look for strength from our own believing in Jesus, this strength will fail us again and again. For our faith is weak. Our faith is dependent upon our strength. But The Faith, the faith of Jesus, is without limit. The faith that is worked in us through the means of grace is the very power of God at work in us and for us.

From this word dunamis we have the word dynamite. It is a very fitting adoption of this Greek word. The Gospel of Christ is the dynamite that blasts through our rock hard heads and hearts to move us from self-reliance to faith in our loving God and Father and Creator and Provider and Redeemer and Savior and Brother and Sanctifier and Comforter. When this Gospel is conjoined with water, it works to carry us into the kingdom of God even now, here on earth, into the body of Christ. Having been carried or washed into the body of Christ here on earth, having been brought into the communion of His body, we then are continually nourished and strengthened and renewed through the communion of His body and blood in His holy Supper.

This is how God works to keep us in Jesus Christ all the days of our life. This is how God works to make us poor, weak, miserable sinners strong in the one empowering us. Because of this St. Paul could say that he was strong for all things, even while imprisoned. Even though it had likely been a long time since he partook of the holy Supper in a congregation of the saints, he nevertheless was strong through the many times that he did partake of Christ’s body and blood. In the assurance that he had been given through the gift of Christ in the Sacrament, he remained strong even now, even when he felt otherwise all alone and abandoned.

This strength is far greater than saying “I am able to do all things.” For this strength is available to the person who is in prison and is not able to do all that one would choose to do. This strength is available to the person in the hospital suffering from cancer that is eating the flesh and destroying from within and causing seemingly unendurable pain. This strength is available to the person trapped in the darkness and loneliness of a coma. This strength reaches the person cut off from loved ones and friends through Alzheimer’s. This strength breaks through the enslavement and hopelessness of addiction. In Christ there are no twelve steps to fulfill. Christ is the fulfilment. Christ is the one empowering and setting free. In Christ, one is already strong, already free. In Christ is forgiveness and restoration to holiness. In Christ is justification in the face of all accusations. In Christ is sanctification from all unholiness. In Christ is life everlasting.

This is the strength of which St. Paul speaks. This strength is ours in Christ in His Holy Communion. He has ordained Baptism as the means by which we are washed into His communion. He has ordained the Supper of the New Testament by which we are made partners or communicants in His communion. Through these, just as God promises, we are made to be strong and kept strong in the one empowering us, Christ.

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How hard is life?

A statement that one often overhears, from others, and often even from one’s own heart, mind, and spirit, is “Life is hard!” This statement can be heard in other forms as well.

“Life is hard!”

Is this a true statement? If one thinks that this is true, what is the cause? What makes life hard for a person?

Do you find yourself thinking that life is hard? If so, why?

What is a person’s focus when thinking that life is hard? What thoughts prevail in the heart, mind, and spirit of a person who believes that life is hard?

I continue to be amazed at the response of Adam to the Word of the Lord. In Genesis 3, after the Lord confronts Adam and his wife with their sin, condemns the serpent for its part in the devil’s plan to destroy the life that the Lord established for His children, pronouncing the mighty work that would be accomplished by the Seed of Woman, tells the woman the consequences that sin has brought upon her and then counters this with the promise that her husband shall still rule over her despite her rebellion and that her desire will still be for her husband and his God-appointed place as her head, tells Adam that the ground is cursed for his sake but that he nevertheless shall eat by the sweat of his brow, and then Adam turns to his wife, Woman, and names her Eve, that is, Life.

Before the Lord called them from their hiding, Adam and his wife thought only of the consequences of sin in their lives. They could no longer see Life, because they had died in their sin. Sin had cut them off from the one and only source of Life. And so, for them, Life was no longer possible. Only death was now before them. They felt it in their spirit. They felt it in their mind. They felt it in their body. They were no longer alive. They were no longer full of Life. Their anatomical parts still functioned, but they were no longer alive. Their life had become not only hard, but impossible. They could not make things right again.

But when the Lord came calling for them and brought them out from their hiding, He reversed this. It was not that Adam and his wife came to the Lord, it was not that they sought Him and found their way back to Him, but that He came to them through His Word. He came to them and hearing His voice, the darkness was gone. The Lord had come and filled the emptiness, and the darkness in their soul was gone.

He changed their focus by calling to them. His Word restored them to be able to see His goodness, but not only His goodness. More importantly, they saw His gracious attitude toward them. By calling to them He caused them to understand that the difficulty that they faced was the result of their own choice, not His. They turned from Him. He did not turn from them. The Life that He desired from them was not this life of struggle and doom that they had chosen for themselves. And so, by revealing to them the plan that He had from eternity, the plan that He prepared knowing the doom that they would choose for themselves, the gracious plan of coming to them in the flesh to redeem them and save them and restore them to His righteousness and holiness, by telling this to them He brought Light and Life to them once again.

Now, even though they fully knew that they would face the daily consequences of the sin that they brought to the world, nevertheless, they rejoiced in the Lord’s mercy, grace, and peace.

The reason that we think that life is hard is because we look to the wrong source for life. When we look to our struggles to provide for ourselves and to do good and to be honorable and to be successful, we see only death and failure and darkness and doom. But when the Word of the Lord breaks through to us so that our attention is turned to hear the voice of the Lord again so that we see all that He has done and promised, so that we see His gracious and continual activity in our lives, then Life is restored and our struggles are seen for what they really are, temporary. Then we see that the Lord is good and that His mercy endures forever. Then our sorrows turn to thanksgiving and rejoicing. Then we see that it is true that to those loving God, the called according to His purpose, all things synergize into good (Romans 8:28).

The reason is that God is good. God is not merely sovereign. He is sovereign with a purpose. His purpose is love. His love is merciful and forgiving. His mercy and forgiveness produce restoration and reconciliation. This He works for us through the ordained means of grace. When we look to these instead of looking to ourselves and what we try to do for ourselves, when we hear God’s call to be gathered together to His means of grace, life no longer appears to be hard. For the Life that God gives is Jesus and the works that He has accomplished for us. It is a done deal! When we realize this we understand that we do not have to become victorious for as St. Paul declares, “We are more than conquerors!” This can only be rightly understood when we hear it as it stands written, “Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.” (Romans 8:37)

“Through the one having loved us,” is past tense. It is not the way that we are inclined to hear this. It is not future tense. Neither is it conditional. The one having loved us is the cause of our being more than conquerors. He has already loved us, even from eternity. He has already given His Son to defeat the powers of sin, death, and the devil. It does not depend upon what we do. God has already done it for us. Our part is made to be like it was in the very beginning. Our part is simply to receive what God has already done and freely bestows upon us. Our part is simply to be brought by God into His kingdom through Baptism and to partake of the unity and life that Jesus purchased for us, to partake of the body and blood that He gives in the Holy Supper. The Lord has set the table by establishing His Church on earth. He calls us and gathers us through the preaching of the Gospel and Baptism. God does it all. We are His beloved children who receive what our loving Father gives to us.

Can life be any easier than this?

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Tough Life Reality

Life in this old world can be tough. This week has been a tough week for me. It has been a week filled with unexpected and difficult circumstances. Every week is tough for an arborist. Climbing trees, hauling heavy tree debris, grinding stumps, repairing equipment, all takes a toll on the body and often the bank account.

But this week the Lord seems to have thought that I needed some special tests to remind me of my dependency upon Him in all things. That is my guess anyway. He often does not provide any explanation for the things that He sends into my life, but I do know that in all things He works good toward me and that He uses all of the trying experiences in my life to call me to continual turning of my heart, mind, spirit, and life (often also called: repentance).

I have been working very hard the last few weeks, doing some very strenuous work, with many little challenges. Monday I completed an emergency tree removal for a lady who was concerned about the potential for property damage. It was a very large Bradford pear that was located between two houses. She also needed the stump and roots to be ground. It seems that the industry standard now is to grind a stump to 6-8 inches, but I grind much deeper in attempt to remove all of the primary stump and roots. Having finished grinding and cleaning the job site and loading a trailer load of logs, I set off to examine some trees and prepare some bids along the way home. I planned to finish cutting the logs to firewood size for a neighbor who needs the firewood to help her and her children save some heating expenses this winter.

However, my poor old pickup truck began to overheat and pump radiator fluid into the reservoir and then the street. I stopped, let it cool enough to open the radiator cap, and added water. But it was acting very strange. It kept over heating and it seemed that either the thermostat was stuck or that the water pump had quit. I ended up stranded in traffic hour one car length from a busy intersection. So I called the tow company. My cell phone kept cutting out, so the dispatcher misunderstood and sent the wrong truck, but we towed the pickup and trailer out of the way of the traffic into a parking lot. Then the driver called another driver with another truck. . . the process extended into the late evening.

I need my pickup, so I focused on getting it repaired. It took a couple of days to get it back from the shop and last night and today I am working to replace the hoses, since they are old.

But the next day, I cut the logs. I always wear my hard hat, with the face screen and hearing protectors. Yet somehow a small piece of wood became lodged in my right eye. I worked at flushing it with water for much of that evening, but it kept hurting and feeling like the debris was still in my eye. In the morning I went to the eye doctor. The good news was that I had managed to flush the debris from my eye. The bad news was that it did scratch the cornea. To prevent infection the doctor prescribed an antibiotic and anti-inflammatory eye drop for 7 days.

This picture gives perspective to the size of the prescription. $ 62.62 !!! And that is for the generic brand. I’ve heard of medications that cost more than imagination allows, yet even this is outrageous.

The following pictures serve as a reminder of how difficult it is for a person to attempt to deal with issues affecting one’s own eyes.

Even taking these pictures was a challenge. Attempting to see debris in the eye was far more challenging.

I’ve had some other challenges this week as well, but the matter with the eye was by far the greatest. It brings to mind the admonition of the Lord Jesus in Matthew 7:3-5:

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

As I mentioned above, in all things, and especially in the challenges and trials of this life, a continual call to be turned again to the Lord sounds forth. The Lord is continually calling to us to be turned again unto Him and His mercy and love and providence. If we are listening, we recognize His calling to us and we are turned again and again throughout our earthly lives. Then, we learn to give thanks in all things, even in the trials and tribulations, even giving thanks for these gifts from God, as we learn in the General Prayer of the Church (TLH pgs. 23-24). Every Sunday I marvel at this prayer. I find myself reflecting upon it throughout each week. It is truly a marvelous prayer.

So today I give thanks for the life that the Lord has given to me and for all the blessings that He brings into my life, including these many struggles that cause me to be turned again to Him, even sometimes with the simple question of “Why Lord?” That simple prayer is truly a wonderful prayer, if it leads one back to the Scriptures to hear the answers that God has provided even before we ask. The answers are recorded for us, if we are willing to hear them and receive them. Ultimately, they all lead back to the preaching of Jesus Christ and Him crucified, and that is the one answer that we most need to hear.