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So which one are you: sheep or goat? How do you know? How can you know? It sounds like Jesus is saying you can’t know—or at least you don’t know. Surely this is one of His most confusing stories.

Most often, we hear this story as a call to do mission work. To care for the hungry and thirsty and naked and imprisoned. And the conclusion drawn is often that if we reach out to the hungry and thirsty and naked and imprisoned, we’ll be counted among the sheep—we’ll receive eternal life and not eternal punishment.

But is Jesus really saying that our final judgment will depend on our good works?

Surely not. Wasn’t there a long and bloody period of reformation in the 16^th century fought largely over this very issue? And wasn’t the conclusion, the very foundation of our Lutheran heritage, that we’re saved by faith and not by works?

And if that’s the case, then how can it be that Jesus is saying that our eternal fate is dependent on our works?

And if that is what He’s saying, then why is it that the very next words out of His mouth after this passage were, “You know that after two days the Passover is coming, and the Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified” (Matthew 26:1)?

Why did Jesus need to be hung on a cross to die if we can by saved by caring for the hungry and thirsty and naked and imprisoned?

And why is this the gospel reading that the lectionary gives us for Christ the King Sunday?

Obviously we’ve missed the point. If I had to select a single passage from all of the gospels to illustrate just how important it is to consider every part of Scripture in the context of the rest of Scripture, this might well be the one. Because the only way to understand what Jesus is really talking about here is to look at it in light of the rest of Matthew’s gospel.

So, just as two weeks ago we took a lightning tour through the Book of Acts, this morning we’re going to take another tour, this time through the gospel of Matthew.

Right there is our first clue—this is a gospel. And none of the gospels are about telling us what we should do; they’re about telling us what God has done. What He has done for us because He knows that we can never save ourselves.

Matthew’s gospel is very intentional not only with the message that we can never hope to save ourselves, but also that God can never be stopped. And that God is continually at work in our world—all the time.

So if you have your Bibles with you, I’d like you to turn to the beginning of Matthew’s gospel (if you’re not in the habit of bringing your Bible with you, you might want to consider doing so).

Matthew begins with Jesus’ genealogy because he wants us to understand right from the beginning that Jesus is a real person. When Joseph discovers that Mary is pregnant by the Holy Spirit, he wants to send her away, but the Lord intervenes to stop him.

God is at work.

Jesus is born and magi, wise men or kings from the east show up to worship Him even as King Herod is looking for Him to destroy Him. The Gentiles are searching for the Messiah while the Jews are already trying to kill Him.

Once again God intervenes and Joseph takes Mary and the baby and escapes to safety in Egypt.

Then we have John the Baptist announcing the coming of the Messiah and calling people to repentance. He gets arrested and Jesus begins His ministry. He calls the first disciples, Peter and Andrew, James and John, and they immediately begin to follow Him.

That’s important.

Chapter 4:23-24 say, “And he went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease and every affliction among the people. So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought Him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, paralytics; and He healed them.”

And then He begins to preach the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, … blessed are those who mourn, … blessed are the gentle, … blessed are those who hunger and thirst, … blessed are the merciful …” (Matthew 5:3-7).

Jesus is using a form of “Show and Tell” here. The crowd is filled with all those people who have just been healed, people who have already been touched by Jesus. People who had been blessed because The Kingdom Among Us had touched them with Jesus’ heart and voice and hands.

Jesus is saying that they’re blessed because they know they can do nothing without God. He’s saying that blessed are the spiritual beggars when the kingdom of heaven comes upon them. These are the people who know they’re nothing special. They’re not important, they don’t have any great talent or ability. And yet, “He touched me.” The kingdom of heaven drew near and they received it.

But the way that we often interpret this passage, along with our gospel reading from Matthew 25, pretty much removes Jesus from the scene. And yet, these two passages are like bookends on the teachings of Jesus in Matthew’s gospel.

Here in the beatitudes, we often seem to think that Jesus is saying we’re blessed if we’re poor in spirit or if we’re mourning or if we’re persecuted. So we think that we need to figure out how to be poor in spirit.

Really? Is He saying that we’re to go looking for persecution? To go looking for people to “utter all kinds of evil against you” (Matthew 5:11)? Of course not.

To understand it this way is to understand that salvation is by works. Maybe even by attitude or situation. Or chance?

But Jesus didn’t say “Blessed are the poor in spirit because they’re poor in spirit.”   He said blessed are the poor in spirit because they know that they need help. They know they need a Savior—and when He showed up they were blessed to receive Him.

He’s speaking to a crowd where He can say, “Blessed are the poor in spirit…” and point to those people who were spiritually impoverished that He has just blessed. “Blessed are those who mourn …” and point to the mourners that He has just blessed.

Show and tell.

Again, it’s the gospel. It’s about what God has done for us, not what He expects us to do for Him.

As He comes to the end of His sermon, Jesus warns His listeners to “enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it” (7:13-14).

And: “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter” (7:21).

What is the will of His Father? How do we know?

We’re up to chapter 8 now—where, as soon as Jesus finished speaking, a leper comes and kneels before Him and Jesus heals him.  Leprosy was an incurable and fatal disease in Jesus’ day—a lot like the spiritual condition of man. But now the kingdom of heaven has arrived and there’s no one that God will not touch—if we will just let Him.

A centurion comes to Jesus, recognizing in Him an authority greater than that of the Roman government. Jesus heals his servant and then He heals Peter’s mother-in-law, who immediately “began to serve him.”

Matthew 8:17 says, “He took our illnesses and bore our diseases.” Matthew’s pointing out that already Jesus is bearing our sins.

Then in chapter 8, in the midst of more miracles, we find another warning: two men come up and tell Jesus that they want to follow Him—but on their own terms. Jesus says, “Follow me.” He’s saying, “You don’t get to set the terms of our relationship. Admiring me, liking what I do, isn’t enough. You need to be prepared to risk—or spend—all your earthly security.

This is the Father’s will—that we follow Jesus. That we be prepared to go where Jesus tells us to go and do what He tells us to do.

Are you seeing a pattern here? It’s those who are willing to acknowledge Jesus’ lordship over them, who are willing to follow Him and serve Him that are blessed—who receive the kingdom of heaven. Not at some future time but immediately.

He is Christ the King.

In the midst of all this, in chapter 9:9, “Jesus … saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And he rose and followed him.” Think of it—Matthew the tax collector, despised by his fellow Jews; watching and listening to Jesus for weeks or even months. Probably thinking that he was too far gone for Jesus ever to want to have anything to do with him. And then Jesus looked at him and said, “follow me.” What must it have been like?

Then in chapter 10, we come to the passage that I believe is directly connected to this morning’s gospel reading. Jesus has finally gathered twelve disciples—and now he sends them out. Sends them out to do what He’s been doing. He tells them to “go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And as you go, preach, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received without paying; give without pay. Do not acquire gold, or silver, or copper for your money belts, or a bag for your journey, or even two coats, or sandals, or a staff; for the worker is worthy of his support. And whatever city or village you enter, inquire who is worthy in it, and stay at his house until you leave that city. … If the house is worthy, give it your blessing of peace. But if it is not worthy, take back your blessing of peace. And if anyone will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet when you leave that house or town. Truly, I say to you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for that town” (Matthew 10:6-15).

Here Jesus is clearly connecting the day of judgment with the way that His disciples are received. He tells them that preaching the kingdom of God isn’t going to be easy. Lots of people won’t want to listen, won’t want to receive them. Some will not only reject them, but their message of the kingdom of God will make them angry–persecution will come. “You will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved” (10:22).

You might wonder why anyone would reject the message of the gospel? And here, I think, we come to the sheep and the goats and the confusion over which camp we fall into. Have you received the gospel message?

Because what Jesus is saying isn’t just, “Do you believe in me?” Or “Will you let me be a part of your life?” What He’s saying is, “Follow me.” Not even “Will you follow me?” Never once in the gospels does He ask this as a question. He simply says, “Follow me.” “The choice is yours. I won’t force you to follow me or even try to coerce you. I’ll invite you—you can decide.”

He’s Christ the King.

10:37-38 says, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.”

And then He says, “Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives his who sent me. … And whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward” (10:40-42).

In Matthew’s gospel, little children are all who put their trust in Jesus as Lord. Little children are those who will follow.

Clearly, the little one that Jesus is referring to here is the one sent by God to be His messenger. And clearly Jesus is saying that how we treat those messengers sent by God represent how we treat God Himself.

When John the Baptist sends word to Jesus in chapter 11 asking whether Jesus is really the Messiah, Jesus’ response is: “The blind receive sight and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he who does not take offense at me” (11:5-6).

11:20 “Then he began to denounce the cities where most of his mighty works had been done, because they did not repent.” And again, “it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you” (11:22).

We find in the parables and stories and healings a continuing warning of judgment combined with instructions on how to serve God. It’s all about heart—never ever in Matthew’s gospel is it just about what we do. Never about thinking that we’ll go feed the hungry in a soup kitchen today or visit someone in prison because those sound like good things to do.

Always, for Matthew, it’s about following Jesus, allowing Him to rule over our hearts and our lives.

Letting Him be our King.

Matthew point this out very plainly in chapter 19, with the story of the rich young ruler who is very willing to do lots of good things, to keep the commandments—but who turns away when Jesus told him that what he needed to do was “follow me” (19:21).

This is the key to the whole of living the Christian life—they key to being certain that at the final day of judgment, we’re one of the sheep and not one of the goats. Jesus says, “Follow me.” And this is so hard for us—it’s giving up control.  We’re all happy to do good things—as long as we get to decide what things.

19:29 “Everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life.”

Then comes Palm Sunday and Jesus knows that the cross is only a few days away. Matthew gives us Jesus’ final teaching: eight “woes,” describing the problems of the Pharisees, which really all come down to the fact that while they do what they think is the right thing, their hearts are bad. They refuse to follow—they insist on leading.

Finally, chapter 25. We have the parable of the ten virgins, all of whom look alike on the outside, but five are ready and five aren’t. We have the parable of the talents, where we find that it’s not about how much we’re able to increase what we’re given, but whether we know who Jesus really is, who the Father really is.

Is He “a hard man, reaping where he did not sow”? Or is He the compassionate God who cannot say no when called by one of His lambs to heal them? To help them? Do you know that there is not a single instance in the gospels where Jesus refused to heal someone who asked for it?

And we come to our gospel reading. To a picture of a great and worthy king, a king who left His heavenly home to come and live in our midst. Came even knowing that many would reject Him, that many would refuse to listen to Him, many would reject His offer of the kingdom of heaven. He came anyway.

He came to extend an invitation to all who would listen. The question for you and me is: how did we receive those who came? Did we welcome them and did we welcome their message of the kingdom of God? Or did we reject them?

And so when “the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world’” (25:34), He’s talking to those who weren’t afraid to go wherever He called them to go to declare that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Who weren’t afraid “to preach, to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.”

The message isn’t “do this to become part of the kingdom of heaven,” but rather “If you are part of the kingdom of heaven, this is what you will look like.”

Brothers and sisters in Christ, are you willing to follow Jesus? To follow the King of kings? Are you willing individually? And are we willing as a congregation?

As we gather downstairs to begin a conversation on our future, will we let Christ the King be in charge? Are we prepared to seek His will and then to follow Him? No matter where He might lead?

Our eternal future depends on your decision.

Let us pray.

Grace and peace …

And now, Holy Spirit, pour out upon us wisdom and understanding, that being taught by you in Holy Scripture, our hearts and minds may be opened to receive all that leads to life and holiness. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.

Tests … they’re everywhere in life. We have tests in school to measure how much we’ve learned. We have to pass tests before we can drive, some jobs require tests.

Manufacturers test drugs and cars and all kinds of other things before they sell them.

And God tests us. In fact, the first thing God did after He created Adam was to give him a test. In Genesis 2 we read that He “put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die’” (Genesis 2:15-17).

A test … “Are you going to listen to me? Or not?”

And although we’re not given the specific timing, it appears that it was almost as soon as God created Eve and gave her to Adam to be his wife that they ate that forbidden fruit. We don’t really know why Adam ignored what God had told him about that fruit, but it seems pretty clear that he was now more concerned about keeping Eve happy than he was about God.

Adam failed the test—he and Eve were banished from the perfect garden and sin began to multiply on the earth. As time goes on, many people forgot all about God.

It was years after Adam, but still 2000 years before Jesus was born, that God called a man named Abram, who was living in Haran with his family. In the 24^th chapter of the book of Joshua, we’re told that “Terah, the father of Abraham and of Nahor … served other gods,” (Joshua 24:2) so we know that Abram was a pagan. But the Lord God called him to “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing” (Genesis 12:1-).

God was putting Abram to the test. When God called him, Abram was 75 years old and his father Terah was 145 years old.

Nevertheless, when God called, Genesis 12:4 says, “So Abram went, as the Lord had told him.”  He didn’t say, “My father’s old; I can’t leave him. Ask me again after he dies.” He didn’t even say, “I’m too old to go somewhere else.” He just said, “OK, Lord.” His nephew Lot went with him, so apparently God didn’t tell him that he couldn’t take his family.  We don’t know why Terah didn’t go—but he didn’t.

God was testing Abram—testing him to see whether he’d put God before his family.

Abram passed the test.

Whenever I read this passage, I wonder: Was Abraham the first person God called to go, to become the father of a great nation? Or had He already asked others, who’d said, “No, Lord. That’s too much to ask.”

The first commandment had not yet been written in stone, but it was already in effect: “I am the Lord you God, you shall have no other gods before me.”

Many years later, Matthew 8:19-22: “A scribe came up [to Jesus] and said to him, ‘Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.’ Another of the disciples said to him, ‘Lord, let me first go and bury my father.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead.’”

Abraham and his wife Sarah go—and then they wait. Wait 25 years before God finally gives them a son, Isaac, their only child, born when Sarah was 90 years old and Abraham was 100.

25 years of testing.

The child grew and then one day, as we come to this morning’s scripture reading from chapter 22, “God tested Abraham” again. This time God told Abraham “to take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountain of which I shall tell you” (Genesis 22:2).

For many of us, this may be the most horrifying verse in all of Scripture. I have two sons whom I love very much. What would I do if God called me to sacrifice even one of them? Would I do it?

What kind of God would tell Abraham to sacrifice his only beloved son, to do such an impossible thing?

Maybe the kind of God who would one day sacrifice “his only beloved Son, so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

The kind of God for whom “all things are possible.”

“God tested Abraham.” “Way back before you knew me, Abraham, I called and you answered. You put me ahead of your earthly father and followed me. Now, after all these years, now after you know so much more about me, do you still love me more than anything? Do you love me even more than your only beloved son?”

And once again, when God said, “’Abraham!’ Abraham answered, ‘Here I am.’” God told him to take Isaac and go to the land of Moriah, and God would show him where to go to sacrifice Isaac. So Abraham got up early in the morning and went.

Now of course in the whole story of Abraham we see a foreshadowing of what is to come. Abraham leaves his father and goes to a new country just as Jesus will leave His Father and come to live among us. And here in chapter 22, we see Abraham laying the wood on Isaac just as soldiers laid the cross on Jesus for His journey up the mountain of Golgotha. When they reached the top of the mountain, Abraham bound Isaac to the wood just as Jesus was bound to the cross.

The difference is that at the moment when Abraham was about to slaughter his son with the knife, God stopped him. He provided a ram instead.

Just as our Lord God provided His only beloved Son, the lamb of God, to be slaughtered in our place.

Abraham once again passed the test.

2000 years later, the lamb of God, Jesus, would walk along the Sea of Galilee and call two brothers, “Simon (who is called Peter), and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. He said to them, ‘Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.’ Immediately they left their nets and followed him” (Matthew 4:18-20).

Like Abraham all those years earlier, they didn’t know this man Jesus. But when he called them to follow, they went. Immediately.

They passed the test.

Jesus called others—ten more men. And they, too, followed.

They followed Him for the next three years—they walked with Him and talked with Him. They watched Him reach out to the poor, to sinners, they watched Him heal the sick and cast our demons and even control the weather. They saw Him raise the dead. Until finally one day, Peter said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16).

Peter passed another test.

“And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake the and gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?’” (Mark 8:34-36).

He called the crowd to hear this because He wanted us to understand that He wasn’t just talking about some special mission that He had for the twelve. Jesus was talking to all of us—to you and me.

Jesus was putting us to the test.

This wasn’t the first time the disciples heard this. At the very beginning of His ministry, Mark 3:31-35 tells us: “And his mother and his brothers came, and standing outside they sent to him and called him. And a crowd was sitting around him, and they said to him, ‘Your mother and your brothers are outside, seeking you.’ And he answered them, ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ And looking about at those who sat around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.’”

Matthew repeats this story in 12:46-50. Except that in his version, he writes that Jesus “stretches out his hand toward his disciples, and said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.’”

Matthew’s gospel is written after Mark. Perhaps by this time he had come to recognize that there is a very real difference between somebody who says they believe in Jesus and someone who is actually a disciple.

Which brings us to our gospel reading.

Mark 10:23-31

I Peter 4:12 – Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.

How about you? Can you pass the test? Are you willing to put Jesus ahead of everything? Ahead of your spouse and your children and your grandchildren?

Is our family important? Of course our family is important! Every single member of our family has been created by God and is loved by God. God loves your spouse and your children and your grandchildren and your parents and your brothers and sisters even more than you do. Even more than anyone else!

So why don’t we believe this? Why are we so unwilling to trust them to Him? Why do we have such a hard time believing that God can take care of our families even better than we can? And that if God calls us to do something, He will take care of them.

Do you really think that when God calls us to follow Him in some way that seems impossible to us, that He’ll allow our families to suffer as a result? Do you think that He didn’t care about the families of Peter and Andrew and the rest of the disciples?

Can you pass the test? Do you love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and with all your mind and all your strength?

Why are we so willing to spread the gospel of our football teams or favorite Netflix shows, but struggle to name the only name given to mankind by which sinners can be saved (Acts 4:12)? We’re terrified of receiving the disapproval of the walking dead. We have forgotten that “If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you” (I Peter 4:14). What was true in Jesus’ day continues to be true in ours: “For fear of the Jews, no one spoke openly of Jesus” (John 7:13).

They were afraid that they’d be thrown out of the synagogue—the focal point of Jewish life. We fear sarcasm from our parents, ridicule on Twitter, being “that guy” at ever social gathering. So we slide from shadow to shadow, church service to home to work, only visiting our Lord under cover of night, like Nicodemus.

A new Muslim convert from a country where it is illegal to be Christian, recently said, “When I return home next month, there’s a good chance they’ll kill me before I can come back to America.”

He’d only been a believer for a year.

“To know Jesus is so amazing that I couldn’t help but tell my family and friends about the new life I found in Him. several people disowned me outright. One said that if he sees me when I get back, he’ll kill me immediately. There’s a good chance someone will tell the government. When they do, I won’t see you again in this life.”

This new Muslim convert passed the test. He knew that Jesus is worth living for, even if it means dying for Him.

Jesus said in Matthew 10:32-39, “Everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven. Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law again her mother-in-law. And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

Jesus spoke these words not just to the twelve apostles, not just to the people living in first century Palestine, not even just to people living today in other places. These words apply to every single one of us.

These words are the test: Jesus says, “How much do you love me?”

“Do you love me more than you love sports and money and electronics? Do you love me more than you love your father and mother and sister and brother and son and daughter and grandson and granddaughter?”

“If you don’t,” he says, “You’ve failed the test.”

Brothers and sisters in Christ, the first century disciples turned the world upside down because they did love Jesus more than anything. Christianity is spreading like wildfire in persecuted nations because people love Jesus more than anything else.

We say, “Well, I just don’t know Him well enough.”

We say, “I’m really busy with my job and my family and my life right now. But someday, I’ll have more time for Jesus—maybe.”

We say, ”When I’m older, after I’ve had a lot of fun in life, then I’ll get serious about Jesus.”

Have you counted the cost? And if so, have you chosen the world?

Have you failed the test?

My test

There is nothing you can do for your children or grandchildren that is more important than teaching them that Jesus is the most important thing in your life.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, are you willing to do whatever it takes to follow Jesus wherever He calls us to go? To do whatever He calls us to do? To give up whatever He calls us to give up for His sake? No matter who or what that is?

Is the call of Jesus to go and make disciples the most important mission in your life? Because until we make that our most important mission, we are not the church that God is calling us to be. God wants all of us—not just the extras, the leftovers after we’ve done all the things that we think are important.

And our job as a congregation is to make sure that everything we do is important to Jesus. To make sure that we’re not wasting people’s valuable time on things that have nothing to do with growing the kingdom of God.

Let us pray.

My youngest sister lived for a number of years in New York City and it can be a pretty scary place. If you’ve ever been in a taxi in New York, you might well have feared for your life. Last summer on our way to Estonia, Chris and I and several other members of our team had to spend the night in Amsterdam when our flight was cancelled. The short taxi ride that we took from the airport to the hotel where we spent the night was perhaps even more harrowing than those New York taxi rides.

We live in a scary world. A world filled with terrifying things. A world filled with the destructive forces of hurricanes and earthquakes and wildfires, a world where even a trip to an outdoor concert can suddenly be turned into a war zone. It can even be dangerous to go to church on Sunday morning.

Last Sunday, while we were gathered together in worship, a man in Sutherland Springs, Texas, killed 26 people and wounded 20 more during their Sunday morning worship service. That’s 46 people out of the estimated 60 in attendance that day. Sutherland Springs is a small town only a little bit larger than McCallsburg.

We’re horrified by what happened last Sunday in that Baptist church in that little rural town in Texas. This is not a new occurrence in the larger world—in fact, prior to last Sunday, more than 60 people had already been killed in churches around the world this year. Killed while they were gathered together with other Christians worshiping God. An additional 182 have been wounded. The most deadly attack occurred last April, when 49 people died and an additional 78 were wounded in two Christian churches in Egypt when their churches were bombed during Palm Sunday worship services.

We live in a scary world—a world that can be even more scary for Christians, as you saw in the video. We have lived so long in this country under an illusion that our churches are safe places that we’re not even sure what to do when faced with the reality that they’re not as safe as we thought.

But God never intended our journey through life to be safe.

It’s only because a man in a nearby home heard gunfire in that church, grabbed his own gun and ran toward the danger, that any of the people in that church survived. Had it not been for him, it’s likely that every single person in that church would have been killed and possibly others as well.

Why did God allow this to happen?

Why did He allow Richard Wurmbrand and many other Christians to be tortured and persecuted—many of them dragged out of their churches as they worshiped?  It’s estimated that since Jesus died on the cross, 43 million Christians have been martyred. Right now 200 million people face persecution for believing in Jesus and 60% of those people are children.

The man who fired his gun at the shooter and then followed him was scared last Sunday—he’s said that he was terrified. Nobody wants to run toward danger. But he knew he had to do something.

Nobody wants to go out into the world and rescue the perishing. You don’t want to and I don’t want to. We want to stay nice and safe in our own little world. And right here in this place—we even call it a sanctuary. For generations, people thought that there was nowhere safer than in a church.

But no more—why? Why is God allowing the refuge to be taken from us? Why isn’t He keeping us safe in our sanctuaries? As I thought about this question over the past week, I turned to the Book of Acts. And as I studied, I realized that perhaps I’d never really understood all of the story that Luke is telling of the early church.

So this morning I’d like to take you on a lightning tour through the early part of this book.

If you have your Bibles with you, I’d invite you to open them. If you don’t, you might want to take a few notes so you can look at these passages later.

As the book begins, Jesus is about to ascend into heaven and He tells the disciples that they’re job is to continue what Jesus Himself had begun—but they’re not to do anything until they receive Spirit. His final lesson: don’t try to figure it out on your own and don’t get ahead of the Spirit.

In Chapter 2, this small band of Jesus’ disciples are “all together in one place” (Acts 2:1) when the Holy Spirit descends upon them.  immediately they go out among the people who have gathered outside; Peter stands up and shares the gospel and “about three thousand souls received his word and were baptized” (Acts 2:41).

And the next thing we read, as you heard earlier, is that “All who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved” (Acts 2:44-47).

Sounds great, doesn’t it? Who wouldn’t want to be part of this body? When we talk about being a first century church in the twenty-first century, this is often the picture that we have. A nice church where we all are together—in our nice, safe sanctuary—with everybody loving one another and getting along together.

We often forget—or at least ignore—the fact that they’d just received 3000 souls into their fellowship, and more were coming every day. They were all together because they needed to disciple all those new converts. Teaching them more about this Jesus who was both Lord and Savior, this Jesus who had died on a wooden cross for them. This Jesus whom God raised up from the dead, a resurrection that Peter and the other disciples had witnessed.

Sharing the good news wasn’t something they could do overnight but God doesn’t let them that in that comfortable place very long. The very next thing that happens is that Peter and John pray for a lame beggar and he gets healed—a crowd gathers and once again Peter shares the gospel. Shares it so effectively that he and John are arrested.

Satan is already at work trying to stop the good news of Jesus Christ.

In Chapter 4, the high-priest and the rulers in the temple order them to stop telling people about Jesus, to which Peter and John said, “Nope. Not going to happen. We can’t stop telling people this great news.” The temple leaders continue to threaten them, but finally let them go “because of the people” (Acts 4:21).

When they were released, Peter and John went back and told everyone what had happened. And the believers prayed to God; they said, “And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.” And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness.” (Acts 4:24-31).

But now they’re all back together again—they’re safe. And the very next verse says, “Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him were his own, but had everything in common” (Acts 4:32).

“The place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness”—and the conversation immediately turns to physical needs. To their comfort. They were sharing their money, their food, their stuff.

And then, in Chapter 5, we meet Ananias and his wife Sapphira, who sell a piece of property and donate the money to the church—some of the money, but not all of it. The problem isn’t that they kept some of it—it was their land and their money. No one told them they had to give any of it to the church. The problem is that they told the church that they were donating the entire proceeds of the sale. They lied to make themselves look good.

We’ve gone from crying out to God for boldness in speaking His Word to “Look at me, look at how good I am” in almost no time at all.

Peter calls Ananias out for his lie and when Ananias sticks to his story, he immediately drops dead right in front of them all.

A few hours later his wife Sapphira comes in and Peter asks her how much money they sold the land for. She too lies—and she too immediately drops dead.

Satan, the father of lies, has now invaded the body of the church.

“And great fear came upon the whole church and upon all who heard of these things” (Acts 5:11).

Now the apostles are doing many signs and wonders—but “none of the rest dared join them, although the people held them in high esteem” (Acts 5:13). Sounds a lot like today, doesn’t it? We hold the great evangelists of our day in high esteem. We hold the persecuted people in other countries in high esteem—we’re amazed when we hear from the very mouth of Eenok Haamer how he lived in an underground bunker, a hole in the ground, for years while hiding from the communists who wanted to arrest him and his mother—the same communists who had sent his father to a Siberian labor camp. We listened to the story of Richard Wurmbrand, who was suffering in prison at this same time and again we’re amazed.

We’re amazed—even as we’re grateful that we’ve never had to suffer like that.

So the apostles, the Twelve, continue to do signs and wonders and multitudes of new believers are being added to the Lord (Acts 5:14). Now the high priest has all twelve of them arrested, “but during the night an angel of the Lord opened the prison doors and brought them out and said, ‘Go and stand in the temple and speak to the people all the words of this Life’” (Acts 5:19-20). “Keep preaching—keep sharing the good news.”

And they did, enraging the council—they wanted to kill them.

Why didn’t they? Because God wasn’t ready for them to die—He had more work for them to do. And when they were released, “they left, … rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name” (Acts 5:41).

Have you ever suffered for the name of Jesus Christ? Suffered dishonor?

It didn’t even slow them down. The Twelve are on fire: “Every day, in the temple and from house to house, they did not cease teaching and preaching that the Christ is Jesus” (Acts 5:42).

But we discover at the beginning of Chapter six, that while they’re out preaching and teaching, the people back at the church are arguing again—this time, about whether everyone’s getting their fair share of the food. The apostles, “the twelve” refuse to be distracted from “prayer and the ministry of the word” to settle quarrels among the people. They tell them to choose seven men to be in charge of overseeing the distribution of food. They’re going to keep praying and preaching.

Seven men are chosen; they “prayed and laid hands on them.” And the next thing we know, one of them, Stephen, is “doing great wonders and signs among the people.” So the elders and the scribes arrest him and “bring him before the council.”

Stephen used the opportunity to preach the gospel and they were so furiously angry that they took him out and stoned him to death. His last words were, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them” (Acts 7:60).

“And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem”—a great persecution that caused many of the believers to scatter “throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles” (Acts 8:1).

Why did the people leave? They left because they were terrified that they’d be killed, too. But now we find that they’re not arguing with one another—they’re preaching the gospel—sharing the good news of Jesus Christ. All of them—even the ones who weren’t ready.

Chapter 8 tells us that some were baptizing in the name of Jesus but not in the Holy Spirit. No one yells at them for preaching before they knew enough—Peter and John just show up and lay hands on prayed that “they might receive the Holy Spirit” (Acts 8:15).

And from this point on, we hear very little about Christians living together safely in their own little sanctuary.  From here on out, they’re preaching the gospel, they’re being persecuted and even killed. And nowhere is there any indication that God wants them to go back to that place where they’re all just happy together.

Why didn’t the apostles leave, too? We don’t really know. Perhaps it was simply because they weren’t afraid of losing their lives for Jesus. Perhaps it was because they could see that there were still many people in Jerusalem who had not yet heard the gospel.

Perhaps it was because they understood that our true purpose in life is to live for Christ. Perhaps it was because now they understood what Jesus had been trying to teach them for so long: we can be truly alive only as long as we live the way that Jesus lived. We must lose our life in order to have life.

Our default position is to go to the place where we’re comfortable—to find sanctuary. But that way doesn’t lead to life—it leads to death.

We are called to live. To truly live, we must live as Jesus lived. We must give up our life to live for Him. Jesus said, “Remember …: A servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you” (John 15:20). And “In the world you will have tribulation” (John 16:33).

The persecuted church understands this. Richard Wurmbrand, in the 14 years he spent in prison, writes in his book Tortured for Christ that “the Early Church in all of its beauty, sacrifice, and dedication has come alive again in these countries” where persecution is what Christians can expect.

So compelled was Pastor Wurmbrand by his experience in communist prisons that he said, “When I was released,  he was concerned to the point of obsession that the plight of Christians prisoners should not be forgotten.” He worked day and night for the Lord for the rest of his life.

For the last 2000 years, commitment to sharing the good news of Jesus Christ with the lost has always been greatest when the church has not been too comfortable.

Bethlehem Lutheran

Brothers and sisters in Christ, will our horror at the lives lost last Sunday in that Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs fade away as we return again to our own little world—until the next tragedy occurs? Or will we use this as a wake-up call, as a reminder that we never know when our lives might be cut short? We never know that we will actually have a tomorrow in which to serve the Lord.

People in prison for their Christian faith, people suffering in slavery around the world: God asks us—you and me—asks us, as those who would take up our cross and follow Jesus to Golgotha, to allow ourselves to be drawn into the pain of suffering and violence.

To let it break our hearts. We are called to “bear witness.” We are called to live as those who, in the midst of our pain, do not shrink back, but rather rise up. We are called to rise up, to make choices every single day that move us toward the God who alone can convict us of His calling on our lives, the God who alone can sustain us, the God who will cleanse us from broken-hearted fear and despair.

We are called to rise up to meet our God at the foot of the cross. At the cross we meet the God who drew near to us without fear. We meet the God who moved toward the suffering and oppressed. We meet the God who joyfully submitted to bearing all our sin, all our shame, all our burdens; the God who offers us His yoke, who makes our burdens light. At the cross we, like the apostles, can proclaim with boldness, the words of the psalmist, “I will remember the deeds of the Lord” (Psalm 77:11).

Will you go forth boldly—wherever God might lead you? Will you take the prayer cards in your bulletin and pray? Pray for the persecuted church. Pray for the people of Sutherland Springs. We don’t need to pray for those who died—they’re in a far better place. But pray for those lying in the hospital recovering from their wounds. Pray for the families even now beginning to bury their loved ones.

Pray that we will remember that the church is not our sanctuary. True sanctuary comes only in the Holy Spirit. We can find sanctuary in a prison cell, a torture chamber, or on a city street where we’re being stoned to death.

And pay that this congregation may move forward with deep roots, filled with the Holy Spirit, sustained by knowing the only hope that never disappoints-the hope of God’s glory, the hope of God’s healing the hope of God’s kingdom, now and to come.

Let us pray.