August 12, 2012 at Calvary
Evangelical Lutheran Church – Mechanicsburg, PA
“And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that I should lose nothing
of all that He has given Me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the
will of My Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him
should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
Jesus’ words reveal His purpose
in coming to the world: “I have come down
from heaven, not to do My own will but the will of Him who sent Me.” He
comes one sent with a particular purpose. So what is Jesus’ assignment? What is
the task that Jesus has been given? And just who was it that sent Him? This is
what Jesus discloses: “This is the will
of Him who sent Me, that I should lose nothing of all that He has given Me, but
raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of My Father, that everyone
who looks on the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life, and I will
raise him up on the last day.” The task is to bring salvation. The will of
the Father who sent Jesus is that people would look at His Son and believe in
Him. Jesus’ purpose is to bring all who have been given to Him to the blessed
end of life everlasting, losing none along the way.
Jesus’ words also reveal the
character of His Father in heaven. The Father is benevolent, caring, desirous
of good, protecting, and gracious. This had been revealed in the events of
Israel’s history. The chronicles of what the Hebrew people experienced shows a
string of actions that the Lord
performed for them, acts that brought them deliverance and restoration. This
was not always evident, as you heard with the plight of Elijah, one of the Lord’s prophets: “Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah
had done, and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. Then Jezebel
sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, ‘So may the gods do to me and more also, if
I do not make your life as the life of one of them by this time tomorrow.’ Then he was afraid, and he arose and ran for his
life and came to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there.”
Elijah’s flight into the
wilderness is done after facing the greatest degree of opposition. He had done
as the Lord commanded, showing the
Lord’s supremacy over Baal to His
Covenant People who had fallen into apostasy. By this act—the consuming of the
sacrifice offered to the Lord,
while the sacrifices to Baal went untouched—Elijah was meant to awaken the
people out of their state of idolatry, calling them back to the Lord. But what did this bring Elijah? It
brought him opposition from the royal house of Israel, death threats from the
queen.
In the face of that opposition,
Elijah wanders off to the wilderness, seeking an end to his life: “He asked that he might die, saying, ‘It is
enough; now, O Lord, take away my
life, for I am no better than my fathers.’ And he lay down and slept under a
broom tree.” But the Lord’s
character is shown in what He does for His beleaguered prophet: “And he looked, and behold, there was at his
head a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water. And he ate and drank and
lay down again. And the angel of the Lord
came again a second time and touched him and said, ‘Arise and eat, for the
journey is too great for you.’ And he arose and ate and drank, and went in the
strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mount of God.”
Elijah was not to be lost from the Lord’s
hand. The Lord’s will for him was
to sustain his life, to bring him to completion of his task, and to lead him to
life everlasting. And no threat from anyone, even the pagan queen of Israel,
would keep that from happening.
This same will is revealed by
what Jesus says and does. It is not just an Old Testament thing from a long
time ago. Jesus states that He is meant to do the same: “This is the will of Him who sent Me, that I should lose nothing of all
that He has given Me, but raise it up on the last day.” Jesus acknowledges
that He has a people who have been given to Him by His Father in heaven. They
have been entrusted to His care. And the will that Jesus has come to fulfill is
that none of these entrusted to Him will be lost, but will be raised up at the
last day.
So who are these people who have
been entrusted to Jesus? Perhaps some of you might think it’s the company of
apostles whom Jesus called to Himself. That is a correct answer, but it is
incomplete. Jesus’ words give the complete answer: “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and whoever comes to Me
I will never cast out…. For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who
looks on the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life, and I will raise
Him up on the last day…. No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me
draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.” Those who have been
given to Jesus’ care are not just a small number of apostles or a group of
about 500 or so followers who were with Him at the time of His resurrection.
No, it is everyone who has been drawn by the Father to believe in His Son. They
are the ones promised to have eternal life, to be raised up on the last day.
This is the definition that describes
you. You are here because of your belief in Jesus’ identity, in His words and
works. You have been called to be followers of Jesus, recipients of His gifts
and merits. You have been given to know about what Jesus has said and done to
bring forgiveness, life, and salvation to you—“assuming that you have heard about Him and were taught in Him,”
as the apostle writes. You have been granted a new identity, as the Father has
drawn you to faith in His Son, “the bread
that came down from heaven” to be the source of your life.
You have been transformed by the
Holy Spirit who makes known what the Son has done in completing His Father’s
will: living perfectly, obeying all the commands that have been placed on
humanity, offering Himself as “a fragrant
offering and sacrifice,” rising from death to be the source of eternal
life. So you have “put off your old self,
which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful
desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new
self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”
This is what happened for you in your baptisms, as the Holy Spirit was granted
to you. It is what happens as you receive the divine words, as Jesus testifies:
“It is written in the Prophets, ‘And they
will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father
comes to Me.”
But that transformation is not
totally complete. You wait for the day of your own resurrection, when you shall
be graciously taken from this valley of sorrow to Himself in heaven. Until that
day, you are present among all sorts who want nothing to do with the Father’s
will. You have your own sinfulness that arises and makes itself known in your
own sins: “bitterness and wrath and anger
and clamor and slander and malice.” Around you are those “darkened in their understanding, alienated
from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their
hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to
sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.” There is the pagan
monarch, the ruler of this world, who is a liar and murderer, seeking your
harm. Encountering these things, the same thought that entered Elijah’s mind
runs through yours: “It is enough; now, O
Lord, take away my life, for I am
no better than my fathers.”
So how does the Lord answer? He answers with the news of
what His Son has done: “I am the living
bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live
forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is My flesh.”
The Son has offered Himself for you. He gave Himself up for you, “a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God”
that atones and absolves your sin. He has risen victorious from the grave,
routing that dreadful enemy. Jesus is no dead source, but “the living bread that came down from heaven” instead.
But the Father’s answer does not
end with the news of what His Son has accomplished for you. No, He provides
something else. He says to you: “Arise
and eat, for the journey is too great for you.” The food He provides is not
from the baker, no cake baked on hot stones, but rather the bread from heaven
that is placed in your mouths from this altar. The flesh that His Son gave for
the life of the world is given to you: the bread that endures to eternal life.
This is what sustains you in your time of trouble in this world. It is what you
are given as the Lord’s answer to
your plight. It is given to you because the Father’s will completed by His Son
is that He “should lose nothing of all
that He has given Me, but raise it up on the last day.”
So you come here where that
bread from heaven is found. You come to eat, so that you may learn to believe
that Christ, out of great love, died for your sin, and also learn from Him to
love God and your neighbor. You come because of the command, encouragement, and
promise that are given. You come because you have been drawn by the Father to
believe in the Son and His promise: “I am
the bread of life; whoever comes to Me shall not hunger, and whoever believes
in Me shall never thirst.”
Eating in faith what is offered
by the benevolent, caring, and gracious Father, you will be raised up by the
Son on the last day. It is the Father’s will for you, the will that the Son has
fulfilled, the will that the Holy Spirit makes known to you: “I am the living bread that came down from
heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, He will live forever.” So you will make
the same confession as the Psalmist: “This
poor man cried, and the Lord heard
him and saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him,
and delivers them. Oh, taste and see that the Lord
is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him.”
+ In the Name of the Father and
of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
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