God Loves You Dearly!

Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, Amen. Dear friends in Christ, here we are, the second day of a new year. And not a whole lot has changed, has it? And we enter into this year, not knowing how it's going to end. And we may be perplexed. We may be frustrated. We may be fearful. We may just plain wonder about God and His love.

And we're not alone. Ephesus was not an easy place to be a Christian. They were the center of the worship of Diane. The major industry in the town was making little silver statues of Diane and selling them to the tourists, I mean pilgrims who would come to worship at the Temple of Diane. They're surrounded by pagans. And wondered what does it mean for us to be Christians in this society? Lots of questions. What does it mean to be a Godly spouse? A husband or wife? What does it mean to be a Godly parent or an employer or employee? And Saint Paul lays out for the Ephesians to answer their questions. And some of ours, as well.

In college, a pastor led a Bible study on Ephesians, and the title of his study was Love Notes to Ephesus. And as we read the letter that Paul sends to the church at Ephesus, we can feel the love that he has for these Christians. We know that Paul dearly loved the church in Ephesus. In fact, when it was time for him to be - I'll say evacuated from Ephesus because of the stir that arose among the smiths who made the statues of the Goddess Diane and now the need, the demand for those statues was deminishing, and they were blaming Paul for that. And the elders had to smuggle him out of town in a basket lowered down from the hillside. With great tears. But before anything else, before Paul goes anywhere else, he begins first and foremost by underscoring God's great love for the Christians at Ephesus and you and I.

Now, we all at various times, I'm sure, have felt unloved, and maybe we'd even wondered about the love of a spouse, of a friend, of a child, of a parent. That's part of being human. We don't always show our love, or express our love. But God fully expresses His love for you and I in this world. And Paul wants to underscore that.

And when we talk about God, we can't simply just talk about God in the generic, but we have to focus on the Father, Son, Holy Spirit. The Trinity, the One True God, as opposed to gods and goddesses like Diane and Zeus and others.

And Paul begins with God's great love and he doesn't begin with earthly blessing. That's not to discount that. God certainly blesses us in the earthly realm with all that we need for our life in time and space. He provides us food, clothing, shelter, spouse, children, employment, our reason, our senses, everything we need for our life in this time and space. But he goes on - and of course, God provides those blessings from everyone. Even unbelievers benefit from God's mercy. And we receive those blessings - again, not because of our worthiness - but out of God's pure Fatherly divine goodness and mercy.

But Paul focuses on the spiritual blessings. He has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. God the Father chose you and I before the foundation of the world in Christ Jesus that we might stand before Him, holy and blameless. Now, are we standing before God, holy and blameless? That's kind of a trick question. The answer is yes, if we believe that God sent His Son to rescue us from our sin. But without Jesus, we can't stand before God, holy and blameless.

We're beginning to see, now. There's a difference, now. A difference in the spiritual realm between those who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and those who don't. God chose you and I. He knew that you and I - before anything began being created - He knew we would believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, I don't know about you, but it just blows my head. Because there's so much knowledge in God. I mean, before the foundation of the world, He knew that we'd be standing - or I'd be standing here and you'd be sitting there - at this very moment. Using these very same words. He knew that this morning, Zoe and Maddie would be adopted into His family through baptism. In fact, He knows you and I better than we know ourselves. And He knew we'd believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. And in Him, He has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms. Every blessing of heaven is yours and mine because of the Father's love for us. And it's ours through faith in Jesus Christ. That's how much God the Father loves you and I. Even though, by our nature, we are not blameless and holy. We're full of blame, aren't we?

I was once sharing with the confirmation students that if you point the finger at somebody else, you always have three pointing back at you. One of the bright confirmands said, "Okay, Pastor, then I'll just point like this." (with his whole hand). I'm like, "Okay, that's rather creative. Who else would have thought of that." But regardless, we're full of blame. We can't pass the blame for our misdeeds. Things we're supposed to do because God wants us to do them that we don't do. But then also, we're held full of blame for those things that He doesn't want us to do that we so easily do.

But He blesses us in the heavenly realm through His Son, Jesus, who takes on human flesh, who becomes one of us. And when we talk about Jesus, we're all really right on the same page when we come to Him dying on the cross for our sin. And we're pretty well in line with that He takes our sin upon Himself.

But, also part of that is that He comes in flesh and He lives a sinless life. That's important. That's part of how you and I can stand before God, blameless and holy. Because the Father, when He looks at us, He looks at us through Jesus. He sees Jesus spotless, blameless, and I know you're probably thinking, yeah, but Pastor, in our Gospel reading, Jesus kind of went rogue and left Mary and Joseph high and dry, searching for him for three days. Yes, but notice Jesus' answer: didn't you know I needed to be in my Father's house. He was obeying His Heavenly Father's will. Now, I don't suggest that you give, children, any of that kind of lip to your mom and dad, cuz after all, you're not Jesus. And I don't know that Mom's going to treasure that up in her heart like Mary did. But the thing is, Jesus perfectly fufills God's will for you.

Now, that doesn't leave us off the hook. God still wants us to follow the commands. But for us, now, as redeemed children of God, they become a guide for our lives. No longer is it something we need to do to earn eternal life for ourselves.

I have to confess. I saw a sliver of Little House on the Prairie this morning before I left for church. The Reverend, he's supposed to be Lutheran, but he wasn't a very good Lutheran, because he said, "the only way to get right with God is to be in church."

If that's all it took, we'd be pretty full here, wouldn't we? But Jesus does what we're unable to do. And He shows His love in that He becomes human and takes on, not just our sin, but that death that should be ours. And then finally, the Holy Spirit. God loves us, and He shows His love through the Holy Spirit.

We didn't see it up here, but when Zoe and Maddie were baptized, the Holy Spirit filled them. I'm guessing He's already been working in them a little bit. And He sealed them. You saw Pastor: "receive the sign of the cross on the forehead and upon your heart to mark you as one redeemed by Christ." You're sealed. They were sealed. You and I, we've been seeled. God's put His seal on us, and we're His. We're His. But not just that. Paul says, "And He's given us the Holy Spirit as a guarantee." Remember, we have all these spiritual blessings waiting for us in heaven. They'll be realized when our Lord Jesus returns.

But in the meantime, we have the Holy Spirit, who's a guarantee, a deposit, if you will, of all that awaits us in heaven. Now, back in the ancient days when I was growing up, you could get pop in a can or soda, however, you identify it. But not so much in plastic bottles. You got it in glass bottles. And some of you remember getting milk in glass bottles. And when you'd buy the soda, there would be a deposit that you had to pay on the bottles. And the purpose of the deposit was that you would hopefully bring the bottles back when they were empty to the store, rather than just pitching them out the window into the ditch. Now, some people - I don't know that anybody got real wealthy off picking up bottles in the ditch and turning them in for the deposit - but they got a little spending money.

In the same way, that Holy Spirit is a deposit that Jesus is coming again. And we all have that Spirit in us. We all have that Spirit in us. And what a joy that today, we see our Lord's love shown for us in His word, as the young people said, in the water of baptism which adopted Maddie and Zoe into God's family and our family here at Immanuel, and the bread and the wine. Give us Jesus' body and blood. We see those gifts and reminders of God's love, but there's so much more. And there are times when the devil will work on you and I, to cause us to wonder, to doubt: now does God really love me? Does God really love you, they could have said to Eve afterwards. Now, does God really love you because you disobeyed? Does Daddy still love me, even though I bent his saw, so now he can make 90-degree cuts with it?

The answer is yes. God loves you.

The kids did a better job of singing it than I do, but yes, God loves you dearly. And I'll say it again: loves even you and I, with an everlasting love, the psalmist says. So whatever this year brings your way and my way, one thing that we take into this new year as constant as we have in every year before and every year yet to come, is that God loves us dearly. Amen.

Now, may the peace of God, which surpasses our understanding, keep our hearts and our minds in faith in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting. Amen.