The Lutheran Hour
-
"Who Are Those Guys?"
- Download MP3 Reflections
-
Text: Luke 9:30-31
-
Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed. Today your heavenly Father invites you to see His Son. Look into the manger; gaze upon the bloodied cross of Calvary; look into Joseph’s empty tomb and see clearly: Jesus Christ is the fulfiller of the Law; the completer of the Old Testament prophecies; see clearly your Savior and Lord. Amen.
Men and women are different. You probably didn’t need me to tell you that; but, trust me, they are. Men and women are different. It’s official. British scientists have discovered there are 78 genes which are different between men and women. Seventy-eight genes which explain at least some of the variations in the way we look at life.
One of the ladies at Lutheran Hour headquarters said women have a “calendar gene.” Women remember birthdays, anniversaries, the date of a first date. Men sometimes know what year it is, occasionally they know the month. Men and women are different. Men say their wives think the “E” on the gas gauge stands for “enough;” women say their husbands wait for applause when they take out the garbage. Men are amazed women can hear a child’s faint cry coming from the other end of the house; women are astounded men are barely aware that there are little people called “children” living in the house with them. There are differences.
I have a genetic difference. I would call it the “photograph gene.” The photograph gene is a big one in our house. Anytime I see Pamie, and I love her dearly, walking toward me with a stack of pictures, I head for the hills. Whenever I see a bride who is packing picture proofs from her wedding, I hide in the furnace room. Whenever a friend shows up with a pillowcase which is chock full of photos from her trip out west, I fake some serious, and highly contagious malady. Why? It’s the photograph gene. You see when I, or just about any male, looks at a stack of pictures, he… looks at them. Although I am certainly not the fastest guy in the world, and I have never won any Olympic medal for hand-eye coordination, I think that I can go through 100 pictures in under two minutes. It’s very simple. Step #1 – I look at a picture. Step #2 – I pick up the picture and put it into a new pile. Step #3 – I look at the next picture. I repeat those steps until all the photographs have been viewed. The men who are listening to me understand.
The women who are listening do not understand. Every one of them out there is saying, “You can’t possibly look at 100 pictures in a minute.” Well, I can and I do. I just don’t analyze the pictures; I don’t pour over the pictures; I don’t get involved in a lengthy discussion about each and every one of the pictures. It’s a genetic difference. It’s the same genetic difference which makes women save those pictures, and when their men are least expecting it, pull out the pile and say, “Let’s look at these together.” When you hear, “Look at my silly smile. I never take a good picture,” reassuringly mumble, “Of course you do, dear. I love you in all your pictures.” The truth is, almost all of us, both men and women, don’t like the way we appear in photographs.
In some respects, I think Jesus felt the same way about Himself, and the picture other people came away with when they looked at Him. You see, it wasn’t very often that people saw Jesus for who He really was… the Son of God, the Savior of the world. Shortly after He was born, King Herod looked at Him and saw a rival for his earthly throne. Herod had a bad picture of Jesus. Then there were the people of His boyhood home, Nazareth. While they had at first been impressed by the wisdom of His Words, they thought He had gotten carried away and they ended up trying to kill Him. They had a bad picture, too. Of course there was the picture carried around by the Jewish religious leaders. Their picture of the Savior was always blurry and out of focus. Depending on the day, they saw the Christ as being possessed by the devil, a liar, a charlatan, a conman, or a challenger to their authority over the people. The crowds – they pictured Jesus as a political leader, or a provider of all their physical needs, wants, and wishes. Jesus quickly pointed out that those pictures weren’t especially accurate, either. Jesus’ own family saw Him as a crazy person; a fellow who needed to be taken home and cared for (see Mark 3:21). Everybody had a bad picture of Jesus.
Now, I suppose I need not point out some things haven’t changed over the centuries. Right now in the world, there are a lot of snapshots of Jesus being circulated; a lot of bad pictures of the Savior are making their rounds. No, I’m not talking about the bad pictures of Jesus which are often seen and shown in the movies… you know the ones where He appears to be far more Norwegian than He does Jewish; where He looks like a 98-pound-weakling, rather than the son of a carpenter in the days before there were power tools and everything was done by hand. I’m not talking about the movies which show Jesus always walking slowly, and speaking in a meaningful, slow-motion monotone. You know the Bible talks about the crowds which came and listened to Jesus speak. They came early in the day and stayed around until evening. Do you think they would have come and stayed if Jesus had preached, “Blessed… are… you… when… men…”? Would you have stayed? You might, if you were asleep. No, the movies of Jesus are pretty bad.
Even so, those pictures are crystal clear compared to some of the other poor representations of the Redeemer that some people are tying to pass off. There are folks who will show you pictures which are fuzzy and blurry. When you look at those pictures you can hardly see the Savior at all. He kind of looks like Jesus and like Buddha, or Mohammed, or Zoroaster, or some ancient Greek philosopher. If you ask those folks to explain why their pictures seem so hazy and indistinct, they’ll tell you: use your imagination. Fill in any face you want. It doesn’t make any difference if you see Jesus, or some other religious leader. It doesn’t make any difference because they’re all the same. The people who are trying to pass off these pictures would have you believe that all religions are interchangeable. It just ain’t so. Christianity is different. While every other religion, and I mean every other religion says you have to work your way into God’s good graces; only Christianity says God sent His Son to earth to save us. Only Christianity maintains God has, in the person of His Son, done for us what we could not do. Only Christianity says God’s Son has paid the penalty-price to remove our transgressions; only Christianity claims a Savior who has lived, suffered, died, and risen to save humankind from sin, death, and devil. See clearly the picture Scripture paints: “There is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all” (1 Timothy 2:5-6).
No, there are some pretty bad pictures of Jesus being circulated. While millions of people around the world recognize Him as their Savior who has rescued them from their sins; who identify and entrust themselves to His nail-pierced hands which have supported them in their tragedies and losses; there are many others who are showing snapshots of the Savior which have obviously been doctored. There are religions which are dedicated to doctoring Christ’s picture. You can see how they have taken from His brow the crown of thorns He once endured and instead, have tried to crudely paint in the horns of a devil. There are authors who have taken the picture of the crucified Savior which is shown so clearly and completely in the Gospels and doctored it. They have replaced Scripture’s picture with that of a regular man who escaped Calvary’s cross and lived happily ever after as a husband and father. There are those who have doctored Jesus’ picture by erasing all of His miracles, denying all of His words of hope and forgetting His calls to repentance and forgiveness. There are preachers who have doctored the picture of the suffering servant who sacrificed Himself and they’ve replaced it with that of a Christ who looks very much like Santa. He looks like Santa because, in this new picture, Jesus’ greatest desire is not the saving of souls, but the giving of earthly gifts. There are pictures of Jesus which are so doctored, that when you look at them, He’s nowhere to be found. Great governments, complete colleges, and philosophical movements have done their very best to take Jesus out of the picture all together. For them, Jesus is not a Savior; He is not a Redeemer; He is not the Lord; He’s nothing – nothing at all.
I think you’ll agree there are some pretty bad pictures of Jesus out there which might make you ask, “Is there no place, no picture that shows Jesus for who He really was, and is?” To that question, it’s my privilege to say such a snapshot exists. No, not a real, actual photograph of the Christ. His life was begun, lived, and His resurrection completed before any photographic reproduction had been thought of or invented. But that doesn’t mean I can’t produce an accurate picture of Jesus. To do so, I ask you to go back in time almost 2,000 years ago. Go back to Caesarea Philippi, the Roman capital of Judea. Here, in pagan territory, the seat of the procurators who ruled the country, the place where Roman troops were quartered, this is where you will see a snapshot of the Savior. Here, in Caesarea Philippi, we can see the Savior surrounded by idolatry. In this place there are no less than 14 temples dedicated to Baal; one worship center has been built to revere the emperor and there is a cave which, according to legend, is the birthplace of the Greek god of nature, Pan.
Here, in the devil’s domain, where nothing is sacred and all is profane, Jesus questioned His disciples. In effect, He asked them, “What kind of picture do people have of Me?” They replied, “Some say you are Elijah, or Jeremiah, or one of the prophets; others say you are John the Baptist. ” Then Jesus asked, “How about you? What picture do you have of Me?” That’s when Peter, surrounded by these false gods, spoke by inspiration of the true God. He said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” It was a good answer; the best answer which could have been given. Still, Peter may not have had a complete picture of what His words meant. We know that because, not long after, when Jesus was talking about how He would soon be headed to Jerusalem where He would be arrested, condemned, crucified, and buried; Peter tried to talk Him out of going. You see, Peter’s picture of Jesus – it didn’t show the Savior sacrificing Himself as a ransom for sinful souls.
Maybe that’s why, about a week later, Jesus took Peter, along with two other disciples, James and John, up a high mountain. It is there you can see the snapshot of the Savior. There the four of them began to pray. How long they prayed, I cannot say, but eventually sleep closed the eyes of the disciples. Jesus continued praying, and as He prayed, He was changed. The disciples awoke and they saw Jesus as they had never seen Him before; as they would never see Him again, at least until they appeared before Him in heaven. Depending on the account you read, it says, Jesus’ face started to shine as the sun; His clothes became whiter than white, whiter than any laundry could get them; glittering, white as light. Indeed, Jesus entire figure seemed bathed in light. Even more, Jesus was no longer alone. He had been joined by two other men.
For years, I wondered how the disciples, in a day before photographs, knew the identities of the men talking with Jesus. Scripture doesn’t record anybody asking, “Hey, who are these guys?” I can only believe that the Holy Spirit told the disciples they were in the presence of the Old Testament’s Moses and Elijah. Are you starting to get the picture here? Remote location, great views, Jesus is bathed in light brighter than the sun; and now He is conversing with two of the heaviest hitters in the Children of Israel’s history. Moses, the man who had at Sinai delivered God’s Ten Commandments, was talking to the Savior whose perfect life was fulfilling those commandments. Elijah, the representative of all those who had spoken God’s Word and proclaimed His prophecies which would, unerringly, identify Jesus as the Son of God, was now talking with the Savior of the world.
The disciples, in awe of what they were seeing, listened to Jesus and the great men as they talked. And what did they talk about? Did they visit about how the Cubs hadn’t won the pennant that year? Did they complain about the level of Roman taxes, or whether it was worth the effort and price to upgrade your computer to the newest Microsoft operating system? Did they talk about how many miles their burro got to a bale of hay? None of these things were the topic of conversation. Scripture doesn’t keep us in the dark. It tells us, “They spoke of (Jesus’) His departure, which He was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.” They were visiting about Jesus’ suffering, how the crowd would welcome Him on Sunday, and call for His crucifixion on Friday. They were talking about how one of Jesus’ own best friends would betray Him for 30 pieces of silver. They were talking about the beating and the whipping, the spitting and the scorn, the taunts and the terrible pain He would endure. They were talking about how Jesus would drink, and drain dry, the cup of suffering none of us could taste. They visited about how Jesus would die so all who believed on Him as their Savior, all who would be given a repentant heart, would be saved from hell’s horrible torment. Do you see the picture? It is completed as God’s great voice comes calling out of a cloud: “This is my Son, my chosen One; listen to Him!”
That’s the picture I want you to see; the picture that God wants you to see. I know God wants you to see it because He made sure Peter and John and James were there that day. Jesus could have gone up on that mountain alone. He often went off to pray by Himself. Similarly, Jesus didn’t need Moses and Elijah to tell Him what was going to happen to Him. He had always been fully aware that He would suffer and die in Jerusalem. No, these things happened in the presence of the disciples so that they would have a snapshot, a picture they could hold on to. He wanted them to have a picture to remember when He was murdered. He wanted them to have a picture to cherish and cling to during those years when they would be persecuted and condemned for sharing the Savior’s story of salvation. God wanted His disciples to keep the picture He had shown them that day.
Years ago, a group of kindergarten children visited a local police station and viewed the pictures of the ten most-wanted criminals. One child pointed to a picture and asked if it really was the photograph of the wanted person. The policeman guide replied it was. The youngster inquired, “Well, why didn’t you keep him when you took his picture?” I can tell you that Peter and John did keep their picture of the Savior that God gave them that day. When skeptics were attacking the faith, when false messengers were putting forth a different picture of Jesus, Peter recalled that day on the mountain. He wrote: (2 Peter 1:16-18) “For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty. For when He received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to Him by the Majestic Glory, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,’ we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with Him on the holy mountain.” Peter was not alone. John did the same in the very first chapter of the book which records the life of Jesus. John recalled that day on the mountain when he wrote, “The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).
To those of you who know the Savior, but who have found your picture of the Redeemer becoming confused and confounded by the devil’s distortions and humankind’s manipulations, hold fast to this picture. To those of you who, this Lord’s Day, are filled with doubts and find yourself denying the love of the Lord, see this picture. Twenty centuries ago, God knew what you would feel, and He gave you this snapshot so you might clearly see the Savior and believe in the salvation He has won for you. See the Savior who has fulfilled the prophecies; who has answered the law’s requirements. See Him and know that this is God’s crucified and risen Son in whom you can believe. And, if you need help in the seeing, call us at The Lutheran Hour. Amen.
LUTHERAN HOUR MAILBOX (Questions & Answers) for February 18, 2007
TOPIC: Judgment Day – Part 1ANNOUNCER: How much of a difference can one little comma make? Pastor Ken Klaus responds to a listener’s concerns about Judgment Day. I’m Mark Eischer.
KLAUS: And how is it that our listener is all upset over a punctuation mark?
ANNOUNCER: Well, it’s actually related to the larger question of, “What happens when we die?” It seems our listener heard a talk by a Bible scholar who said that when the Bible was translated, a comma was allegedly put in “the wrong place.”
KLAUS: That scholar was referencing Luke 23:43 in which Jesus is speaking to the believing thief who was dying on the cross next to Him. Jesus said, “Verily I say unto thee, today shalt thou be with Me in paradise.”
ANNOUNCER: Right. That’s a very familiar passage.
KLAUS: A familiar passage which has been interpreted several ways . Some would put a comma after the word “today;” others put the comma before the word “today.”
ANNOUNCER: That’s not such a big deal, is it?
KLAUS: It doesn’t sound like a big deal. But, let’s see what happens when I say the same line with the comma changed around. “Verily I say unto you today, you will be with Me in paradise.” Here’s the other version: “Verily I say unto you, today you will be with Me in paradise.” Do you see the difference, now?
ANNOUNCER: Well, the first way, Jesus is making a promise that the thief will be in heaven eventually; and the other way, the thief is going to be in heaven that very day. I guess I didn’t realize that the placement of a comma could make that big a difference? Which one is correct?
KLAUS: Ancient Greek didn’t usually have commas and a lot of other punctuation that we use today. If you were to look at such a Greek document, all the words are run together, and the reader is supposed to figure out how to read it and punctuate it.
ANNOUNCER: You mean all the letters and words are continuously strung together without any spaces between them?
KLAUS: Yes, paper was expensive and they didn’t want to waste it. That’s right.
ANNOUNCER: So we really can’t tell what happens on Judgment Day.
KLAUS: I wouldn’t go that far. Remember; when you read the Bible, the clear passages of Scripture help us to interpret those which are not as clear. Scripture is very clear about what happens when we die. The Book of Revelation says, “Whoever dies in the Lord is blessed from henceforth” (Revelation 14:13). That means the blessing starts immediately. The book of Hebrews (9:27) also has a passage which is very clear. It says, “And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment…” Very simply, we die and we are immediately judged.
ANNOUNCER: Which leads us to another question then. Do we go into the grave and then more or less sleep until the Day of Resurrection?
KLAUS: You know, Mark, right before Jesus raised the daughter of Jairus from the dead, He said she was “sleeping.” Pastors and preachers often say much the same in their funeral sermons.
ANNOUNCER: But that’s not to suggest that we go into some sort of spiritual hibernation when we die, do we?
KLAUS: No. When we die, the soul is separated from the body. We are immediately judged, our souls go either to heaven or into hell. On Judgment Day, God is going to reunite our souls with our resurrected bodies. The redeemed will enjoy a blessed eternity in the presence of the Triune God. The damned are going to suffer eternal torment in the fires of hell. And although our listener didn’t ask it, faith in Jesus as your Savior is the litmus test of judgment. What ultimately matters is not where you placed your commas, it’s where you place your trust-right now! If you believe in Christ and the forgiveness He has earned for you, you have already received salvation. If you don’t-well, then, you deserve-and will receive-everlasting punishment.
ANNOUNCER: And, one more question: Are we then judged twice-once at the time of our death, and then a second time on Judgment Day?
KLAUS: Mark, if you remember that Hebrews passage, it said, “It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes the judgment.” The judgment – there will be only one. We die; we are judged, and the verdict for us is given. On Judgment Day, that verdict, privately given at the time of our death, now becomes public.
The best comparison I can make is this: when a jury finds a person guilty (or innocent) of a crime, from the moment the decision is made, that person is either guilty and will be punished, or he is exonerated and will be freed. Still, that decision, although it has been made, becomes public when the judge reads the decision from the bench. That is what’s going to happen on Judgment Day. God’s verdict becomes public.
ANNOUNCER: This has been a presentation of Lutheran Hour Ministries.
Music selections for this program:
“A Mighty Fortress” arranged by John Leavitt. Concordia Publishing House/SESAC
“The Transfiguration of Christ” arr. Garber. Concordia Publishing House/SESAC
“O Wondrous Type! O Vision Fair” arranged by Timothy Moke and Georg Masanz. From Magnificent Christian Hymns, vol. 2 by Timothy Moke (© 2005 T. Moke Recordings) Used by permission
“Prelude on Lauda Anima” by John Behnke. From For All Seasons, vol. 2 by John Behnke (© 2001 John Behnke) Concordia Publishing House