The Lutheran Hour
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"Share in Suffering"
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Text: 2 Timothy 2:3
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Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed. With His victorious resurrection from the dead, Jesus has reclaimed this world to be His own. In triumph, believers rejoice that it is no longer necessary for souls to live in slavery; no longer is damnation our inescapable destination. By God’s grace, and through faith, we are forgiven – free and glad to invite you to join with us in the service of the Redeemer, our commander, our Savior, and Lord. Amen.
Almost 2,000 years ago, one of Jesus’ apostles, the wandering witness, Saint Paul, wrote to his son in the faith, Timothy. Arrested, imprisoned, on trial for his life, Paul knew his earthly end was coming, and so, by the Holy Spirit’s inspiration, he gave the young man some instructions for ministry. In the book of 2nd Timothy, which became Paul’s last will and testament, he instructed: “Be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus… Share in the suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 2:1,3). Twenty-two years ago, when I was a pastor with a parish, I used those words for my text when I spoke to a Lutheran High School graduation. After the service, while I was talking with some of the people, I noticed a man standing off to the side who was patiently watching me. After the other folks were done with their conversations he came up to me and said something like, “Pastor, that was an interesting sermon you gave to the young people. But don’t you think it’s a little strange telling these seniors to be soldiers for the Savior? Isn’t it a contradiction to be a soldier in the Savior’s army if you’re supposed to be following the Prince of Peace?”
The man didn’t wait for me to respond, but continued. He said, “Reverend, I noticed that you like to tell stories. I’d like to tell you a story which might help make my point. This is what he said: There was once a soldier, a German soldier who had been lightly wounded. Still able to get around, the soldier walked to the military hospital which was a large and imposing building with two front doors. The first of those doors was marked: Slightly wounded, while the other was labeled: Seriously wounded. The soldier went through the first door and found himself walking down a long hall. At the end of the hall he ended up facing two more doors. The door on the left was marked: Officers, and the door on the right was marked: Enlisted men. Being a corporal, our soldier walked through the appropriate door and entered another long hall. You will not be surprised if I tell you at the end of that hall there were two more doors. The first was labeled: For Party Members, and the other had the sign: Everyone else. Since our soldier had never been interested in anything political, he went through the second door, a door which quickly closed behind him. Do I need to tell you the soldier found himself outside the hospital, in the alley behind the building? Later, after he had returned to his comrades they asked, “How did they treat you at the hospital?” He replied, “To tell you the truth, they didn’t help me at all, but you ought to see the organization they have!” The man in Minnesota concluded his story by saying, “Pastor, that’s just one of the things I see that is wrong with the church and being a soldier in the Savior’s army. You folks have got a lot of organization, but you never really help anybody.”
As I look back, I remember we talked for a while. I don’t think I changed his mind; I know he didn’t change mine. The encounter was all but forgotten, until about two weeks ago when I received a letter in the mail. No, it wasn’t from the same fellow, but it was a person who apparently held the same sort of feelings about the Savior’s soldiers. He wrote, “For almost 2,000 years you Christians and the Church have been preaching Jesus. For 75 years The Lutheran Hour has sounded like a broken record as it comes across the airwaves with the message: ‘Repent, believe, be saved, live as a Christian.’ In spite of all your preaching, and the preaching of everyone else, we still have wars, we still have hatred, we still have violence. Don’t you think it’s time Christianity admits the Savior has failed? Isn’t it time that you gave up? Look at the murder and misery, the pain and the poverty, the crime and the cruelty! The Savior’s soldiers haven’t changed those things, have they? They haven’t changed anything, not one little bit.”
By the time I got done reading that letter, I was mad. I was really mad. Although my conversations with these men were separated by two decades and more, they were making the same charge and criticism against Christ and His Church. In the spirit of our age, they were saying Christ’s Church has failed to win the field; they were suggesting the Savior’s soldiers were a sad and sorry lot who should surrender. Twenty years ago, as pastor of a church, I had to be calm, collected, and composed in the face of those accusations. Twenty years ago anything I had said would have looked pretty self-serving. That’s why, 20 years ago I put up with that kind of criticism. But I’m not pastor of a congregation anymore, so I can say things the way they really are. I can speak honestly to all of you who get some kind of unpleasant pleasure in putting down Christ, His pastors, priests, parishes, and people. I can respond to all of you who are greatly delighted in demeaning, degrading, and debasing the Savior and His soldiers. Which is why, to you I would like to say…
You don’t get it. You heard me right: you don’t get it. I’m not saying you don’t get it because you’re deliberately trying to be petty or perverse. I’m not saying you don’t get it because you happen to be intentionally antagonistic and argumentative. While there are some who don’t get it because they think of themselves as being self-sufficient, self-actualized, and self-saving, most of you don’t get it because you haven’t really thought about what you believe and why you believe it. You don’t get it because you’ve found it so very easy to go along with the crowd, parroting what you’ve heard someone, or a whole bunch of someone else’s say.
If that accurately describes you, then I would ask you to consider this: Would you say the polio vaccine has failed because a doctor didn’t order it, a nurse didn’t give it, and a patient refused to take it? Would you say an appendectomy has failed if the patient never went into the hospital, no surgeon was ever called, and no scalpel was ever applied? To say such a thing would be a great foolishness. The failure was not in the medicine; the fault was not in the surgery. Both failure, fault, and flaw can be found in this fact: the gift which could have given life was never administered.
Now, if that is the case when it comes to medicine and surgery, why would your conclusion be any different when it comes to Christ and His Church? Why would anyone hold the Savior and His soldiers responsible for the pains and problems of this world when so many leaders in numerous nations have forbidden their people to be told anything of the Savior’s birth, life, suffering, sacrifice, death, and resurrection? Why would anyone say that Christ and His soldiers in the Church have failed when, all too often, the teachings of the Savior have never been tried or applied; when His instructions are left unspoken and unheard, when His call to repentance is left unheeded, when His offer of forgiveness and salvation is left unwanted and unreceived?
Understand, I am not making a whitewash of the faith, here. There is no defense possible for those soldier-scholars who claim to serve the Savior, but who deny the Bible is the inspired Word of God, written under the direction of the Holy Spirit. There is no excuse for those who believe it is their duty to rewrite and improve the Lord’s Word, which, they maintain, was produced in ignorant times by ignorant and easily duped disciples. There can be no justification for those who deny the Christ’s virgin birth, His miracles, His preaching, His prayers, His condemnation, and His crucifixion. It is impossible to support those whose questions cause people to doubt the Savior’s suffering, His sacrifice, and above all His blood-bought salvation. What positive thing can be said about the Savior’s so-called undershepherds who refuse to condemn sin and prefer to speak exclusively about the secular, about social and political causes? It is impossible to cover up the misdirection of those false leaders who, in order to promote their ministry, choose to minimize the perfect life, the innocent death and sin-forgiving, eternity-bestowing resurrection of the Christ.
Having said that, I fear for the eternal ending and destiny of the many souls who, through misguidance and misdirection, have concluded Christ’s Church is primarily and only concerned with war, illegal aliens, international treaties, discrimination, homelessness, poverty, and the manipulation of God to give them stuff. I cringe anytime I hear a minister of the Gospel speak without any reference to the Law or the Gospel; when any servant of the Savior preaches without any mention of the cross or the empty tomb. There is no whitewash here today. What there is, is a prayer that the Holy Spirit may send forth more servant-soldiers who are glad to confess with Saint Paul: “When I came to you, brothers, (I) did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith may not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God” (1 Corinthians 2:1-5). When preachers can say those words with Paul, you will see some wonderful and powerful changes in the Church and the witness that she makes.
Has the Savior failed? Should His soldiers give up the field? With a sick satisfaction, some skeptics and cynics say the surrender has already taken place. Gladly, almost gleefully, they point to those who have deserted the church. The deserters of the church are the ones who once enlisted as soldiers of the Savior when they said, “Master, I’m reporting for duty. I’ll never leave You, or forsake You; I will be faithful unto death, You can count on me.” That’s what they said, but today, when muster is called, the deserters can’t be found. Somewhere along the way they went AWOL. Maybe the message of salvation no longer seemed important to them; perhaps they didn’t think they’d be missed, maybe their feelings were hurt, maybe a lot of things happened. Whatever their reason, these soldiers have deserted the church and they are gone.
Has the Savior failed? Should His soldiers give up the field? There is a soldier; I call him the discourager, who thinks we should. What, you’ve never heard of the discourager? Let me describe him. The discourager stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the other soldiers. He gives every appearance of being a good grunt, ready to witness, eager to share the name of Jesus and the blood which saves humanity from sin. Yet, ever so quietly the discourager whispers and gossips and condemns and throws doubts into the minds of others. With the discouragers at work, it doesn’t take long before many of the soldiers of the cross despair of seeing any positive results to their work and witness. When the discouragers are at work, the soldiers who are still engaged in battle have to fight twice as hard to gain ground.
With the doubters, the discouragers, and the deserters at work, the greatest story ever told, God’s gracious good-news of the Savior’s victory over sin, death, and devil can seem unimportant and inconsequential. Because of the mass of doubters, the many discouragers, and the multitudes of deserters, it’s not amazing that the devil has managed to convince countless civilians that the Lord Jesus has lost and His soldiers are unsuccessful. If your opinion of the Savior and His soldiers has been shaped by the terrible and tragic sins of clergyman which are occasionally featured on the evening news; if your concept of the Christ and those who follow Him has been controlled by the uncomplimentary and scandalous way Hollywood loves to depict the Savior and His followers; if you are among the millions who think the Savior has failed and His soldiers should give up the field, may I gently, and as lovingly as possible, say: “I’m sorry, you don’t get it, and I wish you could.” It’s important that you do, because “getting it,” being given Jesus, is the difference between salvation and damnation; it is the difference between heaven and hell.
What can I say to those of you who think the world would be better off if Christ and His solders surrendered the field which is this world? Should I tell you to take a look at the record of history and see how the Savior’s soldiers have done in the past? When Paul told Timothy to be a good soldier, Rome was in control of the known western world. As Christianity swept over that land, the vices, the degeneracy, the perversions and persecutions decreased. Do you want to see the same truth brought home in reverse? Then read up at what happened during the French and the Russian revolutions which demoted the Savior even as they promoted human reason and economics. Without the Christ, chaos reigned, and respect for human life, family, and faith was set aside in a cutthroat scramble for power, wealth, and personal gain.
What can I say to those of you who think the world would be better off without the Savior and His soldiers? Should I make some practical comparisons? Most of The Lutheran Hour listeners are not ready to disregard motherhood and dismiss the whole value of family because last summer when the temperature soared to 98 degrees, a mother locked her children in her car while she spent three hours in a gambling casino. If you still continue to believe in mothers even though there have been some poor examples of women occupying that exalted position, why do you so quickly write off the Christ and His soldiers because some have proven themselves to be faithless? Let me ask: how many of you have stopped using money because some criminals are circulating counterfeit cash? That would be a silly thing to do, but that is exactly what many do in regards to the Savior and His soldiers because some Christians have been leading lives which are hypocritical and less than exemplary.
Have the Christ and His followers failed so miserably that they should be written off? If you believe that, then go to a Christian worship service. Go anywhere you like and you will see how Christians continue to pray for peace and salvation for all the peoples of this world. Have Christians behaved so poorly? Then I challenge you to show me any example of Christians dancing in the streets and singing songs of joy because numerous women and children have been killed by a car bomb. Show me any Christian parents whose great desire is to have their children grow up to be murderous martyrs whose success will be determined by the number of unsuspecting and uninvolved lives they manage to snuff out. Show me another faith other than ours which has provided a continuous river of relief for the world’s faceless poor, the starving, the homeless, the lonely, the lost, the troubled, and the displaced.
Have Christians failed? Some have, but for every example of disobedience and disgrace you can produce, I can come up with ten, a hundred, examples of selflessness and self-sacrifice which was begun and completed in the Savior’s name. For every story of cowardice, I can tell a tale of courage, of people like Dr. Claude Barlow. What, you’ve never heard of Dr. Claude Barlow? Let me tell you of this respected missionary to China. During Barlow’s time of service to that great country there appeared a deadly disease which had no known cure. Dr. Barlow, without a laboratory or proper equipment, researched this disease to the best of his ability. After he had gathered as much information as he could, and when he had managed to gather a vial of germs, he set sail for America. Understand Dr. Barlow was not deserting the field; he was not trying to save his life. On the contrary, before his arrival home, Barlow deliberately gave himself the disease. When he presented himself to his friends at Johns Hopkins University Hospital, it was for the purpose of observation and experimentation. When Barlow returned to China, he was able to do so with a cure which managed to save countless lives.
That’s the story of Dr. Barlow. Not one in 10,000 of The Lutheran Hour listeners have heard his story before… or the story of the hundreds of thousands of others who, in the Savior’s name, continue to make a witness to their Lord. Such stories don’t make for front-page news, you know. Now it is unimportant if you know these stories. On the other hand, it is all-important for you to know what the Lord has done for you and the difference He wishes to make in your life. It is imperative that you, by the power of the Holy Spirit, be brought to know the love of God which sent His Son to take your place under the law, fulfilling the prophecies, dying on the cross, rising on the third day, ascending into heaven, so that all who believe might be forgiven of sin and be free from condemnation. It is critical and crucial that you see the wonderful, the eternal change the Lord wishes to make in your heart and your life. It is essential that you reject the propaganda which is directed against the Christ and be brought to see Jesus as the Redeemer of your soul, the commander of your life. With the conviction which can come only through faith in the Christ may you enlist and become a saved soldier of the Lord Jesus. That is our prayer this day… and to that end, I, along with all the supporters of The Lutheran Hour broadcast, pledge our support and assistance. Won’t you please, call us at The Lutheran Hour? Amen.
LUTHERAN HOUR MAILBOX (Questions & Answers) for October 14, 2007
TOPIC: HalloweenANNOUNCER: Now, Pastor Ken Klaus answers questions from listeners. I’m Mark Eischer. Halloween is approaching and I thought it might be appropriate to deal with a question about spirits and séances.
KLAUS: Those questions do seem to surface this time of year.
ANNOUNCER: A listener writes, “My father died suddenly. My brother and sister didn’t have the chance to say ‘good-bye.’ They felt bad about that. My sister attended a Renaissance festival and met someone who said she could tell fortunes and conduct séances. Although my sister didn’t believe in such things, she had a séance with the lady, who told my sister stuff no one could possibly know and my sister got to talk to our dad. This made her feel better. I know Christians aren’t supposed to be involved with such things, but can it be bad if my sister felt so good about it?”
KLAUS: Long question, Mark, and that letter has so many things which need to be addressed. I don’t know whether we can get through it all today.
ANNOUNCER: Let’s see what happens.
KLAUS: First, let’s say, the sudden death of a loved one can leave the survivors feeling empty. So many apologies left unsaid, so many expressions of love not voiced. I can understand why the sister felt the way she did.
ANNOUNCER: I think all of us can.
KLAUS: Of course, remember, these sad feelings are a one-way street. The lady’s father, and I’m assuming he was a Christian, is in heaven. He is not up there all upset because he got such a poor send off. He is not worried about unfinished business down below. He is with his Savior in perfect peace. The sister doesn’t need to feel bad about her dad. About herself? Maybe. About dad? No.
ANNOUNCER: OK, what’s the next thing?
KLAUS: Second, if I remember rightly, the letter said something like: Although my sister didn’t believe in mediums, she requested a séance.
ANNOUNCER: That’s right.
KLAUS: So, do you see the problem? The woman didn’t believe; her conscience probably told her it was wrong. She went in anyway, and from the way things turned out, she has now become a believer in this medium and spiritism.
ANNOUNCER: So, in other words, she acted against her conscience and now it seems she might be bitten by the bug.
KLAUS: I’d say she has been bitten; and so does her sister. Didn’t the sister say, “How can there be anything wrong if it makes you feel good?”
ANNOUNCER: So, rather than listening to the Lord, they listened to what they wanted. That’s a sin of rebellion. Not good.
KLAUS: Not good at all. But it goes further than that, Mark. The woman got what she hoped for… a visit with dad – or something she thought was dad.
Think about it, Mark… if Satan who is the father of lies wanted to get somebody to believe something, he’d tell the truth… at least at first. Then, when he got that individual’s confidence, he’d slowly maneuver them the way he wanted, or to where he wanted.
ANNOUNCER: Because the devil’s not going to start out by telling us things that we know aren’t true.
KLAUS: No, he’s going to maneuver us. That is what has happened here. That’s why our writer said, “I know a Christian isn’t supposed to get involved with such things, but…” That’s where the trouble starts.
ANNOUNCER: It’s like saying, God is great, God is good, but I’m still going to do what I want.
KLAUS: Yes, and the Bible has a word for that. It’s called idolatry. It’s the same sin that Adam and Even committed. For them, Satan started out almost telling the truth. His almost truths became outright lies which led to sin. Adam and Eve decided God was great and good, but they were going to eat the forbidden fruit anyway, and it messed them up.
ANNOUNCER: And that’s what happened here.
KLAUS: That’s what happened here. The devil, supreme psychologist that he is, knew the weakness in this woman’s heart, and he played to that weakness. He gave her what she wanted and slowly started to draw her away from the person in whom her confidence should have been placed.
ANNOUNCER: In other words, her Savior.
KLAUS: Yes. Rather than turning to a medium, it would have been better for the lady to turn to Scripture. The Lord Jesus gives a glimpse into heaven. He says this: “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to Myself, that where I am you may be also” (John 14:1-3). Those are the words of our Savior, whose death and resurrection have truly opened heaven for all who trust in Him.
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
“Built on the Rock the Church Doth Stand” From Hymns for All Saints: Adoration, Praise, Comfort (© 2004 Concordia Publishing House)
“Built on the Rock” arranged by Timothy Moke and Georg Masanz. From Magnificent Christian Hymns, vol. 3 by Timothy Moke and Georg Masanz (© 2006 T. Moke Recordings)
“Komm, Gott Schöpfer, heiliger Geist” by J.S. Bach. From Bach at the Sem, vol. 2 by the American Kantorei (© 1998 Concordia Seminary, St. Louis)