The Lutheran Hour
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"God’s Vision Revealed"
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Text: Romans 8:28
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Sometimes, you have to be able to see something before it is there, if it is going to be there at all. Back in 1927, Gutzon Borglum saw something that others hadn’t seen in a 5,700-foot mountain in South Dakota. After 14 years of drilling and chiseling, the rest of the world could see it, too.
Mount Rushmore has been called the world’s greatest mountain carving, and some of you know why. It features 60-foot high faces of four American presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln.
The monument took vision, skill, and dedication to complete. And our text today describes how God uses vision, skill, and dedication in a project on which he is still working – a project far more ambitious than Rushmore – not making a monumental mountain, but helping humble humans.What is God’s vision? To form us into the people we are meant to be; to conform us to the image of Christ; and to transform the world through us. God surely is an optimist. He knows better than any of us how hard is the work of redemption. But our text says He looks at us and knows what might be, then rolls up His sleeves and goes to work. It reads: We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose. For those God foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of His Son (Romans 8:28-29).
The word “predestined” troubles some people, and has been the source of theological debate. Some protest that it makes us merely puppets, God pulls all the strings, controls all events, and that we are victims of divine fate. Some use it to blame God that some are not saved, but predestined to hell. That is not what Paul says. He is simply stating that salvation is God’s work from start to finish.
In our salvation, there is a golden chain of activity: Those He predestined, He also called; those He called, He also justified; those He justified, He also glorified (Romans 8:30). And since it is God-initiated and God-completed, we know that it will be done right.
General George Patton believed he was fulfilling his destiny to be a great soldier. In the move, Star Wars, Luke Skywalker hears a voice saying, “Luke, it is your destiny.” He is to be a great Jedi knight. Many would like to know their destiny and so they resort to astrology and fortune telling.
But such avenues will not reveal God’s destiny for you. It will be found in God’s Word, which both describes our destiny and achieves it. Paul explains God’s destiny for us by showing how it is carried out.
God calls. This is not referring to some hidden and secret voice in the night or in private revelation. Earlier in Romans Paul said: Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God… How will they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? … How will they hear if no one preaches? The Holy Spirit, through the Law, leads us to know our sins, and in the Gospel, to believe the good news that we are saved from sin by the death and rising of Jesus. Through Baptism we are born anew, our destiny changed from death to life!
Being saved is not a gradual process that takes years, like the carving of Mount Rushmore. God does not take us through initiation, until we finally get to the point where we are saved. No, whom He calls, He justifies. To be justified is not to be put on trial, to see if we will behave better. It is to be declared not guilty of sin, to be absolved.
It took countless hammer blows to carve Mount Rushmore. But the hammer blows in which we find salvation were delivered on Mount Calvary, on Golgotha’s cross. There, the innocent hands of Christ were pierced and fastened to the cross. There, the Bible says, the sentence of condemnation that hung over our head was put on His head and nailed to the tree. And with His death and rising, it has been buried, too.
To be justified is an instantaneous work that is entirely God’s doing. He accepts Christ’s innocent life and perfect death for us. He cancels our sins and cleanses our heart. But God is not finished with us once He has saved us. God also has in mind the shape of what we are to be. What is our potential as His child?
Paul invites us to share God’s vision of what we can be. Do we believe that His Word and Spirit have the power to conform us to the likeness of Christ? As Christians, we are given a vision to see not only what we receive from God, but what we are as God’s children.
Some spend life observing the way things are; others, imagining how things can be. Think again of Mount Rushmore. One hammer blow at a time; a magnificent monument took shape. I suppose if the same amount of effort of the hammer had been aimed differently, it also could just have lowered the mountain by a few feet.
The Word of God is mightier than any hammer. If God wanted to, He could simply level us, humble us, and put us in our place. But here is the good news again from this text. God is always at work for our good! Many other things in life may wish to tear us down. The devil and our own sinful self would reduce us to worthless rubble. But God does not let these things keep Him from His purpose. Through it all, He works to conform us to the image of Christ.
When Jesus called His disciples to follow Him, He also shared with them His vision of what that would mean. They were to love as He loved; to serve as He served. By this they will know that you are My disciples; if you have love for one another. Let your light so shine that men may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.
It is the likeness of Christ to which God conforms us. And it is an ongoing work. The Bible says: He who began this good work in you will carry it on to completion in the day of Christ. How is this done? It is through Baptism, through the Word, through the Lord’s Supper that He has promised to act. That is why God’s people gather around Word and Sacraments, where He applies His tools to us. A hammer has no impact on something it does not strike. And the Word’s magnificent power is wasted when we neglect it.
While the presidents, in a sense, were immortalized, their memory kept alive for generations; what God has done for us is far more magnificent. God gives true immortality. Not just your memory will be kept alive, but you will. Your mortal body will pass through death – it will be raised, glorified. You will live forever! Even the great mountains someday will pass away, but not the promises of the Lord. Your destiny is to be an inhabitant of heaven. Your name is written in the book of life.
God envisions yet another honor for us. We are also God’s agents to transform the world. Too often, we get used to what we see, and think it can never be different. We give up on people, and pigeonhole them. They will never change, we say.
We may give up on ourselves. Maybe there is a sin in which you are caught that you have given up trying to break – maybe an impasse with another person. But a little word may begin a chain of events to break through that wall. With God, nothing shall be impossible.
The fact is, people do change. If you are a believer in Christ, it has happened to you, courtesy of the grace of God. It can happen to others. Some change happens by learning information. Teachers dedicate their lives to the belief that people have potential to learn, to develop, to change. The most important happens from learning the Word of God.
That’s what the ministry of the church and of this broadcast is about. We are God’s instruments of reconciliation. God’s purpose for us is to make a difference in the world by sharing what has made a difference for us. How will they believe in one whom they have not heard?
In Pennsylvania, rescuer workers worked around the clock desperately to try to reach miners trapped hundreds of feet below the surface in a flooded mine shaft. What if the drill had reached them, the basket was there, and the men would have said, no thanks – I’ll find my own way out? It would have been pure foolishness.
In a similar way, people can harden themselves against the purpose of God. They can deny His call, close their ears and shut their hearts. They can pursue other paths to heaven. But there is only one way. And it is our purpose to proclaim that way.
Sometimes you have to see something before it is there, or it will never be there at all. What a sculptor did for Mount Rushmore, God has done for you. Before you were born, God knew you. Before you knew Him, He envisioned you as His child. And He has worked to turn that vision into reality by bringing you to faith in the Jesus who died to save you. God calls. God justifies. God glorifies.
What does God yet have to do in you and for you? Look with the eyes of a sculptor on the mountain of your life, and see what yet may be by His grace. Be sure of this. God formed you to be His child. He conforms you to the likeness of Christ. And He works to transform lives through you. In joy and sorrow, sickness and health, God is consistently at work for your good. Amen
LUTHERAN HOUR MAILBOX (Questions & Answers) for July 27, 2008
Topic: The Believable BibleANNOUNCER: Can we trust the Bible? That will be our topic for the next few minutes as Pastor Ken Klaus responds to several related questions from a listener. I’m Mark Eischer.
KLAUS: Hi, Mark. Well we ought to be able to wrap this up quickly. The answer is: Yes, we can trust the Bible.
ANNOUNCER: But I think it gets more complicated than that. After all, the men who wrote the New Testament were all disciples of Jesus. So they are not what you would consider to be impartial observers. So, can we really trust what they say? And the second question – the related question to this – Since the Bible has been copied, translated, and retranslated so many times over the centuries, how do we know it’s still accurate and that we can trust what it says?
KLAUS: Mark, if you don’t mind, I’d like to take the second question first. The one that says: Since the Bible was copied so many times, can we trust it? I think the person is thinking of the Bible like that game we used to play in school where you whisper a story in the ear of one person, and they repeat the story to the next person, and it keeps on going until you get to the last person. That person recites the story and everybody is amused at how much everything in that story has changed in the re-telling. So much so that sometimes it’s almost unrecognizable.
ANNOUNCER: Right. And since the Bible’s been passed along through so many hands, so many different copyists, how can we trust it not to have become corrupted in the process?
KLAUS: The problem is, that kind of thinking doesn’t hold up as far as the Bible’s concerned. The Bible is not just another human book. It’s not a fair comparison. No, it should be stated that we don’t have the original manuscripts written by the authors of the Bible. We do have thousands, over 6,000 copies of the Greek manuscripts that were produced very close to the time that the originals were written.
Now, if you compare those documents, you will find that, like Ivory Soap, they are pretty pure.
ANNOUNCER: How pure is pretty pure?
KLAUS: Well, they agree with each other over 99 percent of the time.
ANNOUNCER: But that still leaves 1 percent of disagreement.
KLAUS: It does. And most of those disagreements are pretty obvious: spelling errors and small changes in wording. For example, one text might say, “Jesus” and the other might say, “Jesus Christ.” All in all, the result is an almost miraculous degree of accuracy.
ANNOUNCER: Something you wouldn’t expect.
KLAUS: No, it isn’t. And I think there are two reasons for that: First, all Scripture is given by inspiration of God. The Lord Himself had a vested interest in making sure His story of salvation comes to us unaltered. The second reason is the copyists of the Bible knew they were making valuable copies of God’s own book, and they weren’t going to take it upon themselves to edit it. They wanted others to receive it as unaltered as they had.
Another point we should add here: The Bible isn’t generally translated from one language to another, to another, to another, getting fuzzier and fuzzier along the way. It comes from the original Greek or Hebrew directly to us – in our own tongue from the original.
ANNOUNCER: But getting back to that first question: the people who wrote the Bible did so from what might be considered to be a biased position. Therefore, can we trust what they say?
KLAUS: Well, we have to ask: Were the writers of the Bible biased?
ANNOUNCER: I would say so.
KLAUS: I would, too. Like Peter and John said at their trial (Acts 4:20) “We cannot help but speak of the things that we have seen and heard.” That’s pretty biased.
ANNOUNCER: And if they’re biased, does that mean they can’t be trusted?
KLAUS: The disciples told the truth when they wrote their eyewitness accounts of what Jesus said and did.
ANNOUNCER: And why do you think that way?
KLAUS: You know, if they were reporting from an over-biased position, you’d think they might want to make themselves look good. They don’t. They talk about how they didn’t understand Jesus; how they fell asleep when He asked them to pray; how they at first didn’t believe the resurrection.
Further, they were sharing God’s story of salvation with a sinful world. That’s not something these men would have discarded easily.
If they were writing from an overly biased point of view, they probably wouldn’t have talked about the arguments they had, the difficulties in sharing the Gospel they encountered.
If they were writing down lies and falsehoods, I doubt if they would have done so at the cost of their own lives.
ANNOUNCER: How would you sum this up?
KLAUS: Were the writers of the Bible, biased? Yes. Did they believe what they were saying and writing? Also, yes. Does that mean that they are inaccurate? No. The ultimate question is not whether you believe what the prophets and apostles wrote; it is whether you believe the Bible is God’s Word accurately describing His plan of salvation.
ANNOUNCER: Thank you, Pastor Klaus. 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
“Praise to the Lord, the Almighty” arr. F. Melius Christiansen. From Great Hymns of Faith by the St. Olaf Choir (© 1999 St. Olaf Records, Northfield, MN)
“Glory Be to God the Father” arr. William Heyne, performed by the Concordia Seminary Chorus.
“Let All Things Now Living” arr. Robert A. Hobby. From Thine Is the Glory by Robert A. Hobby (© 1997 MorningStar Music Publishers)
“Holy Spirit, Ever Dwelling” arr. Paul Manz. From Hymn Improvisations, vol. 2 by Paul Manz (© 2002 Paul Manz)