The Lutheran Hour
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"Blowing in the Wind"
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Text: Ephesians 4:11-16
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Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. The world is filled with experts, but the empty tomb tells us that the world has only one Savior. Our lives are filled with facts, but there is only one fact that is essential: Christ Jesus has come to seek and save sinners. The world is filled with many truths, which may or may not be true, but you can believe God when He says, “I love you.” He has shown that love through the life, death, and resurrection of His Son.
So, what do you know? That’s a pretty broad question. Let me get specific. Did you know that if you dropped a penny off the Empire State Building, by the time it hits the ground, it is going fast enough and has force enough to lodge itself into the concrete or anybody who was unlucky enough to be walking by? Did you know that if you swim within an hour after eating, you will get cramps, and cramping greatly increases your chance of drowning? Did you know the Great Wall of China is the only man-made structure that can be seen with the naked eye from the moon? Did you know that after a person dies, his hair and nails continue growing for up to six months? Did you know that eight witches were burned during the Salem witch hunt?
I love knowing things like that. That’s the kind of meaningless information that can really help you when you’re playing a game of trivia. But there’s only one thing wrong with knowing the things that I just listed: They’re wrong. That’s right, they’re wrong. They’re false, flawed, fictional, fabricated. Once upon a time, somewhere during the course of my life, I, and many people I know, absolutely knew those things were completely true, but they’re not, they’re wrong. There were not eight supposed witches burned during the Salem witch hunt. No, it’s not nine or seven either. Nobody was burned. They were killed in other ways, but nobody was burned.
If I had the time, I could explain the others, but I don’t have the time. If you don’t believe me on these matters, I understand. Check them out for yourself. I did, and it was pretty depressing to find out these things I knew were true, aren’t. You see, I used to think that I was a fairly smart guy. You probably thought you were a pretty smart guy or gal, too. Oh, maybe we weren’t geniuses, but we have street smarts or common sense or a whole wagon load of trivial facts at our disposal. But now we’re not sure what to believe. There probably was a time in my life when I knew the answers. But age has brought, along with gray hair, a firm conviction that those convictions may be faulty, false, and phony. There are times when I’m being blown by the winds of false facts and tentative truths.
Of course, you might be saying, “Reverend, who cares about this stuff? Do the answers really matter?” And if you challenge me, I am forced to confess, when it comes to the big picture, these are probably inconsequential, insignificant questions, and their answers also inconsequential and insignificant, at least to most people. But what happens when you can’t find truth for any of life’s questions, including the big ones? Take stock of your life, look around. What do you see? I see souls searching, sinners seeking, I see skepticism, suspicion, and cynicism, doubt, distrust, and disbelief creeping into almost everybody’s opinion about almost everything. I see it reflected in the angry music of the young. I hear it in the hard, harsh jokes of comedians. We feel there is no truth. We feel there are no right answers. We feel there is nothing in which a person can place his hope. That feeling is reflected in every public opinion poll, and every office conversation around the water cooler, and every time old friends gather together at the coffee shop. We don’t know what to believe, who to believe, or if we should believe anything at all. These are times when we’re adrift, being blown by the winds of false facts and tentative truths.
Look, there was a time when a president could say, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” and people nodded, understood, and tried to put their fears into perspective. Today, if a president were to make that same statement, numerous critics would raise a howl of protest at his ignorance, coldness, blindness, stupidity, and naivete. “But then again,” they would add, “who can trust the president or any other politician?” Although we remain rich and powerful, something appears to be missing. Do you believe tomorrow is going to be better? If not, what do you believe? Who do you trust? What are you holding on to? Many of you listening feel adrift, like you’re being blown by the winds of false facts and tentative truths.
Can you trust the experts? I remember not so many years ago that some experts decreed that if we stopped being so uptight about sex and let everybody do their own thing, we could all be happy and hassle-free. So everybody relaxed. Under the experts’ supervision, teachers, many against their better judgment, were compelled to teach their children about the mechanics of sexuality but at the same time were forbidden from imparting a moral framework. The result? The incidence of venereal disease increased. Molesters began to move relatively unmolested through city streets and home computer terminals. Despite the tools and techniques at their disposal, the frequency of teen pregnancies with an absent or unknown father soared. Looking back, the experts seem not to be so expert, and we feel adrift, like we’re being blown by the winds of false facts and tentative truths.
Whom do you trust? What can you hold on to? Experts told us that we were too rigid and rough with lawbreakers. They said incarceration and institutionalization were not really going to stop people from committing a crime. Now, when we heard that, we remembered how the fear of getting a ticket makes us slow down when we see a police car parked alongside the road. We remembered how, when a law enforcement vehicle follows us, we are super sure not to violate any laws. “But,” we thought, “that’s us.” Maybe the experts know that the fear of punishment doesn’t work on hardened criminals. And the courts started to loosen up, and the number of crimes began to climb, and now there are places where even the police feel unsafe, and we feel adrift, like we’re being blown about by the winds of false facts and tentative truths.
Experts told us to let children shape their own spirituality and manufacture their own morality. That didn’t seem right. All of us have seen what happens to our lawns when we let them go to seed. But children aren’t lawns, and the experts ought to know. That’s what we thought. Experts told us that it didn’t make much difference to children if mother and father were continually gone and didn’t spend any time with their children. That didn’t seem right either. We thought parents should be important beyond the biology of making and feeding children; parents should have the ability to give their children a degree of love that nobody else can supply. But we wanted to be modern, and we listened to the experts. The experts told us not to discipline our children, because any kind of restraint will leave emotional scars and, besides, the kids will grow up to hate us. Well, we didn’t want to be hated, so we let the children grow up without morals, responsibility, and ethics. It was true, the children didn’t hate us. They were totally indifferent to us.
The experts said that we don’t want Bibles in the classrooms. But after the children who had been left on their own went bad, and after the children who had been unloved went sour and ended up in the jail, the experts allowed that maybe, just maybe, they ought to have a Bible in the jail, in prison. They told us that if we would be more generous with those who will not work, there would be no more motive for stealing. So, the government gave the unwilling, not the unable, the unwilling a great deal of assistance, but robbery, shoplifting, burglary, and car thefts don’t seem to be on the decline. The experts said the market would never stop going up, that our nation’s major corporations could never collapse. They were wrong. The experts said that your job was secure. For many, they were wrong. The experts said if we legalize drugs, the people who use drugs will be meek, mild, and not disturb us at all. In this area, like so many others, the experts will be wrong. You feel adrift, like you’re being blown around by the winds of false facts and tentative truths.
Yeah. I’ve done a lot of talking in this message about what the experts say. If I sound mad, I am, but not at you. I’m not mad at you, I’m sad. Sad to watch so many people who, at the end of the day, are confused, confounded, baffled, and bewildered. They pick up a magazine, and it tells them what they have to do to be liked and loved. And the next issue of that same magazine has a whole new set of standards and a whole new collection of directions. I’ve watched marriages go down the tubes because a husband and wife, although they may still have loved each other, had no idea how to reach out to their partner. Oh, they followed the experts, but the experts didn’t know. I’ve seen teens searching desperately, sometimes even when they didn’t know they were searching, for something solid that, no matter what happened to them, would always be there. I’ve watched seniors, people who lived by a certain set of standards, wake up one morning to find out those standards were out of date, behind the times, and stupid.
No, I’m not mad at you. I’m saddened because individuals keep running from pillar to post, flitting from hither to thither. They work as hard as they can, and it’s not enough. They try as hard as they know how, and it doesn’t work. All of us desperately want to be right, feel good, believe our lives have some lasting meaning, and we just don’t know how. We don’t know who we can trust, believe in, and build on. It’s very lonely, very frustrating, and intensely sad to be blown around, being tossed back and forth by whatever is the current craze.
When Satan slithered into the lives of Adam and Eve, they listened through his sinfully subtle suggestions. At the moment they disobeyed God, they started humanity’s race away from divine direction and godly truth. And the second that they selected a new authority, a new truth, they started us off toward the shallow satisfactions and pathetic pleasures of this pitiful planet. Since that day, in every human ear, the world has continued to whisper of delirious delights and diversions. It is suggested it could offer fundamental fulfillment and satisfaction of every whim and wish. That has been the promise. Yet when the world has been challenged to deliver and make good on these promises, it was able to deliver nothing. That’s why you may feel like you are being tossed about by the winds of humankind’s wisdom.
Does this even remotely sound like a description of your days? Are you ready to echo the sigh of the philosopher Socrates, who said, “I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing”? Are you convinced from experience and error that the world with all its wisdom can only give you a poor imitation of truth? Are you among the millions who are ready to take your life, the only life you have, and invest it, as soon as you find something that you can trust and believe in completely?
If you are at this point in your life and are finding yourself looking, then I’ve got good news for you. This day, the Spirit of God, with all His love and grace, is reaching out to you with answers to your questions. God is trying to show you another way, a better way, the only way that offers true and total peace. What? You don’t know if you’re ready to believe me? Good. Don’t. The truth you’re looking for can’t be found by asking the world’s experts. You’re looking for a truth that doesn’t change. You want something you can hold on to, no matter how big the waves, no matter how strong the wind. That kind of truth only comes from God. That kind of truth is what God wants to give you this day. So, listen to the truth that comes from the perfect, all-knowing, never-changing, always-right Lord.
Are you listening? Good. God wants you to know He loves you. Disappointed? Don’t be. The fact that God loves you makes Him pretty unique. The world is filled with false gods that are incapable of caring. But assume these false gods were real. They’re not, but assume they were. Do you know what they would say? They would say, “You human beings are nasty. Before I have anything to do with you, you have to clean up your act, beat yourself bloody, give up everything, try again and again to work your way to me.” And who could blame any god if he felt that way? You and I both know, when we’re being really honest like we are now, that there are things and thoughts that make us pretty unlovable. That’s why we work so hard at building our walls, isn’t it? We don’t ever want anyone to spy on our sinfulness or hear our twisted thoughts.
But God, the true God, the only God, the Triune God knows us, knows everything about us, right down to the hairs on our head. He has seen our bad deeds, has heard our evil thoughts, and still He loves us. That’s a truth you can hold on to, no matter how much the wind blows. Now, don’t think God’s love comes to you without a cost. Yes, it’s free for you, but it cost Him a great deal. How much? The life of His Son. Do you love anything in this world so much that you would sacrifice your son or daughter? God did. He loved you so much that He sent His Son into this world for you. Somebody had to pay for all those sins we’ve committed, and we couldn’t do it. That’s why God sent His Son to pay for your sins. From the day Jesus was born, He paid for your sins. He paid when King Herod tried to kill Him. He paid when His friends rejected Him. He paid when He turned down the devil’s temptations. He paid when the crowds deserted Him. He paid when one of His own students betrayed Him and the others deserted Him. He paid for your sins when He was tried, condemned, tortured, and crucified. Throughout His life, Jesus paid for all that you have done wrong.
Why? Because God loves you. That’s not going to change. No matter what happens to you, you can believe it. It’s not going to change. God loves you. Right now, even as I’m speaking, God is trying to tell you of His love. If you know Jesus, you already understand what I’m talking about. Oh, the full depth of God’s love may not have sunk in, a lot of pressures may be keeping you from a deep appreciation of it, but you know God loves you.
But it is especially to those of you whose lives have been spent without anything to hold on to, anything to believe in, that God is especially talking today. He wants you to know He loves you. He wants you to believe in Jesus as your Savior from sin, your divine Substitute. He wants you to know that when you believe in Jesus, the sins of the past are forgiven, your conscience can be at rest, your life will be changed. No matter what happens to you, this too you can believe, it’s not going to change. God loves you. Truly, the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanses us from all sin. No matter how strong the wind, no matter how high the waves, this too you can believe, it’s not going to change. God loves you.
So, what do you know? Did you know that a policemen promised a waitress half the winnings from his lottery ticket, and when the numbers came up, he kept his word by sharing the jackpot with her? Did you know in 1905 the Stanley Cup was drop-kicked onto a frozen canal in Ottawa, Canada? Did you know that on January 15th, 1919, in Boston, 150 people were injured and 21 were killed by two and a half million gallons of molasses? It probably doesn’t matter what your opinion on those things are, as long as you know this: the Triune God, in love for you and to save you, gave His Son to live and die in your place. With Jesus as your Savior, a changed life in this world, and an eternity of joy in the next is yours. If you need to know more about this wonderful fact, please call us at Lutheran Hour Ministries. Oh, and by the way, those last things, they were all true, and so is this sentence. God loves you. Amen.
Reflections for August 1, 2021
Title: Blowing in the Wind
Mark Eischer: You’re listening to The Lutheran Hour. It’s Archives August, and that was a classic message from our Speaker Emeritus Pastor Ken Klaus. For FREE online resources, archived audio, our mobile app, and more, go to lutheranhour.org. And now here is Lutheran Hour Speaker, Dr. Michael Zeigler.
Mike Zeigler: This sermon from Pastor Klaus, it tapped into language from Paul’s letter to the followers of Jesus in Ephesus, which we’ve been walking through over the last month. And this drew on chapter 4:14-16. So let’s talk a little bit about chapter 4. There’s a strong turn from chapter 3 to chapter 4. Paul goes in a new direction. And I think it’s a little like the end of the movie, Saving Private Ryan. Do you remember that movie, Mark?
Mark Eischer: I know how it ends. Yeah.
Mike Zeigler: The captain of the group that went out on the mission to rescue Private Ryan, as he’s there dying, he says to Private Ryan, “Earn this.” As in—live a life that shows how valuable this gift is that you’ve been given. Not in a sense like this is going to be taken away from him if he doesn’t earn it, but to let this shape the rest of your life. And then you see Private Ryan at the end of the movie as an old man. And it’s clear to you as the viewer that this has shaped his every decision his whole life.
And that’s what Paul is doing here, now, in chapter 4. He, in the first three chapters, has laid out the plan, what God has done through Jesus in the Spirit to rescue us from death. And now, he turns in chapter 4, and he says, “Walk in a manner that’s worthy of the calling that you received.” That shows how valuable this gift is. I think of a choir director from a church that I’m a part of now, his name’s John. He’s now deceased. But he led a children’s choir for 46 years. And I remember finding the photo album of those 46 years. And he took a picture of each children’s choir. And some years were great, big, 20, 30 children. And some, it was just one or two. But he faithfully did this for four decades. And that was, I think, an example, for me, of someone who lives a life that’s worthy, that shows the value of the worth of this grace that we’ve received.
So we hear how Paul encourages us to walk in a manner worthy of our calling. And a word that he repeats again and again in chapter 4 is “unity.” And he stresses this oneness. And he says it again and again, that we’ve been called to be a part of one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one Baptism, one God, and Father of all. Over and over again, he stresses unity. But this isn’t the same as uniformity. What would you say would be the difference, in your mind, between unity and uniformity?
Mark Eischer: That gets into the discussion about the different gifts, the different parts of the body. We’ve all been given different gifts, and maybe a different role to play within the body of Christ. It’s not like we’re all the same, but we are moving in the same direction under the headship, under the Lordship of Christ.
Mike Zeigler: And the body image is very helpful for this. You know that the eye and the foot, they are very different, very different members of the body, but still unified in purpose. And I like what you said, under the headship of Christ. So we’re not all the same. We have been equipped for different functions, but we’re moving in the same direction. Paul says that he wants us as a body of believers to be mature and to grow up to be unified so that we all attain the full stature, the same height as our elder brother, Jesus.
And Paul says he wants us to be mature so that, as Pastor Klaus said in his sermon, that we would no longer be tossed to and fro by the winds and the waves, by the human cunning of the so-called experts that he mentioned at length there. But instead of being tossed to and fro, he writes in Ephesians chapter 4 that we should speak the truth in love, and grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body joined together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. So Paul says that the body of Christ grows in truth and in love. What would you say happens when we pick one of those, say, love, and set aside the other, truth?
Mark Eischer: I would think you’d be willing to let things slide that shouldn’t be ignored. That you might not be willing to offer admonishment or correct someone. It’s like, oh, it’s all love. Smooth it all over with love. But if it’s not based on truth, I don’t see that as a long-term help for anybody.
Mike Zeigler: Right. And if you set aside love, you might have a lot of structure, but it would be very rigid and restrictive and not nurturing. I think of the image, and maybe you can help me with this. I know you grow grapes in your backyard, the image of a trellis with a grapevine. You, as the vinedresser, you care for that vine and you want to see it flourish and be fruitful. But you give it structure. So tell us, what does the trellis do for the vine?
Mark Eischer: The vine is just relentlessly growing, and it looks for something to grab onto. It’s got these tendrils that are constantly grabbing on, even to itself.
Mike Zeigler: That’s such a helpful image for this unity between truth and love. That, as a vinedresser cares for a vine, you want the vine to grow. But to grow, it needs something to grasp onto. It needs a structure. It needs the truth. And this is exactly what Paul is doing for the followers of Jesus there in Ephesus, and for us today who read his letter.
So as you listen with us through the rest of these weeks in August, we’re going to be continuing to hear sermons based on Paul’s letter to the Christians in Ephesus. Go ahead, keep reading the book of Ephesians, and listen to see what we come to next week.
Music Selections for this program:
“A Mighty Fortress” arranged by Chris Bergmann. Used by permission.
“Guide Me, O Thou Great Redeemer” From The Concordia Organist (© 2009 Concordia Publishing House)