5th Sunday after Pentecost

Grace be to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

In our Monday morning Bible study class, Deacon Linda taught is this month how the Bible came to be. When the early church organized itself, it had to decide at some point what its holy scripture would be. Among other things, it had to decide whether or not to keep regarding the Old Testament as scripture. Should the church drop the Hebrew Bible since Jesus had begun something new? Or should it be held on to because it was part of the church’s story, too?

In the end, the church decided to keep the Hebrew scriptures as holy books. After all, Jesus and his disciples had all been Jewish and had all regarded the Old Testament as holy. Jesus quoted from those scriptures all the time.

 More importantly, they realized just how much Jesus’ ministry and message was a continuation of the story of faith in the Old Testament. Jesus built on what had happened before in the history of God and God’s people. The church came to the conclusion that we must know the story of the Hebrew scriptures to fully understand who Jesus was and is and what he came to accomplish.

 As we have been going through the biblical story over the last few weeks, we have discovered how certain themes come up again and again. They continue to come up in the New Testament, as well. We will look at two of those themes today: creation and exodus.

 And we will do so with the aid of this graphic. It comes from the Bible study curriculum “See Through the Scriptures” by Harry Wendt.

The top section pictures the first creation and the first exodus. To the left is the hand of God creating the earth and the universe. This morning, we read parts of the creation story in the Bible. It affirms the belief that God made the world and made it well and rejoices in his creation.

On the right side we see a depiction of the exodus. The chains symbolize the captivity of the Hebrews, who were oppressed as slaves in Egypt. God the King broke the chains and led them into freedom. At Mount Sinai, God made a covenant with the people. Eventually, God brought the people into the Promised Land.

God created the world, and God liberated the people.

The middle section tells the story of the end of the Babylonian exile. After Israel and Judah had been destroyed, thousands of people had been captured and deported into captivity in Babylon. Prophets like Isaiah and Ezekiel comforted the exiles with a message of hope: God would bring about a second exodus. Once again, he would break the chains and set his people free. He would guide them on the long way through the desert. God would provide water in the wilderness. In a posture of joyful praise, the people of God would return to the Promised Land and rebuild a holy nation and live as God’s covenant people.

This liberation did take place when the Persian Empire conquered Babylon and allowed God’s people to go home. God had done it: God had brought about a new exodus, and God had recreated the nation.

The bottom section illustrated how the themes of exodus and of new creation emerge in the ministry of Jesus.

Here we see the chains again. Contrary to prior exoduses, and contrary to the hopes and expectations of his contemporaries, Jesus was not so worried about freedom from political oppression. Jesus came to set people free from sin, death, and the devil.

God breaks the chains of sin and death through the gift of baptism. Just like the Hebrew slaves crossed through the waters of the sea to get to freedom, and like God would bring forth water in the desert to sustain the returning exiles on their way to freedom, so God uses water to mark our transition from being captured by sin and death to being freed in Christ.

Christ brought us that freedom by being the servant king, depicted here in the position of the servant washing feet, even though he is wearing a crown. The love and humility of Christ the King was so deep that he died on the cross. Then he rose again to now reign.

The place where he reigns is in our hearts. In baptism, God recreates us. As the Apostle Paul writes: “In Christ, there is a new creation.” Our old self is washed away, drowned, removed. Our new self emerges from the water of baptism as a child of God, reborn into God’s grace, set free from bondage to sin, and promised salvation and eternal life.

This illustration shows us how three times, the themes of exodus and creation take place in the Biblical story. They are each a little different, but they each show the power and grace of God, a God who loves and sustains his creation, a God who desires all people to be free.

They also each contain two important components: Each time God frees them from something and for something.

God creates the world and places humans into the Garden of Eden for keeping it and taking care of it. God liberates the people from slavery and God sets them free for living as God’s covenant people, following God’s commandments and living as a holy nation.

God liberates the people from exile and captivity in Babylon. God sets them free for being a light to the nations, to live in such a way that other peoples will learn to love the God who is faithful, forgiving, and sets people free.

In baptism, God sets us free from the power of sin, death, and the devil. He set sus free for a life that is modeled on and inspired by Jesus Christ.

Let’s unpack these two aspects.

We don’t talk a whole lot about evil and Satan any more. Ever since the era of enlightenment, we disregard talk about the devil and evil spirits. The Bible, however, talks about Satan and his minions quite a bit. Martin Luther felt the power of the devil on a daily basis, asking God each night to protect him from the evil one and thanking God each morning for having done so. Martin Luther wrestled with the devil to the point that one day he threw an ink well at a spot on the wall where he saw the devil’s visage.

Missionaries to Africa say that the gospel stories of Jesus casting out demons have much more impact among tribes there, because the presence of demonic powers is felt and acknowledged openly.

We don’t talk about evil much, and yet, we all sense it being around us. C. S. Lewis once said that “there is no neutral ground in the universe. Every square inch is claimed by God and counterclaimed by Satan.” The prime battleground where this claiming and counterclaiming takes place is the human heart.

If you look at the chain that holds us captive to sin, death, and the devil in the illustration, you can see how it is superimposed on an arrow that forms a circle. That is the symbol this curriculum uses for sin: Sin means being focused only on one’s self. Everything revolves around me, my needs, my wants, my desires. The devil convinces us that the goals in life should be my power, my position, my profit, my pleasure.

When we look at stories in the news that report events I would label as evil, then at the root of them is usually this very message from the devil. For example, when I look at the terrible opioid crisis in this nation, what caused it? The greed of the pharmaceutical company that produced opioids and promoted them as safe when they knew full well they weren’t, and the proprietors of pill mills who sold them in irresponsible amounts. Families, towns, whole counties are devastated because a few people followed Satan’s message and focused on their own profit and pleasure and power.

Watch the news with an eye to this connection, and you will almost always be able to trace terrible events back to the devil’s message ruling in people’s hearts.

Through our baptism into Christ, God is counterclaiming our hearts. God is breaking us free from the power of the devil’s messages. In Christ, God shows us another way to live, another way to think, another life to strive for.

Jesus did not care at all about power or position, profit or pleasure. Jesus was not caught up in sinful thinking that made everything revolve around him. Instead, Jesus focused on the other person. Jesus served, Jesus gave, Jesus loved. So filled was he with the love of God that it exuded in everything he said and did.

That is why Satan had no power over Jesus. Satan tried, numerous times. But Jesus’ faith and love and complete devotion to God and neighbor rebuffed the devil’s attempt to control Jesus.

Looking to Jesus for guidance and support, we, too, are called to be so filled with faith and with love of God and others that Satan’s messages have no power over us. Our baptism into Christ freed us from the eternal power of sin and death; we will enter God’s kingdom when we die. Here on earth, though, the struggle continues. Satan is still very powerful, and there are times when we fall for his empty promises. That’s why we begin every worship service with confession: We admit to God that we gave in to selfish temptations. And then God blesses us with words of forgiving grace. We are restored. We are recreated. We can go on living as a beloved child of God.

In baptism, we are freed from the power of sin, death, and the devil. We are freed for living the life of Christ, making the invisible presence of Jesus visible in the world. God creates new hearts in us in which Jesus rules. And this rule encompasses all of our lives.

The creator of this curriculum puts it this way: “The Christian faith is not the most important part of life, it is life itself. Christians see all of life as a sacred affair, lived in the presence of Jesus. Their one desire is to reflect Jesus’ servant mind in all they think, say, and do.”

As Christians, we reflect Jesus in the way we vote, in the way we stay informed and educate our mind, in the way we consume goods, in the way we shape our family life, in the way we handle money, in the way we take care of our bodies, in the way we worship and support God’s work in the world.

God is the God of exodus and creation. Time and time again, God has liberated and recreated his people. God has done so for us in Jesus Christ. In our faithful and joyful living, let us reflect this amazing God of freedom and hope. Amen.