READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
Exodus 32:1-20
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
- St. Matthew 24:15-28
Grace to you and peace from Him Who is and Who was and Who
is to come; from Jesus Christ the faithful Witness, the firstborn of the dead,
and the ruler of kings on earth. (Rev 1)
Who speaks to you this very morning saying,
“And if those days
had not been cut short, no human being would be saved. But for the sake of the
elect those days will be cut short.”
Jesus suffering and dying to seek and save the lost has
confounded theologians and arm-chair theologians for millennia. In one sense,
the work seems too drastic, overkill for such a goal. In another sense, it
appears only to be for some and not others, as Jesus seems to suggest in
today’s Gospel reading, when He mentions the “elect”.
These “elect” then become objects of disdain, in our sin,
because they are the lucky ones and who knows if we will be one of them? The
so-called theologians have spent lifetimes trying to figure out who is and who
isn’t someone for whom Jesus had died.
So much so, that this has become the central point of all of
their theological teachings. And such fear has been instilled in those who hear
it, that when they come across the words of Jesus, such as those found a little
further on in St. Matthew 24, saying, “Then two men will be in the field;
one will be taken and one left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one
will be taken and one left” (v. 40-41), one thought takes over: which one
am I?
Our anxiety then spills over. We don’t just ask “which one
am I”, but because it distracts us from our own guilt, its more important to us
to ask “which one is my neighbor”.
We find ourselves no longer focused on Christ, but rather
what God is thinking and who He is picking for His team.
However, if sin is against God, but only God can pay the
price, then how can God satisfy God? If one person satisfies another, then he
that satisfies is still unsatisfied.
It appears then, that God cannot forgive because His very
nature is Holiness and Perfect Justice. The Bible says God is just. Therefore,
Justice and Holiness is His nature. God cannot act contrary to His nature. God
doesn't even have the capacity to forgive or the capacity to be Holy. It
violates His nature. He's already inherently Holy and Just.
Also, God's fellowship with Sin is completely void and
impossible. God cannot have fellowship with anything less than His perfect
righteousness. He must also deal with every human being with perfect justice,
meaning He can't deal unfairly. Man is entirely without spiritual life or
capacity, so no one can work or earn fellowship with God.
Repent. Approaching this “why” of God only leads you into
what God does not tell you. This is the hidden God. Not only is His thinking
far beyond yours, but if we understood everything about God, He would be a
false idol. However, this still does not comfort us in regards to the Last Day,
Final Judgement, or the elect.
We still have a God who is All-powerful and can do anything
He wants to at anytime and not have to give excuses for it. We will have to
make up something quick. Either set some man-made guidelines and requirements
of what it takes to be “elect” or give up on God completely.
Before giving up, though, Moses has left a clue for us to
solve this problem. It is in verse 14 of our Old Testament reading which says,
“And the Lord relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on
his people.” Now at first glance this seems exactly like the same
changing-His-mind-God that we have already sadly come up against and no comfort.
But the word “relent”, is not a change of mind word, but
something more. It is atonement. It would read better, “And the Lord atoned
Himself concerning the disaster.” He doesn’t just change His mind, He does
something about it Himself. He takes the problem head on without flinching.
But what does atonement mean? There are only a few hints
given to us. In Exodus and Leviticus, we only know who is handling this
atonement. In Leviticus 4:20 we hear, “And the priest shall make atonement
for them, and they shall be forgiven.”
By his own self? No. By the blood of bulls and goats. The
priest might be offering the atonement, but he does not make it effective,
neither do the bulls and goats. Leviticus 17:11 gets us closer to an answer, “For
the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar
to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by
the life.”
Not the priest. Not the animals. The blood. The blood
covering and coating, along with the Promise it is so. Think Passover when the
blood was spread over the doorposts and lintels to stave off death. There a
distinction was made, but at the Golden Calf incident, no distinction was made.
All sinned. All drank the gold-infused water.
Dear Christians. Do we have a blood-less, unfeeling God Who
only makes rules? Is God so out there, that He cannot even properly interact
with His creation, but only as a tyrant Who picks favorites? If God were an
unfeeling, piece of legislature, then we would have no choice but to decide on
our own who is elect and who is not and despair.
But, God is not blood-less, but full of blood. He is not a
God of ballot boxes, but of people. Humans. Flesh and blood. So much so that
when He shows up in front of people, in front of you, it is not as a judge or
lawyer, but a man. A flesh and blood man Who has come to cause the Lord to
relent of disaster.
Hebrews 2:17 begins to explain, “Therefore he had to be
made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and
faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation (atonement)
for the sins of the people.”
To be the true chosen, or elect, you would have to be such a
faithful and high priest that your body and blood would make atonement, would
cover the sins of all people of all time. Therefore, Jesus is the one and only
Elect. The true high priest, Who is able to intercede for and buy back His
creation.
There is then no point to elections or asking Jesus for
candidates. Because there is only one candidate and one vote. Your vote doesn’t
count because you would always pick the wrong person, as is evident. God voted
for Jesus, His vote counts, and Jesus was still rejected and crucified.
But this rejection was planned. Indeed, it was Jesus’s one
and only job. “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved
us and sent his Son to be the atonement for our sins” (1 John 4:10).
It was planned because it was the only way to provide
election to those who are neither worthy of it nor could by any means merit it.
We are all familiar with Romans 3, “for all have sinned and fall short of
the glory of God”. But to find our own election into God’s party, we must
read on, verse 24 and 25 say, “and are justified by his grace as a gift,
through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as an
atonement by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's
righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former
sins.”
To say that you are elect means that you believe the Holy
Spirit has chosen you. You believe that you cannot come to your Lord Jesus
Christ, nor believe in Him on your own. Your election to the divine paradise
that God has created from the beginning for those who love Him, is received.
And it is received by faith alone.
So we have no need for elections or jurisprudence or sleepless
nights of anxiety about “am I elect”. Neither do we have to punish our neighbor
in hopes God’s attention will be on them and He will passover us. If the Blood
of the Atonement covers you, you are elect.
That’s it. And that’s what irks the legalists. It is so
easy. Too easy. Our pride reels and rejects such a proposition, crucifies it.
But, it is no proposition that our Lord and Savior offers. It is a gift. Not a
gift to be taken, but a gift to be received. Yours and yours alone.
You don’t even have to search for this gift. It is set on a
Table for you. The Lord’s Table. As He says in 2 Corinthians 5, “All this is
from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry
of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself,
not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of
reconciliation” (v. 18-19).
This ministry of reconciliation is Jesus’s work through His
Word and Sacrament (as Miles taught us today). Jesus gives us the gift of
election through His ministry of Election by the Message of Election. That is
that Christ purchased and won your election with His holy, innocent, and
precious Body and Blood.
The same Body and Blood we eat and drink today in faith, the
same Blood that covered us in our own baptism, of which we are reminded, are
all found in His Church of Election. So that instead of wondering around your
own head for the answer, you can come here and have God answer it directly,
from our Epistle, “since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so,
through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep” (1 Thess
4:14), His Elect.
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