666 & the 2nd Command [Easter 3; St. John 10:11-16]

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Jesus truly speaks to you all today saying,

“I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me”

There is a second command we have from God: “You shall not misuse the Name of the Lord your God.” This means that we not to curse, swear, use satanic arts, lie, or deceive by His Name, but call upon it in every trouble, pray, praise, and give thanks.

God has many names. So which name, when misused, gets us into hot water? Is it just God? Is it Lord? Almighty? Wonderful? Counselor? High? The Name? Jesus? How many of God’s “names” do you use day in and day out and not even think that it applies to God? In other words, you break the 2^nd commandment without even knowing it.

There is one name that everyone is way more obsessed about and spends ungodly amounts of energy on. You are all thinking about it because of our hymn of the day which was hymn 666. A funny hymn to be using during such a high feast time as Easter, however there is a point.

That point is two-fold: 1) having that hymn is to reveal your deep sin in regards to that number and what it is associated with and 2) it is to show that not even a lowly, pitiful number can dim the Light of Easter.

All that time spent thinking about the anti-christ and the mark of the beast and nothing has come of it but false and failed predictions and proclamations. Every single time someone is labeled as the anti-christ, it turns out to be wrong and the world continues as it had been before, albeit a little worse.

Even the number of the mark, 666, is so twisted by movies and sensationalism, that we hardly have any biblical knowledge of it. Yes, in the book of Revelation, the number 666 is given as the number of man and the number of the mark of the beast, and something ot be avoided, but that is the only place it is mentioned in the entire Bible.

What does that mean? It means that it is insignificant. Let me explain. There are only a few times that 666 is mentioned in the Bible elsewhere and it has nothing to do with the anti-christ or his beast mark. In Ezra, there is a man named Adonikam who had 666 relatives come with him back to Israel, after the exile.

Some get so excited over this because there is finally a name closely attached to the number 666 so obviously, the anti-christ will be called AdoniKam, which means “the Lord raises”, by the way, so its not really an evil name at all. But that’s like saying, if you name your kid Judas, or any variant of it, he will go to hell or if you name your child Jesus, he will save people and that’s not true at all.

There is also the passage in 1 Kings where God says that “The weight of gold that came to Solomon yearly was 666 talents of gold…” This is more significant than Adonikam, because King Solomon also had a throne built that had 6 stairs, with 6 lions on one side and 6 lions on the other. So we have the man, the beasts, and the number. Was Solomon the anti-christ?!

Or is it going to be Adonikam? No, because according to Nehemiah, Adonikam brought back 667 of his kinfolk, not 666.

Repent! The amount of time expended and the amount of energy and money wasted on discovering why 666 is so important and who it might be in the future would be better spent in the Church of Christ and would be a boon to any church. Besides, if you think that a silly number, written on paper or forehead or hand, would cause the Almighty to reel back from you in disgust, you are not paying attention to Jesus, but to men.

God is not tricked by a number anymore than He is tricked by your good works. He knows His own and His own know Him. If not even death or life or angels or principalities, or things present, or things to come, or powers, or any other created thing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord, then what is so scary about 666?

I’ll tell you what: unbelief. It is the fear in the you that your sins will overpower you and mislead you. It is the fear that some thing, even a silly thing like a tattoo or a number, could be the thing that rips your fragile faith away from you. It is not the number. It is not the mark. It is not even the beast on the outside. It is the beast inside.

The reason there is nothing special about the mark or the beast is because we are already marked and we are already in league with the beast. Ash Wednesday preaches this to us when we smear ash on our foreheads. We are marked with sin. We are marked with death. This is the lot of the sinner.

We don’t always see those marks, neither do we always see the marks of salvation that we have been given. Jesus bears those, in His body, from the nail, spear, and thorn. We bear our marks in the same way: the body. For what the Lord does to the soul, He also does to the body.

What is that, that is done to the body in Church? It is washed, it is subdued, it is fed. The Lord does not leave out the body when dealing with salvation, which is part of the reason why getting the mark is such a big deal. It means you do not believe that what the Lord has done to your body is enough.

But let’s look at some more 6s in the Bible. Moses led 600,000 men on foot out of Egypt, besides women and children. Pharaoh took 600 chariots out against him to get the Israelites back. Who succeeded in that campaign?

Noah was 600 years old when the earth was flooded and he was saved too. There are angels called Seraphim, means “burning ones”, that serve the Lord night and day. They have six wings and are associated with God, not the beast. In the parable of the Sower, the seed that fell into the good ground produced 60-fold.

Finally, 6 is the number of labor, for in 6 days God created the whole earth and the heavens and all the host of them. While, in the Sower, the sixes are swallowed up in the good seed and the good soil, in Creation the six days are swallowed up by the 7^th, the Sabbath, and finally brought to completion in the 8^th day: the Resurrection.

Jesus, the Good shepherd, knows us. He is cognizant of us and, by virtue of His faith given to us, we are cognizant of Him. Which simply means, O little flock fear not the foe, who madly seeks your overthrow. For it is faith that overcomes the world the one who believes by faith.

For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world – our faith and belief that Jesus is the Son of God. So while 666 is a name and a mark to be avoided, it simply does not hold a candle to the Name of Jesus and the marks of His Church in the Sacraments.

In keeping the 2^nd commandment, then, we should not over-sensationalize or blow up the meaning and significance of 666, because it is not worth it. Jesus hardly places emphasis on it. In fact, its quite similar to how He describes the Last Days, when He says if you’re out in the field, don’t go back for your cloak or if you’re on the roof, don’t go inside for your shirt, when the Abomination of desolation comes.

He says to just run away from it. It doesn’t matter what it is or who it is, just run. Run in the opposite direction, which is towards the Name of Christ, given to a man, Who has purchased and won a new name for you, with His precious, innocent Body and Blood.

666 is the scarier number because of our sin and our own doubts and unbelief. But the Name of Jesus the Christ is stronger still. Because of this, the church flees to it every Sunday and every other chance she gets. She knows that god’s Will and promise are directly tied to the Word and Sacraments and that “…it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God Who has mercy"; the God Who has mercy on us through His Son, on the cross.

True revelation [Easter 2; St. John 20:19-31]

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Who speaks to you today, saying,

“Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’”

There is a command we have been given, the very first one. It says, “You shall have no other gods”. This means that we should fear, love, and trust in God above all things. All well and good. But immediately the questions arise: who or what is god? There are so many, which one is the right one? The command itself gives us no answer.

If we come at the question naturally, we do not find a satisfactory answer either. However, the fool can look at a tree, how wonderfully made it is, or at the world and its perfect order and conclude that there is some higher intelligence at work. Who or what that intelligence is the trees can not tell him, but having seen he can not simply believe it all fell together on its own. Someone built it.

We head closer to an answer of who or what this intelligence is when we seek it in conscience, or our sense of right and wrong. The reason we know more here is because a sense of right and wrong implies an absolute right and wrong, as in there are things that are universally right and wrong. In this way, conscience rises above the natural world, because it can not be explained by natural theory.

However, where nature was outside of ourselves, morality only points inside of ourselves and from that we only know one rule: “the might makes right” and that is hardly a benevolent or hope-filled rule. Thus, we reach two dead-ends when attempting to find this god who is above other gods and Who demands our fear, love, and trust.

St. Thomas was in the same situation, as were all the Apostles. They had grown up with a God that demanded loyalty, but had refused to show Himself for hundreds of years. Life was what a man could eke out for himself fighting against both man and nature. Finding little to no spirituality, the common man was left with the impression that there was a god, but that he was to fend for himself.

We should not be surprised, then, to find on the lips of St. Thomas and all the Apostles, the confession we heard in the Gospel today. We should not be surprised because God made it easy for them. St. Thomas had his brain, his eyes, and his fingers. He had Jesus in front of him with holes in His head, hands, feet, and side that were not bleeding. He had a locked room. He had the crucifixion. He had the Easter preaching. It would be foolish of him not to be able to put 2 and 2 together and get, “My God and my Lord.”

Good for St. Thomas. Good for St. Thomas and the rest of the 1st century world that had such weak faith as to need God walking around in the flesh in order to believe. Not that we are ones to talk, for we are still waiting for the same exact thing to happen in front of us today. We wait for God to reveal Himself to us and when He doesn’t, make up stories and pretend that HE did.

Repent! Why is He called Jesus? Because it means “The Lord saves” as in, saves His people from their sins. Which Jesus is the right Jesus? It is the Jesus Who bears the name the angels gave Him at Easter. This Jesus, The Crucified, is the real Jesus.

Why is He called the Christ? Because it means anointed or chosen. This Crucified Christ is chosen with the Holy Spirit without limit to be our Prophet, Priest, and King. The only reason you know this is because of the only true revelation of God: Holy Scriptures.

The Bible is the only true revelation of the one, true God and it is the one thing we ignore the most. “These things are written, written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.” Where the trees are silent, Scripture speaks out. Where conscience is cloudy, the Word is clear. But it is not just to ink and page that we fully trust in, but the word of God inscribed in blood and engraved in the Body that St. Thomas handled.

Jesus the Christ is the true and ultimate revelation of God. The God of nature is the God of the cross. The God of right and wrong is the God of the resurrection. We do not follow cleverly devised myths or old wives tales. We do not create fantasies about Red Seas or Passover Lambs. We are people of the Word made flesh Who dwells among us still today.

In these last days that we live in, God has spoken to us through His Son and He has spoken to us directly the words of faith and salvation. There is no need for us to blindly walk through life wondering which god is which or even doubting whether or not God is worthy of our fear, love, and trust, for He has shown us His fear, His Love, and His trust in Jesus.

In Jesus, the first Commandment stands fulfill and completed. Jesus has perfectly and completely feared God, loved Him, and trusted Him on our behalf. And with the Resurrection of Jesus the Christ, the Word has revealed to St. Thomas that, because St. Thomas is in Christ, he too has fulfilled the first commandment. Not just the 1^st, but any and all commands from God. And not just commands from God, but life has been fulfilled as well, that he would not see death.

Meaning, now St. Thomas has found that his natural life, which he had been living, is now, and really has been, a supernatural life in the Word. And what bursts out of his lips is not his own doing, but that of the Holy spirit. The same Sprit that anointed Jesus and chose Him to be the Savior of the world since before the beginning.

So, the only way to find this true God of nature and intelligence, is to work backwards from the resurrection. Who was resurrected? Jesus, Who claimed to be God. What is this God like? He healed the sick, cared for the poor, raised the dead. He grew up like us and was born of a virgin.

He lead His people into and out of exile and still took care of them. He literally dwelt with His people in the Temple, gave them pastors, and gave the Commandments through Moses. He rescued Joseph, Isaac, and Noah. He redeemed His wayward children and created an entire universe for them.

You want the one, true God of this universe? You have to go to Jesus. You want to experience Him? You have to go to His Word and Sacraments. Do you find forgiveness, life, light, and salvation there? The Church cries out with St. Thomas, “My Lord and my God!”