In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The main theme for the sixth Sunday of Easter, which is called “Rogate,” and that means “to ask,” is the theme of prayer. This is a very appropriate topic for us to discuss on Mother’s Day, not only because for many of us it was our moms who first showed us how to pray, but also because there are few people in this world that probably pray more than mothers do for their children. I can still remember how my mom told me once that she prayed every night before bed that her four boys would find good Christian women to marry and that when we got older, we wouldn’t wander away from the faith. I thank God for giving me a mom that prayed that for me, and now I pray it for my own kids too.

Prayer is a wonderful gift that comes from the Lord. Jesus even tells is in our Gospel lesson today from John chapter 16 that the reason why God gave it to us was so that we would have joy. As Christ says in verse 24 of our text “Ask and you will receive that your joy may be full.” Prayer isn’t supposed to be something that causesus anxiety, it’s supposed to be something that takes it away. And yet, in order for that to happen, we also need to understand how to do it in the right kind of way.

The right kind of way to pray, according to God’s Word, is in Jesus’ Name. Again, as Jesus says in our text today, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in My Name, He will give it to you.” But what exactly does it mean to pray in the Name of Jesus?

Certainly, praying in Jesus’ Name doesn’t just mean that you end your prayers with those exact words. If you notice not even the Lord’s Prayer includes the exact phrase “in Jesus’ Name.” But that, of course, doesn’t mean that it’s a bad prayer. In fact, the Lord’s prayer is the best prayer of all. It’s a perfect prayer, because it includes every possible thing that we could ever ask for from God and summarizes all of it for us succinctly. When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we can have confidence that were praying correctly, because it’s literally the word of God. That’s how every good prayer starts. It doesn’t start with our own ideas or our own wisdom. It starts with the wisdom of God, which is given to us in His Holy Word.

Praying in Jesus’ Name also doesn’t mean using God’s Name as some kind of magic formula to get whatever you want. There was a very popular movement not too long ago in our country, called the “name it and claim it movement,” which taught this exact thing. Rich television personalities maintained that if you prayed in Jesus’ Name, and you believe in what you were praying about, you could get anything. If you wanted to be rich, God will bless you with lots of money. If you wanted to get cured of some disease, you could get that too. So long as you had enough faith, meaning so long as you wanted it bad enough, if you used Jesus’ Name, in just the right way, you could get it.

But that’s not what it means to pray in Jesus’ Name. We have all kinds of examples from the Bible of people trying to use Jesus’ Name for that purpose, but still not getting what they asked for. For example, in the book of James, James tells us in James chapter 4 that “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.” We shouldn’t expect God to give us things that we want to use for sinful purposes. What kind of a good God would do that? Or what about the story of the sons of Sceva from Acts chapter 19? Do you remember that one? That’s when a couple of Jewish exorcists tried to use Jesus’ Name to cast out a demon, but because they didn’t actually believe in him, the demon jumped on top of them and overpowered them all. So, using Jesus’ Name to try and get things, or thinking that you can trick God into giving you stuff if you want it bad enough, isn’t what praying in the Name of Jesus is about. 

What it’s about is praying for things in faith. And praying is faith is not about getting God to do the things that you think are best, it’s about receiving whatever God gives knowing that His will is best. It’s about trusting in the fact that because God has already given you the forgivness of sins in Jesus, He will certainly give you whatever else you need too. You can be confident that God is never holding out on you, because He didn’t even hold back His own Son from you. As Paul says in Romans 8, “He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all, how will He not with Him gracious give us all things.”

The people that give the impression that our praying or our believing by itself cause things to happen, have it exactly backwards. Faith doesn’t do. It receives. And prayer doesn’t do anything either, at least not in that sense. Good prayer recognizes that God is the One who does everything. That’s the reason why we’re praying! Because we can’t do anything without Him. “Apart from me,” Jesus says, “you can do nothing.” And that’s what praying in his Name is all about. 

Besides asking for things in faith, praying in Jesus’ Name also means praying according to God’s Word. True faith rest in the promises that God’s actually made, not in promises that He hasn’t. How would we even know what sort of things God wants us to have, if we didn’t have His Word? We don’t just look around and think about the things that we want. We have to look at the Scriptures. That’s where God speaks to us. That’s where the Holy Spirit guides us so that we don’t end up in the wrong place. When people try and look for signs in the world around them, and especially when they think about prayer as means to make those signs happen, they end up just interpreting them the way they want anyway. The use the façade of signs to legitimize whatever decision they’re making, even though it’s impossible to prove that the sign actually came from God. But our faith, and our prayers, aren’t supposed to be built on every changing signs. They’re supposed to be built upon the unchanging truth of God’s Word. Only then can we have confidence that we will receive the things for which we ask.

And just because it looks like we didn’t get the exact thing that we prayed for, that doesn’t mean that we didn’t. It certainly doesn’t mean that we didn’t have enough faith. Did Saint Paul not have faith in Jesus, when he pleaded with the Lord three times to remove the thorn that was in his flesh and God told him, “No.” Did King David not have faith in Jesus, when he prayed and fasted all night that his son wouldn’t die, and God did not let the baby get better? Did Moses not have faith in Jesus when He asked God to let him cross over into the promised land and instead the Lord only let him see it from a distance? And what about the prayer that Jesus Himself prayed in the garden of Gethsemane? In the mystery of His state of humiliation, our Lord prayed multiple times that if it were possible for the cup of His suffering to pass from Him, that God would take it away. Did that mean that Jesus did not have enough faith? Of course, it didn’t. Jesus had perfect faith. He completely trusted in the will of His Father at every single turn. And yet, Jesus still had to go to the cross and suffer for our sins.

Sometimes God answers our prayers in good ways that we can’t even see. Sometimes we ask for the wrong things without even knowing it and God gives us something better instead. Sometimes we are completely unaware until later on just how merciful and kind our Heavenly Father was to us when we came to Him asking for help. That’s because God always has the bigger picture in view. He sees every moment of our life at once, and He knows exactly what is best to actually bring us to our eternal home. Lots of times we think we know what is best, but we don’t. But God still does. He desires all people to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth, and He works all things together for the good of those who love him. And when we pray for things with that perspective in mind, then it becomes easier to see how God actually does give us everything that we ask for in Jesus’ Name. 

Go back to those same examples. Yes, it's true that God did not take away the thorn from Saint Paul’s side, but He did give him something even better. God gave Paul the assurance of His grace. God reminded Paul how His power is made perfect in weakness so that Paul could continue to trust in the Lord and be saved. No, God did not let King David’s son get better from his sickness in this earthly life, but He did usher David’s son into everlasting life early. Remember what David said after the baby died, “He cannot come to me, but I will go to him.” It’s true, God did not let Moses go into the promised land, but He did take Moses directly to the promised land of heaven. Which is better, a piece of land in the Middle East that people are still fighting over or a place in our Father’s House where there are many rooms? And no, God did not take away the cup of His wrath from Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, but by letting His only begotten Son drink it, God satisfied His wrath over sins of the whole world and made it possible for everyone who believes in Him to be saved.

And just like God did those things for all of them, we know that He will do the same kinds things for us too. We know that not because we’re better than any of them, or because we deserve it more, but because just like them, we’re also God’s dear children. In the waters of our Baptism, God adopted us into His family, and poured His Spirit in our hearts crying “Abba, Father.” He made us part of His house, and gave us all the rights and privileges of true sons and daughters. As Jesus says elsewhere, “What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg will instead give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!”

God always answers the prayers that we pray in faith. Even when we don’t know what to pray for, and even when we unknowingly pray for things that could harm us, as it says in Romans chapter 8, the Holy Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. God takes our feeble and imperfect prayers and He polishes them up, and then He provides the perfect response to them. He does that not by giving us necessarily what we always expect, but by giving us exactly what we need the most in order to remain faithful to Him to the end.

Prayer is a good topic to talk about on any day, but it’s especially good for us to think about on Mother’s Day. Few people pray as much as moms do for their kids. They worry about them all the time. But Jesus tells us in our text today that when we pray to God in the right way it’s lead to our joy. When we pray in Jesus’ Name, meaning, when we pray in faith, trusting in God’s Word, then God uses our prayers to give us comfort. What could be more comforting to a mom who’s worried about her kids than the knowledge that Jesus died for them and God wants them to be saved? What could give her more peace of mind then knowing that we have a merciful God who proved that by offering up His own Son in our place? Moms, even if you can’t give certain things to your kids, God still can. And He loves them even more than you do. Remember that before you say your prayers at night. And remember that no matter what God gives, in the end, through faith Jesus, your joy will be complete.  In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

It’s still a common thing nowadays for people to talk about “conviction” as if it were a virtue by itself. When an important public figure is honored, let’s say at their retirement party, or maybe a funeral, often times you’ll hear it said that he was a man of great conviction. “He always did what he thought was right,” and “he never backed down from his principles.” The idea that someone has strong beliefs about certain things, and that they let those beliefs guide their life, is seen by many as an objective good no matter what. In fact, in some cases its even viewed as a cause of salvation.

I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but ever since the Second Vatican Council, this is actually the official doctrinal position of the Roman Catholic Church. In a section called Lumen Gentium 16, they argue that even atheists of goodwill can be saved if they follow the dictates of their conscience. So long as a person does what is in himself, and doesn’t suppress what he thinks is right, God will apparently overlook everything else. You can literally hate God, and not even believe in Him, but if you hold to that belief sincerely enough, Rome says that it might just get you into heaven.

Well, that’s absolutely insane. And it’s a good example of what happens when you reject the foundation of Scripture alone. God’s Word does not teach us that “conviction” is a virtue by itself, or that doing what you think is right excuses you from your sins. It certainly doesn’t save you from them! On the contrary, our convictions, need to be grounded in the right thing. They need to be formed and shaped by the Holy Spirit, who speaks to us through the text of the Bible.

And that’s exactly what Jesus is getting at in our Gospel lesson today from John chapter 16. In that passage, Christ comforts His disciples by promising them that after His ascension into heaven He would send them a Helper, who would guide them into all truth. Specifically, Jesus says that the Holy Spirit would do that by convicting the world of three important things. As we read in our text, “And when He comes, He will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.” Those are the three things that we need to have a proper conviction about if we’re going to be saved.

First, Jesus says that the Holy Spirit convicts the world concerning sin. That means that He gives us the proper attitude about what sin is and how we should actually think about it. There are lots of different opinions out there about sin and, especially, what kind of sin truly condemn a person to hell. 

Most people assume that sin isn’t really that big of a deal, and that you only go to hell for committing the really bad ones like murder or adultery. Even though people in our society can’t even agree among themselves about what counts as murder or adultery, I’m thinking here of things like abortion or cohabitating, the assumption is that as long as you haven’t done anything like Hitler or Bin Laden did, you’re automatically good to go. God will just let the rest of it slide, and you don’t need to worry about it. 

Isn’t it interesting, though, that when people in the world talk about what sins might send somebody to hell, they almost never talk about sins against the first table of the law. It’s only the ones that have to do with your neighbor. Apparently, God doesn’t care that much if you worship other gods, misuse His Name, or never remember the Sabbath day. He only cares about the things that have to do with the way other people treat you. 

But none of that, of course, comes even close to the proper conviction about sin that we get from the Holy Spirit. What does Jesus tell us in our text today from John 16? He says that the Holy Spirit convicts the world of sin, “because they do not believe in Me.” This is an amazing statement. Certainly, Christ does not mean that unbelief is the only sin that there is. We hear about all kinds of different sins elsewhere in the Bible, even from Jesus Himself. But the point that our Lord is making here is about where sin really comes from, and what makes something truly sinful in the first place.

According to Christ, that which makes something sinful in the eyes of God, and worthy of eternal damnation, is not just the “bad things” that we say and do, but even the good-looking things that we say and do for the wrong reasons. In fact, it’s everything that someone does apart from faith in Christ. That’s literally what Saint Paul tells us in Romans chapter 14, “Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.” All of our acts of kindness, all of our charitable donations, every time that we help someone in need, even the times that we try and follow God’s Commandments, if we do any of that for the purpose of trying to earn us a place heaven, it will have the exact opposite effect, and condemn us to hell instead.

That is the true conviction of sin that comes from the Holy Spirt, and the only one that leads to salvation. It’s the reason why we in the Lutheran Church are not ashamed to call ourselves “poor miserable sinners” every Sunday morning. Because that’s who we are by nature. That’s who we are apart from Christ. And our only hope for salvation is Christ. It’s not us, and it certainly not our works, either good, or not so bad.  

The second thing that the Holy Spirit convicts us of then, and this is related to the first thing, is a proper understanding concerning righteousness. Besides showing us what sin is, and what kind of sin actually condems someone to hell, He also shows us what true righteousness is required for salvation and where we find it. because many people in this world get sin wrong, assuming that it’s not that big of deal, that leads them get righteousness wrong too, and totally miss the point of where it comes from.

The universal attitude about righteousness, which is common to all men, unless the Holy Spirit convinces them otherwise, is to think that righteousness is something that comes from us. It’s found in you, and in the way that you live your life for other people. If you’re a good citizen, or a hard worker, or even the pious religious type, who always says your prayers, and never misses a church service, then doing those things is what make you righteousness before God in heaven.

But listen again to what Jesus says in our text today. He tells His disciples that the Holy Spirit will convict the world of righteousness, “Because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer.” That, of course, is a description of our Lord’s ascension into heaven, which is the culmination, and victory lap, of all of His redemptive work to save us. It’s a summary of the Gospel! Jesus Christ, true God, and true Man, came down from heaven to win for us eternal life. He came to give us what we poor sinner don’t have by ourselves, which is the kind of righteousness necessary to be saved. The way that Jesus accomplished that for us was by living a completely perfect life in our place and then He suffering and dying as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. That’s how He fulfilled all righteousness on our behalf. Remember what Saint Paul says in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, “For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.”

The way that you get the kind of righteous that you need to go to heaven is not through doing a bunch or righteous deeds, which you could never do enough of, but through faith in the perfect righteousness of Christ. It’s through trusting in what Jesus did for you, not in what you do for Him or for others. As Saint Paul also tells us, this time in Romans 10, “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.” And as he says in Philippians chapter 3, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ, and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness that depends on faith.” 

The true conviction about righteousness that comes from the Holy Spirit, the one that actually saves, is that we find it in Jesus alone. We get is not by our merit, not by our works, not by anything that we do at all. But only through faith in what Jesus did for us. 

And finally, Jesus tells us in our reading today that the Holy Spirit also convicts the world concerning judgment. That means that He gives us the proper attitude towards God’s coming judgment on the Last Day and how we should get ready for it. 

There is a very popular idea in our time which says that Christians aren’t supposed to judge anything. People take that one verse from the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus says, “Judge not,” and they twist that into something that’s completely different than what it was ever intended to mean. They make it about how you shouldn’t make any judgment at all, and never even say that something is wrong. 

But the kind of judging that God’s Word forbids is not telling someone else what God’s Word says. It’s stating your own personal opinion as a fact, even if it isn’t backed up by the Scriptures. Listen to what Jesus tells us elsewhere about judging in John chapter 12. He specifies that “the one who rejects Me and does not receive My words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day.” Or what about John chapter 7? There Jesus literally says, “Judge with right judgment.” 

When we Christians tell other people what God’s Word says from a position of humility and not hypocrisy, we’re not doing the kind of Judging that Jesus forbids, we’re doing the kind of judging that He commands. That’s because we aren’t making a personal judgment at all. We’re just pointing out the judgment that already exists in His Word. For example, when we tell a couple that they can’t sleep together before getting married because the Bible says it’s wrong, that’s not a bad kind of judging. In fact, we’re trying to help them avoid God’s judgment so that they don’t fall into it. What does the author of Hebrews tell us in Hebrews chapter 13? He writes, “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.” We don’t want that to happen. We don’t want people to go to hell. So, sometimes we have to tell them what the Bible says about how you go to hell so that they won’t actually end up there. We warn them out of mercy and love, just like we would want to be warned too, so that they’ll repent and be saved as well.

In fact, that is the entire reason why Jesus says that the Holy Spirit will convict the world of judgment. He says it’s because “the ruler of this world is judged.” The ruler of this world is a reference to Satan. What our Lord is getting at is that He has already conquered the Devil through His death on the cross. He’s already paid the price for our sins so that they can’t condemn us any longer. There is no sin that Satan can accuse us of having done that we can’t have forgivness for in Jesus. The only way not to have it is if we refuse to receive it through unrepentance. But anyone who comes to Christ with sorrow in their heart asking for His mercy will not be turned away. They can have confidence that God will restore them and forgive them, and not even the Devil can say otherwise.

No, having conviction by itself isn’t necessarily a good thing. It doesn’t excuse you for your sins and it certainly won’t get you into heaven just because. You need to have conviction over the right things. You need to have the convictions that come from the Holy Spirit. First, you need to believe that you are a sinner, who is completely damned apart from Christ. You have nothing good to offer God on your own, and even your best works don’t contrite anything at all towards your salvation. Second, you need to believe that Christ is your righteousness and despite your sins, He gives you forgivness for them out of His own mercy and love. You’re saved not because you’re a good person, but because Jesus traded places with you on the cross and bore the punishment you deserved. He acted as your substitute, traded His innocence for your guilt, and you receive the benefit of everything He did through faith alone. And third, you need to believe that the prince of this world is judged. God has already revealed His judgments to us in the Bible, and we cling to His Word for truth and grace. Satan can only harm those who won’t take refuge in Jesus. But everyone who does, no matter what they’ve done in the past, doesn’t have to be afraid of him at all. They can rest assured that despite their sins, they have full forgivness for them in Christ.

Those are the convictions that the Holy Spirit gives. They are the only convictions that save. May God give them to us all for Jesus’s sake. May He open our hearts to His Word constantly so that the Holy Spirit would guide us into all truth, even to the One who is the way, the truth, and the life. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

We Christians are not at home in this world. That’s what Saint Peter is getting at in our Epistle lesson today from 1 Peter chapter 2 when he tells us that we are sojourners and exiles. A sojourner is someone who is on a journey away from their home, and an exile is someone who has been temporarily removed from their home. Our true home, of course, is in heaven. It’s not the 2000 square foot ranch we have here in Denver Iowa, nor is it the 4-bedroom farmhouse out in the country. It’s the place in our Father’s house, which Christ prepared for us through His death and resurrection. It’s eternal life with Jesus and all of His saints in glory, an inheritance that we receive through faith alone. That’s where we belong. And that’s where we’re trying to go.

And the point of our reading this morning is how we’re supposed to live on the way there. Given the fact that heaven is our home, and that this earthly life is not all that there is, but only a temporary trip and a momentary journey towards our true destination, what does that mean for us Christians here and now? We get three different things in our reading.

First, Saint Peter reminds us that we should abstain from the passions of our flesh and not indulge our sinful desires. As he writes in verse 11 of our text, “Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.” 

How do most people think about their life here in this world? Even if they don’t say it out loud, they act as if the point of it is simply to enjoy yourself as much as possible. They give little thought to the reality that someday their life will come to an end and that no matter what they’ll have to face God’s judgment. Instead of asking questions like, “what must I do to be saved,” they assume that everyone goes to a better place when they die anyway, so what’s even the point? That’s why they ignore the cries of their conscience and don’t pay any attention to God’s Word. It’s why they don’t make a habit of regularly going to Church to receive God’s forgivness, and barely ever come to receive the Sacrament. It’s why they live in their sin on purpose and do things that the Bible expressly forbids without any remorse at all. They devote themselves to money, work, fame, and pleasure, because, in their mind, that’s what this life is all about. 

But, in the end, that sort of attitude leads to their eternal ruin. And the same would be true for us if we lived in the way that they did too. That’s why Saint Peter tells us in our text this morning that we need to abstain from the passions of our flesh which wage war against our soul. You and I, and every baptized believer in Christ, is engaged in an ongoing spiritual struggle that isn’t over until the day we die. It’s the struggle between what’s called our “Old Adam” and the “New Man.” Our “Old Adam” is the fallen and sinful nature that we’ve inherited from our first parents Adam and Eve. Elsewhere in the Bible, like in this passage from 1 Peter 2, it’s referred to as the “flesh.” Even after we become Christians, and the Holy Spirit enters into our hearts, giving us the gift of faith, our flesh continues to cling to us and refuses to go away entirely. We have to keep on putting it death over and over again so that it doesn’t kill us instead and destroy our faith in the process.

If you remember, that’s exactly what the Catechism teaches us in the fourth part on Baptism. I know that we love to talk about how Baptism forgives us of our sins, and that’s true, but what else is our Baptism for? What does such baptizing with water indicate? “It indicates that the Old Adam in us should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die with all sins and evil desires, and that a new man should daily emerge and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.” The way that you put your Old Adam to death, so that he doesn’t kill you and destroy your faith, is by repenting of your sins and looking to Christ for forgivness. We don’t just do that one time. We have to do that all of the time. Otherwise, if we give into our passions, and follow them wherever they lead, they’ll lead us away from Jesus and off the narrow path that leads to heaven. If we try to build a permanent residence here in this world by doing whatever feels best to us in the moment, forgetting that everything in this world is ultimately passing away, then we risk the possibility of passing away along with it. 

So, we’re called to conduct ourselves as if we aren’t really at home here, and not lose sight of the real goal. When the cares and pleasures of this life pull our attention away from what actually matters, we listen to God’s Word and let it pull us back of what truly does. We remember that nothing in this life, no matter how enjoyable or satisfying it may seem, lasts forever, but thank God, because none of it can even begin to compare to what He has prepared for us in heaven. 

Next, Saint Peter tells us that beacuse we are not at home in this world we should also be careful give a good witness to unbelievers. As he writes in verse 12 of our text, “Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.” This is almost identical to what Jesus Himself tells us in Matthew chapter 5. “In the same way,” Christ says, “let you light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”

One of the primary reasons why God keeps us in this world as long as He does, and doesn’t just take us out of it immediately, is for the sake of our neighbor. It’s so that others, who don’t yet know the Gospel like we do, would be able to hear about it and come to faith as we have. And yet, nothing stops people from wanting to listen to the Gospel more than when false Christians give it a bad name through their sinful behavior. 

This, of course, can happen in a lot of different ways, but think about the example that Saint Peter uses in our text. He singles out as particularly important how we treat those in authority. Peter says, “Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by Him to punish those who do evil and praise those who do good.”

Yes, the ultimate authority in our life is God. We are citizens of heaven above, and our first allegiance always belongs to Jesus, the King of kings and Lord of lords. Therefore, when earthly authorities try and get us to disobey God’s Word, we don’t not have to obey them in that specific matter. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t have to listen to them at all. It doesn’t mean that we can disrespect them, and just do whatever we want instead. In every matter that is not sinful, even if we don’t like it, or think its dumb, we’re called upon to obey it. Even though we are free in Christ, as Saint Peter says, we don’t use our freedom as an excuse to do evil things, but live as servants of God.

When those who bear the name of Christ act as if this privilege entitles them to ignore those in authority, they end up teaching others to despise all authority, even the authority of God. This exact thing has happened in our time with words like “submission.” Because of certain ideologies, like the feminist movement, which taught people to hate that word and think it’s always bad, nowadays many people don’t even like it when they hear it in the Bible. And yet, submitting to Jesus, and letting Him be in charge is the most wonderful thing that there is. It literally means allowing Him to serve you with the forgivness of your sins and lead you to heaven. 

So, we lead others to Christ, and prepare them for the day of His visitation, when we show respect to those in authority, and give the word “authority” a good name. We do it when we obey our earthly leaders, even the ones we don’t like, and willingly submit to them, as long as they don’t ask us to violate our allegiance to God. Then we give a good witness to the world, and don’t put a stumbling in front of them believing the Gospel. In fact, we get them ready to listen to the Gospel, and give ourselves more opportunities to preach it. We represent our homeland well and serve as good ambassadors of our true King.

And, finally, the fact that we are sojourners and exiles here on earth, and that heaven is our true home, also teaches us to patiently bear our cross, and willing accept any suffering that we might experience along on the way. As Saint Peter also writes in our text this morning, “For this is a gracious thing, when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly.”

Just like any trip you go on, as we journey through this life towards our eternal dwelling with Christ, we can expect to face certain things before we get there. That’s what happens every time that you travel. Who has ever been away from their home for a long period of time and not run into something difficult or challenging on the road? We should expect nothing different while we’re traveling through this fallen and sinful world.

And yet, we can also use that truth to comfort ourselves along the way. If we have to deal with difficult or unpleasant people who makes our life bitter and hard, we can remember that that’s how it goes sometimes when you travel. Sometimes you have to put up with an unfriendly host, who doesn’t always treat you very kindly. But we have a kind Father waiting for us above, who’s mercies are new every morning, and who’s steadfast love never comes to an end. Yes, right now, it’s like we’re staying at a cheap hotel in a dangerous part of town. But soon, we’ll be with Christ in paradise, and the former things will be forgotten.

If we see other people living securly in the world, having what look like a good time in life, while nothing seems to be going our way, then we can encourage ourselves with the truth that not every trip is the same. Sometimes you coast down the road at 70 miles an hour, and at other times you have to wait in traffic at a dead stop. But eventually the cars start moving again, and you don’t have to sit there forever. Regardless of how long we have to wait, our wait will be worth it. Eternal life in heaven isn’t that far away, and we’ll have plenty of time to rest once we get there.  

And if we experience so much temptation in this world that we think we can’t bear it any longer, we can take heart that we are not on this journey alone. Just as Christ was with His disciples in the boat during the raging storm, He is with us in the boat of His Church too. Our Great Captain is still at the helm, and He promises never leave us or forsake us. In His holy Word and blessed Sacraments, He gives us forgivness for all of our sins, and makes a sure and certain pledge of our salvation. No matter what we suffer with, or who we suffer from, we know that Jesus suffered the true price for our sins on the cross already, so we can suffer anything that we need to. God wont forsake us in our suffering, but will even use it to bring us closer to Him.

We Christians are not at home in the world. We are sojourners and exiles on our way to heaven. That simple truth should change the way that we live and act here and now. For one, it should compel us to abstain from the passions of the flesh and not indulge our sinful nature. Since Jesus has prepared for us a place in our Father’s house, we should put everything in our life in the right place too. We shouldn’t live in the moment, as so many people do, but we should live for that one moment when we see Christ face to face in glory. Likewise, we should give a good witness to our neighbor. God has allowed us to stay in this world a little while longer not for the sake of serving ourselves, but for serving others and bringing them to Christ. One of the ways that we do that is by obeying those in authority over us and teaching them that authority is a good gift that comes from God. It’s not degrading to submit to someone else, that’s exactly what we do as Christians with Jesus, because He gives us everlasting life. And no matter how hard our life is at times, it won’t last that way forever. If we cling to the Lord and His promises, forsaking our own righteousness, and trusting in His alone, then regardless of how our journey went, and the end of it we will hear, “Welcome home, though good and faithful servant.” In Jesus’ Name.