What is God’s plan for my life? What does the Maker of heaven and earth want
for me – today, tomorrow, forever? What
does God have in store for you, your children, for all of us beyond this short life of ours on earth? Many people exert a lot of energy and spend
lifetimes trying to figure out the answer to such questions. And we can hardly blame them? These are really deep questions. It’s not easy to just stumble upon the right
answer (though many believe they have).
But who is to say when you think you’ve figured it out, that you haven’t
just been deluded and deceived – especially considering that greater and wiser
men than we have spent their entire lives seeking such understanding without
any success? Who’s to say that what we
have figured out, on one hand, and what God has chosen, on the other hand, are
not totally different? It’s a hard
question, and it’s even harder to answer it.
And so people often give up and pretend like it isn’t even an all that
important question anyway. But it
is. Our life depends on it. And we here at Trinity Lutheran Church know
the answer to it. We learn of God’s will
for our eternal welfare when we learn what His will for each one of us is right here today: GOD’S GOOD WILL IS FOR
CHRIST TO BEAR OUR BURDENS.
“Jesus
said, ‘I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden
these things from the wise and
prudent and have revealed them to babes.’” God the Father hides
from some that which He reveals to others.
Wow! This presents one of the
most difficult teachings of Holy Scripture: God’s eternal election, or what is
called the doctrine of predestination.
But what exactly does God hide? And
what exactly does He reveal? How do we
find out what God’s eternal choice is for us, and whether He is holding
something back by hiding something from
us? Since these questions are so
pressing and fundamental to a true knowledge of our God, many theologians have
attempted in different ways to provide definitive answers.
In the 1500’s, the great Swiss theologian, and
father of the Reformed church, John Calvin, tried to answer the impossible
question of “why are some saved and not others.” He did so by stressing the
supreme sovereignty of God. He thought
that this is where we could find God’s plan for our eternal future. Calvin taught that God had chosen from
eternity some people for salvation, and that He had chosen from eternity other
people for damnation. He bolstered this
false doctrine of his with the just-as-false teaching that Jesus only died for
the sins of those whom God had elected for salvation, but He had not died for
those whom He had elected for damnation.
It makes sense. Both choices,
Calvin taught, serve to bring glory to the almighty and sovereign Lord
God. Which choice He has made for you … is ultimately unknowable until you
die.
As you could well imagine, this attempt to
understand God’s hidden will by employing reasonable arguments is not without
its problems. People want a little bit
more certainty concerning their salvation than just the distant hope that God’s
sovereign willy-nilly choice has swung in their favor. Many people who were taught this false
theology therefore reacted strongly against certain aspects of it. For instance, many rejected the notion that
Jesus only died for some and not for everyone.
That was good. They correctly insisted
that because Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,
that Jesus has taken all sins
away! But of course this doesn’t mean that
all sinners go to heaven. We are saved
by faith alone, and yet not all sinners believe the Gospel. Why is that?
In order to answer this question, and to determine
who it is that God actually has
elected for salvation, even here, those who were disenchanted with Calvin’s
rationalism nonetheless sought a reasonable
explanation. And so they averted
their gaze away from God’s sovereign
will, and toward man’s free will. “How do you know if you are saved?” they ask. “Look inside your heart. Do you see faith? Have you decided to accept Jesus as your
personal Lord and Savior? Have you had a
true religious experience? Do you still
have such experiences? Look at your
life. Are you verifiably converted? If so, then you know God has elected
you. If not …”
These two explanations of God’s election represent
the most common approaches among Protestants today. But both of these explanations are wrong,
because they both attack and deny the work that Jesus has accomplished for our
eternal salvation. The one denies that
Jesus died for everyone. The other denies that Jesus’ death is enough.
Oh, they make perfect sense. They
were not stupid people who came up with these answers. But God’s eternal election is not a doctrine
that is discernable by wisdom and understanding. “The Lord by wisdom founded the earth and by
understanding established the heavens” (Prov. 3:19). But it is
not by examining earth or pondering heaven that we will ever come to know God’s
eternal plans for us.
The doctrine of God’s predestination to salvation is
not a study of natural science to determine who goes to heaven and who goes to
hell. It is a doctrine of the gospel.
And it is revealed only to sinners who see their need for the forgiveness of
sins and who seek God’s eternal will in the promises of the Gospel alone. For there it is revealed that GOD’S GOOD WILL
for us IS FOR CHRIST TO BEAR OUR BURDENS.
All things have been delivered to the Son. Only through Him can we come to know the
Father. Only through Christ can we come
to know what He wills and chooses for our lives – today, tomorrow and for
eternity. These things are only revealed
through Jesus because no one knows the Father except the Son and
the one to whom the Son wills to reveal Him. And how does He do this? Christ reveals the Father’s eternal election
by giving rest to poor miserable
sinners. That’s how. “Come unto Me, He says, and
I will give you rest.” Jesus
does not make known the deep secrets of the divine majesty by inviting us to
think really hard, or by telling us to examine our religious decisions and
experiences. He makes known what is
hidden by telling us to come to Him. “What
does God choose for my eternal welfare?”
God hides the answer to this most important question from every other
source of information. It can only be
found in Jesus.
And that’s why it is so important to come to where Jesus
is – because within ourselves, we can’t even find our temporal welfare, let alone our eternal
welfare. Just think of all the burdens
in your life right now that you bear – all the things that trouble you, that
distract you from listening right now, or from coming to hear the Word of God
more regularly on Sunday morning like you ought to. Just think of how you toil and spin to make
relationships healthier and more satisfying, just to find the same sins year
after year rising up to bring you back to square one. Think of all the resolutions and promises you
have made to God that in time prove to be too much of a load on your chest for
you to keep your word. Just think of
that load on your chest that follows when you fall back on the same sin again
and again. And when you think of all
these burdens that we sinners and our own loved-ones have laid upon each
other’s shoulders, what other solution do we ever find within ourselves than to
worry. We worry about lost
happiness. We worry about our finances tomorrow. We worry about the physical and spiritual
well-being of our children today. We
worry about whether God will ever get around to answering our prayers, and
about our own unworthiness to bring all these troubles to God. But dear Christians, it is precisely all your
troubles that your own sin has caused you, and all your fruitless labors that
qualify you who labor and are heavy laden to learn from God what the wisest
man has never been able to figure out: that GOD’S GOOD WILL for you IS FOR
CHRIST TO BEAR YOUR BURDENS.
Jesus said, “You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and have
revealed them to babes. Yes, Father, for so it seemed good in Your sight.” This word “seemed good” is the same word as
“good will.” We have heard this word
before in the New Testament. This is
what the angels sang to the shepherds as they pointed them to where the Son of
God lay as a little baby in a manger: “Glory to God in the highest and on earth
peace, good will toward men.”
This is what the Father spoke from heaven at Jesus’ Baptism and
Transfiguration: “This is My Son in whom I am well pleased – in whom I have good
will. Listen to Him.” St. Paul uses the same word when he writes
that God has “predestined us to adoption as His own sons by Jesus Christ, according
to the good pleasure of His will” (Eph. 1:5). Whenever we hear about God’s good will –
whenever we hear about what pleases the Father – we hear about what the Son of
God has done for us poor sinners. And it
is there that we see the Father’s plan for our life. GOD’S GOOD WILL IS FOR CHRIST TO BEAR OUR
BURDENS.
God hides from our wisdom His eternal will and plan
because by nature we place so many other fleeting needs above our need to find
rest for our souls. But we see this
greatest need most clearly where we see our greatest need most thoroughly
met. And there it is that God reveals
what is hidden from all the futile thoughts of men. There where Christ bears all of our sin upon
Himself, we see God’s love for us. There
where Jesus receives the punishment for all of our worrying and doubt, all of
our selfish lusts that ignore the desires of our wives and husbands, and that
cause them so much grief – there where the very Word of God become flesh takes
into Himself all the guilt of having ignored and despised Word of God preached
for you so that you may be confident that the promise of the Gospel is for you
–– indeed it is there where Jesus bears in his own body on the cross our very
death, that we see our heavenly Father’s compassionate and pardoning heart
revealed. It is there that God makes
known His eternal plan for each one of us.
It is as that wonderful hymn by Martin Luther puts it:
But God beheld my
wretched state
Before the world's foundation,
And, mindful of His mercies great,
He planned my soul's salvation.
A father's heart He turned to me,
Sought my redemption fervently:
He gave His dearest Treasure.
Before the world's foundation,
And, mindful of His mercies great,
He planned my soul's salvation.
A father's heart He turned to me,
Sought my redemption fervently:
He gave His dearest Treasure.
This dearest treasure is Christ Himself who invites
us who labor and are heavy laden to come to Him. And He gives us rest. It was the Father’s will that the cup not
pass from His Son when Jesus prayed in the Garden, and the Father’s will was
done. And so too it is the Father’s will
to reveal to us who need the life-giving fruit of His Son’s death that there
where Jesus takes upon Himself all our sin, guilt, shame and sorrow is also
where our God has chosen to give us eternal rest for our souls. The Father’s will for you and for everyone in
the whole world is that we find in Jesus eternal rest from all the exhausting
demands of the Law. That is the reason
for Jesus’ all-encompassing invitation to come to Him.
This is the Gospel that all of us believe and
confess who are here today to come to Jesus at this altar to receive from Him
His very body and blood that has purchased our eternal rest. This is God’s plan for your life … tomorrow,
on Tuesday, on Friday afternoon, when all the burdens of life and the pent-up
temptations in your heart seem to be too much for you to bear on your own. But you are not on your own. This is God’s plan for your life: FOR CHRIST
TO BEAR YOUR BURDENS. And He does -
everyday.
Jesus tells us that His yoke is easy and His burden
is light. He places this yoke upon all
of us so that we walk where He walks.
But He doesn’t threaten or prod us, because He is gentle and lowly in
heart. This yoke is easy because it
demands nothing of us. The burden that
is left for us to bear is for us to rely not on our own wisdom and
understanding – as much as we want to – but instead to come to know the Father
by seeing where the Son has rendered obedience in our place. This burden is light because Christ has born
it for us, and still today, bears it with us.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.
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