Pentecost 2 2024 2 Corinthians 4: 5-12

“The Excellence of the Power of God”

Power is the thing! To wield and exercise power makes you “big man on campus.”  Many are there in the world who desire power and will sell their soul to obtain it, because with power goes fame and riches.  Power will guarantee some semblance of immortality if mention is made in the history books… and they say that those who are powerful write the history books.  Their position will secure their reputation.

But power in the hands of God is used differently.  Man seeks his own glory, …and so does God.  But man will seek glory in flexing his muscle, in war and destruction, by manipulation or devious practice, by exercising leveraged influence, by theft, by deceptive or destructive speech, and if necessary — by murder.  But God seeks His own glory by acts of love.  That is not to say that God doesn’t use force or even death to exercise His will, but such actions on His part are always performed above board and most often in consequence of man’s failure to hear His Word.  There is nothing devious or deceptive about God’s exercise of power.

Nevertheless, there is evidence beyond contradiction that the Lord Yahweh, comes to man, in the hope that man might duly note that ours is a compassionate God, who would draw us by love, and who abhors the idea that the only way he could draw us would be by force.

What father here today wants to think that the only reason why his children have a relationship with him, or speak with him, or share the same space with him is because of fear?  “Love me or I’ll belt ya.”  What is noble or endearing about that?

Yet a father’s compassion for his children is to reflect (obviously in a lesser way) the love of our heavenly Father.  “Which father among you, who, when his child asks for bread, gives him a stone; or a fish and gives him a snake, or an egg and offers him a scorpion instead?”  That would be absurd!   However, “If sinful fathers know how to give good gifts to their children when they ask, HOW MUCH MORE will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!”

Know the mind of any father on earth, his desire, and hope, and in a small part you know the mind of your Father in heaven.  He wants our loyalty, love, and devotion freely given in response to His generous heart and nature.  He wants us to trust Him for every good and perfect gift.  Our heavenly Father wants us to know that we can come to Him in times of trouble, seeking and receiving deliverance, we will rightly respond by adoring His holy Name.

He seeks our welfare at every turn.  A loving Father corrects, instructs, provides, helps, nurtures, admonishes, teaches, trains, disciplines, encourages, yes, and on occasion, rescues, and restores.  “My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord, don’t grow weary of His correcting, for whom the Lord loves, He also corrects, as a father corrects the son in whom he delights.”  With love as the motivation (and kids can’t really see it until they have children of their own) even discipline and correction are for the ultimate good of that future parent and citizen, that present child of a man and of God above.

A father will do what is in his power to do to benefit their child; they will do more than just throw money at them.  They will do more than occupy the same space; we now better understand the concept of quality over quantity.  What the heavenly Father is offering is nothing less than the benefits of God’s Son, won at Calvary, distributed by Word and Sacrament, and given for the forgiveness of sins.

Furthermore, there is no exercise of power for rescue lest someone cries out that they need a helping hand.  No one asks for assistance until they require it.  No one takes the medicine before the disease is diagnosed.  No one notices desperation until the symptoms of desperation make themselves known.  We should already feel, know, and assent to the fact that we are desperate people, living in desperate times. We would faint from exhaustion were it not for the fact that love lifted us, even as it lifted the Son of Man above the earth to draw every sinner to Himself.  We are fragile, earthen vessels, easily toppled, easily cracked, easily broken asunder.  Any success under those conditions — any survival amidst the harsh realities of life must be ascribed to the love and “the excellence of the power of” God the Father, who delivered us by His Son, and revealed Him and the mystery of salvation by His blood to us by the Spirit of Truth, the Comforter.

The power of God — tempered by His complete, overwhelming, and all-encompassing love, saw us hard pressed, up against the ropes.  Our sin offered only one ending and that was death, and with death must come hell and its torments, a paying back what is never paid off. Our lives appeared dark and bleak with our only choice being — made under our own power —to slide deeper into darkness and farther away from home.  Our minds were clouded.  Our love was curved only inward.  Yet these maladies can never crush us… because the Son of God was crushed for us, “bruised for our iniquities!”  He was nailed, together with every accusation that stood against us, to that rugged, cursed tree.  Since He did not see corruption, but victory, so do we NOW stand upright and confident – through faith – that His victory is ours, even as God promised, and by His power, that promise is fulfilled for us and in us!

We may not be certain of how we may last through the next day (or even today for that matter) but our perplexity cannot leave us in despair when He has promised, in a gracious and merciful answer to our prayer, that daily bread is ours.  In “seek[ing] first the kingdom of God,” the worries of our insecure flesh become opportunities to observe and enjoy the God’s might and authority bathed in holy, saving, and sustaining love.  Such is the excellence of the power of God.

Hounded on every side by the devil, demons, and by those in this world who have allied themselves with hell, we are assured that we are blessed, even when persecuted. 

First, because we are not and never will be forsaken when nothing can separate God and His family.  No sheep from His flock can be plucked from His hand!  That stands true, even if everything else is proven false. Secondly, those who stand against us have already been defeated.  Their power is wielded like a wounded animal lashing out in its last moments, but which is surely done for, its fate irreversible.  Thirdly, the excellence of the power of God will see us through to that time when we claim our thrones at the table of the King!  That is certainly a long-term solution to our many short-term dilemmas. 

We may even be struck down, but we have not perished.  We may draw our last breath in this life, only to be awakened in the bliss of eternal life by Him who declared Himself “the Resurrection and the Life.”  The wolves may surround us, but the Good Shepherd defends the sheep with rod and staff — and life, if need be — so that we are not destroyed.  He is the Gate!  He is the Bread of life and the Light of the World.  In answer to every assault of body and soul, we claim no power of our own, but we rely upon and rest in the excellence of the power of God revealed in the life, death, resurrection, and eternal reign of the Prince of Peace.

Even as death claims each of us, we do not mourn as those without hope, but rather we lay our loved ones to rest knowing that “this corruptible must put on incorruption, this mortal must put on immortality, and so shall come to pass the saying that is written, “’Death is swallowed up in victory.  O Death, where is your sting?  O Grave, where is your victory?  The sting of death is sin, the strength of sin is the law, but thanks be to God, who gives US the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.’”

The appearance to the world is that we succumb to all the same ravages of life as anyone else.  Christians fall to temptation.  Christians have and make enemies.  Christians swoon to the spell of riches, power, and fame.  Christians enjoy plenty in one moment and in the next must endure want. Christians lose hope and get depressed. Christians get sick, lose strength, grow old, and die.  But as we still, by the Spirit of God, cling to our Savior, trusting in His promise, hoping in His Word, walking in His will, we — no matter how hidden — we are still more than conquerors, and neither life, death, things present nor things to come can change that or make the Word of God null and void.   As children of the heavenly Father, roughed up by the bullies of earth and hell, the life of Jesus is still made evident in our mortal flesh and existence.  Cracked, bruised, broken, bent, folded, stapled, mutilated, we stand as the Lord Jesus stands.  He went through it all as our brother, without sin or complaint, and His conquest is ours, His success is given as a gift.  His love embraces us as brothers and sisters.

Remember that you were once in bondage and the Lord your God brought you out by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and provided rest and security as no one and nothing else could.  The Lord of Sabbath-rest is your Lord who gave Himself completely to deliver you from your natural born enemies.  That same Lord walks with you every day, even as He has taken up residence in your heart together with the Holy Spirit and is making you a temple built of living stones dedicated to the excellence of the power of God at work in all who believe.  The power of God has been and will be used always toward our obtaining the goal of that prize associated with the upward calling of God in Christ.

We are told, and it becomes a part of our worship vocabulary, that “He who has begun a good work in you will bring it to completion in the day of our Lord Jesus.” That means that (supplementing and placing great and real value on our physical lives) our true lives, the life of the Spirit, begun in Holy Baptism, sustained by His Word and Supper, empowered by His Spirit, and dwelling on His blood-bought proclamation of pardon and forgiveness, will find its culmination safe on the other side. There — that harbor — offers a safe haven from the wind and waves of “here and now.”  This baptismal life, so ennobled, so embraced by the excellence of the power of God, so enfolded in His love, gives way to eternal rest, to the feast of life, and to the ever-abiding presence of that God and Lord Almighty who made us, redeemed us, and gathers us into our Father’s family here and above.

Such is the excellency of the knowledge and power of God, made manifest in His love, given by His grace even to the likes of us!  To Him goes all the praise!

Amen.