The Old Testament text from Leviticus 19 occurred during the time when Moses led the people of God through the wilderness on their way to the Promised Land.  As preparation for their entrance into the Promised Land and as a matter of requirement in regards to living in covenant or relationship with God, the Israelites were given the law as a code to live by.  The part of the law that Leviticus 19 comes from is often referred to as the Holiness Code.  This section served to show the Israelites what it would look like to live a holy life in obedience to God.

Throughout this section of Scripture there is a recurring theme and it is pretty well laid out for us in verse two.  “You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.”  Talk about raising the bar.  Apparently Moses, the great leader of the people, isn’t the standard of holiness like they might have thought.  Father Abraham isn’t the standard either.  Abraham’s son, Isaac?  No.  Isaac’s son, Jacob?  No.  God tells the people, “be holy because I am holy.”  God is the standard for what holiness looks like and that is a difficult standard to live under.  It’s enough to wonder whether or not the Israelites really knew what they were getting into as the chosen people of God.

“You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.”  It is a difficult standard to bear.  It is as frightening a benchmark that one might find.  If it seems unreachable and unattainable, well that’s because it is.  Yet it is God’s desire and command.

God is a holy God.  He is other.  God is separate.  God is the Holy One and therefore God is held apart entirely from anything else in creation.  In calling us to be holy, he is calling us to be apart; to be different from the surrounding world through adherence to the law given through Moses.

The Holiness Code in Leviticus lays out everything that is commanded of those who are to be holy because God is holy, but in chapter 19 of Leviticus, this command to be holy because God is holy is fleshed out for us in the realm of how we treat other people.  In other words, chapter 19 tells us that our holiness is measured by how we relate to other people.

This is summed up by the second half of verse 18, “you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  As we heard in this morning’s Gospel, this is a verse that is held in very high regard by Jesus.  For Jesus, loving your neighbor as yourself comes only after loving God with your entire being.  Jesus goes on to tell us that the entire message of the law and prophets hangs upon these two commandments.  Everything is summed up in them.

So when God commands us and the Israelites to “love your neighbor as yourself” in connection to imitating God’s holiness, God essentially tells us is that the demonstration or outward expression of our holiness before a holy God shows itself most clearly in our relationships with other people.  In other words, if holiness could be measured, the degree to which we are holy is contingent upon, at least in part, how we love others.  Your holiness or lack thereof is on display through your relationships with people.  And if that wasn’t frightening enough, Leviticus and Christ reminds us that everyone is our neighbor.  Strangers, enemies, family members (gasp) and friends alike are all our neighbors.

Understood in this light, a commandment like “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy” connected with “love your neighbor as yourself” really exposes one’s own selfishness doesn’t it?  It exposes just how un-holy we really are.

My son Jude is a few months away from being three years old now, so he is getting to be quite social with others, especially other children.  Not too long ago, a little boy about a year older than Jude moved in next door to us and so the two of them have certainly enjoyed each other’s company.  They really are boys in every sense of the word.  One of their favorite things to do is to play in this section of dirt next to our house.  In fact, over the last month or so there has been a permanent fixture of trucks and implements lying in this dirt, ready for Jude and Lucas to play with at a moment’s notice.  The favorite toy in the fleet belongs to Lucas.  It is as my son would say, a “backholodo” or “back hoe loader.”

Now let me tell you, my son’s sinful nature and depravity is usually on full display daily, like all of ours to be sure, though perhaps more explicitly.  However, when it comes to the “backholodo” his sinful flesh is exhibited magnificently in all its un-glory.  When someone else plays with the “backholodo” one would think that the world has come to an end.  All of a sudden this sweet little boy who loves to hug his sister and tell his mommy that he loves her transforms into this selfish little monster.  His face contorts and his eyes and nose secrete strange liquids.  Foam pours out from his mouth and his hands become claw-like vises capable of clinging to any item he desires like a pit bull might latch onto a mailman’s leg.

For Jude, loving his neighbor as himself is a difficult prospect.  Now of course, it is easy to look at this illustration and brush it off as a two year old simply doing what two year olds do.  But if we are truly honest with ourselves we aren’t really that far from our two-year-old selves in our ability to love our neighbors as ourselves, are we?  Though we may play nice most of the time, all it takes is the right situation for our true selfish desires to come forth.

Loving others as we love ourselves is really an impossible obstacle to overcome because our own love for ourselves is corrupt and is itself sinful and fallen.  We are our own gods and our real desire is to give our worship to ourselves.  This is the nature of the fall of humanity in Genesis two and three.  We weren’t content to be images of God, rather we wanted to be gods and so we bit the fruit offered by the serpent.  There is no room for us to give the worship which we crave so much to some other being.  And so any hope of truly loving God and loving others was crowded out long ago.

In all of this the commandment we find in Leviticus 19 to “be holy because God is holy” and to “love your neighbor as yourself” exposes us for the dirty rotten scoundrels that we really are.  You and I have been convicted by the law and have shown ourselves to be unholy.  We have found that the law is seemingly completely insatiable in its requirements for holiness and so we have discovered that we are unable to complete or fulfill the conditions of the law no matter how hard we might try.

Jude, like all children, loves his toys and his snack foods, like Cheerios or raisins.  And so, at the end of the day when it is time for bed, there is no shortage of action figures, trucks, or building blocks scattered around the floor.  Nor is there a shortage of Cheerios or Cheerio dust ground into the carpet.  We try our best to have Jude clean before he heads up to bed, but no matter how much he sets himself to cleaning, the mess is never perfectly taken care of.  Usually, mommy or daddy have to go over things afterwards and simply do it ourselves to get the desired results.  He always misses something.  At this point he is quite simply incapable of cleaning his messes up perfectly.

In the same way, no amount of neighborly love we do apart from Christ can make up for any un-love we may have shown at some other time.  There is nothing we can possibly do to be holy.  There is nothing we can do to merit God’s forgiveness for disregarding his commands.  Christ is the only one who perfectly fulfills and satisfies the insatiable requirements of the law.

When Jesus began his ministry, he came before John the Baptist and presented himself to be baptized.  And in that moment, he was baptized into our despicable, wretched, and unholy selves.  He was clothed with our sinful nature, the sinful nature of his neighbors – us.  But unlike us, he lived a perfect, holy, and blameless life before God the Father and in the most pure and holy instance of loving your neighbor as yourself, bore our that which he was baptized into upon the cross where he suffered the wrath of God on our behalf; for our sake.  And then, when Christ was raised from dead and ascended into heaven he presented our redeemed humanity before the Father as holy and blameless.

All of this was done so that God could therefore declare those baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection to be holy, blameless, and righteous for Christ’s sake.  God’s command, “you shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy” now becomes God’s declaration to us.  God says to you now, “you are holy because Christ imparts his holiness upon you.  I complete the law for you and I declare you to be holy for the sake of my son Jesus Christ.  I choose you and I welcome you as a child of God for you are mine.”

As Jesus was baptized into your sinful flesh to redeem it, you were baptized into his death and resurrection bringing life and salvation to you.  This is God’s word of hope and promise to you, “You are holy because I declare you to be holy, for Christ’s sake.”  Amen.

At Park River Bible Camp we take the Christian faith, that is the teachings of the Holy Scripture, very seriously. We believe that the Word of God, that is the 66 books of the Old and New Testament, reveal God’s Holy Law along with His wrath and judgment against sin, as well as God’s great grace given to us in His Son Jesus Christ. These revelations – both of God’s law which condemns sin and God’s gospel which raises those who were dead in sin to new life through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, are the two core teachings of the Christian faith. Among Lutherans these two teachings are known as “Law” and “Gospel.” The law reveals that all are born into sin and are by nature children of wrath. The law shows us how we are to live and who we are to be. It serves us as a mirror which shows us all our blemishes. It is like the scale which reports our true weight. It is the light which reveals the sinfulness of our inner thoughts, the lusts of our eyes, the pride of our heart and all our hidden secrets. The law says, “Do, Do, Do” and since we do not “do” willingly and with a cheerful heart it also says, “die, die, die!” The Gospel says, “Look, here is Christ. He has done it all for you. He has done all the righteous deeds the law requires. He has died for you on a cross. He has taken away your sin. He is your savior. He washes you clean in the water’s of baptism and raises you to new life. He gives you his body and blood for the forgiveness of sin. He sends you preachers to proclaim to you God’s rich mercy. Do not fear. Do not be afraid my beloved child. I have redeemed you. I have saved you. You are mine.”

In later blogs we will walk through some of the core articles of the Christian faith as expressed in the three ecumenical creeds. These creeds serve as summaries of the Christian faith and are universally accepted as true by the entire Christian church. Any group that does not recognize them as true is either completely ignorant or is simply not a part of the Christian church.

Have you ever felt totally and utterly alone?  Have you ever felt totally and utterly abandoned?  Have you ever felt this way knowing that it was completely your fault for finding yourself that way?  Have you ever done something to cause a relationship to severe and cease entirely?

In the events leading up to our Old Testament text today from Isaiah, Israel, the Old Testament people of God, certainly felt that way.  At this point in their story, they have found themselves to essentially be divorced from God.  Historians and theologians have given this event and period of divorce a name; it is referred to as the exile.  What makes Israel’s exile and her perceived divorce from her God even more filled with heartbreak and despair was the fact that it was entirely their fault.  All the blame for the broken relationship rests upon this rabble of people we know of as the Israelites.

Long ago, when God spoke to Moses and gave the people the Law, the 10 commandments, Israel entered into a covenant with God.  This covenant or relational contract was such that if the people obeyed God’s commandments and be faithful to him things would go well with them.  They would be protected and would have a land of their own.  God would fight their battles.  He would be their God and they would be his people and they would be a light to all the nations.

So when the people were about to end their long journey and exodus out of Egypt and stood on the precipice of the Promised Land, Moses reminded them of the covenant they had made with God.  “If you abandon this covenant, if you break this vow you made with God and turn away from the Lord your God by giving your worship to some other thing then you will be in violation of this covenant and be cast out of this land of promise.”

Of course, the entire story of the people of Israel as told to us in the Old Testament is almost nothing but the story of them turning away from God towards other things.  Over and over and over again, the people disregarded the one who brought them out of slavery in Egypt into the land of promise, into freedom.  They were consistently disobedient, rebellious, and faithless though God remained steadfast and true; faithful and patient.  This rabble of people had the audacity to spit in the face of the God who chose them out of so many others to be his favored people; to be a people who would truly know the God of the universe.  Eventually, God decreed that he would honor their disregard for their covenant and send the people into exile.  It was as though the people’s relationship with God had been divorced.

Now, it’s easy to point fingers and to read this history from a distance and to be critical of and over it, but the sad fact is that we are as human as they were.  Our depravity and rebellion and fallen nature are no better than theirs.  The reality is that our sin and fallen natures distance us from God as though we were in exile.  We too have been divorced from God, from life, from salvation.

What can we do about that?  Can we hope to become better people and somehow draw ourselves out of exile?  Can we approach God in all his holiness and righteousness on our own merit or good works and say, “look at this, surely this merits your forgiveness?  Surely this makes me deserving of your grace and mercy?”  Our Lutheran theology and interpretation of Scripture tells us that this simply isn’t so.  We absolutely cannot hope to draw ourselves out of exile and reunite that which was severed.  You and I are despicable, selfish and self-centered beings who think we know what is right and better.  As Rod Quanbeck, the former Director at Park River Bible Camp used to say, we are all of us dirty rotten scoundrels from birth!

So what is one to do about exile?  What can one do about exile?  In the case of the people of God in their very real and physical exile, they were a leaderless people.  Everything they cared about was destroyed and taken away from them.  They were a people dispersed amongst a land not their own. And God, who at one time had their back, is the one who sent them away to begin with.

The hope was that God, in his benevolence, would raise a leader up among them.  Legend had it that a king would arise from the great line of David and spark a revolution and a return from exile to the glory of a new nation.  But instead, this prophet named Isaiah comes along and delivers hope to the people in a completely different and somewhat shocking way.  He tells the people that God has decided to accomplish deliverance to the exiles and bring them back to their land, which is good news.  The shocking part of this is that the deliverance would come through a pagan king named Cyrus.

When Israel was sent into exile, God used the ruthless nation of Babylon to accomplish his will.  The Babylonians came in and broke the nation.  They sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple and then they dispersed the Israelites among their empire.  Not long after, the Babylonians were conquered by another great empire called the Persian Empire.  Cyrus is the king of the Persians.  So in a sense, he is the new landlord over the exiled people of God.

He is not one of them, never will be one of them.  He is a pagan ruler who knows nothing about the remarkable history between Israel and the God of all Creation.  He is an uncircumcised outsider.  And this uncircumcised, unfamiliar, pagan outsider is the one that the God of Israel will bless and use for the deliverance of Israel?  Really?

As far as I can tell, Cyrus is like Brett Favre, the long time quarterback of the Green Bay Packers.

I have been a football fan all my life and my team has always been the Minnesota Vikings.  Cut me open and I bleed purple and gold.  In fact, when I found out I was going to have a son my first dream was of him playing football professionally in a Vikings uniform.

Now as a Vikings fan, it goes without saying that I despise and hate the Green Bay Packers.  When Pastor Matt asked me to stand in for him today so that he could go to a Packer’s game I almost lost it.

Now, for the majority of my life as a football fan the Packers have had one person in particular who has irked me more than any other and upon whom my wrath and great displeasure has settled.  Brett Favre.  For years, Brett Favre was the face of the Green Bay Packers.  For years, the Green Bay quarterback, Brett Favre, represented everything I loathed about the Packers.  Brett Favre.  Seeing him trot onto the sacred field of play caused the bile in my liver to boil.  Brett Favre.  His very name was poison to my lips.  Brett Favre.

So you can imagine my consternation when my beloved Minnesota Vikings wrangled Brett Favre out of retirement and invited He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named to play quarterback for them!  How could they do this to me?  How could they bring in our mortal enemy to lead the team to victory?  Brett Favre, the very bane of my existence as a fan of the Minnesota Vikings, now became one of us.  Oh, the heartache!

Cyrus is Israel’s Brett Favre.  He is the enemy brought in to be the hero.  When Brett Favre led the Vikings, any success they had was for me corrupted success at best.  Any good done by him was done by the hands of an imposter, an outsider.  But Isaiah tells us that the difference between the leadership imposed upon Viking’s fans as opposed to that of Cyrus upon Israel is the fact that it is God who is the active agent towards the Israelites.  God is the one in control and at work, not Cyrus.  Cyrus is simply the means through which God is enacting his plan for deliverance.

God is the active agent in this story, no one else.  Read the text again and you will see almost every sentence begin with “I”, the “I” being God.  “I will go before you,” “I have grasped,” “I will give,” “I call you,” “I name you,” “I equip you,” I form” and “I make.”  They are all there.  And why does God take action through this man named Cyrus; for the sake of his servant, Israel his chosen people.  All of God’s actions are done for the sake of his people who he has not abandoned or forgotten.

God could have raised one of Israel’s own up to do what needed to be done, but instead he chose an outsider.  God does this to show that he is the LORD, no one else.  Besides him there is no other God.  There is no other deliverer.  There is no other way out of exile.  Through God’s magnificent power, he was able to orchestrate and weave a plan to bring the people out of exile in a way that was completely surprising; in a way in which there would be no doubt about who was in control.  God’s plan served to show that the deliverance of the exiles was brought about only through God’s hand.  Salvation, as is said, truly belongs to the Lord.

God’s orchestration in this episode of Israel’s history shows the limitless and boundless nature of God’s grace.  The surprise and shocking nature of God’s grace and deliverance in this story was repeated in grand and ultimate fashion of the cross.

Just as there was nothing that the Israelites could do to merit or bring their own deliverance from exile, there is nothing we can do about our own state of wretchedness as humans.  We did nothing good to merit Christ’s journey to the cross, rather it was his desire and love for us that placed him there taking our sins and God’s wrath upon himself to free us from our self imposed exile and divorce from God.

We were a stuck and depraved people cast off into exile, but God being rich in mercy sent his son into the world to take on our wretched humanity, to die for it, to redeem it and to present it to God the Father as holy and blameless.

God, in his bountiful grace and love for you, is and always has been faithful to us despite our unfaithfulness to him.  Christ’s word to you and to me is “I love you.  And even though you tried to take yourself away from my presence and imposed upon yourself the curse of exile, I suffered for you.  I was crucified for you.  I endured exile for you.  You are mine.  I deliver you.  I chose you.  I elect you and clothe you with life and salvation through the waters of baptism.”

“The Angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them.” Psalm 34:7

When I was growing up, my friends and I drove to a nearby reservoir to a certain spot. We drove to a location with cliffs, where unsupervised boys might jump from into the waters below. These cliffs were not terribly high. But the water below was not terribly deep. None of us got injured, but it was not a very intelligent idea.

In Psalm 34, David recounts a time in his life when his own decisions led  him into a great deal of danger. By his own volition David entered the land of his people’s enemies seeking refuge in one of their cities. Logically speaking, he should have been captured or killed. Yet the LORD spared his life. From this experience David writes, “This poor man cried, and the LORD heard him and saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him, and delivers (saves) them (Psalm 33:6-7).”

I’ve been reading a lot on justification by faith alone lately.  And yesterday, I heard a sermon that very much dealt with the subject dead on.

The pastor said that many Christians today, if asked, could give you the basics of the faith – that we are saved through Christ’s death and resurrection.  However, he believes that many Christians in their language and in the heart felt convictions don’t actually believe what they are taught to confess.

My experience among young people causes me to resoundingly agree with him.  In our interviews and discussions with potential camp counselors and in conversations with youth that attend camp, it is painfully obvious that many of us still don’t get it.  That “by grace you have been saved through faith.  And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” Ephesians 2:8-9.

But our old selves still vie for control over our salvation and this can only cause despair, uncertainty, and what could be called an unhealthy addiction to pietism.

Let it be known that Park River Bible Camp has taken up the cause of Justification by Faith Alone.  This is what we teach and we are unapologetic about it.