God of all comfort, heed
Us as we cry in need;
Never conceal Your face;
Hear us with patient grace.
Daily we struggle on,
Pressed till our strength is gone;
Fearful, we feel alone;
Do not forsake Your own!

God of all comfort, bring
Balm for our suffering,
Mercy amid distress,
Song for the wilderness.
When heart and spirit fail,
Still will Your might prevail;
Through You, our eyes will see
Healing and victory.

God of all comfort, teach
As You are kind to each;
Through Your compassion, show
Mercy for others’ woe.
When they are faint with grief,
Help us to bring relief,
Sharing Your comfort too
As we were taught by You.

During our week and a half of vacation, we drove for more than 3000 miles.  About 400 of those miles were through the state of Nebraska.  I am sure that Nebraska is a great state for growing corn in, but when it comes to scenery, I’ve seen better.  There’s not much to look at but corn and roadside signs.

This being Nebraska, a fair percentage of the signs had some religious message.  Generally, they weren’t particularly profound, but there was one that I particularly liked.  It said, simply, “They wrote what they saw,” and provided a number that you could call for more information.

I have no idea what kind of information you would get if you called the number, but that’s a great point!  It speaks to one of the key issues underlying our faith:  the reliability of the Scriptural accounts of Jesus.  If, on the one hand, the stories of Jesus’ life were sourceless legends written down hundreds of years after the events they contain supposedly occurred, that’s not much to build our faith around.  If, on the other hand, the stories we have come from eyewitnesses who demonstrated their sincerity, we have strong reason to remain disciples.  This evening, then, let’s consider what it means that they wrote what they saw.

The first eyewitness we will consider is the apostle PETER.  We see his eyewitness testimony in 2 Peter 1:16-18.  Apparently, at this point in time, there is some question about whether the events of the Transfiguration occurred.  In response, because Peter knows that he is going to die soon, he feels compelled to set the record straight. 

He affirms that he, along with James and John, saw Jesus transformed in a way that revealed His divine glory and majesty.  He heard the voice of God Himself confirm that Jesus was His Son.  He says this is not made-up legend or myth.  This is fact.

That’s what Peter claims.  Is Peter a reliable witness, in this and the other claims he made about Jesus?  The evidence points to yes.  If this is a lie, it certainly did not benefit Peter.  Indeed, the opposite is true.  Because he proclaimed Jesus as Christ, Peter was arrested, beaten, imprisoned, and condemned to die.  All that happened in just the first 11 chapters of Acts.  Even though the rest of his life story is not recorded for us, it probably went about the same.  He could have avoided all of that pain by recanting or even just shutting up.

As he is writing 2 Peter, he is convinced that he is about to die.  Even though he doesn’t specify the manner of his coming death, John 21 reveals that he was going to be killed for his faith in Christ.  Once again, if he is lying, all he has to do to get out of trouble is to give up on the lie.

Even beyond that, if he believes he’s about to die, what’s the point in lying, anyway?  In the law of our country, dying declarations are given particular evidentiary force because it is presumed that someone on their deathbed will tell the truth.

And yet, what do we see Peter saying at the end of his life?  It’s the same story.  He is still claiming to be an eyewitness to proofs that Jesus is the Son of God.

Next, let’s consider JOHN.  Look at what he says in 1 John 1:1-2.  This is nothing less than a claim of John’s involvement in the ministry of Jesus from beginning to end.  He says that he heard, he saw, he carefully examined, and he even touched.  His conclusion from all that is that eternal life is attainable through Jesus.

In the gospel of John, John goes into much greater detail.  Everything that the book contains is his eyewitness testimony, but at particular points of the narrative, John emphasizes his personal involvement.  During the Last Supper, John was the one who asked Jesus who would betray Him.  John was present for Jesus’ show trial before the Sanhedrin.  He watched when the Roman soldiers came to the body of Jesus on the cross, concluded that he was already dead, and stuck a spear into his side to prove the point.  On the morning of the resurrection, he and Peter looked into the empty tomb.  He was the first to recognize Jesus standing by the shore of the Sea of Galilee.

These are the claims that John makes for himself, and once again, he lived his whole life as though those claims were true.  He was arrested, beaten, and imprisoned right next to Peter.  He too had to hide from the persecution of Saul.  When he writes the book of Revelation, he does so as a prisoner on the island of Patmos.

Basically, from beginning to end of his long life, John gets nothing but misery because of his testimony about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.  Frankly, if John was a liar, he was the dumbest liar ever to walk the face of the earth.  He didn’t write what he made up.  He wrote what he saw.

Finally this evening, let’s consider PAUL.  We see his eyewitness testimony in 1 Corinthians 15:8-9.  The event that he describes here leads to one of the most dramatic life changes in all of human history.  On one side of the event is Saul of Tarsus, proud persecutor of the church, foremost enemy of the gospel of Christ.  On the other side of the event is Paul the apostle, servant of the church, proclaimer of the gospel of Christ. 

What could cause such a profound change?  In Paul’s own words, Jesus appeared to him just as He had to the other apostles.  That event on the road outside Damascus changed Paul’s life and the future of Christianity forever. 

This is what Paul claims.  Is there reason to accept him as a reliable witness? 

The reasons start, I think, with his conversion himself.  As a Hebrew of Hebrews, probably a member of the Sanhedrin already, Saul had prosperity, comfort, respect—everything that people want.  He gave all that up to join with a poor, hated, persecuted minority sect.

During the time of his apostleship, he himself suffered greatly.  He went throughout the Mediterranean world and got beaten, shipwrecked, imprisoned, and stoned for his pains.  He was so poor that sometimes he didn’t even have enough to eat. 

Like Peter, Paul also writes a book at the end of his life, 2 Timothy.  He’s not dying peacefully in bed.  Instead, he is back in prison—again—and he is about to be executed for the cause of Christ.  And yet, what does he keep proclaiming?  In 2 Timothy 2:8, it’s the same old story.  Jesus rose from the dead.  What’s more, he even encourages Timothy to suffer for Christ like he has suffered!

This is not the behavior of a liar.  Instead, this is the behavior of an intelligent man—and Paul was extremely intelligent—who considered the evidence before him and was so sure that Jesus was Lord that he staked his life on it, even at the cost of everything else.  As with Peter and John, Paul’s testimony shows all the signs of a genuine eyewitness account.

There are a number of things that the Internet holds to be self-evident truths.  Among these is that “Pharisee” and “legalist” are synonyms.  To be a legalist is to be a Pharisee, and furthermore, to be concerned with obedience to the commandments of God is to be a legalist. 

This is very convenient for opponents of the return to first-century Christianity.  We say, “There is no authority in the Bible for the use of instrumental music in our assemblies.”  They reply, “Pharisee!”  We care about commandment-keeping, so we are legalists.  We are legalists, so we are Pharisees.  Jesus opposed the Pharisees, so we are enemies of the gospel and should be dismissed.  QED, right?

However, before we abandon the Restoration because it is Pharisaical, it would be well for us to consider what, precisely, Jesus condemned about the Pharisees.  To my knowledge, Matthew 23:23 appears to be the best Scriptural basis for the above argument.  There, Jesus says, “You pay a tenth of mint, dill, and cumin, and yet you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy, and faithfulness.  These things should have been done without neglecting the others.”

Notice that nowhere in this does Jesus condemn paying attentions to the minute details of the Law.  Instead, He objects to the hypocrisy of tithing garden herbs while failing to practice justice, mercy, and faithfulness.  The problem wasn’t the commandments the Pharisees were keeping.  It was the commandments they were breaking.

Similarly, we need to pay attention to Jesus’ two-part solution.  The Pharisees need to start practicing justice, mercy, and faithfulness.  However, they need to do so “without neglecting the others.”  Yes, they need to pay attention to the more important matters of the Law.  However, they also should continue to tithe garden herbs.  Jesus is telling us that all of God’s commandments are important and should be followed, not just the big ones.

For us, the application is plain.  I don’t know anybody who would class the Scriptural witness about mode of worship, use of church funds, etc. as “the more important matters of the Law.”  We talk about those things a lot for the same reason that Paul talked about circumcision a lot—because God’s will in those areas frequently is ignored.  However, no one sets them on the same level as “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  If we aren’t practicing “Love your neighbor as yourself,” we are in a heap of trouble!

Nonetheless, even if we have an obedience problem there, the solution to the problem isn’t to focus on loving our neighbor while ignoring what God has to say about worship and the church treasury.  Instead, it is to continue to honor what God has to say about worship and the church treasury while striving to love our neighbor better.

In short, obedience to God’s commandments never is a spiritual problem.  It always is part of the solution.  Obedience doesn’t make us Pharisaical.  It makes us faithful.  We don’t become more like the Pharisees by caring about all the commandments.  Instead, paradoxically, we imitate them by refusing to attend to the commandments we don’t like.

As different as the four gospels are, all four of them put their greatest emphasis on the events of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection.  Before that point, their narratives take different paths and discuss different things.  At that point, all of them focus on the garden, the cross, and the empty tomb.

However, even before the gospels come together, we can feel them beginning to converge.  Jesus, even though He will be the innocent victim, is the one firmly in control of the situation, bringing the threads of history together.  Indeed, even though Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are interested in different facets of the story, they all reveal Jesus doing the same thing:  turning up the pressure on the chief priests.

John 12:9-11 reports that the resurrected Lazarus was, not surprisingly, attracting tremendous attention from the crowds.  In response, the Jewish leaders decide not to believe Jesus because of the miracle, but to try to kill the evidence of the miracle—Lazarus—in order to keep the people from believing. 

In Luke’s account of the Triumphal Entry in Luke 19:37-38, the crowds are celebrating Jesus’ entry as King into Jerusalem, using the words of Psalm 118:26.  This is rebellion-against-the-Romans talk, so the Pharisees urge Jesus to quiet them.  He refuses.

In Mark 11:15-17, Jesus cleanses the temple, driving out all the animal sellers and moneychangers who were clogging the temple courts.  Everyone in Jesus’ day would have known who got a cut from all the commerce—the chief priests.  According to Matthew 21:14-17, in response to His miracles of healing, the crowds begin to hosanna Jesus as the Son of David—more incitement to rebellion.  The chief priests get angry and demand that Jesus shush them.  Again, He refuses.

In this context, our final reading for the week is unsurprising.  The chief priests plot with Judas for Jesus to be betrayed into their hands.

If they weren’t so utterly corrupt and evil, it would be easy to feel sympathy for the Jewish leaders at this point.  Jesus has them completely boxed in.  His spectacular miracles have won over the crowds.  Those same crowds are saying irresponsible things about Jesus as King, and Jesus is allowing them to continue.  He is challenging their authority and showing them up as spiritual frauds.  All of this is happening in the spiritually volatile atmosphere of the week before Passover, a holiday that celebrated the Jews’ deliverance from a foreign oppressor.

If the chief priests do nothing, the situation will spin out of their control swiftly.  If they decide to back Jesus so that the whole nation rises against the Romans, they are convinced that the Romans will win and destroy them along with Jesus.  The only solution that is left is to solve the problem by killing the man, the option they decide to take. 

We often think of the Jewish leaders as these devious, cunning plotters, and they were.  However, all through the week before Jesus’ death, we see them running scared, constantly thwarted in their attempts to restore order by Jesus.  They are the rulers of the nation, but they aren’t directing events.  He is, and He is directing them toward a conclusion that nobody but God had even dreamed was possible.

It’s no secret to anyone who pays attention that year by year, the political climate in our country grows more and more toxic.  Political dialogue is dominated by extremist voices on both sides who openly describe people on the other side as their enemies.  Believing the best about one’s opponents is unheard of.  Civility is nonexistent.  Rumors are flying of civil disorder if the wrong side wins, and sometimes even if the wrong side loses.

All of this says that the upcoming election is a very important one for Christians, though maybe not the way that you think.  The truly meaningful choice before us is not whether we vote Republican or Democrat.  It is whether, however we vote, we allow ourselves to be dragged down into the mud with the world, or whether we glorify Christ in what we do, say, and think.  Some will say that the fate of the nation is at stake in November, but our souls are at stake right now. 

In particular, let’s evaluate ourselves according to the standard of Matthew 5:43-44.  Here, our Lord tells us that we are to love not only our neighbor, but even those who hate and persecute us.  These were challenging words when He first said them, and they remain challenging today.  With this in mind, let’s consider loving our political enemies.

This morning, let’s evaluate ourselves on this according to four Biblical standards.  The first is, “DON’T RETURN EVIL FOR EVIL.”  This comes from 1 Peter 3:8-9.  By the point in his life when he was writing this, Peter knew a thing or two about persecution.  He knew what it was like to be beaten and humiliated even when he had done nothing wrong.  Nonetheless, he warns us that it’s wrong to repay the wicked in their own coin.

I see two political applications here.  The first is that it is not godly to respond to the other side’s evil with our evil.  One of the political diseases of our time is whataboutism.  Whenever somebody in our party, it’s common for partisans to reply with, “Well, what about when So-and-So did Thus-and-Such?” as though hypocrisy on the other side mitigates bad behavior on our side.  Evil conduct doesn’t become less evil because the other side did it first.  Sin is sin, even when it’s practiced by somebody on the home team.

Similarly, we must beware of approving in our hearts when a political commentator on our side attacks the other side with vicious sarcasm.  It doesn’t matter whether we think they deserve it.  Hate-filled vitriol is hate-filled vitriol regardless of the source, and Christians never should have anything to do with it.  When we buy in to political savagery, it inevitably corrupts us.

Second, we must be sure NOT TO REJOICE IN UNRIGHTEOUSNESS.  This, of course, is 1 Corinthians 13:6.  This is a familiar passage, but this morning, I want to put a little different spin on it.  Rather than talking about our attitude toward unrighteousness in the people we love, I want to talk about our attitude toward unrighteousness in our political enemies.

Let’s say you flip on the TV or open the Internet browser in the morning, and the first thing you see is a story about awful, wretched behavior by a politician in the other political party.  How does that make you feel?  Do you feel gleeful that the wickedness you always knew was there has been exposed for all to see?  Do you feel vindicated that someone you opposed has lived down to your expectations?  “See!  I knew it all along?”

If so, let me suggest that that’s a problem, because that’s not how we respond to wrongdoing in people we love.  When somebody here at Jackson Heights gets trapped in sin, I’m not gleeful.  If some brother I’ve been concerned about for a long time falls away, I don’t feel vindicated because I was right.  Instead, I’m heartbroken!  In fact, if I weren’t, and I went around talking about how glad I was that Brother So-and-So was gone, I’d probably get fired over it.

Brethren, if it’s not loving to rejoice over unrighteousness in our brethren, it’s not loving to rejoice over unrighteousness in our enemies either!  We should never feel justified or satisfied or vindicated by someone else’s wickedness.  If we respond to sin in anyone with anything other than mourning and a prayer for their souls, we’re doing it wrong.

Third, also from 1 Corinthians 13:6, if we love our enemies, we will REJOICE IN THE TRUTH.  Necessarily, that means that we can’t rejoice in lies, and these days, that poses a problem.  Right now, there is no “the news” anymore, like there was when I was kid.  Instead, you have Red News and Blue News, and Red News promotes Red narratives, and Blue News promotes Blue narratives.  What people watch and read and listen to depends on what they believe already. 

In fact, the deeper Red you get, and the deeper Blue you get, the more important the narrative becomes, and the less important the truth becomes.  It is often the case that the most wretched lies put out by far left and far right alike are the stories most eagerly read and shared by partisans.  “The other presidential candidate had an affair with a space alien?  Great!  I’m going to share that on my Facebook page, right next to the inspirational Bible quote from yesterday!”

Brethren, no!  If we love our enemies, we won’t be eager to believe lies about them either.  If you come to me with some whopper of an awful story about my wife, I’m not going to lap that stuff up.  I’m going to be really reluctant to believe you.  Why?  Because I love my wife!  When we want so badly to believe evil about our political enemies that we embrace even falsehood, it reveals that we don’t have a shred of love for them in our hearts.

Finally, it will help us to love our enemies if we ENTRUST OURSELVES TO GOD.  Consider the example of Jesus in 1 Peter 2:23.  Even on the cross, Jesus did not cease to love His enemies, and He was able to endure such terrible suffering because He had entrusted Himself to God.  They could kill His body, but they couldn’t touch what truly mattered.

I predict that over the next couple of months, we’re going to hear a great deal about how this election is going to be one of the most important in our lifetime.  We have to get out and vote right, or else horrible things are going to happen!  Of course, the same people also said that the 2008 election, and the 2012 election, and the 2016 election also were the most important in our lifetimes.  If we’re still here in 2024, I predict that will be called the most important election of our lifetimes too.  All of them are, apparently.

But really, brethren, for the child of God, no election is truly important.  No matter who wins the vote, they can’t touch our relationship with God unless we let them. 

Right now, all is well with us, not because of our earthly blessings, but because our lives are hidden with Christ in God.  On Wednesday, November 4^th, if the wrong guy wins the election, it still will be well with us—so long as our lives are hidden with Christ in God.  Even if worst comes to worst, and stormtroopers from the other side come after us, and they drag us out of our homes and stand us up against a wall and shoot us, even then, it will be well with us—so long as our lives are hidden with Christ in God. 

So long as we are with our Lord, our enemies can’t touch us, no matter what they do.  We have no reason to fear them, and that frees us to love them.  If we entrust ourselves to God, something as insignificant as an election isn’t worth worrying about.