To Lose Is to Find Matthew 10:34–42; Jeremiah 28:5–9; Romans 7:1–13

Grace, mercy, and peace be with you, from God our Father, and our Lord, Jesus Christ.

Today we’re going to talk about losing, that we might find; having less, that we might have more; dying that we might live.

This all sounds like one great big contradiction, but that’s what the Gospel does, it turns everything upside down, or maybe we should say backside up.

When we fell into sin, it turned God’s perfect creation upside down. The Gospel turns our lives back the way God originally intended them to be. 

For our lives to be back on the right track, right side up, we need to have our conventional lives and worldly attitudes turned upside down. Upside down, that we might be right side up; inside out, that we might repent and believe; taken away, that we might live; made less, that it might be more.

God would give us so much more than the world has to offer. 

The world can offer temporary gain; God gives eternal blessings. The world would offer a quick fix to our troubles; God gives an eternal solution to our greatest problems, sin and sickness and suffering and dying; God gives eternal life and healing.

We live in a broken, hurting world. God would dismantle our world, bring it to its  knees, that He might restore people. 

That dismantling is called repentance; and restoration is believing the Gospel.

That’s where the healing and hope is for our dysfunctional world. 

And that’s why we don’t just know Christ; we also make Him known. We trust and love Him, that we might share Him. He’s the helper our hurting world needs.

There are things we can do to help the world, and God calls us to do those things. But Jesus can do things for the world that we can’t. And so He’s the gift we offer. 

And we offer with a prayer that the world would receive this gift from God, and believe and rejoice.

Our world may seem beyond hope and help, but there’s always hope when you hold to the Gospel.

But to hold to the Gospel, we need to let loose of the things that stand in the way. 

When our hands are hearts are filled with worldliness, worldly believing and worldly living, there’s no room in our lives to grab hold of the Gospel and cling to Christ. 

So Jesus calls us and helps us to empty our hearts and minds of worldly thoughts and desires, and empty our lives of worldly clutter, that we might have room for the Word that can restore us to a better place, a place of faith and grace. 

From this better place we sing, My Faith Looks up to Thee! I look up in faith, and I live in hope.

It seems we’re being bombarded with bad news lately. It’s overwhelming. But God would overwhelm the bad news with His Good News. He would lift us up with the Good News that Christ is with us, and has already won the victory for us. 

In our Epistle, Paul tells us how the law of God makes us aware of our sin, and how this brings death to us. But it’s not the law’s fault, which he says is good and holy; it’s because of sin.

Later in Romans 7 Paul talks about his struggle with sin and worldliness. The good I want to do, I don’t do, and the bad I don’t want to do, that’s what I do, Paul says. Not all the time, but some of the time. And some sin is too much sin.

Wretched man that I am, Paul says, who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!   

We’re fallen creatures living in a fallen world; we all have these struggles. But thanks be to God, Jesus has overcome this fallen world. So we live with hope.

As our hope in worldly things diminishes, our hope in godly things grows. We hope less, that we might hope more. Less hope in vain things, more hope in heavenly things. 

We lose our worldly perspective of life, that we might find the truth that Jesus promises will set us free. Then you will know the truth, he says, and that truth will set you free.

We become servants of the Gospel and slaves of righteousness, that we might live free and forever. 

So, as we said, God turns everything on its head to save us; just as Jesus died in order to rise, using death to give us life. 

Jesus gives us the opposite of a worldly approach. But in that opposite approach, we have all His good gifts, most of all forgiveness, life, and salvation.

In our Gospel Jesus says, Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. 

Following Christ, you find your true self. In Baptism, you found the person you were meant to be. To say it more precisely, God found you, and is making you into who you’re meant to be.

Say goodbye to the worldly version of you; say hello to a better you. 

Say hello to the new person arising in you through God’s Word and Sacraments, by the power of His Spirit; a person with the power to love others more in the way God does. Not perfectly as God loves, but day by day becoming more that way.

As we daily confess our sins, we say goodbye and good riddance to them. As we daily follow Christ, receiving His forgiveness, we say hello to a better life, even though that life means bearing a cross for Christ. 

In the cross He bore for us is our life; let us believe and bear our cross in Christ, and live, and proclaim this life with Him. 

The world thinks it doesn’t need God. It’s scary how secular our culture is becoming. And how fast! 

We look at the Old Testament and we see how fast the Word of God was lost at times; and the upheaval it took to reclaim it. 

Let us be bold to claim the cross at any cost, because life with Christ is worth it. 

Let us be bold and loving to share the message of the cross, no matter the cost, because it’s worth it for all and any who would believe, even one.

Political, external peace may or may not come to this world, sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t, but the peace of God that passes understanding, can be with us in all situations. No one can take this peace from you because it’s between you and Jesus. 

In our Old Testament Jeremiah says,  As for the prophet who prophesies peace, when the word of that prophet comes to pass, then it will be known that the Lord has truly sent the prophet.”

Peace with God would come to the world through His Son, and the prophets who promised His coming are the true prophets to believe. The disciples who saw Him in person and learned from Him, and saw Him dead on the cross and risen from the tomb, they are the apostles to believe. 

We have the words of the prophets and apostles in the Bible, true and inspired by God for us to believe, full of grace and hope for us to share. 

Let us bring this Word to a world of confusion, that it might be turned right side up again, that the cross might be seen and the Gospel heard, and the world might have God and His grace in their lives, and His peace and joy in their hearts. 

And may that peace which passes understanding, be with you, to guard your heart and mind, in Christ Jesus, our Lord, who is worth everything to us. Amen.