2026 04 19 - On the Road to Heaven - Popp

Grace, peace and mercy from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The road to heaven. Now, I know the gospel story was about the road to Emmaus. Great story.

But as I read First Peter, I saw the road to heaven. And unfortunately a lot of us, when we get our map looks a lot like the one on the screen, we over complicate it. We struggle, not sure where we're at on the map or how to get to our destination. I'm here to make it very clear. The Bible should make your map look like this.

I am here, will be in heaven. Amen. I mean, Dave's children's message made me hungry too, so I'll try to be quick. All right, this is what Peter was doing. Let me explain a little bit.

Well, first he is risen indeed. As we continue that Easter celebration, we acknowledge Jesus rose from the dead, defeated sin, death. And the devil desires to know us personally. So now what? Today we look at what Peter wrote to the elect.

Exiles. Like, like exiles. Well, while we were not around in the 60s A.D. we know that he could have been writing this to you and me. It's about God's faithful people. So let's take a look.

Right. We're called to be holy. I know the scripture, the, the scripture that John read was correct, but I had to go back four verses. You're going to see why I think these 1316 is worth it. Therefore, preparing your minds for action, being sober minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance. But as he who called you as holy, you also be holy in all your conduct. Since it is written, you shall be holy for I am holy. No pressure there, right? You shall be holy, for I am holy.

It is that end, that verse 16, that final one makes you a little worried. Are you holy? A lot of times I want to get into this pulpit and the first thing I want to do is raise my right hand and say, sinner Saint, I'm a sinner. If you ever feel convicted by the words coming out of this pulpit, just know I was convicted first. We struggle.

We're called to be holy, and yet we're sinners. We fail. I mean just that that verse in the Bible about pastors are spoilers, supposed to be above reproach and almost kept me from wanting to be a pastor. Right. We're sinners.

This is a struggle and, and of course it doesn't help. It's followed by verse 17. And if you call on him, his father, who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout your time of your exile.

He's gonna judge my deeds? Some of you are a little bit older like I am. You might remember the old movie with Meryl Streep and Albert Brooks called Defending youg Life. I used to use that scene to try to help kids understand how we sometimes fear for no reason. Right.

Albert Brooks character dies, and he's up in this courtroom waiting to see if he gets into heaven or if he goes to hell. There's a prosecutor and a defender, and they're showing scenes from his life. Boy, did that scare me to death. I guess that was my Luther moment. I don't know.

Good thing it's not like that. Because the blessing is they're not going to be looking at scenes from our life. They're going to be looking at Good Friday and Easter.

That whole point right there. If you call on him as Father, who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, whose deeds is he going to judge you by?

Thank you. I'm glad somebody pointed out, because I can't show you this video. I wish I could. I show it to the middle schoolers. It's old.

I'm sure they giggle, but I love the point. It's this video. Maybe I'll put it on Facebook so you guys can actually watch it later. It's this video where all these people come up and they give them a folder of all the red and green papers in there. The good things they did, the bad things they did, Right?

And they. They all step on the scale and none of them are good enough. Then of course, you see the folder in the one guy's hands. It's all red. This guy's awful.

And right before he takes the scale, Jesus stops him and says, oh, no, this one's mine. When Jesus steps on the scale, he's good enough. He's the perfect sacrifice. What I love about that isn't just the fact that Jesus takes the scale for him. It's all the people that have previously been judged who were better than this guy had more green sheets, less red sheets, right?

I love it. I kept the caption in there because the one girl is like, that's not fair. And that's why the guy says fair. That's why it's called grace.

Because it's not what we did, it's what he did. And that's that reminder we need all the time. It's not about him judging us. It's about him looking at what Jesus did for us as his people. Remember that whole idea of being clothed with a robe of righteousness in Christ, being baptized with him.

We'll come back to that. Hold that. This idea of a ransom. This verse 18, right after it, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as gold or silver. Precious blood of Christ.

What are you worth? Pastor Jeff and I, for our Christ Culture and Cinema podcast this week, did Finding Nemo. How many of you have seen Finding Nemo? Cute one. We talked about, how much is a father willing to do for his child, right?

And of course, Pastor Jeff went right to take it. And Liam Neeson is like, okay, we're not going to go there. What are you willing to do for your child? Guess what God was willing to do for us?

He sent his son to die. Now, what he's willing to do for his son, but what he was willing to do for us, his children? Sacrifice his son.

So we love because he loves. That last four verses of this epistle, when we jump into it, it's again that struggle. We know what the greatest commandment is. Love the Lord God with all your heart, soul, mind. Then the second is love your neighbors, yourselves.

We're supposed to love. We don't always feel like it, do we? So when we look at these verses, the first thing it talks about is actually the obedience. Verse 22. Having purified your souls with your obedience to the truth, for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart.

We'd like to love, but we're anything but obedient. In fact, that obedience. Sometimes we struggle again, we justify. I might not be perfect, but I'm better than him. It's easy to do, but we certainly aren't good enough on our own.

Once again, we love because he first loved us. And it was his obedience. That idea. And of course, it continues with that idea of living and abiding in God's Word since you've been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and abiding Word of God. That Bible is incredible.

A Bible so far. We're going to. We're going to come back a little bit to this idea of how important that Bible is. But it's so important because it even says the next one. The word of the Lord remains forever.

That's the last part of this, right? We rely on that Word of God, that's foundational to our faith. When somebody asks, why do you believe what you believe? Why do you do what you do? We go back to the Bible.

39 books that point to what Jesus is going to do. They all come true. All 300 plus Old Testament prophecies all come true in Jesus. Four books that tell us the story of what Jesus did. And then 23 more books pointing people back to what Jesus did and showing how they were sharing Christ.

I mean, just the days, over 3,000 people were added to that to the family that day. Right.

How are we pointing people to that? Through that Word of God. We're going to come back to that, too. Time to get a little selfish. All right.

I know a lot of times I'm telling you, hey, hey. Here's your gifts. Do these things. Now we're going to get a little selfish. We're going to have to look at ourselves, Right?

It starts with this idea of obedience. We heard it in verse 14, as obedient children do not be conformed by the passions. Certainly in 22. Right. Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth, it sounds like it's important, but the obedience comes from trusting in God, professing Lord as our Savior.

I. I have done a lot of funeral planning lately, and what a great time right after Easter, right after we remember why it's so important that we prepare to go be with the Lord. But what is the greatest gift we leave with our friends, our family, our loved ones. An assurance of where we're going to be and how we will be together again. That's an obedience that matters. That's where it comes down to how are we continuing to grow in that love and faith and understanding of our Lord and Savior, not giving the devil a foothold when we do confession, absolution.

I know you're all focusing on what you did, but again, there's usually that person holding onto that grudge, that, that anger, what somebody else did, they haven't apologized. Forgive them anyway.

Whether they get it or not does not matter to us. Allowing the devil to come into our lives and hurt us, to hold us back, to keep our relationship with the Lord rocky. Because of what somebody else has done, we can't control anybody else. We can control how we handle.

Made me think of grace. As we get into what's most important in our faith with the Lord, I ask, is there a downside to grace? Right. We love grace. I showed you kind of the end of that video, right, where Jesus took the scale for he's going to do it for all of us.

It's what he did, not what we did. Right. It's grace. We don't deserve it. What is the downside?

Some people, they just can't wrap their heads around how easy it is. It's too easy. Give me something to do. How can I earn it? It's always sweeter if I'm doing it right.

That's not how it works. Again, our faith is relied on Jesus Christ. That's that Easter message that over and over. But with that being said, I do want to give you some foundational things as we get in there. And that's the word and sacrament ministry.

They always say, what's a pastor's job? Word and sacrament ministry. Word and sacrament ministry. You're going to hear that a lot. Preach the word, administer the sacraments.

Preach the word, administer the sacraments. That's what we saw in today's gospel. We saw them right there. First began with Moses and all the prophets. He interpreted to them all the scriptures and things concerning himself.

He opened their minds to understanding the scriptures. We're going to see it again in Pentecost. We have been given those scriptures to understand. And of course, then the Lord's Supper. We know the sacraments are baptism of the Lord's Supper, love of baptism.

But again, that word and sacrament ministry is what we know as foundation. So let's start with the most important one. Prayer every day. Hopefully you're praying by yourself with other people in community. The importance of prayer.

I realize we don't have any pictures in our church of people praying. I guess nobody wants to be the person to pull out their phone and take a picture while everybody's praying. Right? I took this one at a basketball game from the scorers table. I'm sure everybody's like, look at that guy taking a picture during the prayer.

But I wanted it. This is why people praying. Why before the game, good game, no injuries. Please be with us, Lord. But I also snuck into the men's Bible study one Saturday morning.

They didn't know I did it. Pastor Tim was visiting. I just wanted to get a picture. I thought, what a special moment. People in prayer.

I know our praise team. I really need to sneak in when our praise teams. Our prayer team is praying on Thursday mornings. They're incredible. They all set that side a time aside on Thursday mornings and profess their faith by praying for all of your requests, the ones that we submit that are public and private ones.

The power of prayer is so important. We need to Take time to talk to them. Number two, read the Bible. Having that word of God so important. Actually, people in our world who are not allowed to have a Bible, and we do, we all have one.

They're in front of us. We have them all the time. We give them to the third graders. I put this one in here going way, way back. You know, we see Rod, our old principal there, and of course, she looks just as good.

Now we won't go there. Okay. That's my wife. For anybody who doesn't know, I can say that. All right, Mel.

Duplicity is going to be with the Lord already. Just a servant, of course, Pastor Rick and Dave Ledbetter. What made this one important? The reason I chose this one is because one of the Bibles handed out that day was Dave Ledbetter to his daughter Anna. Granddaughter.

Granddaughter Anna, Tara's oldest. You know, she's third grade there. I think she's 26, 27 now. I mean, out of these three, he's married. She just got engaged.

I hope Brian will someday. We'll see. But why do we do that? Third graders get their Bibles. I'd love to.

Hey, if you're ever in my office, ask me to show you my third grade Bible. Boy, that poor thing. I had a third and fourth grade teacher, made us highlight everything we read. That thing's highlighted all over the place. I had all the colors.

We need to be in the word. Why? Because we know bad things happen and God's word takes us to exactly where we need to go. Third thing. Remember our baptism?

Google Photos does some fun things with pictures once in a while. I put that one up. That was a recent baptism back in February. This is the original picture, right? Beautiful picture.

Beautiful family. Love Joel and Sidney. They came down baptism and then this is what Google Photos did.

That stream of water just hits me. The life giving water that he went through, the Holy Spirit coming upon. I love this picture. I really need to go pull all my baptism pictures out and see if it'll do it again. Make me some more Google Photos.

Hey, here we go. We need to be remembered in our baptism. Every time we make sign of the cross, we ask the Lord to join us. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We remember our baptism.

Dave and I actually talked about putting our baptismal font out there on days where we have a baptism. So you guys, when you walk in, can dip your finger in, make sign of the cross on your forehead to remind you of your baptism if you want. Some people think, oh, it's too high church. What a great remembrance. Our baptisms are important of course then we have to carry the font in and we'll spill water anyway.

But let's remember our baptism supports of baptism. We've got to keep going, right? Oh, and I did put the johns. They are now officially in Michigan. Hurts my heart but I love this picture only because it was Natalie's baptism.

It doesn't feel like they're all all in, right. Everybody's leaning in such a special, you know, even as Natalie comes to ours baptism that is a family together, you know. Gonna miss him. Alright, confessing our sins. Another one.

We don't really take pictures while we're confessing our sins but I put it into Google Photos and I guess we have confession absolution on the screen at this time. So it gave us this picture. We've already talked about how important it is but I wanted to show you one more where it came up because it's on the screen up there. That's at the youth gathering. 25,000 people in worship asking God to forgive them.

That's some serious absolution being sent out that day. Right? Not just because they're youth. All right. I'm not saying it was worse.

Maybe at the youth gathering it is. But we're all together asking God to forgive us. And you know what? Every single sin confess that that youth gathering was forgiven. Every single sin.

They said, look, I don't even know if I did. He forgave it all knowing all powerful, all present. Our God forgave us and finally receiving his body and blood which we're about to do.

So important. And I did just recently ask somebody come up and take a picture of that because the only decent ones I had was during COVID when we did first communions in the gym. So I took one. My pastor Jeff is giving first communion. But I just want a picture.

What a great picture. Us receiving the body and blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

I hope every time you come up and kneel and receive it you understand what we're saying. When Jesus said in his words, this is my body, this is my blood. It's bread and wine. You're going to taste terrible. Unleavened bread and men, Shabbat.

But because we believe in Jesus words and I hope you do too, we receive his body and blood as Dave reminded us, in with and under the bread and wine. That's the blessing we have. And I hope as you come forward you understand that too. And finally, real quick, quit making it so Difficult, right? I was going to put like the KISS Bible up here.

Keep it simple, stupid. Right? We all know those KISS books. God's word. It can't get much simpler than this.

For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

Right? That's the map. Quit making it so difficult. It's very clear. Do you believe in Jesus Christ?

I literally walked into seventh grade religion the other day. Give him a pop quiz. Why? Because every quiz I give is a pop quiz and. Oh, come on.

Not even a laugh? You're ready to go eat? I'm sorry. All I said is, is do you believe in Jesus? Yes or no?

Do you expect to be in heaven? Right. And then anybody that didn't put yes or both of them, I kept after no, I didn't. But they graded their own. I just want to remind him.

Everything we do here, Jesus already taken care of it. We love because he loved us. He is risen. This is a quick recap. Because Jesus rose from the dead, we are forgiven and saved.

He did the work, we get the reward. Eternal life in heaven. If you're still not sure, stay awake next time and come see me this week. I'll catch you up on what you just missed. To God be the glory.

Amen. Let us rise as one, people. Make our confession of faith. Today we confess together the words of the.