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Fear the Good Samaritan. And thank God for Him.

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Sermon for the Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity

Galatians 3:15-22 + Luke 10:23-37

Even people who don’t know the Bible or pay much attention to the words Jesus spoke are familiar with the term “Good Samaritan.” They think of a Good Samaritan as basically a nice guy who stops along the road to help a stranger in need. In fact, just last week there was a tragic news story, headlined, “Good Samaritan killed after helping two South Carolina teens pull SUV from ditch.”

We need to pause again this year, on this 13th Sunday after Trinity, to recalibrate our understanding of the Good Samaritan, to line it up with what Jesus was teaching, as opposed to what the world has come away with from this parable, which is basically the notion that you’re supposed to lend a helping hand to a stranger once in a while. That’s not why Jesus told this parable. He told the parable of the Good Samaritan to frighten his hearers to death.

Let’s back up for a moment. Let’s start where our Gospel starts. Then He turned to His disciples and said privately, “Blessed are the eyes which see the things you see; 24 for I tell you that many prophets and kings have desired to see what you see, and have not seen it, and to hear what you hear, and have not heard it. Why? What was it that Jesus’ disciples were seeing and hearing that the prophets and kings of the Old Testament all yearned to hear and see?

They were hearing and seeing the Seed of Abraham in action. Remember what you heard in today’s Epistle from Galatians 3—that’s a key chapter of the Bible for understanding the role God intended for the Law of Moses to play. Paul reminds us that God made a covenant with Abraham—that God would cause Abraham and His Seed to inherit the earth, to inherit eternal life. And the apostle points out that God did not make that covenant with all of Abraham’s descendants (plural), but only with THE promised Seed of Abraham (singular), which was Christ. He was the Heir of the Old Testament. Prophets and kings longed to see His day—which meant the fulfillment of the Law, the atonement for sins, and the proclamation of the day of grace—salvation for sinners by grace through faith in the Seed of Abraham. That was always God’s intention, always the only path for sinners to inherit eternal life.

But what happened between the time of Abraham and the time of Jesus? The law was added, summarized in the Ten Commandments, and summarized again in a different way with the twofold command: You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind,’ and ‘your neighbor as yourself.’ Why was the law added to the covenant God made with Abraham and his Seed? Paul tells us that it was not added in order to void or to change in any way the promise of salvation by grace that God made with Abraham. It was added, Paul writes, because of transgressions, till the Seed should come to whom the promise was made. In other words, the law was added in order to shine a bright light on the transgressions—the sins—that all men commit, so that we might repent and believe in the promised Seed of Abraham for the forgiveness of sins and for the gift of eternal life that only He can give.

But human beings still have this innate, twisted tendency to think that we can earn a place in heaven by keeping the law, even though the law was never given for that purpose. That’s what the lawyer in our Gospel thought. What was his question again? Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? And since the lawyer was infatuated with the law, Jesus sent him back to the law for his answer, and he answered correctly—Love the Lord with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself. And Jesus agreed. If you do this, you will live.

The problem is, he couldn’t do it, and neither can you. Neither can anyone. As Paul wrote, For if there had been a law given which could have given life, truly righteousness would have been by the law. If life could be won by the law, it would have been done by the law. If man was capable of earning his way to eternal life, God would have made the law the way to enter eternal life. It’s a good law, after all! Love for God! Love for your neighbor! What could be better than that? But human beings are fallen. Human beings are sinful. We can’t do it. And not only can’t we do it, but we can’t even recognize that we can’t do it.

Like the lawyer in the Gospel. He heard Jesus’ reply, Do this and you will live, and he knew how broad and overarching that command was, but still tried to wiggle his way out of the law’s sweeping command—and condemnation. But he, wanting to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

Maybe if I can narrow down this command of the law to include only a small set of people—my immediate family, my next-door neighbor, people of my own race. Who is my neighbor?

That’s what prompted Jesus to tell the parable of the Good Samaritan. You heard it. You know it. We’ll summarize it briefly.

There’s a man in need. He’s been robbed and beaten and left for dead on the side of the road. Two men come upon him—two men from Jerusalem, two “holy” men, two “children of Abraham,” a priest and a Levite, the guardians of the Law. They see the man lying there, right on their path, needing their help, needing their love. He’s their Jewish brother, their fellow church member. But they each go out of their way to step to the side, to avoid him, to avoid loving him.

The Samaritans, on the other hand, were treated poorly by the Jews, despised as foreigners and half-bloods. But see how this Samaritan treats the dying Jewish man as if he were his brother, his next-door neighbor, his friend. Some people might see a wounded man on the side of the road and despise him, or fear him. The Samaritan has compassion on him. He runs over to help. He takes all those loving steps to tend to his wounds, to bring him to safety, and to see to his ongoing care there at the inn until the Samaritan returns from his journey. It’s a beautiful story of love and compassion.

But it’s also a terrifying story. Because this is what God’s law requires, if you would do something to inherit eternal life. Not the once-in-a-while helping of a stranger, but the ongoing treatment of every single person around you with this level of care and compassion, even putting your own life at risk if necessary—in addition to that perfect love for the God of Abraham who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Love your neighbor as yourself. Do to others what you would have them do to you. That’s the model the Good Samaritan sets for you. That’s the Law. Either keep it without fail, or be damned.

The parable of the Good Samaritan should terrify people. It should send them running for cover from the Law’s condemnation, which is aimed at everyone who has ever shown anything less than the mercy of the Good Samaritan in our Gospel. If people understood that, they would not think so highly of the Good Samaritan. Because he puts all men to shame and shows us what we must do, if we would inherit eternal life.

What a terrible lesson. But what a necessary lesson for us poor sinners to learn. Because most people live under this delusion, that you can be good enough for God to accept you into eternal life. But you can’t. That’s why you should fear the Good Samaritan.

But at the same time, if you’ve learned to fear the Law and to tremble at your sins, there is great comfort and hope for you in this Gospel. Indeed, as Paul writes to the Galatians, the Scripture has confined all people under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.

The Lord God saw us wounded by the devil, abandoned by the Law, helpless to save ourselves because of our inborn sin. He saw us, wretched, poor, naked and blind, and He took pity. He had mercy. He sent His Son into our flesh, even though we were His enemies by birth. He became our Neighbor. He came and helped us, putting His own life in danger, even sacrificing His own life on the cross in order to buy the bandages and the oil and wine to heal our wounds, to forgive us our sins. He sent His Gospel to you in the ministry of the Word, He sent someone to baptize you, washing your sins away from God’s sight. He brought you into the inn of His holy Church, where His ministers look after you and keep applying the healing salve of Word and Sacrament, until He returns from His journey to bring you safely home.

Once the Good Samaritan has terrified you, so that you flee from the law and from thinking you have to do something good in order to inherit eternal life, flee in faith to the truly Good Samaritan, Christ Jesus, and thank God for Him who has loved you with a love you can never equal.

And yet, because He has loved you and granted you the gift of eternal life that is only His to give, as the Seed of Abraham, now you are equipped, as a son of Abraham through faith in THE Son of Abraham, to spend the rest of your life on earth imitating His love. You’ve experienced the love of Christ, the Good Samaritan, firsthand. So it’s a fitting thing for the Holy Spirit to call out to you now, Go and do likewise. Not in order to inherit eternal life. But because Christ has inherited eternal life for you and gives it away for free to all who believe in Him. Amen.

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The One who wounds is also the One who heals

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Sermon for the Twelfth Sunday after Trinity

2 Corinthians 3:4-11  +  Mark 7:31-37

We have before us today in the Gospel the simple, friendly account of how Jesus healed a man who was deaf and mute. Let’s begin today by simply reviewing the story.

The good word about Jesus was spreading all over Israel: this man Jesus is a Teacher sent from God. He speaks with authority. He teaches with patience. He accuses all men of sin, but at the same time He offers the grace of God to all men—the forgiveness of sins as God’s free gift through faith in Him. This Jesus has divine power over the creation—over sickness, over demons, over nature itself. This Jesus takes from no one, but gives freely to all who come to Him for help. This Jesus is merciful, kind and good. And He just might be the Christ.

Some of those who heard the good word believed the good word. But some of those who heard and believed had a friend who couldn’t hear anything, because he was deaf. So they brought to Jesus one who was deaf and had an impediment in his speech, and they begged Him to put His hand on him. Which He did, without requiring anything at all of the deaf man. He stopped what He was doing, took the man aside, one on one. And then, in His typical not-afraid-to-get-too-close-to-you manner, He put His fingers in his ears, and He spat and touched his tongue. Then, looking up to heaven, He sighed, and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” And his ears were opened and his tongue was loosed. And the crowd was amazed and said, He has done all things well. He makes both the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.

I wonder how the world would react if Jesus performed this miracle today. I think the world would react this way. “It’s about time you healed him, Jesus! It’s Your fault—God’s fault—this poor man was deaf and mute in the first place! You should heal everyone who is suffering. You never should have made them suffer in the first place.”

Blaming God for human suffering is a very common reaction. Many people would say it’s God’s fault that the man in the Gospel was deaf and mute in the first place, and in a sense, they’re not entirely wrong. There is this from the book of Exodus, when God first called Moses to deliver the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, and Moses at first made the excuse that he couldn’t speak well enough. So the LORD said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Or who makes the mute, the deaf, the seeing, or the blind? Have not I, the LORD?”

Yes, God is, in a way, responsible for these physical maladies that people suffer. There’s no getting around it or denying it. But God is responsible for these things like the principal of a school is responsible for a naughty student getting suspended, or like a judge is responsible for a criminal going to jail. Yes, the teacher suspended the student. Yes, the judge put the criminal in jail. But the guilty parties earned those consequences for themselves.

Still, we shouldn’t imagine that the deaf man committed some specific sin to earn his deafness. It all goes back, once again, to the terrible sickness that infects all men from birth, to Original Sin, the corruption that we inherit from our parents, and they from theirs. It goes back to our natural lostness, our deadness, the slavery to sin in which we’re born—a condition that is absolutely lethal for everyone, and yet it’s a condition that no one fully grasps on his own. Before God, no one is innocent. No one is righteous. No one is heaven-bound by nature. Instead, all are hell-bound from birth.

So why does God cause some to be deaf or mute, blind or handicapped in some other way? It’s not because He’s cruel. In fact, God commanded the Israelites not to be cruel to those who suffer in these ways: You shall not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling block before the blind, but shall fear your God: I am the LORD. Why, then? Is it only to punish? Is it only to give us what we deserve?

Not at all. In all these things, God is more like a doctor than a judge. We’re like tumor-ridden cancer patients by nature, who either don’t know or who refuse to acknowledge how sick we are, because spiritual illness is impossible to see. But the symptoms…the symptoms are easily diagnosed by God’s Law, by His commandments as they tell us what healthy people look like in their thoughts, words and deeds, with selfless love toward God and toward our neighbor. But that’s not what we look like.

So what does God do with us? He afflicts us in ways that we can see, that we can perceive, with maladies, some with one, some with another, some with physical afflictions, others with mental or emotional afflictions, sometimes with financial challenges or hardships. All of it’s designed to get us to go running to the doctor, to the Great Physician, so that we can hear His diagnosis and receive His medicine.

As the Lord says through the prophet, Now see that I, even I, am He, And there is no God besides Me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; Nor is there any who can deliver from My hand.

But when God afflicts, when He wounds, He wounds like a doctor who prescribes a harsh chemotherapy, or like a surgeon who has to poke and prod and who takes his knife and cuts open a patient’s body and may even have to amputate some part, not to make us sick—we’re already dying! Not to cause harm, but to get in to where the tumor is growing, so that he can remove the tumor that’s killing his patient, so that He can treat the sickness at its source. Now, the surgery may be painful and the recovery, too, may be painful and life-long. But the wounding that a doctor does is for the sake of saving a life, not harming it. He wounds in order to heal. He kills in order to make alive.

So it is with our God. All the earthly wounds and troubles that mankind suffers are used by God to drive us to His Word for answers, for the diagnosis, and also for the cure—the forgiveness of sins, earned for us by Christ through His death on the cross; adoption, sonship, the promise of present help and future glory.

What did God promise in the Old Testament? In that day the deaf shall hear the words of the book, And the eyes of the blind shall see out of obscurity and out of darkness. That prophecy was a prophecy about Christ. It was a prophecy of spiritual healing—the healing of spiritual deafness and muteness and blindness. In other words, those who stubbornly refuse to listen to the Gospel will be brought to listen to it, to believe it. Those who stubbornly refuse to confess that God is good will be brought to confess Him as the One who gave His Son into death in order to save us poor sinners. Those who stubbornly refuse to see the path of life, which is faith in Christ, will be made to see it and to walk in it.

But again, those spiritual healings can’t be seen. So Jesus performed miracles that could be seen, healing deaf ears and loosing tongues that couldn’t speak. He did it to show His kindness, God’s kindness toward those who deserve His wrath. He did it to show that all who come to Jesus for help receive help. When He walked the earth visibly, that help was also visible. Now that He reigns invisibly from God’s right hand, His help is often invisible, too, but it’s just as real. He makes it, not seen, but heard—heard through the proclamation of the Gospel, through the absolution, through words connected with water and with bread and wine. Forgiveness, strength and hope.

Forgiveness, so that you can be certain that the wounds you Christians suffer now are not punishments from an angry God, but tools of the Great Physician to keep you close to your divine Doctor, to teach you to persevere and to trust in Him who was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities. Strength to bear up under those afflictions.  And hope, that there will be an end to the sufferings, either in this life or in the life to come, when Christ returns. The One who wounds is also the One who heals. But when He comes again, it will not just be to heal our wounds, but to make us new, to turn us into flawless creatures, with neither physical nor spiritual deformities. That is the sure hope that is ours, through faith in Christ Jesus. Amen.

Source: Sermons

Only one kind of sinner will be justified

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Sermon for the Eleventh Sunday after Trinity

1 Corinthians 15:1-10  +  Luke 18:9-14

There are two kinds of sinners portrayed for us in today’s Gospel, and also in the Epistle: those who are not easily identified as sinners and thus deny that they are sinners, and those who are easily identified as sinners and who confess their sinfulness with humility and seek help and mercy from the Lord God alone. In the Epistle, the same man—the Apostle Paul—was each kind of sinner at different points in his life. He started out a Pharisee, denying his sinfulness, claiming to be righteous before God, looking down on other people as the real sinners. But then God, in His mercy, showed Paul (or Saul) how great a sinner he actually was. God took pity on him, humbled him, brought him to repentance and faith in Christ Jesus, who died for our sins according to the Scriptures, was buried, and rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. And so Paul went from being a Pharisee-kind-of sinner who stood condemned before God to being the other kind of sinner, a penitent, humbled sinner who was justified by faith in Christ.

Now, you know and agree with the Holy Scriptures when they make the sweeping claim that all men are sinners. That all have sinned, including you. That all have earned and now deserve nothing but temporal and eternal punishment from God. If we could just start with that premise, then we could move on to talk about the solution. But we can’t start there. The Pharisees of the world—the Pharisees who dwell in our own flesh—have to be addressed first, as Jesus so directly addresses them in today’s Gospel, comparing them with the tax collectors of the world.

The Pharisee and the tax collector each go to the temple in Jerusalem to pray. The Pharisee looks up to heaven and praises…himself. He thanks God, but actually credits himself with being a fine, upstanding person—a far better person than the tax collector who entered the temple with him. He lists the fine things he has done and holds himself up before God as a model citizen and church member, fully expecting God to smile down at him, and to look down with His divine gaze on the sinful tax collector with contempt.

The tax collector knows he isn’t good enough even to lift up his face to heaven. Remember, the tax collectors of Jesus’ day were known for being cheaters, extortionists, and thieves. He knows he has sinned against God and man. He doesn’t list anything good in himself, but beats his breast and prays for mercy—mercy that he knows he doesn’t deserve, but God has revealed Himself as a God of mercy, as a God who set up His temple and His altar in the temple for the very purpose of accepting the death of innocent animals as sacrifices in the place of guilty sinners, so that He might show mercy to the sinners, all of which pointed ahead to the great sacrifice of Christ for the sins of the world.

The tax collector was right to seek mercy from God, who proclaims Himself to be a God who delights in mercy, the God who proclaimed long ago through the prophet Isaiah: On this one will I look: On him who is poor and of a contrite spirit, And who trembles at My word. True to His Word, Jesus reveals to His hearers how God viewed the self-righteous Pharisee and how He viewed the penitent tax collector. Only one of those two men went down to his house justified, forgiven, and it wasn’t the Pharisee.

The Pharisees, as a Jewish sect, no longer exist. But the Pharisaical attitude lives on. The Pharisees of today are those who, like the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable, appear to be godly people on the outside. Compared to other men, they are relatively innocent, good, righteous. They work hard. They pray. They go to church. They give generous offerings. That’s all well and good. But here’s the other quality of the Pharisees that makes them Pharisees: they actually believe that they are good people. They actually believe themselves to be righteous people, better than other men, deserving of God’s favor and blessings.

The world tends to view all Christians as Pharisees, as pompous, self-righteous hypocrites who love to talk about how good and moral they are, showing off their good works, who walk around comparing themselves to others and looking down on others and putting others down, even mistreating their neighbors and then patting themselves on the back for being fine “church people.” That’s not fair, of course, to brand all Christians that way. It’s a stereotype that the world has created to hide its own guilt and shame, to make excuses for its unbelief in the true God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

But the stereotype has had more than a few representatives over the ages, and there is certainly a warning for Christians in this Gospel. Self-righteousness is a powerful temptation that afflicts Christians, and all the more as the world around us becomes more openly godless, as sin is celebrated and truth is mocked. The contrast between a life lived according to the Ten Commandments and the way the world around us lives is becoming greater and greater. How easy it is to compare yourself to the immoral people of this world—you could even begin comparing yourself to your fellow Christians! —and conclude, “I am definitely living a better life than they are. Thank God I’m not like them.”

Watch out! Those who exalt themselves will be humbled. There’s no room for pride or self-congratulation in the kingdom of God. There’s only room for God’s mercy in Christ. If you wish to bring in your goodness, your decency, your works, your ego and hold them up before God as reasons for Him to accept you, then you will be on your own, and Jesus tells you in the Gospel how it will go for you. You will not go down to your home justified.

Instead, Jesus holds up for us the example of the tax collector as the one who went down to his home justified.

Now, there’s more than one kind of tax collector. There are at least five kinds of tax collectors, of people who are easily identifiable as sinners. First, there are the ones who recognize their sin and gladly flaunt it for all the world to see. They are just as condemned as the Pharisee. Then there are those who recognize their sin and fool themselves into thinking they can fix the problem themselves, work harder, do better, make themselves righteous. They are just as condemned as the Pharisee. There are others who recognize their sin and seek help from a false god who cannot save—the Mormon god, the Jewish god, the Muslim god, the Jehovah’s Witness god, or any of the pagan gods men have created from their own imaginations. They are just as condemned as the Pharisee. And then there are those who recognize their sin and despair of all help and mercy. Some commit suicide. Others live in deep sadness, bitterness, anger, or fear. They, too, are just as condemned as the Pharisee. And then, finally, there are the ones like the Apostle Paul, like the tax collector in today’s parable, who recognize their sin with sorrow, but who also recognize in Jesus a kind and merciful Savior who is mighty enough and worthy enough to save even the worst of sinners, and so they seek mercy from the only true source of mercy, from the Lord God, for the sake of His Son Jesus Christ.

“Be like that!”, Jesus pleads with us. Be like the tax collector. Yes, he’s done terrible things. But so has the Pharisee—his sins are just less obvious to those around him. The real difference between the two lies in repentance and faith in God’s mercy for the sake of Christ. Be like that and humble yourself before God. Acknowledge the deep corruption of your heart and the crimes, both small and great, that you have committed against your neighbor, and against God. Be like that tax collector in the temple. Confess your sins to God, trusting in His mercy for the sake of Christ Jesus who loved us and gave Himself for us. Find your righteousness, not in yourself, but in Him. And then know for certain—you have God’s word for it—that you will always go down to your house justified. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

It’s true that you’re always a sinner, so you always have sins to confess. But it’s also true that God forgives sins, and because He does, it means that you don’t need to live with guilt or shame laid upon your back, but, by faith in Christ Jesus, you are free, free to live in joy and thankfulness to God for showing mercy to you, a sinner, and then to show the same mercy in humble service to your neighbor. Amen.

Source: Sermons

Remember Jerusalem

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Sermon for the Tenth Sunday after Trinity

1 Corinthians 12:1-11  +  Luke 19:41-48

Palm Sunday saw much celebration as Jesus rode that famous donkey into Jerusalem. But it wasn’t all celebration. While the crowds met Jesus with joy, the leaders of Jerusalem met Jesus with hostility. While the crowds sang praises to Him who came in the name of the Lord, some of the Pharisees called to Him from the crowd, “Teacher, rebuke Your disciples.”

As always, wherever Jesus was, some believed, but many disbelieved. Jesus knew that. He knew that some in Jerusalem would believe and be saved, but He also knew that the city as a whole would never believe in Him as the Christ, the Son of the living God.

So, on that otherwise joyful Palm Sunday, Jesus wept over the Jerusalem. If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. The rest of the world could be excused for not recognizing Jesus as the promised Savior from sin. But Israel was the nation that God had nurtured like a mother nurtures and raises her children from infancy. Jerusalem was the capital city that God Himself chose for Himself and graced with His presence, where He placed His temple and His altar, where He listened to prayer, where He accepted sacrifice. You, even you, Jerusalem, God’s daughter, do not recognize your God, do not want to recognize Jesus as your God. You, even you, will crucify your God at the time of His visitation.

And yet, that’s not why Jesus wept over Jerusalem. All of that, even crucifying the Son of God, could have been forgiven, would have been forgiven. But even after His resurrection, after His ascension, when Jesus sent Peter and the other apostles to preach repentance and the forgiveness of sins to Jerusalem, holding out Holy Baptism to them as a gift, as a means of salvation, they still would not repent and believe. They still would not be baptized. Jerusalem would play its awful part in the crucifixion of the Son of God, and then, rather than trust in the atoning sacrifice made by Christ, they would leave God standing there with His arms open, like a Husband whose wife left Him for another man, like a Father whose daughter would rather live as a prostitute than live in the same house with Him.

Jesus knew all that. You, even you, who persecuted the prophets of old, will again resist the Holy Spirit and persecute those who are sent to you and thus bring on yourself the just punishment for your sins: the bitter siege of Jerusalem that the Romans would bring against the city, and its total annihilation by the Romans some 40 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection.

In 70 A.D., God abandoned Jerusalem for good. Notice that He never sent His Christian people against Jerusalem to wipe out the Jews, even though the Jews were responsible for the slaughter of Christ and of Christians. No, God sent the pagan Romans against Jerusalem and Judea, who had their own evil reasons for what they did. God never calls upon His Christians to use violence against those who reject Christ. Instead, He places the sword of the Word of God into our mouths, to warn the Jews—and the Muslims and all unbelievers—of their impending destruction, and to call them to repentance and faith in Christ. That’s the role of the Church.

The destruction of Jerusalem was just. But understand this: the Jews were not condemned by God and Jerusalem was not destroyed by the Romans because the Jews were responsible for Jesus’ crucifixion. The Romans were responsible for that, too, as we confess in the Creed, “He was crucified under Pontius Pilate.” No, those Jews were condemned and slaughtered and eternally damned because of all their sins, which all men have in common with them. You don’t have to call for Jesus’ death or pound the nails into His hands in order to earn God’s condemnation. You just have to be born, born of a sinful man and a sinful woman. You just have to break one of the Ten Commandments in your thoughts, words, or actions. And you’ve done that, too. The sins of the Jews, the sins of all men, have already earned God’s condemnation. He delays it, giving men time to hear the Gospel and repent. He delays it, so that His Holy Spirit might work through the Gospel to bring sinners to faith in Christ, which is the only divinely provided way of escape from punishment. But most of Jerusalem, most of the Jews resisted the Holy Spirit. They refused to believe.

Now Jerusalem’s destruction stands for all time as a harbinger of the destruction that awaits all those who stubbornly refuse to repent of their sin and trust in Christ Jesus for salvation. Neither Jews nor Gentiles will escape. And as for you who have been made to see the light of Christ, to repent and be baptized in His name for the forgiveness of your sins, remember Jerusalem, God’s chosen city. Remember Jerusalem and its destruction and know that, there but by the grace of God go we. Remember how she fell, how she became so good and upright in her own eyes that she no longer cared about her sins, no longer looked for a righteousness from above, no longer looked to her Lord for forgiveness, life and salvation. What happened to Jerusalem can happen to Christians, too, if we are not vigilant.

So remember Jerusalem. But more than that, remember the Lord who wept over her—over her who was about to put Him to death. Still with no bitterness. Still with no grudge. Still wanting to take her back as His bride and forgive her her sins, even after she crucified Him, if only she would take the help from the hand stretched out to her by her God. See Jesus weeping and know that He doesn’t delight in anyone’s destruction, but yearns for every sinner to repent and be saved.

Remember the Lord who wept over Jerusalem and turn to Him in faith.

And then remember Him driving the buyers and sellers out of the temple with their wares. This is the side of Jesus that modern “Christianity” would rather forget. It’s not “nice” enough. It’s not mild-mannered and mushy-gushy enough. But it’s real.

Now, why was He so upset with the buyers and sellers in the Temple—upset enough to overturn their tables and drive them out of God’s house? It wasn’t only because of how it dishonored God’s name. It was mainly because the proclamation of God’s name was the only thing that would rescue those who would be rescued from the coming destruction. Zeal for His neighbor drove Jesus to do something about this buying and selling in the temple. How could anyone think with all that commerce taking place all around them? How could anyone pray? How could they know the true God and hear His Word when, apparently, even the priests and religious leaders were perfectly fine with the Temple being turned into a marketplace? How could anyone focus on their sin and on the atoning sacrifices for sin? And how could anyone hear the words that Jesus would so urgently teach over the next few days of that Holy Week? So Jesus cleansed the Temple and cleared a place for the crowds to come and listen to God’s Word one last time before He, the Lamb of God, would be offered up for the sins of the world.

Then, after the Temple was quiet again, He sat down and taught them—large crowds who still were willing to listen. And in spite of all the opposition, in spite of all the hatred of the Jewish leadership toward Jesus, He sat down in their midst and taught for the sake of the elect, for the sake of those who would still hear and believe the Gospel.

Such is the role of the Church still today. To remember Jerusalem, in humility and in fear, so that we never become proud or complacent toward God and His Word. To weep and lament over the lost, as Jesus did, but not only that. To drive out of the Church all the worldly things that would hinder the truth of the Gospel from being proclaimed and heard, and then to teach those who will listen, because there will always be some who listen, some who repent, some who believe, even as there will always be many who rage against Christ and His Church.

The Church, the communion of saints, will be just fine. The tears Jesus shed were not shed over how terrible things will be for His Church or how hopeless the situation will be for His believers. His believers are not the ones who will be punished by God. His Christians are not the ones who will be destroyed on the Day of Wrath, for there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Remember Jerusalem and take comfort in the Lord’s mourning. He mourns over those who will punished for their unbelief. But He continues to rejoice over His holy people who have been cleansed from their sins by faith in His blood. And the Day of Wrath that is coming on the wicked will be a day of salvation for those who put their hope in Christ Jesus. Amen.

Source: Sermons

By their fruit you will know them

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Sermon for the Eighth Sunday after Trinity

Romans 8:12-17  +  Matthew 7:15-23

Beware of false prophets. That is Jesus’ instruction to His disciples. Let’s begin this morning by giving thanks to God for that instruction, because without it, we might get the idea that the Christian Church on earth would be this glorious, easily identifiable, united entity, filling the whole world with a unanimous confession of Christ, with all its pastors and preachers in communion with one another.

But that isn’t what we see, is it? We see dozens and dozens of different doctrines, different confessions, church bodies that divide and then sub-divide and then split again and again into smaller and smaller groups. The world laughs at how divided the Christian Church is, and Christians wring their hands over it. They either try to fix it by brushing aside doctrinal differences and coming together on the basis of something other than doctrine—“deeds, not creed,” they say, are what matters. Or, they despair and say, “How can I ever know who’s telling me the truth? Why bother trying to figure it out?”

But the divine Author of our faith is the One who told us ahead of time to expect exactly what we now witness on this earth: false prophets, and many who follow them. In fact, if the visible Church were not plagued by false prophets, then Jesus would be a liar, and then where would we be?

And here we’re not talking especially about non-Christian false prophets, although there are plenty of them, too. Here in this Gospel Jesus is warning us about those who call Him, “Lord, Lord,” who bear the name “Christian,” who look and sound harmless, mild, gentle, innocent, intelligent, and sincere, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.

And so we have the command—not the suggestion, but the command—from Jesus to beware of false prophets. It won’t do for Christians to say, “Meh, doctrine doesn’t matter.” It won’t do for Christians to say, “Why bother trying to figure it out?” It won’t do for Christians to tell Jesus on the Last Day, “You, know, Lord, I was pretty busy and never got around to actually checking to see if that preacher was telling me the truth or not. I was just a layman, after all. It’s not my fault I believed that guy (or that gal, as the case may be, and if it’s a woman pretending to preach in the name of Christ, you should know right away that she’s a false prophet). Anyway, Jesus, it’s not my fault. Blame the false prophet, Lord, not me for believing him!”

Don’t worry. Jesus will blame the false prophet. But He will also blame the one who heard His warning to beware of false prophets and refused to take heed. He will blame the disciple who had His Word and who cared more for earthly benefits than for the Word of Christ and who trusted more in the word of man than in the Word of Christ.

You must have God’s Word for yourself. Each one. Not the word of this or that pastor or synodical statement, or of this church or of that church father or of this diocese. You must have God’s Word. Your parents can’t have it for you. Your husband or wife can’t have it for you. Your church, your synod, your diocese, your pastor can’t have it for you. You must have it and be able to stand on it before God. And when you have it, then you are never to let go of it or let it be compromised or twisted or perverted or diminished. Then you are not to sit at the feet of one who teaches it even a little bit falsely, no matter what great earthly benefits you might reap from staying with such a preacher or with such a church, no matter what hardships or afflictions you may have to endure for holding onto God’s Word.

So how do you know? How do you judge? The Apostle John writes in his First Epistle, Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world. The test that St. John then sets before his readers is a doctrinal test, comparing the teachings of the preacher with the teachings that have been passed down from the holy prophets and apostles.

So when Jesus says in today’s Gospel that you will know them by their fruits, He’s talking about the teachings that they produce. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.

Now, there is something to be said about examining the “fruit” of a preacher’s life and works. Ultimately the faithful preacher sent from God will show his faith in various ways, producing the fruits of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control—while the false prophet may have good-looking works for a while, but his lack of concern for the sheep usually becomes evident, and fear instead of faith will tend to show itself. Fear that outweighs faith, fear that manifests itself in many ways, but especially fear to stand up for the Gospel if it means losing some earthly benefit; and unbelief when it comes to trusting the Gospel to do what God wants it to do, always trying new ways to bring people into the Church that have nothing to do with the Gospel.

But true prophets of God have a sinful flesh, too, and won’t always do the good they want to do. So judging a man by his life and good works should always be secondary. The main fruit of a preacher is the teaching he produces. The leaves and flowers on thornbushes can often appear just as beautiful as the leaves and flowers on grape vines and fig trees. You have to look past appearances, look past official titles, look past the preacher’s strengths and weaknesses, his personality traits, his niceness, his charm, look past how he makes you feel. Look to the teaching he produces, to see whether it is good or bad. Then and then alone will you know if the preacher is good or bad.

So what is the fruit Christians are to look for in a preacher? You look for teaching that either agrees or disagrees with what you know to be true from God’s Word. And since you are Lutherans who have already compared the teaching of God’s Word with the Small Catechism (and all the Lutheran Confessions) and determined that our Confessions teach the Word of God purely and without error, you look for teaching that either agrees or disagrees with your Catechism.

Let’s summarize those teachings briefly. The Ten Commandments teach what is good and right in God’s sight, how to love Him above all things and how to love your neighbor as yourself. But they also show how you haven’t done that, and so deserve only God’s wrath and punishment.

The Apostles’ Creed confesses who the true God is—one God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—who has made all things, who has had mercy on His fallen creatures by sending His Son into human flesh and giving Him into death for our sins and for our redemption, who sends His Holy Spirit into the world in the preaching of the Gospel to gather a holy Church by calling sinners to repentance and faith in Christ.

The Lord’s Prayer teaches you how to pray as Christians, what to ask for and what to expect from our gracious Father.

Holy Baptism teaches you how and where God first forgave you your sins, adopted you as His child and made you an heir of eternal life, by applying the merits of Christ to you and clothing you by faith with the righteousness of Christ. There the Holy Spirit gave you rebirth and began the lifelong process of sanctifying you and renewing you in the image of Christ.

Confession teaches you that baptized Christians are continually to confess your sins and trust that God Himself is the One declaring forgiveness to you through the mouth of His called and ordained pastor, who speaks to you in the stead and by the command of the Lord Jesus.

And the Sacrament of the Altar proclaims the simple truth that the risen Lord Christ now regularly feeds the members of His Church with His own body and blood, which are really present with the bread and the wine, to offer and seal to you the forgiveness of sins, purchased with the death of our Lord.

Now that’s a summary of a summary, and a necessary starting point. But God has put His whole Word at your fingertips to study and to learn, and the whole Book of Concord is a faithful guide, so that you can use it to see through all the lies and deceptions and falsehood that pass for “Christian teaching” these days.

Where you find the Gospel purely taught and the Sacraments rightly administered, there you know the preacher is a good tree who is bringing you good fruit. Where you find teachings that differ from this or practices that are contrary to this, there you should not look for good fruit at all, even if many things the preacher says are right.

And where you find good fruit, there you should remain. Where you find bad fruit—from there you should flee. Don’t settle for the “closest thing” or the “next best thing.” Remain with the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Even in this church and in this diocese, I urge you in the name of Christ to continue to test the doctrine that is proclaimed from this pulpit, because there is no guarantee than a good teacher will ever and always remain a good teacher. Many good trees have gone bad over the ages, and many Christians have fallen away from the truth by continuing to cling to a good teacher gone bad.

Does this sound difficult? Does this sound like hard work? Who ever told you it would be easy? Salvation is free, already earned for you by Jesus! But the Christian life is not easy. It involves denying yourself and taking up your cross daily as you follow Jesus. And it’s serious business. Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. The will of God is that you should abide in His Word and cling to it for dear life, for there He reveals Christ to you, and you are saved and justified by faith alone in Christ. There in His Word He speaks to you, and He’s always sincere. There He draws you to Christ and gives you eternal life and preserves you in Christ Jesus, who has made you this promise: If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. God is faithful, and He will do it. Amen.

Source: Sermons

Jesus refreshes the faithful with bread

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Sermon for the Seventh Sunday after Trinity

Romans 6:19-23  +  Mark 8:1-9

Jesus provides refreshment for the weary, bread for the hungry. That’s the simple summary of today’s Gospel—another timely text for the troubled times in which we live. Who couldn’t use a little refreshment after yet another week full of news that depicts a nation consuming itself, destroying itself from within? Here we sit, hungry for peace, thirsting for righteousness, weary of violence and hatred and lies and distortions of facts. Who will save us from this wretched, sinful world?

I’ll tell you who won’t save us. Politicians. They won’t save us. Angry, vengeful people. They certainly won’t save us. In fact, people won’t save us at all. Only God can. And He will. But He won’t do it by turning our nation or our world into a utopia here on earth. He won’t save us by making America great again. He won’t save us by forcing people to live in peace and harmony with one another. No, we are living in the days before the Great Flood, when the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually, and only a remnant of humanity will be rescued, as Noah and his family were kept safe on the ark. God will save us as He saved Noah, by bringing His judgment upon this earth and rescuing us out of it.

In a way, He has already done that for us Christians. He did it through Holy Baptism, where He washed us clean of our sins, forgiving us our sins in the blood of Christ, and has caused us to cross over from death to life through faith in Christ. He has already rescued us from condemnation and from wrath on the Day of Wrath. He has already made us new creatures, after the image of His Son. He has already redeemed us from the slavery of sin and uncleanness and lawlessness. As Jesus said to His disciples, “I chose you out of the world.”

But the Lord God has not yet taken us out of the world. In fact, Jesus once prayed for His Church, saying, Father, I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth. So feed on God’s word today. Find refreshment in the goodness and mercy of Christ, and in this way God will keep you from the evil one.

We learn in today’s Gospel, not just that Jesus has the power to do miracles, to multiply bread and fish, to feed lots of people. We learn of His care and compassion, which extend to all men, but we learn here of His special care and compassion for those who have “continued with Him,” for those who have come to Him and believed in Him and left things behind in order to hear Him and learn from Him. Yes, God, in His mercy, provides food for the good and for the bad, for the righteous and for the unrighteous. More than that, God has given His Son into death for all men, so that all might believe and be saved, even though not all will believe and be saved. But we see today the special care Jesus shows for those who believe in Him, His ever-present compassion for His Church in the midst of this wilderness of chaos and despair.

The multitude of the 4,000 in today’s Gospel was different from other multitudes. For example, on a different occasion, Jesus gave bread to 5,000 men, plus women and children, in order to point them to Himself as the true Bread that came down from heaven. That multitude was curious about Jesus. That multitude was infatuated with the miracles Jesus had done and couldn’t get enough of the signs and wonders. They spent a day with Jesus, not far from their homes, not far from their cities. And they proved very quickly that they didn’t really want to hear the words of Jesus, that they didn’t really believe in Jesus or want the eternal life He had to offer.

This multitude, however, in today’s Gospel had followed Jesus a long way out into the wilderness for no other reason than to hear Him, to learn from Him, to receive eternal life from Him.

At the end of three days, they had no food left. Whatever they had brought with them for the journey had been consumed. Jesus looked out at them and said to His disciples, I have compassion on the multitude, because they have now continued with Me three days and have nothing to eat. And if I send them away hungry to their own houses, they will faint on the way; for some of them have come from afar.

That’s the care and compassion Jesus has for His people. He knows what they’ve given up to be with Him. He knows what they need. He knows what would happen to them if left on their own. And so He takes care of them.

It’s not as if His people deserved His help. We don’t. Our sins would condemn us just as much as the world’s sins condemn them, if not for the grace of the Lord Jesus, who sent His Spirit in the preaching of the Word and has brought us to repentance and faith in Him.

But now, in His grace, He treats us like friends, like family, like brothers, because He has become our Brother and has made us into children of the heavenly Father. He assures us time and time again that the Father will always have compassion on His dear children who are united to Christ by faith and covered with His righteousness in Holy Baptism.

In the case of this multitude in our Gospel, what they needed at that moment was literally bread, food, which God normally provided through regular channels, like working for wages that can then be used to purchase food, clothes, and house. But, when necessary, God has also promised His people that He will provide in miraculous ways, so that there’s never any reason for us to turn anywhere but to Him for all that we need in this life and for the life to come.

Those needs are summarized well in our Catechism in the Fourth Petition of the Lord’s Prayer: What is meant by daily bread? Everything that has to do with the nourishment and needs of the body, such as food, drink, clothes, shoes, house, yard, land, livestock, money, property, a godly spouse, godly children, godly servants, godly and faithful rulers, good government, good weather, peace, health, discipline, honor, good friends, faithful neighbors, and the like.

Jesus teaches us to trust in God and to trust also in Him for all these things.

That doesn’t mean He’ll make us rich in earthly possessions. That doesn’t mean we will not bear a heavy cross in this life. On the contrary Jesus tells His disciples plainly, In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.

Even in the midst of earthly tribulation and suffering under the cross, Jesus will not abandon us or leave us to fend for ourselves, just as He refused to abandon the 4,000 who followed Him out into the wilderness and to leave them to fend for themselves on their journey home. He offered them a meal’s worth of bread—not enough refreshment to get them through the rest of their lives, but enough to get them safely home on that day. Again, daily bread.

As we heard earlier, the bread that God’s people need most to get through this life, to be kept from the evil one as we walk through this world to our heavenly home, is the Word of truth, the Bread of Life, Jesus, who feeds on with Himself. What we need most is a constant supply of Word and Sacrament, because that is God’s means of sanctifying us and keeping us separate from the world and safe while we’re still in the world. Through His word, He shows us our sin and brings us to repentance. Through His Word, He shows us Christ crucified for sinners, brings us to faith, and keeps us in the faith. Through His word, He speaks forgiveness and comfort and hope and peace, and He seals it all to us, individually, one by one, as He gives us His own body for bread and His own blood for drink.

And now, as you make your journey home today, refreshed once again by the miraculous food that Jesus has provided in Word and Sacrament, you have all you need to face the world again for another week, to get back to your daily life of faith toward God and loving service toward your neighbor. You have all you need to live another week…as a slave. Not slaves to sin, but slaves to righteousness, as St. Paul said in the Epistle. Slaves who live to serve their loving Master, who gave His life on the cross so that we might live. Beloved slaves, who have your fruit to holiness, and the end, everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

Source: Sermons

Two kinds of righteousness are necessary

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Sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Trinity

Romans 6:3-11  +  Matthew 5:20-26

In today’s gospel, Jesus teaches His disciples about righteousness. The Scriptures speak of three kinds of righteousness, actually, or even four. One is God’s own essential divine righteousness, His quality of being righteous, good, loving, and just. We won’t focus on that righteousness for the moment, because that’s who God is, with or without us, just as He is omnipotent and omniscient and omnipresent. It’s an attribute of God, and we’re concerned today with the attribute of righteousness that God demands of us human beings.

In that regard, there are two kinds of righteousness that are necessary, and a third that is theoretically necessary. The first is the righteousness by which we are justified and enter the kingdom of heaven. There is a second righteousness in which justified Christians begin to live within the kingdom of heaven. The third kind, if we want to speak of a third kind, is more theoretical in nature. It can’t actually be performed by any of us who are born from a man and woman. But it is, nonetheless, required of us, so we’d better understand it.

It’s actually this third “theoretical” kind of righteousness that Jesus speaks of in today’s Gospel. You have to be righteous in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. That’s what Jesus says. And not just a little bit righteous. Not just pretty righteous or very righteous or extremely righteous. The scribes and Pharisees had that going for them already, but Jesus informs His disciples: I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.

Perfect righteousness. Utter sinlessness. Complete obedience to God’s Law, in thought, word, and deed. That’s the requirement for entering the kingdom of heaven. The Ten Commandments do not say, “Do your best! Try your hardest!”, or, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again!” No, they say, “You shall! You shall not!” And they go deeper than most people imagine, including the scribes and Pharisees in Jesus’ day. The commandment says, “You shall not murder!” They thought they were righteous because they had never actually murdered anyone. But Jesus reveals in the Gospel that angry words, hurtful words, make a person just as guilty of hell fire as murdering someone. The apostle John, in his epistle, applies the commandment also to the heart, “Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer.”

Likewise the scribes and Pharisees thought they were righteous because they didn’t sleep around with other men’s wives. But Jesus reveals in the words just after our Gospel that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

The righteousness that God’s Law requires is high and lofty. You have to be good and loving, just and upright all the time. Honoring God all the time, and not according to your version of who God is, but honoring Him according to His Word, recorded in the Bible. Loving your neighbor all the time, and again, not according to your version of what love looks like, but according to Holy Scripture. That’s what God demands of His creatures. That’s the righteousness that earns a place in the kingdom of heaven.

But it’s theoretical. It can only be performed by people who start off righteous. That’s not you or I, or anyone born of man and woman. We’re doomed from the start, not because God made us incapable of being righteousness, but because our parents did, and their parents before them, back to Adam and Eve. Original Sin has infected us all and turned us into people who don’t even want to be truly righteous, by nature, people who trust in ourselves first, who look out for our own interests first, people who easily find fault in others, or even in God, but who imagine ourselves to be, well, righteous—or at least, righteous enough, more righteous than a lot of other people.

Now, the Law’s penalty for unrighteousness— for every misstep, for every transgression, for every rebellion, for every “oops,” is the shedding of blood. Without shedding of blood there is no remission. And not just a little blood. All of it, till you die. And not just physical death, but eternal death and the suffering of hell fire. So the price for forgiveness and reconciliation with God is a price so high that to pay it is to perish.

In the Old Testament, God offered some temporary remedies for Israel’s unrighteousness, the death of animals, one after another after another, to atone for, to make up for the sins of the people, to earn reconciliation with God. But, as you know, those animal sacrifices were only temporary remedies until the true price could be paid, the sacrifice of God’s own Son, true God and true Man. His perfect obedience under the Law, His suffering and death for the sins of mankind—that’s the righteousness that counts before God.

And so the Gospel goes out into the world, calling all men to repentance, because all have sinned. All have transgressed the Law of God and all are under its condemnation, by nature, because no one can perform the righteousness that the Law requires. But see, in the Gospel, in Holy Baptism, God holds out to us poor sinners another righteousness, or better, the righteousness of Another, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. The righteousness that counts before God. He offers it to us a free gift, already purchased for us by the blood of Christ. This is the righteousness of faith.

Faith saves, faith justifies, not because it’s such a good and noble work, but because faith lays hold of Christ, who offers us His righteousness—His perfect obedience in doing and suffering, living and dying—to hold up before God as our own. God counts this faith to us for righteousness—again, not a righteousness that we had done, but a “foreign righteousness,” the righteousness of Christ, credited to our account through faith in Him.

By this faith, by this righteousness of faith, we are justified before God. This is the righteousness that is necessary for us to enter into the kingdom of heaven, to be reconciled to God, to be adopted as His children and made heirs of eternal life, and it’s entirely ours by faith in Christ.

That’s our great comfort, because, when we believe in Christ Jesus for righteousness, we know that it is certain, because His righteousness is certain. His perfect life was already lived for us. His death as the payment for sins has already been accomplished. And so eternal life depends on Him, not on you.

There is still that other righteousness that is necessary—not necessary in order to enter the kingdom of heaven, but necessary, nonetheless, for those who have been justified by faith, for those who have been made heirs of heaven by the righteousness of faith. This other righteousness is the new life of obedience to which God has called us. It is the ongoing renewal of the Holy Spirit as He sanctifies us and forms us Christians more and more into righteous people, who think what is right, who want what is right, who do what is right. This righteousness within us who believe is necessary, because it’s what a living faith always produces, and it’s God’s will that we live in it.

What did Paul write to the Romans in chapter 6? As many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? 4 Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. 5 For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, 6 knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin… Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Reckon yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ. That’s what daily contrition and repentance looks like, saying no to sin, and living each day for God, which includes living each day to serve your neighbor, in love. That’s what the Ten Commandments teach us how to do, now that we’ve been justified by faith. They guide us in the new obedience of the children of God, in righteous attitudes toward God and our neighbor and in righteous behavior.

We recognize that this righteousness of new obedience is only begun in us in this life. We never reach the goal of perfection here on earth, because of the weakness of our sinful flesh. But we keep working together with the Holy Spirit. We keep striving to be righteous like God, and we keep watching out for sin and temptation, always taking it seriously, because God has warned us that, yes, we’re saved by faith, but faith can’t coexist with an evil intention or with impenitence. And if we allow ourselves to grow indifferent toward sin, indifferent toward righteousness, then we will make shipwreck of our faith, as the Scripture says, and drive out the Holy Spirit.

So let us pray that God would preserve us from that, through His Word and Sacrament. He has already promised to hear such a prayer and to work through His means of grace, to keep us steadfast in the faith by which we stand righteous before Him, and to strengthen us in the love and obedience in which God’s righteous children walk, being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Source: Sermons

The Father’s compassion goes out to His fallen children

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Sermon for the week of Trinity 3

Micah 7:18-20  +  Luke 15:11-32 + The Lord’s Prayer, Fourth Petition

The words of the two lessons you heard tonight deal most directly with God the Father’s compassion toward His children who have fallen into sin.

By “His children,” I don’t mean all people on earth. Yes, God is the Father of all people—and of all things! — because He created them all. But in the context of these texts, God is referring specifically to those who have been born again and brought into His house by covenant relationship: OT Israel, through the Old Covenant God made with Abraham, and NT Christians, through Holy Baptism, which is the seal of the New Covenant. Obviously these texts also have applications to those who have never known the true God, as God teaches all men here about His goodness and mercy in Christ, calling out to sinners to enter His kingdom and His family also for the first time. But primarily and directly, these lessons apply to fallen or “lapsed” Israelites at that time, or Christians in our time.

And by “falling into sin,” I don’t just mean the sins that all of us sadly commit every day. We daily sin much and always have need of repentance. As the Apostle John says, If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. No, I mean falling into sin and staying there, living in impenitence, committing mortal sin, as it’s called, that is, knowingly sinning against God and refusing to repent. That kind of sin drives out the Holy Spirit and separates a person from God’s kingdom of grace. A believer turns into an unbeliever again, and a child of God goes back to being the devil’s slave.

That happened all throughout the history of Old Testament Israel, right up to the time of Christ. Many Israelites fell away from the faith, including tens of thousands who escaped from Egypt with Moses, including the tax collectors and public sinners in Jesus’ day who started out as members of the Church of Israel, but wandered away into a life of sin.

The same happens to NT Christians, too. A person is baptized, maybe as a child, but then—often beginning in the teenage years, but it can happen anytime—he or she wanders away from the Father’s house. They turn their focus from God to their earthly life, to concentrate on their studies, or their careers, or their friends, or sports, or even video screens. They buy into the world’s lies about success and pleasure and happiness. They adopt the customs and the philosophies of this world. They go off to indulge their sinful flesh. They abandon the hearing of the Word and the reception of the Sacrament, and their faith dies. They become unbelievers. And none of it was God’s fault.

Then what? They’ve willfully abandoned their Father and His grace and Jesus, who suffered for them and never once betrayed them or lied to them or led them astray. Still, the Father wants to have the sinner back. Always! Now, it’s not the Father’s desire for the prodigal to be saved while he remains in his current state of unbelief and wild living, but to be saved from all that, to have him recognize what a huge mistake he made in ever leaving his Father’s house, to have him recognize that the world with its attractions and temptations was fooling him all along, to have him turn back to his Father in humility and repentance. See the Father’s joy as his son returns. See the Father’s immediate embrace of him who was lost. See the Father’s full forgiveness bestowed on the penitent son, and the celebration that follows.

And recognize that, while the parable depicts the son returning by himself to his Father’s house, in reality, what was it that turned him around? Necessity played a role. He lost all his money. He was left basically homeless and hopeless and hungry. The prodigal was deprived of daily bread for a time, that he might repent and return to his father, who was kind and good and provided daily bread even for the servants in his house.

So, too, God often uses earthly necessity and even tragedy to show people that they have a problem, that they can’t save themselves, that they need saving. Lack of daily bread, loneliness, despair, destitution, a ruined life—those things sometimes make fallen Christians recognize their sinful mistakes, even as God’s use of wicked men and pagan nations throughout the Old Testament to bring devastation and destruction on Israel were often His external means of causing them to recognize their transgressions.

What else caused the prodigal son’s repentance? The knowledge he already had of his Father’s mercy and kindness and goodness, which he witnessed every day while he was still living in his Father’s house but failed to appreciate it.

So, too, God sends His Word out and reaches many lapsed Christians with it, who once heard the Gospel and knew God’s love in Christ Jesus, but then left the Church or were even excommunicated for their impenitence. To them the Father calls out by His Spirit, reminding them that He is good and compassionate and will forgive them for the sake of Christ. That Word is the very thing that turns their hearts and brings them back, even though you can’t see the Word doing it; it seems like they’re returning alone along the path. But in reality, Christ Jesus is there, sending His Spirit to work repentance and to convert them again from unbelief to faith. And when that happens, the sinner is received again into the Father’s embrace, redeemed, restored, and forgiven.

Finally, we see in Jesus’ parable that it’s far better to be the son who falls away and then returns to his Father’s house than to be the other son who never physically left the house, but who despised the mercy and goodness of his Father all along and begrudged his brother the opportunity to return and be accepted back. That son has become prodigal without even knowing it.

So we are warned by Jesus as members of His Holy Church that there is more than one way to leave God’s kingdom of grace. A person can physically abandon the Church and leave. But a person can also remain an outward member of the Church, even as his heart turns evil toward his neighbor and faith in Christ disappears, so that his membership in the Church is nothing more than an outward show, his Christianity an empty shell.

The remedy against that, as well as the remedy for those who have fallen away and the remedy for those who still need to be brought into God’s kingdom for the first time, is the preaching of Jesus, the Word of God that depicts Him as a God who pardons and forgives, as the God who gave His Son into death, not to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. As the prophet Micah wrote, Who is a God like our God? Amen.

Source: Sermons

Christ never sends away any who come to Him

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Right Click to Save

Sermon for the Third Sunday after Trinity

1 Peter 5:6-11  +  Luke 15:1-10

Last week you heard of Jesus eating with the Pharisees at a Pharisee’s house. They were known as the good people in town, the law-abiding citizens, and Jesus was always happy to accept their invitations to associate with them, to dine with them, to talk with them, to teach them, even though their invitations were often traps, and at the end of the day, most of them didn’t believe Jesus’ words or want Him for a Savior. No matter. He came into the world to call them to repentance, so that they might recognize that they were sinners, too, so that they might be saved by faith in Him.

Jesus was also happy to have the well-known, open sinners in His company, including thieving tax collectors and notorious prostitutes, to associate with them, to dine with them, to talk with them, to teach them. His message to the open sinners was essentially the same as His message to the righteous-looking Pharisees. None of you are actually righteous before God. None of your works can make you acceptable to Him. You haven’t been good enough to earn His favor, and you can’t be good enough to earn His favor, because you’re all sinners. And because you’re all sinners, you stand condemned before God’s holy Law. Repent and believe the good news, that I have come to save you from your sins—both the public ones and the private ones, both the ones that the whole country knows about, and the ones that only you and God know about, and even the ones that you don’t know about, but God does. I have come to help you! To offer you a daily clean slate before God, the sure hope of eternal life in heaven, and the beginning of a holy life here on earth! Believe in Me!

And many of them did believe in Jesus. At very least, many of them were drawn to Jesus’ word and kept coming to Him, wanting to hear more. And He never sent away any who came to Him.

When the Pharisees saw Jesus surrounded by these tax collectors and well-known sinners, they grumbled and complained. This Man receives sinners and eats with them. You have to understand why this bothered them so much. The Pharisees had nothing to offer thieving tax collectors and prostitutes and wretched sinners. They believed that the path to salvation was paved with good works and a good life. It was too late for people who had messed up so badly. They didn’t even want such people to be saved. They didn’t believe in a God who would allow such sinners into His house.

So Jesus told the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin.

A shepherd has a hundred sheep, one goes missing, so he leaves the 99 in the pasture to go search for the one that was lost. Any shepherd would do this, as they all knew. No shepherd would be content to let a sheep wander off without searching for it.

So also God says through the Prophet Ezekiel that He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked should turn from his way and live. God, unlike the Pharisees, does not easily give up on those who wander away from His sheepfold, who turn away from Him to their idols, who indulge their sinful desires, who act wickedly toward their neighbor, who wallow in the mud of their sins. On the contrary, He sent His Word to the holy prophets to call the wicked in Israel to “turn from their ways and live.” He sent His Son into the world to search for sinners and to preach the same word of repentance to them, and more than that, to suffer and die for their sins so that they should be forgiven and saved by faith in Him.

And now He still searches for His lost sheep through the preaching of the Gospel in all the world. And this is the message: Turn from your sins and take refuge in Christ Jesus, who suffered for you. Believe in Him and so be clothed with His perfect righteousness before God. Learn from Him whose yoke is easy and whose burden is light. In Him you will find full and free forgiveness, as He promised long ago through the Prophet Isaiah: Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool. For Christ’s sake you will find a loving Father in heaven who knows all the evil you have done and still will take you back and make you holy in His sight through faith in Christ.

When the shepherd finds his sheep, he puts it up on his shoulders, carries it home rejoicing, and celebrates. So also God’s chief purpose in sending His Son into the world was not to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. And when a sinner repents and believes in Christ, God doesn’t grudgingly take him or her into His house. He rejoices. He celebrates. He is thrilled to have the sinner back. And all the holy angels, and all the saints and true members of the Church rejoice together with Him, to the praise of God’s glorious grace.

But the Pharisees weren’t rejoicing with Jesus when the tax collectors and sinners were gathering around Him. They wanted to believe that heaven was only for righteous people, like them, who “had no need of repentance.” But Jesus tells them the hard truth: I say to you that likewise there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance. You who think you are just and righteous, you who pretend that you need no repentance, and that God should be happy to have people like you in heaven—you’re the ones who are fooling yourselves. You’re the ones who bring no joy to heaven at all.

The second parable is similar to the first one—the woman who had ten silver coins and lost one. Here Jesus makes it clear that no one is worth more or less than another. Every soul is valuable to God. Everyone is worth saving. Christ shed His blood for everyone, and He has His Gospel preached to everyone, so that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

What Christ has done for sinners is actually much more than the shepherd or the woman in the parables did. The shepherd took time and effort to find the lost sheep, and the woman took time and effort to sweep the house in search of the lost coin. But Christ Jesus took on human flesh, became Man, spent His entirely earthly life serving lost sinners, sacrificed His own life on the cross for lost sinners, and now spends the rest of this earthly age ruling at God’s right hand and sending the light of His Gospel out into the world, searching, sweeping the earth, until He finds another lost soul whom the Holy Spirit will enlighten with His gifts, another lost soul who will turn in faith to Christ and be found.

You see in both parables today how serious God is about the sinner’s salvation. He doesn’t cast anyone away who comes to Him and wants to hear Him. At the same time, He isn’t looking for mere onlookers. It won’t do anyone any good in the end to remain on the fringes of Christ’s kingdom. Christ is searching for participants in His Church, for people who will value Him highly enough to follow Him into His kingdom, to cling to Him above all things. He’s looking for those who will “faithfully conform all their life to the rule of the divine Word, to be diligent in the use of the means of grace, to walk in a way that is worthy of the Gospel of Christ, and in faith, word, and deed to remain true to the Triune God, even to death.”

Natalie, Andrew, Vanessa, that is exactly what you are about to confess before this Christian congregation that you are ready to do. You were baptized into Christ, but then wandered away from His Word and Sacrament for a time. Now you have been drawn back to Christ by the word of His Gospel, and He hasn’t sent you away. Instead, His Holy Spirit has worked powerfully in you so that you’re ready to confess Him publicly, with one voice, together with all the members of this congregation. And what the Pharisees said of Christ in derision, you will gladly and thankfully confess for all eternity, together with us: This Man receives sinners and eats with them. More than that, this Man, Christ Jesus, is also true God, who gives His very body and blood for sinners to eat and to drink in the Sacrament of the Altar, a sign and seal of the forgiveness of sins that He purchased with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death. Heaven rejoices over you today, and so do we. May God’s Holy Spirit preserve us all in daily contrition and repentance, clinging to Christ in faith, until He carries us on His shoulders safely into life everlasting. Amen.

 

Source: Sermons