God’s anger and punishment will end for the believer

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Sermon for Midweek of Trinity 14

Isaiah 57:14-21

Chapter 57 of Isaiah is the 9th and final chapter in this second set of 9 chapters in Isaiah 40-66, which means we’re about two thirds of the way done with our walk through Isaiah’s prophecy. The Lord has gone back and forth, rebuking the secure idolaters and comforting the penitent believers. The first part of the chapter was a strong rebuke. But the second part before us this evening offers strong comfort.

And one shall say, “Heap it up! Heap it up! Prepare the way, Take the stumbling block out of the way of My people.”

Israel hadn’t been allowed to return from captivity earlier. The way was blocked. The punishment for their idolatry and rebellion had to remain, until now. Now the Lord commands the stumbling block to be removed from the path, so that His people can return to their homes, and, much more importantly, to Him.

For thus says the High and Lofty One Who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who has a contrite and humble spirit, To revive the spirit of the humble, And to revive the heart of the contrite ones.

Listen to how God describes Himself. He is high and lofty. God is so far above and beyond our mortal, earthly lives. He inhabits eternity. He isn’t affected by time or by events, as we are. Our bodies wear out. Our minds slip. We can get into accidents, or others can impose their will on us. But God is above all that. He’s outside of the story. He doesn’t need anything from us, or from anyone. And His name is Holy. He’s perfect. He’s sinless. He’s unapproachable by sinners and by mortal men.

Except that He makes Himself approachable. Or rather, He condescends, He chooses to come down and dwell with…whom? With him who has a contrite and humble spirit. We use that word “contrite” or “contrition” sometimes. It means to be crushed. In this case, crushed by sorrow over our sins. Crushed by the weight of our sorry situation. Crushed, not proud. Crushed, not “doing just fine.” The one who has been crushed by the weight of what he or she has done, who has a humble spirit before God, not trying to make excuses for himself, not insisting that God owes him something—God chooses to dwell with such a person. The high and lofty One comes down low, to meet sinners in their weakness and in their desperation.

To do what? To gloat? To rub it in? No, but To revive the spirit of the humble, to revive the heart of the contrite ones. These are comforting words, and they apply to all the humble and to all the contrite, because it’s a description of who God is, always, all the time. In His way, in His time, He will meet the humble and the contrite and bring them back to life.

For I will not contend forever, Nor will I always be angry; For the spirit would fail before Me, And the souls which I have made.

Again, pure comfort. Yes, God contends for a while with sinners. He rebukes, He threatens, He punishes. But when the sinner finally comes down from his pride, when he finally admits his sins, when he finally abandons all hope in himself—and in his idols! —, then God stops rebuking and threatening that person. The earthly punishment may still remain for a little while, until the lesson has sunk in as far as it needs to. But God’s anger against sinful men has an end. If it didn’t, God knows that no one could survive. He knows that the spirit, the soul that He made can’t take His perpetual anger, even if we deserve it. And so He promises an end to His anger for the penitent in Israel, and also for us.

For the iniquity of his covetousness I was angry and struck him; I hid and was angry, And he went on backsliding in the way of his heart.

God is talking about Israel here, about the nation in its state of rebellion, in its state of every man looking out for himself, enriching himself, turning away from God’s word and from God Himself. God tried punishing Israel, sometimes with an attack from a foreign nation, sometimes with blight or famine or plague, sometimes by not sending a prophet for a long time, depriving people of His Word. And, as it says in this verse, it was never enough. “He went on backsliding in the way of his heart.” And so the punishment of the Babylonian captivity had to happen. But after that severe punishment did its work…

I have seen his ways, and will heal him; I will also lead him, And restore comforts to him And to his mourners. “I create the fruit of the lips: Peace, peace to him who is far off and to him who is near,” Says the LORD, “And I will heal him.”

The Lord knew Israel’s rebellious nature, just as He knows the rebellious nature of all men. And yet He promises healing and guidance and comfort. And that’s the kind of healing that Jesus really came to bring. Yes, He healed physical diseases. But this is the true healing He came to bring: comfort to those mourn, forgiveness to those who humble themselves in contrition and repentance. To them, the Lord says, “Peace! Peace!” He says it to him who is far off and to him who is near, to the one who has gone so horribly astray as to ruin his life, and also to the one who maybe hasn’t fallen into such grievous outward sin, and yet still needs God’s forgiveness and peace. He says it to those who have spent their lives outside of the Church, and to those who have grown up in it. Peace! Peace! I will heal him! For the believer, God’s anger and punishment will end. Indeed, they have ended already for him who believes in Christ.”

But the wicked are like the troubled sea, When it cannot rest, Whose waters cast up mire and dirt. “There is no peace,” Says my God, “for the wicked.”

Isaiah concluded chapter 48 with those words, and now he concludes chapter 57 with the same words. “There is no peace,” says my God, “for the wicked.” We still need to remember that. Our world still needs to hear that. The God of heaven denounces as wicked many of the things that this world celebrates. He has tender words of peace and comfort and healing, but those words are not intended for those who wish to continue to live in their sin, away from God, away from His Word, away from Christ Jesus. For such, there is no word of peace, only God’s wrath and anger and eternal punishment. To such, the Lord cries out, “Repent while there’s still time! And then, in repentance, come to know the peace of Christ Jesus, who was pierced for our transgressions, who was crushed for our iniquities, upon whom was the chastisement that brought us peace, by whose wounds we are healed.” Amen.

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Go and do likewise, with faith and thanksgiving

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Sermon for Trinity 14

Galatians 5:16-24  +  Luke 17:11-19

Last week, we heard the parable of the Good Samaritan who treated with such kindness that man who had been mugged and left for dead on the side of the road. This week, we hear of another good Samaritan, not in a parable, but in his actual encounter with the Lord Jesus. And just as we were instructed by Jesus last week to “go and do likewise,” to go and show the Samaritan’s kindness to our neighbor who needs our help, so we are guided by the Holy Spirit in today’s reading to “go and do likewise,” to show the kind of faith, and the kind of thankfulness, that the Samaritan showed in the healing of the Ten Lepers.

First, why does Luke include all these accounts with Samaritans? Samaritans lived in between Judea in the south and Jewish Galilee in the north. They were essentially foreigners, as Jesus calls the Samaritan in today’s account. But that’s exactly why Luke includes them, and why the Holy Spirit guided Luke to include them. They teach a very important lesson to the Jews who thought of themselves as the VIP’s in God’s kingdom, who thought that their race, that their ancestry automatically made them acceptable to God. Now, there were certainly advantages at that time to being a Jew. But there’s nothing automatic about being acceptable to God. You don’t gain God’s acceptance by having the right parents or the right genes. The only way to gain God’s acceptance is by trusting in the One whom God sent to make us acceptable.

Now, on to the story itself. There were ten men (including one Samaritan) with the disfiguring disease called leprosy. Even in the secular world, showing signs of leprosy often forced people to quarantine away from the healthy people. But in the Old Testament Law given by God through Moses on Mt. Sinai, lepers were strictly prohibited from interacting with Jewish society, including the synagogue, including the temple. It was a lonely, lonely life.

God was teaching Israel a vital lesson in how His Law dealt with lepers. God’s Law absolutely insisted that a person had to be “clean” in order to be acceptable to God. Clean and unclean were themes throughout the whole Old Testament. There were many ways to become ceremonially unclean, and specific procedures for becoming clean again. Leprosy was the ultimate form of uncleanness, a disease that couldn’t be cured, that couldn’t be washed away, because it was an ugliness that infected the skin and the body. Leprosy didn’t really have a cure, but if a person did somehow recover from it, God’s Law specified a very elaborate process, involving the priests, for examining the person and then performing the rituals needed to pronounce the person ceremonially clean.

Now, the outward disfigurement of leprosy that affected a small minority of people symbolized the inner disfigurement of sin that affects all people. There is a deep-seated uncleanness that infects us all. We call it original sin. And it’s ugly in God’s sight. Every time the Israelites saw a leper, they were to remember, that’s what I look like on the inside, unclean and isolated from God! That’s why I need the spiritual cleansing that my God provides in the sin offerings, and, ultimately, in the promised Messiah!

The promised Messiah, Jesus, has a very brief but meaningful encounter with some of these lepers in our Gospel. Ten of them had heard the word that was going around about Jesus. That He had come from God. That He was able to heal all kinds of diseases. That He was kind and merciful and ready to help anyone who came to Him. They heard it, and they believed it. And since they believed it, they called out to Him, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”

And just like that, without requiring anything of them, Jesus replied, Go and show yourselves to the priests. He didn’t need to spell out for them what that meant. They knew that the priests were the ones who had to examine lepers and pronounce them clean. They understood exactly what Jesus implied: “I have mercy on you. By the time you get to the priests, you will already be clean!”

So they went on their way. We don’t know how far they got before they noticed that their leprosy was gone. They had believed what they had heard about Jesus. They had asked Him for help. He had spoken to them a cleansing word, a promise to cleanse them of their leprosy. And they had believed that promise and had acted on it. And now the promise had been kept.

Then what? They all celebrated their cleansing. They never thought it was possible, until Jesus came along. And now their hopes had come true. Their faith in Jesus’ promise had been confirmed. But then something terrible happened. Nine of them forgot about Jesus.

But one of them, the Samaritan, didn’t forget. He remembered the source of his cleansing, and his heart was filled with gratitude. So he turned back, glorifying God with a loud voice. And he fell down on his face at Jesus’ feet, thanking Him.

Now, Jesus wasn’t surprised that the man had been healed. What surprised Him, or at least what clearly disappointed Him, was that only one out of ten came back to give glory to God. Were not all ten cleansed? But where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give glory to God except for this foreigner? Some of the nine, maybe all of the nine, were Jews who should have known better, whose first thought upon being healed should have been acknowledging the God who had healed them. Instead it was a foreigner, a Samaritan, someone who had no ancestral claim to God’s acceptance, who demonstrated both faith and the thankfulness that flows from genuine faith.

And so Jesus both commended him and assured him: Rise and go. Your faith has saved you. And the clear implication is that everyone who reads this account, everyone who hears it, should “go and do likewise.” Believe as the Samaritan believed, and give thanks to God as the Samaritan gave thanks.

Outwardly, the Samaritan began as a leper. Inwardly, spiritually, you and I all began as unclean lepers, with that “flesh” that St. Paul talked about in today’s epistle to the Galatians, that flesh that lusts against the Spirit, that flesh that is opposed to the Holy Spirit, that flesh whose works are obvious: adultery, sexual immorality, uncleanness, indecency, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, murders, drunkenness, debauchery, and things like these. Not only did you begin that way. But here’s the hard thing to hear: Your flesh is still that way, eager to engage in works like those the apostle mentioned. There’s no “cure” for the flesh, as long as we still live in this world.

But there is a cleansing before God. There is a way to be accepted by God, and it has nothing to do with your ancestry, or with your works. It’s hearing the word about Jesus, that He came from God, that He is the very Son of God, that He is kind and good to all who come to Him for cleansing. It’s hearing the word about Jesus, that He suffered and died for your sinful flesh and for the works that have come from your sinful flesh. And then it’s hearing and believing the promise He now makes: All who believe in Him are cleansed before God. All who believe in Him receive the forgiveness of sins, are made acceptable to God, are given a status that is clean and new and beautiful. The Samaritan leper believed the promise of Jesus, and his faith saved him. That is, his salvation came as a result of faith in Jesus. You should believe it, too. Go and do likewise!

Not salvation from leprosy, though. Not salvation from every illness, or from poverty, or from tragedy. Jesus hasn’t promised salvation from those things during this lifetime. What He has promised is salvation from sin, from death, and from the power of the devil. Believe that promise, by the power of the Holy Spirit, and your faith will save you, too.

But faith ought to be accompanied by thanksgiving, as it was with the Samaritan in our Gospel. If it isn’t, then there’s something wrong. And you can all think of times when you’ve received a wonderful gift from God that you went on to enjoy without actually thanking Him for. Let today’s Gospel lead you to repent of that inborn thanklessness and to follow again the example of the Samaritan leper.

And as you do, notice that the Samaritan didn’t just stop where he was on the road and say a silent prayer to God in heaven. No, he returned to where Jesus was present for him, to where Jesus made Himself available to people. You can do something similar. Jesus isn’t located in this place or that place since His ascension into heaven. But He has promised to be present in a special way where Christians gather together in His name, to hear His Word and to receive His Sacraments. He’s here among us today in that way, and He gladly hears and accepts your prayers of thanksgiving, whether sung or spoken. He gladly accepts the thanksgiving you bring as you come to His holy Supper, the Eucharist. And as you kneel, in humble thanks, to receive the very body and blood that He gave into death for your sins, just as the Samaritan once knelt at Jesus’ feet, He speaks to you, just as He spoke to the Samaritan, Rise and go. Your faith has saved you.

The Samaritan came to Jesus with His uncleanness and sought His help. He believed in Jesus’ word of cleansing and returned to give Him thanks. Go and do likewise, over and over again, with faith and with thanksgiving. Having been cleansed of the works of the flesh, make it your daily purpose to put to death the works of the flesh, to walk by the Spirit, and to produce His fruit in abundance, with thanksgiving. Amen.

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The righteous are spared, the idolaters are condemned

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Sermon for Midweek of Trinity 13

Isaiah 57:1-13

The righteous man perishes, and no man lays it to heart; and merciful men are taken away while no one understands, for the righteous man is taken away from the evil to come. He shall enter into peace; they shall rest in their beds, each one walking in his uprightness. But come here, you sons of a sorceress, offspring of an adulterer and prostitute. Whom do you mock? Against whom do you open wide your mouth and stick out your tongue? Are you not children of transgression, offspring of falsehood, inflaming yourselves with idols under every green tree, slaying the children in the valleys under the clefts of the rocks? Among the smooth stones of the stream is your portion; they are your lot. Even to them you have poured out a drink offering; you have offered a grain offering. Should I relent concerning these things? On a lofty and high mountain you have set your bed; even there you went up to offer sacrifice. Behind the doors and the doorposts you have set up your memorial; far removed from Me, you have uncovered yourself; you have enlarged your bed and made a covenant with them; you have loved their bed, you have looked on their nakedness. You went to the king with ointment, and increased your perfumes, and sent your messengers far off, and made them go down to hell. You were wearied by the length of your road; yet you did not say, “There is no hope.” You have found renewed strength; therefore, you did not faint. Of whom were you afraid or fearful when you lied and you did not remember Me, nor give Me a thought? Have I not held My peace for a long time so that you do not fear Me? I will declare your righteousness, and your works, yet they shall not profit you. When you cry out, let your collection of idols deliver you. But the wind shall carry them all away, a breath shall take them away. But he who puts his trust in Me shall possess the land and shall inherit My holy mountain.

Isaiah 57. In this final chapter of the middle section of Isaiah’s prophecy that has dealt especially with the Messiah’s coming to suffer for sin, the Lord returns to the main reason why the people of Israel had to go into captivity in Babylon, and why the Messiah had to come: Because Israel had turned away from worshiping the Lord to serving false gods. Over and over again Isaiah returns to this pattern. He (1) exposes Israel’s idolatry, (2) announces their punishment for it, (3) calls them to repentance, (4) announces comfort and peace for the penitent, and, finally, (5) repeats the condemnation that awaits the impenitent.

The chapter begins with a little bit of that comfort and peace for the penitent. The righteous man perishes, and no man lays it to heart; and merciful men are taken away while no one understands, for the righteous man is taken away from the evil to come. He shall enter into peace; they shall rest in their beds, each one walking in his uprightness. These are some precious verses in the Bible. It’s not uncommon for tragedy to strike a good person. Sometimes “the good die young.” Sometimes the righteous man perishes before he reaches old age and merciful men are taken away in the prime of their life. How does that fit with the promise attached to the 4th Commandment, “Honor your father and your mother, that it may go well with you, and that you may enjoy a long life in the land the Lord is giving you”? Here God spells it out for us. Sometimes the righteous man, the merciful man, the good man or woman, the faithful Israelite in the Old Testament or the faithful Christian in the New, dies and doesn’t enjoy a long life in the land. But it’s literally for their own good.

Now, if you don’t believe in the life after this life, then that’s an absurd claim. But if you do, then understand that God wanted to spare that person from the evil that was coming. Sometimes believers are forced to live through dark times here on earth. But sometimes God, in His mercy, takes some of His people out of this life to spare them from those dark times. Sometimes He says to the Christian, “Come home! Come home now. I have to send some severe punishment against the people where you live. Dark times are coming, and I don’t want you to suffer it with everyone else. You have served Me faithfully. Come into your Father’s kingdom!”

It’s just the opposite, though, for the unrighteous, for the impenitent. But come here, you sons of a sorceress, offspring of an adulterer and prostitute. Now the Lord is about to lay into the idolaters in Israel. He calls them “sons of a sorceress, offspring of an adulterer and prostitute,” which may be literally true, in some cases, since sorcery and adultery literally go hand in hand. But throughout this chapter God is mainly exposing the spiritual sorcery and adultery that Israel had been committing. How? By turning away from the forms of worship that God had instituted, by turning away from the “marriage vows” they had made with God and by turning instead to false gods.

Whom do you mock? Against whom do you open wide your mouth and stick out your tongue? It seems that some of the people were so brazen as to make fun of the God of Israel. God would speak to them through their prophets and they would stick out their tongues like little children. It’s exactly how our own culture now behaves toward the God who revealed Himself in the Bible. They poke fun at Him and at anyone who dares to uphold His Word as true, at anyone who dares to confess the Lord Christ as He truly is. But God exposes them for what they are.

Are you not children of transgression, offspring of falsehood, inflaming yourselves with idols under every green tree, slaying the children in the valleys under the clefts of the rocks? Among the smooth stones of the stream is your portion; they are your lot. Even to them you have poured out a drink offering; you have offered a grain offering. Should I relent concerning these things?

Many of the Israelites were literally going out to the trees of the forest, or to the lone tree in a desert region, setting up their idols and their altars there. They would offer sacrifices. They would perform pagan rituals. Apparently they even practiced child sacrifice. In today’s world, there are still some who participate in cultic rituals. But much more common is for people to sacrifice their children through abortion as they worship their careers, and their pleasures, and their freedom from God and from religion. Much more common is for people to worship at the altar of “science,” or of popularity, or of politics. It’s all idolatry when people devote their lives to these things instead of to the God who has revealed Himself to us in Christ.

On a lofty and high mountain you have set your bed; even there you went up to offer sacrifice. Behind the doors and the doorposts you have set up your memorial; far removed from Me, you have uncovered yourself; you have enlarged your bed and made a covenant with them; you have loved their bed, you have looked on their nakedness. You went to the king with ointment, and increased your perfumes, and sent your messengers far off, and made them go down to hell.

Another description of idolatry, here compared to fornication or adultery and lewd practices. The daughter of Zion had made herself a prostitute by worshiping other gods. Again, this is what our culture has done, prostituting itself to every degenerate practice and belief. Listen and see if St. Paul’s words about the Gentiles of his day apply to the world we live in: For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

You were wearied by the length of your road. Serving idols and worshiping demons is a “long and tiring road” that leads to nowhere. The false gods can’t actually improve your life. Yet you did not say, “There is no hope.” You have found renewed strength; therefore, you did not faint. Even though the false gods weren’t getting them anywhere, they kept serving them anyway, just as our culture does. Our society continues to get worse and worse, and yet they keep pursuing the policies of failure, out of reverence for their false gods.

Of whom were you afraid or fearful when you lied and you did not remember Me, nor give Me a thought? Have I not held My peace for a long time so that you do not fear Me? I will declare your righteousness, and your works, yet they shall not profit you. When you cry out, let your collection of idols deliver you. But the wind shall carry them all away, a breath shall take them away. In other words, when God held His peace, when God didn’t immediately punish them for their wickedness, they stopped fearing that He would ever punish them. But that’s foolish. God does sometimes postpone punishment for the wicked, not because He’s oblivious, not because He’s doesn’t care, but because He’s giving unbelievers time to repent before ending their time of grace permanently. But God’s patience will run out, and He will bring judgment, and none of the wicked, none of the impenitent will survive.

But he who puts his trust in Me shall possess the land and shall inherit My holy mountain. Finally, the Lord brings back a word of comfort and peace for the penitent. Just because the vast majority of Israel had prostituted itself with idols didn’t mean that the Lord would destroy the righteous together with the wicked. His eye was upon those who still trusted in Him and on those who repented of their wickedness and turned back to Him for mercy. The same is true for us. Just because the world around us has fallen into rampant idolatry doesn’t mean the Lord will wipe out His beloved Christians who still trust in Him. In a little while, God’s people will inherit the new heavens and the new earth. May God keep you faithful to Him, that you may always be found among the righteous! Amen.

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A Law to frighten the secure and to guide the forgiven

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Sermon for Trinity 13

Galatians 3:15-22  +  Luke 10:23-37

I saw a post on one of the Las Cruces community groups on Facebook this week. A local man was recounting how he had noticed a young woman, a complete stranger, being followed by a scary-looking man at a gas station, how he kept an eye on the young lady, gave her some advice, followed her to her car and scared the stalker away. It sounds, just a little bit, like the deed of a “good Samaritan,” doesn’t it? Now, did he do the right thing there for that stranger? Absolutely! Should every man offer that kind of assistance to a woman who may be in danger? Absolutely! But the question I’d like you to consider this morning is this: Did that man earn himself a place in heaven because of that good deed? The answer is, absolutely not!

And yet, some people are confused about the parable Jesus told in today’s Gospel. They think that’s exactly what it’s about, that Jesus is commanding people to go around doing good deeds for strangers in order to earn themselves a place in heaven. Nothing could be further from the truth.

You have to read this parable in context, as with all of Scripture. And what is the context of it? Luke tells us. An expert in the Law of Moses was testing Jesus. What must I do to inherit eternal life? It’s a strange question, because you don’t normally “do” anything to “inherit” something. You inherit something based on your relationship to someone, not because you’ve done a good deed. But this expert in the Law was confused, as many people are confused on this point. He was confusing the promises that God had made in the Old Testament to Abraham and his Seed—promises of the free gift of an inheritance—with the laws commanded by God through Moses, laws that had to be kept, that had to be obeyed, where God agreed to do His part if the people of Israel would do theirs.

Jesus asked him, What is written in the Law? How do you read it? Remember, “the Law” refers to the first five books of the Bible, starting with Genesis. Jesus was giving the man the opportunity to cite the promise God made to Abraham and his Seed in the book of Genesis about the inheritance. But instead, the man cited a portion of the law-covenant from Mt. Sinai: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself. That’s a good summary of the whole moral Law. Complete and utter devotion to God, from the heart, and devotion to one’s neighbor has always been God’s will for mankind. And that will of God was codified and written down at Mt. Sinai, where the people of Israel all agreed: (1) This is what is good and right, and (2) we will do it. All the other laws proclaimed by Moses were examples of putting this law of love into practice.

So, since the expert in the Law wanted to focus on God’s moral commands, and since he believed that keeping those commands was the way to inherit eternal life, Jesus went along with him. You have answered correctly. Do this, and you will live. Love God with your whole heart. Love your neighbor as yourself. That’s your end of the bargain. That’s what you have to “do” to inherit eternal life—if you get it by “doing something.”

But if you do—if you gain eternal life by doing—then there’s always a follow-up question: “And how do I know I’ve done enough?” How do I know if I’ve loved the Lord enough, or if I’ve loved my neighbor as myself enough? You see, the expert in the Law was left in doubt. He understood that his own law, the law he loved so much, only made his hope of eternal life more doubtful. And so he tried to “justify himself.” He asked, “And who is my neighbor?” You see what he was getting at. If he can narrow down the list of people he’s commanded to love as himself, maybe he can at least pretend he’s done it. But if “his neighbor” includes too many other people, he knows he has no chance.

So Jesus answers the man’s question with the parable of the Good Samaritan. A man was beaten and robbed and left for dead on the side of the road. A priest (a servant of the Law) came along and offered no help. A Levite (another servant of the Law) came along and offered no help. But then a Samaritan came by. Samaritans lived in Samaria, north of Jerusalem. They had a little Jewish blood left in them and some Jewish practices and beliefs, mixed with pagan practices and beliefs. The Jews hated them. But this Samaritan came along and, when he saw the injured man, went right over to help him and offered every sort of help you could think of, including caring for his wounds, taking him to an inn, caring for him there, and then paying the innkeeper to keep looking after him while he was away on his journey, adding the commitment to return and pay any additional expenses he might incur.

Then Jesus turns to the expert in the Law and asks: Now which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell among the thieves?” And he said, “The one who showed mercy to him.” Mercy, which is nothing but a form of love. Mercy and love were at the heart of all God’s commandments. And so, with one parable, Jesus turned this man’s religion upside down, forcing this expert in the Law to look at what his Law really demanded of him: mercy and love toward everyone he encountered on his earthly journey, not once, not once in a while, but at every single opportunity.

And then Jesus spoke those terrifying words: Go and do likewise. What must you “do” to inherit eternal life? This is what the Law of God demands. If you would be saved by that Law-covenant, by doing your part to obey God’s commands, while God does His part to pay you the wages of eternal life, then you must do as the Good Samaritan did, showing genuine over-the-top mercy at every turn, in every way, with every person, at every opportunity, in every setting. Not just for injured (or endangered) strangers you come across, but for your parents, for your children, your brothers and sisters, your husband or wife, your coworkers, your boss, your friends and acquaintances, your fellow citizens whom you encounter day after day after day—and also for your enemies. Mercy. Self-less love, love that’s just like the kind of love you would have others show to you. And that’s just what God’s Law requires that you do toward your neighbor. We haven’t even touched on all the things you owe to God directly, to fear, love, and trust in Him above all things, to honor His name, to worship Him, and to cherish His Word above all things.

Terrifying, isn’t it? It should be, if you’re honest with yourself. And that’s the point. In fact, that was always the point of the Law, to reveal the sin that already lives inside each of us. As Paul wrote in today’s Epistle, “The Law was added for the sake of transgressions,” that is, that the Israelites and that all people might have God’s will spelled out for them so that they could see just how much they transgress it. Because sin is there in your heart and in your being, whether you can see it or not, whether you help the occasional stranger or not. The Law simply reveals it for what it is.

And then, once you’ve been beaten to a pulp by the Law, once it’s left you for dead on the side of the road, unable to lift a finger to save yourself, along comes this Samaritan—the Son of God, true God and true man, though despised by men. He comes along with the very, genuine, heartfelt mercy and compassion that He demands of us, because He made us originally in His image and wanted us to be like Him. But now, having come as a man, the Lord Jesus shows this mercy, not only as our example, but first and foremost as our Substitute. He gave His life on the cross for us out of mercy, as the payment for our sins. He began to heal us through Holy Baptism, where He forgave us our sins and gave us His Holy Spirit and made us heirs of eternal life—heirs who will inherit eternal life, not by doing the right things, but by believing in the Lord Jesus, who did everything we were supposed to for us, because we couldn’t.

And then, before He ascended to heaven, He put us battered, weak, still-sinful believers into the charge of the “innkeepers,” the ministers whom He has called into His Church, to keep tending to the spiritually wounded, to keep us on the narrow path that leads to life, to spur us on to love and good works, because while we received the forgiveness of our sins in Baptism and live now under God’s grace, we are not yet what we should be, what God is healing us to become: truly good Samaritans whose hearts are as full of mercy for our neighbor as the heart of Jesus Himself was and is.

We call that aspect of healing “sanctification,” the Holy Spirit’s ongoing work of turning believers into the image of Jesus in how we think and in how we live. So the same “go and do likewise” that first was intended to strike terror into the heart of secure sinners becomes, for the believer, our marching orders, to go and be like Jesus. It begins in the heart—hearts that have been renewed and recreated by God’s mercy and grace toward us. And then it extends to our hands and to our whole life. “Go and do likewise.” Go and walk in the footsteps of Christ, with mercy toward your neighbor, toward everyone whom God places next to you on your path through life, until He determines that your time here is done, or until He returns from His “journey,” and He brings you at last into the eternal life that all who persevere in the faith will inherit, not by doing good works under the Old Testament, but by believing in Christ Jesus, who has made us coheirs with Him in the New Testament in His blood. Amen.

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Words of instruction, encouragement, and disgust

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Sermon for Midweek of Trinity 12

Isaiah 56:1-12

After the gracious invitation of chapter 55 to come and eat and drink at the Lord’s table, to seek the Lord while He may be found, to receive the free gifts of His forgiveness and salvation, the Lord has some words of instruction in chapter 56 for those who accept the invitation. He also speaks beautiful, tender, encouraging words to the eunuchs and the foreigners, which we’ll discuss in a moment. And, finally, He has some harsh and bitter words of disgust for the useless religious leadership of Israel.

First, the words of instruction: Thus says the LORD: “Keep justice, and do righteousness, For My salvation is about to come, And My righteousness to be revealed. Blessed is the man who does this, And the son of man who lays hold on it;”

You come into God’s kingdom for free. And once you’re in, you still don’t earn your stay there. It’s always a gift. It’s always grace. But there are rules of the house that the house members are expected to keep. Keeping justice. Doing righteousness. Obeying God’s commandments. Those things are expected of the Church of God, whether of the Old Testament or the New Testament. It doesn’t matter. God’s teaching about right and wrong, must be followed. In other words, God’s people are expected to be holy and to grow in holiness throughout this life, and God promises to bless them when they do.

But you’ll notice in the next words that there is a difference between Old Testament obedience and New Testament obedience. Blessed is the man who does this…who keeps from defiling the Sabbath, And keeps his hand from doing any evil.” “Who keeps his hand from doing any evil” applies to everyone, all the time. That’s easy. But “who keeps from defiling the Sabbath”? Here it’s helpful to remember that God is speaking most directly to the hearers and readers of Isaiah, who lived some 700 years before Christ was born. That’s 700 years during which the people of Israel were still under the Law of Moses, under the Ten Commandments in their full original force, which included keeping the Sabbath Day holy, not doing any work for those 24 hours, business owners closing up their shops, farmers staying out of their fields, etc. Why does God mention that commandment in particular? Because that was the commandment that required real sacrifice on the part of the Israelites. Not a painful sacrifice—who wouldn’t want to rest, right? But for 24 hours, it required a conscious decision not to do the things you would regularly do during the rest of the week, simply because God told you not to do them. It was a unique sign of devotion to God to keep the Old Testament Sabbath Day, and failing to take the required rest was essentially a rejection of the whole Law, and of the rest God had promised in His heavenly kingdom.

In the New Testament, we aren’t under the strict Sabbath Law anymore, so we don’t defile the commandment by failing to rest on Saturday (or Sunday). But we do defile the commandment when we despise preaching and God’s Word, when we pretend that it no longer matters if we attend church services or not, or if we belong to a church at all. God still instructs the members of His household to hear the preaching of His word and to support the ministry of it. So let God’s words of instruction here guide you in those things, and certainly in keeping your hand from doing any evil.

Next, the Lord speaks some tender words of encouragement that He addresses especially to the “eunuchs” and to the foreigners (non-Israelites by birth): Do not let the son of the foreigner Who has joined himself to the LORD Speak, saying, “The LORD has utterly separated me from His people”; Nor let the eunuch say, “Here I am, a dry tree.” For thus says the LORD: “To the eunuchs who keep My Sabbaths, And choose what pleases Me, And hold fast My covenant, Even to them I will give in My house And within My walls a place and a name Better than that of sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name That shall not be cut off.

Even in Old Testament times, God opened wide His kingdom to the Gentiles; it was not only open to the physical descendants of Abraham. But the Gentiles couldn’t remain as they were. They had to join themselves fully to the people of Israel and to the covenant God had made with Israel if they were to be counted among the people of God. They had to be circumcised. They had to keep the Sabbaths and observe the rest of the Laws of Moses. They had to lay aside their pagan practices and beliefs, and the culture that was tainted by pagan beliefs. But if they did that, they were given equal status with the children of Abraham.

As for the eunuchs, they were more common at that time among the Gentiles than one can possibly imagine today—men who would allow themselves to be castrated (or were forced to be castrated) in order to be full-time servants to a noblewoman. There were probably a good number of them in Babylon, where the Jews would be held captive. But the Lord reaches out to them, too, and assures them, it doesn’t matter that you can’t have children. If you come into My house, says the Lord, you won’t have to have children to pass your name down. “I’ll give you an everlasting name.” In other words, you will never die. It’s a promise of eternal life!

“Also the sons of the foreigner Who join themselves to the LORD, to serve Him, And to love the name of the LORD, to be His servants— Everyone who keeps from defiling the Sabbath, And holds fast My covenant— Even them I will bring to My holy mountain, And make them joyful in My house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices Will be accepted on My altar; For My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations.”

This is why Jerusalem was so important! This is why the Jews had to return there after the Babylonian captivity! Because God had made His house, the temple in Jerusalem, to be the one place on earth where anyone could go, even the Gentiles, to find the true God and to find a welcome into His kingdom, if they would join themselves to that people of Israel and become part of the Church of Israel, under the covenant God had made with them. I’m sure you remember that Jesus quoted this verse from Isaiah 56 while He was cleansing that temple in Jerusalem. Because God had wanted all nations, even in Old Testament times, to hear His Word, to find Him, to worship Him, and to receive salvation from Him in Jerusalem.

That happened to some small degree as Gentiles did make their way to the second temple, after Israel’s return from exile in Babylon. But it would happen much more fully after the time of Christ. Because now, in Christ Jesus, the city of Jerusalem is meaningless and temple in Jerusalem is meaningless, because Christ is where God wants to be found. Christ is where God accepts people and welcomes them and gives them eternal life. Where Christ is preached and where Christ is confessed, that is the house of God, that is the holy mountain of Israel, wherever it may be in the world, even here in New Mexico. As Paul once wrote to the Ephesian Christians, Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.

Finally, God has some words of disgust for the useless religious leaders of Israel: All you beasts of the field, come to devour, All you beasts in the forest. His watchmen are blind, They are all ignorant; They are all dumb dogs, They cannot bark; Sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber. Yes, they are greedy dogs Which never have enough. And they are shepherds Who cannot understand; They all look to their own way, Every one for his own gain, From his own territory. “Come,” one says, “I will bring wine, And we will fill ourselves with intoxicating drink; Tomorrow will be as today, And much more abundant.”

God calls on the beasts to come and devour the worthless watchmen, the useless pastors. Isaiah’s description of them is echoed in Jesus’ description of them as hirelings who care nothing for the sheep. They’re lazy. They fail to warn the sheep about the dangers of sin and impenitence and false doctrine. They’re greedy, looking out for themselves, for their own gain, for their own enjoyment. And they’re blind to the judgment that’s coming against them and against all the impenitent, as if Christ weren’t returning for judgment. And God expresses here His disgust with such spiritual leaders, because He wants all nations to come into His house, but, because they refuse to preach the truth from God, they’re keeping many people out.

There were plenty of examples of this in Isaiah’s day, and later in Jeremiah’s day when Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians. There were plenty of examples during the intertestamental period, and again in Jesus’ day. And the examples are not hard to find in our day, either. So let’s watch out for them and not allow ourselves to be misled by them!

Yes, let’s take to heart all these words of Isaiah, words of instruction, of encouragement, and disgust, that we may remain in God’s house all the days of our lives and inherit the blessings of His people, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

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The Spirit still opens ears and loosens tongues

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Sermon for Trinity 12

2 Corinthians 3:4-11  +  Mark 7:31-37

In today’s Gospel, we see Jesus healing a man’s inability to hear and to speak. We need to understand what an important miracle that was. When God wanted to bring the universe into existence, He spoke, and what He said happened. The universe didn’t have to have working ears. When God wants something to happen, He has the almighty power to speak and to make it happen, whether anyone is there to hear it or not. Here’s another example. When Jesus wanted to raise Lazarus from the dead, Lazarus didn’t need to have working ears. Jesus simply used His almighty power to make it happen. But when God wants to deal with people, to convict them of sin, to persuade them to trust in Him, to teach them, to guide them, to strengthen them, He doesn’t use His bare, almighty power. Instead, His Holy Spirit works on people’s hearts through the words that they hear. So you can see why today’s miracle was so important.

And it’s also important for us, because there is also a spiritual kind of deafness and speechlessness that affects unbelievers, but that also affects believers. God has a lesson for all kinds of deafness and speechlessness in our Scripture readings today. So he who has ears to hear, let him hear!

The deaf man in our Gospel had some friends who cared about him, who wanted him to be able to hear. So they brought him to the One who could help. They asked Him to place His hands on the man, to heal him that way. But Jesus does much more than that. He takes the man aside and communicates with him using signs, symbols, and actions that the man can receive through his working senses, in order to teach us all some key spiritual truths.

First, He puts His fingers in the man’s ears. Your ears can’t be healed from the inside, Jesus shows him. The finger of God has to enter into your ears. Faith in the heart comes by hearing the Gospel. And it’s no coincidence that Jesus elsewhere refers to the Holy Spirit as the “Finger of God,” because it’s the Holy Spirit who enters the ears through preaching to work faith in the heart.

Jesus spits and touches the man’s tongue. What does that teach us? Your bodily healing comes from the body of Jesus. So does your spiritual healing. Through His body and the word of His mouth, the man’s tongue would be healed. Through the suffering and death of Jesus’ body, and through the Word that goes out from His mouth, a sinner’s tongue is also healed, as the Spirit of Christ enters your ears through preaching and creates faith, by which He applies the bodily suffering and death of Jesus to you. He even places the body and blood of Jesus directly on your tongue in the Sacrament of the Altar, freeing your tongue now to give thanks to God, to praise God, and to confess Christ Jesus before men.

Jesus looks up to heaven and sighs. Sighing in Scripture is a symbol of the prayers we utter to God in our troubles and sorrows and sighings. Very simply, Jesus teaches the deaf man to look to God in faith in every trouble, to seek God’s mercy for the sake of Jesus, to cast all his sorrows onto the Lord, because the Lord cares for us.

And then Jesus speaks the word of healing which any lip-reading deaf person could easily discern, “Ephphatha!” Be opened! And the man’s ears were opened, and his tongue was loosed. And the people were amazed.

But here we note a problem with the ears of the people who were there. Jesus commanded them sternly not to tell anyone about this healing. They heard His command with their ears. And then they went on to ignore it, and to use their tongues to do the opposite of what Jesus commanded. Now, we may think their intentions were noble. After all, they were telling everyone how Jesus “does all things well,” which was true, and which was intended to praise Him. But this is like when King Saul offered a sacrifice to God which God expressly told him, through the prophet Samuel, not to offer. And because of his disobedience, God stripped the kingdom away from his family, teaching us that you can’t praise God by doing the opposite of what He says, no matter how good your intentions were. You praise Him by keeping His word. Period.

There are several lessons for us in this simple Gospel, in addition to the obvious one that’s present in every miracle, that Jesus has divine power, and that He is kind and good and merciful to all who seek help from Him.

First, as I already alluded to, we have here a beautiful picture of how God the Holy Spirit works on our natural spiritual deafness and speechlessness, on our natural inability to know God until He reveals Himself to us in His Word, our natural inability to believe the Word we hear, and our natural inability to call upon God in true faith, because of the sinful nature, the original sin with which we’re all born. But then the Finger of God, the Holy Spirit, enters through our ears through the Gospel. That’s why Paul, in today’s Epistle, refers to the New Testament ministry as the ministry “of the Spirit,” or the ministry that brings the Spirit. The Old Testament was written on stone tablets. It consisted in commandments and laws, and it brought condemnation and death to Old Testament Israel as the Law revealed their sins and their desperate need for a Savior. It does the same thing to us as it reveals our sins and our desperate need for a Savior. But the New Testament ministry proclaims the Gospel, that Christ suffered and died for our sins, that Christ is the propitiation for our sins, the thing that makes God the Father happy with us and that makes us acceptable to Him. The ministry that brings the Spirit proclaims faith in Christ, and then, as the Gospel enters our ears, the Spirit works the very faith that’s required for us to be reconciled to God. And then our tongues are also healed at the same time, to pray to God rightly, through faith in Christ, claiming only Christ as our Mediator and Advocate before God. Our tongues are freed to give thanks to God and to praise God and to confess Jesus Christ as Lord, as we said before. As Paul writes to the Romans, For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. All that is the work of God the Holy Spirit, the Finger of God, to open our ears and to loose our tongues.

But there is also an application here for those who already believe, for those whose ears have already been opened and whose tongues have already been loosed.

It is entirely possible for ears that have once been opened to become shut again, and for tongues that have been loosed to become tied up again. If your mouth is full of rocks, there’s no room left for nutritious food, is there? So, too, with the ears. If your ears are full of earthly things, then there’s no room for the heavenly Word of God to enter. What do you listen to all day? What fills your ears and penetrates your thoughts? The news, that sounds worse and worse every day? The complaints of those around you? The false teaching of false teachers? The “sounds” that come from your own heart? How does it affect you? It can be depressing, can’t it? To the point of obsession, even. Sometimes we fail to hear God’s Word at all, and that’s dangerous for our faith.

Or, you can have a case like we have in our Gospel, where the crowds were actually listening to the Word of Jesus, commanding them to tell no one of the miracle He had just done. But it went in one ear and out the other, didn’t it? They heard, but they didn’t process. They heard, but they didn’t obey. They seemed to have some degree of faith in Jesus. “He does all things well!”, they cried. But that faith was weak, threatened by their ongoing deafness to what He actually said, and their refusal to do what He said. That’s how destructive false doctrine takes root, because people are sometimes eager to listen, but they filter it through their own human reason or through false beliefs that are lodged in their hearts. People are sometimes eager to listen, but their itching ears crave preaching that agrees with what they already believe, that agrees with what they want to hear.

And then there’s the tongues of believers. Tongues that may still be quick to criticize, quick to complain, quick to demean, to mock, to ridicule, quick to tear down, but slow to pray, slow to praise, slow to give thanks, slow to confess Christ before the world, slow to build up your neighbor, slow to encourage, slow to defend your neighbor, slow to speak up against the wrong and for the right in this world.

So we, too, need the ongoing ministry of the Spirit, the ministry that brings the Spirit, the ministry of the Gospel. That’s why our service is filled with the Word of God. That’s why the sermon is preached. So hear with your ears! Repent and believe! And then, obey God’s commandments! Receive the body and blood of Christ in your mouth and then use your loosened tongue to call upon God through Christ, to thank, to praise, and to confess! Use your tongue to encourage one another, and to defend your neighbor! Speak up for what’s right! Speak against the wrong! And know that, in all of it, you have the powerful Spirit of God working on you and in you by His Word, and working through you as He dwells in your hearts by faith, giving you all the strength you need to believe and obey, to pray, to praise, and to confess Christ in the world. It may not seem like much to you, these simple acts of hearing and speaking. But they are the very instruments God will use to defeat the devil and to make His kingdom come. Amen.

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Hear God’s gracious and urgent invitation!

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Sermon for Midweek of Trinity 11

Isaiah 55:1-13

We’re going from chapter 51 last week to chapter 55 this evening, because, if you recall, we covered Isaiah 52-54 during Holy Week. The last triplet of this middle section of Isaiah’s prophecy, chapters 55-57—and really, the rest of the book—depicts the Messiah guiding His people into an eternal and joyful home, and in tonight’s reading, we hear a gracious and urgent invitation to take part in the joy of the Messiah’s kingdom.

“Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. It sounds, intentionally, like Jesus’ own invitation, Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. It sounds, intentionally, like the vision John saw of believers who have fallen asleep, These are the ones who come out of the great tribulation, and washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb…They shall neither hunger anymore nor thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any heat; for the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne will shepherd them and lead them to living fountains of waters. The Lord calls out to all who recognize that they’re needy, that they’re sinful and unclean, to those who realize they aren’t what they should be, that something important is missing in their very soul. There’s a hole there, an emptiness, a desire that can’t be fulfilled with anything on earth. It’s a desire for eternity. It’s a desire to have God for a Father. To such people the Lord cries out, “Come! And you will be filled!”

Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? It sounds, intentionally, like Jesus’ own words, Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you. It sounds like many of Jesus’ parables, too, where a man prepared a great feast and told the guests, “Come! Come! For all things are now ready!” This is how the Scriptures portray the Gospel, as an invitation that goes out to all people to come and be satisfied, not with a comfortable or luxurious life on earth, but to come into His Church and be satisfied in the kingdom of Christ, who does not offer an earthly paradise, but a heavenly one.

Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live. How do we come and eat? What is this rich food in which we should take delight? We come, first, by listening! We come by inclining our ear and hearing the words of the Lord, hearing His invitation to let Him remove our sins from us and to enter His kingdom as clean and holy people, ready to feast at the Lord’s table with Him in righteousness and holiness forever.

I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David. Behold, I made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander for the peoples. Behold, you shall call a nation that you do not know, and a nation that did not know you shall run to you, because of the LORD your God, and of the Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified you.

God had promised David that his Son would rule over an everlasting kingdom, and that the kingdom would include many nations. So here, God promises to those who accept His gracious invitation a new covenant, and everlasting covenant, based on that promise He had made to David. This is like the new covenant God promised to make with Israel through the prophet Jeremiah. Here’s part of it: Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah… I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people…For they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more. Here, in Isaiah’s prophecy, the Lord clearly extends this everlasting covenant beyond Israel, to the Gentiles, to come and be a part of the kingdom of the Son of David, to enter into a new covenant of grace and the forgiveness of sins through Christ.

Seek the LORD while he may be found; call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the LORD, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.

Here is the urgency in Isaiah’s message. Yes, seek the Lord. But seek Him while He can still be found. Call upon Him while He is still near. Because the day will come when He won’t let Himself be found and when He will remove His gracious presence forever. If a person insists on clinging to his sins and wickedness, if a person stubbornly rejects His Gospel, if a person persistently resists His Holy Spirit, if a person despises the time of grace that God has given him to repent and to seek the Lord, then the Lord will stop giving him chances to repent. So seek Him now. Call upon Him now. As Paul says to the Corinthians, Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

What God says here is a general truth. He doesn’t think like we do. He doesn’t plan like we do, or like we think He should plan. And that’s so important to remember. God is above us; we are not above Him. He’s smarter than you are, wiser than you are. When you say, “Jump!,” God doesn’t ask, “How high?” In fact, it’s the root of idolatry to imagine that God should behave as you think He should behave. So what God says here is a warning. But it’s also a source of great comfort. Because, when you see things not working out in the world as you think they should, when you see evil appearing to win and lies appearing to prosper, remember that God has plans that you couldn’t possibly fathom, even if He told you about them ahead of time. And they’re better than any plans you could come up with. And yes, that’s something you just have to believe.

And where will that faith come from? “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

God’s word does everything. It created and sustains the universe. It brings to faith those who listen to it. And it hardens those who hear but refuse to accept it. Listen to the Word! And it will take root in your heart and grow to produce a faith that’s like a shield against every fiery dart of the evil one.

“For you shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle; and it shall make a name for the LORD, an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.”

Israel did, finally, go out from Babylon in joy. But that joy is nothing compared to the joy that the Church will experience when the Lord Jesus returns to bring us out of this dying world. And knowing, by faith in the Lord’s word, that such joy is coming will help you cope with this Babylon here below. Amen.

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Starting with the top priority

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Sermon for Trinity 11

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

Take a moment this morning and consider the priorities in your life. That’s helpful to do, once in a while, because your priorities will determine your decisions and your behavior. The word, priority, by the way, comes from a Latin word that means “to come first, to come before other things.” You could make a list of the things in your life that come before other things. The fact that you’re here today (or watching the service today) would suggest that hearing God’s Word is a priority for you. It obviously came before any of the other things you could be doing at the moment. Surely your family’s happiness and wellbeing is a priority. Hopefully your health makes the list. And serving your neighbor in love, that should be a priority for you, as a Christian. I’m sure you could come up with other things. But what’s at the top of the list? What’s your top priority in life? And a different question, which may or may not have the same answer, what should be your top priority? Well, if there is a God, and if He takes any interest at all in human affairs—and it’s obvious to any thinking person that there is and that He does—then the top priority has to be being right with God; to have His favor, both for this life and for the next. It’s more important than family. More important than health or wealth. More important than life itself.

Now, if it’s true that being right with God should be the top priority, then the most important thing to know is how a person can be right with God. And there are two basic answers to that question, illustrated for us today by Jesus in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. How can you have God’s favor? We have the Pharisee’s answer: “Be a good person! Be right with God by doing the right things and avoiding the wrong things!” And we have the tax collector’s answer: “Flee in faith to God’s throne of grace! Be righteous before God by faith in His promised mercy!” You already know which answer is the right answer. But you still need to hear it again from Jesus’ lips, because the Pharisee’s answer—the wrong answer—is the one that your natural heart always wants to go back to.

If even you Christians need to hear Jesus’ answer again, and again and again, then the unbelieving Pharisees certainly needed to hear it. Luke tells us that Jesus told the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector to certain people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others. That describes very many people in today’s world, too, people who think very highly of themselves, because they think they’ve done some very good things, things that, if there is a God, will certainly put them in good standing with Him.

The Pharisees knew there was a God. They knew many things about Him, true things, the things He had revealed about Himself in the creation as well as the things He had revealed about Himself in the Old Testament Scriptures. They knew His commandments; they knew His Law. One thing they didn’t know—because they passed right over it whenever they came across it in God’s Law—was that God’s Law demands, not only outward obedience, but perfect love for God first, and then for our neighbor, love that comes from the heart and shows itself with the hands and with good deeds. Sins of the heart and a lack of love in the heart are just as damning before God as any evil deed of the hand. The other thing they didn’t know—again, because they passed over it in the Old Testament Scriptures—was that none of their good deeds could erase, or make up for, any of their bad deeds.

And so we have this Pharisee in Jesus’ parable, a man well-respected and honored in the Jewish community, who went up to the Temple in Jerusalem to pray. How would we describe him, based on his behavior in the parable? He’s smug. Proud. Full of himself. And he’s so confident that he’s right with God already, because of how many good things he’s done, that he has no word of praise or thanks for what God has given him, no word of confession, not even a word of supplication, seeking God’s merciful help with anything. On the contrary, we see only a self-congratulatory “thank you” that I am not like other men—extortioners, unrighteous, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I possess.

Now, he’s an extreme version of a self-righteous person, apparently admitting no flaws in himself whatsoever. There are less extreme versions out there that fall into the same category. There are people who will admit that they aren’t perfect. In fact, they see the very act of admitting they aren’t perfect as one of their praiseworthy virtues! But ask them if they consider themselves good people, and most will answer, yes. Most will point to something good they’ve done, some deed of kindness or obedience, or at least how hard they try to be good. If nothing else, some will hope that, no matter how many bad things they’ve done, God may yet accept them because of some really bright, shiny moment of goodness.

This is how the world sees things. This is how all the religions of the world (except for Christianity) teach people to gain God’s favor, by doing good, by being honorable, by showing “love.” This is how people normally comfort themselves when a loved one dies. “He or she was such a good person. He must be in heaven. She must be with God.”

On the other hand, there’s the tax collector of Jesus’ parable, respected by no one, referred to as a “good person” by no one, including himself. His career was synonymous with extortion and thuggery, not to mention the regular betrayal of their countrymen in service to the Romans. How would we describe him, based on his behavior in Jesus’ parable? The tax collector, standing at a distance, would not so much as lift up his eyes toward heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God be merciful to me, a sinner.’ He’s humble. Contrite. Sorrowful over his sins. He knows he doesn’t deserve even to look up toward heaven. He offers God no list of accomplishments, no excuses. Instead, he seeks something from God. He seeks God’s mercy. And he uses a special word for mercy in Greek. “Be favorable to me! Be propitious to me! Be merciful! Be gracious!”

Now, that word is related to the Temple itself. Within the innermost part of the first Temple—Solomon’s Temple—was the ark of the covenant, and the lid of it was called in Greek the Propitiation Place, or the Mercy Seat, or the Throne of Grace. It’s where the blood of atonement was sprinkled once a year by the high priest. It’s where God promised that He would be present with His people and would be gracious toward His people who sought Him there, because of the blood of atonement. But after Solomon’s Temple was destroyed, there was no longer an ark of the covenant in the Temple. It’s as if God no longer wanted His Throne of Grace to be enclosed in the Temple, as if He wanted Israel to start seeking it somewhere else.

Sure enough, the Apostle Paul, in Romans 3, refers to Christ Jesus Himself as the Propitiation Place or the Throne of Grace. He was the true ark of the covenant. His blood shed on the cross truly made atonement for the sins of all. And now all who flee to Christ as the Throne of Grace, all who seek God’s favor through faith in Him, receive God’s forgiveness. Or in other words, they are justified before God, they are right with Him, they have His favor.

This is truly the top priority, that which should be “first and foremost” in your life, what comes before everything else. As Paul also said in today’s Epistle: For I delivered to you first and foremost that which I also received, that…you have to be a good person? No, that’s not what he said. That you have to make atonement for your sins? No. That…what? What was first and foremost? That Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. That’s first and foremost. That’s the most important thing, fleeing to Him in faith as the Throne of Grace, as the one who died for our sins and rose again.

That’s what the tax collector did by seeking mercy from God in the temple where He had promised to be merciful. That was his answer to the question, How can I be right with God? Not by finding righteousness within himself, but by seeking it by faith, as a gracious gift promised by a merciful God. And so Jesus shocked the self-righteous Pharisees with His conclusion: I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but whoever humbles himself will be exalted. The Pharisee who tried to be righteous by himself failed, while the tax collector was counted righteous by God, through faith.

The same was true of the Apostle Paul. He had a sordid past, not as a thief or tax collector, but as a self-righteous Pharisee, as a religious fanatic, as a persecutor of Christians, until he learned that what the Prophet Isaiah had written hundreds of years earlier was true: All our righteousnesses are like filthy rags. As Paul wrote to the Philippians, Whatever things were gain to me, these I have counted a loss for Christ. Indeed, I count all things a loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith.

And so the apostle humbled himself. You hear it in today’s Epistle: For I am the least of the apostles. I am not even fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But in humbling himself, there was finally room for God to exalt him. As he says, But by the grace of God I am what I am.

But notice this about the Gospel: It teaches us what our top priority must be, to be justified through faith in Christ. But the Gospel then gives us other priorities that flow down from the top one. Those who are righteous by faith are then called to be righteous in their deeds, in their works, to care for our families, to keep God’s commandments. The difference is, we’re no longer working to earn the favor of God. We’re working to serve the God who has already favored us in giving His Son into death for our sins, and in justifying us by faith in His Son, so that even the righteous things we now do are really being done in us by Him, as Paul also concludes about all his hard work as an apostle: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.

Of the two answers we’ve considered today to the question, how can I be right with God?, Jesus reveals clearly what the Christian answer is: only by fleeing in faith to Christ, the true Throne of Grace, for mercy and forgiveness. Let that be your top priority! And then arrange all your other priorities around it. Trust in the mercy God has promised you in Christ Jesus! Flee to Him in faith! And you will not only go down to your house justified; you will also have everything you need to get through all the trials of this life and to lead a good, honorable, godly life of humble obedience to the God who has justified you by faith. Amen.

Source: Sermons

If God promises deliverance, why be afraid?

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Sermon for Midweek of Trinity 10

Isaiah 51:12-23

We heard pure comfort from Isaiah, from the LORD!, in last week’s reading from the first part of Isaiah 51—comfort regarding all three kinds of oppression: The literal oppression of captive Israel in Babylon, the spiritual oppression of sinners by the devil, and the literal and spiritual oppression of the New Testament Church by the devil and the world. In all three kinds of oppression, God had promised deliverance to His people. God Himself was comforting them with these promises!

But He foresees the captives doubting. “I, I am he who comforts you; who are you that you are afraid of man who dies, of the son of man who is made like grass, and have forgotten the LORD, your Maker, who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth, and you fear continually all the day because of the wrath of the oppressor, when he sets himself to destroy?

The Lord foresees the captives doubting His comfort, still fearing the Babylonians, still fearing what powerful men might do to them, doubtful that they would ever be rescued. But that’s senseless! It’s foolish! God is stronger than every enemy, stronger than any man. Man is mortal. But God…God stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth. If God comforts, if God promises deliverance, then why still be afraid that man might, what?, overpower God? Thwart God’s plans? Stand in God’s way? Foolishness! Fear may be appropriate at times, but when God says, “I’m holding onto you,” it’s absolutely foolish to keep being afraid that you’re going to fall.

God promised to literally deliver the captive Israelites from the Babylonian Captivity. He also promised to save them spiritually from that other oppressor, from that other captivity—the one in which Satan would keep them, or us, out of God’s kingdom. The Lord comforts Israel with promise after promise of the Messiah who would come, and suffer and die, so that, by His death, He might conquer the devil and take away His power to accuse sinners. He comforts the penitent, those who feel the weight of their sin, with words of forgiveness and acceptance through Christ.

And God has also promised to deliver His Church from all our enemies. He comforts us with promises that Jesus will not abandon us or leave us as orphans, but that He’ll give us His Holy Spirit now to strengthen us, and that He’ll return at the right time to deliver us from this wicked world.

So why be afraid of man? Why be afraid of the tyrants and the wicked rulers of this world? They may threaten us for a time. They may take our life, goods, fame, child, and wife—Let these all be gone. They yet have nothing won. The kingdom ours remaineth!

And where is the wrath of the oppressor? He who is bowed down shall speedily be released; he shall not die and go down to the pit, neither shall his bread be lacking. I am the LORD your God, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar— the LORD of hosts is his name. And I have put my words in your mouth and covered you in the shadow of my hand, establishing the heavens and laying the foundations of the earth, and saying to Zion, ‘You are my people.’ ”

Where is the wrath of the oppressor? Would Babylon continue to threaten the captives? Does the devil or the world threaten you? God laughs at them. He says, there is no one standing in your way. I am going to help you and provide for you and protect you. The same power that established heaven and earth and set them in place will now accomplish Your deliverance. You are My people, He says to the believers in Zion, which also includes the baptized believers in the New Testament Church. If God has claimed you as His people, why would you still be afraid?

Wake yourself, wake yourself, stand up, O Jerusalem, you who have drunk from the hand of the LORD the cup of his wrath, who have drunk to the dregs the bowl, the cup of staggering.

The Lord pictures His wrath in a bowl (not unlike the book of Revelation) in John’s vision of the seven bowls of God’s wrath that He was about to pour out on the earth. Here He pictures Israel as having drunk so deeply from that bowl, having received so much of His wrath, that they were drunk and sprawled out on the floor. But now, He says, it’s time to wake up! Time to sober up! Because the days of wrath are over. No more punishment in Babylon for the people of Israel. No more condemnation for those who believe in Christ Jesus. No more oppression by the devil or the world in the new heavens and the new earth.

This doesn’t mean the Jews would never again fall under God’s wrath. We heard about that just this past Sunday as Jesus foretold the destruction of Jerusalem, and we heard it again in the First Lesson this evening, where Jesus assures the Jews of His day that their judgment will be some of the worst the world has ever seen, because when their Deliverer finally came, as promised, they wanted nothing to do with Him.

There is none to guide her among all the sons she has borne; there is none to take her by the hand among all the sons she has brought up. These two things have happened to you— who will console you?— devastation and destruction, famine and sword; who will comfort you? Your sons have fainted; they lie at the head of every street like an antelope in a net; they are full of the wrath of the LORD, the rebuke of your God.

There can be no human savior, no human deliverer. No Israelite would step forward to rescue captive Israel from Babylon. No mere man would step forward to deliver men from the devil, either. And no man will deliver the Church from the world that seeks to destroy us. Only God Himself could do it, through His Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore hear this, you who are afflicted, who are drunk, but not with wine: Drunk, again, with the wrath of God, which caused them to suffer in captivity.

Thus says your Lord, the LORD, your God who pleads the cause of his people: “Behold, I have taken from your hand the cup of staggering; the bowl of my wrath you shall drink no more; and I will put it into the hand of your tormentors, who have said to you, ‘Bow down, that we may pass over’; and you have made your back like the ground and like the street for them to pass over.”

I will remove My wrath from you and take your well-deserved suffering away from you. Once again, God Himself promises to rescue Israel from captivity. God Himself promises to rescue sinners from the devil’s kingdom. And God Himself promises to deliver His Church from the death, and from the devil, and from the world that sets itself up for battle against us.

And He also promises the turning of the tables, judgment against those who oppressed God’s people. Judgment against Babylon brought by the Medes and Persians. Judgment against the devil now, through Christ’s resurrection from the dead, and the final judgment against the devil and all unbelievers in the end. It’s just as St. John pictured the day of Judgment in the book of Revelation: I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things which were written in the books. The sea gave up the dead who were in it, and Death and Hades delivered up the dead who were in them. And they were judged, each one according to his works. Then Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire.

Deliverance for God’s people. Vengeance against the Lord’s enemies. These are comforting promises that God made to Israel and that still apply to you, who believe in the Lord Jesus. So why would you still be afraid? The message of tonight’s prophecy is, don’t be! Because, if God promises deliverance, you have nothing at all to fear. Amen.

 

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You don’t have to be a part of the Church’s demise

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Sermon for Trinity 10

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

On the 10th Sunday after Trinity, the Church has historically remembered the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, because Jesus prophesied it in today’s Gospel. Speaking to Jerusalem from the back of the donkey on Palm Sunday, Jesus wept and said, The days will come upon you when your enemies will put up an embankment around you and will surround you and besiege you on every side. And they will raze you to the ground, you and your children within you; and they will not leave one stone upon another within you. As the all-knowing Son of God, Jesus could see where things were headed for Jerusalem, not just in general, but very specifically He could see some 36 years into the future, as Jewish rebels began to revolt against the Roman government and eventually overtook the city of Jerusalem. He could see some 40 years into the future as the patience of the Romans with the Jewish rebels ran out. And the armies of Titus besieged the city in April of the year 70, resulting in the city’s inhabitants resorting to violence toward one another, murder, and even cannibalism. By the end of August, the Romans were ready to enter the city. And they tore down the walls, and the temple, and burned the city to the ground. And so ended a thousand years of Jewish occupation of Jerusalem (minus the 70 years of captivity in Babylon, of course). So ended the Jewish priesthood, and the temple worship, and the rites and rituals of the Law of Moses, never to be resurrected again. Jesus saw it all coming, as clear as day. The destruction of the city was inevitable, from God’s perspective.

Why? Why was it inevitable? Because God sees beforehand everything that everyone will do. And Jesus saw what the people of Jerusalem would do. If you only knew, in this your day, the things that would bring you peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes…You did not recognize the time of your visitation. What would have brought peace to Jerusalem? Acknowledging their sinfulness before God. Repenting of their wickedness. Seeking mercy from the God of Abraham instead of relying on their family tree. Believing in Jesus, the Christ sent from God to redeem them from sin, death, and the devil. That’s what would have brought them peace.

And they had multiple opportunities to obtain that peace! They could have not crucified the Son of God at the end of that Holy Week. But that was only one opportunity. For the next 40 years or so, the Gospel would be preached in Jerusalem. The Christian Church would have a presence there, gathering in the temple and in other places, showing from the Old Testament Scriptures how Jesus had fulfilled the prophecies about the coming Christ, preaching repentance and the forgiveness of sins through Jesus, even to those who had crucified Him.

But over and over again, they refused to recognize the time when God visited them for salvation, first through Jesus directly, and then through the apostles whom He had sent. They heard the Word of God…and then ignored it, or stoned those who preached it, or put them in jail, or put them to the sword, or chased them around from one city to the next, trying to stir up the whole world against these horrible, terrible Christians who were preaching the Gospel of free salvation and eternal life for all people of all nations through faith in Christ Jesus.

And so, after giving them 40 years to acknowledge and receive the crucified and risen Christ whom God the Father had sent to Israel, God worked through the government of the Romans to bring final destruction on the city of Jerusalem and to remove His ancient people from their homeland for good. The people who reside on that piece of land today are not the covenant people of the Old Testament. They’re foreigners to the covenant God made with Abraham and with Moses, regardless of whether they can trace their earthly ancestry back to Abraham or not. No, God saw to it that Jerusalem, with its Old Testament significance, was permanently destroyed.

I said at the beginning of the sermon that the Church remembers the destruction of Jerusalem on this day of the Church Year. And we do. But we don’t celebrate it, as in, rejoice over it. Because our Lord Jesus didn’t rejoice over it. He wept over it! As he drew near, he looked at the city and wept over it. Their rejection of the Messiah wasn’t God’s doing. It was theirs. Their destruction was inevitable from God’s perspective, because He knew what they would do. But from their perspective, it was entirely avoidable. The Holy Spirit called out to them through the preaching of the apostles. He even gave miraculous signs in His early Church, as St. Paul discussed in today’s Epistle, as proof to the Jews that the preaching about Jesus was from God. They weren’t prevented by God from believing. They owned their unbelief. And Jesus wept over it, because God wanted to save them. But they didn’t want to be saved by Jesus.

It’s useful for us to reflect on these things. Because what happened to the Jews and to Jerusalem will also happen to the Christian Church in its outward form. Jesus predicted the infiltration of many, many false prophets and false christs into His Church. He predicted that weeds (false Christians) would be sown by the evil one right in the midst of the wheat (the true Christians). He predicted that the love of most would grow cold, that many would be deceived and would abandon the true teaching of His Word. He predicted the working of the Antichrist, not outside the Church in some world government somewhere, but right in the midst of the Church, and He predicted the great apostasy, the great falling away, the great rebellion within the Church, leaving her just as desolate as Jerusalem was left by the Roman armies.

Does God want to see things turn out this way? Of course not. As little as He wanted to see Jerusalem rejecting the Christ and suffering the consequences. But He knows the choices that people will make, and He allows His word to be opposed and His warnings to go unheeded. He doesn’t force people into submission and obedience during this time of grace between His first and second comings.

So, why preach on this text? Why meditate on this text or pay any attention to it, if the Church, in its outward form, is going to end up in ruins, just like Jerusalem did in 70 AD? Because! It doesn’t have to happen to you! Jerusalem, as a city, perished for its unbelief. But many people in Jerusalem heeded Jesus’ warning and repented and were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Many of those Jewish Christians got out before the destruction came. Just because the Church in its outward form will perish doesn’t mean that the true Church, in its true form, will perish. On the contrary, Jesus assures His disciples that the gates of hell will not prevail against My Church. That isn’t a promise that the large institutionalized Christian Church on earth will be victorious in the end. It’s a promise that there will always be a faithful remnant of true believers within His Church, and that they will be victorious against the devil and every enemy.

And how does Jesus preserve this faithful remnant within His Church? By doing the very thing He did after He predicted the demise of Jerusalem. He pressed onward. He entered Jerusalem. And He cleansed the temple there of all the distractions and all the wickedness and all the things that were getting in the way of people hearing His teachings and praying to God. And then He taught. He taught, right there in the temple that would eventually be destroyed. He taught all those who would listen. And even His enemies couldn’t prevent Him from teaching. Because while Jerusalem would eventually perish, not everyone in Jerusalem had to perish. Some could still be saved. And the only way for them to be saved was for them to be able to hear and meditate on His Word.

And so, even though we know that the outward Church, influenced as it is by the Antichrist, will be destroyed together with the rest of the world, we press onward. We don’t get drawn in by the outward Church with its prestige and glory. We don’t get depressed when we see the outward Church failing. No, we press onward, as we are able, to make sure that the Church among us, the Church where we gather, is clean of outside distractions, clean of wickedness, clean of false doctrine, clean of lovelessness. We make sure that the Gospel is taught here where we gather, that the truth is spoken, and that lies are exposed. And those who are able gather around the Word and Sacraments of Christ. And those who aren’t able to gather here among us gather with whoever will join them wherever they are to hear the Word of God and to put His Word into practice in whatever ways they can. We make sure that we who gather together around the ministry of the Word are living in humble repentance and genuine faith, and that we’re living in the world as the light of the world and as the salt of the earth that Jesus made us to be.

When we do that, we have the Lord’s assurance that He won’t remove His Gospel from us, nor will He remove us from that faithful remnant that will remain after the outward Church is destroyed. When we see to it that our own church is continually cleansed, and that the Word of God is taught rightly among us, and that we, as Christians, are praying diligently and leading holy lives in the world, then we have nothing to fear from the impending destruction of the outward Church and of the world. We can simply go about our business here, joyfully worshiping the Lord, looking for opportunities to serve our neighbor, to encourage one another, and to be a witness in the world that Jesus is the Christ, and that there is a Jerusalem here on earth that welcomes Him into our midst, a Jerusalem that will not be destroyed, a little gathering of a faithful remnant, which all people are invited to join. Amen.

Source: Sermons