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The Apostles’ Creed

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Sermon on the 2nd Chief Part of the Small Catechism

Isaiah 42:1-9  +  Colossians 1:12-23

The Second Chief Part in the Small Catechism is the Apostles’ Creed. A creed is a statement of faith, what a Christian should and does believe. The Apostles’ Creed wasn’t put together or approved by the apostles, or by a Church council. It was put together, starting in the second century, as far as we can tell, for practical reasons, as a way of teaching new converts the basics of the Christian faith, so that, when they were baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, they knew the God into whose name they were being baptized.

So the Creed has three parts or “articles,” one for each Person of the Holy Trinity, each of whom is credited as having a primary role in certain aspects of our salvation.

In the first article, God the Father is emphasized. We believe in Him as the Almighty Creator of heaven and earth. Implied in that belief is the acknowledgement that the account of creation in the book of Genesis is historical and true, that the whole universe, all things, visible and invisible, had a beginning and were created in six literal days, that all life, whether plant or animal or human (or angel!), comes from God, and that man is the crown of His creation, that the human race was (originally) made in His image, according to His likeness, with a rational soul and with a perfectly good and righteous character.

We also believe that God the Father preserves His massive creation, but all for the benefit of a single planet, the one we call “Earth.” (And yes, we say that, even knowing how vast the universe is. God’s creative focal point was always Earth.) He holds it all together and causes it to keep functioning according to the laws of physics that He wrote into His creation. God’s work of preservation includes providence, as He continues to provide for all His creatures the things that we need to sustain this body and life. It also includes protection, as the Father sends forth His angels to shield us from harm and to guard and protect us from all evil, not because we deserve it, but because our Father is good and kind toward all that He has made.

But when you say in the Creed, “I believe in God the Father,” you don’t just mean that you accept these facts as true. You’re saying, “I believe in this Father who has done all these things for His creatures, including me, and I recognize that I owe Him my thanks, and my praise, and my obedience.”

But, as we know, mankind has not been obedient. Mankind quickly turned away from thanking and praising and worshiping God, to seek out his own, sinful path. And so, instead of wiping us out or condemning us to an eternity in hell, God the Father is credited with something else: He planned already in eternity to send His beloved Son into the world to redeem fallen mankind, and then He carried out that redemption in time. That’s the theme of the Second Article of the Creed.

In the second article, God the Son is emphasized, who is both true God and true Man. True God, as we heard in the reading from Colossians, the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. Firstborn, not in the sense of being the first thing created, but in the sense of being “born,” not created,” the firstborn (or, as He’s called elsewhere, the “only-begotten” or “only Son”) of the Father, through whom and for whom all things were created. But to redeem fallen mankind, the Father sent His Son into human flesh, to be born of the virgin Mary. When you say in the second article that He is “our Lord,” you’re telling the world that you not only know who Jesus Christ is, but that you acknowledge Him to be your Lord and Master, whom you love, whom you serve, to whom you owe your undying allegiance, to whom you owe your very life.

And why do you love Him? And why do you owe Him your life? Because you know Him as your Redeemer, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried, so that He might purchase and win you from all sin, from death, and from the power of the devil, not with gold or silver, but with His holy precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death.

But, of course, your Redeemer didn’t stay dead. His state of humiliation ended with His burial. But then the Father exalted Him. He descended into hell to preach His victory to the spirits imprisoned there, and He rose from the dead on the third day, and ascended into heaven, and sat down at the Father’s right hand to reign over all things until He comes again in glory, at the end of the age, to judge the living and the dead.

And what was His goal in becoming your Redeemer? His goal wasn’t to set you free and then leave you be. No, He redeemed you that you should be His own, that you should live under Him in His kingdom and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, just as He is risen from death, lives and reigns forever and ever.

But what is His kingdom, and how do you come into it, and where does it all lead? That’s the theme of the Third Article of the creed.

The Third Article focuses on the Holy Spirit and His work of sanctification. People are not automatically saved just because Jesus died for their sins and rose again. We’re saved by our faith-connection to Jesus Christ. But faith is something we’re born without. In fact, we’re incapable of it by nature. By our own reason and strength we are unable to believe in Jesus Christ or come to Him.

And so the Lord Jesus, as He reigns at the Father’s right hand, sends the Holy Spirit into His Church, to call people through the preaching of the Gospel: Repent! Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved! The Spirit is the One who enters our hearts through the word that’s preached, enlightening our eyes to see Jesus as our Savior from sin, death, and the devil. When that happens, the Spirit gives us new birth and sanctifies us, setting us apart from the sinful world and bringing us into Christ’s holy Church. He gathers all those whom He has enlightened and brought to faith into the Holy Christian Church, the communion of saints throughout the world, where the Gospel is rightly preached, where the Sacraments are rightly administered, where, through the ministry of Word and Sacrament, He continues to enlighten us with His gifts, forgives us our sins richly and daily, keeps us with Jesus Christ in the one true faith, and abides with us to turn us into holy people who are progressively molded into the image of Christ, our Redeemer.

And where does it all lead? It leads to the Last Day, when our bodies will be raised from the dead and transformed into glorious bodies, like that of the risen Lord Jesus. And then we who have been sanctified by the Spirit in this life will go into the life everlasting, where we’ll live in the presence of our God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, forever and ever.

These are the basics of our Christian faith. These are the things that every true Christian believes. These are the things that we stake our lives—our very souls—upon. So, with the catechism, let us always boldly and gladly confess the Creed, and, after each article add a heartfelt: This is most certainly true! Amen.

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A great High Priest who was tempted as we are

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Sermon for Invocavit

2 Corinthians 6:1-10  +  Matthew 4:1-11

It says in the book of Hebrews: Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Those words look back, in part, to today’s Gospel, where we watch Jesus, our great High Priest, enduring the temptations of the devil during His forty-day fast, being in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. And as a result, we can now approach God the Father through His Son Jesus Christ, our great High Priest, as someone who can sympathize with us in our weaknesses, as someone who, through His victory over temptation, both earned for us mercy (the forgiveness of sins) and gives us the grace to withstand in the day of temptation.

After His Baptism, where Jesus, our great High Priest, was anointed and placed into office by God the Father, He was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted. His being tempted was an essential part of God the Father’s plan for Him. Not that God tempted Him; the devil alone did that. But since the devil had had so much success against the human race, going all the way back to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, it was essential that the Son of Man also be made to confront the devil, to see how He would do. Would He stand? Or would He fall, like the rest of mankind has always done? If He stands, He is qualified to be the great High Priest who offers Himself as the sinless sacrifice for the sins of the world, and who will forever stand before God the Father as the one priestly Mediator between God and man, between God and sinners. If He falls, at any point, then mankind belongs to the devil forever. There is no other plan for our salvation.

Let’s walk through the three temptations that are recorded for us in the Gospel.

The first temptation is a temptation to doubt God’s goodness. It comes at the end of Jesus’ forty-day fast. He’s hungry, starving, even, and the devil tries to take advantage. If You are the Son of God. You’ll notice, the devil begins two out of the three temptations with that “if You are the Son of God” condition. It was about 40 days earlier, when Jesus was baptized, when, you remember, God the Father spoke from heaven and proclaimed, “This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased.” “Well, if that’s true,” the devil implies, “then You should get some special privileges, like tapping into Your power as the Son of God to turn these stones into bread for Yourself. Wouldn’t that be nice? You haven’t eaten in over a month, right? You could have food right now, this very minute. You’re entitled to it. Right?”

It’s eerily similar to the devil’s temptation of Eve in the Garden, where he tried to convince her that she deserved to have that piece of fruit that was just hanging there in front of her eyes. God had no right to keep it from her. She was entitled to it—even though God had given her all the other fruit in the garden, and every possible gift and blessing was at her fingertips, except for this one thing that God hadn’t given her: the forbidden fruit.

Hasn’t the devil approached you in similar ways, holding forbidden fruit before your eyes, tempting you to doubt God’s goodness, trying to convince you that you’re entitled to things that God hasn’t provided for you (in spite of all that He has provided for you), persuading you to become discontent with what you have, to believe that, somehow, God owes you? “Don’t focus on Him. Focus on your hunger! Focus on your need! Steal, if you need! Fight, if you need to! (Forget the fact that the fruit is forbidden!).”

Turning stones into bread to feed Himself was forbidden to Jesus. He was sent to live in humility, like the rest of us. He was expected to depend on His Father for providence, just like the rest of us. He knew it would have been “cheating” to use His divine power to provide for Himself. Now, Jesus could have argued with the devil. But, instead, He chose to answer the temptation very simply, with the written word of God. It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. Moses spoke those words to the Israelites, reminding them why God had caused them to wander in the wilderness for forty years: And you shall remember that the Lord your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. So He humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord. Jesus, too, had to be humbled, and tested. But unlike Israel, He never complained. He never grumbled against God. He waited patiently for His Father to provide, and so He passed the test and defeated the temptation.

In the second temptation recorded in Matthew’s Gospel, the devil tempts Jesus to doubt His Father’s word—just as he had done with Eve in the Garden of Eden. He took Him up to a high point on the temple and said, If you are the Son of God, cast yourself down! For it is written, ‘He will put his angels in charge of you,’ and, ‘In their hands they will lift you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone.’ Yes, the devil can use God’s word. He can pretend to go along with what God says. That should serve as a sobering warning for us, because many people use God’s word today for evil purposes, just as the devil did with Jesus. The devil didn’t quote Psalm 91 to get Jesus to trust in His Father. He quoted it so that Jesus would doubt His Father and put His Father’s word to the test. Would He really keep His word and send His angels to rescue Jesus, if Jesus jumped down from the temple? Only one way to find out!

Hasn’t the devil tempted you in similar ways to doubt the word of God? Did He really create the world in six days, as He said? Was the world really destroyed in a flood? Did Jesus really rise from the dead? If only you could find some proof, something tangible, something scientific! Or, maybe worse, he uses God’s word to lead you into false belief, as he tried to do with Jesus, so that you misinterpret God’s word, so that you end up believing something that God never intended, and then stake your life on it. He never intended, for example, for His promises of angelic protection to lead His children to needlessly endanger their lives.

But Jesus, our great High Priest, knew His Father’s word well enough to stand up to the devil’s temptation. It is written again, ‘You shall not test the Lord your God.’” Again, He was quoting Moses, who was warning the Israelites not to repeat their past sins of testing the Lord, as they did early in their journeys when they angrily demanded that Moses give them water to drink—as if God had to prove His faithfulness by giving in to their demands. Jesus refused to do such a thing. He would trust in His Father’s word and in His Father’s faithfulness—blindly, if necessary. Nothing His Father said could ever be false, could ever be wrong. And so He passed the test and defeated the temptation.

Finally, the devil tried to get the Son of Man to abandon God altogether so that He could have everything a man could ever want—riches, power, fame, and fortune, the world itself—and have it easily at that, without having to work for it or earn it, or suffer for it, just by switching sides from God’s side to the devil’s side. All these things I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.

Hasn’t the devil approached you with similar temptations? Have the job or the relationship that you want! Have the pleasure you desire! Have the approval of men that you crave! For once in your life, stop worrying about what God wants. You do what you want! You take what you want! All you have to do is set aside the First Commandment briefly.

Jesus would have none of it. Go away, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.’ And so Jesus endured every temptation and passed every test. He met the requirement of sinlessness and so became our great High Priest.

Now, since our great High Priest faced temptation just as you do, since the whole purpose of His incarnation was to become the sinless Substitute for sinful mankind and thus to become the perfect Mediator between God and man, since He has now conquered the devil and death itself, Let us come boldly to the throne of grace, to Jesus Christ Himself, who is the Mercy Seat of God, that we may obtain mercy. Come to God with your sin, with your shame, with all the times you’ve given in to temptation, and give it all to the great High Priest! He has already suffered for your sins and offered Himself once for all as the sacrifice for them, the sacrifice that God the Father has accepted. Come to the Father through His Son, Jesus Christ, and you will obtain mercy from Him, even the forgiveness of your sins.

And, as forgiven children of God, Let us come boldly to the throne of grace…and find grace to help in time of need. You will be tempted again. You will be tempted throughout your earthly life, tempted as Jesus was tempted, tempted to stop listening to God and to listen instead to that other voice, the voice of the devil and his demons, the voice of the unbelieving world, the voice of your own sinful flesh, nudging you away from God’s commandments, prodding you toward sin and shame and disgrace. In such times, turn boldly to the throne of grace. Remember how your great High Priest used Holy Scripture to withstand temptation, and equip yourself ahead of time with the word of God, so that you have that mighty weapon at your disposal when you need it the most. Pray to your High Priest. He will understand your struggles, will sympathize with them, and will offer you all the help you need to stand strong for Him, as He once stood strong for you against the devil and against all the powers of hell. As it says in Hebrews, Since we have a High Priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works. Amen.

 

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The Ten Commandments

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Sermon for the First Day of Lent

Romans 13:8-10  +  Mark 12:28-34

The Lenten fast or “giving up something for Lent” has been around for a long time. And, if used for the purpose of self-denial, prayer, works of charity, or reflection on spiritual things, fasting can be a helpful tool, a useful discipline. We maintain that fasting should never be forced on anyone in the New Testament Church, since God doesn’t force it on us. But during this Lenten season I’ll encourage you to engage in another kind of discipline. During the six Wednesdays of Lent, prior to Holy Week, we’re going to review together the six chief parts of Luther’s Small Catechism. One part per week, starting tonight. And I’m encouraging you, not only to set aside every Wednesday for these services, but to take your Small Catechism out, and read the part for the week at least once a day. If it makes it easier, you can pick up a copy of the weekly catechism reading from the table in the narthex.

This evening, we begin with the First Chief Part: The Ten Commandments. We can’t possibly talk about each one in depth in a single sermon. But it’s my hope that this service will help you to read them fruitfully throughout the coming week.

The Ten Commandments were thundered down to Israel by God from Mt. Sinai, and later written by God’s own hand on two stone tablets. They were part of the Old Testament, the binding covenant which God established with Israel, through Moses, and into which the people of Israel willingly entered. All the words which the LORD has said we will do.

Why do we care? We are not Israelites, after all. We never signed onto that covenant and were never asked to. We care about the Ten Commandments, because we did sign onto the New Testament by being baptized into the name of the same Yahweh God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And in the Ten Commandments, the will of our God for mankind’s behavior is revealed. They reflect who our God is, teach us what His standards are of right and wrong, teach us what we are to do and not do, think and not think, desire and not desire, in order to be holy people in fellowship with the holy God. We care, because the Ten Commandments teach us Christians why we needed a Savior named Jesus in the first place.

As you heard tonight in both Scripture lessons, the Ten Commandments are summarized with the word, “Love.” Love is not optional. It wasn’t for OT Israel, it isn’t for NT Christians, either. Love is the fulfillment of the law. And, as you may remember from your catechism classes, the Law serves as both mirror and guide.

The Law is a mirror. It shows us what we look like—like sinners, who have not kept God’s commandments. As a mirror, the Ten Commandments tell us what we’re supposed to do and not do, desire and not desire, so that we may see clearly how far short of God’s glory we fall. The man who does these things shall live by them. But we haven’t done them. Not all of them. Not all the time. No one has. And so the curse of the Law is pronounced on all men: Cursed is the one who does not continue to do everything written in the book of the Law…Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.

But the Law is also a guide. As a guide, it shows us Christians, who have been redeemed from the curse of the Law by Christ, who became a curse for us, the holy lives that holy people are called to live. We are called to walk by the Spirit. And the Ten Commandments are a Spirit-inspired summary of how the Spirit teaches us to walk.

So we turn to the First Table of the Law, the first three commandments, summarized by love for God.

1st: You shall have no other gods. Every form of idolatry is forbidden, every form of worship of any god except for the One who reveals Himself in the Bible as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Instead of serving other gods, we are to fear, love, and trust in the true God above all things, including ourselves. He is to be our all in all, while all that we have and all that we are is to be entirely devoted to Him.

2nd: You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God. The LORD, or Yahweh, or God, or Jesus, or Christ, is not a name to be tossed around lightly, much less used as a curse, or for needless swearing, lying, deceiving, or practicing witchcraft. His name is to be holy to you. For sacred use only. God’s name is to be used for good, to call upon Him in the day of trouble, to praise Him in front of other people and tell of all His wondrous deeds, to give thanks to Him, at all times, and in all places.

3rd: You shall sanctify the Day of Rest, or, Remember the Sabbath Day, to keep it holy. The Old Testament regulation about doing no work from sunset on Friday to sunset on Saturday has fallen away. But God’s command to hear His Word regularly, to cherish the preaching of it, to use His Sacraments with reverence, and to honor and support the ministry of the Word—that command remains.

The first three commandments summarize how we are to love God directly, by honoring Him, His name, and His Word. The rest of the commandments, the Second Table of the Law, show us how to love God by loving our neighbor. Your neighbor is literally the person next to you, the one whom God places in your direct path, which begins with your immediate family.

4th: You shall honor your father and your mother. God has placed children under the authority of their father and mother, not only demanding outward obedience to them, but also the honor and respect of the heart. That honor and respect are to remain even when the parents are old, even if the same level of obedience to them is no longer required. By extension, this commandment applies to all the authorities that God has placed us under. We are to honor them, serve and obey them, love and respect them.

5th: You shall not murder. No one is permitted to end a human life (and yes, that includes abortion) unless God authorizes it in His word, as He does for the government in the case of evildoers, or as He does for the average citizen if a thief breaks into his home or poses an imminent threat to his life. And if we are to avoid taking another person’s life, then we are also to avoid mistreating our neighbor’s body (or our own bodies!). On the contrary, we are to provide help for our neighbor’s bodily needs as we are able.

6th: You shall not commit adultery. Or as the writer to the Hebrews puts it, Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous. God gets to define the terms of sexual relations, just as He gets to define man and woman, husband and wife. He designed marriage to be a sacred, loving, lifelong bond, where husbands and wives love and cherish each other. And He clearly forbids all sex outside of marriage, all homosexual behavior, all pretending to be a different gender than the one He made you to be, and divorce in most, but not all, cases.

7th: You shall not steal. God permits people to acquire things and to own things, and He forbids people from taking things that another person owns, unless the person freely agrees to sell it or trade it or give it away.

8th: You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. Our tongues and our typing fingers are to take great care, lest we say or write something that may harm our neighbor’s reputation. Lying about our neighbor to get him in trouble is a sin, but so is telling the truth about our neighbor in such a way that we expose a sin that we have no business exposing.

9th: You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. This commandment, together with the next, is especially revealing. No human government can regulate your desires. But God can, and does. Not only are you not allowed to take your neighbor’s house from him. You aren’t even allowed to desire it, to set your heart on it, to be discontent with your own house. And not only house, but…

10th: You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, workers, animals, or anything that is his. You are to control your desires, to the point that, whatever possessions the Lord enables you to have, whatever opportunities, whatever place in life the Lord gives you, you are to be content with these. And while you may desire something beyond what you now have, you commit those desires to the Lord, and if He provides it, good! And if not, good! But setting your heart on what your neighbor has, and growing bitter over your neighbor having something that you crave, such desires are forbidden by God.

If you stop and really think about all these commandments, what obedience looks like from the start of your life to the end of it, when you take into account what James says about the commandments, that whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it, it’s clear that all men, including us, are lawbreakers.

But during this Lenten season, we celebrate our Redeemer, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Ten Commandments show us the reason why, because no man can hold up his own obedience to the commandments to God and claim, “See, God! I have kept them all!” Instead, everyone must approach God as a humble beggar and admit, “Oh, God! I am a poor, wretched sinner!”

But sinners are called, not to despair, but to repent, and to run to Christ, the Redeemer, where God promises that sinners will find forgiveness, on the basis of His obedience, on the basis of His suffering and death, which He suffered for all our lawbreaking. So run to Christ and stay close to Him, because where He is, there the commandments can no longer accuse or condemn, because Jesus has fulfilled them all in our place.

But as you stay close to Christ, you dare not ignore God’s commandments. As John says, This is love for God: to keep His commandments. For the redeemed, this is the path. This is the way, each and every day. Do you love the God who has redeemed you? Would you serve the God who has redeemed you? Would you be holy, as God Himself has called you to be? Then, as Jesus Himself said, If you love Me, keep My commandments. Amen.

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Faith, hope, and love, even in the dark

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Sermon for Quinquagesima

1 Corinthians 13:1-13  +  Luke 18:31-43

Sometimes the ways of the Lord are clear as crystal; the pieces of the puzzle all seem to fit together; the things going on around you make sense. But sometimes the Lord’s ways are about as clear to us as mud. And that’s okay. You’re not supposed to understand everything yet. It’s like when you read a book. Many things that the author understands perfectly well are not understood by the reader, or by the characters in the story, until the end, or close to the end. As the Lord says through the prophet Isaiah, “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” says 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 do you do when you’re in the middle of the story, and the Author’s plans seem fuzzy and dim? We learn that lesson from today’s Gospel and Epistle, from Jesus’ disciples, from the blind beggar, and from the apostle Paul. And the pattern we learn from them is simple: Have faith, hope, and love, even in the dark.

As Jesus made His way through Judea to Jerusalem for His final Passover, He began to spell things out for His twelve apostles. See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and all the things that were written through the prophets concerning the Son of Man will be fulfilled. For he will be delivered to the Gentiles, and he will be mocked and mistreated and spit upon. And they will scourge him and put him to death. And on the third day he will rise again. For His part, Jesus saw everything clearly. He knew exactly who He was—the Christ, true God and true Man; He knew where He had come from—from God the Father; and He knew exactly why He had come: that the world through Him might be saved—saved from sin, death, and the power of the devil; saved from every evil and every trouble at the end of the story. He even saw clearly the path to get there, both because He was the Author of the plan, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, and because it had been revealed, although somewhat obscurely, in the Old Testament Scriptures. He would go to Jerusalem at the Passover and allow Himself to be betrayed by His own friend, handed over to Pontius Pilate by His own people, falsely accused, condemned, tortured, and killed. He would do this willingly in order to make atonement for the sins of the world. And then He would rise from the dead on the third day, ascend into heaven, and work, by His Spirit, with the preachers whom He would send out into the world to bring men out of darkness into His marvelous light.

The light of the Gospel, shining on Jesus as the merciful Savior, is clear to all who believe, but it doesn’t always shed a bright light on the path directly ahead of us on our way to the salvation at the end of the story. Even when Jesus shined the light on the path that lay ahead of Him in the coming days, His disciples were like blind men still groping about in the dark. We’re told that they understood none of these things; this saying was hidden from them. How can that be? It can be, because, when it comes to the ways and the things of God, only the Spirit of God can truly enlighten the mind, and sometimes He has a reason for keeping even the faithful in the dark about certain things, as an author often does in the story he’s writing.

In the case of the apostles, it wouldn’t work out the way it was supposed to if they had perfect understanding of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection ahead of time. They had to be kept in the dark for a little while longer, for their own sake, for our sake, but also for Jesus’ sake, so that He could suffer more. You see, it lessens a person’s suffering to share it with friends, with those who can sympathize and understand. On the other hand, it increases a person’s suffering to go through it alone, without the understanding of family and friends. And Jesus had to suffer alone.

What did they do when they didn’t understand? Well, first they listened to Jesus and pondered what He said, even though they didn’t understand. They listened, and then, later, after Jesus’ resurrection, they were able to remember what He had said. But even before they remembered, they trusted. They had faith in Jesus, that He knew what He was talking about, even though they didn’t. And so they kept following Him, hoping and expecting that things would turn out well, for Jesus and for them, hoping for the details to be made clear when the time was right.

So listen to God’s Word and ponder it, if the path ahead seems blurry or dim, and have faith in the God who has given you His Word, and who has given you His only-begotten Son, and who, through His Son, has also given you His Holy Spirit, to enlighten your minds as much as necessary for the place where you’re at in the story. The Lord has His reasons for not making everything clear to you now. Not that He has hidden His overall plan or His saving works from you. He has revealed more than enough of it in Holy Scripture to bring you to trust in Him, and to preserve you in the faith, and to give you hope that things will turn out well. Have faith! And hope!

Next in our Gospel, we encounter a blind man. Actually, two blind men, according to Matthew, but they believed as one and called out to Jesus as one. Mark reveals the name of one of them. His name was Bartimaeus. He had no physical sight. He was reduced to begging, and the Lord hadn’t revealed to him why it had to be this way. In that way, too, he was left, for a time, in the dark.

But Bartimaeus’s physical blindness, and his blindness to the Lord’s plan, didn’t hinder him one bit from listening to the word of God in the Old Testament, and to the word about Jesus being the Christ, the promised Son of David, and, having heard, he believed. He had faith. And because he had faith, he cried out to Jesus, as soon as he heard that Jesus was passing by, Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me! And he refused to be silenced, when the crowds told him to keep his mouth shut. He cried out boldly, confidently, and with great hope, Son of David, have mercy on me! So Jesus stopped the procession, called the man over, and asked him what kind of mercy he was seeking. Bartimaeus said, Lord, I want to receive my sight!

And what happened? Jesus said, Receive your sight! Your faith has saved you. Jesus granted his request freely, willingly, gladly. Not only that, but he praised Bartimaeus’ faith as that which led to his healing. Not because faith had the power to heal, but because faith brought him to Jesus, who had the power to heal. The blind man’s eyes were opened, enlightened, just as his mind had already been by the Holy Spirit. His sight was restored. And then, what? He followed Jesus, glorifying God.

It’s really the same lesson as with the apostles. If you confess Jesus as Lord and Christ, as the apostles did, as the blind beggar did, then have faith in Him, even if it’s blind faith, for the moment. And put all your hope in Him, even if it’s blind hope, for the moment. You don’t have to understand everything now. Go along with the story now, as it unfolds. Follow along with Jesus. Do the things He has given you to do, the things you know to do, because His Word has clearly revealed those things. Have faith. And hope. You won’t be disappointed in the end. There will be a cross. But there will also be a resurrection and a glorious future in the kingdom of God.

There’s one more thing God calls on you to do while you remain in the dark, in addition to having faith and hope. St. Paul wrote a whole chapter of the Bible about it, which you heard as today’s Epistle: Love.

We learn love from Jesus in today’s Gospel. The way He stopped and took time for the man in need. The way He spoke kindly to him and helped him gladly. And, of course, we hear from the Apostle Paul in today’s Epistle a beautiful description of what Christian love looks like. Love is patient. It is kind. Love does not envy. Love does not boast. It is not conceited. It does not behave indecently. It does not seek its own. It does not become angry. It does not dwell on evil. It does not rejoice in iniquity but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.

Being in the dark about the path ahead, being confused or frustrated doesn’t give you the right to behave badly toward your family, toward your neighbor, toward your fellow Christian. On the contrary, you are called to keep loving at all times, with Christ Jesus Himself as the prime example. In fact, you are called, as Christians, to be characterized by love—not love according to the world’s definition, but love as God defines it in His Word, love that is consistent with God’s commandments. Yes, you are to be known in this dark world as people of faith and people of hope. But just as much you are to be known as people of love—the kind of love Paul describes in the Epistle, which will continue into the next life after there is no longer a need for faith or hope, because all that is now dark will be made bright. As Paul says, For now we see through a mirror, darkly; but then we will see face to face. Now I know in part; but then I will know fully, even as I am also fully known. And now faith, hope, and love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Have faith in Christ, whether or not you fully understand. Trust in Him who willingly and intentionally suffered and died for you. Wait in hope for the Lord to act and to reveal things in His time. And be a person characterized by love. In faith, hope, and love, keep following the Lord Christ, wherever He goes, wherever He leads, knowing that your Shepherd will never lead you astray. His path is the path of the cross. But if we suffer with Him in shame, we will also reign with Him in glory. Amen.

 

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An invitation for weary children to rest

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Sermon for the Festival of St. Matthias

Acts 1:15-26  +  Matthew 11:25-30

Our Scripture readings this evening are the readings for the festival of St. Matthias, which occurred two days ago. Matthias is only mentioned once in Holy Scripture, and yet he was a disciple of Jesus from the very beginning, unmentioned and unnamed, standing in the background of Jesus’ earthly ministry. After the Lord Jesus ascended into heaven, but before the Day of Pentecost, His remaining eleven apostles concluded that they were meant to fill the vacancy among the Twelve left by Judas Iscariot when he betrayed the Lord and then hanged himself. In order for such a man to be a true eyewitness to the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus, he had to have accompanied the apostles from the beginning, “from the baptism of John to that day when Jesus was taken up from us” (Acts 1:22). Barsabas and Matthias were the two qualified men who were nominated, and Matthias was the one chosen by lot to be added to the number of the Eleven, after which little is known for certain about his life and ministry.

Now, the choosing of Matthias to be counted among the Twelve Apostles is a little strange. After all, Jesus appeared on and off to His disciples for 40 days after His resurrection. And yet, Jesus never handpicked Matthias to replace Judas. On the other hand, He did handpick the apostle Paul some time later, and we know from the New Testament what a vital role Paul played in the founding of the Christian Church, leading us to conclude that maybe Matthias wasn’t Jesus’ own choice for rounding out the Twelve foundational Apostles. But his selection for the office of the apostolic ministry was still entirely valid. He was still called by God through the Church to be a minister, to preach and teach and administer the Sacraments. In fact, the manner of his calling sets the pattern for the calling of all future ministers in this New Testament era. The Church, both ministers and laymen, gather. They pray to God to reveal, through their choice, whom He is sending into the ministry. And then, whether by lot or by vote, a man is selected.

As I said, we don’t know anything about Matthias except for what is said about him in Acts 1, but since we know that he was with Jesus from the beginning, it’s altogether possible that he was one of the 70 (or 72, as some manuscripts have it) who was sent out by Jesus ahead of Him, to preach and prepare the way for Jesus. Those 70 performed many miracles, including casting out demons, and when they returned from their mission, they told Jesus in amazement, Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name. And Jesus replied, I was watching Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Although Jesus wasn’t with them on their mission, He was still watching them. He was with them through His Holy Spirit, through whom He was watching—and participating in—all they did in His name. And He not only saw Satan falling as the disciples cast out the demons. What else did He see? He saw the same things He had seen already in His own ministry. He saw most people, especially the wise, the smart, the religious leaders, rejecting His message. But He also saw simple people, and little children, even, believing it. And so, it was in that context that He spoke the first words you heard tonight from Matthew 11. He prayed and said, I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and learned and have revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for so it seemed good in Your sight.

The wise and well-educated religious leaders thought they knew God so well. They would have fit right in in our modern world, where people pretend to be religious, even Christian, while they intentionally ignore what God actually teaches in His Word about right and wrong, sin and grace, and faith in Christ being the only path to salvation. But because people think they know God so well, they don’t like it when Jesus steps in and tells them something that clashes with their “knowledge” and their version of morality. And because they don’t want to listen to Jesus, God chooses to hide the truth from them, to hide Himself from them, because God only invites people to know Him by knowing Jesus.

Little children, on the other hand, have no problem with the illogical, supernatural things that Jesus says. He says, “I am the Son of God, born of the virgin Mary. No one comes to the Father except through Me,” and a little child doesn’t say, “How can that be?” or “That’s not fair!” A little child says, “You’re amazing, Jesus! Tell us about God, Your Father!” Jesus says, “I will die on the cross to pay for your sins and then rise from the dead.” And a little child doesn’t stop to think about how impossible that is. She just says, “Thank you, Jesus, for dying on the cross for me and rising again.” Jesus says, “The water of baptism will wash your sins away and bring you into my family,” and a little child has no counterargument, no argument at all. He just watches Jesus do what He says He’ll do. And that child who simply takes Jesus at His Word knows God a thousand times better than the smartest theologian, the greatest Bible scholar, or the most devout religions people who question, deny, or ignore, Jesus’ Word, because God hides Himself from the wise and learned, but invites little children to know Him through Jesus. As He says in the next verses, All things have been delivered to Me by My Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father. Nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and the one to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.

That’s great news for the little children here today. Jesus says in Matthew 18, I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. So it’s not about how old you are. Even the 80+-yr-olds here today can be little children when it comes to Jesus, little children who sit at His feet and listen to His Word and trust in the things He says. So if, like a little child, you look to the Word of Christ and know Jesus to be the One sent from God the Father to be your Savior, if You trust in Him to tell you the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, then join Jesus in praising God for inviting little children like you to know him.

Jesus makes the invitation even more specific in the following verses: “Come to Me,” He says, “all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” This is one of the most beautiful verses in the Bible, and I’m sure many of you knew them by heart before you came to church this evening. “Come to Me,” Jesus called out, but you notice, he didn’t invite everyone. He invited only the weary and burdened people to come to Him and rest with Him. The tired people! But not people who are tired because they stayed out too late last night or worked long hours at their job. He’s inviting people who have weary and burdened souls.

Who are they? They’re people who are exhausted from living each day in rebellion against their Creator. Exhausted from carrying around years’ worth of guilt and regret. Exhausted from trying to be good enough for God to accept them and love them. Exhausted from fighting against a sinful nature that, no matter how hard they try, they cannot get rid of, and from living in a world so full of wickedness. It’s these people, all of them, whom Jesus invites to Himself and says, Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.

Now why would Jesus offer these tired, weary, burdened souls a yoke to put on? Because He has a sense of irony. A yoke is normally put over the neck of a farm animal. It’s a symbol of hard work, working underneath someone else’s rule. Every religion in the world offers you their “yoke,” teaching you how to be a good enough person to be accepted by God, which, in today’s world, often means being so good that you would accept and tolerate things that the Bible calls evil. No, they say, to be good enough for God, you have to be a better person than Jesus was! You have to be more accepting, more “loving,” more tolerant, less “judgmental.” But their “yoke” is worthless. It’s fake, but it’s still a heavy, burdensome thing. And it produces only death.

Jesus’ yoke, on the other hand, offers, not work, but rest, because Jesus took up that yoke of God’s Law upon Himself, and like a work-horse, ploughed the whole field of God’s commandments for us. Jesus’ yoke is the Gospel, and to take His yoke upon you is nothing else than to recognize Him as Your Savior and as Your King, to trust in Him as the One who has saved you from the burden of sin, death and hell, to believe the good news that He has done God’s work in your place, the good news given to weary and burdened souls that you don’t have to do one single thing to earn eternal life. You can rest in Jesus, and in what Jesus did for you.

You can rest, knowing that God has already punished your sin on the cross of Christ. You can rest, because Jesus is gentle and humble in heart and doesn’t want you to go through life wondering whether or not you’ll be in heaven when you die, but resting in the knowledge that heaven is God’s gift to you through faith in Jesus. You can rest, because, as you struggle every day against the devil, and the world, and your sinful flesh, God knows your struggle, and God knows how to defend you, how to strengthen you, and how to rescue you in due time. These are the things that make His yoke easy and His burden light.

So don’t turn down this invitation today, the invitation to know the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom He Has sent, to know Him and to enjoy the rest He invites you to have with Him. Be a little child. Hear the Savior’s invitation, and accept it with joy! Amen.

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Overcoming the obstacles to the growth of God’s Word

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Sermon for Sexagesima

2 Corinthians 11:19-12:9  +  Luke 8:4-15

Today’s Gospel is about the power of the Word of God. But it’s also about the condition of the heart of the one who hears the Word of God. Jesus compares the word that is preached to a seed, and the hearts of those who hear to various kinds of soil.

The Word of God, like a seed, always carries inside it the energy, and the ability, and the tendency to grow. For a normal plant or a tree, healthy growth looks like the seed being embedded in the soil, sending down more and more roots, so that the plant gets the moisture and the stability it needs. As the roots go down, or even before, a stalk begins to spring upward, putting out leaves to catch the sun’s rays, which is converted into more energy. It gets taller and bigger until, when it’s mature, it produces flowers, and then fruit that ripens until it’s finally ready to be picked. But the conditions matter, don’t they? The seed may be healthy, and the dirt itself may be the right kind of dirt. But if the conditions are poor, the seed may not sprout at all, or, even if it does, it won’t mature and produce the desired fruit.

What does growing look like for the seed that is God’s Word? Well, ideally, under healthy conditions, the Word of God is preached, accusing everyone of being a sinner, who hasn’t loved and worshiped God as he ought, who hasn’t loved his neighbor as he ought, who stands under God’s eternal condemnation and will be judged by God on the Last Day and sentenced not only to death but to eternal death in hell. This preaching hits home with the hearer. It strikes fear and dread into his heart. He realizes that, it’s true, God is real, and he hasn’t given God the honor He is owed. He deserves this threatened punishment and God’s righteous wrath.

But the seed of the word of God contains more than this. It contains a message of hope for the poor sinner, a message that centers on Jesus Christ, whom God the Father sent into the world to redeem sinners. It’s a promise that God holds out to the world, inviting all men everywhere to look to Christ Jesus for salvation. The sinner draws hope from that promise. He looks to Christ in faith, confident that God will keep His promise, that his sins will be forgiven, that he will be accepted by God because of Jesus and will escape eternal death, and just like that, the seed has sprouted!

But the word of God is not done. It contains more. It teaches the newly sprouted plant, the new believer, to come to the water of Holy Baptism, to stay close to the preaching of the Word and to the Lord’s Supper, which are, together, like the life-giving water that a plant needs. It teaches the believer to grow in the grace and knowledge of God, never to be content with knowing just the basics of the Christian faith. It teaches the believer that he must daily take up his cross and follow Jesus, being willing to suffer for the name of Christ, and bearing up under suffering with the patience and strength that God will give. It teaches the believer to live each day in contrition and repentance, to set his heart, each day, on leading a holy life, completely devoted to God, and to keeping His commandments. And it offers the continual comfort and strength necessary to do this, not just once, but until the believer has grown to full maturity, in faith and love, and has, with God’s help, weathered every storm, and has, by God’s power, produced a lifetime of good works.

That, dear friends, is the Christian life, start to finish. It’s not flashy. It’s not necessarily exciting. It’s like a plant growing in a field. It’s a slow and steady process. But, at the end of the process, what is produced is something wonderful, something beautiful, something astounding.

In today’s parable, Jesus describes how that process is often disrupted. He gives three examples of the disruption. There’s seed that falls along a dirt road. The seed is good, and the dirt itself is fine. But the conditions aren’t right for a seed to grow there. The soil is far too compacted, too trampled upon (or driven over, in a modern setting), so the seed would just sit there on top and would eventually be either crushed or snatched away by the birds. This is what happens very often when the Word of God is preached. Instead of listening to and pondering the message, people tune it out, think about other things, or immediately reject whatever is said because it challenges what they currently believe. It happens out there in the world. It can happen right here during the sermon. The hearers hear but don’t really listen.

Then there’s seed that falls on rocky soil. There are some softer spots on top. The seed can germinate and begin to grow quickly, but it doesn’t get very far, because the rocks keep the roots from going downward and outward, so there’s not enough moisture to keep the process going. The hot sun soon overpowers the growing plant, and it withers and dies. This is what happens very often when the Word of God is preached. A person believes, and is excited about the Gospel, but there’s no deepening of the roots, no ongoing watering with Word and Sacrament, no struggle to resist temptation or to bear the cross. And so faith dies. It happens all the time.

Then there’s seed that falls among thorns or weeds. The soil itself may be fine. The seed itself is potent as ever. But a plant that has to compete with weeds almost always loses, because part of the curse of this sinful world is that the weeds grow faster than the good plants, they’re hardier than the good plants, and they end up choking the good plant, stealing its moisture, blocking its sunlight, tangling up the roots and the leaves of the good plant, until its growth is stunted, so that it never reaches maturity or puts forth edible fruit. This is what happens very often when the Word of God is preached. A person begins life as a Christian, grows for a while, goes to church for a while, but then the cares, riches, pleasures, and concerns of this life take over. God and His Word become less and less important as other things become more and more important, and so they don’t finish the process of the Christian life, meaning, they don’t finish life as Christians. What makes this disruption of the Christian life so insidious is that it’s sometimes a slow process that goes unnoticed until it’s too late, until the person is left with nothing but an outer husk of faith, without its saving power.

But, finally, sometimes, the seed falls on good soil—those who hear the Word with a good and noble heart, keep it, and bear fruit with patience. In them, the process of germination and growth and bearing of fruit is allowed to continue, until it’s finished, until it’s time for the harvest, and the farmer and his family, and the whole village that he feeds with his crops, rejoice together in what that tiny seed has now become.

Now the question that really matters: What kind of soil are you? Or, maybe a better question, where are you in this process? What are the conditions like around you? You’ve all heard the Word of God. You’ve all confessed your faith in the Lord Jesus and your commitment to follow Him, to follow His teachings, so His Word has penetrated into your hearts. But do you still hear His Word sometimes without really listening, without pondering what you hear? It can happen. Are you continually deepening the roots of your faith through regularly hearing and learning God’s Word, so that you’re ready to face temptation and persecution when they come? Are you watching out for those annoying cares and riches and pleasures of this life that threaten to creep up on you and choke the faith God has given you, that threaten to keep you from doing all the good works God created for you to do, to keep you from finishing your lives as Christians? Are you hearing the Word with a good and noble heart? Will you hold onto it, and bear fruit with patience?

No one can fully answer all those questions until all the obstacles and disruptions have been overcome, until you reach the end of your life with your faith still intact and with the harvest of works God is seeking from the seed He has sown in you. But the questions, like the parable itself, are there to help you, to guide you, so that you don’t take the Word of God for granted when it’s preached, because, if you’re prepared for the conditions that you know can come along and adversely affect your faith, and disrupt your growth in the Christian life, then you’ll guard against those conditions. You’ll recommit yourself to hearing God’s Word fruitfully and to putting it into practice. And you’ll remember that you must keep doing this, slowly and steadily hearing and growing, hearing and growing, throughout your whole life. But God Himself will see to the growth. The power for you to grow is not in you but in the seed, where it’s always been. It’s in the powerful Word of God, which is like the rain and snow that come down from heaven and water the earth, making it bud and flourish. Such is My Word, God says, that goes out from my mouth; it will not return to me empty, but it will accomplish that which I purpose, and will succeed in the thing for which I sent it. May God’s Word always find, and create, in you a good and noble heart. He who has ears to hear, let him hear! Amen.

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You have to know God to work in His vineyard

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Sermon for Midweek of Septuagesima

Acts 17:22-34

On Sunday we considered the parable of the workers in the vineyard, where those who were hired last, toward the end of the day, had spent the whole day—their whole lives—outside of God’s kingdom, but were invited in, nonetheless, and given the same reward as those who had started working early in the morning. This evening’s lesson from Acts 17 gives us a glimpse of the recruitment process for the late-in-the-day hired workers.

The Apostle Paul goes out to “hire” workers for God’s vineyard, that is, to preach the Word of God to them and to call them to repentance and faith in Christ. And what he sees at first, as he walks around the famous city of Athens disgusts him. In the verses before our text begins, Paul’s spirit is provoked—he’s appalled by all the idols he sees throughout the city. Athens had beautiful sculptures and ornate statues and temples for all their many gods, based on a mythology that went back hundreds, maybe thousands of years: Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Apollo, Artemis, Ares, Athena, and an endless list of minor deities and demigods. They had put such time and effort and human ingenuity into the sculptures and statues that represented these gods. They had created an elaborate system of worship. They had invented dozens of belief systems and religious philosophies. They were so proud of their piety, of how religious they were.

They were proud, but Paul was appalled and disgusted, as every Christian should be. Because none of the Greek gods were real, none of their beliefs were true, just as all the gods and beliefs of all the nations, from the Saxons and Vikings in the North to the Africans in the South to the early settlers of the American continents in the West, were all unreal and untrue. It was all manmade. It was all wrong. It was all worthless, and, worse, an abomination to the true God.

But Paul doesn’t address the Athenians with disgust or with any sort of pride. He addresses them with respect, you might say, with sincerity, and with hope—hope that, once they were told the truth, they would abandon their longstanding false religion. He addressed them with trust that the Gospel of Jesus Christ was powerful to break through centuries worth of devotion and zeal and a mountain of pride, to bring these Greek idolaters to repentance and faith in the one true God, who can only be worshiped if He is known, who can only be worshiped in one way, through the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

The Athenians invited Paul to speak after hearing bits and pieces of his message in the marketplace. So he addressed them: Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious; for as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Therefore, the One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you. It’s not okay to worship God as an unknown, without truly knowing Him. It isn’t God-pleasing. It isn’t helpful. Paul would not have been better off leaving the Greeks in ignorance, any more than the early settlers of the Americas would have been better off left in ignorance to worship their own gods. Those who don’t know the true God will perish in their ignorance, outside of the Lord’s vineyard, unless their ignorance is corrected.

The reality is that, even after almost 2,000 years of the Christian Gospel going out into the world, most people, even here in our own country, still don’t know the true God. Many have given up on the concept of “God” entirely, becoming fools, because, as the Psalm says, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” Many reject Christianity and worship idols. But perhaps the biggest problem in the world today is just how many people think they’re worshiping the God of Christianity when, in fact, He remains an unknown God to them.

I’ve talked with many people who think they’re believers, who think they worship the God of the Bible, but in their own way, according to their own personal beliefs, disengaged from His Church. We were just watching a TV show last night where a “Christian” minister joyfully proclaimed to a troubled soul that, “No, God won’t punish you for living together outside of marriage! You have nothing to worry about there!” What a relief that was for the troubled soul! But what a soul-destroying lie it was! No, many people who use the name of God, and of Jesus Christ Himself, don’t actually know Him at all.

So Paul began to reveal the true God to the Athenians. I’ll summarize his points: God is the Creator and Lord of heaven and earth. He doesn’t need anything from man, not our sacrifices, not our devotion, not our rituals. He gives life and breath to all. From one blood, from one man and one woman, Adam and Eve, He made all the people and all the nations on earth. He determined where and when they should live. He wants to be sought and found. He isn’t far from us. “We are His offspring,” that is, we came from Him in the first place, and we owe Him everything. He cannot be or be contained in man’s artwork. God “overlooked” these times of ignorance, that is, He didn’t wipe out all the idolatrous nations of the earth, but allowed them to live out their lives on earth and even still provided sunshine and harvest for them.

But now, Paul says, God commands all men everywhere to repent. He has set a Judgment Day for all men, and Jesus Christ, appointed by God, risen from the dead, will be the Judge.

It’s really important to see how Paul preached to these people who didn’t know God. Not, “It’s okay that you were worshiping false gods!” Not, “You’re all good people, and God accepts you just as you are!” But, “God commands all men everywhere to repent.” It’s vital that people hear the truth in today’s world, too. If they were living separated from God’s holy Christian Church, not paying attention to God’s commandments, not hearing His Word, not sorry for their sins, not trusting in the Lord Jesus for forgiveness, not determined to live as saints, according to God’s commandments, then they must hear that, no matter what notions they had about “believing in God,” they weren’t believing in the true God. And God commands them to repent, which includes acknowledging their sins, looking to Christ for forgiveness, being baptized if they weren’t already, becoming engaged with His Church, hearing His Word, and determining to lead holy lives from now on.

Many of the Athenians stopped listening when Paul mentioned a man being raised from the dead. That was just too much for them. But against all odds, contrary to all human reason and possibility, some believed. They believed because the Gospel is a message filled with power, the power of God’s own Almighty Holy Spirit. So don’t worry that the message of repentance, the message of the cross, or the message of the empty tomb, is hard to accept in today’s world. It was always hard to accept, impossible to accept. But the Holy Spirit worked through it then, and will keep working through it until the end of the world, bringing late-comers into the Lord’s vineyard, a few here, a few there, until the end of the day—the Day of Judgment—when we will see the Lord Jesus in whom we have believed coming to judge the world and to give out the promised reward to all who worked for Him in His vineyard. May we be among them! Amen.

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God’s kingdom is not a meritocracy

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Sermon for Septuagesima

1 Corinthians 9:24-10:5  +  Matthew 20:1-16

Even before Jesus went to the cross, He foresaw a challenge in His Church going forward, a sinful tendency, common to all men, that sometimes showed itself even among His chosen apostles, and would be a recurring problem in His Church, because the members of the Church of Christ are still sinful people. Always have been, always will be, until we’re finally rescued from this sinful world. Jesus tells the parable in today’s Gospel in order to get ahead of the problem, as it were.

The problem would initially center on the Jewish Christian Church as it started to incorporate more and more Gentiles into the Church—non-Jews, who hadn’t grown up under the Law of Moses, as all the Jewish believers had, people who had engaged in every form of idolatry and wickedness for their whole lives. It was really not very different from the problem of the Jewish tax collectors and sinners who had spent much of their lives living very poorly under the Law of Moses, not doing many of the things they were supposed to do under the Law. And it’s a problem that still comes up repeatedly in the Church today. The problem, or the question, is, Is God’s kingdom a meritocracy?

What is a meritocracy? It’s a word that gets tossed around quite a bit these days. It’s what many people rightly want for our country. It means you get ahead, you get rewarded, by merit, by what you’ve earned, by how qualified you are, not by any other factor. The most deserving get the job, or the scholarship, or the prize. Your pay scale should reflect how hard you work, how many hours you work, how good you are at your job, without considering any other factors, like race or gender. Everyone gets treated equally, based on their performance alone. That’s the definition of fairness—in the affairs of the world.

But God’s kingdom is not of this world, and it doesn’t work like the kingdoms of the world. It’s not a meritocracy. There is fairness in it, a certain kind of equality, but it’s a God-centered fairness instead of a man-centered fairness. In other words, it’s a fairness that’s not based on man’s performance or man’s qualifications, but on God’s free choice to give an equal reward to all who are in His kingdom—His “vineyard,” as Jesus describes it in today’s Gospel.

And what is the reward? Forgiveness of all sins. A clean slate that stays clean as long as you’re in the vineyard. Adoption into God’s family. Rescue from this dying world. Eternal life, eternal joy, eternal peace with God in Paradise. That’s the promised reward, the “denarius” that’s promised at the end of the day.

And who gets it? All who are “hired” to work in the vineyard, everyone who comes into God’s kingdom, which, again, is His holy Christian Church. How does a person come into it? By hearing God’s call to repent of our sins, and by hearing God’s gracious invitation to come into His kingdom through faith in Jesus Christ, which includes the renouncing of sin and the determination to lead a godly life, a holy life, according to God’s commandments.

So, everyone in the kingdom gets the same reward, no matter what their ancestry is? Yes. No matter the color of their skin? Yes. No matter how long they’ve been a member of the Church? Yes. No matter how wickedly they lived before they came into the Church? Yes.

“But, that’s not fair, not fair to the Jews who spent their whole lives trying to meticulously obey the Law of Moses, not fair to those who have worked hard to lead a holy life, who have dutifully avoided sin, who have suffered much for the name of Christ!” Of course it’s fair! Didn’t God tell you, when He invited you into His kingdom, what the reward would be? Of course He told you! Will He fail to give you that reward? Of course He won’t! You’ll receive exactly what God promised. And so will the one who was only in the kingdom for one hour, for a much shorter stretch of his life than you. God, in His wisdom, God in His generosity, has decided to apply His Son’s sacrifice equally to everyone who is baptized into His Church family, to all who continue to live in repentance and faith.

And, see, that’s why God can give equally to everyone. Because the basis for the reward is not your work at all. It’s the work—the righteous life and the innocent death—of Jesus Christ that earned the reward for everyone, so that all who are attached to Jesus by faith receive everything that He earned.

And that’s also why it’s a terrible, dangerous thing to start thinking that you deserve eternal life, even a little bit, because of all the good you’ve done in your life, or because of how long you’ve been a member of the Church. Equally terrible and dangerous is the notion that creeps into a person’s thinking that he deserves a better reward than what God has promised, something more than just His forgiveness and adoption and eternal life and Paradise. “No, all Christians get that. You’ve worked longer and harder than most. You’ve been such a good person! You deserve extra credit!”

No, no. If you ever find yourself starting to think that way, wake up! Remember the parable of the workers in the vineyard! Remember how annoyed the owner was with the first workers, who grumbled that they were receiving the same as the rest, even though they had worked harder and longer. Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me on a denarius? Take what is yours and go. I want to give this last man the same as I give you. Is it not lawful for me to do what I want with what is mine? Or is your eye evil, because I am good?

The early Christian Jews began falling into this sin. They had worked so hard to keep the Law of Moses, being circumcised, eating the right foods, following the right rituals. They were brought into God’s kingdom from infancy. Then the Gospel goes out to the Gentiles, and the Gentiles don’t even need to be circumcised? Don’t need to eat Kosher? Don’t need to follow any of the rituals of the Mosaic Law? It’s not fair! So some of them tried to insist for a time that the Gentiles did need to be circumcised and follow the Law of Moses. But God, through Peter, and Paul, and James of Jerusalem, through this parable that Jesus Himself had taught, made it clear that He wanted to give the Gentiles the same reward He gave to the Jews, without requiring them to go back and do more work under the ceremonial Law. And, in the end, the Christian Jews did welcome the Gentiles, and they became one Church under the New Testament of Christ.

On the other hand, Paul, in the Epistle you heard today, would later write to the Corinthian Christians, most of whom were Gentiles, that they shouldn’t become haughty, either, as they watched many of the Jews rejecting the Gospel and being rejected by God because of it. Because just as many of the Jews perished at the time of Moses when they fell away from the faith, so the Gentiles, too, would perish, if they didn’t remain humble and steadfast in the faith.

So, in God’s vineyard, in God’s kingdom, no one gets to boast or take pride in his work. No one ought to look back fondly or proudly at his own works, or compare his works with those of another, except to recognize on a daily basis that our own works, even the good ones, are tainted with sin, and, therefore, they do not make us the least bit deserving of God’s grace, or of the reward He has promised to believers. We are all directed away from our own merit, to the immeasurable grace of God, who prepared this vineyard for us to work in, and who brings each one into it when and where He wills.

Once you’re in it, be diligent at the work God gives you. Hear His Word faithfully, regularly. And don’t just hear it, but ponder it, and learn it. Receive His Sacraments. Live as the saints God has called you to be, avoiding what is evil and pursuing what is good and right. As Paul wrote in the Epistle, run this race of the Christian life in such a way as to win the prize!

But always remember, at the same time, that, unlike a race, you don’t win the prize because of how fast you ran. You don’t win the prize because you earned it or “merited” it. You win the prize in the end because of your connection to Christ Jesus, who has merited every prize and every conceivable good gift for you, that He might share His merit with you, and give you every reason not to eye God’s grace and generosity with disgust but with eternal gratefulness and appreciation, knowing that you have been freely given a place in God’s kingdom, not by your merit, but by God’s grace alone. Treasure God’s free grace! Live in it! And toil away in God’s kingdom, not to gain God’s favor, but because, in Christ Jesus, you already have it. Amen.

Source: Sermons

We preach a Gospel of light

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Sermon for midweek of Transfiguration

Matthew 11:25-27  +  2 Corinthians 4:5-6

This week of the Transfiguration, we’re still focused on the glory of Christ that is real, but that is hidden from the world. It’s hidden from our eyes, too, so that we can’t see it. But our joy as Christians is that God the Holy Spirit has revealed Christ’s glory to us, so that we believe it is real, so that we see it with the eyes of faith. He has enlightened us with the Gospel so that we believe that Jesus is true God and true Man, and also believe in Jesus, the God-Man, as the One who speaks the truth to us and saves us from wrath and condemnation by the power of His blood shed on the cross.

Tonight, with Jesus and with the Apostle Paul, we have to take a step back and simply say a prayer of thanks to God for giving us this light, and by light I mean knowledge, and by knowledge, I mean both the knowledge of Christ and the confidence that goes with it, which we call faith. And not just to us here, but to all true Christians who hear the preaching of the Gospel and believe in Christ Jesus as a result. Because that faith-knowledge is and always has been hidden from most—hidden, as Jesus says, from the wise and the prudent. Hidden, or “veiled,” as St. Paul writes just a few verses before the ones you heard tonight, veiled to those who are perishing, whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them.

It’s not that we have some secret knowledge that we’re unwilling to share with “certain people,” like the lodges or the secret societies of the world claim to have. No, as Paul writes to the Corinthians, our preaching is like a bright light, unmistakable, not hidden at all. And we don’t shine that light on ourselves. We do not preach ourselves, Paul says. Ministers—true ministers of Christ—don’t highlight their own accomplishments. No, Paul writes, we preach Jesus Christ as Lord. We preach about Christ Jesus plainly and openly—that He is the Lord, the Son of God and the same God proclaimed in the Old Testament who came into the world and took on human flesh to take away the sin that we have done.

Our sin is exposed by a different kind of light, the light of God’s holy Law, that is, His commandments, which tell us what is right and wrong in His sight, commanding us to do the right and avoid the wrong, but also accusing us of doing just the opposite in many cases. Now, whatever the details are of your disobedience to God’s commandments, the Law reveals that you are sinful, and, therefore, unable to escape from the Law’s just condemnation. You’ve earned God’s wrath for yourself, and a place in hell. All people have. That’s what the Law preaches.

But the light of the Gospel is also revealed through preaching. It shines forth from a God who is good and merciful, who gave His Son to be punished for the evil you have done. The light of the Gospel shines from Christ, who is good and merciful, and who bore your sins in His body. The light of the Gospel lights up the mercy of God in the face of Christ and shows you where to find the mercy and the forgiveness that you so desperately need: in the ministry of the Word of Christ and the Sacraments of Christ. God the Holy Spirit is active in the preaching of the Gospel, shining the light of Christ Jesus out into this room, where He is being preached, out into the world wherever His Gospel is preached, and penetrating the darkness of men’s hearts with that light, just as He once penetrated the darkness of the universe with His command, “Let there be light!” So He has shone in our hearts, Paul says about himself and his fellow ministers, that we, in turn, might shine forth the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Not everyone sees it. To them the Gospel is veiled. Their minds are blinded by Satan, the god of this age. They don’t believe in this merciful God. They pretend that Jesus doesn’t even exist, or they twist the real Jesus into someone else, someone who “gets us,” as the ad campaign falsely portrays him, instead of portraying Him rightly, as the God who died for our sins and rose again, and calls us to repentance, that we may sin no more.

So what should we do? Is it a matter of saying just the right words in order to convince them, in order to lift the veil from their hearts and to cure the blindness of their minds? Not at all. Jesus and His apostles spoke all the right words. The Gospel shone forth brightly from their mouths. And most still didn’t believe.

What we do, all that we’ve been given to do, is, we preach Christ Jesus the Lord. Ministers preach Him, and you laymen speak openly about Him and show by how you speak and how you live that Jesus is, indeed, your Lord. And God the Holy Spirit will enlighten whom He will enlighten. Through His Spirit, Jesus, the Son of God, will reveal the Father to whom He wills to reveal Him, as He said in the Gospel. As for you, to whom the Holy Spirit has revealed the light of Christ so that you believe in Him and confess Him, rejoice in God’s gracious election, and in God’s mercy to you, that you should hear the Gospel rightly preached and have the Sacraments rightly administered, and that you should believe the voice of the Gospel and see the light of the Gospel unveiled. And we ministers will continue to preach Christ Jesus the Lord, even as you Christians continue to live in the world as children of God, as children of light, and as the very lights that God has strategically placed into this dark world, that Christ may be honored, that the faithful may be preserved, and that your neighbor may be helped, and even eternally saved. Amen.

Source: Sermons

A brief vision of life after death

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Sermon for the Transfiguration of Our Lord

2 Peter 1:16-21  +  Matthew 17:1-9

If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works. Assuredly, I say to you, there are some standing here who shall not taste death till they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.

Only six days had passed since Jesus had spoken those words to His disciples, and they were still ringing in His disciples’ ears as Peter, James, and John—some of those who were standing there when Jesus spoke those words—accompanied Jesus up onto the mountain of Transfiguration. And before Jesus spoke those words about the death—and the life!—that awaited His disciples, He had begun to tell them about the death, and the life, that awaited Him in the near future—death on a cross, followed by resurrection on the third day. They didn’t understand yet what Jesus meant about dying on a cross, or rising from the dead, and so the image of taking up their own crosses must have been especially confusing. Why did Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God, have to suffer and die? Why did they? And what is this about finding one’s life after losing one’s life for Jesus’ sake? All these questions were buzzing in the disciples’ heads, but rather than explaining everything in detail at this point, Jesus decided that what they needed to see—and what we would need to hear about—was a brief vision of life after death.

Only three of the twelve disciples were allowed to see it. That was enough. They didn’t all need to see Christ’s glory and the life that Moses and Elijah were now living. Peter, who would become a prominent leader in the Church; James, who would be the first apostle to be martyred; and John, who would be the last living apostle to oversee the founding of the Church. Jesus determined that it would be especially helpful for these three to witness the transfiguration, which Peter himself would later write about in his second Epistle, as you heard this morning.

What did they see? Jesus was transfigured before them: his face shone like the sun, and his clothing became white like the light. They saw the Son of Man “coming in His glory,” even though this visible glory wouldn’t last. It would soon be hidden from sight again until Jesus’ coming at the end of the age. But for a moment, they saw Him as He really is. They saw Him as we will see Him after this life, the glorious, almighty Son of God.

What else did they see? They saw Moses and Elijah talking with Him. Somehow (we don’t know how) they were enabled to recognize these two Old Testament prophets. A saint who had died, and a saint who had never died but had been transported to heaven alive. Key figures among the OT prophets. Why these two? Jesus could have appeared with Adam and Eve, or with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Instead He chose Moses and Elijah, both of whom bore the cross Jesus had told His disciples about six days earlier. Moses bore the cross, trudging through the desert for 40 years, putting up with the Israelites’ complaining the whole time. And then he died without being able to enter the Promised Land himself, a wholly sacrificial ministry. Elijah bore the cross, too, being hated and persecuted by most in Israel, including its wicked king and queen. He began to despair. He wanted to be done with it, done with the ministry, done with this earthly life. But God comforted him, sustained him, and finally took him into glory in a chariot of fire. Both Moses and Elijah bore the cross, served God faithfully, gave up their earthly life (that is, earthly comfort, personal gain, selfish pursuits), and now—now, look! They’re doing just fine! They’re here talking with Jesus in glory. They know Him already, because they’ve been with Him in glory since the moment they left this earth. They gave up their earthly life, and yet they’re still very much alive.

Peter, James, and John were stunned, afraid, confused. Peter offered to set up three tents, for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah. It was a foolish thought, but it shows how much they wanted this vision to last, how eager they were to remain up here on the mountain in that glorious state. But, no. Moses and Elijah had already stayed long enough here on earth. They have a far, far better place to live in now. They’re only here to talk with Jesus for a moment, because Jesus still has to finish the path they already finished. He has work to do at the bottom of the mountain, a cross to bear, a death to die. And so do Peter, James, and John. The glory comes after the cross, not before.

What did they see next? A bright cloud, the same kind of cloud the Israelites in the Old Testament saw on many occasions. They called it, “The glory of the Lord.” It’s how God communicated visibly that He was present in their midst. The Almighty Father of heaven and earth was there with them, with His Son, the ultimate, visible, stamp of approval on Jesus by the Father—a stamp of approval, not only on Jesus Himself but on everything Jesus had said, and would say.

The Father spoke from the cloud, This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased. Hear him! Listen to Him! That includes every word that comes out of His mouth. It includes the word calling sinners to repentance, and the word calling the penitent to come to Him for healing and forgiveness, and the word about His impending death, and the word about His resurrection, and the word about the necessity for those who would follow Jesus to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Him, the call to abandon our earthly life and the invitation to find our true life with God, and with Jesus, His beloved Son, with whom He is well pleased. Yes, you must lose your life in order to gain a far better life. You must let go of your earthly life in order to gain the heavenly one. That’s what Jesus says. So, Hear Him, Peter, James, and John! And know that there is life after death.

And then it was over. The cloud disappeared. Moses and Elijah disappeared. Jesus was back to looking like just a man again. And Jesus told these three disciples not to tell anyone about the vision until after He rose from the dead. This vision wasn’t meant for all the apostles, to get them through the coming months. It wasn’t even much of a help to these three, because they still didn’t understand that Jesus was literally going to suffer and die and rise again. But after the resurrection, when the Holy Spirit brought all these things to their minds, then this other-worldly experience on the mountain would come back to them, and it would all make sense. And it would constantly serve to remind them of what they had seen and heard. It would prepare them to follow Jesus to the cross, and to take up their own cross, because they had seen a glimpse of the life that awaits on the other side.

Jesus gave three disciples this vision. But God the Holy Spirit almost never does anything for our faith by things that we can see. He uses His Word to bolster our faith. He uses His Word to give us the strength to face the cross, to hold on very loosely to our earthly life so that we’re ready to let it go, if need be, in order to follow Jesus. So the Word of God that you’re hearing today is just as good as being there with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration, and even better, because the Word of God is even more dependable than your sight. As Peter wrote in today’s Epistle, Yes, we have the prophetic word as something entirely sure, and you do well to pay attention to it as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. You don’t need the light of Jesus’ glorious face right now. You need the light of His Word. And you have it! So, as Peter says, pay attention to it! You may not understand the road ahead of you any more than Peter, James, and John understood the road ahead of them. But you have been given this brief vision of life after death, the life that awaits all of you who remain faithful, who daily bear your cross as you trust in the One who bore His own cross in order to atone for your sins. By His cross, He has reconciled you with God. By His cross, He has shown you the way to glory, the way to eternal life with all the saints, the way to life after death. Hear Him! And follow Him! Amen.

Source: Sermons