181028 Sermon for Reformation (Romans 3:19-28), October 28, 2018

181028 Sermon for Reformation (Romans 3:19-28), October 28, 2018

Five hundred and one years ago this Wednesday, October 31st, Martin Luther posted 95 theses, or statements, in which he challenged the Roman Catholic Church’s selling of indulgences.  Indulgences were and still are offers of merit to those who purchase them, which reduce the amount of time a person spends in purgatory.  This was something that only the pope could do because as the vicar of Christ he claimed ownership of the treasury of merit that has been accumulated by all the saints.  He believed that he was able to transfer the merit that one saint had achieved with his or her good works to another who would receive them when they paid for these indulgences authorized by him.

No part of what I’ve described to you is based in the Bible.  There is no such thing as indulgences in the Bible.  There is no such thing as purgatory in the Bible.  The pope is not the vicar of Christ and he doesn’t own and distribute the merit of the saints.  It is not possible to transfer credit from one sinner to another, nor is it even possible to earn this surplus of merit, or extra credit with God that then can be given to others.  None of this is Biblical.

And so we come to one of the great principles of the Reformation: sola Scriptura or “Scripture alone.”  The Roman Catholic Church does not believe that the Bible is the only source for the teachings from God that we are to believe.  They say that the pope can establish doctrine when he speaks in an official way, or else Church councils can establish doctrine so long as the pope agrees with it.

This might sound strange to us, that so much authority should be invested in someone that doesn’t even have a position that is instituted in the Bible, but human nature is the same across the centuries.  Think of how some people look at synodical pronouncements about this and about that.  A lot of these documents that are produced by our synod are pretty good, but they are not infallible.  Officially our congregation and synod ultimately only recognize the Scriptures as authoritative, but practically speaking these other pronouncements can carry a lot of weight.  A lot of our people look to the synod like the Roman Catholics might look to the pope or the church councils.

So what is the alternative?  One of the more radical things that Luther taught is that each person must judge for himself or herself what is being taught.  And this takes us to another of the great principles of the Reformation: sola fide or “Faith alone.”  Each person is responsible for his or her own faith.  In the end only you can either believe what God says or disbelieve it.  This cannot be handed over to anybody else.  If you are deceived and led astray by false doctrine it is you who will pay the penalty, not anybody else.  It doesn’t matter what any church says.  What matters is what is true.

This can sound kind of lonely, and in a way it is.  Think of the great examples of faith that are given to us in the Scriptures.  Abraham is the greatest example.  God gave his word to him to sacrifice his son, his only son whom he loved.  Would he believe it or not believe it?  He believed, but he was all alone as he did so.  It doesn’t appear that he told his wife Sarah.  He didn’t tell Isaac, or the servants who accompanied them to the mountain.  It was just Abraham and God until the angel intervened before Abraham sacrificed his son.

King David, also, is commended to us as an example.  The Scriptures say that David was a man after God’s own heart.  But when you listen to the Psalms he has written, he often complains about being all alone.  His friends have deserted him.  His own family has turned against him.  His enemies are looking to bring him down.  It is just him and God, but he puts his trust in God and God delivers him out of all his troubles.

Faith is individual to each person, and it cannot seen.  Our fallen nature likes things that it can see and can measure and can then brag about.  That’s why people want to be the best and have the most.  This makes its way into churches and congregations too.  The Synod wants to be big and rich.  Congregations want to be growing and influential.  But what the Christian Church is always to be about is something that is unseen and quietly dwells in the hearts of those who hear the Gospel, and that is: faith in Christ. 

What matters is that each individual says in their heart, “Have mercy upon me O Lord, a sinner, for Jesus’s sake.”  Wherever there is such a confession of faith you can be sure that for that person, death has been destroyed, the devil has been defeated, hell has been closed, and heaven has been opened.  But nobody can see this yet.  It won’t be plain to see until the apocalypse at the end of the world when everything will be revealed.  But in this life Christians will quietly believe and hope in Jesus, and the world (which only cares about numbers and bigness) either won’t pay attention, or if they are forced to take it seriously, they will fight against it.

The world is hostile to Christ.  It is hostile to faith.  But there is nothing it hates more than the third principle of the Reformation that we will consider: sola gratia or that we are saved by grace alone.  This teaching has an edge to it that makes people upset, because it contradicts our reason.  Being saved by grace alone means that there is nothing whatsoever in the person being saved, that brought about their salvation or helped bring about their salvation or kept them in their salvation.  Salvation depends solely upon God and the mercy he chooses to either withhold or give.  God says, “Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.”  That’s good for Jacob.  Jacob gives thanks and praises God for choosing him.  But Esau gets mad.  He, after all, is the firstborn.  Why should his brother be blessed instead of him.  It’s like Cain, the firstborn, who can’t believe that his loser of a brother should be acceptable in God’s sight while his was not.  The world’s reaction to the Gospel of grace alone can be seen in Esau and in Cain.

What had happened to the Catholic Church was that the world’s thinking entered into the Church, as it always is, to this very day.  Salvation by grace alone was the most important dispute of the Reformation.  The Roman Catholic Church also teaches salvation by grace, but they literally curse and anathematize salvation by grace alone.  If you believe that you are saved solely through the forgiveness of sins that Jesus has won for you, then you are a heretic according to them and cannot be saved.  In contrast they teach that God is gracious.  He will give and forgive.  But he will only do so much and the rest is up to you.  God will do his part, but if you don’t do yours, then you cannot be saved.  This makes sense to our reason, but it is not the teaching of the Bible.

What Luther discovered from the Bible, in contrast to this, is that the only reason why anybody is going to be saved is because God chose them in Christ from the foundation of the world, and brought it about that the whole world should be redeemed by the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, and that the person should have the pure Gospel preached to them—that Jesus is their only hope, but he is a hope that will not disappoint.  And that the Holy Spirit should work in the one who hears the Gospel so that they believe it and are saved through the faith in Christ that the Holy Spirit works in them.  As far as the person himself or herself is concerned and the works that he or she might do, these do not enter in to God’s decision to save.  Those who happen to hear the pure Gospel and believe—setting all their hopes on Jesus—are righteous in God’s sight.

To be sure, this leaves a lot of questions unanswered and our reason doesn’t like it at all.  St. Paul frankly admits this in 1 Corinthians where he says that the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, and that apart from the Holy Spirit it cannot be accepted because the natural Man fights against it.  Because the teaching of being saved by grace alone is so contrary to the way that we naturally think there are a lot of books that have been written about it, and you can read them if you’d like. 

But in the end you must realize this: God has not given us his revelation of the truth so that we can analyze it intellectually.  He did not sent his Son Jesus Christ so that we can look on him from afar, evaluate and judge him, and determine whether he is worthy of our approval.  God is not putting on a play or a show and waiting for you to applaud or boo him.  God acts.  Jesus enters in and does what he does.  He heals and saves, just as you read about in the Gospels.  God doesn’t wait for you and he doesn’t need your approval. 

If a person judges and rejects what Jesus does, it doesn’t change the fact that he has actually done it.  I can believe that I’m the king of England, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m not the king of England.  The fact is that God has decided to bring about your salvation through Jesus’s atonement and the Holy Spirit’s preaching of the Gospel to you.  He saves you from soup to nuts by the forgiveness of your sins, and you never outgrow the forgiveness of your sins until you die.  If you decide to judge that and reject that and say that it isn’t fair or that God should do it in some other way, you can do that, but it doesn’t change what God has done and does.  God reveals to us that he saves solely by his grace without our participation.  Pulling it apart and trying to understand it doesn’t change what Jesus has done.

Finally today, we will consider what is the most important Reformation principle: solus Christus or “Christ alone.”  Salvation by Christ alone is the capstone of all the solas that we have already considered.  Scripture alone, faith alone, and grace alone are all contained in Christ alone.

The true heritage of the Lutheran Reformation is that Jesus should be magnified and exalted in every way and on every occasion.  He is the center of the universe and all things are beneath him.  There is no hope and no goodness in ourselves or in any other thing.  All hope and goodness is in Jesus.  The Reformers did not fight against the Pope because they thought he was getting this little thing wrong or that little thing wrong.  They fought against him because he was robbing Christ of the glory that belongs him and claiming it for himself, and encouraging others, also, to claim for themselves the credit of their own salvation.

“Christ alone” must be our great principle in our dealings with those of other faiths still today.  Doctrinal disagreements should not be thought of as just technicalities or quibbles where someone or some group is getting this little thing wrong or that little thing wrong.  What is really important is what errors do to the doctrine of Jesus Christ.  Who is he?  Is he your assistant for living a nicer or more prosperous life?  Does he do some of the work of salvation, but leave the rest up to you? 

Or is he love incarnate, seeking out you for your salvation in spite of all your sins, and by his Word and Sacrament saving you completely, from baptism to grave?  Those who understand Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God, the Savior, are true Christians.  Flesh and blood does not reveal this to them, but the Father who is in heaven by sending the Holy Spirit.

There is a lot of stuff that people can say and do say about the Lutheran Reformation, but what is really important about the Reformation is that Jesus was put forward as the Savior so that people could once again hold to him by faith.  All the other stuff, as important as it is for history or society, is not what matters on the Day of Judgement.  Hold to that which matters.  Hold to that which saves.

181027 Funeral Sermon for Arlene Thiele

181027 Funeral Sermon for Arlene Thiele

Not all deaths are the same.  The difference between someone who is old dying and someone young dying is so vast that they are almost two different things.  When young people die there is immense sadness.  It is easy for all of us to imagine the things that a young person might have done if only they lived longer.  When someone who is old dies, we know that those kinds of experiences are generally behind them.  They’ve had their children and their grandchildren.  They’ve had their careers and vacations and memories.   Unlike how it is with young people, nobody seems to be getting robbed of the potential life that they might have lived.

And when we consider the situation of someone like Arlene, it is even more this way.  She certainly lived to be old.  At ninety-six she was the oldest member of our congregation.  In addition to having a long life, full of experiences, we also know that these last few years were not the way that most of us would choose to live out our days.  Dementia took away Arlene’s memories and many of her abilities.  She lost her independence and became more child-like.  In a way, she became like a different person.  We can be thankful that dementia did not take away her pleasant demeanor and positive outlook on life like it can with some.  I don’t think she was really unhappy these last years, but certainly thing were changed, and the daily tasks only became more and more difficult for her to do.  Life was only becoming harder, and so it is good that things should no longer be difficult for her.

Death, therefore, can be evaluated very differently depending on the circumstances.  It can be a horrible tragedy, or something that is only to be expected, or even it can be somewhat of a relief.

But what is almost always ignored, when death is looked at in this way, is God.  All the focus is on this life and the relative quality or quantity of it, but what about the One who giveth and who taketh away?  Behind every life there is a story with God, the Creator, on the one hand, and the person, the creature, on the other.  They are the main characters.  A good way to understand the Bible, and the history that is recorded in it, is that contained in this book are stories about the way that God dealt with different people.  Just as God dealt with the people of the Bible, so also he deals with each and every one of us up until today.

And the stories can be quite different.  Some live in rebellion against God and will not listen to his Word.  They thwart God’s efforts to save them through faith in his only beloved Son whom he sent to redeem the world.  Others repent of their sins and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sins.  Yet others believe for a while, but then fall away.  And yet some of these are called back to faith.  The Good Shepherd goes out looking for the sheep who was lost, and when he finds it he puts it on his shoulders and carries it back to the flock rejoicing.  The twists and turns and failures and restorations and joys and crosses are all a part of this story.  The length of a person’s life, also, then, is part of this story.  But it isn’t the main thing.

A person might have a short life on this earth, but then he or she is “away from the body and at home with the Lord.”  Or a person might live a long life on this earth, but if he or she lives in rebellion against God and his Son, then their long life on earth will look incredibly short from the perspective of eternity.  Jesus says, “What good does it do for a person to gain the whole world, but to lose his or her own soul?”  This life and the quality of it is not the only or even the main concern.  The will of God towards you in Jesus Christ is everything.

Jesus speaks of this will of God towards us in the reading from John that we heard earlier.  Jesus says that the will of the Father is that he should lose none of those who are given to him, and that he should raise them up on the last day.  Whoever looks to the Son, Jesus, and believes in him will have eternal life and will be raised up on the last day.

Jesus Christ is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.  The sin of all people was laid upon him.  He suffered and died in our place and the wrath of God against all unrighteousness was poured out upon him instead of upon us.  That is why those who look to the crucified and resurrected Lord Jesus and who believe in him will have eternal life and be resurrected on the last day when all the world will be judged, and they will enter into heaven with their bodies and souls because Jesus is their righteousness.

Ever since the fall into sin God has been bringing this word of hope and life to save sinners, and that is true to this very day and in your hearing of it.  This word reached Arlene in her life, and it continued to work all through it, and there is a great story behind that which is known to God and to a lesser degree also to Arlene.  She learned the greatness of what it meant to look upon the Son and believe in him—that it meant eternal life and that she would be resurrected to live together with her Lord.  That is why she chose the epistle reading that you heard this morning from 2 Corinthians where St. Paul says that it is good to be away from the body and together with the Lord.  What this means is that it is good to bring this earthly life to a close and be together with Jesus.  And so Arlene testifies to you what she believed and what she would have you also believe, so that you may also be together with the Lord Jesus Christ.  This was the main thing in Arlene’s life, just as it is in every Christian’s life, and that is quite a different perspective from those whose only hope is in the stuff of this world.

Through Arlene and her experience with her gracious God, we can also learn something important that can help each one of us.  Dementia is not something that any of us would choose for ourselves if it was up to us.  And so we are afraid of it.  And there are other things, too, that we wouldn’t want for ourselves and so we might fear those things also.  We don’t want our quality of life to be diminished.  But God, in his wisdom, chose this path for Arlene, and we know that God works all things for the good of those who love him.  The Scriptures say “all things,” not “some things.”  I cannot tell you why he chose this path or whatever path he might choose in your life.  But I can say with utmost confidence that so long as you remain in Christ you have nothing to fear.  The path God chose for Arlene made her weak, but he is strong, and Jesus says that his power is made perfect in weakness. 

The story of your life is not how much money you have or the memories you have made or even who your friends and family are.  The story of your life is God your Creator who, because he loves you, sent his Son to be born of the Virgin Mary, who was crucified, died and was buried.  On the third day he rose from the dead and ascended into heaven to prepare a place for you there.  So that you would not be left as orphans he sent the Holy Spirit and the Word of the Gospel so that you may look to the crucified Lord Jesus, believe in him, and have eternal life.  He has caused you to hear this word so that you may receive the promises contained in it and be blessed by it.  He has put Christians into your life to speak this word to you, so that you may know the real story, and to keep you in the faith of that real story.

It is because this is the real story of our lives that St. Paul can say those familiar words, often referred to at funerals: “I am certain that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  We could add to this list dementia or cancer or any number of things that appear tragic and impossible to overcome, but they, in fact, are not.  They are just part of the story of your salvation, and things will get better, as they have for Arlene, so long as you hold to the truth of God’s will, that you should look to the Son, believe in him, have eternal life, and be raised up on the last day.

And so we can be cheered today with the story of God’s salvation that he has worked out in and for Arlene.  One chapter has been brought to a close.  Her life in this world has ended.  But the story is not over.  It is on-going.  And there is more excitement and anticipation in the next chapter of her life than anything of this life that we might think is great, for Jesus is coming to raise all the dead and give eternal life to all who believe in him.  We lay Arlene’s body into the grave today, but tomorrow or the next day, it shall live.  She embraced this, God’s story of her life, and is blessed forever.  May you do likewise.

181021 Sermon on Ephesians 6:10-17, October 21, 2018 (Trinity 21)

181021 Sermon on Ephesians 6:10-17, October 21, 2018 (Trinity 21)

One of the great themes in the Bible is that God stands by and saves his own, even though the odds against them are overwhelming.  Generally speaking, God is not with the strong.  He is with the weak.  The Bible is full of examples of this, but I’ll just mention a couple.

God was with Moses and the twelve tribes of Israel who were enslaved in Egypt.  Slaves don’t have weapons.  They are not allowed to organize themselves so that they can revolt against those who are enslaving them.  The Israelites were weak.  But God is strong.  He pounded the land of Egypt with ten plagues.  With the tenth plague he slaughtered the firstborn of every family, unless that family had been redeemed by the blood of the Passover lamb.  All the Egyptians finally tell the Israelites to get out of his land, because otherwise they would all die.

You might think that in such a situation the Israelites would scurry out of town under the cover of darkness, escaping while they had the chance.  But that’s not how it was.  They left in the daylight, taking all their stuff with them.  God even made it so that these powerless people plundered the Egyptians.  Moses had told them to ask for gold and silver and clothing from their Egyptian neighbors, and God made it so that the Egyptians gave it to them.  The slaves became rich.  The weak became strong.  How so?  God made them rich and strong.

Another example of God fighting for his own people who are weak is with Gideon.  At his time the Israelites were weak compared to their neighbors.  They couldn’t defend themselves, and so their more powerful neighbors would come and take their stuff whenever it suited them.  And so the Israelites weren’t able to thresh out their grain in the open or store anything so that it was easily accessible.  They had to hide everything carefully, because their enemies would take anything that they could find.  But God decided to raise up the man Gideon to free his people from their oppressors. 

The call went out for men to fight and 32,000 answered the call.  But God told Gideon that the number was too large, because otherwise the people are going to say that they saved themselves instead of the Lord saving them.  And so Gideon said to the men that whoever didn’t want to fight should go home.  22,000 went home, leaving 10,000 to fight.  But that number was still too large, so God told Gideon to choose only those men who drank from the river with their hands as his warriors.  The final number was just 300.  These three hundred men were vastly outnumbered by their enemies, but God made it so that the thousands who were arrayed against them became terrified when the 300 approached them in the dark.  They ended up killing themselves in their flight from the three hundred and those who escaped were taken care of by the 10,000 who had stayed to fight.

When I teach these kinds of things from the Bible I often ask those I’m teaching to put themselves into the shoes of the people they are learning about.  How would you feel if you were a slave in Egypt?  How would you feel if you saw the horrible plagues that maimed and killed?  And what if you were Gideon or one of those three hundred soldiers who were sneaking up on the enemy camp that would without doubt slaughter you if they knew how few you were? 

I like how King David says it when he is an old man and he looks back on the way that God had dealt with him over the years in Psalm 18.  David says, “He made my feet like the feet of a deer and set me secure on the heights.”  Think of those mountain dwelling animals that run and skip along where there is just a tiny ledge of rock and on the other side there is a thousand foot drop.  That’s the picture that David is painting for us.  He is like that mountain goat that has it’s little patch of ground and is happy and content, even though it is surrounded by trouble and death.  God is with those who are his own, and he will never let them be confounded even if they should be abandoned by family and friends, in the belly of a fish, or being crushed with stones.  The people of the Bible are not strong in themselves.  What makes them strong is that God has chosen them and fights for them.

Recognizing this theme that runs through all of Scripture can help us understand St. Paul’s words in our Epistle reading this morning.  He talks about the Christian as a soldier.  The Christian is to put on the belt of truth and the breastplate of righteousness and the shoes of the Gospel of peace.  The Christian is to take up the shield of faith and wear the helmet of salvation and take in hand the sword of the Spirit.  By likening Christians to soldiers it can sound as though being a Christian is up to the individual and his or her own efforts.  Soldiers fight, and seemingly they fight alone and for themselves.  Being a Christian, then, might seem as though it is a matter of putting into practice one’s own efforts.

But several details must be overlooked to maintain this interpretation.  Whatever persuasiveness this interpretation has isn’t because St. Paul actually says that, it’s because of our reason.  Our reason thinks that this is how the Christian life should be.  But what does St. Paul actually say?  Does he say, “Be strengthened in yourself and in the power of your resolve?”  No.  He says, “Finally, be strengthened in the Lord and the power of his might.”  This sentence at the beginning of our reading is determinative for everything that follows. 

All the armor that is spoken about is the way in which we are being strengthened in the Lord and the power of his might.  With the different portions of armor he is speaking about things that God does to you and in you, and not stuff that you do somehow apart from him.  It is God’s armor, not your armor.  He gives it to you, you don’t manufacture it for yourself.

Furthermore, what is the goal for this armament and equipping?  Put on the whole armor of God.  Why?  Is it so that you can rush into battle, to strike and kill and conquer?  No, St. Paul is pretty emphatic about this.  The only goal is to stand.  He says, “Put on the whole armor of God so that you can stand against the scheming of the devil.”  And again he says, “Therefore, take up the whole armor of God so that you can withstand in the evil day, and having done all things, to stand firm.  Stand therefore…”  This runs counter to the way that we think about battle strategy.  Since when has standing ever been able to bring about a victory?  If there is no advancing there is no winning.  Of course, standing is different than retreating.  That is to say, it is different than losing.  But it seemingly isn’t going to bring about a victory, so far as our experience and understanding is concerned.

But the advice that we should stand is not uncommon in the Bible.  At the Red Sea, when it looked like the people of God were going to be either slaughtered by the Egyptian army or drowned in the water, because there was no way of escape, God says, “Be still, and know that I am God.”  Probably the hardest thing for the Israelites to do at that moment was to stand still.  Their reason would have been screaming at them to do something—set up some kind of barricade and make due with whatever they might use as weapons, or, on the other hand, to run for their lives.  If they ran, at least maybe a few thousand might be able to get away from the Egyptian chariots.  But God tells them to stand still and believe in him.

And what does God do?  He opens up the sea so that there is a wall of water on the right and on the left, and he miraculously dries the sea bed so that they can walk, not run, through the midst of it.  And then when they are all safely through, he literally crushes the most powerful army on earth so that not even one remained.  No victory could ever be so complete as God’s victory.  Even if the Israelites had been superbly equipped and led, they could not have won so completely as God did, while the Israelites stood still and believed.  They were weak, but God was strong.

Standing and believing is the real theme behind the armor of God that St. Paul is speaking about too.  You are to put on this armor so that you can stand against the scheming and lies of the devil, the world, and our sinful nature.  We are not fighting against flesh and blood.  We are fighting against the powers and authorities that wish to define our life for us and tell us what our life is all about.  What do these spirits say about life?  They say that it is to be lived for pleasure, or for human progress, or to make the world a better place.  They say that God doesn’t exist or that he didn’t create anything.  Everything is a product of random chance.  The Bible is not trustworthy.  It is just a collection of myths and legends.  When you die, that’s going to be it.  There is no final judgment.  There is no resurrection from the dead.  These are all intellectual lies. 

There are also lies about our passions and desires.  The lying spirits will say that you can’t keep fighting your sinful urges forever.  You might as well give in to them and embrace them.  You can’t live with your ungrateful and unloving spouse forever.  You might as well divorce.  Whatever it is that you want, just give up, fall down, worship the devil, and happiness shall be yours.

Then there are the spiritual temptations.  Can’t you see how you have worshipped the devil over and over again?  How can you think that there can be salvation for you?  People like you, with your history, and with your desires, don’t belong in church.  Or perhaps it is the opposite: People like you are the exact ones who belong in church.  You are a respectable citizen.  You deserve to be at the Lord’s table, because you are not one of those low-life losers who can’t get their life together.

If you will only examine your own hearts and heads and pay attention to the steady diet of spiritual food that is fed to you by your television, you know that I could go on and on and on with this stuff.  If one thing doesn’t work, then the spirits and authorities will try something else.  Everything is geared towards you no longer standing and believing, but forsaking God and making a life for yourself.  Standing and believing is no mean feat.  In fact, without the constant aid of the Holy Spirit no one can stand, and unless he would pick us up when we have fallen, there would be no hope for any of us.

The life-and-death character of the struggle for faith is the reason why St. Paul uses the picture of a soldier to speak of the Christian life.  We might think that monsters or murderers or some other frightening thing is what is to be feared above all else, but that is not true.  Such things might be able to kill the body, but they cannot bring about damnation.  What brings about damnation are lies, because only lies can take away the truth that we have in Jesus Christ, whom we hold to by faith.  The armor of God, therefore, is all directed against the lies that seek to dethrone Jesus in the heart. 

The belt of truth renounces the selfishness and doubt that cause us to lie.  The breastplate of righteousness is the righteousness of Christ that encases the heart and is not dependent upon our own works.  The Gospel of peace makes us light and nimble, so that we can maneuver with a good conscience while we stand against the lying spirits.  The shield of faith extinguishes the fiery darts of the devil that would otherwise pierce us through and kill us.  We could never stand and believe on God if we entertained the doubts that are sown in us by the devil, the world, and our sinful nature.  The helmet of salvation encases the head and is to direct the mind.  The story of Jesus and his salvation is to direct all our thoughts and understandings, and not all the other stuff that the world cares about.  The sword of the Spirit is the Word of God.  This is the only offensive weapon.  It opposes those spirits that say otherwise about life, about God, about ourselves, and in what we should hope.

And so you can see that this picture of the well equipped soldier is in harmony with the rest of Scripture.  The saints are saved by faith.  Their strength does not consist in themselves—in their own thoughts, emotion, or willpower.  Their strength consists of the truth of God and his action on our behalf.  And so it seems to me that when we put in mind the picture that St. Paul paints for us, we shouldn’t think of a big burly man who is ready to conquer everybody in his path.  We should put in mind a weakling, or a woman, or a child, or a baby.  God’s enemies are always underestimating his people, and why shouldn’t they?  They don’t look like much on the outside.  The boy David did not look like much to the giant Goliath.  But Christians believe in Jesus, and he fights for them.  The person in the armor of God is weak, but the armor itself is as strong as God himself.  It is the truth.  The devil and all other liars can only gain the victory over us if we are moved from this truth. 

“Stand, therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”

181014 Sermon on Matthew 22:1-14, October 14, 2018 (Trinity 20)

181014 Sermon on Matthew 22:1-14, October 14, 2018 (Trinity 20)

The history of the world is the history of the Gospel.  After the fall into sin God promised salvation by the Messiah who would be born of the woman.  Ever since that time God has continued to preach the Gospel through the testimony of his Christians, and that has always provoked a response.  This is something that we also see from the beginning.  Adam and Eve believed and lived by their faith.  But their first born, Cain, did not believe and this provoked him into murdering his brother Abel.  The very first man born after the fall into sin was a murderer, and the reason why he murdered is because he couldn’t stand to see the image of Christ in his brother.

This is a story that continues on from that point to the present day.  It is very important that we learn from the Bible about the reactions the Gospel will produce, because the Bible teaches very differently than what most people believe.  The Bible clearly shows that the Gospel will bring division and trouble as it separates the believers from the unbelievers.  When Jesus sends out the twelve to preach the Gospel to the towns of Judea he says to them, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth.  I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.  For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.”  The most intimate ties that we know of by nature are the bonds of family.  But there are bonds that are supernatural and greater than the bonds of family: the bonds of belief and unbelief—the bond to Christ on the one hand and the bond to everything else that is not Christ on the other.

The Bible speaks of these two different groups or ways of living as being opposites.  There is the way of life and the way of death.  There is darkness and there is life.  There is righteousness and there is sin.  There is salvation and there is damnation.  In all of these things there is no middle ground.  Something is either one thing or the other.  Either you are dining in the banquet hall or you are in the darkness outside where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

This kind of talk makes people nervous because it raises the stakes of what might otherwise be considered something optional.  Most people think that the Gospel invitation is something a person can either take or leave and it won’t make too much difference either way.  Life will go on, as they say, whether a person becomes a Christian or not.  The importance of Christ’s redemption is never clear to those who remain unbelievers until the end of their lives and the end of the world.  In the meantime they can eat and drink, buy and sell, marry and be given in marriage.

But this injustice cannot go on forever.  It must come to a stop either through repentance in this life or eternal confinement in hell in the next.  God does not take delight in the death of the wicked, but desires that all people be saved, and so he sends out his messengers with the Gospel as we heard about in Jesus’s parable today. 

In Jesus’s parable the messengers are entrusted with the invitation to the King’s wedding feast for his Son.  The King is God the Father.  The Son is Jesus Christ.  The Holy Spirit is in words of the messengers’ invitation to the wedding feast.  The sacrifice for sin that Jesus has brought about is indicated by the slaughtering of the oxen and fattened calves for the feast of victory.  There is an abundance for the people to enjoy. 

And this kind of language is not just parabolical and symbolic.  Christ says in another place that whoever eats his flesh and drinks his blood has eternal life.  Eat and drink while you believe his promise and you will live have exactly what the words say.  Who wouldn’t want good food?  Who wouldn’t want eternal life?  The message that is given in the Gospel is not a summons to a concentration camp or forced labor.  It is an invitation to leisure.  God says, “Put aside the work you do, so that I may do my work in you.”

But how is it received?  Most people respond with a polite, “No, thank you.”  They have better stuff to do.  Their joy is in their business or recreation.  They’d rather be active and busy in whatever it is that they enjoy so that the time flies by as they rush onward towards their death.  They much prefer that to sitting in a pew, being the guest of the king, eating and drinking.  And so they might say all kinds of things to themselves. 

They might say, “Well, I don’t need to go to Church to be a Christian.  I can go there when it is more convenient.  I’ll skip this invitation, but maybe next time.  I’m a supporter of the King and all his banquets, but I don't want to be fanatical about it.  It’s not like these banquets are the only thing that matter.  Maybe if these banquets were a bit more lively, I’d be more interested.  As it is, they can’t really compete with the various alternatives for my attention.” 

Some of this stuff that people say to themselves has a little bit of truth to it, but really they are lies.  The little bit of truth that is mixed in with it only makes the lies that much more powerful.  It makes their justification to themselves stronger for doing what Jesus says of those who received the invitation to the banquet in his parable: “But they paid no attention and went off, one to his farm, another to his business.”

But let’s say that the messengers are really insistent.  They forcefully press upon their hearers that Jesus is exalted above all things and that this banquet is more important than money or pleasures or cherished memories.  And that those who love father and mother, son or daughter, husband or wife more than they love Jesus are not worthy of him.  If the messengers insist on these words of Jesus, then you can be sure that the claws and the fangs will come out.  The messengers are attacked in such a way that is essentially no different than the way that Cain attacked Abel.  They will say all kinds of evil against the messengers falsely, but a lot of their lies will have a little bit of truth mixed in with them to make the lies especially powerful.  The power of the lies will make it so that their denunciation of the messengers and perhaps even their deaths seem completely justifiable.  Dying for confessing Christ is not unusual, as we learn in the Scriptures, even if for the time being the wrath of unbelievers does not go to such great lengths among us.

And realize that these messengers are not just pastors.  It is not just pastors who must bear the cross.  These messengers can be any Christian who boldly speaks the Gospel message.  St. Stephen, the first martyr after Pentecost, was not a pastor.  But when he told the Jews that they were stiff necked, uncircumcised in heart, and always resisting the Holy Spirit, they rushed upon him and stoned him.

But being treated shamefully and killed can easily be avoided, if that is what a person wants to do.  All that is necessary is to say, “To each their own.  You do what you want to do, and I’ll do what I want to do.”  If Stephen had not called the Jews stiff-necked, uncircumcised in heart, and always resisting the Holy Spirit, then they would have just paid no attention to him and went off to their farms or businesses.  Because we do not want to suffer, it is an incredibly strong temptation for Christians to validate sinners in their sins and make peace with them.  Insisting on Jesus’s words makes those who stubbornly fight against those words angry.  But we must resist the temptation.  Never be ashamed of God’s Word.  Never be ashamed of the Gospel.  It is the power of salvation to all who believe it. 

If we become ashamed of the Gospel then we simply won’t proclaim it anymore—at least not in its fullness, which is always divisive.  And if this being ashamed of Jesus and his words is not turned back, then it will result in the loss of the Gospel altogether.  It will just move on to another people, which is what happens to the Jews.  The Gospel moved on to the Gentiles—those who are not descendants of Abraham.

Jesus’s parable prophesies how this happens.  The king became angry with the way that his messengers were shamefully treated and killed.  God loves his Christians.  He loves those who love him and his Gospel more than they love the flattering lips of unbelievers.  When his Christians are insulted and belittled and called names and run out of families, towns, and congregations, it makes him angry.  When the Jews refused Jesus as his eternally begotten Son and the Messiah and killed him on the cross, this provoked God’s wrath.  And when they still would not repent with the preaching of the Christians and the apostles, but imprisoned and killed them instead, he had had enough.  He sent the Roman army to destroy Jerusalem and the temple in 70 A.D.  This corresponds to the words of the parable, “The king was angry, and he sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.”

From that time forward he no longer blessed his people with the preaching of the Gospel as he had previously.  Instead, he sent his messengers and the Holy Spirit to the Gentiles, so that they may believe and become his people.  These people formerly worshipped the devil and his demons.  They knew nothing of the true God and the life of the world to come.  They were not the proper people to be invited to the wedding feast—the proper people who should have been there were the descendants of Abraham. 

But God is not a respecter of persons or families or heritages or congregations or synods or denominations.  Those who receive his invitation with glad hearts will be blessed in this life and the next, whether they are rich or poor or upstanding citizens or prostitutes, tax collectors, and drug users.  But those who refuse him cannot be ultimately blessed even though they might enjoy many blessings from God in this life and be quite happy and respectable in the eyes of their peers.  But we do not live forever.  And one day we will all meet the king, and he shall inspect us.  If we are not justified before him then we will be tied hand and foot and cast into the outer darkness. 

It does not matter if you are a Missouri Synod Lutheran or a Roman Catholic or a Southern Baptist.  A person might be outwardly associated with whatever sort of group, but what matters is what you say of the Christ.  He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.  All who trust in him will not be put to shame, but whoever loves and trusts in whatever else besides him will be condemned, even if they should have the most perfect churchly credentials outwardly.  God looks to the heart, not to the outward appearance or membership in any Church body.  The Holy Christian Church is a fellowship of believers in Christ, no matter where they come from or who they are.

And so today, no matter who you are or where you come from, so long as you are hearing the words, you can be sure that you have the invitation to the King’s Son’s wedding feast: “Come!  All things are prepared. Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, eat Christ’s flesh and drink Christ’s blood for the forgiveness of all your sins.”  Now we are living in the time of grace.  While we live in the time of grace all may repent of their sins, believe on Christ, and be saved.  You can see this with the main thrust of Jesus’s parable: the King is good and generous, the feast is rich, no merit or worthiness is required for the invitation.

But the parable also warns us against offending God with our sins and coldness and resistance to the wooing work of the Holy Spirit.  This is not an optional invitation that you can safely despise with your preference for other gods.  God will move on with his grace.

And so, as God says in our Old Testament reading, “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 God explicitly speaks to those who are wicked and unrighteous.  He is speaking to sinners.  He is speaking to you, no matter what it is that you have ever done.  Return to the Lord, and he will have compassion.  Return to our God, and he will abundantly pardon.  Come to the wedding feast.

181007 Sermon on Ephesians 4:17-32, October 7, 2018 (Trinity 19)

181007 Sermon on Ephesians 4:17-32, October 7, 2018 (Trinity 19)

There are two groups in the world: those who are God’s people and those who are not.  All of history has this theme and the Bible testifies to it.  What is particularly important for understanding the Bible is the way that God chose Abraham and his descendants to be his people, and that he would be their God.  Abraham believed this promise from God and it was credited to him as righteousness.  Abraham’s descendants, Isaac, Jacob, and Jacob’s twelve sons, believed this promise they too were justified by faith.  And so it went generation after generation.

The Bible records the dealings that God had with these people and whether they believed in him or not.  Because of the powerful enemies against faith, namely, the devil, the world, and our sinful flesh, the faith of God’s people is never as stable and strong as we might like it to be, and this is attested to in the Bible.  And so there are some of God’s people who defect from God and his promises.  They are deceived and tempted and misled.  They end up putting their trust in things besides the one true God for the blessing and happiness.  And in God’s wisdom, which is unsearchable, he does not restore them to the true faith.  They are cut off and lost.  They once were believers, but they are no more.  They once were God’s own, distinct from all other people, but that is no more.

There are a couple exceptional examples of this fall from faith that are recorded for us in the Bible.  The first is the fall of the northern kingdom called Israel.  They continually put God to the test with their disobedience and idolatry.  God was long suffering towards them and sent them many prophets to turn them to the right way, but they would not be turned.  They loved their dishonest, proud, and lustful practices too much.  They did not repent.  Finally God quit sending prophets to them and sent the Assyrian army instead.  Then the people of the northern kingdom were scattered hither and yon and they simply melted into the mentality and beliefs of the people around them.

The other great example of God cutting of his people is what happened with the Jews in their rejection of Christ.  From the very beginning God promised to send his beloved Son as the Messiah who would redeem his creatures who had become sinners.  In the fullness of time he sent this Son, born of the woman, the Virgin Mary, who redeemed all the people of the world.  But with the exception of a very few the Jews did not recognize the true Christ and believe in him.  In fact, it was the Jews—descendants of Abraham and God’s own beloved people whom he cherished above all other people—who rejected Christ and would not rest until he was put to death on the cross. 

Even though they tortured and murdered his Son, God was still long-suffering towards them.  He sent Christ’s disciples to testify to them.  He announced the forgiveness of sins, purchased with Jesus’s blood, that was for them and for their children.  Again, a few were converted by this promise of God’s favor, but most were not.  Instead they mocked and gossiped and lied about those who believed in Christ.  They drove them out of their jobs and out of their towns and tried to extinguish all knowledge of Christ and his redemption.  They killed ordinary Christians, but they especially targeted those gifts of God whom God had given who were able to testify publicly.  They killed the public preachers and the apostles.

There are no worse sins than these sins—when God’s Word is derailed and silenced so that people’s faith is overturned—and so God’s wrath was provoked.  He quit sending his messengers to the Jews and sent the Roman army instead.  The people who would receive God’s promises now would be those who previously were not his people: the Gentiles. 

The Gentiles are all those people who are not descendants of Abraham, who are not Jews.  Because God had not made himself known to them, they couldn’t believe in him.  They believed in themselves and in other things instead.  But because the proper people of God—the Jews—rejected God’s invitation, God went out into the highways and byways and beat the bushes.  He took in the lame, the crippled, and the blind instead of the Jews who are really the princes and princesses of the human race.  The Jews became darkened in their understanding, as they are to this very day, while a great light dawned upon the Gentiles, so that they learned of the only true God: The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. 

Instead of living for pleasure or glory or human progress, as they previously lived, the converted Gentiles now lived with the hope of heaven opening upon them and being visited by angels as Jacob was in our Old Testament.  They learned of the great and awesome destiny of the human race, that we should be brought into the presence of Almighty God and have fellowship with him—something that is totally impossible except through the holy precious blood, and the innocent suffering and death of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Coming into God’s presence apart from Christ is to come before him with our defiling sins and it means wrath and hell.  But in Christ we are acceptable and holy and righteous, only because Jesus is these things and he has given us this, his standing before God, through his Word and Sacraments. 

No eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the imagination of the heart of Man the greatness and splendor of being before almighty God.  The most awesome forces of nature such as tornados and tsunamis and but a puff of wind and a splash of water compared to the unlimited power and glory everybody will experience when they come before God, but those who had lived and believed in Christ will not be afraid.  Those who have worshipped themselves and idols and demons and the devil, on the other hand, will wish that the mountains would fall upon them.  They would prefer that to seeing God’s glory and suddenly realizing that they foolishly lived in rebellion against him.  It is no minor thing to have the Gospel, to know the true destiny of our human existence, to escape the wrath that is about to be revealed, and to be safe in God instead.  Salvation moving from the Jews to the Gentiles is one of the most dramatic moments in the history of the world.

St. Paul is very aware of how monumental this change has been.  God’s rejection of the descendants of Abraham so that they are lost in their futile, sinful thoughts, is very raw and painful to him.  In one place he says that if it were possible he wished that he could be condemned if only his fellow Jews would repent and believe in Jesus.  By their unbelief the Jews have become Gentiles even though they are descendants of Abraham by blood, while the Gentiles, who are not descendants of Abraham by blood, have become his true sons and daughters, because they, like Abraham, believe in God and his promises and are justified by faith.  God is not a respecter of persons or of skin color or of nationalities.

Therefore, we, who are Gentiles by blood, must be aware that we can be rejected just as the Jews and Israelites were rejected before us.  They did not have some kind of monopoly on God and his promises, and neither do we.  If we cease to love God and his glory bringing Gospel, then it isn’t going to stay around. 

Therefore, the messages of the prophets to the wayward people of God are provoking his wrath are especially applicable to us because we are in a very similar situation.  The message of these prophets is very consistent: “Repent.  Turn aside from the ways of the unbelievers around you.  Take to heart what God says both with his threats of punishment and his promises of restoration after the punishment.  Do not persecute those who speak for the truth and support the truth, like the unbelieving world.  Support them and be friends with them, even though what they say and believe is unpopular and it might mean that your family, friends, and neighbors might look at you funny or say mean things about you.  Otherwise you and your children will relapse into the idolatry that is so natural for us.”

St. Paul, in our Epistle reading, is speaking along these lines.  He is addressing people who were formerly Gentile unbelievers.  They used to not know the triune God, his will, and his promises.  Instead they lived for this world only.  They only cared about themselves and their own happiness.  They did not take seriously the final judgment of the living and the dead and the life of the world to come.  St. Paul knows how easy it would be for such people to relapse into their former worldview and way of living.

And so he says, “Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds.  They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart.  They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.”

What you see in St. Paul’s characterization of the Gentiles is that they are oriented to this world instead of being otherworldly.  Unbelievers do not want to miss out on any pleasure and so they will do whatever is necessary to get ahead in life.  This frenzied fight for possessions is futile, though, as St. Paul says.  They are ignorant that all things that we acquire and accomplish in this life must be left behind and will be destroyed and that we will each be judged before God.  All is vanity and a chasing after the wind. 

Instead of being on earth, our treasures are to be in heaven, where rust and moth do not destroy and thieves cannot break in and steal.  Our acts of righteousness and kindness and forgiveness are these treasures.  Jesus says that even if we should give a cup of water to a child in Jesus’s name, as his disciple, that we shall not lose our reward.  The true incorruptible treasures are the gifts of the Holy Spirit through which we can remain faithful and love our neighbor selflessly.  The gifts the Holy Spirit gives in the lives of his Christians are precious to God and glorify Christ.  These deeds will remain, even though everything else is futile and will melt as it burns.

And so in our reading St. Paul is turning these Christians away from the corrupt riches of this world to the incorruptible riches of the life of the world to come.  We won’t talk about everything that St. Paul says in detail, but we’ll just look at a few things that give us the big picture.  Instead of the deceitfulness and scheming and lying of the old, unbelieving life, we are to be plain and honest.  You know very well the way that we hide things or distort or manipulate in order to get what we want.  Christians are not to be that way, even if being plain spoken and open might seem to mean that we are going to miss out financially or we might lose the friendship of those who are rebuked for their wickedness.

St. Paul says that we should do honest work.  And why?  So that we can become filthy stinking rich, retire, and let everybody else serve us?  No, but so that we might have something to give to the one who is in need.  You do not need to be rich in this life.  It is better to use your money to help others.  There will be no money or possessions that we can take with us into eternal life, but Jesus does seem to indicate that our deeds will be remembered on Judgement Day and that they will either vindicate us or condemn us.  The sheep are accepted and the goats are rejected based on what they did to the least of Jesus’s brothers.  What good is it to have all the money in the world when you will without doubt lose it all in the end?

St. Paul also says, “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all meanness.”  Bitterness, anger, and the seeking after revenge is being this-worldly instead of otherworldly.  Being this-worldly makes people eager to punish those who might mistreat us, as though there will not be a final judgment or that God doesn’t punish and avenge.  Unless God has given you the job of punishing evil by making you a parent or a judge or a policeman, you must turn all things over to God.  God is a much better judge than we are, and the only thing that all our anger and bitterness is able to accomplish is to give place for the devil to eat away at us like a cancer.

In summary, we can see from St. Paul’s words is that there is a big difference between the people of God and the Gentiles.  We must not think that Christians are just like everybody else, except that they happen to also believe that Jesus exists and that what the Bible records about him is true.  Believing that Jesus is exists and that he has redeemed all people through his death on the cross and justified all people by his resurrection from the dead, is certainly what makes a person a Christian, but that is not the end of the story.  There is a new life in Christ that is different than the old life that we have inherited from the first Adam.  Being a Christian is putting off these old things more and more and being clothed in Christ more and more.  Living that way is an anticipation of the end when all the old and corrupt things will be in hell and only the new and incorruptable will remain.  Be wise, therefore, and embrace the future that God has revealed to you, lest you lose it and revert back to being a Gentile.