190825 Sermon on Jeremiah 7:1-11 Romans 9:30-10:4 Luke 19:41-48 (Trinity 10), August 25, 2019

190825 Sermon on Jeremiah 7:1-11 Romans 9:30-10:4 Luke 19:41-48 (Trinity 10), August 25, 2019

Wherever the Word of God is, there is a paradise, an oasis in the desert. This is because the Word of God brings to us the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ. If ever we have missed a friend, if ever we have loved a child, then let that serve as the way to start to measure the goodness of being together with Jesus. Knowing God as our friend and champion is the highest and best thing that can possibly be hoped for.

But we must also watch our step here. On the other hand, knowing God as our enemy is the most terrifying and awful thing that anybody can experience. So let’s not paint God as an impotent, doting grandma. There is a burning and consuming fire in the relations between God and man. This fire is inspiring, enlivening, and exhilarating for those who believe in his mercy. But to those who do not know him this fire is hellish.

How can we know and believe in the God of mercy? It is the Word of God. Wherever the Word of God is, there is a paradise, an oasis in the desert.

Those who have the Word of God, therefore, are so richly blessed that no comparison can do it justice. Suppose that you don’t own just a few hundred acres of land, or ten thousand acres of land, let’s say that you own the whole world. Everybody has to pay you rent. Let’s say that you are the devil himself, the prince of this world!

That’s not good enough. You have something infinitely more with the baptism with which you have been baptized. That baptism has communicated to you God himself. God’s own child, say it gladly, you are baptized into Christ. The fiery yet good relationship with the eternal Creator is yours through this Word of God that has been poured onto your head—poured onto your head, I say, together with the water, lest you think that it couldn’t be for you, but has to be for somebody else.

What happens, though, when we are in this paradise of possessing the Word of God and we start to be disobedient to him? We know what happened to Adam and Eve when they were disobedient to God in their paradise. Adam and Eve’s sin changed everything. Their minds were darkened and they were hostile to God. But God sought them out. God is longsuffering, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. He does not take delight in the death of the sinner, but desires that all should reach repentance. That is what he did with Adam and Eve. Because God came to them with his message, they turned from their sin and believed in the promise of the Messiah.

That is how it usually is. To those who have God’s Word, but are faltering, God will send yet more messengers of his Word. The messengers will reprove, rebuke, and exhort the wayward people so that they may turn from their evil ways. If God is gracious he might also send along some plagues to give that Word impressive power, for people often will not be moved by words alone. It is only when their checkbook or their body or their family has been touched with disaster that they will sober up.

Where things turn out well the people will put on sackcloth and ashes. They will call a sacred assembly with all the people—young and old, even those who have just gotten married and are supposed to be going on their honeymoon. Together the people will call upon God to have mercy on them, which always brings God to his knees. He turns from his disaster and relents. Then the people are blessed with God’s Word again for a season and a time. That is when things turn out well.

When things do not turn out well people reject the messenger together with the message and the one who has sent it. The particulars of what people might do is extremely variable. They might say that the messenger is not understanding God’s Word correctly. They might say that times have changed. Who does the messenger think he or she is? I say he or she because the messenger doesn’t have to be a pastor. It could be Mom or Dad. It could be a member of the congregation rightly contending against the pastor with the truth of God’s Word. It is not just pastors who can be the messengers of God’s truth. It can and it should also be you.

Now if the messenger is insistent and the hearer is stubborn then the tension will build. It’s like the tectonic plates that get stuck together for a time. But eventually something gives and you have an earthquake. So it is also when God is contending with his people through whatever messenger or messengers he has been sending them. If they resist, the pressure builds, until something happens.  

When the Word of God is opposed, there will be violence and trouble. Controversies! Look at all the controversies in the Old and New Testaments. Violence and trouble are bad. Nobody wants them. But there is one thing that is still worse than violence and trouble—it is the stillness that can come when God is totally fed up. He quits sending messengers. He leaves the people be. He says, “He who is a sinner, let him be a sinner still.” Have it your way. The Word of God, if it remains at all, no longer works towards the softening of people’s hearts, but it works for the hardening of people’s hearts. The more the people hear it, the worse they become. They’d be better off not hearing it at all.

In the end, God will move on to a different people. God is going to have his banquet. We know that from the parable where the master of the house says, “Go out and bring in the lame and blind. Go out and bring in the losers.” And the servants say to him, “We’ve already done that and there is still room.” And so the master says to them, “Go out into highways and byways. Beat the bushes. Force them to come in!” Wherever the Word of God is, there is a paradise, and oasis in the desert. There is where Jesus is, and being together with God in his fiery glory, knowing that he is well pleased with you, is the best thing that can ever happen to anybody. God desires this and so he is going to make it happen. If one people won’t suffer him to be among them anymore, then he will move on to others.

What we have laid out here today is what our scripture readings teach. From the time of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the Jews were the possessors of God’s Word. They lived in paradise, the oasis in the desert. They were the only people who knew the one true God. But they were disobedient to the Lord. They were greedy and lied. They turned the Church into a worldly institution—a goose that laid golden eggs for the clergy. So long as people were coming to the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, then all was well. God had to bless them—it was part of their rules. They honored God with their lips, but their hearts were far from him. They were much more concerned with their day to day living. Their great ambition was not to meet God. It was not to be filled with love for God and for their neighbor. They did not want God to be glorified. They wanted to be glorified.

The outward trappings of the Word of God were still around while this rebellion of the heart took place. They were still having worship services and teaching and preaching. But the teachers wouldn’t tackle real topics. They played it safe. If ever any preacher did take a bite into real life with his message from God, it was dismissed. The people’s hopes and dreams were on their technology and their diplomacy and the fact that they were the greatest nation and the greatest people on earth. Because they had the Word of God it should have produced faith and the fruits of faith, but all that was coming up was thorns and thistles—no grapes or figs.

And so God sent one last great calamity to this people to wake them up from their stupor. He destroyed Jerusalem in Jeremiah’s time, almost 600 years before Christ was born. Then he destroyed it again about 70 years after Jesus was born. Both times the suffering and sadness was beyond our ability to describe it. No doubt, with these extreme measures, a few finally repented and asked Jesus to remember them, like the thief on the cross asked Jesus to remember him when he came into his kingdom. Today, these folks are with Jesus in paradise. But the second time was different than the first time God destroyed Jerusalem. After the second time, the Holy Spirit moved on to another people..

St. Paul speaks of this in our Epistle reading. The Jews rejected Jesus. They stumbled over the stone of offence. They did not believe that the righteousness of God is in Christ and him crucified. Instead they thought that it could be brought about by their own efforts. But this has never been the hope of God’s people. God’s people have always been waiting for the fulfillment of the promise in the Garden of Eden—that we should be redeemed from the serpent by the seed of the woman. That woman was the virgin Mary. Her seed is our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the one who makes for forgiveness and peace, but this was hidden from the eyes of the Jews. It was hidden because God himself hardened their hearts which they had already hardened for themselves.

Therefore, now God’s light and his truth was going to go to the other nations of the world—the Gentiles—those who are not the blood descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. To them the Word of God was given and paradises sprang up wherever the Gospel was preached. Those who had been dead and lost in their trespasses and sins became aware of their terrible plight under their false gods, who can offer no real hope (only fake hope), and the true God was held out to them. New ambitions were formed—new hope and new dreams. Now these Gentiles wanted to see Jesus. They wanted to be with him. They wanted to be healed and made whole. They prayed, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from Thy presence and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation and uphold me with Thy free Spirit.”

But just as God was with his Old Testament people, so also he is with his New Testament people. There are vast sections of the globe that were once populated by devout and energetic Christians. The Word of God provided lush, green pastures. But now in these same places there are no Christians to be found. North Africa and the Middle East used to be Christian. Now it is Muslim. Europe used to be Christian. Now it is unbelieving. Many believers in Christ, our ancestors, traveled from Europe to America. How do things stand with us? What is in our heart? What are our hopes and dreams? What are we teaching our children and our grandchildren?

God most certainly would be within his rights to take our paradise away from us because of our thanklessness and our hankering after false gods. If we will not learn and change from the preaching of God’s Word, then he will remove his grace entirely just like he did with his beloved Jews. It may be that the religious trappings remain, the way it is with some of the Jews to this very day, but the trappings will not be effective. They will be like the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, because the Gospel will not be received by faith. The Jews still have the Scriptures, but without the Holy Spirit’s blessing they cannot see or believe the Gospel.

But the Scriptures are consistent in the message that God gives to his wayward people. So long as the message is still going out for repentance, there is still hope. Jesus says, “Work while it is day before the night comes, when no one can work.” We are still in the time of grace. We can still go to the sellers to get oil for our lamps. We can still hate the lives that we have been leading and ask Jesus to have mercy on us—to heal our blindness, to open our ears, to unleash our tongue that it may sing God’s praises. Contrary to what we might think, when we are weak and filthy and impotent in our own eyes, that is precisely when we are strong, for then Christ is our strength. Christ is our strength, I say, and let me tell you, he is pretty strong.

But if we will just continue to go on our merry way and won’t change, then the Word of God is going to fall silent among us. God is already showing us how he will move on to another people who will actually listen to him, since we have not. Let the example of the Jews and of Jerusalem be a warning to us. Let us not go on carelessly while our paradise is going away and our oasis is drying up.

190818 Sermon on 1 Corinthians 10:6-13 (Trinity 9), August 18, 2019

190818 Sermon on 1 Corinthians 10:6-13 (Trinity 9), August 18, 2019

St. Paul is doing something important with the Bible in our Epistle reading that we should learn from. He is taking the history that was recorded by Moses in the first five books of the Bible and he is applying it to the Corinthians even though they live in a different time, different place, and are even of a different people—for most of the Corinthians were Gentiles, that is, not descendants of Abraham. After recounting what happened with the Israelites, St. Paul says, “Now these things that are recorded in the Scriptures took place as types or as examples, so that we do not desire evil the way that they did.” And then a few verses later: “All these things that were happening to them had meaning as examples or as types. They were written down to warn us, to whom the end of the ages has come.” What St. Paul is saying here is that the history of Israel continues to be relevant and useful for the present day, because it reveals the way that God typically acts.

It is quite common for people to neglect history and think that it is some kind of dessert that only nerds like to consume. And this might be true, depending on what you mean by the word “history.” History is often thought of as memorizing a bunch of facts—names, dates, and events. Here’s an example of such history: “The Duke of Wellington defeated Napoleon in the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.” That is history, and even somewhat important history, but you could live a long and satisfying life without knowing such a fact as well as the countless others that are like it.

Something similar can happen with the Bible and its history. The useful knowledge of the Bible does not consist in the bare accumulation of names, dates, and events. This is often referred to as trivia, and that’s a good name for it, because such knowledge, on its own, is trivial. The knowledge of these facts might make a person competent for the Jeopardy game show or for quizzes on facebook, but this will not do them much spiritual good. The knowledge of history that is relevant and useful and is even indispensable for the health of God’s people is different than just the bare facts. It is understanding the way that God has dealt with people over the centuries, how he has blessed them and cursed them, and then applying this also to ourselves.

This is exactly the kind of thing that St. Paul is doing in this letter to the Corinthians. He is pointing to the people of Israel who were so freshly delivered out of Egypt. In the verses prior to our reading he goes through the blessings that God blessed them with. They were under the cloud of God’s glory, they passed through the Red Sea, they all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink. They drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them and that Rock was Christ. They were all richly blessed by God. But they ended up being cursed by God because of their sins as well. That is what you heard in our reading today. The wilderness was covered with the dead bodies of those who rebelled against God in many and various ways.

“Now,” St. Paul says, “apply this to yourselves.” What God did to them, God has also done to us. God has blessed us by baptizing us into Christ instead of being baptized into Moses. He has fed us with spiritual food and spiritual drink. Instead of manna, quail, and water from the rock, our spiritual food and drink are the very body and true blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is how God has blessed us—even above and beyond what he did through Moses. But just as God brought catastrophe upon the disobedient Israelites, so also he will bring it upon us if we live in rebellion against him like the Israelites lived in rebellion. God dealt with his people of old the way that as we read about in the Scriptures. God will deal with us along those same lines, for he is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Understanding that the history of the Bible is relevant and useful to us today because we can learn from it how God will bless us and curse us, gives us a particular way of looking at our life that is sometimes called a worldview. Everybody has a worldview, because everybody has beliefs about how life is going to go or how it should go. When a person wakes up in the morning he has an idea of what is going to happen during that day because he believes that things typically take a certain course. Let’s look at a small example of such thinking. A man gets up in the morning. If he goes to work like he is supposed to, then things will go like they normally do. If he doesn’t show up, then he’s going to get in trouble. But if he calls into work and says that he is sick, then things will be fine. But if he is spotted going around town when he is supposed to be sick, then he might have to deal with that when he comes back into work. This shows a few of the assumptions that we have for how we think life will go. There are countless others.

Now think about the Israelites. These people were not so different from us. They had assumptions about how things were supposed to go. So let’s put ourselves in their shoes. Let’s say that we have a vast sea on one side of us, and a huge military that is armed to the teeth on the other who are looking forward to slaughtering us. If we see the world with the way we think that things normally go, then we foresee that we are dead. We can’t go into the sea or we will drown. We can’t run away. The Egyptian army is well equipped with chariots to overtake anybody running on foot. The worldview that does not include God’s influence is going to say that they have made a horrible mistake. They should have remained as slaves under Pharaoh. You know how that turns out though. God unzips the Red Sea, dries out the ground, and makes it into a highway. Even with all our technology we couldn’t do that.

But that’s not the end of the story. Very soon after they’ve been baptized in the Red Sea the Israelites start to find that their canteens are empty. If you are in the middle of the desert, where are you going to find water? And not just a little water, but enough to quench the thirst of hundreds of thousands of people plus all their livestock? The worldview that only thinks of the way that things normally go without any reference to God is going to say that they are doomed. They won’t survive a week. They’ve made a horrible mistake. They should have remained as slaves under Pharaoh. Again, you know how this goes. God made water come out of a rock. I could do the same thing with all the other difficulties that the Israelites encountered in that wild, deserted place, but I think you’ve got the idea.

But it was not just with the necessities of life—those times when the Israelites needed a miracle—that the Israelites failed to consider God as having anything to do with how their day might go. They also did this when they were tempted and fell into sin. It is astounding that the Israelites constructed a golden calf to worship only a few weeks after God had commanded them not to make any idols. Maybe they did that because everybody else did that when they worshipped their God, and they get along fine, so why couldn’t they? Or when they started to hang out with their new friends, the Moabite people, and they had some titillating practices that were oh-so-enjoyable, they thought they might join in on the fun. What could happen to them, after all? But what happened is that 23,000 of them got sick and died in one day.

You can see that the Israelites were unbelieving altogether. They were unbelieving as far as God’s blessings were concerned. They were also unbelieving as far as God’s punishments were concerned. They didn’t think God would help them when they needed help. They didn’t believe that God would punish them when they broke his commandments. Their hearts were hard. They were worse than animals. When I start to walk out towards the barn in the morning my cattle and pigs do not have to be prodded and beaten to come into the barn. They book it, as fast as their legs can carry them. They know that I’m going to feed them. Or when my dog barks, and he knows that I don’t like him barking, and I give him just a look, he hushes up.

But the Israelites had to be led with bit and bridle the whole way along. They would not trust in God’s help, but were always rebelling against God and against Moses. Over and over again they are ready to stone Moses and head back to Pharaoh, their old lord, whom God had redeemed them from. And before they would quit breaking God’s commandments they had to be punished brutally. They wouldn’t stop until they were terrified by disease or by serpents or some other dreadful thing. David says in his psalm, “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” That is what the Israelites were saying in their hearts, even though, if they were asked, they most certainly would have said with their mouths that God exists.

So it is also with us, for this godlessness is built right into our natural selves. Every time that you wake up in the morning and plunge into your day without giving a thought to God, calling upon his name, you are doing the very same thing that the Israelites were doing. Every time you believe that your day and your life has to go a certain way, because that’s just the way that things typically go, you are being godless. Every time you break God’s commandments you are inevitably saying that God does not exist or that he doesn’t care or that he won’t punish me. I can just go on doing what I’m doing.

But it’s even worse than all this. Even having the thoughts that I’ve mentioned is a giant step in the right direction. The most natural state for fallen man is to live in rebellion against God and to never even have the thought of that rebellion come to mind. That is when the devil really has us in his iron grip. If we are waking up, going about our business, going home, watching TV, going to bed, and then doing it all over again the next day—all the while not even giving a thought to God, his blessings, or his curses—that is when we are totally spiritually dead.

But being spiritually dead does have this one nice side effect, so far as our life in this world is concerned. It means that we do not have to be afraid of God. Sinning without fear is oh-so-much-better than sinning with the fear of God’s punishment. The devil knows this. He’s no dummy. Just like I can trick my cattle and hogs with feed to go onto the trailer that will haul them to the butcher, so also the devil knows how to lure us with our stupidity to our doom, and we will be smiling the whole way. Ignorance of God is blissful for the old Adam. But it also means slavery to sin and the devil.

The work of God is to set us free and make us human beings again. We were not meant to be like cattle and hogs, or even worse than cattle and hogs. We were created in the image of God. We have been made as spiritual creatures who are able to know and communicate with the Creator. Andy boy has our Creator really communicated to us! To us the end of the ages has come. God has not kept us in the dark. He has fully revealed his heart to us by sacrificing his dearest treasure, our Lord Jesus Christ, so that we could be set free from our old master, the devil. The day is quickly approaching when the children of God will receive their inheritance while those with hardened hearts will be led into the slaughterhouse of hell. Faith in God is what makes all the difference.

And so St. Paul’s application of history to the people of Corinth has just as much relevance to us today as it did to them. To understand our lives as being under God is unnatural for us when we are in bondage to sin. Instead, we imagine that we are a law unto ourselves. It is only God’s Word that can teach us anything different from our natural assumptions. That is why we must study the way that God has acted in history and still acts today. Accordingly, taking into account what St. Paul has taught us in our Epistle reading today, we should not desire evil as the Israelites did. They are just like us, and look what God did to them. Instead, let us fear, love, and trust in God. He has made his promises for deliverance and blessing. Let us believe them and be blessed through them.

190811 Sermon on Jeremiah 23:16-29, Matthew 7:15-23 (Trinity 8), August 11, 2019

190811 Sermon on Jeremiah 23:16-29, Matthew 7:15-23

Two topics are prominent in our readings today. The first is the topic of false prophets. The prophet Jeremiah, in our Old Testament reading, speaks about the false prophets who were saying the opposite of what he is saying. Jeremiah was telling the people to repent because the wrath of God was coming upon them. These false prophets were saying, “Oh no, Jeremiah is overreacting. No such thing will happen.” They claimed also to have the Spirit of God, they had dreamed dreams, and who is Jeremiah to say that they are wrong? This topic of false prophets also comes up in our Gospel reading. Jesus warns us to beware of false prophets. They come in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.

The second topic in our readings is about the good works that must be present in those who belong to the Lord. If someone believes, then the Holy Spirit will produce good works. If there are no good works, then it is evident that the person’s faith is a sham, a self-delusion.

I’ve already mentioned this with the prophet Jeremiah. He was telling the people that their turning away from God’s commandments meant that they were not the people of God even though they had God’s promises and covenants. They thought that they were believing these promises and covenants, but what was really going on was that they were enslaved to their flesh and devoted to false gods. They thought that they were believers, but they were actually unbelievers. Their ongoing rebellion against God’s commandments was proof of it.

In our Epistle reading St. Paul says that those who have the Holy Spirit will put to death the deeds of the flesh. So if you are living in harmony with the sinful flesh, then you will die. But if the Spirit of God has been given to you, then you will seek after righteousness and live.

In our Gospel reading we perhaps have the starkest preaching of all. Jesus says that if you are good, then you will do good. A good tree bears good fruit; a bad tree bears bad fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. It is by their fruits that you will know whether someone is genuine. It doesn’t matter if someone says over and over, “Lord, Lord,” if they are living contrary to the will of God. They will not go to heaven even if they were able to cast out demons and even work miracles in Jesus’s name. To them it will be said, “Depart from me, you evildoers.”

And so the second topic that is found in all our readings is that God’s people live according to his will. True faith produces good works. The people of God, led by the Spirit of God, value and strive after the God’s will. Otherwise they are not the people of God.

So the first topic is false prophets. The second topic is the teaching and keeping of God’s will. What I’d like to consider is how these two topics are related to one another. What does the warning against false prophets have to do with the requirement that God’s people live according to God’s will?

In order to begin to answer this question, I’d like to recall what we talked about last week. Last week I spoke about the way that we are lawless by nature. The sinful flesh is not interested in God’s will. The sinful flesh only looks out for itself. Nobody has to teach us this. We are born this way.

In order to show you that this is indeed so, I’d like to point to young children. Babies are very selfish creatures. They want everything just so. If it isn’t just so, then they will make you pay for it. It’s a good thing that we indulge infants in their selfishness because they are too young to be taught anything otherwise. But when a baby is two or three, then they can start to be taught. They can’t just take whatever anybody else has. They have to share. They can’t do whatever they want, they have to do what they are supposed to do. You might say that the Law is imposed upon them. And how do these toddlers like the Law? They don’t like it at all. It is very bitter. They might get angry and seek revenge.

Good fathers and mothers are going to teach the child that they cannot always have it their way. If toddlers are not taught this, then they are screwed up for the rest of their lives. But every parent knows how hard this work is. There is a tenderness in us all for our children as our own flesh and blood that wants to indulge whatever desires our children might have. It is unpleasant and difficult to deal with the aftermath of discipline, when they want to hurt us in turn. Plus, how does one do it rightly? How much is the right amount? What techniques should be used? There is a lot of wisdom and art that is required for doing this well. It only becomes harder the older the child gets, and the better at lying the child gets. When children are toddlers they are quite transparent about their intentions. Once they get older and more sophisticated, they get really good at lying. Sorting out what is true from what is not true is so hard that it is impossible to do it perfectly. But again, where this lying and wrongdoing is not confronted and punished, the child will be irreparably warped and deformed. The native lawlessness will go on and only get stronger and stronger.

So let’s go back to our question this morning: “What does the warning against false prophets have to do with the requirement that God’s people live according to God’s will?” The answer is that those who do not require God’s people to live according to God’s will are false prophets. There are many other ways to be false prophets too. Anybody who lies, claiming to speak for God, is misusing God’s name and is a false prophet. But we are taking up only this specific way that someone is a false prophet—when God’s will is ignored, and people are allowed to sin without consequence by thought, word, and deed.

This is what is going on in our Old Testament reading this morning. The false prophets were saying that everything is fine. They were saying that their country was the greatest country on earth. Only good days lie ahead for them. Jeremiah was saying something quite different. He was saying that they were under God’s judgment. Because of their sin, God was angry at them. His wrath would come down upon their heads like a whirlwind, like a fire, like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces. Between the patriotic prophets on the one hand, and the gloomy Jeremiah on the other, which do you think was more popular with the people? They liked the false prophets. Why? Because they let the people do whatever they wanted.

I think this is also a part of what Jesus is talking about when he says that false prophets appear to be sheep, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. Those who let others do whatever they want, appear to be loving and gentle. Nobody’s afraid of them because they never speak harshly or put people on the spot. They seem totally harmless. But this is only a cover for what is really going on. What is really going on is that these folks are just looking out for themselves. Luther liked to call them “belly preachers.” What he meant by that is that with all that they say and do, they look out for their own bellies, their own livelihoods. They don’t want anybody upset, otherwise their pay might be cut. They don’t offend anyone because they wanted peace and quiet for themselves. They don’t actually give a rip about the true welfare of the people (even though it might appear that way). This becomes clear if ever they are pushed or crossed or taken to task so that they actually have to suffer. Then you will see the claws and the fangs come out from that sickly sweet exterior.

I am someone who has been called by God to speak his word to this congregation. I can understand how it happens that pastors become false prophets in this regard. I like money. I like tranquility. I especially like it when people like me. I want all of you to think that I am just great. So how can I keep your affection for me? What if I should call you a sinner? What if I should point out something specific that you are doing that must stop? How are you going to like that? I don’t care how sanctified you are, so long as you have this flesh and blood, you are going to resent it. We are not so different from the way that we were when we were toddlers. It is annoying to be criticized to say the least. It doesn’t matter if the criticism comes from someone we otherwise love ever so much, we still resent it. Sometimes it makes our blood boil.

But God willing, we will also come to our senses and see that the judgment against us is correct. Fools will not repent. They will not be reformed. They will remain warped and pig-headedly continue on with their sin. This is what the Jews did with Jeremiah’s preaching. They continued on and hardened their hearts against the word that God spoke through him. They got so mad at him that, according to tradition, they stoned him to death. Not many pastors today are stoned, but I tell you what might happen to them: they might have their call rescinded. They might have their pay cut. They might be given dirty looks and harassed. Why? Because they are evil? No, but precisely because they are good. They are insisting on God’s will being done, and they are rebuking those who break God’s commandments. This is always directed towards repentance. Those who repent are forgiven, but those who remain unrepentant are not forgiven so long as they do not repent.

Tolerance is not some great virtue that requires wisdom and hard work. All that is required is for us to be tolerant is to not give a rip about God or the other person. The parent who doesn’t give a rip about the true welfare of their child will let the child do whatever it wants. But is that loving? Is it loving to not lift a finger to help another person because it is going to be difficult and stressful? No, that is not loving at all. We, as Christians, have to look out for one another. We have to help one another. That might very well mean that we have to put relationships on the line, put our peace and tranquility on the line, and confront one another when we are walking not according to the Spirit, but according to the flesh. This is true and necessary for each one of us as a Christian. It is also true, then, for me too, because I, like you, am a Christian.

False prophets do not have as their primary goal that anybody should be a true Christian and through repentance and faith in Christ be saved. Their primary goal is their own happiness. Therefore, they will not risk their own happiness for the good of others. Whatever it might be that can keep an even keel in the congregation is the very thing that they will do. This will create a certain kind of peace within the congregation, but it is a deathly kind of peace. It’s the kind of peace that find at a graveyard. The reason why graveyards are so quiet is because everybody is dead. There is nothing that is fighting against it. In a congregation where the Holy Spirit is fighting against the devil, the world, and our sinful nature, there is going to be trouble, because good and evil are clashing against one another with eternal consequences.

We are not looking for a worldly tranquility. We are looking for a peace that the world cannot give. We are looking for a peace that is beyond our understanding. That is the peace of sins exposed and then forgiven. The world does not believe in the power of Jesus’s blood to completely do away with sin. The best remedy that the world knows of for sin is forgetfulness. The best they can hope for is that their sins might be forgotten, not forgiven.  But we do not believe in the forgottenness of sins. We believe in the forgiveness of sins. The forgottenness of sins is the devil’s pseudo-Gospel. It cannot save us from death and hell. The forgiveness of sins in Jesus’s name makes for the resurrection from the dead and the life everlasting.

False prophets, like the world, do not believe in the forgiveness of sins. They only believe that sins can be forgotten. According to their thinking, then, they are consistent in not bringing up sins. Why bring up what can’t be changed anyway? True prophets believe in the forgiveness of sins that has been worked by Jesus on the cross. They are not as afraid of sins being brought into the light, because they know that they can actually be done away with by God’s own almighty power that he has even given to us with his Word and Sacraments. We all, including myself, need our sins exposed so that we can turn away from them, be forgiven, and live under God’s blessing in Jesus’s name. That’s how God’s kingdom works.

These are not just my thoughts, but Jesus’s thoughts. He told us how his kingdom is to go forward. Before he ascended into heaven he told the apostles and Christians to preach repentance and the forgiveness of sins in his name to all the earth. Wherever people are brought to sorrow over their sin and faith in Jesus for the forgiveness of their sins, there is the kingdom of God. There is where people are saved from death and hell. May this place be such a place.

190804 Sermon on Romans 6:19-23 (Trinity 7), August 4, 2019

190804 Sermon on Romans 6:19-23 (Trinity 7), August 4, 2019

In the Garden of Eden the serpent said to Eve, “You will not surely die.” The devil’s lie was in direct contradiction to God’s Word. God had said that if Adam and Eve should sin, then they would most certainly die. And yet the serpent says, “You won’t die.” God had made a law, but the devil said, “There is no such law.” It was the power of lawlessness that led Eve and then Adam to eat what God had forbidden with his law. They hoped that the law did not exist. They hoped that it wouldn’t be enforced. But, of course, the law did exist. It would be enforced. They were living in a fantasy land. They were living in a lie.

As we well know, God was gracious to Adam and Eve. Contrary to their will he showed them that the law was real and that it would be enforced. This was contrary to Adam and Eve’s will because they would have liked to have continued on in their false hopes rather than being terrified by the sound of God coming after them in the Garden. But it was a good thing that their false hopes were demolished, because then they could build on a new foundation. They could build upon God’s own promise that he would send his Son to redeem them from their slavery to sin and the devil. Through this promised seed of the woman, there was reconciliation between God and Man. That’s because there would now be a righteousness that was not based upon the Law, upon what we have done or left undone, but upon the free gift that is given to us in Christ Jesus our Lord.

But the fall into sin has done its work. We are born blind to the truth. The lawlessness by which we ate in the Garden is the lie that comes much more naturally to us than the truth. Nobody has to teach us lawlessness. It is of the essence of our sinful flesh. Everybody wants to do whatever they want to do and not be punished for it. That is why Adam and Eve ate. That is why children disobey their parents. That is why we have done things that we know to be wrong. We do not think that things will go badly for us. We think things will turn out fine. The forbidden fruit looked good to Eve. That’s why she ate it. So also those things that are forbidden for us look good, otherwise we wouldn’t even be tempted to do it. The false hope that there is no Law or that it won’t be enforced is the only sensible reason why anybody would ever break the Law.

Unfortunately, most people live their entire life entertaining this false hope, this lie. They hope that they will not be judged and will not be punished for their sins. There are very powerful forces that cooperate in the endeavor to keep people convinced of this. The devil is the author of this lie, and he knows well how to further it along. All the unbelievers that make up the world take lawlessness for granted. People are sinners. That’s just the way they are. So this is just what is considered normal. The only advice that the world has to offer in this situation is to make use of second chances and to try harder. This is very familiar advice to us. Try harder and never give up. Do this your whole life and then people will say nice things about you when you die. But who cares what people think? Who cares if the whole world thinks you are just swell? It is not to the devil or to our fellow sinners that we must give account. They very well might give us a free pass with a winky, winky at all our misdeeds. It is to God our Creator and Judge that we must give answer. What shall we say? … I tried? Can he possibly be convinced by such lies?

And so if we want to help ourselves as well as our neighbor, then our first task must be to dispel this false hope, this lie, that God’s Law does not exist or that it won’t be enforced. The world believes that we Christians live in a fantasyland. It is actually the other way around. Christians know God’s Law and that he is deadly earnest about it. The whole Bible is testament to the existence of the Law and how God punishes those who break it. It is the world who is believing in lawless dreams of bliss both now and eternally. But what will happen when they die or when Judgment Day comes? The devil will have caught his prey with his awful tricks and lures just as he one time suckered Adam and Eve. Always remember that the truth is not on the devil’s side. The truth is on our side, because God send his Son who redeemed the whole world. It is only by the devil’s lies, which nurture our unbelief, that he can succeed.

Telling the truth to ourselves and other people about the Law’s condemnation of our sin is helpful, even if it makes the heart race. Thank God that he did the good deed for Adam and Eve, confronting them in their sin, so that they should repent and believe in the promised Messiah. God saved them from the lie, the pseudo-gospel, that says, “Don’t worry about it. Everything is going to be okay.” Indeed Adam and Eve were going to be okay, but not because anybody said, “Oh, just forget about it. It’s no big deal. You won’t surely die. You won’t burn in hell.” No, they and whoever else might be saved is rescued only through the holy, precious blood, and innocent suffering and death of Adam and Eve’s Son and God’s Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Lawlessness does not actually exist. There are only two possibilities. Either the Law cries out for our punishment, or it is fulfilled. Either you are a sinner who is under God’s wrath or you are righteous by God’s gift of Jesus, who fulfilled the Law, whom you receive by faith.

Understanding that there is no such thing as lawlessness can help us understand what St. Paul is talking about in our Epistle reading today. St. Paul is dealing with another one of the devil’s lies by which he wishes to trick people into unbelief and damnation. The lie goes something like this: “I’m a sinner. God forgives sinners. Therefore sinning does not matter anymore. I can sin all that I want.” This is a very powerful lie, because it has a lot of truth to it. It’s true that you are a sinner. It is also true that God forgives sinners. These are two outstanding, incredibly important truths. It is only the conclusion that is false. The conclusion is geared towards unbelief and lawlessness, instead of faithfulness and devotion.

Here would be a more proper argument: “I’m a sinner. God forgives sinners. Therefore (instead of saying sinning doesn’t matter and I can sin all I want), the more proper conclusion is that I shall thank and praise my God who has done this great thing for me. He even sent his dearest treasure to suffer and fulfill the Law in my place. That is a conclusion to this argument that is right.

And yet our Old Adam, who is so good at looking out for himself, brings his reason to bear and says, “If we are saved by grace, then it doesn’t matter what we do. We shall be saved regardless of how we live. Since we like to sin, let us sin all the more. God has to forgive us. It’s part of the rules.” But this is just that old lawlessness that has been around ever since the fall into sin, and remember that lawlessness does not actually exist. It’s a big fat fairytale. You can pretend that the Law does not exist. You can pretend that for your whole life. But eventually everyone has to wake up from that dream. The Law will come crashing down upon those who have not received the fulfillment of the Law in the Messiah, and the devil will gladly take them with him down into hell. If you present yourself as a slave to sin, obeying sin’s commands for how you should live, then you belong to sin. If you belong to sin, then the Law is going to condemn you to hell. “The wages of sin is death.”

The Christian who musters up his reason and thereby says that we can sin without fear because we are covered by God’s grace is believing a very subtle lie of the devil. The devil is urging that poor creature on, saying, “Eat, eat, it won’t hurt you. You won’t surely die. It’s all right there in the rules. God has to forgive you.” But this is playing Russian roulette, counting on God’s grace like a person might count on the chamber of the gun being empty. You might not lose your faith forever by hardening your heart after this sin, and another sin, and another sin, and another sin. But it just might be that after one of those sins, God does not call you back to repentance and faith. Perhaps he will leave you as a slave to sin, because that is what you have told him over and over again you would like to do. Do not put the Lord your God to the test. Otherwise you might end up like King Saul or Judas or many others who had tasted the goodness of the Lord, but ended up making shipwreck with their faith.

Now all of this can sound rather complicated. I’m sorry about that. It shouldn’t be that way. God’s message to us in the Gospel is so simple and easy to grasp that even an infant can and does grasp it. It is the simple message that Jesus is the Savior. He is the Good Shepherd, we are the sheep, let us listen to his voice and follow him. But the subtlety of the devil’s lies forces us to get into complicated things. That’s what lies do. They make it very hard to tell what is the truth. And so we have to try to sort these things out like St. Paul is trying to sort them out in our Epistle reading.

So let’s try to sum up things, making things simple. It might not seem like it, but what we are dealing with here is a very practical matter—there isn’t a single one of us who has not had to deal with it. Here is the situation: You are confronted with the temptation to sin. What do you do about it? What St. Paul is warning against in Romans chapter 6 is how we might say to ourselves, “Oh, it’s fine. Go ahead and do it. We won’t be harmed by it,” and then we pile up some nice theology to make it kosher. That false theology is the great danger that St. Paul is warning against, because that is where the lies are, and lies have no power to save. It is precisely by these lies that we lose our faith and are taken as the devil’s prey.

So what should we do in that situation when we are confronted with temptation? St. Paul tells us. We should consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. We should present the members of our body as slaves to righteousness. We should say to God, “Here I am. You know what evil dwells in me. Make me your instrument for holiness. Lead me not into temptation, but deliver me from evil.” We turn ourselves over to our God who own us, who has purchased us back from the devil with the ransom blood of Jesus.

The devil cannot prevail against this. He has to retreat so long as we stick with these divine weapons. Blessed are you if you take up this armor of God and stand against the devil. This is a great gift and I want this gift to be given to you and that you should learn and grow in using it.

I wouldn’t mind stopping right there, but I also do not want to give a false impression that this is the way it has to go unfailingly. Whenever we hear about how we are supposed to do something, then we automatically assume that we are always going to be able to do it. In this case, then, we might believe that we are able to get better and better, holier and holier, and go from one triumph to another. That, however, is not how this works. And this is not me saying it, but St. Paul says this. In the next chapter after our reading, Romans chapter 7, he speaks about the way that this battle against the devil, the world, and our flesh goes. That is where he says, “The good that I want to do, I don’t do, whereas that which I don’t want to do, that is the very thing that I end up doing. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

We are a work in progress with terrible ups and downs throughout our whole lives as Christians. This is frustrating. It would be nice if we could learn how to battle Satan, the world, and our own flesh, and kill them once and for all. But of course this is not something that we are capable of doing. Only One Person has been capable of doing that, and that is Jesus. Although it is frustrating to fight, and especially to fight and to lose, it does serve a good purpose in the end. It teaches us over and over again that we are not capable and competent. If we are going to be saved, then it is the Lord Jesus Christ and him alone who is going to have to do it. It helps us fight against the lies of the devil and hold to the only truth that saves. Jesus has fulfilled the Law for us. He gives this to us as a gift. Therefore, this, always and forever, remains true:

Jesus, thy blood and righteousness

my beauty are, my glorious dress;

'midst flaming worlds, in these arrayed,

with joy shall I lift up my head.