190929 Sermon for St. Michael and All Angels, September 29, 2019

190929 Sermon for St. Michael and All Angels, September 29, 2019

One of the most powerful stories that we are all taught by many different sources is that progress is marching on. We are getting better and better all the time. There seems to be a lot of evidence for this. People used to not have toilets. Now we do. People used to not have electricity. Now we do. Sick people used to die quickly. Now they die slowly. People used to have to write letters. Now they text. Who knows, then, what we might discover in the future, but whatever it is, it is going to be great.

Another important part of this story of progress also has to do with religion. The story of progress says that we have outgrown religion. According to the story of progress, religion was a substitute—and a rather poor substitute at that—for science. For example, people used to not know how weather worked, and so they ascribed it to the will of a certain god. People used to not know how diseases worked, and so they ascribed it to a demon. Now we supposedly know how weather and diseases work, and so there is no longer any need to believe in gods or spirits.

The story of progress has been very successful in our culture. It is in the air that we breathe, and so it has its effect on us Christians as well. We also are prone to disbelieve in the existence of evil angels and good angels. We are even more prone to disbelieve that these spirits have anything to do with our day-to-day life. If such things exist or if they actually do anything, then we want proof. Since the proof is never as good as we want it to be, it is a whole lot easier to just believe what everybody else believes. People will think that you are weird if you don’t believe what everybody else believes.

Therefore, being a Christian today requires some independence. Christians have a very different story of what the universe is all about. We are not the product of progress or evolution. The heart and soul of the story of our existence is the love of God toward us in Jesus Christ. For us and for our salvation God became man. Jesus redeemed us by dying on the cross even though we have been rebellious towards God. The Creator has joined himself to us with the greatest intimacy and friendliness. God is flesh of our flesh—an unheard of thing and very intimate. He is also very friendly. All who believe in him shall not perish but have eternal life. Those who do not believe in him remain in their sins and are condemned for they reject the best and most important thing that has ever happened—the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Angels are not at the very heart of this story of our existence, but they are still very much a part of it. The festival of St. Michael and All Angels gives us the opportunity to look at their part in the story of the universe that is otherwise neglected or dismissed as antiquated.

Angels were created by God as spirits. Spirits are unusual creatures in that they don’t have bodies like we have bodies. When they have become visible to people, it is because they have taken on a visible form, like the Holy Spirit took on the form of a dove at Jesus’s baptism. The Holy Spirit is not a dove. The Holy Spirit does not have a body. He is a spirit. That’s who the angels are too, but sometimes they will take on a visible form.

Sometime after God created all the angels, there was some kind of rebellion among the angels. The Bible doesn’t tell us nearly so much about this as our curiosity might want. All that we can say for sure is that as a result of this rebellion there were thenceforth good angels (as God had originally created them all to be) and evil angels (who once were good, but then made God their enemy).

The fallen angels are also called demons. The leader of the demons is the devil or Satan. It was this Satan who took on the form of a serpent, or possessed a serpent, and tricked Adam and Eve into their rebellion against God. Satan is the liar and the murderer who is ultimately responsible for all the misery that we have to endure. According to the prophecy that God himself made in the Garden of Eden, he was going to be crushed by the Seed of the woman. This was fulfilled with Jesus’s death and resurrection. The serpent’s head was crushed. The devil lost all claim to us. Jesus purchased us, not with gold or silver, but with his holy precious blood and his innocent suffering and death.

Although the devil has already been defeated, he has not yet been put away once and for all. Now, for a short time, he uses the only weapon he has, which is to lie, so that souls are murdered through false believe and despair. Soon Jesus will come, though. That is when things will enter their final state. The devil, together with all evil creatures—including evil men, women, and children—will be forever locked up in hell. That is good. They will never again be able to break into the goodness of God’s creation and corrupt it.

Opposed to the devil and his fellow demons are the good angels who did not rebel against God their creator. The Bible testifies to the existence of angels from Genesis to Revelation. It was angels, cherubim, who barred the way for Adam and Eve to eat from the tree of life. That’s Genesis. St. John makes known in Revelation that the angels are the ones who will bring vengeance to all evildoers who live upon the earth in the final days. Between the beginning and the end, we see the work of angels throughout the Scriptures. Angels come to Abraham, to Moses, to David, to Joseph, to Mary, and to many others whom God loves.

When the angels come to these different people, we see what their chief work is. They are chiefly messengers. In fact, the word “angel” means “messenger.” They are God’s messengers. The people to whom God’s messengers come are to embrace that message by faith. Faith is the way that we receive and hold onto God’s greatest blessings. And so the work of angels as messengers is their proper and most important work.

We know that angels also do other works for God. It was the angel of the Lord who brought the plague upon Pharaoh and Egypt that happened at Passover. The angel of the Lord brought the plague upon David and his kingdom when he took a census of his people. The angel of the Lord struck down 185,000 Assyrian soldiers in one night who were about to overrun the city of Jerusalem. There is no doubt about the tremendous power angels have.

When God’s people come into contact with angels in their raw power, they are quite overwhelmed. Perhaps something of the holiness and majesty of God is reflected in these exalted creatures. The most typical response to seeing an angel in his raw power is to fall down on one’s face. The angels must say over and over again to those they meet, “Do not be afraid.” Then they give the message God has given them to communicate.

The Scriptures show us that these spiritual creatures are very different than some common notions people have about angels. The movie, “It’s a wonderful life,” has had a large impact on how people think of angels. The angel in that movie is kind of bumbling, kind of doting. He’s waiting to get his wings. In the 80s and 90s there seemed to be a lot of interest in writing stories with angels as characters. So there were TV shows and movies that were written where angels are cute, humorous—and perhaps this trait is the one that dominated all others: They were perfectly harmless. They wouldn’t hurt a fly. Nobody would be afraid of these grandmotherly characters. Unfortunately I think these TV shows and movies have had a bigger effect on what people believe about these spiritual creatures. More people watch these shows than read their Bibles.

And so we have quite a bit of growing that we can do in our understanding of angels and demons. Reading the Scriptures will tell us what angels are really like and what they have done in the past. The Scriptures will be our true source for information if we are interested in knowing anything about angels and demons.

There is another way our understanding should grow also, and that is to understand that demons and angels still exist, and they still make their impact on the way things go on earth. This is something that is difficult for us. Science has become the main way for explaining how things work, and one of the rules in science is that there can be no supernatural explanation for why things happen the way they do. A cause must be found for every phenomenon that does not make any reference to God or what he has revealed. That is one of the fundamental rules of science. Since science is such an important part of our understanding of the world, even though we are Christians it is difficult for us to believe that angels and demons have any place in a person’s life.

And so as I mentioned at the beginning, we have to learn to be independent as Christians. Angels and demons exist and they do stuff. What they do and how they do it is not going to be as clear to us as we would like, especially since we have gotten so out of practice. Somebody like Martin Luther understood demons and angels a whole lot better that we do because that was the way he understood life. He was raised with that understanding and enriched his understanding with Scripture. We have been raised with the understanding that there are no such things, and our Bible lie covered with dust in our homes. Therefore, we almost have to start over in our understanding of what they do.

So what do demons and angels do? Demons make people sick. They can make a person mentally disturbed. Accidents and other misfortunes may very well be the work of demons. Their chief work is geared towards our damnation, and so they lead us into temptation and try to keep us away from God’s wholesome Word. When it comes to such things I have to admit that I do not have the certainty that I would like in claiming such things. I’m pretty much a novice like you.

As far as the angels are concerned, we should understand them as fighting against the demons. They save many a person from various accidents. They shield and protect us. Their greatest desire corresponds to God’s own will, and that is our salvation. They guide us towards the Word of God and the Gospel. They rejoice when a sinner repents. Angels know better than anybody that it is only the Gospel that is the power of God unto salvation. What should it profit a man if he should gain the whole world, or suffer no accidents, of that his foot should not be dashed against a stone, if his soul should wither and die from starvation because he never heard the preaching of the Gospel?

We have a challenge today with this holiday. One of the reasons why we have holidays and saints’ days is so that we can learn from God’s Word about things that we otherwise wouldn’t take up. To my shame, I have to say that I don’t speak very much about the work of demons and angels. This festival has forced us to consider it. We have much to learn.

And so I encourage you not to let today’s thoughts just go in one ear and out the other. Understanding the world as being inhabited by these spiritual creatures is disallowed by the reigning story of progress. If we don’t deliberately think about these things and cultivate them, then we simply won’t believe them. Let us rebuild the old foundations that have been lost over time.

190922 Sermon on Luke 17:11-19 (Trinity 14), September 22, 2019

190922 Sermon on Luke 17:11-19 (Trinity 14), September 22, 2019

Leprosy was a terrible disease not just because of what it did to the body, but also what it did to a person socially. If anyone had leprosy they were considered unclean. They were shunted off to a colony by themselves. Therefore, there wasn’t hardly a single aspect of their life that was left untouched.

In our Gospel reading Jesus comes upon practically a crowd of lepers. Ten men were desperately calling out to Jesus for help. Jesus tells them to go show themselves to the priest. The reason why Jesus says this is because this was part of the Law God gave to Moses. Leprosy made the person ceremonially unclean. They couldn’t be readmitted to society until a priest had looked them over and sacrifice was made. When Jesus tells them to go to the priest it is so that they could be checked over and return to their former lives.

All ten lepers believed what Jesus said. They began to make their way to the priest. Accordingly they were healed by Jesus’s almighty power. Their situation had previously looked quite hopeless. Now they could return to the lives that they had known and loved. How happy they must have been as they looked forward to reunions and celebrations! In a sense they had been lost to their families, but now they were found. They had been essentially dead to all who loved them, now they were alive.

But one of these men was not like the others. He did not go home to celebrate with family and friends. He turned back to Jesus. St. Luke says that he glorified God with a loud voice. When he came to Jesus, he fell on his face at Jesus’s feet, thanking him. And he was a Samaritan. Samaritans were not from the right church. They combined some biblical truths with a whole bunch of pagan notions. The Jews looked down on them, and at least partly, for good reason, because they were in error about many things. In spite of this, however, there the man was at Jesus’s feet on his face.

Have you ever been on your face at Jesus’s feet? To some this might seem like groveling. You wouldn’t find Frank Sinatra in such a pose. He lived life his own way, and that meant that he didn’t kneel, much less fall on his face. To others who aren’t so godless this might just seem weird. “That’s not the way we thank and praise God in church. We sit and stand and fold our hands.” Still others will say, “Well, this is what’s in the Bible, so that’s how we should give thanks.” Henceforth they will lie down in church with their faces in the carpet during the Divine Service.

All of these ways of looking at it, however, are only external. The attention is on the appearance. The appearance is not so important as what is going on internally. The Samaritan is filled with thankfulness. It’s bursting within him. What he does outwardly is just how the thankfulness happened to be expressed. He was not putting on a show. He didn’t do it to gain Jesus’s approval or to be seen as more thankful than others. His motives were genuine. Therefore, all his actions were natural and a joy for him and for everybody who was saw it.

Jesus asks about the other nine. Where were they? Weren’t they happy? Weren’t they thankful? There’s no reason to think that they weren’t happy and thankful in a sense. But their hearts were not lifted up to the Lord. Their hearts remained firmly planted on the earth. They were glad to see their families and have their lives get back to normal. They were glad to be sleeping in their own beds and to take up those projects that they had to abandon when they got leprosy. Jesus says in another place, “Where you treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Everybody treasures something, or even many things. Whatever those things might be, that is where the happiness and thankfulness is focused. The Samaritan’s treasure was in the God of Israel and his Son, our dear Lord Jesus Christ. Since that is where his treasure is, that is where his heart is also.

Where our heart is, where our happiness and thankfulness are located, is a sure indication of who our God is. There is a very close association between the first and second commandments. The first commandment requires our fear, love, and trust in the true God. The second commandment is about the use of God’s name. We are not to use it for evil. Instead we are to call upon our God in every trouble, pray, praise, and give thanks. Whatever it is that is god in a person’s life, whatever it is that a person looks to for happiness and comfort—that is where the heart will be. That is also, then, where the thanks and praise will be too.

And so with the failure of the nine to return and give glory to God we are not just dealing with a thanksgiving problem. It’s not just like, “Whoops, I forgot.” The problem is much deeper. They have an idolatry problem. They have false gods from whom they expect joy and comfort. There’s no reason to think that their false gods are anything but wholesome and honorable. Their gods could have very well have been their families, their children, their grandchildren, their wives, or it could have been their jobs—all wholesome and honorable. False gods by no means have to be dark and nasty. In fact, the better the idol looks, the more effective it is for the devil. These men gladly worshipped their families, their nation, their way of life. That is why they don’t come back. Their hearts were far from God, who created them, and who so very recently healed them.

The Samaritan, in a very real way, was unusual with his actions. It’s not that surprising that only one out of ten gave glory to God. His choice was against the grain, and not everybody would approve of it. Think realistically about what the man did. He didn’t go to his home first. He went back to this stranger, Jesus, first. He didn’t pour out his heart to his wife, he poured out his heart to his God. For him it was better to spend one day in the courts of the Lord than to spend a thousand with his wife and children or with whatever else is good in this world. There is a massive crowd of people—probably about nine out of ten—who will say that it is fanatical and inhumane that this man chose his church and his God over his family.

Now let’s bring this close to home. I might touch a nerve here. Nine out of ten funerals today are geared towards the family, toward the job, towards the hobbies, towards the earthly life of the person who has died, rather than being a service that is devoted to giving glory to God. A funeral service that is dedicated to the person’s life, is vastly more socially acceptable than a funeral service that thanks and praises God. This is very divisive. There are some people who will not look at me to this day because they think that I slighted their loved one by talking more about God than I did about them. I don’t claim to conduct perfect funeral services or preach perfect funeral sermons. But one thing that I think I can safely say, is that the whole service is directed towards God and his glory. God created this person. God redeemed this person with the blood of Christ. God sanctified and claimed this person as his own in Holy Baptism. Now God has brought the person to himself.

A lot of people don’t like that—maybe nine out of ten. And why should they? If they do not treasure God, then that is not where their hearts are. The message of a Christian funeral service, insofar as it is actually Christian, must always be that the relationship that the person who has died had with their God and with his Word, that is, his Church, is more important than the relationship that the person had with the spouse, the children, the grandchildren. The only people who are going to appreciate that kind of message are the ones who likewise treasure God above all things and are eager to worship him. The rest, if they do not repent and believe, are going to find it offensive. That’s understandable, because what they treasure is not given top billing. To choose to worship and glorify God is not free. There’s a cost involved. It’s going to rub some people the wrong way. Idolatry is always going to be more popular in this old world. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

But let’s not let people’s glaring eyes damper the joy that there is in glorifying God. What we see with the Samaritan is an outstanding thing—a precious jewel, a gift given by the Holy Spirit. Anybody who has tasted and seen that the Lord is good, knows that it is very pleasurable to give thanks unto the Lord. To be sure, these experiences do not come along every day—at least not in their fullness. The devil, the world, and our sinful flesh see to that. With our Divine Service, where our hearts should be lifted up unto the Lord, we find that we struggle. Our “glory be to God on high” is not as enthusiastic as we would like it to be.

And so, may we grow in our sanctification. True growth as a Christian is not that we get sadder and sadder. Growth and strength are evident when we call upon God in every trouble, pray, praise, and give thanks. Now to an outsider it might seem as though Christians are gloomy. That’s because unbelievers put their trust in man. The Bible doesn’t have very nice things to say about man. He is full of idolatry and ingratitude. It is a part of our training as Christians that we renounce our Old Adam more and more. But at the same time our confidence in our God is to increase more and more—and that confidence is our strength.

Having confidence in God is very good in this life that is so full of troubles and disappointments. He is the God of all comfort who comforts us in all our afflictions. When we are confident in him and thankful, we have peace. We know that God is for us—who, then can be against us? God, who did not spare his only begotten Son, but gave him up unto death for us all—how cannot this God also give us all good things?

So when this Samaritan is on his face, it is not so much the fact that he is on his face that is wonderful—it is the inward moving of his heart that is truly great. He has been given the gift of faith in the one true God. That gift pays dividends. But we should realize that no matter how much pleasure we have ever gotten from thanking and praising God, it is only the down payment that has been given by the Holy Spirit. The fullness is yet to come.

The book of Revelation shows us that heaven is full of thanksgiving and praise. In Revelation chapter 7 St. John is given a vision of heaven. He sees a great multitude that no one could number from every nation, tribe, people and language, gathered before God and before the Lamb with palm branches in their hands. They cry out with a loud voice: “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb.” All the angels stood around the throne with the elders and the four living creatures. They fell on their faces, just like the Samaritan, and worshipped God saying, “Amen, blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever. Amen.”

Realize that this is not just for somebody else in a far off place. Those Christians who have died with faith in Jesus are already there. You will be there too, according to Jesus’s own word. We saw in our Gospel reading how wonderfully Jesus’s word worked. Jesus said the word; the men were healed. Jesus speaks also to you. He says, “Whoever believes and is baptized shall be saved.” He says, “Whoever believes in me will live, even though he dies. Whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” Here we have the promise of not just the curing of leprosy, but the defeat of death and hell.

Therefore, lift up your hearts. We lift them up unto the Lord. Let us give thanks unto the Lord, our God. It is meet and right so to do.

190915 Sermon on Luke 10:23-27 (Trinity 13), September 15, 2019

190915 Sermon on Luke 10:23-27 (Trinity 13), September 15, 2019

Our Gospel reading today teaches us what God considers the highest and best life. That is important knowledge. Many kings and prophets would like to know such knowledge, and here it is, right before our eyes. The best life is the one where we love God with all our heart, all our soul, all our strength, and with all our mind. We should love our neighbor as we love ourselves. This is the highest ambition a person can have, and the best possible life that a person can live.

But as a way of life there are very few who take it up. The gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to eternal life, and few there are who find it. Broad is the gate and easy is the way that leads to destruction. The reason why loving God and loving the neighbor is hard is because it is so contrary to the way that we are by nature. How we are by nature is that all our love is directed inwardly instead of outwardly. We want stuff for ourselves and for those who belong to us. Others can fend for themselves. Our selfish desires shape and form our ambitions.

We should not think that these desires and ambitions are obviously sinful. According to our reason and according to the world’s thinking there is nothing wrong with self-gratification. Capitalists, for example, believe that selfishness is what makes the world go ‘round. Squeezing your neighbor for some extra profit is good business sense. Dumping some friends for better friends is the way to move up the social ladder. Awards and honors for one’s self makes people try and compete for the prize, and therefore is the secret to success and progress.

Talking about this way of life as being bad might be confusing to you, and that’s understandable. It’s what comes naturally to us. Most people have never even considered the possibility that there is another way of living one’s life. But there is, and we are taught that today by our Gospel reading. What should motivate all our actions is love for God; love for the neighbor. Instead of trying to please ourselves, we are to please God. God is pleased when we do good things for other people besides ourselves. This is the chief way that we can love God and serve him—when we do good for others. God doesn’t need our good works. We can’t enrich him because everything is already his! God doesn’t need our good works, but our neighbor does. Our neighbor needs those good works very much.

“Who, then, is my neighbor?” This is the question that the expert in the Law asked Jesus after he heard that his interpretation of the Law was correct. Jesus said that he would live if he loved God and loved his neighbor. But the expert in the Law wanted to know whether he was in good stead. I assume that he thought that he had been pretty good to his family and to his friends. But what about other people? “Who else am I required to help?” he wondered.

Jesus answered his question by telling him the parable of the Good Samaritan. The answer to the question of who the neighbor is, is whoever happens to cross your path. And how much should be done for such people that we happen to come across? The parable shows us that it is a lot. This parable forces us to see that our notions of generosity are off base. If we came across some miserable person and gave them a couple hundred bucks, boy, would we ever feel like we had done our good deed for the day! But the Samaritan does so much more than that.

He picks the man up, bandages his wounds, and tries to make him comfortable. He puts the man on his own animal and walks beside him until they find a place to stay. When they get there he checks into a room and stays with the man. He nursed him along through the night. He probably didn’t sleep well with the moaning of the injured man, and the help he needed to give him. It wasn’t until the next day, after the hardest work as far as nursing is concerned was over, that he continues on his journey. That’s when he gives a couple hundred bucks to the innkeeper and gave him instructions for caring for the man. He also, essentially, leaves a blank check behind. Whatever the innkeeper should spend in addition to the couple hundred bucks, the Samaritan would pay when he passed through on his way back.

At any stage during this story the Samaritan would have been justified, according to our reason, to leave the man be. He could have given him the money on the road and moved on. He could have helped him get to the inn and moved on, instead of staying the night. Or, after doing all that he did, he could have given the innkeeper the couple hundred bucks and moved on—not leaving behind a blank check. And who could fault him for being unkind or unloving—even if he had just given him money on the road?

The Samaritan went above and beyond our natural expectations which have selfishness already baked right into them.  In fact, that selfishness is so much a part of the way that our reason works, that it will balk at the notion that such a way of life should be required of anyone. It’s unreasonable that anyone should work so hard and sacrifice so much! What would happen to a person’s happiness and leisure of such a thing were required? Nobody would get any rest and relaxation! The whole world would be plunged into misery! “Such thinking is wicked,” Reason says.

I’m not going to respond to Reason’s complaining. Instead, I’m going to point out three important biblical truths. First of all, we are always trying to avoid being labeled as sinners. When we think of our sinning we only think of those ugly things that bother the conscience. “Fine, I did do those nasty things, but otherwise I’m a pretty good person.” It doesn’t even enter our minds that our day-to-day life, being dominated by selfishness, is sinful. It doesn’t enter our minds that we should be loving God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our strength, and with all our mind, and that loving him who is unseen means that we love our neighbor who is seen. If it weren’t for God telling us so, we would never believe that we are a tenth as sinful as we actually are. It is as St. Paul says in our Epistle reading: The Word of God imprisons every single last one of us under sin. No one is righteous—no, not even one—for we do not love. The direction of the energy in our life is towards ourselves: “Gimme, gimme, gimme.” We are not occasional sinners. We are died in the wool sinners. This is a crucial biblical truth that we should see here.

A second biblical truth is that a massive change is what is required for us to be God’s people. Jesus says that we need to be born again, and even entering our mother’s womb a second time—as extreme as that might be—wouldn’t be good enough. We have to be born again by the water and the Holy Spirit, by God’s own birthing action in baptism. The prophet Jeremiah says that we need a whole new heart. The old heart will never do it. That would be like trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. That would be like trying to turn lead into gold. That would be like trying to turn a heart made out of stone into a heart of flesh that beat and moves and feels. All of this is to say that a miracle is required. If our energies are to be turned outward, then God is the one who must do it, otherwise we will only remain selfish.

A third biblical truth is that this life of love is the end point of our salvation. 1 Cor. 13 is well known as the so-called “love chapter.” We are familiar with its verses: “Love is patient, love is kind,” and so on. What is not so well understood is that St. Paul is saying that love is a spiritual gift that continues on and is perfected in heaven. “Now we see in a mirror dimly,” he says, “then we will see face to face.” Heaven is when the work of God’s salvation is completed by him making us like himself. God is love. We will be made to love from the bottom of our hearts when we are purified by the death and resurrection of our bodies. To be loved, and to love in turn, is the best. We love, and will love completely in heaven, because God has first loved us.

What we can see from all of this, then, is that as Christians we are called to love. It is our highest ambition and goal. It is an anticipation of our heavenly life. We have been given the first fruits of the Holy Spirit. We have been born again. God has given us a new heart. That heart has begun to love, even if it does so in great weakness because we must struggle against the devil, the world, and our sinful flesh. For the sake of Christ, God does not reckon our sins against us. He approves of us for Jesus’s sake. Together with the forgiveness God gives us in Jesus he also sets our lives on the right track. The right track is to love. The ability to love, the desire to love, is something that can only be given to us by God as a gift.

I know that you have noticed how hard it is to do things that you don’t want to do. When you don’t want to do something, everything about the task is drudgery. You watch the clock and wonder when it will be over. Without the desire to love being given to us as a gift, this is how our so-called love will be. We will be wondering when we can quit living for other people and start living for ourselves. We will always be looking forward to when we can stop loving.

Notice how this is not the way that it is with the good Samaritan. The only way that his actions can be explained is that this is what he wanted to do. He wasn’t forced and prodded along by whiplashes of the Law. If that were the case, then he would have met the minimum requirement that was laid upon him and moved on with his life, devoting it all to himself. No, he loved the man because he wanted to love the man. Think of the stuff that you enjoy doing. Does anyone have to force you to watch your favorite TV shows? Does anyone have to threaten and harass you to do your hobbies? No, you gladly do the things that you enjoy doing because those are the very things that you want to do. Without the desire to love being given to us there is no way for us to turn our lives around.

Left to our own devices even our interactions with God are going to be driven by selfishness. We will try to follow God’s rules so that we can be handsomely rewarded for our efforts. Unfortunately, we will never have the confidence we want, though, because deep down we will know that we are only doing it for ourselves. There is no love for God or the neighbor. There is only love for one’s self. This is what can be seen with the expert in the Law’s interaction with Jesus. It’s like he was looking at God and saying, “Now what can I use you for? What are the right buttons to push to get what I want?”

God is not a vending machine for salvation. God is not even a set of rules that is just itching at the chance to judge and condemn. God is love. As the great Lover, who wants to love, who goes out looking for it, he has come to from heaven and become incarnate in the womb of the Virgin Mary. He saw us by the side of the road, the victim of the fiendish devil. But we were and are far worse off than this poor injured man in the parable. We have not just been stripped, beaten and left half dead. The poison of Satan has settled right into our heart, soul, strength, and mind. Jesus, when he deals with us, when he serves us, is not helping someone who is grateful and good. What did people do to Jesus, the greatest of the good Samaritans, who only helped and did all things well? We crucified him. And yet, even from that very instrument of torture, he looks upon those who are torturing him, and prays, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Jesus did nothing for himself. Everything he did and does is for us and for our salvation.

The life of love is good. It is the highest good. And so it is a worthy ambition and highest goal. “Beloved, let us love one another.”

190908 Sermon on Romans 10:8-17 (Trinity 12) September 8, 2019

190908 Sermon on Romans 10:8-17 (Trinity 12) September 8, 2019

The doctrine of election is the teaching that God has chosen who will be saved from death and hell from before the foundation of the world. God has known from eternity who his own people are. He has loved them even before they have done anything right or wrong. God says, “Jacob have I loved. Esau have I hated.” Jacob was to become Israel with his twelve sons. Esau was to become Edom, a nation that was not chosen as God’s own.

The teaching of election easily brings to mind many difficulties for our reason. For example, if God is the one who chooses for salvation, does that mean that he also chooses who is going to be damned? If God is the one who chooses who will be saved, then does it not matter whatever else might happen through the course of history? Can those who are predestined sin all that they want and still be saved? Can those who are not chosen not be saved no matter what? Plus it can seem as though God is arbitrary and random—“I’ll take this one and this one and this one; the rest I leave behind.”

Because of all the difficulties that our reason immediately throws up when it hears of this teaching, it is often neglected. I, also, tend to neglect this teaching. It seems more prudent to just leave this teaching be. It’s safer and easier that way. But that’s no good. The Scriptures clearly teach it, and I suppose that that’s enough justification for speaking about it right there. But there’s also the fact that the doctrine of election, the teaching that God has picked us for salvation, is quintessential to the Gospel. Why should you be saved? The Gospel says that God picked you. He foresaw you, predestined you, called you, justified you, and he is glorifying you. All these gifts are because of God’s good will towards you from eternity, without any reference to what you have done or left undone. God has chosen you and no one can take you out of his hand. If God is for you, then who can be against you?

As for the difficulties that God’s election brings up for our reason, what we must keep in mind is that the doctrine of election has not been given to us to satisfy our curiosity. He has not revealed it so that we could master it with our reason and give our consent to God’s plans.  As the Scriptures say, “Who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?” God has revealed how he chooses those who will be saved in order that we can believe it and be drawn near to God with our trust in him. We should trust him, because he has said that he has chosen you.

You might be wondering, “When did God ever say this to me? I’ve never heard him talk?” To the contrary! Of course you have heard God talk to you. It is true that he has not spoken to you directly. God doesn’t normally interact that way. He works through means instead of directly, but it is him doing it all the same. And so he has brought it about that you should hear of Jesus Christ, the Savior and Redeemer of the world, who has been sacrificed for you. You’ve been baptized. Baptism is God saying, “You are mine.” You have heard Jesus’s own words where he says that God has loved the world in this way, that he sent his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For Jesus did not come into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. He is the Good Shepherd. His sheep hear his voice and they follow him. His sheep hear his Words in the Scriptures.  And there are also those holy and sublime words of Holy Communion, that are also Jesus’s own words. He says that this bread is his body, given for who? Given for you. And this cup is the new testament, the new arrangement between God and us, the new binding agreement. What is the nature of this arrangement? Jesus says that this blood is what has been shed for you for the forgiveness of all your sins. Wherever God’s revelation of salvation is made in accordance with the Scriptures, there you have God’s voice that says, “I pick you. You are mine.”

This is the way that it has always been. God has always called those whom he has chosen through the preaching of his Word. The reason why Adam and Eve knew that they were reconciled to God, that God had picked them in spite of their sins, was because God told them so. The reason why Abraham knew that he was chosen by God is because God told him. The reason why the children of Israel knew that they were chosen is because God told said so to Jacob. The reason why the people at Pentecost knew that God chose them is because St. Peter said, “This is for you and for your children, for those who are near, and for those who are far off.” It is the same way still today. The way that you can know that God has chosen you is by hearing him say this to you in his Word and his Sacraments.

In our Epistle reading this morning St. Paul says that if we confess that Jesus is Lord and believe in our hearts that God has raised him from the dead, then we will be saved. Everyone who believes in Jesus will be saved. … Everyone who calls on the Name of the Lord will be saved. … But how can anyone know about Jesus if they are not told about him? And how can anyone speak about Jesus unless they have been sent by God to do so? Beautiful are the feet of those who bring the good news of peace, who preach the Gospel of good things!

This reading is about the way that God calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the ones that he has chosen by the preaching of Jesus Christ. God’s choice, God’s election of those who are to be saved, is made known by the preaching of the Gospel. Heaven and hell hang in the balance. What makes the difference is the preaching of the Word of God. Preaching is the way that God’s kingdom comes. It is the way that he reigns and rules in the hearts of his children by the power of the Holy Spirit when they believe in Jesus and are saved.

The goodness of the preaching of the Gospel is spoken about in our Old Testament reading in a poetic way:

Isn’t it true that in a very short time

Lebanon will be turned into an orchard,

and the orchard will seem like a forest?

On that day, the deaf will hear the words of a book,

and out of gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind will see.

The humble will rejoice in the LORD once again,

and the poor will delight in the Holy One of Israel.

When the Gospel goes out into any place it is a life giving and a life enriching force. It makes orchards of sweet fruit spring up, and the orchards are so bounding with life that they seem like a forest. The Gospel makes the deaf hear and the blind see. All people by nature are deaf and blind to the truth of God. We won’t tolerate either his Law or his Gospel. Unbelievers live in rebellion against God so that death is a dreadful prospect and the life of this world is held on to as the only thing that is hopeful. But the words of a book, the Bible, make people understand God. Their ears are unstopped and their eyes are opened. They come to know and to believe Jesus, the Holy One of Israel, and are excited by the prospect of beholding the glory of God in the merciful face of Jesus.  The Gospel is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes. It reveals God’s election. It says, “God has chosen you,” so that you may have peace and be glad.

We can see from this that the most important thing in this world is the preaching of the Gospel. It has always been this way. It was this way with the very first preaching of the Gospel in the Garden of Eden whereby Adam and Eve believed in Jesus who would crush the serpent’s head. It is the most important thing that happens today. What does it matter that the world advances in this way and that way? What does it matter that each one of us sits on mountains of money that our ancestors could only dream of? If we do not have peace with God through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, then it is all for naught. Everyone will die, and what will all the trinkets and gadgets mean then? This world is even going to melt as it burns, so the institutions of this world will turn to nothing. The thing that endures forever is the Word of God, the Gospel, God’s reconciliation of sinners to himself in the crucified Son of God who is risen from the dead and sits at God’s right hand. When he comes in glory, you will be raised in glory to be seated with him at his heavenly banquet.

To the extent that we are hearing and believing the glad tidings of great joy—to that extent we are in good stead. Our strength is not in ourselves or in any earthly thing. Our strength is from our head, Jesus Christ, who gives life to his body, the Church, to which he has joined himself. That is God’s own strength, given to us, so that we may have peace and joy in the God who has loved us, chosen us, and brought us to himself.

But what about those who have heard this Word of the Gospel and have not believed? What about those who hear God’s Word that says that he has chosen them, but they do not believe it? This happens. St. Paul interrupts his hymn of joy and gladness about the preaching of the Gospel to say, “But not all obeyed the Gospel, for Isaiah said, ‘Lord, who believed our message?’” What does this do to God’s election, and the proclamation of God’s choosing, when I or any other Christian says that God has chosen you?

Here we are getting to the border of what we are able to say. Remember, the doctrine of election was not revealed to us to satisfy our curiosity or to know all things.  There might be questions that we have that the Scriptures do not give answers for. But St. Paul does say this about those who hear the Gospel but do not believe—he asks this rhetorical question, “Will their unfaithfulness undo the faithfulness of God who has made his promises to us in good faith? God remains faithful, even if nobody else does. The promises he makes he keeps, and he wants us to believe them.”

An analogy might help here. We all know that a one hundred dollar bill has great worth. We know that it will work when we want to buy something. We know that it will do what it is supposed to do. But suppose someone took their hundred dollar bill and flushed it down the toilet because they mistakenly believed that it was worthless? Does the fact that they don’t believe in the value of that hundred dollar bill do anything to actual value of the hundred dollar bill? No, it doesn’t.

In a similar way, when God says, “Here, this salvation is for you. I choose you and I give it to you,” that is true. Something much greater in value than a hundred dollar bill is given to us. If we walk away from this promise of God, and do not believe it and hold to it by faith, it doesn’t change the nature of God’s promise. We know that God’s will is that no one should perish, but that all should repent and come to a knowledge of the truth.  The things God says to us are trustworthy and true whether they are believed in or not. But if we do not believe them, if we turn away from them, then they won’t be any good to us personally. It will be like we have flushed the Gospel down the toilet. We have treaded the blood of Christ underfoot.

What we should take from this, then, is that if we hear the voice of God today, we should not harden our heart against it. It is not an accident that you are here today. God is in control of all things. He has brought you here to hear the Gospel, to have your ears unstopped, your eyes opened, and your tongue loosed. What I have said to you today is not my own thoughts. I have not come up with this stuff out of thin air. It’s what the Bible says. Go and look for yourself, and see that this is what St. Paul says in Romans chapters 9 and 10. I say this not so that you think that I’m some great, smart person, but so that you believe it when God speaks to you, telling you that he has chosen you for salvation from before the foundation of the world. He has brought about that salvation by the redemption that is in Jesus, and by the preaching of the Gospel, so that you may believe it and by that faith be saved. When you take the Lord’s Supper, just listen to what Jesus is telling you. This is his body. It’s given for you. This is his blood. It is shed for you for the forgiveness of all your sins. Isn’t it amazing that our salvation is given to us in such a way, in such a place as this?

190901 Sermon on Genesis 4:1-15 Luke 18:9-14 (Trinity 11) September 1, 2019

190901 Sermon on Genesis 4:1-15 Luke 18:9-14 (Trinity 11) September 1, 2019

The Bible is a very useful book because it teaches us the truth about life. This always conflicts with the way that the unbelieving world looks at life. That is why the Bible is useful. If the Bible didn’t tell us so, then there would be no way for us to understand things correctly. The world will loudly tell us the opposite, and we can’t help but believe it, if that’s the only thing that we are taught.

This is why it is so important for us to be educated with the Bible. I urge people to come to church every week. I do not do this because I want them to be miserable or because I want them to somehow earn their way into heaven by their attendance. I say this to people because otherwise they are not going to hear what the Bible teaches and how that conflicts with popular opinion. Without this constant training whatever is taught in the schools, by friends and neighbors, by the TV, and all the other things that take up our time, is what we will believe. And we won’t think anything of it either. It’s the air we breathe. How often do you think about the air you breathe? The fish also doesn’t notice the water it lives in. It is only when the fish is out of water that it might think about where it used to be. So also, we will not think about all kinds of things that are taken for granted until we are taught something different. This is something that the Bible will do if it is taken seriously.

The teaching from the Bible that I’d like to look at today is about our human nature. What are we like? How do we act? What do we want? What happens when we get what we want and what happens when we don’t?

So let’s begin with our Old Testament reading. Here is a good place for us to learn about human nature because this is where we learn about the first human being who was born in the natural way. Adam was intimate with his wife. She conceived and bore a son. They called him Cain. They thought a lot of Cain. Eve thought that he was the Messiah that had been promised. It is grammatically possible for the Hebrew to be translated as we are used to where Eve says that she has gotten a man with the help of the Lord, but I don’t think that is what she said. A very wooden, literal translation goes like this, “I have gotten a man, the Lord.” Or, “I have gotten a man, who is even the Lord.” The context also supports this translation because God had just told Eve that her seed would crush the serpent’s head. Why wouldn’t she believe that this first born seed of hers would be the Messiah? And so Adam and Eve were very impressed with Cain and even pinned all their hopes upon him.

It seems that Adam and Eve were not as impressed with their second born son. They named him Abel, which means insubstantial—like a breath or nothingness. His name is from the same root word that gives you the Old Testament word for vanity, as in “All is vanity and a chasing after the wind.”

Cain seemed to be the favored son. He is the one who ended up taking up his father’s occupation. He became a worker of the soil. Abel tended sheep. When the time for sacrifice came they both offered their sacrifices. God was pleased with Abel but not with Cain. This was crushing to Cain.

Here we can learn something about human nature. We all want to be recognized as someone good. We all want to be esteemed. We all want to be the best. There are many different areas in which we can be high achievers. We can be the smartest, the strongest, the best looking, the best athlete, the nicest, the funniest, the richest, the most popular, and so on and so on. Depending on our talents we all seem to pick a few different categories where we try to be high achievers. When we believe that we are good, then we are happy. We especially like it if we hear other people say this kind of stuff about us. Talk about giving a person a high! We love it and we cherish whatever good things might be said about us. We will mull them over and over in our minds, savoring it to the last drop.

On the other hand, there is perhaps nothing so awful as when we do not feel good about ourselves. That stinks! And if other people point out the way that we are not the greatest, then that makes us especially miserable. We will mull their criticisms over and over in our heads and that is extremely unpleasant. It does not matter if it is true or not. In fact, if it is true it only makes it all the more depressing. We want to love ourselves and we want everybody else to love us too.

So what happens if recognition of our greatness is withheld? Cain gives us the answer that comes naturally to us. The other person or other people become the enemy. They are hated.  Revenge is contemplated. Whatever can be gotten away with to make the other person’s life miserable is mulled over. Thankfully God restrains people with the Law from murdering or taking another person’s property, and so what normally happens are nasty looks and the running down of the person’s reputation with others. But murder is what is really in the heart. It is only because the consequences are feared that people don’t go through with it. But sometimes the consequences aren’t even enough to restrain the murderous heart.

Think of all these mass shootings that we have had in recent history—particularly those that have taken place in schools. Here we can see the importance of being recognized and the disastrous effects that can happen when a person is not recognized and esteemed. Who are the ones who are doing these shootings? Are they the popular ones? Are they the ones who everybody thinks are just great? No, these are the ones who are run down with the cruel words and actions of their peers. Every recognition of goodness in every sphere of their life is withheld from them by the mockery and jeering of their fellow students. Having been rejected, they become hateful. Then they turn murderous. The people they shoot are not necessarily the ones who wronged them. They end up hating everybody.

In the fight for recognition of achievement and goodness there are winners and losers. The winners are the kids that are on top. The way they get to the top and stay on top is by not associating themselves with those who are on the bottom. The ones on the bottom wish that they could be on the top. Cain was someone who knew both of these states. He was the first born and the highly favored son. He was feeling pretty good about himself. When God does not have regard for him and his sacrifice, then he became angry and envious.

The picture that we get of our human nature from this first human being born in the natural way is very disagreeable. He is proud. He is vain. He is a murderer. He is quite like the devil, as Jesus describes the devil. The devil is a liar and the father of lies, and he is a murderer. Cain was a liar. He lied about himself to look better than he really was. He was a murderer of those who got in his way. Being a liar and a murderer—being a little devil, a chip off the old block—is not a very pleasant picture of what we are like.

Alright, enough depressing talk. How do we fix this? There are two ways to answer this question. There is a theoretically way, and there is a real way. We will start with the theoretical way. Theoretically we should be able to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and get to work on reforming ourselves. God has even given us the blueprint for how to do this. It’s his Ten Commandments. If you keep the Ten Commandments, then nobody can say anything bad about you. Even God wouldn’t be able to say anything bad about you.

But with that last statement we can sense no matter how successful we might be in our endeavors, we won’t be able to pull this off. If we could keep the Commandments, which we can’t, but suppose that we could, how would we feel about ourselves? We’d feel pretty good. We might just strut around a little bit. We might say a little prayer to God thanking him that we are not like other men. Pride is the queen of sins! It is said that pride is the very thing that caused the devil to fall into sin. He was created an angel, a good spirit. Pride—the desire to be God, the desire to have all glory, laud, and honor—is what corrupted him. That desire to be recognized as good—that’s what did it. The truth is that only God is good.

And so this first way of fixing our human nature, which is altogether evil, where we apply ourselves and bring about great achievements is not possible. It will always be remain theoretical. As a theory it will always be true, but it cannot be brought into practice. In a way, when we start to go down this road, the harder we try, the worse it gets. The more we achieve, the worse our being lost in the imagination of our own hearts becomes.

Let’s turn to the real solution—the one that can actually happen and has actually happened. What is required is that there be action on God’s part rather than on our own. God condescends and comes down from heaven to meet us in our wretchedness. He who is best joins himself to those who are worst. This is like the cool kid in school—and not just superficially so, but genuinely good and deserving of all the praise; this is like the cool kid in school going to the nasty kid who picks his nose and does whatever else is unattractive and truly becomes friends with the kid. As a good friend he sticks with you and helps you come what may. He does not consider himself too good for you. He strangely loves you.

But here we meet a tragedy that has played out over and over again on down the ages. The uncool kid so often tells the good kid to go away. The sinner tells the Savior of sinners to go away. And why? Because the kid doesn’t want to be uncool. The sinner doesn’t want to be a sinner. It’s embarrassing to not be cool. It hurts like hell to admit that you really are a loser. And so the person says, “Go away.” They can manage on their own. Like Frank Sinatra they say, “I’ll do it my way.” Then they can own their own praise for whatever it is that they accomplish in their life instead of giving all praise to God who alone is good.

In addition to this natural resistance to the Gospel there are also all kinds of religion and philosophy teachers who will say that this kind of thing is a recipe for disaster. They say that you can’t tell people that they are forgiven otherwise they won’t work to be good. You can’t be too friendly, otherwise they’ll keep picking their nose and doing all those unattractive things. Pride, they say, is the secret to success. If people are humble, then they’ll be satisfied in the situation where God has placed them and they won’t strive after higher and more glorious things. They’ll remain a bunch of losers!

That, indeed, is the thing that the devil likes to say to us over and over again. He accuses us of our sins day and night. He does not want us to look up into heaven or to Jesus who is beside us as our friend. He plays upon our emotions and our dreams and our pride like Charlie Daniels plays his fiddle.

But while the devil says and does whatever it is that he does, we have something more certain and powerful. God himself is behind it. We have the glad tidings of great joy that is for all the people. To us a Child has been born. To us a Son is given. He is the Savior, Christ the Lord. God’s good will is toward us. His favor rests upon us. That is a blanket statement that applies to all people the whole world over. It doesn’t matter if we pick our nose or do other unattractive things. It is not dependent upon what we have done and left undone. Although we are sinners, Jesus sticks with us like a good friend even though we deserve to be picked on. And merely saying that he sticks with us is putting it altogether too mildly. He also died for us, was crushed for our iniquities, and why? For no other reason than that we can be set free and live in peace together with him, our friend.

And so let’s drop this silly preoccupation of ours where we are always evaluating ourselves and comparing ourselves and trying to make ourselves lovable. Frankly, we aren’t loveable, and yet we are loved by God. This is not some achievement of our own, but is in the mystery of God’s love for us. Check out from that rat race where the devil is prodding us on to establish our own worth. Be satisfied with the callings that God has given to you and love as you have been loved. That is a good life. It is a life that is not lived for some grand eulogy at the end, which people will forget in a week or a month. The life we live is for an eternal song of praise to God, who alone is good.