201025 Sermon for Observation of Reformation, October 25, 2020

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This Sunday of the Church Year is a little different from what we normally concern ourselves with on the other Sundays. On the other Sundays we are mainly concerned with something that happened with Jesus—his birth, his baptism, his death and resurrection, his teachings, his miracles, and so on. This puts our mind back in biblical times. With Reformation Sunday, however, we are dealing with things that happened in the 1500s and the times since then in the Lutheran Church. It can seem a little inappropriate to talk about the Reformation or the Lutheran Church in a worship service. Shouldn’t we be talking about the Bible instead?

But this is an incorrect way of looking at being a Christian. We are not a Bible appreciation society where we celebrate all things bible merely for the sake of being about the bible. The Bible was never intended to be something for its own sake. It has always been for the purpose of faith in God, with love that follows after by the Holy Spirit’s healing of the sinful heart. This happened when God spoke to Adam and Eve before there even was a Bible. The earliest books of the Bible were written by Moses thousands of years after Adam and Eve lived. But between Adam and Eve and Moses there were generation upon generation of people who believed in Christ even though they did not have any of the books of the Bible that we have today.

And so you can see that the story of there being Christians is larger than the portion of that that the Bible records. The plot of this story is the way that the Word of God fares among a people. God’s Laws and promises are either known or unknown, believed in or rejected, and thereby people either believe in Jesus Christ or they do not. This story was in effect from the beginning. It also continues on after the death of the apostles when the last of the Scriptures were written.

This story has to do with the Christian Church as a whole as well as with individuals. Therefore this story includes the controversies in the early church about the two natures in Christ that resulted in the Nicene Creed. It includes the rise to power of the Roman bishop, also known as the pope. It includes the way that God fashioned a German monk named Martin Luther to be an instrument for reforming his Church. Therefore it is not inappropriate to talk about the history of the Reformation in Church. It is God’s church that was reformed in the Reformation.

And we could also speak of more recent history, the history that brings us up to our present time. Not long after the Reformation the European churches were corrupted and suppressed by the governments in Europe. Some energetic and godly Lutheran men and women left Europe and settled in America in the 1800s. They made use of the freedom of religion afforded them at that time. They worked hard and sacrificed, developing and funding parochial schools to galvanize our people in the rediscovered truths of the Lutheran Confessions. But this has not been maintained. Our people have lost their zeal. Our parochial schools have closed. We have been going after other gods such. We are in need of repentance and renewal.

And finally this story comes right down to each of us personally. How has the Word of God fared with each one of us? Have we let it have its way with us so that we love it, speak of it, promote it and defend it against all nay-sayers? Or have we let it go in one ear and out the other? Have we become hard and calloused to it so that we neither fear God’s threats nor are comforted by his promises? Will we pluck up the courage to help our nearest and dearest to continue to believe in Christ? Will we denounce and speak against our nearest and dearest when they live in rebellion against God’s Laws and promises and are thereby plunging headlong into hell?

The answer to these rhetorical questions, unfortunately, is that things are not good with us. It is as Jesus says, that we have lost our saltiness. And if we have lost our saltiness, then we are good for nothing. We should be thrown out on the manure pile. We are good for nothing, because the purpose of life is not to have the most fun or make the most money. These things rot and disintegrate in the use of them. The treasure in heaven is to know the love of God that surpasses understanding in the crucified and resurrected Jesus, who is God’s own Son.

And so the story of God’s people is much larger in scope than the Bible. All history is sacred history. Each individual life is a story of God’s Word being either taken to heart or rejected. Each congregation is a story of the lives of those individuals brought together into a community. So it is also with a larger church body, such as a district or a Synod. What we do individually and what we do together as a Church body have eternal consequences, for our grasp on God’s Word always is either getting stronger or weaker. We are either growing in our love for the world, and becoming embarrassed by what God says; or we are growing in our conviction of God’s wisdom being right, no matter whether someone might call us names like fool or bigot or misogynist.

The vast history of Israel that is recorded for us in the Old Testament is very instructive in this regard. Reading this history is very dull unless you understand yourself to be just like them. Then you can understand why the Israelites were tempted to follow after idols, to bow to human powers rather than believing in what God had said, and all the other foibles that afflict us every day if only we would open our eyes to see them.

God punishes disobedience and sin, even though it seems to us like our lives are better or easier if we forsake God’s Word. God blesses obedience to his Word, even though almost always that blessing is under the cross so that it looks like we are dying, but behold we live. The weakness of God is stronger than the strength of men. God’s foolishness is wiser than the wisdom of men.

Having this perspective, where the kingdom of God is the real substance of all history, is necessary for correctly understanding the Reformation. There are a lot of interpretations of the Reformation that are out there. Some make Martin Luther out to be a genius. Some see him as a forerunner to democracy or modern thought. Some see him as breaking the political power of the pope. Martin Luther himself would have been totally uninterested in all of these things. He saw himself as none of these things. Luther’s concern was quite simple: He wanted to be a child of God. As a child fo God he wanted to be faithful to what God had revealed. With God’s name being hallowed, God’s kingdom would be furthered. People would repent of their sins and believe in Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

Repentance and faith in Christ was Luther’s main, indeed, his only concern. Whatever else might have happened intellectually or politically or socially was all incidental or in service to this concern for people’s souls. All the other talk that might happen in regards to the Reformation is trivial, even though the whole world was thrown into turmoil by Luther. For even if all aspects of human life were changed by the Reformation, it doesn’t matter in the end. The earth will melt as it burns together with all that is on it. Only human beings, made in the image of God, are eternal. All people and each individual will either live under God’s curse and punishment in hell, or under God’s blessing for the sake of Christ the crucified.

As the church that is named after Martin Luther, repentance and faith in Christ must remain our sole concern. This sets us at odds with almost everybody around us, for the modern world has moved on to what they imagine to be greater concerns. It is thought that we have outgrown this mythical worldview where God’s only-begotten Son could become incarnate or redeem anybody by his sacrifice on the cross. Instead, so-called “progress” is striven after in all areas of human life. It is believed that we can advance ourselves by our own cleverness, our own compassion or tolerance, to bring about a new day. Anybody who has their eyes open to the stupidity and meanness that every day confronts us should be able to see the foolhardiness of this, but it is without doubt what almost everybody believes regardless.

This opposing view, that believes in human goodness and progress, is certainly not limited to secularists, atheists, agnostics. This viewpoint is found within the organization of the church as well. The Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, the ELCA, shares the name “Lutheran,” but only continues to endorse more and more wickedness. Whatsoever the world should find objectionable, you can count on the ELCA to endorse it. This church body will no longer even say that salvation is through Christ alone, according to the resolution that was passed at its last convention by over 90% of the delegates. It is the pressure from the unbelieving world that has brought them to this point.

For a long time the Roman Catholic Church has been our friend when it comes to moral and social issues. They have stuck by many of the old biblical teachings while the modern world has come to fight them. However, just this past week, it has been discovered that pope Francis supports the formation of so-called “families” with civil unions for homosexuals. This obviously is just the first step in fully endorsing this lifestyle that the Bible calls abominable, but which modern society celebrates in fulfillment of the Apostle Paul’s prophecy at the end of Romans chapter 1.

With all the opposition from within and without it appears that the future of those Christians who continue to work for repentance and faith in Christ will be lonelier and more violent—not that the violence will be done by Christians, but rather that they will be punished for their views that are regarded as antiquated. If we are not prepared for this future, then we will at best be silent, not wanting to make waves, or at worst, we will go along with the rest of the world in celebrating wickedness.

Although we must be prepared for the cross that we must now endure, and although it appears that it will only become heavier and more severe, we also have no need to fear. As Paul says, “the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have the power of God to tear down strongholds.” Every high and exalted thing will be brought into subjection to Christ. It is like Luther says in his hymn, “A Might Fortress,” although the world should be filled with demons, and Satan himself should fume and rage against us, the victory has been won, the kingdom ours remaineth, for Christ is by us on the plain with his good gifts and Spirit.

The world believes in itself and its own solutions, but, at best, they only work in part. God has given us his grace that actually does work. The world works day and night to undo the curse of death and all that leads up to it. Drugs and plans and technologies are developed, but they all fail. We have the resurrection from the dead in Christ. One day we will live and never die.

Or the world falls all over itself to justify every fault, even sinful inclination. Everybody says that everybody’s okay because that was the way that they were born. Greed, disobedience towards parents, parents antagonizing their children, meanness, lust, homosexuality, bestiality, fornication, divorce—all these things that you have been guilty of—the world can say all together every moment of every day that all of this is just fine. They can celebrate it until the cows come home. None of it is thereby justified. There is only one justification that does that—and that is the divine justification God’s own Son worked for us. Everybody else is lying. He alone speaks the truth. Nobody’s sins are forgiven otherwise. Only faith in Christ justifies.

We do not hate people when we tell them that they are sinning. We do not hate people when we warn them that unless they repent, they will be punished by God now and eternally. This is the loving thing to do. It is the helpful thing to do. The world tells them lies. Everybody’s flesh, including our flesh as Christians, find these lies comforting. The only problem is that have no power to save. We have the true words that have the power to make people children of God and to give them the Holy Spirit.

This is our fight today. Luther had his fight in his day where people were prevented from repenting and believing in Christ. We have our own today, and it is no less hard or important. Luther taught us in his catechism to pray that God’s Name would be hallowed and that his kingdom would come. We must pray these petitions today just like he did. Then we may see the same power of God that brought about goodness 500 years ago bring about goodness also among us today.

201018 Sermon on Genesis 28:10-17 (Trinity 19) October 18, 2020

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Let’s begin today by dealing with some history that takes place before our Old Testament reading.

The Bible first introduces us to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12. That’s not too far into that first book of the Bible. Up to that point the history of the earth is laid out in a more general way, with a wide angle lens. In chapter 12 it focuses in on Abraham. God spoke several times to this man. He told him that he would inherit the land of Canaan for himself and his descendants. His descendants would be many and great. And through his seed all the nations of the world would be blessed. God gave Abraham the sign of circumcision as a seal of this covenant, to be done to all the baby boys when they were eight days old. Moses, the author of Genesis, says that Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.

Isaac, Abraham and Sarah’s only son, was a long time coming. He was miraculously conceived and born to Abraham and Sarah when they were very old. Isaac married a woman named Rebecca. She was a distant relative of Abraham’s. Abraham and Sarah did not want him to marry one of the Canaanite women around them. Thereby he would be lured away from the true faith to worshipping the gods of the Canaanites. Rebecca, like Sarah before her, also had a hard time conceiving and bearing a child. No children came for a long time until Isaac’s prayer was finally answered with the birth of Esau and Jacob.

Already, while the boys were in Rebecca’s womb, they were fighting with one another. Their mother went and inquired of the Lord, “Why is this happening to me?” The Lord said to her that two nations were in her womb. They will be separated from one another. One will be stronger than the other. The elder will serve the younger. And so it was that when Rebecca gave birth to the twins, the younger brother, Jacob, was holding on to the heel of his older brother, Esau.

There is more that happened between Jacob and Esau that you can read about for yourself. For our purposes today, I will only speak about one more thing before getting into our Old Testament text. It happened right before our reading today. It is the reason why Jacob is alone in the middle of nowhere sleeping with a rock as his pillow.

What happened just before our reading is that mother and son, Rebecca and Jacob, conspired against father and brother, Isaac and Esau, to get Isaac to bless Jacob instead of Esau. Rebecca had overheard that her husband was about to bless Esau after Esau provided a meal of wild game. So she and her favorite son, Jacob, went to work and tricked Isaac who was blind and old. Jacob, the younger, received the birthright. Esau did not.

When Esau learned of this treachery he said that he was going to kill Jacob after his father, Isaac, had died. Rebecca found out about this and told Jacob. She wanted Jacob to go away, back to where she and Abraham, and their relatives were from. There was an additional benefit to Jacob going away besides avoiding his irate brother. He could also find a wife there. Jacob’s brother, Esau, had married two Canaanite women, which were a source of bitterness for Isaac and Rebecca. There’s nothing quite like marrying an unbeliever for derailing a person’s faith.

So this brings us to our reading this morning. Jacob is on his way to his uncle Laban’s house. The sun had set, so he laid down to rest. When he fell asleep he had a dream where there was a staircase from earth to heaven with angels ascending and descending upon it. At the top of it was the Lord God. He declared to Jacob what he had already declared to his father and grandfather. Jacob and his descendants would possess this land. In his seed all the nations of the earth would be blessed. Plus he added that he would be with Jacob wherever he went, and that he would bring him back to this chosen land. God would not leave him until he had fulfilled all the promises that he had made.

Before we get into the tremendously gracious things that God does for Jacob in this dream, let us first deal with something that might be nagging at you as it does to me too. God is so gracious to Jacob, but what about what he had just done? He had just come out from something ugly. He snuck around with his mother and took the birthright. The whole family situation seems to be something of a mess. Isaac loves Esau. Rebecca loves Jacob. Esau wants to murder his brother. These are not the Cleavers. So how can God be gracious to someone who had just come from all that?

And this is not just a matter of feeling or intuition. God’s own law solemnly declares that he will punish those who break his commandments—even to the third and fourth generation—but he shows grace and every blessing to all who keep his commandments. In this case, with Jacob, it seems that God is showing grace and every blessing even though Jacob was fresh from taking the very inheritance from God in an underhanded way.

Here we have on display what the Apostle Paul would write about so many years later. The divine inheritance of salvation does not come about through Man’s keeping of the Law. It comes about by God’s promise that is held to by faith. This, in fact, is how it has been since the very beginning. If God dealt with us according to how we deserve, then Adam and Eve would have been left in death and eternal death. That is what God’s Law explicitly pronounced: “In the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.” But by looking ahead to the Seed of the woman, who, though he knew no sin, became sin for us, God forgave and received Adam and Eve on Christ’s account.

So it is not by looking to the Law that we can understand why good things happen in this sin-infested world. It is only by looking to the grace and mercy of God that is beyond our understanding. Our reason always wants the one to cancel out the other, so that we can make better sense of things. We either want the Law to be the decisive factor, so that people get what they deserve. Or we want grace to be the only factor, so that the Law is no more and people can live however they please despite what is right or wrong.

But all of God’s grace flows from where the Law was fulfilled and did its worst on Jesus Christ the crucified. There, in him, all have died. All have been justified. God’s grace and forgiveness extends to all who will hear it and believe. Sin—past, present, or future—does not annul God’s promise. God is stronger than our sin. He has mercy on whom he has mercy, and he hardens the hearts of those whom he will. Do not consider it a small thing, therefore, that you should hear God’s promise, his declaration of forgiveness and justification. He always means it. It is always effective and true. Therefore you ought to embrace it as your own like Abraham did. He believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness, despite all his sins.

So, to return to what nags at us—the way that Jacob is blessed by God so lavishly and recklessly even though he had just come from such an ugly situation—I can’t really make this smooth for you so that it goes down easy. It seems to offend our sense of justice. The Law says one thing. God in his grace says another. I suppose you could judge God and accuse him of being foolish or unjust. (You certainly wouldn’t be the first to do so!) But I think you’d be better off acknowledging that God’s ways are not our ways, neither are his thoughts our thoughts. Instead of wondering if he should do and say what he does and says, why don’t you pay attention to what he actually does and says? He is God, after all.

Despite whatever Jacob had thought, said or done, God appeared to him at this troubling time. He was full of doubts, fears, and sadness. He had heard the promises made to his grandfather and grandmother, his father and mother, but so far as we know, God had not yet appeared to him or spoken to him. What he sees is glorious. God showed him all of himself that was possible for Jacob to see without dying on account of the surpassing glory. These angels were not the cute cherubs of the popular imagination, but mighty, holy warriors. With an army of those at your back, nobody and nothing can stand in your way.

Plus the words that the Lord God speaks to Jacob are almost over the top, dripping with loving concern. What more would God need to say to him to assure him any further? He told Jacob what he already had heard and believed—that he would inherit the land promised to Abraham. But then he goes on to say that God will watch over him and be with him. No matter where Jacob might go, the Lord would be there too. Although Jacob was going away from his homeland, and he would be gone for well over a decade, God would bring him back. God won’t let a single promise fall to the ground.

Jacob, to his credit, does not argue with God. He certainly could have. He could have said, “Look, Lord, at my sins. How can you bless someone like me? Look at what I just did?” This sounds pious, but it is the opposite of piety. It sounds humble, but it is in fact pride.  Why should God be merciful to you? Because you’re sorry? Because you’ve decided to make it up to him? Because you promise to never do it again?—Like all those other times that you’ve promised to never do it again? With junk like this nobody is going to be in heaven.

No, the reason why God is gracious to you is because he has set things right, not you. Jesus suffered and died. God is well pleased with him and the justification and salvation he has brought about. He is not waiting around for you to feel bad enough or reform yourself. On the basis of Jesus Christ and him crucified the forgiveness of sins may be boldly and lavishly pronounced to poor, miserable sinners who totally and completely do not deserve it. As the Scriptures say, “Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated.” If you happen to be Jacob, that’s a pretty good deal.

And you should consider yourself to be a Jacob. Here’s why: Because God has brought it about that you should have the Gospel declared to you. If God wanted to appear to you in a dream and speak with you the way that he did with Jacob, then he could certainly do that. But God didn’t always do that. In fact, he did that kind of thing very rarely. Instead, the way that God’s people have always learned about his promise of salvation is by what seems like ordinary means. Parents tell children. Friends or neighbors tell one another. A preacher tells it to a congregation.

This is not done at random or according to the will of man, but it is following what Jesus himself told his disciples to do. His disciples did not go out on their own initiative, as though it were their own idea. No, Jesus tells them to go out and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; teaching them whatsoever Jesus commanded them, and Jesus promised to be with them. “Whosoever’s sins you forgive,” Jesus says, “they are forgiven them. Whosoever’s sins you retain, they are retained.” To my dear church the keys are given to open, close, the gates of heaven.

So when you hear from a Christian that you are loved by God, redeemed, forgiven, and an heir of heaven, this is not just somebody’s opinion. Jesus says, “Whoever hears you, hears me.” This is the way that God works. He works through the preaching of the Gospel, so that it may be embraced and received through faith by those who hear it.

Therefore we can and should apply what God said to Jacob also to us for our own comfort and joy. God says, “I will be with you wherever you go. I will bring you to the land that I have promised to give to you. I will be with you until I have fulfilled the promises that I have made to you.” This means that God will be with you even if you should have much that is given to you or much that is taken away. He will be with you if you catch some dread disease. Yea, though you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, he will be with you, his rod and his staff will comfort you.

It is a very good thing that God speaks to you just like he spoke to Jacob. He speaks to you by the testimony of Christians. Indeed, God speaking to us is the best of things—nothing is higher or better. Isn’t it strange, then, that it is held in such contempt, despised and neglected? Be that as it may, make hay while the sun shines: I announce to all of you the forgiveness of sins, God’s grace, and everlasting blessing in Jesus’s Name.

201011 Sermon on 1 Corinthian 1:1-9 (Trinity 18) October 11, 2020

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Our Epistle reading this week begins with chapter 1, verse 1. It is at the very beginning of a letter that the apostle Paul wrote to the congregation that existed in the Greek city of Corinth. It is customary that we go about doing these kinds of things in a certain way. Among us we might begin a letter or an email by saying, “Dear So-and-so…” And then, before we get into the subject at hand, we might talk about things that are a mutual concern of the author as well as the recipient. One farmer might write to another farmer about the weather and how the crops have been growing. Old friends might begin a letter by talking about mutual acquaintances that they had recently come across. You get the idea. It is quite common for the beginning of a letter to speak to things that both the letter writer as well as the ones receiving the letter would find relevant.

With the writing of Holy Scripture the Holy Spirit by no means despises these sorts of things. The vast majority of the Bible is quite ordinary in the way that it speaks. Only some of the prophetic works like Ezekiel or Daniel in the Old Testament or Revelation in the New Testament speak in a more exalted way. Otherwise you might say that the Holy Spirit wears everyday clothes when he inspires the authors of Scripture. The letters of Paul that we have in the New Testament certainly follow this typical pattern.

Whenever Paul addresses a letter he is immediately thinking about the connection that exists between himself and those he is writing to. It is not surprising that he talks about Jesus Christ and God the Father and the Holy Spirit, for this is their shared interest. Already in the very first verses of the letter he is foreshadowing and preparing the ground for what he would like to say to them. He often lays out divine truths at the very beginning that he will apply to his hearers so that they can gain a greater understanding of them.

Although Paul has not addressed a letter specifically to any one of us, nor to our congregation, what he says can also be applied to us because we have the same connection to him as these people to whom he was writing 2,000 years ago. We believe in the same Jesus Christ and God the Father and the Holy Spirit as they, so what Paul says to the Corinthians also applies to us.

With that in mind there is a lot that we can learn from this little introduction to his letter. Therefore, today we will look at what Paul says to the Corinthians with the idea of also applying it to ourselves.

First of all, Paul says where the letter is directed: to the church of God in Corinth. Then he adds a phrase that describes them. He says, “Those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, who are called as saints.” The important word behind “sanctify” and “saint” is “holy.” To sanctify means to make holy. A saint is someone who is holy. Holiness is something that is strictly limited to God and is only available through an association with him. There is no way for anyone or anything to be holy except by being in a relationship to the only source of holiness, which is God. So what Paul is saying is that the members of this congregation have been made holy in Christ Jesus, and that they are holy. This is the reason why the Father sent his Son. It was to make sinners into saints.

Then Paul adds this: “along with all in every place who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours.” The congregation to which a person belongs is important. It is not by accident that certain people end up in certain congregations. It is the Holy Spirit who calls us and gathers us into congregations. But the Holy Christian Church, the fellowship of saints, is larger than any individual congregation. As Paul says, it is made up of all those in every place who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ as their Lord. Another way of saying this is that what makes a person a Christian is faith in Jesus as his or her Lord. For without faith, it is not possible to call on something. You must first believe that you will be helped, otherwise you would not call out to him.

Then follows words that are quite familiar to us: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” There is more to those words than we might suppose. Grace means gift or help or blessing. Peace means comfort, tranquility, rest. Pronouncing this to someone is offering it to them. The reason why anybody can say, “Grace and peace to you from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” is because this grace and peace is actually available to them. The reason why it is available to whomever might hear it is because Jesus has died for the sins of the whole world. It is available to all, and God wishes for all to embrace it by faith, saying, “Yes, this grace and peace is mine as God’s gift to me.”

Blessings naturally serve as a kind of concluding statement. Our church services end with a blessing: “The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious unto you, the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.” There is also often blessings like “have a good week,” that we say to one another. So when Paul pronounces the blessing “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,” this concludes his opening greeting to the church of God in Corinth.

Then Paul gives thanks: “I always thank my God for you because of the grace of God given to you in Christ Jesus. You were enriched in him in every way, in all your speaking and all your knowledge, because the testimony about Jesus was established in you.”

It is amazing how thankful Paul always was. Some people are born with a cheery disposition where they are almost always bright eyed and bushy tailed. They have a smile for everyone. But it is obvious that Paul’s thankfulness is not just of this sort. It is not like Paul is a cock-eyed optimist who cannot be down on life because he isn’t able to see deeply enough to notice anything discouraging. Paul is keenly aware of failings and short-comings and tragedies of all sorts. Therefore his thankfulness is not a matter of his personality, but is rather intertwined with his Christian faith.

When Paul looks at any Christian, no matter how weak or troubled, he is moved to give thanks. Such a one has been called out of the darkness of slavery to sin, death, and the devil, to the light of being known and loved by God. Even if the Christian is still weighed down by the flesh, harassed by the devil, afflicted with disease and death, the victory has already been won. By faith in Jesus Christ the Christian will overcome all these things and more. The grace and peace that is given to us by God is such a great and powerful gift Paul is moved to thanksgiving every time.

This is especially noteworthy when we consider the congregation to whom Paul is writing. If you are at all familiar with 1 and 2 Corinthians, you know that there were a lot of problems in this congregation. There was a lot of disorder, a lot of jealousy. Some were even talking bad about Paul and the Gospel of Christ the crucified that he preached. They said it was too gloomy and weak and unimpressive. To such a crowd it seems that denunciations and curses would be the more natural choice, especially since many of them were opposed to Paul. But the fact that Paul does not deal with them in such a way, but actually gives thanks, shows that his thankfulness is not personal. He is thanking God for what God has done in them. He has the eyes to see that God was powerfully at work, in spite of their blemishes. The goodness that God has worked is so great, that their faults are hardly noticeable, even though they are opposing Paul himself.

This is something useful for our life together and our fight against the devil. Without a shadow of a doubt I can say that the devil does not want you to be a part of this congregation. He wants you to be away and stay away. So it is with all Christian congregations and schools and wherever else Christians might gather. There’s hardly a more effective way for the devil to achieve this purpose than to turn Christians against one another. Instead of thanking God for the grace he is worked in your fellow congregant so that you hardly notice the faults, the devil will turn it around. You become so aware of the faults that you can’t hardly believe that the other one can be a Christian.

I have known congregations where they become so poisoned and toxic that feuding becomes more important than praying, praising, or giving thanks. On the other hand, where there is humility, gentleness, bearing with one another in love, this covers over a multitude of sins and weaknesses. When the flock stays together it is a lot stronger against the wolf. He wants to divide and scatter so that he can pick us all off one by one. So Paul’s thanksgiving to God is important, not because he is making it up with rose colored glasses, but because he has the eyes to see the goodness of God even in the midst of much trouble.

It is also important to hear what he gives thanks for. He says that they have been enriched in every way, in all their speaking and all their knowledge, because the testimony about Christ was established in them. Given their troubles, it might be easy to think that they were poor rather than rich. But for that to be the case, they would have to cease being Christians altogether. For if anyone is a Christian, then he or she can’t help but be filled to the brim particularly in the way they speak and think. A Christian knows that God has saved the whole world in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ. A Christian knows that this world will not last forever. A Christian knows that evil will one day be segregated and punished once and for all in hell. A Christian knows that what is truly good about life is not money or glory or all the things that the unbelievers go after, but rather love. All these and more make up the tremendous wisdom that God gives whenever he works faith in Jesus. There is no such thing as a poor Christian when it comes to knowledge. If a person is a Christian, then automatically he or she has been given more than anybody could hope for or even imagine. It does not matter if they are clever and quick or slow and dumb. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism. We all have one Savior, one knowledge. We all have the same gift whereby we overcome death and grave and will enter into eternal life.

Eternal life is the name of the game. We are not a country club. We are not a public service organization. Our congregation is a gathering of Christians who work together so that the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ may be made known to us and to whomever crosses our path, and so that the sacraments which Christ has instituted for our salvation may be offered to those who desire them. All this is done so that we may stand redeemed and holy, forgiven of our sins, when Christ comes again in glory and inaugurates the fullness of his heavenly kingdom. When Paul speaks about the way that the Corinthians are rich and overflowing, it is with this endpoint in mind. He says, “because the testimony about Christ was established in you, you do not lack any gift as you eagerly wait for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Paul is speaking about the last day.

If there is anything that has made Christian congregations deteriorate all around us, I think it is the loss of this end times perspective that has done it. When congregations are seen as places for people to socialize or do volunteer work or what-have-you, and they no longer see themselves as places where we are being prepared for the last day, then they cannot help but lose sight of the Gospel of Christ the crucified. Indeed, this is one of Paul’s concerns with the Corinthians. They were losing sight of why we are Christians, and so Paul speaks of this divine truth at the beginning of his letter and will explain it more thoroughly as the letter goes on.

Finally we have some encouragement at the end of the portion of Paul’s letter that was read today. He says, “God will also keep you strong until the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, who called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.” In many and various ways, sometimes by rather strange circumstances, each one of you has come to be part of this congregation. This includes me and my family too. This is not by accident. The Holy Spirit has gathered us together.

So also the Holy Spirit gathered together the congregation at Corinth in Paul’s time. So what Paul says of them is also true of us. The reason why we’ve been gathered is so that we can be kept strong until the end, so that we may be blameless on the day of the Lord Jesus Christ. You have been called into fellowship with Jesus Christ. You are in communion with him by God’s working. Although we are not nearly so faithful as we would like to be, God is faithful. He has given us his Gospel. He has given us his sacraments. By continuing to use them we may be assured of our faith being strengthened, of our ongoing sanctification, until the end.

In conclusion, I hope that you can see from Paul’s words to our congregation today that we are something special. We are not just religious consumers, and this church happens to be the store at which we happen to be shopping at the time. Our eternal lives are already bound together in our shared story of salvation. We are together being sanctified and kept in the true faith. Our interactions with one another are important and powerful—either for the good or for the bad. Thus we are responsible to one another, to help one another. God help us to be faithful. Amen.

201004 Sermon on Luke 14:1-11 (Trinity 17) October 4, 2020

 Audio Recording

Sermon manuscript:

We Christians live in the time of the New Testament, the new covenant, the new arrangement between God and us. The nature of this New Testament is that Jesus Christ is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. By the redeeming sacrifice of the Son of God, all people have been reconciled to God, even though they have disregarded and even actively fought against God’s will. Therefore, through faith in Jesus we are justified before God. That means that God accepts us and welcomes us and blesses us for Christ’s sake.

There have been previous covenants, previous arrangements between God and his people, before the fullness of time came with Jesus. There was the Abrahamic covenant where Abraham and his descendants were given the sign of circumcision. There is also the much more extensive covenant that was given at Mt. Sinai. This covenant included the tabernacle and temple, all the sacrifices and festivals that went along with that, the distinction between clean and unclean food, and so on. Today we will be talking about one aspect of this Sinai covenant, the third commandment, which requires the people of God to not work on Saturdays. This, like many other aspects of the old covenant, set apart the people of God from all the other people on earth.

As you know, we Christians do not observe the Sabbath. We do not forbid work on Saturday or Sunday. The application that we make with the third commandment is that we should not despise preaching and God’s Word, but hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it. But we can do that on any day of the week if we so choose. It is an ancient custom, going all the way back to the apostles, that Christians meet on Sunday, the day the Lord was resurrected from the dead, but theoretically we could meet any day.

We also do not observe the distinction between clean and unclean food. We are allowed to eat pork, shellfish, and whatever else, for what Jesus has made clean we ought not call unclean. Neither do we have the Levitical priesthood or the services and sacrifices and festivals of the temple in Jerusalem. These were prophesies and foreshadowings of the one great sacrifice of the God-Man Jesus Christ on the cross, the only sacrifice that is capable of atoning sin.

Now all Christians are royal priests. We declare the excellencies of God who has called us out of darkness into his marvelous light. Our sacrifices are not goats and rams, but our own bodies as living sacrifices—offered up in love for God and for our neighbor. Christians are being conformed to the image of the crucified Christ, being glorified, just as Jesus was glorified on the cross in such a way where it is only visible through faith.

So it is not possible for us Christians to go back to the old covenant. The new has come. The old has passed away. If we seek to establish our righteousness by observing the Sabbath or the distinction between clean and unclean food, then Jesus does us no good—for we are no longer believing in him but in our keeping of the Law.

This is what Paul writes about at length in his letter to the Galatians. Either we are justified through faith in Jesus or we are justified by our own works and laws. The righteousness that we receive through faith in Jesus is greater than any righteousness we can work up on our own. And so we must not let people trouble us with any failure to keep the Law—especially those temporary, ceremonial laws of the Sabbath and clean and unclean foods that applied only to the Jews from the time of Sinai until the death and resurrection of Christ. This was the beginning of the New Testament that we now live in of Jesus’s blood that is shed for you for the forgiveness of all your sins.

So this is how things are for us. The apostles have made this clear to us, even though it took them some time to understand it too, as we can easily see in the writings of the New Testament. It was hard for them to understand how any of God’s commandments could no longer be applicable in Christ. Those laws served their purpose for the people of God at that time. Now God’s people know him in Christ the crucified and resurrected.

Since it was a hard lesson for the apostles to understand how God’s commandments could pass away (indeed, it is still a hard lesson for us too), Jesus was already teaching them and preparing them before the New Testament was fully put into place. This is how we should understand what is going on in our Gospel reading today. Jesus is teaching them the limits of what the Law can do on the one hand, and on the other, what is possible with the new life that was opening up in Jesus. This is very applicable to us too. We are Jesus’s disciples. We need to learn what the Law can do, and, on the other hand, what the Holy Spirit can do.

In our Gospel reading we hear how Jesus went to a dinner party with a large number of people who were very concerned with keeping the Law. They were from the group of Jews called Pharisees. This group of people cared a great deal about what the Bible said. They wanted to keep whatever Laws God might have made.

At the dinner party there was a man who was suffering from edema. Edema is a medical condition where fluid is able to enter some tissue in the body, but it has a hard time getting back out. Therefore the fluid accumulates and that part of the body swells up until it is like a balloon. The skin gets tight and stretches. It might get infected. It is an unsightly and painful condition. When Jesus saw the man he felt sorry for him. He wanted to heal him. But first he asked the people present whether it was lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not.

Nobody said a word. How come? Here we see one of the effects of a preoccupation with the Law. What these people cared about was being right. They didn’t care about the man who was suffering. They wanted to have the right answer. And yet, how could they totally ignore him either? That would leave them open to the charge of being unloving. Therefore, out of love and concern for themselves and the case that they wanted to keep intact for their own righteousness, they thought it was best not to say anything.

Jesus has no such need to establish his own righteousness. He already is righteous. He has no need to prove it to anybody. Therefore he is free to turn all of his attention to the man who was suffering and attend to him. It was an easy decision for Jesus. If only the Pharisees would allow themselves to forget about their own justification for a minute, it would be easy for them to understand as well. That is what he tries to bring out for them by his examples.

Suppose your son or an ox falls into a well on a Sabbath day, wouldn’t you immediately sweat and huff and puff, that is to say, work your tail off, until you got him out? Or would you let your son sit there in the cold wetness for a day? Or would you let the ox bellow away from a day, scared out of its mind? The answer is obvious. The right thing to do is to love and help.

This, in fact, is the real content and meaning of God’s Law. Paul says that all of the commandments are summed up in this one word of love. God himself says that the Law is to love God with your whole being and to love your neighbor as yourself. But the problem is that we don’t use the Law correctly. We are always trying to use it to justify ourselves. We are always wanting to judge ourselves as being good, or good enough, or that we’ve done all that can be expected of us.

Because we are evil, this always turns into a selfish endeavor. We want to be able to check the Law off the list, and then do whatever we want to do—to love and serve ourselves with the balance of our time and energy. This is a great boon for our flesh. In this way we feel good about ourselves, that we are righteous, while also not having to care about or love anybody else one inch more than the Law that we’ve made up for ourselves requires. Having done our chores we suppose that the rest is all ours that we can do with as we please.

That there should be anything wrong with thinking and living this way is very difficult for us to see, because this is the way of thinking that comes naturally to us. We are all born as selfish as can be. Then we are all taught some laws. We have to follow these laws, but we are always looking forward to that time when we can just live for ourselves again, not worrying about anything or anyone else. So long as we have lived according to our own code of ethics we imagine ourselves to be wonderful people, but the truth is that we are not only selfish, but proud as punch to boot. This is how all people will necessarily be—our flesh is capable of nothing other. It is what comes naturally to everyone. The only alternative is if a person be converted, that is, brought to repentance and to faith in Christ.

Christianity has a lot to it that is not “natural” if “natural” is understood to be the way that we all are after being born in sin. Jesus says that we should love our enemies. That we should do good to them. That is highly unnatural. In fact, it is impossible to do it in a genuine way without the Holy Spirit accomplishing it in us.

Another thing that is unnatural is that we should be humble, that we should take the lowest place, as Jesus talks about in the second half of our reading. Everybody naturally looks out for himself or herself. Some do it by aggressively going after the top spots. Others do it by pretending that they are humble so that they look better to other people. Only the Holy Spirit can bring about a humility that is not self serving.

The way that this humbling happens is by God opening our eyes to the way that we really are. When we see how we are really supposed to love, and how our bodies are supposed to be living sacrifices, poured out for the good of others, then we will no longer think that we are justified, that we are good. The way that we should be is to be filled with love from the top of our heads to the soles of our feet. There should be no job too low or degrading that we wouldn’t be thankful to do it. Our love should be such that we wouldn’t live very long, because we would burn up like a spark, pouring ourselves out for others.

Note how different this is from the fellow who uses the law to prop up his own righteousness and wants to be judged as good. Instead of looking to the needs of other, such a fellow is looking to himself, demanding to be recognized for the good job that he has been doing.

Here you can see how severely limited the Law is for bringing about righteousness. When it is used in the natural way—the way that comes naturally to us—it is a way to excuse ourselves from loving others while feeling good about ourselves for doing so. This is not God’s will. God’s will is that we should love genuinely, sincerely, and selflessly. No laws or commandments can do this because of the way that we inevitably misuse them with our sinful flesh. God has to create something new, a new birth by the water and the Holy Spirit. Paul says in Galatians that neither circumcision nor uncircumcision can really do anything, but only faith in Christ working through love. Again, in the next chapter he says, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is able to do anything, but only a new creation.

So for us to be righteous we are dependent upon God, and fortunately this is the very thing that he does for us. We are crucified together with Christ and raised together with him. When Jesus died, we died together with him. When Jesus was raised, we too were raised, justified before God on account of Christ’s sacrifice. Therefore we are free from having to establish a righteousness of our own. We don’t have to be searching for some worthiness in us. We are already righteous because Jesus has made us so.

So when we see someone who needs help, we can help him. When someone asks us to go one mile, we can go two. When someone asks us for our jacket, we can give him our coat as well. To be sure, flesh and blood is not capable of this life. Neither is hammering on the law ever going to bring it about. We will always be looking for a shortcut. Only a new and good heart, created by the Holy Spirit, can do it. And he does do it. That which is impossible with man is possible with God.