Sermon manuscript:
The natural heart of man, darkened by sin, has a very poor
understanding of God and what he is like. We can’t help but apply our own
standards and think that they are good enough.
So, for example, we might think, “I’ve gone to church my
whole life. I must be among those who will be saved.” Or, “I’ve never murdered
anyone. I’ve never done drugs. I’ve never done this, that, and the other thing
that I see everybody else doing.” “I’ve been able to keep a job. I’ve paid my
dues. I’ve worked hard.” We, that is to say, our flesh, derive a great deal of
comfort by weighing and comparing ourselves over and against others. We might
not be the best people, but there are a whole lot of people who are much worse
than us.
These thoughts, which come so naturally to us, are very
powerful. The only thing that can break them is the Word of God. Even then, for
most people, the Word of God goes in one ear and out the other, as Jesus speaks
about with his parable of the sower of the seed. But these vain thoughts about
ourselves and about our salvation must be broken if the Holy Spirit is to dwell
in us and we be saved. Our natural thoughts do not come from the Holy Spirit
who is always magnifying Christ. Our natural thoughts are always singing our
own praises, assuring us over and over, that we must be fine just the way we
are.
Our stupid fallen flesh has been the same ever since the
fall into sin. Thus the flesh of the Christians in the town of Corinth was the
same as that of Adam and Eve’s. It is also the same flesh as ours. It should
not be surprising, therefore, that what Paul has to say to the Corinthians is
directly applicable to us. The Corinthians were a lot like us. They were rich.
They were surrounded by temptations. Their surrounding culture was full of sex
and merchandise. They relied upon their proud Greek heritage as much as we rely
upon our proud American heritage. They became distracted by all that the world
had to offer. Their faith, hope, and love in God grew cold. They thought, “What
can it hurt that this person or that person should fall into sin? Aren’t we all
sinners? God can’t condemn all of us, can he?”
Paul is speaking to these kinds of thoughts in 1
Corinthians, chapter 10. He brings to bear the example of the ancient
Israelites to counter their foolish thoughts. The Corinthians were thinking,
“We’re fine. There’s no problem. Haven’t we been baptized? Isn’t Paul the one
who founded our congregation?” Just before the portion of this chapter that we
heard this morning Paul lists the credentials of the ancient Israelites. They
were all under the very cloud of God’s presence. They all passed through the
sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and the sea. They ate
spiritual food. They drank spiritual drink. They drank from the spiritual rock
that accompanied them—and that rock was Christ, Paul says. Just think of all
the amazing sights, sounds, and miracles that these people witnessed! If
anybody should be able to brag about their credentials, then it should be these
ancient Israelites, shouldn’t it?
Then comes this sobering statement: “Nevertheless, God
was not pleased with most of them. He had them die in the wilderness.”
What was wrong with these people? What kind of horrible
monsters were they that God killed them in the wilderness? They weren’t too bad
by most standards, and when they did sin it seemed somewhat understandable, to
say the least. One time they made a golden calf as a way to honor the Lord God,
then they had a big festival at church, full of fun and interesting things to
do. Everybody thought it was a smashing success. Then there were those times
when they grumbled because they completely ran out of money. They couldn’t get
any food. They couldn’t even going to get any water. There was one time where
they watched some movies that they shouldn’t have watched and God slaughtered
23,000 of them.
Then there was that time when they were afraid that they
were going to die at the hands of the Canaanites who had big armies and think
walls—many more resources than this rag-tag group of recently freed slaves.
These are the sins—particularly that last one—which provoked God to the point
where he decreed that they would all die. None of them would enter the land
promised to Abraham and his descendants. Only their grandchildren would enter
it.
Here we see the many arguments our flesh has for why we
should be saved fall to the ground. We’re members of an orthodox Lutheran
Church. The Israelites were blood descendants of Abraham. We’ve gone to church
our whole life. The Israelites never departed from church. The only sins we
commit are the ones that we couldn’t help but do because we are tempted beyond
what we can bear. The Israelites only worried and grumbled because they had no
food and no water. How would you react if you had no food and no water?
Finally—and this argument always provides such comfort to
our flesh—we suppose that God can’t send everybody to hell. He can’t punish
everybody. We have to be at least in the top 50% as far as how good we are, so
we and those we love have to be among those who are saved.
Just look what he did to these Israelites. They broke the
Law, and they were punished. It did not matter who they were or what they had
done otherwise. For forty years God sequestered them in the wilderness without
house or home until they died. If God did this to the Israelites, what might he
do against you or those whom you love who can’t hold a candle to the Israelites?
There is a common assumption that it is the easiest thing in
the world to get into heaven: It seems everybody can think and live however
they please. I’ve never yet been to a memorial or funeral where it is said that
the deceased went to hell. Everybody gets a free pass. Or, among Christians, it
might be believed that you have to know the magic words. You can live however you
want, just make sure that you don’t forget the magic words. So is that what was
wrong with these Israelites? Did they forget the magic words?
So what recourse is there? What can be done? The answer is
“nothing.” There was nothing that the Israelites could do. Every time they
tried to act they just added sin upon sin. When they tried to fix their food
and water problem, they disbelieved in God and believed in Egypt. When they
tried to fix their Canaanite problem they were rejecting the Lord as their
warrior. When God told them that they would spend 40 years in the wilderness as
punishment, they tried to fix that too. All of a sudden they figured that it
was not so bad of an idea to fight the Canaanites, but God, of course, was
against them. They lost terribly. There was nothing that they could do. They
were wretched. Anything they tried to do only made it worse.
The same thing is true for every single human being on this
planet, without exception. No one is righteous, no, not even one. Those who do
badly have no hope. They wallow in their sin. Those who try to do better only
make themselves more guilty. They believe that they can buy off God with their
hypocritical, self-chosen, works. The most sophisticated do-gooders commit the
worst sins as they play around with things that God has said and given. This
makes them more blind than they were to begin with. They end up being blinder
than the prostitutes and tax collectors, who at least have this going for them—if
they are honest with themselves, they know the truth that they have no hope of
being justified in God’s sight.
Paul tells us that God gave his Law in order to show sin, to
magnify sin, and create terror. This is quite contrary to how we naturally and
rationally think about God’s Law. We think God gave his Law so that we can
carefully consider what it says, apply ourselves to whatever it says, and
little by little, so long as we never give up, we will come out smelling like a
rose.
That would, indeed, work, if we were already good to begin
with. Perhaps that’s kind of like what Adam and Eve could have done. But we are
evil. The Law is good, but we are evil, and so we use the Law wrongly. The only
way that it can be used rightly is when we listen to what it says—namely, that
we haven’t kept it, that we, of ourselves, cannot keep it no matter how hard we
try. If there is to be anything good, it isn’t going to come from us. It is
going to have to come from God.
This teaching, that we are completely without hope, and that
the preaching of what’s right and wrong will only makes us worse, splits the
world in two. Most people reject it because they have never heard of it. They
look for hope where there is no hope. They look for salvation where there is no
salvation. They believe in idols of every kind—even very churchy idols. They
don’t know anything different.
And even if they do hear Paul’s preaching they think it is
nasty. “What, are we a bunch of slobs who are incapable of improving
ourselves?” “What about that wonderful lady down the street who has just been a
peach? Is such a nice lady like that going to go to hell? Is there no hope for
her?”
It is a hard thing to have all that we see and know and
trust in taken away from us. We like to believe that the people we know are on
their way to heaven. All of our flesh’s thoughts that we have considered truly
provide comfort. That’s why we think them! The only problem is that they are
lies. They will provide comfort for a time, but they are going to fail.
So most people hate Paul’s preaching, which is to say, they
hate Christ’s cross. They reject it, fight against it, and want to rehabilitate
our capacity for furthering our salvation. Rare is the person who covers his or
her mouth and says, “O my God, he’s right. I have no hope. I only make things
worse. Those rare occasions where I’m striving for righteousness is just so
that I can glorify myself. I belong in hell as someone who hates God and
everything about him including his beloved Son.” This is a bitter, ugly
confession. It has to be squeezed out of us against our will when our
abominable sin has been found out.
But, as Paul says, “God imprisoned all people in
disobedience so that he may show mercy to all.” Again: “Scripture has
confined all people under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ
might be given to those who believe.” God’s Law has to crush us and kill us
so that we quit believing in ourselves or in any other lie. Then we can believe
in Jesus Christ. We have to die to the Law, so that we can live to another. We
have to quit evaluating ourselves, praising ourselves, building our case for
why we and those we love have to be on our way to heaven. Instead we have to
say, “In the hour of death; and in the day of judgment, help us, good Lord. We
poor sinners implore you, to hear us, O Lord.”
Such faith in Jesus our Savior will not disappoint us. Lies
disappoint. The truth holds fast. Jesus, with this work of redemption and
justification, holds fast.
And so those who believe in Christ have a strange song they
sing. They tear down whatever people might believe in that is not Christ. They
slaughter the sacred calves that everybody else bows down and worships. They
will even tear down highly religious things, such as God’s Law, when these
things are not used rightly. The whole world is to become guilty, so that
Jesus, and him alone, is the only righteousness for all and to all who believe.
We are weak, but he is strong. We are condemned and guilty, damned to hell, and
whatever we might try to do about it will only make it worse. Our works, even
our good works, are terrible. Jesus, though, does all things well. What are his
works? He has chosen us and prepared for our salvation before the foundation of
the world. He died for us while we were sinners under God’s wrath. Now we
belong to him.
And he gives us his Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit assures us
that Jesus is God’s Son, that we will not be disappointed by believing in
Jesus, and therefore gives us peace. The Holy Spirit assures us that we will
not go to hell—not because of what we have done or left undone, but because of
Jesus’s work of atonement. The Holy Spirit also forms us and shapes us, setting
us on the path that we should go, sanctifying us, killing our Old Adam and
raising us with Christ. He raises those who fall and strengthens those who
stand. In this way God is our warrior who leads us into the Promised Land
despite our weakness and sin. He defeats the devil and all enemies, putting
them under our feet.
We, and everyone we might know and love, no matter how good
they might seem, are dreadful and evil. There is no hope in such people. Our
only hope is Jesus.
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