220828 Sermon on Hebrews 3:1-17 (Pentecost 12) August 28, 2022

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There are a couple places in the Bible where there is so much you can learn that they almost seem inexhaustible. One of those places is the Garden of Eden with the fall into sin and the promise. You know how I bring that up all the time in my preaching and teaching. The other place is what we’ll look at especially today—the example of the Israelites when they leave Egypt and are in wilderness with Moses.

The main thing going on with the Israelites is that God is at work with them. Everything that happened was God’s idea. Sometimes we might think that the stuff that happened was Moses’s ideas, but that is very much not the case. From the beginning at the burning bush to the end at Mt. Nebo God was making the plans and doing the actions. God did the plagues. God manifested himself as a sign to be followed with the pillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire by night. God opened up the Red Sea and dried it out so that the people could walk through it as on dry ground. God brought the manna at dawn and the quail at evening. God made the water flow from the rock. God did it all.

But, as you know, the Israelites had a very hard time with everything God did. They didn’t enjoy how God was doing things. God wasn’t doing things the way that they would have done things.

So, for example, they didn’t like it when Pharaoh got mad at Moses and punished the Israelites by making their work harder. They didn’t like being led helplessly to the shores of the Red Sea, looking like they were going to be slaughtered by the Egyptian army. They didn’t like running out of the food and water that they had brought with them from Egypt, and then looking around and seeing nothing but a barren desert. If it were up to them, they would have done all these things very differently than the way God did things.

If it were up to them, they probably would have liked it best if they would have been the masters and the Egyptians were their slaves. They would have liked riding across the desert in air-conditioned limousines. They would have liked to have enough provisions in their convoy to last forever and a day. They would have liked all the circumstances and conditions to be pointing to their awesomeness and successfulness so that they would always be soothed and never ever have a negative thought.

What I’ve said might sound silly, a little over the top, but we can be serious about what the Israelites were thinking and wishing. If there were a physicist at the shores of the Red Sea that physicist would be very serious about his objections to what was about to take place. If there were an economist in the wilderness, that economist would be very worried about limited resources and how they could ever be properly allocated among so many people.

One of the rules for properly engaging in economics is that God is not going to intervene. How could an economist properly predict the price of bread if bread just shows up out of nowhere with the dew? There’s no way for a physicist to describe the physical characteristics of water if all of a sudden it stands up in a heap and removes itself from the mucky sea floor. That’s not how things normally work.

We all understand how things normally work. We all understand how we normally get bread. We all understand how water normally acts. Moses, the writer of Exodus, would have us believe that a bread-like substance came to them every morning. The water of the Red Sea didn’t act like water normally acts. The reason why these things acted the way they did is because God made it so. Either God made it so or Moses is lying about what he saw and experienced.

What happened with Moses, however, is not something that is applicable only to him. Jesus, our teacher, says similar things to us. For example, Jesus tells us not to worry about our life, what we will eat, what we will drink, or what we will put on. Why? Because your heavenly Father knows that you need them. Jesus does not tell us that we should not worry only if we have tons and tons of provisions. He evidently means that we will be fine no matter what the economist might say.

Or, for example, Jesus says that he is the resurrection and the life. Even if we should die, yet shall we live. Whoever lives and believes in him will never die. Here we have a problem for the physicist or the medical doctor. From dust we are and to dust we shall return. How can these bones live? They shall live by the life-giving sacrifice of the Son of God, no matter what the physicist might say.

So when we think of the Israelites and Moses we should understand that we have the same struggles of faith as they had. We are cut from the same cloth. We know how things normally work. God has promised them and us that we will be blessed. But then how things normally work comes along and it doesn’t look at all like we will be blessed. Then they figured that there’s no way that they could be blessed because that’s not how things normally work. God’s promises were thrown out the window because how could God’s promises come true when that’s not how things normally work?

So we need encouragement to believe. It can be hard to be at peace and thankful if our net worth is decreasing rather than increasing. It can be hard to be at peace and thankful when death draws near. What about when our sins be like scarlet? It can be hard to believe that God will make them white as snow. But such are the promises of God.

We can’t know exactly how God will be faithful to his promises to the very last detail. There’s no way that the Israelites could have known that they would be walking on a dried out seabed or have water sweetened by a chunk of wood. But regardless of not being able to see how everything was going to work, God was faithful to his promise of being their God and they being his people, even when they were not faithful to him. The people’s faithfulness was quite awful actually.

And we need to talk about that. As Psalm 95 says, and as our reading from Hebrews says, the Israelites hardened their hearts. Their unfaithfulness was made permanent. It is not as though God can be tested and tested and tested and that’s okay. God eventually slammed the door on these people, and once it was closed, no one could open it. No amount of crying or gnashing of teeth made God relent once God hardened their hearts. They could not believe, even if they had wanted to.

There is nothing worse than God hardening hearts. Other curses and calamities have to do with the body and the mind. The hardening of heart is God’s punishment of finality upon the soul. The way that it happens is as it was with Pharaoh and the Israelites. Moses tells us how Pharaoh hardened his own heart. He heard God’s Word, knew that it was God Word, but he didn’t want to do it. He hardened his own heart. Eventually Moses tells us that not only did Pharaoh harden his own heart, but God hardened it.

So it was also with the Israelites. They revolted over and over and over again. They rejected God. They rejected Moses who spoke God’s Word. It is amazing how long-suffering God is with them. But eventually enough was enough. They no longer could be anything but unbelieving, which is what they and we naturally are in the first place. God gave them what they wanted; he withdrew his Holy Spirit from them.

When this happens, it happens quietly. The hardening of hearts goes unnoticed. The Israelites carry on. There is no scene in the books of Moses after their hearts are hardened where they tear their clothes and say, “My God! What have I done!” Such a reaction is impossible with a hardened heart. Their hardened heart is what kept them plodding alone, still going to church, assuming that they were fine when they were not fine.

This, also, just like everything else we can learn from the Israelites, is very instructive for us. Where are the torn clothes, the “My God! What have we done?” among us? Instead we plod along. The younger generations just don’t care it seems for God’s Word, and we shrug our shoulders. I guess we’re just old fashioned. These whipper-snappers just don’t do things the way we do. Oh well, times change I guess. We can’t be bothered to care or to change or to act. We’ll just keep plodding along.

How did this happen? We have been hypocrites. We, like Pharaoh, have known God’s Word, but not wanted to do it. We, like the Israelites, have had God’s promises, but have not been thankful or believing. Instead we’ve been just like the rest of the unbelieving world. We know how to get ahead. We know how to have a good time. Screw whatever God has to say. We’ve done what we wanted to do and not let God’s will have his way with us.

If God rejected these Israelites, why can’t he also reject us? That is the bracing thought that the writer of the Hebrews puts before us today. It says in our reading: “Watch out, brothers, so that there is not an evil, unbelieving heart in any of you that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another each and every day, as long as it is called “today,” so that none of you are hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.”

Note how it says that an evil, unbelieving heart can come upon any one of us. None of us is immune. I am not immune. How does this happen? It’s by being hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. Sin is deceitful. It deceives. It tricks. It lures. It rewards. It hardens.

How can we be helped? First, we must not be deceived. Sin always wants to masquerade as the thing that is “normal.” It’s what everybody else is doing. It’s what is inevitable anyway. So we might as well just embrace it and act accordingly. We must not allow such deceitful thinking to go unchallenged.

But that’s only the beginning. The main thing, and really the only way that we can be helped, is the only way that the Israelites could have been helped. We must take in hand firmly and ever more firmly and always and forever the promises of God. The strength of the Israelites was always and only in their God who promised and acted. They were strong when they believed that God was for them despite what they saw, despite what the worldly-wise might tell them. Economists and physicists still think that it’s nuts to believe that such things could ever happen.

Our reading says: “Encourage one another each and every day, as long as it is called “today,” … Encourage with what? This: “For we have become people who share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firmly until the end. As Psalm 95 says: Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”

We are to encourage one another each and every day. What is to be our encouragement? It is that we are people who share in Christ. The Israelites were baptized in the Red Sea. You’ve been baptized into Christ’s death. The Israelites inherited the Promised Land. Your inheritance is eternal in the heavens. Don’t be deceived by the passing pleasures of sin. The deceitfulness of sin says that you need your pleasure now. You can’t wait for heaven. You can’t wait for God to feed you what you need. You need to take it in hand and take it for yourself now.

Against this deceit we must fight with faith and thankfulness. Christ’s promises will come true, no matter how you feel, how sinful you are, or how things look. Thus you can be thankful. That’s your strength. God is for you, come what may.

And in the meantime he gives you wonderful and beautiful things if you will only just open your eyes to see them. Don’t be deceived by longing for God to do things the way you want him to do things—air-conditioned limousines and such. Embrace what God has given—even if that doesn’t look very impressive to others.

God’s voice, against which you should not harden yourself, is his promises to you. Therefore, if you hear his voice today, harden not your heart. Believe his promises and it will be so.

220821 Sermon on Luke 13:22-30 (Pentecost 11) August 21, 2022

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A fellow asked Jesus whether there would only be a few who are saved. Jesus does not answer yes or no. He instead gives an admonition with some rather severe warnings:

“Strive to enter through the narrow door. Many will try to enter, but won’t have the strength. Once the door is shut, it’s shut for good. No amount of crying or weeping will be able to change it. Inside will be the feast of salvation with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the rest of the blessed from the north, south, east, and west.”

On first hearing Jesus’s words it can sound as though he is intending to dash everyone’s hopes. And maybe, in a way, he is. Think of how people regard what happens with death. The assumption is that everyone who dies is fine. The only cases where there might be a shred of doubt is when the person is notoriously a scoundrel, and we are pretty good at hiding how bad we are from other people so there aren’t too many notorious scoundrels around. The assumption, otherwise, is that everyone is saved just the way they are.

Jesus, in fact, is quite an unwelcome messenger among us. Compare what Jesus says to what is commonly assumed. Which sounds nicer to you? Jesus says that there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. No amount of begging can make the door open once it has been shut. That’s included in Jesus’s view.

Then, on the other hand, folks assume that heaven is a place for anyone and everyone, come as you are. Play your favorite games or engage in your favorite activities. Only the most horrible criminal might be left out.

If we only consult our feeling and our reason we are of course going to pick the second option. Why on earth would we strive to enter the narrow door when all of this can be had for free?

But there’s something important to realize about popular notions concerning salvation. They are basically in the realm of fantasy. Anyone can believe whatever he or she sees fit about such things. It’s assumed that there’s no hard and fast truth—whatever one needs to believe in order to get by. The Christians have their views, but who’s to say whether they’re right? So everyone believes whatever he or she wants to believe.

We do not do this kind of thing, however, with anything that is taken seriously. There is no believe-whatever-you-want-to-believe electricity book. If you believe wrong things about electricity this can have some very stimulating results! So it is with basically every endeavor that is worthwhile. You can’t just make believe whatever you want and expect to be blessed.

We have a hard time seeing this, however, when it comes to salvation because the results of false beliefs are not yet evident to us in this life. Nobody’s burned to a crisp for believing fantasies about such things. A basic tenet of our reason is that if there’s no harm, then there’s no foul. Fantastic beliefs about the afterlife do not seem to negatively affect anyone in this life, so let everyone believe as he or she wishes. To say anything contrary to this makes you sound cranky, like Jesus, who speaks of weeping and gnashing of teeth.

But, as they say, the proof is in the pudding. Faulty wiring might work for a while until it doesn’t. Jesus says in another place: “Everyone who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on bedrock. The rain came down, the rivers rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house. But it did not fall, because it was founded on bedrock.

Everyone who hears these words of mine but does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the rivers rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was the fall of it!”

The house that is built on sand can look just as sturdy and comfortable as the one that is built on bedrock until the judgement. Then the difference is completely apparent. We don’t want a house to fall down upon us. We don’t want an afterlife where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. How quickly and easily such a possibility is wished away by the vast majority of people. They simply don’t believe in the existence of hell. They have built their house on sand, but it will be fine because the judgement will never come.

Instead of salvation or the afterlife being in the realm of fantasy or completely unimportant, you, as Christians, must understand that this is actually what is the most important. Another way of saying the same thing is that your life in this created world is one thing. Your relationship with the Creator is the most important.

In order for your relationship to be good with the Creator, you must be justified before him. So how may a person be justified? There are only two ways. A person may be justified according to the Law or a person may be justified according to grace. Being justified according to the Law is when the Law is kept.

What does God’s Law say? We should believe in him and in nothing else. We should use his Name rightly. We should call upon him in every trouble, pray, praise, and give thanks. We should gladly hear his Word and receive his sacraments. We should honor our parents and others in authority. We should do good to our enemies. We should not commit fornication, adultery, or divorce. We should not lust after anyone, but our desire should be for the spouse whom God will give to us or has given to us. We should not steal or rip people off. Instead we should be generous. We should not lie or gossip. We should not covet, but be thankful.

I hope you can see even in this brief sketch I’ve given the beauty and the goodness of the Ten Commandments. God’s Law is not bad or ugly or evil. What kind of a wonderful human being would a person be if he or she only partly fulfilled the Ten Commandments? Such a person would be pious, loving, forgiving, truthful, and so on. Such a person would not live for himself or herself. Such a person would live to serve others in love. But, alas, no such person exists.

The Bible somewhat surprisingly says, “No one is righteous. No, not even one!” If we kept the Ten Commandments, then the Ten Commandments would justify us before God. The Ten Commandments would testify on our behalf and say that we are good. We are justified. However, on the other hand, if we have not kept the Ten Commandments—and no one has—then those same Ten Commandments testify against us. Those Ten Commandments point to us and say, “This one is an unbeliever. This one hates God’s Word. This one hates his or her parents. This one is perverted.” And so on.

So theoretically we could be justified before God according to the Law, but in reality, after the fall into sin, only Jesus has kept the Law. If we are judged according to the Law we will be utterly rejected because the truth demands that we should and must be rejected. But there is another justification that avails before God. This is justification by grace.

Galatians 4 says: “In the fullness of time God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, to redeem those under the Law, so that we would be adopted as sons.” God’s Law condemns us, so God sent his Son so that he would be condemned in our place. In him, in Christ crucified, then, we may be justified with a righteousness that is not our own. 2 Corinthians 5 says: “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them. … God made him, [that is, Jesus,] who knew no sin, to become sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.”

God is the great justifier of sinners in our crucified and risen Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus died for everyone’s sins so that they are forgiven. Jesus’s righteousness, the very righteousness of God, is given to you by the Gospel, by baptism, by the Lord’s Supper. This message from God to you is to be received and believed. Thereby, although you are a sinner according to the Ten Commandments, you are righteous according to grace. Jesus has reconciled you, a sinner, to God together with everyone else. You are justified in Jesus before God. He even says that you have been adopted as his own child. Of course you must recline at the feast of salvation with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob the blessed.

So when Jesus speaks of salvation in our Gospel reading and says, “Strive to enter through the narrow door,” we must understand that he is saying, “Strive to live by faith in God’s promises.” Live by faith that you are justified before God for Jesus’s sake. Live by faith that even if you should die, yet shall you live, for Jesus says: “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” In the midst of sin, even when it is hot and fresh, live by faith in the suffering and death that Jesus has already finished in agony on account of those sins. Although you are foul in light of your sins, you are as righteous as God himself because Jesus’s righteousness has been given to you in your baptism. Strive to believe that.

It is very important that we understand Jesus to be speaking of faith here and not about our own thoughts, words, and deeds. When we hear a word like “strive” we can’t help but immediately think of hard work. That can make it sound as though Jesus says that we better get to work. We better get our act together. And in a sense that’s true. We better get our act together.

Contrary to the popular fantasies about the afterlife, where being judged by God is the furthest thing from folks’ minds, people would be better off even if that’s all they would think of with death. Of course, being judged according to the Law will only work horror and terror if anyone is being honest. God, to them, will seem like a policeman who’s come to punish them for the sins they’ve committed by throwing them in hell. But this is a lot closer to the truth than believing that each of us can just make up some fantasy for ourselves about what it will be like when we die.

It’s a lot better, for example, for someone to realize that electricity can kill them than to go on believing fantasies. Electricity is no joke. How much more is it the case, then, that justification before God is no joke! God judging you is no joke! You dying and appearing before God is no joke!

But no amount of striving according to the Law will ever make us righteous. We must strive to live by faith in Jesus, the forgiver of sinners. Faith in Jesus is the narrow door. There is no other door available to sinners. And Jesus’s words ring true: There are few who strive to live by faith in God’s justification of us in Jesus.

Many within the Church believe that they are justified before God because they’ve followed the rules. They belong to the right church. They’ve taken the right actions. Thus they can live however they want in every other aspect of their lives (within reason of course).

Those outside of the church think that Jesus, God’s Son, is a myth or ineffectual. Even if they do believe that Jesus is true, they don’t want to hear what he said or receive his sacraments.

For all unbelievers within and without the church, what really matters about life are the accumulation of riches and pleasures and the avoidance of pain. Their hopes for the afterlife end up being totally devoid of God and his holy presence. The highest their hopes can reach is that the good times will keep rolling.

So when Jesus admonishes us to strive, he really means it. Few strive to live by faith. The door is narrow to eternal life. The only way that we may enter it is through the blood of the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. Therefore do not be deceived into thinking like most people think—that what happens at death is no big deal; everyone can believe their own fantasies. The Scriptures define death and life for us: “The wages of sin is death, but the undeserved gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

220814 Sermon on the division Jesus brings (Pentecost 10) August 14, 2022

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Jesus says in our Gospel reading “Do you think that I came to bring peace on the earth?” The answer is unexpected: “No, I tell you, but rather division.” Jesus did not come to bring peace. He came to bring division.

In order to properly understand Jesus we must understand that he is not talking about being divisive about all things. Being divisive about all things would be ridiculous. For example, every time someone says one thing, you have to say the opposite. To every yes, you would say no. By necessity we would repel one another, unable to agree about anything. No, this certainly isn’t what Jesus is saying when he says that he has come to bring division. Elsewhere he clearly says that we should be agreeable.

But the one thing that we as Jesus’s disciples must not give ground on is God’s Word. This is where there has always been division and will continue to be division. The division has existed right from the beginning. God said “Don’t eat from this certain tree.” That was his Word. Adam and Eve should have kept it. Neither one of them should have been moved from it. As it turned out, they both fell. But that was worth maintaining division over.

After the fall into sin God gave his promise of redemption and forgiveness through the Seed of the woman. That was God’s Word. The descendants of Adam and Eve need to hold to that Word no matter what. The first human being born in the natural way, Adam and Eve’s son Cain, was a murderer. He murdered his believing brother Abel. That was a tremendous division over God’s Word.

If Abel would have sided with Cain, even if Abel had said that Cain was fine, that God’s Word didn’t really matter, then there wouldn’t have been any division or any murder. But there also wouldn’t be any Gospel, or any Kingdom of God. All that would be left would be the devil’s kingdom and his lies. That first family in the garden already experienced division. Jesus’s words in our Gospel reading where already true then.  

Subsequent history has continued to bear this out. Last week and this week in our Epistle reading we have been hearing this refrain: “By faith.” By faith Abel offered his sacrifice. By faith Enoch was taken up. By faith Noah built an ark. By faith Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob lived in the promised land as strangers. What all of these people had in common was faith in God’s Word, in God’s promises. God’s Word cannot be given up by us Christians if we want to continue to be Christians. Otherwise we will no longer be living “by faith.” We will be living by unbelief in what God has said and belief in something else.

So what is meant and what is included in God’s Word that we must not give ground over? The answer is the Scriptures. The Scriptures are God’s inspired Word. Nobody has the right to change or ignore what has been revealed by God to the inspired writers. We are bound to what God has said in the Scriptures.

As you know, there are many things that can be discussed and disputed when it comes to the Scriptures. We often get the idea that it’s mainly the fine points that cause divisions—obscure teachings. No, in fact there are divisions over the most essential teachings.

The Ten Commandments teach us how we are to behave. The Ten Commandments are just as serious as that first commandment God gave in the garden concerning the tree with just as far-reaching of consequences. The Ten Commandments teach us to believe only in God, to use his Name correctly, to hear his Word, to obey your parents and other authorities, do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not lie, do not covet.

Think of the division that takes place over this Word from God. How common it is for people to think they can believe in whatever or whomever they choose. They do not feel as though they are required to pray from the heart. They do not think they have to hear God’s Word or receive Christ’s sacraments. They do not feel as though they need to honor their parents, their boss, or whomever is in authority. With all ten of the commandments there will be people—and we, ourselves, frankly—who will deny that these need to be kept.

However, it is our duty—faith demands—that we do not run away from these commandments so as to please those who want to ignore them or break them. That will create division. But that’s alright. God’s commandments are good, right, and holy. Those who argue otherwise are no different than the serpent who got Adam and Eve to believe that this commandment wasn’t given to them for their good. They argue that we would be happier if we broke the commandment and followed our own will.

There is division over how we should live according to the commandments God has given. There is also severe disagreement about who God is. We confess in the Creed that God has made me and all creatures. You know full well that there are tons of people who disagree very strongly on that point. The popular myth these days is that we are the product of chance and the selection of the fittest.

The Creed confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord. He was born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into hell. The third day he rose again from the dead, ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From thence he will come to judge the living and the dead.

Here is the very heart of our faith as Christians. Jesus is the Seed of the woman who crushed the serpent’s head. He has redeemed us by his holy, precious blood and by his innocent suffering and death. Jesus is the great revelation of God’s will towards sinners—that he does not wish for us to be left in our sins, estranged from him, but adopted through baptism into his only-begotten Son. When Jesus says in our reading that he has come to cast fire on the earth and that he has a baptism to undergo, he is talking about this work of salvation that he will go on to do.

His salvation is also what brings about the division that he speaks about—division that goes all the way down into the home: three against two and two against three; father against son, son against father; mother against daughter, daughter against mother; and so on.

This division is very serious. It is between good and evil. That can sound pompous when it is understood incorrectly. It can sound as though we are naturally good and unbelievers are evil. No, we are not good. We are all evil, without exception. Only Jesus with his kingdom is good. It is also not the case that we had the good sense to choose Jesus. Jesus chose us to lift us out of our otherwise helpless and evil condition. Without Jesus we are enslaved to sin just as much as anybody else. Jesus, who is the truth, sets us free. By his Holy Spirit he begins to work on us now to fight against our flesh, and he promises complete healing in heaven.

Division comes about because we cannot deny Jesus. We cannot deny this saving truth. He is sinners’ only hope. If we give up on Jesus, then we are necessarily siding with Jesus’s enemies. The fire that Jesus has come to cast upon the earth, the baptism with which he was baptized—this was to fight against and conquer our corrupted bodies and souls, to redeem us, to set us free from the devil’s lies. If we give up, then there won’t be division anymore, but there won’t be God’s Kingdom anymore either. God, with his Word and Holy Spirit, wrestles mightily with us to bring us continually to repentance and faith. This is a fight, a war. There will be pain, and even casualties. That’s how it’s supposed to be.

Please take note of that point. We haven’t taught this point very well for a long time, and that has caused us great harm. Jesus says that he has come to bring division. Paul says that there must be divisions even within the church. Strife will be present even within the household—the very worst kind of strife. This is what the Kingdom of God looks like. People are going to get upset.

This is what the Scriptures tell us will happen. We also see it in the history that the Bible records. Think of how Paul was treated by both Jews and Gentiles. It is only by many afflictions that we may enter the kingdom of heaven. That’s how it is always going to be because Jesus’s enemies haven’t given up. These enemies want us to give up.

Since this is the way the Christian life necessarily has to go—not a bed of roses, but a fight to the death with our flesh, the world, and the devil—isn’t it terribly harmful when Christians are led to believe that the Christian life is easy and peaceful and inoffensive? What if soldiers were trained in such a way where they were led to believe that they would receive flowers and chocolates on the battlefield instead of a hail of bullets? That would be some very poor training indeed. So also we Christians must understand that living the Christian life creates division.

This is why it isn’t necessarily a bad thing when you find strife and conflict in a congregation or school. A congregation can be as peaceful as a graveyard, but you don’t find much life in a graveyard. A congregation can be peaceful because nobody cares or everybody’s just given up. There’s no fight going on between the Holy Spirit and the flesh that we all have. Instead in such a congregation it’s like everybody’s just boxing the air. No blows are being landed, which hurt. A pretend fight is going on instead of one where real folks are brought to real repentance because of real sins that they would rather not have to give up. But that’s where real forgiveness happens too.

Fighting probably doesn’t sound like much fun, but realize that it is also by fighting that progress is made. Hopefully you have discovered some of this progress in your own life of faith.

I hope that you have already had the experience where God’s Word comes to you and you really dislike it. It makes you angry. It makes you angry at the one who said it. That’s very often where our fury gets directed: “How dare he say that?” “How dare she judge me?”  We’re not that different than Cain. He didn’t murder God. He murdered Abel. So it is also with God’s Word. We don’t storm heaven and fight God. We fight the messenger whom he has sent. We figure that the messenger is at fault for how we are feeling.

I hope, I say, that you’ve had this experience, but that you have not been a casualty—that you haven’t gone off like Cain, alienated from God, but that you have instead eventually come to your senses. This experience is very educational. It’s good training.

If you’ve had that experience, then you won’t be surprised when others do it to you. You’ll be thankful for that messenger who told you what you didn’t want to hear. Then you will open your mouth and confess God’s Word, and you won’t be surprised when a hail of bullets come screaming back at you in the form of angry words, angry faces or coldness. We all have evil in us that doesn’t want to be kicked out by the finger of God. We all tend to howl when the blow hits home, when the painful splinter is being extracted. That’s how it goes. That’s what we should expect. Those are the Christian growing pains.

So we must not get distracted by schemes for quick and easy growth without any division. Such schemes can hardly be preaching the Gospel that Jesus is talking about in our Gospel reading. Instead we must recognize that growth in faith has always happened the same way from the very beginning. It has happened against our will, so to speak. We get assaulted—or, rather, the evil in us gets assaulted. We have to be pulled out from the bushes and confronted by God. Only then are we truly terrified for our sins. Only then do we understand that the Seed of the woman is our only hope. His goodness is the only way to escape our evilness.

If it weren’t for Jesus we would all be left in the devil’s kingdom with his lies. As it is, though, Jesus fights for us to save us from ourselves and the devil’s lies with his truth and the Holy Spirit. Thus we must not be ashamed of the division Jesus causes and his words. To be ashamed of that would mean that we are ashamed of salvation itself.

220807 Sermon on God making me (Pentecost 9) August 7, 2022

 Audio recording

Sermon manuscript:

The first article of the Creed says, “I believe in God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth.” One of the most important parts of my job is to teach this. What does it mean that God is the maker of heaven and earth?

A couple years ago I started to change the way that I teach this. For the first 10 years or so of being a pastor I really focused on what happened long ago. For all of us, I think, when we hear the word “creation” we think of stuff that happened a long time ago. Bible believing Christians then think about how creation is different from evolution. God created the world. Existence is not the product of chance or the survival of the fittest. I used to focus mainly combatting this alternate understanding of evolution, which is so powerful and persuasive in today’s world.

But, a couple years ago, I started to shift my energy and focus towards a different aspect of God being the maker of heaven and earth. My teacher for this was our humble little catechism. You might recall what it says when it explains this first article of the Creed: “I believe that God has made me.” There you have something that is not in the past It is right now. How often do you think of that? God has made you. Probably not that often. We are very thoroughly trained to think of ourselves as being the result of an egg and a sperm and a whole bunch of natural processes. We just kind of show up. How different it is to think of God the Father almighty wanting you to exist, and, therefore, deliberately bringing that about.

Our catechism goes on: “He has given me my body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my members, my reason and all my senses, and still takes care of them.” God made you; God gave you your body. That’s a great gift. So often we think of our bodies with a tremendous harshness. Our bodies don’t measure up to other bodies that we see. Our bodies are ugly compared to others. Many of us then come to hate our bodies. That’s a shame. “Oh, what peace we often forfeit; Oh, what needless pain we bear.” Your body is a gift from God. It’s wonderful. Even if your body were to become severely disabled with many parts ceasing to function, it would still be wonderful. It’s God’s gift to you and your body is even a gift to us.

God gives you the gift of your soul, your reason, your senses, your personality. What a gift this is too! You can see and understand. You can laugh and cry. You can be a blessing and make the others around you happy by virtue of the way that you are. Unfortunately, here, too, it is common for people to trash this part of themselves. They wish they were smarter. They wish they were funnier. They wish that they were more outgoing.

It is as though we are taught that there is one right way to be. There is one right body that everyone is supposed to have. There is one right personality. We are all supposed to be smart, charming, funny, talkative, cool, popular, and so on. When we’re not all these things, (and, frankly, nobody can be all these things), we suck.

The spirit that causes us to run ourselves down like this is not a good spirit. It is an evil spirit. Evil spirits do not want us to be joyful. They most especially do not want us to be thankful. How long has it been since you praised your Creator for making you, for giving you your body, for giving you your soul? These are tremendous expressions of love from God to you. We should thank and praise him—it’s good and right so to do.

But the evil spirits do not want us to be thankful. What they want is for us to be covetous. Coveting is when you are dissatisfied with what God has given to you, and so you want what you see in others. Your body sucks because others have better ones. Your mind sucks because others are smarter. Your personality sucks because you are not popular.

Supposedly this coveting, this dissatisfaction, can bring about something positive if you do it right. I’m not so sure. Maybe the best case scenario is that you work up such a hatred of yourself, of how bad you are, that you embark on a ruthless self-improvement campaign. You diet. You study. You read books about how to be charming.

But even this best case scenario isn’t very good. There’s no end to coveting. You might think you’d be happy if only you were such and such a weight. You might think you’d be satisfied if you got such and such an award or recognition. Nope. You’ll keep coveting. You’ll keep hating yourself for not being as good as you-name-it.

But this is not so much self-hatred as it is a hating of your Creator. You might think you’re hating yourself, but really you’re hating the one who made you the way that you are. You’ve become blind to his goodness. You’re deaf to his messages of love. The gifts he gives you with your wonderful body and with your wonderful soul are messages of his love.

There are more messages of love. Our catechism goes on: “He also gives me clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, wife and children, land, animals, and all I have. He richly and daily provides me with all that I need to support this body and life.”

I mentioned already how we are prone to think of ourselves as the uniting of sperm and egg and a whole bunch of natural processes so that we just kind of show up by accident. We do the same kind of thing with this list of things that have to do with sustaining this body and life. We don’t think of our clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home coming from God as messages of his love to us. We think we have these things because of our money.

We have money because we work hard and we’re smart. If we worked harder and were smarter we’d have even more money. Maybe if we just worried more, if we could just get to the bottom of things for why we don’t have more money, then we’d have a lot more money. With more money we’d have even better clothing and shoes, tastier food and drink, a more comfortable house and home. What we need is more money. We don’t need God; we need more money.

The same evil spirits that are behind our abusive talk with our bodies and our souls are at work here. That evil spirit said, “You don’t need God. You need a smoking hot body.” “You don’t need God. You need to be smarter or more charming.” So also here: “You don’t need God; you need more money.”

What is the action plan behind all these things? We’ve already mentioned it. You need to be hard on yourself. You need to worry more. You need to worry more about your lousy body so that you finally work up the self-hatred to make yourself a better one. You need to worry more about your lousy personality. You need to worry more about your lousy shameful house, and your ugly junky car, and your miserable dead-end job that isn’t getting you nearly the amount of money that you should be getting. “Then you’ll be happy,” these depressing, evil spirits say. “The more you worry, the harder you’ll try, the happier you’ll be!”

What incredibly different advice we are given by our Lord and Master, Jesus, this morning! Over and over and over he says “Don’t worry.” The opposite. Don’t worry about clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home. That’s the opposite of what we are otherwise supposed to do. We’re taught to never be satisfied, always to be worried, always to be chasing more.

There’s another thing that’s the opposite too, and this also, I think, is highly significant. Jesus says that you are valuable. “Consider the ravens,” he says. “God feeds them. How much more valuable are you than birds!” And again, “Consider the flowers. You’re more valuable than they are.” It is because you are valuable to God that you should not worry. What do you do with the things that you treasure, with what you think is valuable? You protect them and care for them. “You are valuable,” Jesus says, so won’t God, who values you, also take care of you, “O you of little faith?!”

“But,” you might be saying to yourself, “I’m not valuable.” How powerful this thought is! The evil spirit certainly want you to believe that with your whole heart. They want you to believe that you suck; end of story. But it’s not just the evil spirits. The thought that you are not valuable is powerful because there are some very powerful arguments that seem to prove just that.

We’ve done some terrible things. We’ve perhaps stretched our bodies with poor eating so that it will never come back into shape. We’ve perhaps pickled our bodies with drink, but our drinking has had an even worse effect on our souls. These sins and others like them are obvious to anyone and everyone as being bad. The damage is obvious.

But there’s more: there’s also God’s commandments that we’ve broken. The problem that is created by not keeping God’s commandments is less obvious to folks, but our breaking of his commandments is an even more powerful reason for us to say to ourselves that we are not valuable.

But how you value yourself is one thing. How God values you is another. You might not see value in yourself, but you’re not the only one who gets a say. There’s somebody who’s better at appraising than you. That someone is God. He valued us even when we were dead and lost in our trespasses and sins. His value, his love of us, prompted him from eternity to send his Son to suffer and die to redeem our poor bodies and souls. There is no one for whom Christ didn’t die, so there is no one who isn’t redeemed. All are valued by God. Since all are valued by God, you are valued too.

Because God values you, you should not worry. God will give you your clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, and all that is needed to support this body and life. We could even go one step further, perhaps, following Jesus’s advice if we dare. He says we should sell our possessions and give them to those who have need. But that might be a little too advanced for us right now. We’ll get there eventually, but we have some re-wiring to do.

We need to think differently in our daily life. We are prone to keep God far, far away. We don’t need God; we need a smoking hot body. We don’t need God; we need more money. What we need, in fact, is God, then all these other things will come as well.

So, very practically speaking, what should you think about?  The first thing I want you to bring to mind this week is that you are valuable to God. Set aside any self-hatred. What you think of yourself is really beside the point. Who cares what you think? What matters is what God thinks. And God says you’re valuable to him. You’re so valuable to him that he sent his Son to redeem you. You are valuable to him so he will take care of you. Jesus very emphatically teaches this in our Gospel reading today.

The other thing I want you to think about is that God is sending you messages of love all the time, every day. Let the sun shine and nourishing rains speak to you that God loves you. Think of this with all the pleasures of life. He gives you this little pleasure or that. Let the pleasure of food be God’s gift to you. Let the pleasure of drink, even, or perhaps, especially, alcoholic drink, be God’s gift to you.  Remember that the goal of the evil spirits is to banish God from your thinking. Open your eyes to the wonders of everyday life and be thankful to your Creator.

Thankfulness is the antidote to coveting. Coveting is when you look at what God has given to you and you are so dissatisfied with it. You look at what he has given to others and you wish that that had been given to you. The antidote to this extremely powerful spiritual poison is thankfulness. Thankfulness comes from correctly understanding God’s message to you first and foremost and unmistakably in the Gospel. Then also in all the other gifts that he gives you.

Finally, to sum up again so that you don’t forget: 1) You are valuable to God. You, with your body and soul, are valuable, regardless of how you might appraise yourself. 2) God gives you messages of his love everyday with all the good things he gives you. Hear that message and be glad.