230226 Sermon on what lies beneath temptation and the Gospel's response (Lent 1) February 26, 2023

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We hear quite a bit about temptations in our readings this morning. The first one ever was “Did God really say?” “Did God really say you shouldn’t eat from that tree? Why that tree? Just that tree?” And Jesus was tempted in different ways. Maybe he could satiate his hunger by turning stones to bread. He could show his glory by plunging from the temple. He could acquire the earth by worshipping the prince of this world rather than purchasing the world with his suffering and death.

These temptations can seem rather distant and inapplicable. Not a single one of us has been tempted with the exact particulars of any of these temptations. None of us have had to choose whether to eat from a certain tree, put on display our miraculous powers by changing stones to bread, and so on. And yet there is something that draws these temptations together. All temptations seem to strike out against the goodness and faithfulness of God. That seems to be the lie that is beneath the temptations—God isn’t good. God isn’t trustworthy. So you better see to it yourself regardless of his wishes.

Let’s briefly see if this is so with the temptations we’ve heard about today. Adam and Eve weren’t originally concerned about whether God was good to them or faithful to them until the idea was introduced to them that God just might be holding out on them. Adam and Eve didn’t really have anything to complain about when they were created. They were creatures. God was God. They lived as the creatures God created them to be. They had but one command: “Don’t eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.”

The serpent got them thinking, “Why shouldn’t we?” There must be some reason. The command, the serpent figured, couldn’t have been for Adam and Eve’s good. It must be because God is stingy and jealous of his prerogatives. He’s a tyrant who wants to keep humanity as his slaves. Keep them stupid. If only Adam and Eve were to eat from the tree they would become like God. They would know good and evil. And so the real meat and substance of Adam and Eve’s sin is what they came to believe about God. God wasn’t good. God wasn’t for them, but against them.

The same thing is true with Jesus’s temptations. He had been kicked out into the wilderness to be miserable and perhaps eventually starve. “Turn these stones into bread.” But Jesus answered, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” If Jesus threw himself off the temple, he could test whether God’s Word was true, for then the angels would catch him. He could know if God loved him. “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.” The final temptation can only be understood with the awfulness of Jesus’s passion kept firmly in mind. “Bow down and worship me,” is the most direct, blatant, almost ridiculous sounding temptation, but that had to have sounded a lot easier than the difficult, basically impossible, road that Jesus knew lay ahead of him. Beneath these temptations lay the questions: “Is God for you or against you? Can he be trusted or should you see to things yourself? Are you happy or not?”

Perhaps you’ve learned in your Catechism instruction that a sin against any of the other of the Ten Commandments is also a sin against the first commandment. The first commandment is that we should have no other gods. That means that we should fear, love, and trust in God no matter what. Temptations to break any of the other commandments strike out also against this first  commandment.

For example, the second commandment requires us to use God’s Name rightly. A temptation here is to wonder what good that will do me. I don’t need to pray; I need to work. I don’t need to praise or give thanks to God. What good is that going to do me? I need to plan and train. I don’t need to gather with other believers for praying, praising, and giving thanks. I have better things to do. God won’t help me through these things, even though he has promised to do so. I can better help myself.

Or take the fourth commandment, “honor your father and your mother.” I don’t need to do that. I won’t be blessed by God for doing that. Plus I don’t want to. They command me to do things I don’t want to do.

Or take the sixth commandment, “you shall not commit adultery.” There’s an old country and western song that croons, “Heaven’s just a sin away. Heaven’s just a sin away.” Commit adultery and you’ll have heavenly pleasure. God won’t help me find a spouse. God won’t give me a spouse. Or the spouse he gave me is no good. Another one is what would make me happy.

Behind every temptation, and the most awful thing about every subsequent sin, is the judgement against God. God’s no good. God’s commands are no good. They destroy happiness or they keep me from happiness. They’re not what I want to do. They are impossible to actually keep—so that’s kind of stupid on God’s part. Common sense tells us that good laws are laws one can actually keep!

There are also judgements against God’s promises. God promises to bless all those who keep his commands, but temptation says that that’s not true. You won’t be blessed. You’ll be miserable. Plus you’ll never make it. You’ll have to give in eventually to temptation.

And then think of the life that Jesus tells us we should live. Do you want to deny yourself, take up your cross and follow him? Does that sound like fun? Does it look like Jesus was having fun? Why do it then?

Plus there’s that rather common, and even  academically respectable opinion: Maybe God’s not even real. Did God really say? Maybe there’s not even a God who can say! Temptations abound!

And there is only one thing that is able to help in all the temptations. It’s a simple answer, a Sunday School answer, and thus easily despised: The only thing that can help is God’s Word. Adam and Eve notably failed to return to the simple, not hard to understand, Word of the Lord. Jesus, perhaps you noticed, answered all three temptations with: “It is written…” The Word of God is the indispensable thing for knowing what is going on. The Word of God is indispensable for correctly understanding what your life is for and what it is all about.

What I am saying to you about your life is that it is a battle against temptation and the devil. You are constantly being tempted to sin against the Ten Commandments and to abandon the station in life that God has called you into. I know without a shadow of a doubt that it is by being obedient and faithful that you will be blessed. I know without a shadow of a doubt that you will be blessed by being obedient and faithful even if God’s heavy hand were to crush you, send all kinds of pain and sadness upon you. You will be blessed; I know it! But I can only know that from what God says in his Word.

Without God’s Word our life must inevitably be understood in different terms than as being a battle against temptation and the devil. Without God’s Word life might be understood, for example, as the pursuit of happiness. What makes me happy? Surely not following God’s commands. What makes me happy is fulfilling my own desires: More money, more sex, more honor, more dopamine, more stimulants. Plus we don’t want any pain and we don’t want any sweat on our brow. So let’s get rid of anything that might cause that.

What can be easier than to fall into thinking about one’s life along such lines? This is even how we prefer to envision life. We want to be deceived. We want to believe that it doesn’t matter if we keep God’s commands or believe his promises. We want to believe that we know what good is and evil is—that’s an easy one. Good is what is good for me. Evil is whatever is bad for me. With that knowledge firmly in hand, it follows that one should never forgive, never give in, never serve, never sacrifice, never suffer. Live each day as if you mattered most and everybody else should just fend for themselves. Again, nobody has to teach us to live this way. This is the way that we want to live!

It is only God’s Word that can tell us anything different. Life is a battle against temptation and the devil, and our sinful flesh always thinks the devil sounds quite reasonable. It is a battle to believe that God is for us and not against us. God is good, even if the earth should give way and the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea.

One of the most important passages of the Bible says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” We are justified by faith in God’s promises, in God’s goodness. God’s promise is that because of Jesus, goodness and mercy shall follow you all the days of your life and you shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Yea, though you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you should fear no evil, for the Lord, your Shepherd, is with you. His rod and his staff, they comfort you. God is for you.

It is inevitable that you be tempted. You are tempted every day. And you have fallen into that temptation and you have sinned. Understand that according to what we have talked about today your falling for temptation and sin is not just a sin against this or that commandment, it is also a sin against the first commandment. Whenever you give in to any temptation you are also making horrendous judgements against God even though those judgements are usually made unwittingly. You are saying that he is foolish, or nonexistent, or untrustworthy, or any number of other evil things. Sins against commandments, such as the second or third, might not even bother your conscience, but that only shows how leprous and unfeeling your soul has become.

But my answer to your sin is not that you had better get busy fixing yourself. How I’d like to respond strikes at the root of all temptation. Instead of your stupid judgements and thoughts about God I can tell you quite plainly that God is good. I can even say that God is for you and not against you. You might not believe that, but I don’t care. Your unbelief doesn’t have the power to change who God is. God is good. God is for you, even. God justifies you. God forgives you.

I wouldn’t dare say these things on my own. To say something like that is admittedly extreme—especially when you consider all those temptations that you've heeded and thereby made horrendous judgements against God. Nevertheless, I can say these things because of God’s Word. This is laid out so very nicely in our epistle reading that I think a child could grasp Paul’s arguments.

Paul talks about two great historical figures, compares and contrasts them. The one figure is Adam. The other is Jesus Christ. Paul says, through Adam sin came into the world, and through sin came death. And that death has spread over all mankind. If ever we should doubt the power of Adam’s fall, we only need to consider the pall of death that hangs over all people, together with the decay and disintegration that leads up to our death. Adam brought disaster.

In like manner Jesus is one whose effect extends to all. In that way he is like Adam. Adam changed everything. Paul says, likewise, Jesus has changed everything. But instead of Adam’s sin and death, Jesus brings justification before God and eternal life. So, Paul says, “just as one trespass led to a verdict of condemnation for all people, so also one righteous verdict led to life-giving justification for all people.” Condemnation came upon all people in Adam. By the righteous verdict rendered in the sacrificial death of Jesus, life-giving justification—rightness before God—is bestowed upon all people. Being justified means that you are right and good. That is to say, when you are justified God is for you and not against you. No one ever needs to doubt what is going on with God’s will toward them because of Jesus and what he has done. Jesus’s good work of redemption and justification stands as solid as a rock even if your sins be like scarlet.

Knowing this truth about God, knowing that God has forgiven you and justified you, that he is for you and not against you, you can now turn away from what is always behind the devil’s temptations. The devil would have you believe that God is not for you. You have to do it yourself by hook or by crook. You dare not ever give up your claims. Nobody will ever give you anything, you have to take it. God probably doesn’t even exist so why be bothered about his commandments, and so on and so forth. These are all lies.

The truth is that God does exist. His commands and promises never fail. And the most outstanding and almost unbelievable thing—taught only by God’s Word—is that God is for you. God forgives you. Just as in Adam’s fall all mankind fell, so in Jesus Christ, righteousness and justification extends to all people. If it extends to all people, then it must also extend to you, O Sinner.

God is good. God has done this. God is for you.

230219 Sermon on the Transfiguration of our Lord February 19, 2023

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I’d like to begin today by speaking about a detail that could be easy to overlook. At the beginning of our reading it says, “Six days later Jesus took Peter, James, and John to a high mountain.” The transfiguration took place about six days later. Six days after what?

It took place about six days after Peter’s confession that Jesus is the Christ. I’d like to go through that history since I think it sheds light on what is going on with the transfiguration.

Jesus was with his disciples and he asked them, “Who do people say that I am?” The disciples answered by telling him what they had heard: “Some say that you are John the Baptist, some say that you are Elijah, others say that you are Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” We won’t get into the specifics of why the people might have given these answers for who Jesus was. Suffice it to say, though, that the people recognized Jesus as being highly unusual. They thought that he was one of the great prophets.

Then Jesus asked his disciples, “But you, who do you say that I am?” And Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

The word, “Christ,” means “anointed one.” It also has connotations of kingship. The way that the kings became kings in the Old Testament was by being anointed with oil. So there’s kingship here. Plus, throughout the Old Testament God gave his people prophecies about a coming, chosen servant of the Lord. The servant of the Lord would set things right. He would establish justice and righteousness. He would open the eyes of the blind, and the ears of the deaf would be unstopped. Ultimately these prophecies go all the way back to the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve are told that the seed of the woman would crush the serpent’s head. God’s people had been looking for the Christ who was to come.

So when Peter answered Jesus’s question about who the disciples thought that he was by saying that Jesus is the Christ, this was no ordinary, everyday answer. There is no more important confession on earth. In fact, this is the shortest creed, or statement of faith, in Christendom: “I believe that Jesus Christ is my Lord.” And Peter even adds: “the Son of the living God.” So Peter is identifying this man Jesus as the most important ever. He is also saying, “You are God.”

Jesus responded to Peter’s confession by saying, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not overpower it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

There’s quite a bit that I wouldn’t mind saying about these words too. To keep it short, let me just point out a couple things. Jesus says that his church is going to be built on the rock of Peter’s confession. What is Peter’s confession? That Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. So if you want to be a Christian, there you have your creed. The other thing is the activity of the church is also laid out. Christians, those who confess what Peter confessed, are given the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Christians forgive and retain sins. When Christians forgive the sins of repentant sinners, their sins are forgiven. When Christians retain the sins of unrepentant sinners, their sins are retained so long as they do not repent. These are eternal, stupendous things! Heaven and hell, to which each individual must go—to one or the other—are put into the hands of Peter and all the others as well who make his confession.

So this was all well and good. Peter got it right. Good for Peter. Then, not too long after this, Peter will end up getting it wrong. After Peter’s confession the Gospels tell us that Jesus began to teach Peter and the other disciples what was going to happen to him. He was going to go to Jerusalem, suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests, and experts in the law. He was going to be killed, and on the third day rise again.

When Peter heard this he took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him: “May you receive mercy, Lord! This will never happen to you.” But Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are a snare to me because you are not thinking the things of God, but the things of men.”

Note how, in quick succession, Peter is called the rock and Satan by Jesus. He is called the rock for his confession that Jesus is the Christ. He is called Satan for opposing the way that Jesus was going to be the Christ. Jesus the Christ, Jesus the King, was going to accomplish his work of redemption for sinners. He was going to attain eternal life for those who are under the wrath of God, by being subject to that wrath and swallowing it up. By his death he would destroy the power of death. In the process he would look weak, horrible, a worm and no man, and the furthest thing from being a king, but even that had been foretold in the Psalms and the prophets.

After rebuking Peter Jesus goes on to tell the disciples that this is not something that is just applicable to him. The cross applies to anyone who wants to be his disciple. Let me read in full what Jesus says here: “If anyone wants to follow me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. In fact, whoever wants to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. After all, what will it benefit a person if he gains the whole world, but forfeits his soul? Or what can a person give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man will come in the glory of his Father together with his angels, and then he will repay everyone according to his actions. Amen I tell you: Some who are standing here will certainly not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”

What I have just read is immediately prior to where our Gospel reading picks up today. Six days after this Jesus took Peter, James, and John to a high mountain and was transfigured before them so that he shined like the sun. I think it is important to pay attention to the link that the Gospel writers make between Jesus’s transfiguration and what came before. Peter and the disciples confess Jesus to be the Christ, but they have a hard time accepting the work of the Christ. That is to say, they have a hard time accepting the cross.

It seems to me that you can see this somewhat on the Mount of Transfiguration. Think of the frame of mind that Peter, James, and John were probably in. Jesus confirmed their long held suspicions about his real identity. They had long suspected, perhaps even from the very beginning, that Jesus wasn’t even just one of the greatest ones come back to life. Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. He is the most important man ever. And they are his friends and his disciples. They’d been living with that confirmed and certain knowledge about who Jesus is for about a week. Of course Jesus had rebuked Peter in the meantime. He said a bunch of stuff they didn’t really understand, but the important thing is that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God.

And then on the Mount of Transfiguration, Jesus appearance started to change. And I think the disciples maybe were thinking, “Oh, here we go! This is it! Here comes the Son of Man in his kingdom. We’re about to be whisked up into his glory! He is who he said he is! Heis the Son of God!” How thrilling this must have been for them, and they were kind of anticipating this very thing too. And there are Moses and Elijah—the greatest of the greats from the Old Testament. I wonder what will happen next.

And this was all wonderful and exciting and evidently thoroughly enjoyable for the disciples. Peter says, “Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you want, I will make three shelters—one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”

But even before he was done speaking things became even brighter. A bright cloud overshadowed them and a voice came out of the cloud: “This is my Son, whom I love, with him I am well pleased. Listen to him.” Perhaps those words sound familiar to you and they should. When Jesus was baptized he was anointed by water and the Holy Spirit. At that time a voice came from heaven: “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.” What is added here at the Transfiguration, though, are the words, “Listen to him.” “Listen to Jesus.”

We, like Peter, need to listen to Jesus. Our thoughts are not God’s thoughts. Peter thought that it would be horrible for Jesus to suffer, die, and rise again. God the Father, on the other hand, loves Jesus and is well pleased with everything that he did.

This is true also for us with our lives as disciples, denying ourselves, taking up our cross, and following Jesus. Whose life is free from misfortune, pain, loss and sadness? It is always possible for us to react to such things by passing along the pain, make somebody else bear the burden, never allow ourselves to be shamed, and instead shaming others. Living that way, living only to make your life better, tends to make sense to our fallen, sinful, selfish, common sense. Jesus, on the other hand, teaches us many things that are contrary to a selfish common sense. We should not look for what is pleasant or beneficial for ourselves, but what is beneficial for others. And not only should we look after what is beneficial for our friends, but what is beneficial even for our enemies—the ones who have hurt us.

So we are in as much need as anyone of that admonition from God the Father: “Listen to Jesus.” Jesus is his beloved Son, with whom he is well pleased. Listen to him. To follow Jesus’s words might not seem like it’s a sensible course. Certainly Jesus’s words to Peter about his upcoming suffering, death, and resurrection sounded like a horrible plan to Peter. “Never should such things happen to you, Lord,” Peter said. But those very things that Jesus did were the best things that have ever been done. It is by that cross and resurrection that Jesus has brought about the renewal of mankind.

So it is also, but on a much smaller scale, and with many imperfections, when we live the sanctified life that we have been given to live. When we live with faith in Jesus our Redeemer, and when we listen to him and live has he teaches us, this is pleasing to God our Father. It might not appear impressive or honorable to those who do not have the eyes to see or the ears to hear. Living how Jesus teaches us might not even be pleasant to our own selves. Maybe we would wish that things would go differently. But God know best, and those who follow him will be blessed—that’s a 100% guarantee—even if it doesn’t appear so at the time.

One final aspect I’d like to comment on briefly. God the Father said, “Listen to Jesus,” and note what Jesus said to the terrified Peter, James, and John. He said to them, “Get up, and do not be afraid.” When God the Father says, “Listen to him,” that includes Jesus’s instructions and commands. However, it is not just those words that we should listen to. What is most certainly included are kind and tender words like, “Do not be afraid.” Jesus is not just some law-giver. He also is a friend, a Savior, a Shepherd to the sheep.

We are an awful lot like Peter. We have our own ideas of how things should go. Maybe we are not the best listener. Jesus did not reject Peter on that account, but forgave, corrected, led, and loved him. So it is also today with us and Jesus. Listen to him when he says, “Do not be afraid.” He will help you on the way that you are to go as his disciple no matter where that road might go.

230212 Sermon on the work of the Holy Spirit vs the divisions of party spirit (Epiphany 6) February 12, 2023

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Thank you for indulging me with all the sermons that I’ve been preaching on 1 Corinthians. This will be the last sermon on 1 Corinthians, at least for now, since the readings will move on to other things next week with the Transfiguration. Today I’ll preach on 1 Corinthians one more time though.

I really like the two Corinthians letters. I find them to be very instructive for our times. We have struggled, and struggles continue over what the Christian church should be. We have been living through a time when churches have generally gotten smaller rather than larger. How do we fix that? How can we attain success?

Very often, both back in Paul’s time and in our times, one of the ways that people want to answer that question is through the leaders, through the pastors, who have been put in place. How can we hope to be successful? We need to have the right leader. Then these leaders might end up with a following around themselves. In Corinth they had split up into different parties. There was a Paul party, a Peter party, an Apollos party, and probably some other parties too. If there are parties, it’s only natural to also have party spirits.

Party spirit is when people gather themselves together, think that their party is the best, and that everybody else is sub-par or perhaps even down-right evil. To have such an attitude is definitely of the flesh, as Paul says in our reading today. He says, “Insofar as jealousy, strife, and factions have a place among you, are you not people who are following the flesh? Are you not behaving in a merely human way?”

This does seem to be the human way. Gather together enough people to get a coalition. Say nice things about yourselves and attack the other side. We’re handsome, regal, majestic, lovable. They are terrible, horrible, no good, very bad. The goal is to win, win, win, and defeat the other party. Then we can feel good about being the winners. We can also feel good about them losing, because they are losers, and they’re maybe even evil to boot.

It is possible for us Christians to do this kind of thing with our Christianity too. We can create a party spirit that is not from the Holy Spirit, but of the flesh. This party spirit might manifest itself in the way that we live. We can pride ourselves on our clean living, perhaps, and be disgusted by the way that somebody else lives. How can they live like that?

It might manifest itself in a kind of pride where we are the ones who are right—thank God we’ve always been right—and everybody else is wrong. Because we are right and they are wrong, we will go to heaven and they will go to hell. Whenever anyone focuses on how good he or she is, and how bad somebody else is, you can be sure that you are dealing with something that is purely natural, merely human—something that comes from the flesh.

“But,” you might be wondering, “don’t we live better than unbelievers? If we don’t live correctly we could end up under church discipline.” And furthermore, “Don’t we know what is right? Aren’t others terribly mistaken with false beliefs?” And I have to admit that these objections are valid. Christians do and must live differently than unbelievers. Christians must hold to what is true, otherwise they are not really Christians. But these things should be done and held to in such a way where there is not a party spirit. It should not be an “us vs. them” kind of thing.

What it should be instead is that we urge all people to repent under the mighty hand of God—ourselves included. We are not separated from others but are also under the mighty hand of God. This is the unusual way that Paul takes with these Corinthians. Party spirit is so natural to us that it can seem unavoidable. Whenever anybody says something or wants to make a change, it can seem like there is just one more party being formed. What Paul says in his letter to the Corinthians can seem like just one more faction—oh, yep, that’s just what Paul thinks.

But Paul doesn’t want the hearers of his letter to think, “Oh, yeah, that’s just Paul doing his schtick.” He wants all people everywhere to become obedient to God’s Gospel. He doesn’t want to gather anybody to himself. He wants people to repent, to fear God, and to believe in Jesus. And Paul doesn’t care whether that happens through his speaking, through Apollos’s speaking, through Peter’s speaking, or through any man’s, woman’s or child’s speaking. Whoever is doing the speaking is just the instrument through whom God is doing his work. What matters is God doing his work.

These are the lines along which Paul is speaking when he says, “What then is Apollos? And what is Paul? They are ministers through whom you believed, and each served as the Lord gave him his role. I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth. So then, neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but it is God who causes the growth.”

Note how Paul is praising God, and not himself. One telltale sign of a party spirit is when goodness and righteousness can only come from those who are on one’s own team, from one’s own party. But Paul is different. God is the one who caused the growth.

Let’s apply this to a difficult issue in our own times and something that has been divisive in our own church body. Party spirit might manifest itself by people saying that only those with their very special kind of worship are any good. If anybody does worship differently from them then that church is in deep trouble. They are probably going to die. That has been such a commonly expressed thought during my lifetime. It’s unbelievable if you think about it! One group of Christians tells another group of Christians that they are going to die! And it kind of sounds like they want them to die too! They’re too old fashioned. Their worship doesn’t work anymore.

Or, perhaps, from the other side it might be said that if certain modern instruments end up getting used, then that church isn’t any church at all. That too is an amazing thing to say to someone. You’re not the church. The issue of worship is one of those hot-button issues that has caused deep rifts in our church body, and much of it has been carried on with a party spirit. My side is the best, and the other side is horrible, terrible, no good, and very bad.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that it doesn’t matter how Christians worship. I don’t believe that there should just be a free-for-all, and let the floodgates be opened to anything and everything. What a lazy, thoughtless position! What I am saying is that there is something deeper and more important. And perhaps someone might just say, “oh, yep, let’s now hear what Michael Holmen has to say,” but I’d like it if people wouldn’t think that way. I think I’m speaking the truth. What I believe to be deeper, more fundamental, is the fear of God, the abhorring of one’s own sins, and believing in Jesus. Wherever there is this attitude, which I say is from the preaching of the Holy Spirit instead of any party spirit, you are going to have people with whom you can profitably discuss things—serious Christians who care about the damnation or salvation of their fellow man.

This also is not just my own personal opinion, it is also the confession of our Lutheran Church. The Augsburg Confession says, “It is enough for the true unity of the church to agree concerning the teaching of the Gospel and the administration of the sacraments. It is not necessary that human traditions, rites, or ceremonies, instituted by human beings be alike everywhere.”

That is very similar to what Paul has been saying in these first three chapters of Corinthians. Paul has been saying, “We preach Christ, and him crucified… I was determined to know nothing among you except Christ and him crucified.” What is the gospel that we should all agree about? Isn’t it the message of Christ and him crucified—the good news that Christ has died for all sinners? And what are the sacraments if they are not the preaching and application of Christ crucified for you. Baptism, for example, is being united with Christ in his death, so that we may also be united with him in his resurrection. The Lord’s Supper, as Paul says in this same letter, is the proclamation of Christ’s death until he comes again.

Wherever you have the preaching of Christ and him crucified, and wherever you have people who are given the gift of faith in that preaching by the Holy Spirit—that Christ died for you—there you have Christians. We don’t need Apollos. We don’t even need Paul. You don’t need any particular human being or any particular human party. What we need is the revelation from God. What we need is the fear, love, and trust in God that is worked by the Gospel of Christ and him crucified. That is not just one more party spirit. That fear, love, and trust in God is worked by the one Holy Spirit, who is true God.

Wherever you have that, you have Christians. And, on the other hand, wherever you don’t have that you don’t have Christians. It doesn’t matter how beautiful, eloquent, reasonable, entertaining, popular or righteous any group might appear to be. The indispensable thing is the preaching of Christ and him crucified.

So we should be thankful that we have enjoyed the preaching of Christ and him crucified for each one of us. That each one of us has received Christ the crucified and continue to receive Christ the crucified is not from any merit or worthiness in us. Nor has it been by the graces or faithfulness or merits of any human being or human party or human church body. Anytime we hear the pure preaching of the Gospel and the sacraments are administered according to Jesus’s institution, you can know with 100% certainty that this has come from God. It is his gift to you for you to believe in.

But this has, at the same time, come through instruments that God has used. There’s no sense in denying that. God didn’t speak directly from heaven to each one us. He used believing Christians, but this came from God, was worked by God, and is made effective by God. Paul says, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God caused the growth.”

So it has been and so it is with each one of us. Each of us was baptized by some other Christian. Each of us has received instruction from fellow Christians. Sometimes that instruction, guidance, and correction has been through formal and public channels in institutions, through pastors, teachers, or professors. Sometimes that has been less formal, but certainly not less important. Sometimes it is through family members. Sometimes it is through fellow congregation members. Sometimes it is through friends.

In whatever way our faith has been planted, watered, perhaps replanted, and so on, this has been God working through his means to create and sustain our faith. And this has not been done through one person or one party, unless you want to identify that person as Christ. Christ has been faithful in taking care of us, his sheep, and he will continue to be faithful. The instruments through whom Christ speaks his Scriptural Word will inevitably change. Quite possibly the person who baptized you is long dead. But Christ is faithful. He keeps bringing his Word to you so that you may be his disciple, so that you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

Therefore we must not attach our love and trust to a human being or the party or group in which we happen to be. We couldn’t and shouldn’t do that even if the apostle Paul were here standing among us. He wouldn’t want us to attach ourselves to him. To be faithful to Paul is to be faithful to his preaching and teaching, and he is always pointing beyond himself to Christ and him crucified.

Jesus alone is Lord. He is Lord of his church. He is your Lord and Savior. It is the pleasure of us Christians to declare the praises of him who has called us out of darkness and into his marvelous light.

230205 Sermon on identifying true spirituality (Epiphany 5) February 5, 2023

 Audio recording

Sermon manuscript:

The word “spiritual” brings to mind a lot of things. For me it brings to mind a lot of things that aren’t good. What one person regards as spiritual, another person regards as a delusion. For some there seems to be no limits for what is acceptable when it comes to spirituality. Folks might talk about energies, crystals, disciplines, psychedelic drugs, and many other things. I don’t understand these things, and they make me nervous. But this is not just some personal problem. This comes from my training as a Lutheran. The Lutheran Church has a very guarded attitude towards anybody who shows up and wants to start talking about spirits, energies, and stuff. There is a reason for this guarded attitude from our history.

As you perhaps remember, Martin Luther posted his 95 theses against the Catholic church’s sale of indulgences on October 31, 1517. Not long after this Luther was forced to conclude that it was possible for the pope to err and that church councils could err. The church was not infallible. What led Luther to that conclusion was not some rebellious, independent spirit within him. Luther wasn’t like that; just the opposite actually. What led him to believe that the church could err was that popes and councils have contradicted one another. And, more importantly for Luther, they contradicted the Scriptures. The Scriptures became for Luther, and later the Lutheran church, the only infallible, pure source for what we believe and teach.

This brought about a profound change in society. The way that things had been handled spiritually speaking up until the Reformation was that the Catholic church officials would decide what was right and what was wrong instead of individuals reading the Scriptures for themselves. Once the Catholic church had decided what was right or wrong they would go on to enforce those decisions, up to and including death.

John Hus, for example, was a Bohemian reformer who lived about 100 years before Luther. Even though he was promised safe passage, he was burned at the stake at the Council of Constance in 1415. Luther, also, was convicted of heresy by the Catholic church and would have been put to death if he has fallen into the wrong hands. Obviously, then, folks didn’t just mess around with spiritual teachings under the Catholic church. To do so was deadly serious.

But perhaps you can anticipate what happened in Germany after the Reformation started to break the power of the Roman church officials. No longer was it the church officials who decided what was right and wrong. Everybody could decide for himself or herself what he or she wanted to believe. This was a bit like taking the lid off of a pressure cooker. Spiritual teachers started to come out of the woodwork.

Some said they had visions. Some said they had the Holy Spirit. Some said that the end of the world had come. Some said your baptism didn’t count; you needed to do it again. Some said you should live in communes. Some said not only the church officials needed to go, but all those in authority—the lords and princes needed to go too. Less than a decade after Luther posted the 95 theses it appeared that all hell had broken loose. And you can be sure that the Roman church officials were quite happy to blame all that on Luther.

So, what was to be done? Should we get the stake back out again to start burning heretics? That is what the Roman church wanted to do. When it was politically feasible for them, that is what they did do. Should we embrace tolerance? Live and let live? That would be how our modern world would handle it. Luther had a different way of handling it. He and the Lutheran Church didn’t always live up to what Luther said, but by and large they did, and what Luther said was right. Luther said that heresies need to be rooted out by the preaching of the Word from the Scriptures. Hard work must be done with the Scriptures to refute errors. Only by going more thoroughly into what the Scriptures say can errors be revealed for what they are so that people can be led away from them. And hard work should be done, because it is important that we not err in spiritual matters.

This is where Luther’s attitude, and, God-willing, our own church’s attitude as well, is very different from the modern world’s attitude. The modern world thinks that spiritual matters are outdated and have no real effect. Don’t get too upset about whatever anybody might teach in that realm. None of that stuff really matters. What matters is STEM education, finance, making and saving money. This, of course, is a spiritual teaching all its own, but most people don’t see it that way. What is spiritual to most people is that that kind of thing is like a hobby. Some people believe in crystals. Other people believe in Christ the crucified. For the modern mind this is all gobbledy-gook anyway, so who cares what anybody believes or teaches. What really matters instead of any spiritual nonsense is whatever is going on at the universities, or in Washington, or on Wall Street. If the Catholic church was what ruled over people’s minds and souls at Luther’s time, this modern mentality is what rules over the minds and souls of our own time.

This does not mean, however, that anybody who is against the materialist, corporatist, unbelieving, pleasure and power seeking of our own times is somebody who should be trusted. This, too, is very similar to Reformation times. When the lid came off the pot and the spiritual teachers were coming out of the woodwork, you can be sure that these teachers were very anti-Catholic. They had to be! If they were under the Catholic church they would have been burned at the stake as heretics. But this doesn’t mean that just because they were against the Catholic church that they were good spiritual guides.

So it is also today. It appears that we are living in a time of upheaval. Some people are learning that life is more than food, more than clothing, more than mere scientific or economic advancement. These days there are lots of ways people can learn with the internet. We aren’t all watching the same advertisements on the same three TV networks anymore. So what can a person do in the midst of so many different voices?

What Luther advised still holds true. Not every spirit is the Holy Spirit. In fact, there is only one spirit who is the Holy Spirit, and that Holy Spirit is always going to be leading us to Christ the crucified, as Paul says in our epistle reading today. Be very careful with visions or dreams. Visions and dreams can come from evil spirits. Be even more careful about people who brag not in the Lord, not in their weakness, but in themselves. It’s not hard to say you have the Holy Spirit, and therefore are empowered to lead others to supposedly higher and better things. Don’t take drugs, psychedelic or otherwise. Don’t engage in spiritual exercises. Be very skeptical about energies, crystals, modern versions of clean and unclean foods, and so on.

If you’re bored, if you want to get busy with something, try getting busy with the Ten Commandments. There you have an inexhaustible guide for good works. Or turn to Jesus’s words, for example, in the Sermon on the Mount. And learn about Jesus’s saving work from Jesus’s own words in John’s Gospel, or from Romans, or from Galatians. Or you can go to the first two chief parts of our catechism, the Ten Commandment and the Creed, which summarize these things.

This, I would argue, is very much akin to what Paul has been saying in our epistle readings these past few weeks. He tells these Corinthians—who, by the way, are very much like us, very much itching for power, for enlightenment, for excellence—Paul tells these Corinthians: “We preach Christ and him crucified.” Or, as he says in today’s reading, “When I came among you I didn’t come with high-powered, secret teachings. I came with the ABCs of Christ crucified for you. In fact, I didn’t want to know anything else among you except these ABCs, that you are a sinner for whom Christ died to save.” And where can you learn that you are a sinner? You learn that from the Ten Commandments. And where do you learn that God is the justifier of sinners in Christ the crucified? You learn that from the Creed.

A trait that seems to be common among false spiritual guides is that they are dissatisfied with these ABCs. The ABCs aren’t good enough. That’s baby stuff. They want to move on to secret teachings, secret political conspiracies. They like the book of Revelation. They often have peculiar notions about food. They hate the idea of just being common and run of the mill. They don’t want to be just sinners who are saved by Christ the crucified. They want to be powerful and great, saving this current generation and the generations to come by their ever-so-important discoveries and abilities.

I hope that you can see from the readings we’ve had from 1 Corinthians that Paul is not like that: “Who is Paul?” “Who is Apollos?” They are nothing—and worse than nothing—if they are not leading poor, miserable sinners to the forgiveness of sins in Christ the crucified. This is no extraordinary, secret teaching. It is common teaching. There are, in fact, no secret teachings in Christianity. Anybody and everybody can know absolutely everything that Christians believe and teach in the perfectly public Bible.

This is why we must immediately be suspicious or perhaps even immediately flat-out reject any teachings that come from visions or drugs or so-called Holy Spirit filled people. Such things are not out in the open and common. Who can see the Holy Spirit in another person? Whatever is not out in the open and common—openly taught in the Scriptures—seems to contradict Paul’s statement: “I had no intention of knowing anything among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.”

Knowing your spiritual ABCs, never ceasing to learn them, never graduating from them, that is, repenting and believing, seems to me to be the main thrust of what Paul has been saying in these first two chapters of 1 Corinthians. Why is this so important? Because the devil’s favorite activity is to dress up like an angel of light and start teaching religion. And he is one tricky shyster. As soon as you think you’ve avoided his errors on the left, you will find that he has already been at work with errors on the right. It is not grand and sophisticated campaigns that prove to be the devil’s undoing, but, as Luther’s hymn famously puts it: “One little word can fell him.”

“Though devils all the world should fill, all eager to devour us. We tremble not, we fear no ill. They shall not overpower us. This world’s prince may still scowl fierce as he will. He can harm us none. He’s judged; the deed is done. One little word can fell him.” Maybe that one little word is “Jesus crucified for me.”

We modern people might not believe that the world is filled with devils, but even those who have a hard time believing in demons should be able to recognize that the world is filled to the brim with teachers. All these different teachers teach us different things about what is good, what is important, what is useful. They all want your allegiance for their program. Our times are exceedingly dangerous spiritually speaking. There are million ways to go wrong. There is only one way to be saved.

It is as Paul says in Ephesians chapter 4: “There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in the one hope of your calling. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in us all.”

So when you are dealing with spiritual things, make sure you are only dealing with the one Holy Spirit, who makes known to us in the Scriptures the mind of God. What is in the mind of God? His saving will towards us in Christ Jesus. There are many other spirits and these other spirits will even and especially show up in the churches—including our own churches, seeking to lead people astray. Don’t be led astray, but rather follow the voice of the Good Shepherd, Jesus, who lays down his life for the sheep. Don’t despise such simple teachings, but have the faith of a child. It is this faith, and this faith alone, which overcomes the world.