Sermon manuscript:
The belief that the universe is eternal has been around for
a very long time. The ancient Greek philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, taught
that the universe has always existed. Plato believed that there was an infinite
regression went all the way back into infinity. Aristotle taught that in the
gray dawn of time there was a prime mover. Now all things are working
themselves out of their own accord.
Despite all our sophistication, our people have not gotten much
further. The prime mover has been replaced by the big bang. Matter, time,
space, and whatever other dimension there might be has always existed and
always will exist. The universe is without beginning and without end. As it was
in the beginning, it is now, and will be forever.
Although I am telling you what is generally acceptable to
the scientific community, it probably isn’t something that most people think
about. That stuff is for philosophers and astrophysicists. Normal people don’t
go around talking about this. What do normal people talk about? They talk about
buying and selling, eating and drinking, marrying and being given in marriage,
planting and building. That is to say that normal people are concerned with the
everyday things of life. They do not look at the big picture. Their field of vision
doesn’t go out that far.
This is not a mundane coincidence, unimportant, a matter of
taste, as we might assume. St. Paul speaks of the god of this age blinding the
minds of unbelievers to keep them from clearly seeing the light of the Gospel
of the glory of Christ, who is God’s image. How exactly does the devil, the god
of this age, do this? Jesus’s words in our Gospel reading give us some insight.
The people at the time of Noah were eating and drinking,
marrying and being given in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark.
Then the flood came and destroyed them all. Likewise, just as it was in the
days of Lot: They were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and
building, but on the day when Lot went out from Sodom, fire and sulfur rained
down from heaven and destroyed them all.
These people’s narrow field of vision, looking only to the
everyday stuff, made it so that they were not able to see the signs of the
times. They could not foresee the change of circumstances that was coming upon
them because they assumed that all things would go on like they always have
been.
Generally speaking, all of you are practical people who do
not wish to be concerned about big questions. You are concerned with your
livelihood. You want to put food on the table, and pass along a nice
inheritance to your kids. You want to get together with your family for
Christmas. You don’t want to be bothered with philosophy, theology, or any
other ivory tower subject. Since when did any of these things help anybody
accomplish anything? They are totally impractical.
But that only holds true based on the assumption that life
will always go on as it always has. If people are going to go on forever,
eating and drinking, buying and selling, and so on, then it would be a waste of
time to consider any bigger questions—because it has already been decided that
there are no bigger questions. All that matters is accumulating and consuming.
But if this assumption is not true, then it is decidedly
impractical not to consider it. It
was very impractical, for example, that the people at the time of Noah were
amassing fortunes and building up great institutions. The flood came and
destroyed them all, in spite of all their hopes and dreams and hard work. Or,
as Jesus says, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, but to
lose his soul?”
The Bible teaches that things will not always go on forever.
The universe is not eternal. God created it from nothing. It has a starting
point. It also has an ending point. On what will otherwise be an ordinary day
Jesus will come on the clouds with great power and glory together with his
angels. This old creation, which is groaning for its redemption, will be done
away with, and there will be a new heavens and a new earth where righteousness dwells.
Right in the middle of this great beginning and end of our
world is the incarnation of the Son of God. He who has always been God, became
man in the womb of the Virgin Mary. Jesus has redeemed us so that even though
we have been and are sinners, we are forgiven and righteous before God for his
sake through faith in him. In this way we are saved eternally like Noah and his
family was saved, or like how Lot and his daughters were saved. Though the
world is doomed to destruction for its sins, God plucks us out of death through
his Son who became sin and death in our place.
If this is true, then there is nothing more practical than
repenting of our sins, being baptized, and believing in Jesus. For whoever
believes and is baptized shall be saved. Whoever does not believe will be
condemned. This also puts a different spin on what we are about in this world.
Jesus says, “Do not lay up treasures for yourselves here on earth were rust and
moth destroy and thieves break in and steal. Rather, lay up for yourselves
treasures in heaven where neither rust nor moth destroy and thieves cannot
break in and steal. Because where your treasure is, there your heart will be
also.”
And what are these treasures in heaven that Jesus is talking
about? We will get a good indication of this next week with what Jesus says on
Judgement Day to the sheep at his right. These treasures in heaven are the
works of love and righteousness that are done by the saints. Jesus says that
whoever offers a cup of water to a little one because he is Jesus’s disciple
will by no means lose his reward. The sanctified lives of Christians, where
they do their duty in the callings that God has given them—these lives are
treasures, even though they remain unrecognized by anyone on this earth. The
only one who notices is God.
The world only notices anyone when he or she has unusual
powers—great strength, great wealth, great beauty, and so on. Therefore only
the highest and most unusual positions in society receive honor—presidents,
CEOs, athletes, tycoons, so on and so forth. The world has no respect for a
mother lovingly changing the diaper of her baby. Our schools give our high
school girls annoying dolls to convince them that motherhood is an annoying,
unimportant burden. The world has no respect for the worker at Walmart who does
as he’s told. The same is true for factory workers, vegetable pickers, garbage
collectors—any occupation where people work like dogs and are paid
comparatively little.
But God and Christians see things differently. Anybody who
has been baptized and believes has had their whole life sanctified. For Jesus’s
sake, all the work that Christians do in obedience toward God and in love for
their neighbor is holy and precious in God’s sight. He treasures them.
There is no shame whatsoever in any calling where God’s
commandments are being obeyed. In fact, those who soil themselves with
unrighteous dealings in order to get to the top of the heap and be recognized
by the world will have a rude awakening. The first shall be last, and the last
shall be first. In heaven there will be glorious saints, whom the world
rejected as small and worthless.
Such people may well be wives who submitted to their
husbands as to the Lord, and husbands who loved their wives like Christ loves
the Church. Children who served and obeyed, loved and cherished their father
and mother. People who put up with abusive and difficult people—loving their
enemies, not holding grudges, but going on with their selfless service.
These are the great ones. Jesus says that if anyone should
like to become great, then he must become a servant. Whoever wants to be first,
must be a slave. Greatness is defined by God, and look at what he does. The Son
of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a
ransom for many.
Here you can see another aspect of that narrowing of the
field of vision that I’ve already talked about. People become blind to the
bigger questions of the nature of this universe because they are too busy
eating and drink, buying and selling, and so on. So they miss the bigger
things. On the other hand, they also miss the smaller things. They easily
overlook acts of kindness, the lowly works of a slave. They do not do them, and
they do not notice them. They are thought to be unimportant. What is thought to
be important is getting accepted to Harvard, or winning in an athletic game, or
getting a promotion. These are all things that are widely appreciated and
congratulated. So you can see that the natural, fleshly field of vision is
focused on me, myself, and I. How great am I? How rich am I? How will I be
remembered? What might be said at my funeral?
The Word of God is a bucket of cold water to all these
thoughts. The Bible does not celebrate man’s greatness. Instead it says things
like this: Man born of woman has a few short days, and they are full of
anxiety. He blossoms like a flower, but soon withers. He recedes like a shadow
and does not remain.
Note what this says about us human beings. It says that we
don’t live very long. While we live our happiness is always tainted. Our beauty
is like a flower of the field. We are as insubstantial as a shadow.
God’s Word pulls us out of our fantasy about ourselves. We
are but flesh. We are destined for the grave. The striving after eternity that
we might do on this earth whereby we try to leave our mark, or be remembered,
or have our legacy, are all doomed to failure. To fight against this is to
fight against God. And I don’t like your chances in such a fight. The horror of
Judgement Day is the realization that our determination to live for ourselves
and for our own happiness (which we are always so eager to do) will be judged
as wanting. It won’t matter what anybody thinks or believes. God’s reality will
be forcefully impressed upon all whether they like it or not. All God’s enemies
must be put under his feet.
But it is not as though God wants people to be or to remain
his enemies. This is why he speaks to all who will hear beforehand, to warn
them, to bring them to repentance and kindly invite them to believe in him.
This is what God did at Noah’s time. This is what God did at Lot’s time. Nobody
believed his Word, though, until it was too late. So also God speaks in our own
time. How is it received? Is he believed to be a fool? To be impractical?
It is not good with us. Do you know that even among
so-called Christians there are very few who believe that Christ will come again
to judge the living and the dead? Very few believe in the resurrection of the
dead. Thus, despite whatever they might say otherwise, they are not actually
Christians. They cannot be Christians because they disbelieve in the very
reasons why Christ came and did what he did. Christ came so that when we are
judged we might be acquitted of our sins for Jesus’s sake. He came to defeat
death as God’s punishment for sin, and to bring about the resurrection of those
who have fallen asleep. Those who say that they are Christians but deny the
very reasons why Christ came, are only fooling themselves. We’d like to believe
that the universe is eternal because no sinner wants to be accountable. But God
has set a limit to evil. He will not let evil go on forever. This is why he has
done what he did in Jesus Christ. It is also the reason why Jesus will come
again.
God invites everyone to learn from him what is good and what
is evil. Learn from him what he has promised to do now and in the future for
your salvation. Then you will not meet that great day in horror—as though you
were dealing with an enemy. Instead, you may experience it according to another
picture that is used in the Bible—one we will hear about in a couple weeks. You
may greet that day like a virgin waiting for the groom who loves her, and whom
she loves in turn.
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