Matthew 2:13-23 - Find Peace in God's Providential Plan - January 12, 2020

Doesn’t it seem like these verses could have been pulled right out of the recent news? Maybe from Hong Kong or Iran or Venezuela where violence and death threats are common occurrences? Just think of the splashy headlines: I. Petty and paranoid tyrant hunts down supposed child challenger to his throne; II. Family forced to flee in the middle of the night to seek asylum in foreign country to escape death; III. Outsmarted and enraged, petty tyrant retaliates with bloody slaughter; IV. Village mourns the tragic and senseless loss of life. These could be headlines from our world today, but they’re not, they are headlines from the first century AD and they are recorded in the Bible. These are the headlines that detail what baby Jesus went through only months after his birth in Bethlehem. As we meditate on these headlines, God will help us find Peace in His Providential Plan.

Providence is the fancy theological word we use to describe God’s continuous care of his creation and his creatures – and his special care for believers like us. It’s the Bible’s teaching and our confession that God is still actively working in and preserving his creation. The first thing we need to understand about God’s providence is that sometimes God permits his children to hurt. In our text, God allowed his only Son, Jesus to hurt. Here is the baby whom prophets had foretold for thousands of years, whose birth was proclaimed by hosts of angels, who had been worshipped by shepherds and mysterious wise me. This was the King of kings and Lord of lords and yet he had to flee to a foreign country to escape the murderous wrath of a petty tyrant – it certainly doesn’t seem right, it doesn’t seem fair that God’s own Son would have to face such hardship and suffering. But no matter how it seems to us, God in his wisdom allowed his own Son to hurt.

And what was true for God’s only begotten Son is also true for the rest of his children. The Bible declares over and over that those who follow Christ should expect to suffer like he did (1 Peter 4:12). Consider Mary and Joseph. Don’t you think the parents of Jesus might have expected better? After all, the angel said their son was God’s Son (Matthew 1:23). If the Son of God was living in your home, wouldn’t you imagine that your life would be pretty smooth and worry free? Wouldn’t you think you had the ultimate insurance policy against pain and suffering? But the reality was just the opposite – Jesus brought nothing but trouble to Mary and Joseph. First, they had to have that uncomfortable conversation about how Mary was pregnant and it wasn’t Joseph’s. Second, they had to travel to Bethlehem for a census with a very pregnant Mary. And finally they had to flee in the middle of the night to keep Jesus safe. And the suffering didn’t stop there. Enraged that he been outwitted by God and the wise men, Herod ordered the senseless slaughter of Bethlehem’s baby boys. These were children of God, they had been received into his family through circumcision, and yet they were murdered for no reason other than that they were about Jesus’ age.

We immediately ask, “Why?” Why did God’s Son have to suffer like this? Why should any of God’s sons and daughters have to suffer? In Jesus’ case, the Bible’s answer is straightforward. Jesus suffered like this for us. This was part of his humiliation for us. When Isaiah writes that the Savior would be a man who knew grief, who was well acquainted with suffering (Isaiah 53:3) – this is one of the ways he became familiar with suffering. Hebrews says that he had to become like his brothers in every way including experiencing pain and sorrow (Hebrews 2:17). Jesus had to humiliate himself, to undergo pain and suffering as a helpless infant, a despised teacher, and as a crucified criminal to save us from our sins. Why did God’s Son have to hurt like this? That answer is as simple as it is sobering: it part of the price he had to pay to free us from sin, death and the devil. It was part of the cost of our redemption. It was for our eternal good.

We can grasp that, right? At least in theory. But it’s one thing to understand and believe that Jesus endured pain and suffering for our good – it’s another thing to trust that God permits us to suffer for the very same reason: for our good. How can we be sure of that? How can the pain, disappointment, the physical and psychological and emotional hurt we endure in this life – how can it be for our good, how can it give us any peace? There is one detail in our text that gives us peace even in the midst of pain, hardship, and sorrow. Did you notice that Matthew quoted the OT in both stories – the flight to Egypt and the slaughter of infants? Matthew quotes from Hosea (11:1) and Jeremiah (31:15) and says that these prophecies were fulfilled by what happened to Mary, Joseph, Jesus, and these innocent baby boys. In other words, God knew that these things would happen long before they did.

What? He knew ahead of time and did nothing to stop it? Where’s the comfort in that? The comfort lies in knowing that in this world nothing happens by chance or by accident. Everything happens according to God’s plan. There are few places in the Bible that demonstrate God’s complete control as right here, in Matthew 2. Satan was working hard through Herod to root out and destroy the Savior and our hope of salvation, but God was working behind the scenes to frustrate him at every turn. Jesus was indeed destined to die, but on a cross, not as a toddler in Bethlehem – and God used both natural and supernatural means to guarantee his safety. Remember that the next time pain, sorrow, or hardship come into your life – it’s all part of God’s plan for you. God uses suffering to humble us, to draw us closer, to purify our faith and for many other reasons – but it’s all for our good. It may not feel good, you may not be able to see how it could possibly turn out for good, but when you hurt, when you suffer, when you are in pain – you can still have peace, because you know that God is in control and in his eternal wisdom, he permits his children to suffer.

And yet, even though God allows his children to hurt, he also protects them from any true, eternally permanent harm. Yes, it was terrifying and humiliating for Jesus and his parents to have to flee to Egypt. There could have been nothing easy or pleasant about having to pick up in the middle of the night and run for their lives. But through the angel’s warning and this midnight flight to Egypt, God protected his Son so that he could grow up and die on a cross. And now you’re thinking – “yeah, but what about all those innocent babies whose lives were snuffed out by Herod’s soldiers? Clearly God didn’t care enough to keep them safe.” And it’s true, if we look at this story through the lens of reason or emotion all we see is senseless, meaningless suffering. But when we look at this story through our God-given eyes of faith, we can see that even this tragedy was part of God’s plan. The prophet Isaiah teaches us that God’s mercy is really behind the seemingly premature death of even young believers: the righteous one perishes, but no one takes it to heart. Men of mercy are being taken away, but no one understands that the righteous one is being spared from evil. He will enter into peace. They will rest on their beds. (Isaiah 57:1-2) These baby boys, who were the first martyrs to die for Jesus’ name, were also the first to realize the fulfillment of their Savior’s promise: be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life. (Revelation 2:10) Yes, Herod had ended these infant’s lives on this earth prematurely, but he couldn’t rob them of the eternal life God had freely given them. In life and in death, God protects his children from true, eternal harm.

Remember that as we march into this New Year. Because if we know anything about 2020, it’s that this world will continue to be a dangerous and deadly place. And even though we are believers, we will not be immune from pain and harm and danger. Freak accidents will strike, awful crimes will happen, natural disasters will destroy property and lives, wars and epidemics and disease will lead to terror and panic. And yet, through it all, we can live in peace, because we know that God will always protect his people from real, eternal harm. Every day and every night you can carry this promise with you: The LORD will watch to keep you from all harm. He will watch over your life. (Psalm 121:7)

How will he do this? Maybe he will keep harm away from you. Maybe the multi-car pile-up will take place a split second after you clear the intersection. Maybe this will be the year that you don’t get the flu. Maybe He will send one of his angels – or a fellow member – to take your hand as you navigate a treacherous, icy parking lot. Or maybe the LORD will keep you from harm by turning evil into good. Fleeing in the dark of night must have seemed evil to Mary and Joseph, but in the end it resulted in Jesus going to the cross to pay for theirs and the world’s sins – there has never been a greater reversal of evil to good in human history. So you might get in a car accident or experience a life-threatening sickness or lose a job or have your identity stolen in 2020. God can turn these evils into good by using them to humble you, to lead you to repentance, to strengthen your faith, to deepen your trust in his promises, to assure you that all things work together for the good of those who love God. (Romans 8:28) Yes, even if the very worst evil that sin brought into this world happens – even if you or someone you love dies, you can have peace, because not even death can harm those who are children of God by faith in Christ, for Christ has removed the sting of death by his death and resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:56-57).

After Herod died, God again sent an angel to Joseph who told him: get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to kill the child are dead. And again Joseph obeyed God’s command, leaving Egypt to make the long journey back to Israel. However, guided by a dream he passed by Bethlehem and settled in Nazareth. Again, this was not by accident, this was all according to God’s plan and under his providence. Matthew tells us that this was the fulfillment of prophecy: He will be called a Nazarene. In the end, this entire story happened just as God had mapped it out. From a midnight flight to Egypt, to the slaughter of innocent infants, to Mary and Joseph’s return to Nazareth – God was behind the scenes directing everything so that his Son would live in the home he had prepared for him.

And the same is true for us. God has a home prepared for us too. In fact, that’s why he allowed all these events to happen. Jesus had to be born in a lowly manger, he had to suffer as an infant and be crucified as an adult because we have sinned and forfeited any chance at heaven. Because we have failed to trust in God’s wise providence, because we have complained about his mysterious ways, because we have doubted and been discontent with the life God has given us – Jesus had to demonstrate perfect trust in his Father’s plan in even the most painful circumstances. Jesus came and suffered and died to open heaven to us once again and returned to paradise to prepare a place for us there. The night before he died, Jesus showed his disciples the key to finding peace in this world of pain and suffering: Do not let your heart be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you. I am going to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to be with me, so that you may also be where I am. (John 14:1-3) Just as God prepared a home in Nazareth for his Son, he has prepared a place in heaven for you and me and all believers – and no amount of pain or suffering will foil God’s plan.

I have a prediction to make for the year 2020 and the new decade that has just begun: once again people will search high and low for peace but won’t find it because this world is filled with suffering, pain, tragedy, and sorrow. But we will have peace. We will find our peace in God’s providence because even though will never know precisely what direction God has planned for our lives, we do know this: we know that God’s plan is for our path to end in heaven – and that gives us peace no matter what we face in life. Amen.

Matthew 2:1-12 - What Does This Mean? - January 5, 2020

Out there in the world, Christmas is history. No more Christmas music on the radio; the trees are on the curb; the stockings are down; many stores already have their Valentine’s Day displays up. Baby Jesus is safely packed away until next Thanksgiving when he’ll be let out for another month or so. But in the Church it’s still Christmas. For Christians, the Christmas season doesn’t end until tomorrow – January 6th, the Epiphany of our Lord. But because I think I would have a really hard time convincing you to come to church on a Monday night in January, we are going to celebrate Epiphany – the Christmas of the Gentiles – today. We’re going to apply the classic Lutheran question to the account of these mysterious wise men, asking: what does this mean?

The first thing (that should be obvious – but often isn’t) is that we can’t answer the question “what does this mean?” based on what we don’t know. And there’s a lot we don’t know. We don’t know how many wise men there were. All we know is that there was more than one because the plural is used. Christian artists and hymn writers have generally settled on three because they presented three gifts – but we have no idea. Not only do we not know the number of wise men, we’re not even sure who they were. In OT times wise men (μάγοι) were experts in astrology, medicine, and dream interpretation. Daniel was a leader of such an order (Daniel 2:48). In later times, the word “wise men” was used of scientists in general. So we don’t know precisely who the wise men were nor do we know precisely where they were from. The text says they came from the east, but what does that mean? Some think they were from Arabia, others from Babylon, others still from Persia. Again, who knows? The Bible doesn’t say so it’s not worth the time it takes to speculate. So we don’t really know who the wise men were, how many of them there were, where they were from, or even what the star was that they followed. Some say it was a comet, others an exploding star, and still others a rare alignment of planets. All that we don’t know about the wise men is intriguing, it makes for interesting discussions and reading – not to mention many misleading songs and artwork – but in the end, none of it matters. It is a major and all-too-common mistake to focus on what the Bible doesn’t tell us. It can’t help us answer the question “what does this mean?” Instead, we should focus on what the Bible does tell us. So what does God tell us in Matthew 2?

The Bible tells us that wise men followed a star for roughly two years (Matthew 2:16) that led them from somewhere in the east to Jerusalem and then from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. What does this mean? It means that God leads his people by means of things that are often at odds with science and reason. The only thing that makes sense is that the star first led them to Jerusalem. Kings are found in capital cities, but the star apparently didn’t identify the precise location. So the wise men did the very unmanly thing and asked for directions. Which Herod’s advisors provided by quoting Micah 5:2, which they followed to Bethlehem. That’s amazing enough, but even more amazing is that the star reappeared, and went ahead of them, until it stood over the place where the child was.

These wise men were intelligent enough to know that stars don’t stop and go, they don’t go on ahead of you, and they certainly don’t stop and beam down like a spotlight on a single house. The movement of the star did not make scientific or astronomical sense, but they followed it any way. Neither was it wise to go to Jerusalem and ask the king where a potential rival to his throne was, but they did that too. What does this mean? Well, don’t we do the same thing? Don’t we cast aside what we think, what we know, what we feel, what science tells us and instead go where Scripture points us; following where God leads us? There are all sorts of issues where society and so-called experts point in one direction and yet, led by God, we go in the opposite direction. For example, gender identity, abortion, homosexuality, the roles of men and women, the discipline of children, the origins of the universe. No, he doesn’t put stars in the sky to lead us to Jesus today, but he does still show us where Jesus is. We call them the marks of the Church. Do you know what they are? The Gospel preached and taught in truth and purity and the Sacraments administered in line with Christ’s command.

These are foolish signs that many if not most people – even many who call themselves Christians – ignore. Many, supposedly wise people, today think that Jesus is to be found where the greatest number of people are gathered, where the gathering feels the most spiritual, where the pastor has published multiple books or at least has an active Twitter or YouTube account, where there are the most programs for youth, for singles, for elderly, for couples. To suggest that Jesus can be found in the simple preaching of forgiveness because he kept the law and died to pay for our sins is, to many, unimpressive and not worth their time. To find Jesus in the plain water of Baptism is weak. To find Jesus in the bread and wine of communion is not only weak but unreasonable. But these are the ways God has ordained to lead people to himself today. If only we would have the eagerness and tireless determination to see baby Jesus in these means, instead of making up excuses, like Herod and his advisors, to avoid him – then we would truly be wise men and women and children.

The wise men followed the star to Jesus. And what did they do when they got there? Our translation says they bowed down and worshipped him. The Greek isn’t nearly so elegant. The original has them falling on their faces before Jesus. Imagine that! Wise men from the east – probably pretty important men in their own right – are brought to their knees by a child, a toddler, who hadn’t yet cast out a single demon, preached a single sermon, healed anyone or raised anyone from the dead. They fell down and worshipped a child who may have had a stinky diaper, drool on his face and dirt under his fingernails. It had to appear extremely foolish for these fully grown men to be worshipping a child.

What does this mean? They worshiped Jesus not because he looked different than other children, not because a halo hung over his head, not because angels hovered over his house sweetly singing. They worshiped him because the Old Testament had predicted this child (Numbers 24:17; Micah 5:2), had promised that God would stoop down out of heaven, would become a man – all in order to save sinners from eternal damnation. It was the fulfillment of these inspired words that made them fall on their faces and worship – even when their eyes and their reason might have been saying “move along, there’s nothing to see here; it’s just a child.” The Word, not sight, not science, not reason makes wise men out of fools; believers out of unbelievers.

So it is with us today. We meet our Savior in the three holy means he has given us: Baptism, Absolution, and Communion. Though they look ordinary, plain and weak, though there appears to be no power in them at all, we treat them as the holiest things in the world – just because God says so in his Word. “Baptism is not just plain water,” the Catechism says, “it is water used by God’s command and connected with God’s Word.” That’s why we steadfastly confess that “Baptism works forgiveness of sins, delivers from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe this, as the words and promises of God declare” (SC Baptism I, II).

The same is true of Absolution. It is holy and precious to us – even as it is mocked by and offensive to the world. It is the voice of God through the lips of a man. When your sins are forgiven here they are also forgiven in heaven (Matthew 18:18). And when your sins are sent away, you stand holy and righteous before God – whether you feel it or not. The Absolution is the pronouncement by the Judge of the universe that you are not guilty in his courtroom – the only courtroom that matters. Absolution is a holy work, a holy event, an awesome privilege and gift from God that should bring us to our knees in thanks and praise.

And what’s true of Baptism and Absolution is also tangibly and visibly evident in Holy Communion. Here is Jesus on earth for us. But, as with the wise men, he conceals, he hides his glory. We don’t see Jesus’ glory in Communion any more than the wise men saw it in that child, but it’s there. When we sing Glory, Glory, Glory and O Christ, Lamb of God we can’t hear the saints and angels in heaven echoing those songs of praise – but we know they are, because the Bible tells us (Revelation 4:8; 5:12-13). Just as the wise men saw nothing but a toddler, so we see nothing but bread and wine, but like them we fall down in worship because our faith is not based on what we see but what God said.

After the wise men had worshipped, they opened their treasures and offered him gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. What does this mean? The simplest interpretation is also the most profound. Gold was given to kings to acknowledge their rule and authority. Frankincense was offered to recognize the presence of God. And myrrh was used to embalm dead bodies. So by their gifts, the wise men confessed this child, Jesus, as their King, their God, and the Sacrifice for their sins. It doesn’t get more profound than that!

What does this mean for us? Is Jesus your King? Do you find relief and escape from the political madness in our country bringing your daily petitions to the King who ruled from a manger and bloody cross 2000 years ago and who rules today invisibly from heaven and visibly through Water, Words, Bread and Wine? Don’t we still bring him our gold? Do you realize how foolish that appears to the wise men of the world? What the rest of the world treasures as the most important thing, we freely give back to our King. By our offerings, faithfully and cheerfully given, we are giving the very public confession that He, not money, rules our lives.

The wise men confessed child Jesus as true God by their gift of incense. What does that mean for you and me? Is Jesus your God, above, besides, and beyond which there is no other? In our world today that’s quite a confession to make. It’s blasphemy to Jews and Muslims. It is considered hateful and intolerant in our pluralistic culture to insist that your religion is the only true religion because your God is the only true God. And yet it is our confession (John 14:6) – foolish though it may sound to the world. Jesus is our God even though he is rejected by every other religion in the world. We know of no God, we worship no God apart from the flesh and blood of Jesus.

Finally, what kind of a gift is myrrh for a child? It would be like giving your child a shiny little urn or a nice solid wood casket for Christmas. What does this mean? It means that above all else we must see Jesus, even the child Jesus – cradled in his mother’s arms – as the one who would bear our sins and the sins of the world (1 John 2:2). We don’t give him myrrh, but we do give him our sins by confessing them to him. We give them to him rather than try to justify them or make up for them. And when we believe that he has washed them away in Baptism, sent them away in the Absolution, carried them to the cross and paid for them with the very body and blood we are about to eat and drink – we are worshipping Jesus as Savior just as sincerely and truly as the wise men did at that house in Bethlehem.

And so, while the rest of the world has packed Christmas away until next December, our joy and our faith are burning as brightly as ever – because our faith and joy are not built on emotion or reason or speculation about what the Bible doesn’t say. They are firmly grounded on what the Bible does say – which we get to by asking that simple question: what does this mean? Epiphany means that once again we get to see the light of the Gospel reaching to the ends of the earth making wise men foolish and foolish men wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus (2 Timothy 3:15). Amen.

John 1:1-14 - The Real Reason for the Season - December 25, 2019

I’m not going to pretend to be able to read minds, but…I’m pretty sure I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that with a theme like The Real Reason for the Season you already know what this sermon is going to be about. You’re thinking that we’re going to spend the first 10 minutes decrying the culture around us, the unbelieving world that thinks that this Christmas season is all about gifts and family and food while either intentionally or unintentionally ripping Christ right out of Christmas. And then we can spend the last 10 minutes kneeling as faithful believers at Jesus’ manger, pretending to be one of those shepherds, and invisibly patting ourselves on the back for coming to church on Christmas Day – because everyone knows that only the very best Christians come to church on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Well, as you can probably guess, that’s not the way this Christmas sermon is going to go. John does give us the real reason for this Christmas season, but it’s probably not what you think and it’s better than you would have ever imagined.

“Jesus is the reason for the season.” You’ve seen the bumper stickers, the coffee mugs, the t-shirts, the Facebook posts and hashtags proclaiming that message, haven’t you? It seems like a good message. One that would remind people that Christmas is not really about maintaining family traditions or giving gifts. There’s only one problem. It’s totally, completely, absolutely wrong. Jesus is not the reason for the season of Christmas. Think about it. Jesus didn’t need to come to earth, to take on flesh and blood for his sake. Jesus was not unhappy, not unfulfilled, not bored in the glory of heaven reigning at his Father’s side. John makes that clear when he writes in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. “In the beginning” is a reference to Genesis 1:1, the beginning of time, the beginning of human history. But before there was time, matter, or space; before there was an earth, a single man or woman or angel – there was God the Son, and things were just fine with him. John says in him was life. Jesus wasn’t just alive; he was life itself. He needed nothing. He wanted nothing. He had everything.

Of course, Genesis 3 records how shortly after creation the darkness of sin and death fell like a disease infested blanket over all creation. But don’t think for a moment that this darkness reached Jesus in heaven. No, the light went right on shining in the darkness. Darkness is no match for light. We experienced that truth for ourselves again last night. Did you notice how, even after all the lights were turned off as we heard the Christmas Story from Luke 2 and sang Silent Night, this room was still glowing brightly? Just a few dozen candles chased the darkness out of here. In the same way, Jesus, who is the Light of light, went right on shining in spite of the darkness of sin and death. So it was not necessary for Jesus to come here to take care of the darkness for his own sake. Darkness is powerless against him.

Jesus is not the reason for this season. What we celebrate last night and today are not for his sake at all. Jesus didn’t need Christmas. He didn’t need to be conceived in the womb of a virgin. He didn’t need to be born in a stable or laid in a manger. He didn’t need the praise of angels, the visits of shepherds or the gifts of wise men. He certainly didn’t need to be persecuted and mocked, beaten and crucified to save the world. As the second person of the Trinity he could have simply decided to scrap the whole mess and start over again. You know he gave that option to Moses in the wilderness. Several times the Lord told Moses to step back and he would wipe the Israelites off the face of the earth and start over with him (Exodus 32:10; Exodus 33:5; Numbers 14:11-12; Deuteronomy 9:13-14). If Moses had that option, then surely the Son of God did, too. God the Son didn’t have to have this season. Jesus isn’t the reason for this season at all.

The darkness was not a problem for Jesus, but it was and is for us. The darkness had overcome us. We were the people Isaiah referred to as walking in darkness (Isaiah 9:2). You know about walking in the darkness of sin and death, don’t you? How most of our time and energy are spent repairing the damage done by sin and concocting schemes to prevent it from doing further damage. We know how many broken hearts, broken homes, scars both visible and invisible sin has left in its destructive wake. And this darkness is more than just physical, it’s more than just out there. The darkness lives within, too. What can you do to stop yourself from being a 24/7 sin factory? What can you do to control your sinful words and actions, much less your sinful thoughts? We refer to some of our sins as our “pets” – as if we have them under control. When the reality is that our “pet” sins have us locked under their control. What can you do to stop death from grabbing your loved ones away from you? What diet or exercise plan or lifestyle change do you plan to implement to keep death from grabbing you? Add this all up and you finally reach the truth: we are the reason for the season.

Then why do so many think Jesus is the reason for the season? Because the world, in its blind arrogance, has convinced itself that we all but have sin and death all but licked. Medicine has made remarkable strides in recent years. It can replace organs. It can stop cancer…sometimes. It can make the blind see and the deaf hear. Even the slavery of habitual sin is often dealt with in terms of medicine. If you have a problem with anger or depression or addiction or violence or you can’t sleep because of your guilty conscience – no problem! There’s a pill for that. And death? Ha! Death is no match for gene editing and organ transplants and stem cell therapy. The message of our highly scientific and highly secular culture is that you don’t really need this season of light and life. We’ve got sin and death under control. If anyone needs it Jesus does. He might start to feel bad if we don’t take a few moments out of the year to remember just how cute he was when he was born in that stable 2000 years ago.

But the truth is that the world has it all wrong. It’s not just a matter of trying your hardest not to sin and trusting in medicine to keep you from dying. Because the truth is that the moment Adam and Eve ate the fruit, they died and as a result we, their children, are born dead (Ephesians 2:1). So what if medicine can keep us alive 70, 80 or more years? Death is still at work in us (2 Corinthians 4:12). Death still reigns as the heavyweight, undefeated champion of the world. And do you really think that any pill that treats symptoms like anxiety, depression, addiction, anger – can really treat the underlying, systemic disease of sin? Do you think that if you can just keep the resolutions you make this year that you could earn a ticket to heaven? Not a chance (Romans 3:20)!

Man’s best medicine is no match for sin and death, and neither are the petty and invented manmade “miracles” of Christmas. Do you think that throwing a few bucks at the person ringing the bell by those red canisters at the grocery store can really make poverty and hunger go extinct? (They’ve been ringing those bells since 1891 and haven’t been successful yet![1]) Do you think that gathering together as a family to eat together and exchange gifts can heal broken relationships or white wash the fact that some at your cheerful gathering are living in unrepented sin or unbelief – and thus have all but spit on baby Jesus? Do you think that a fat guy in the red suit can just “ho, ho, ho” death away?

“Yeah, but December 25th is Jesus’ birthday and he’s our Savior and Lord and so he really is the reason for the season.” First, we don’t actually know what year, much less what day Jesus was born on – so we can forget about that. Second, you know as well as I do that we have other national holidays to celebrate the birthdays of some of our nation’s most influential leaders. Turning Christmas into nothing more than a birthday party trivializes it, robbing it of its eternal and universal importance. Christmas is not about Jesus’ birthday, but about God’s incarnation. It’s about the fact that in a manger in Bethlehem God parachuted out of heaven like a Navy Seal to rescue us from the sins we could never pay for and the death we could not avoid.

Christmas is about Jesus. But Christmas is not for Jesus. Jesus didn’t need Christmas – but we certainly needed Jesus. He’s the only one who could stand fast against the darkness of death and the guilt of sin. Jesus was the only one sin couldn’t enslave, couldn’t put in its cage – just think about his victory over temptation in the desert (Matthew 4:1-11). Death buried its fangs in Jesus on Good Friday, but come Easter morning it was death that lay crumpled in a heap (Isaiah 25:8). Jesus didn’t come for his own benefit, he came to destroy the devil’s work (1 John 3:8), John writes. And do you know what the devil’s work is? Our sin and our death! Jesus didn’t come on Christmas so that we could give each other gifts as a way of celebrating his birthday; he came to give us the priceless gifts of forgiveness and eternal life. Christmas is about nothing less than God breaking into human history in order to reverse the hell-ward spiral mankind was on.

That’s why I say that Jesus is not the reason for the season. I am. You are. Christmas is one of those golden summaries of the Gospel message because Christmas is for us! So we don’t dare celebrate this season like the people John describes in these verses: he came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Do you know what the Greek word for “his own” is? ἴδιοι – from which we get our English word idiot. We don’t dare celebrate Christmas like idiots – that is, thinking that we somehow have sin and death on the ropes and don’t really need a Savior. We don’t dare celebrate like Christmas doesn’t make any difference – that we must continue to live under the bondage of sin or the cloud of guilt that haunts us from the past. While we may certainly shed tears over the empty spot at the table this year – we don’t dare forget that the Christmas being celebrated by our faithful departed is the best they’ve ever had! Finally, we don’t dare give in to the Christmas blues of depression and despair this year – because whatever problems may still be plaguing us today, this truth remains unchanging and undiminished: the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us to destroy the power of sin and death over us once and for all!

THAT is why this is a day to celebrate, a day for singing and smiling and laughing and eating and drinking and yes, even gift-giving. God has fulfilled his promises! He has given us his Son to save us. He has changed everything. God has come to earth to win our fight against sin and death for us so that we might go to heaven to live in peace and glory forever. If that doesn’t call for an annual day of celebration, I don’t know what does.

You are the reason for the season. You are the reason the Word became flesh. Your salvation is the reason you should celebrate today. But you knew that, didn’t you? because that’s what the angels told the shepherds: I bring you good news of great joy…today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord (Luke 2:10-11). This Christmas sermon was not what you were thinking, was it? But is it better than you imagined? I sure hope so. You are the real reason for this season – your forgiveness, your life, your salvation. It’s Christmas and Christmas is for you! So get out there and celebrate. Amen.

[1] https://www.salvationarmyusa.org/usn/red-kettle-history/

Isaiah 7:14 - Christmas Is a Sign - December 22, 2019

Just three short days until Christmas. Is that good news or bad news for you? I’m sure for all the children here, they may be wishing it were tomorrow. But for the rest of us, maybe not. Maybe you’re even dreading Christmas this year. You haven’t had as much time as you’d like to buy the gifts and clean the house. You have projects at work that need completing and you can’t really afford to take time off. Maybe you’ve suffered some kind of loss this year and the last thing you want to do is try to gin up the “Christmas spirit.” If you’ve ever found Christmas to be more of dreaded inconvenience than a celebration, then you are in the same boat as the man who first heard these words from the prophet Isaiah. His name was Ahaz. He was the King of Judah. His kingdom was under siege by two allied armies and seemed likely to fall at any time. The Lord had come to him pleading with him to trust him for protection and even offering to give him a sign as proof (Isaiah 7:10-11). Ahaz, in unbelief – and, preferring to trust his own ingenuity – refused. The Lord ran out of patience and decided to give him a sign anyway. It’s the sign at the center of Christmas: a virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. Christmas is much more than an annual event, it’s a perpetual sign, a sign to people like Ahaz in the 8th century BC; a sign to people like us in the 21st century. The question is: a sign of what?

A good, one-word summary of Christmas is Immanuel. Immanuel means “God with us.” Christmas means that God is with us. This means that Christmas is bigger than a holiday. It’s bigger than a reason to exchange gifts. Christmas is fundamentally theological. Christmas is the historical event that sets Christianity apart from any and every manmade religion. Every manmade religion is built on the same basic framework: man must struggle to climb a ladder up to God. The best plan mankind has ever come up with to redeem our race ultimately depends on us – whether we do enough, pray enough, give enough, meditate enough – to satisfy God and climb into his good graces. Christmas tosses all of that out the window. If your celebration of Christmas is sincere, you are making an open confession that you cannot climb up to God (repentance) – and that you don’t have to, because at Christmas God descends to be with us (faith). Long after the presents have been opened and the trees tossed to the curb and the echoes of carols have faded – this glorious Christmas truth remains: “God is with us.”

For Ahaz, however, this sign, the birth of Jesus, the coming of God to earth, was a sign of judgment. Because of his unbelief, within 100 years, Ahaz’ kingdom would be, for all practical purposes, annihilated. After being taken into exile in Babylon and released, Judah was never the same, never really free. And when Jesus was born, Judah – and all of Israel – was subject to the Roman Empire. Because Ahaz didn’t believe the words and promises of God, Christmas was a sign of judgment; a sign of worse things to come.

What was true of Ahaz is still true for those who reject God’s Word in 2019 – Christmas is nothing less than a sign of judgment, a sign of worse things to come. How can that be? How can Christmas be bad news? Because Christmas is proof that God keeps his Word; a perennial reminder that God is with us. He’s with us whether we want him to be or not. In the book of Jeremiah the Lord asks Am I only a God nearby...and not a God far away? Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him? Do I not fill heaven and earth? (Jeremiah 23:23-24) Christmas means that even if we were to blast ourselves into the expanse of space or sink into the depths of the sea – we cannot escape God’s presence. We can’t even hope to hide from God in the deep, dark corners of our minds, for the Lord says through the same prophet: I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind (Jeremiah 17:10). Yes, Christmas, God with us, is a sign, for many a terrible sign – since it means that God is so close that he can judge not only our words and actions but the very thoughts of our hearts. For many, that’s not good news. You’ve noticed that dread of Christmas in our culture, haven’t you? What is the cultural movement away from wishing people a “Merry Christmas” and toward “Happy Holidays” other than a futile attempt to suppress the truth that God is with us? Where it’s fine if you keep the season light and cheerful – all about reindeer and sugar cookies, but don’t you dare bring God into it. And yet in spite of the secular world’s best attempts, Christmas still stands as an annual sign, a sign of judgment; that God keeps his Word and for all who reject it, the worst is yet to come.

But, thank God, it’s much more than that, as the children will proclaim in moments. We celebrate Christmas, instead of hiding from it, because this sign: that the virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel is above all a sign of divine love. Here is God’s love in tangible, physical, non-threatening form, in a baby lying in a manger. It means that God didn’t come to stalk us, shaking his finger at us like an angry judge – he came to be one of us. It’s what you might call a divine defection – God crossed the battle lines to take our side, to wear our uniform of weakness and mortality. More than that, this little baby would grow up to be a man who would serve mankind, to preach forgiveness and teach the truths of God, to heal the sick and feed the hungry, and ultimately to suffer and die and rise to save us. This is the heart of the good news the angels proclaimed to shepherds in that field and these children will proclaim to us today – that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself…not counting men’s sins against them (2 Corinthians 5:19). Yes, Christmas means that God is here; he’s here for us, for us and our salvation! Christmas means there’s no reason to fear! Christmas is the ultimate gift, the ultimate sign of God’s love. God in a manger means that God’s love is so unconditional that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:12). God in a manger means that God’s love is so wide that no one in the world is exempt from his forgiving and saving love (John 3:16). God in a manger means that God’s love is so deep that he suffered hell for us so that we might go to heaven. Yes, for all who believe this good news, Christmas is a wonderful sign, an enduring sign of God’s divine love for us.

Now it may still be true that Christmas is going to be an inconvenience for you this year. Perhaps it’s the timing. Perhaps it’s the pressure to be cheerful. Perhaps it’s the stress and strain it puts on your mind and body and budget. But the good news is that even though God knew the kind of mess we have made of our lives and his creation, he sent his Son to be born into it anyway. Christmas means that God doesn’t expect you to climb up to him or clean yourself up to be accepted by him – it means that God has come to you just as you are. Don’t be afraid of Christmas! Yes, Christmas means that God is near enough to judge you. But that’s not why he came; he’s here to save you. That’s why, convenient or not, Christmas is always a day to celebrate. Amen.

Matthew 11:2-11 - Advent Questions - December 15, 2019

Things really changed quickly and drastically for John from last week, didn’t they? It’s like two totally different lives. Last week he was the talk of the town, with crowds flocking into the wilderness to hear his preaching of repentance and receive his baptism of forgiveness (Matthew 3:1-12). This week John is in prison. Why? Because he had the guts to tell King Herod that he was sinning by taking his brother’s wife as his own (Matthew 14:3). Then again, we know just how quickly things can change. I would argue that just stepping through those doors makes for a pretty big change. Out there, these days are all about parties and gifts and good cheer. But in here, we are continuing our season of repentance, preparing not our homes or budgets but our hearts for Christmas. The Lord prepares our hearts today by answering three questions to remove any doubts about who Christ is and what he is coming to do.

Our first question is quite seasonal, since Advent means coming: Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else? Why would John have asked this question? The one to come was an Old Testament title for the Messiah, the Christ (Psalm 118:26). John had already pointed to Jesus as the Lamb of God (John 1:29). But as we noted last week, from John’s perspective, he was supposed to come as a fierce and vengeful Judge. He was supposed to strike at the root of every impenitent tree and sweep the chaff of unbelief into the unquenchable fire of hell. But he didn’t. While John is locked up in prison Jesus is freely roaming through Israel doing unthinkable things: eating and drinking with sinners and giving them forgiveness. He’s calling people to repentance, sure, but he’s not carrying an ax around, he’s not cutting down any trees, he’s not confronting immoral kings, he’s not trying to get John released. What gives, John (or his disciples) wonder? Is Jesus the Coming One, or should they be looking for another?

Do we ever wonder the same thing? We believe that God will not be mocked, yet he is (Galatians 6:7). We believe that the wicked will be punished and the righteous rewarded (Psalm 73), but the wicked seem to thrive in their wickedness and believers seem to suffer. We believe that Jesus rules the world for the good of his Church (Ephesians 1:22). But maybe we got it wrong. Islam seems more of a force in the world today than Christianity. No one dares to mock or antagonize Muslims. But Christians? Christians are mocked on every front. We who believe that God’s Word is truth (John 17:17) are labeled as bigoted and intolerant and accused of having a phobia to every lifestyle or religion God calls sinful. We believe that Jesus is always with us, to the very end of the age (Matthew 28:20) and yet so often we feel alone and abandoned, that no one is hearing our prayers or cares about our struggles. Have we made a huge mistake? Should we be looking for some other religion? Some other Savior?

What’s the answer? The answer is the same today as it was then. Go back and report to John what you hear and see. What had John’s disciples seen and heard? Well, they had seen Jesus, fulfilling one OT prophecy after another: healing the blind, the lame, the leper, and the deaf (Isaiah 35:5-6). They saw Jesus raising the dead. And they heard him preaching to the Gospel of forgiveness to those who were stuck in the bankruptcy of sin. Because Jesus is fulfilling Scripture, John should be convinced that he is the One.

What do you see and hear today? How many blind, lame, lepers or deaf have you seen healed? How about dead men raised? That’s the hang-up, isn’t it? John was in danger of falling away from Jesus because he didn’t bring the judgment John thought he should bring when John thought he should bring it. Today, many risk falling away from Jesus because Jesus doesn’t seem to intervene in the world and our lives in the physical, tangible ways we’d like him to. But we do have one very important thing in common with John – one unchanging truth to hang our faith on: we both hear Jesus preaching the Gospel of free forgiveness to sinners who cannot afford it.

But we have even more than that. We have much more than John. We have 2000 years of history. 2000 years of millions of serious and sober-minded people taking what Scripture records as real, reliable, historical fact. We have Jesus’ death and resurrection, never disproven, witnessed by hundreds. We have baptism, a personal sign from God that you have been adopted into his family and made a citizen of his Kingdom. We have absolution, the proclamation that the King himself has covered our debt of sin with his blood so that we are free to live in peace. And today we have the clearest sign of Jesus’ enduring presence and blessing: his own body and blood. As Jesus told John: blessed is the [one] who does not fall away on account of the humble and unassuming ways that Jesus reigns in this world. Jesus is the one who is to come. He’s come for you. Only don’t look for him to be writing or enforcing laws or ruling from a White House. Instead, look for him where he promises to be: conceived in a virgin, lying in a manger, hanging on a cross, present in water and Word, bread and wine.

Question #2: What did you go out into the desert to see? Jesus asked the crowd as John’s disciples were leaving. They hadn’t gone out to the desert to see a reed swayed by the wind – a spineless, pandering preacher whose message changes right along with the winds of culture. They went out to see a prophet who preached an unchanging message, who called everyone – even kings – to repentance and offered baptism for forgiveness. They hadn’t gone out into the desert to see a man dressed in fine clothes – that is, a trendy, hipster type of man who lived a life of luxury, like those in kings’ palaces. No, they went out to see a man whose appearance and lifestyle proclaimed the unspoken message that there are more important things than earthly comfort.

Why did you come to this desert? Yes, we have a brightly lit tree here, but our main focus remains on what Adam started at the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and what Jesus did to fix it on the tree of the cross. We don’t sing about how white snow or a red-nosed reindeer or a little bit of good cheer can make everything in the world right. We sing about how our only hope for peace is for God to send his Son to die for us. We have wonderful snacks provided by the ladies, but the main meal here consists of nothing more than bread and wine. We don’t have egg-nog or apple cider here, only plain water that is poured over sinners’ heads in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Why have you come to this place that seems so out of line and out of touch with the world all year long – but particularly this time of year? Why have you come to this place that doesn’t find any lasting value in the sappy, greedy, gluttonous “Christmas spirit” that the world so cherishes?

Let’s be honest: there’s better food, better drink, jollier music and more good cheer out there than in here. So, what have you come here to see? They went by the thousands and thousands into the wilderness to see a prophet, but Jesus says, he was more than a prophet. He was the one sent to prepare the way for the Lord (Malachi 3:1). That’s what they went out into the desert to see. What about you? People come to this place not by the thousands, but by the dozens. Not to find a fortune teller but a truth teller. Not a “vision-caster” but a preacher of Gods’ Word. You come here to be served by one who has been sent and called by God for a few very specific purposes: to preach, teach, baptize, and commune. You didn’t come here to have your body healed, but your soul; not to be made rich in this life but to be made filthy rich with eternal life; not so that you can be successful in this world, but so that you may prosper in the world that will never end. Like John, I’m not the one who was to come, but I will do everything in my power to point you to him. And finally, that’s why you’re in this desert place. Jesus is here. You’re drawn to this place to worship not before a Christmas tree but before a cruel cross because of the one who died on that cross for you. Because his pain speaks to your pain; his suffering speaks to your suffering; his sorrow speaks to your sorrow; his death gives you life.

One more question. One that will clarify the other two. This one isn’t explicit but implicit. Jesus says he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than [John the Baptist]. Who is the least in the kingdom of heaven? Is it you? Me? Children? Shut-ins? Who is it? Maybe you want it to be you. Maybe the attacks of the devil and the world might lead you to think it is you. But it’s not. I don’t care how miserable your life is – the least in the kingdom of heaven isn’t you. It isn’t me. It wasn’t John. Jesus says this about John: among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist.

The least in the kingdom, any kingdom, is the one who has to do everything for everyone else, right? Just think of the sins you committed in the past week. The sins of commission and omission. The bad things you did and the good things you failed to do. However many you can think of, the reality is far worse. The reality is that you and I are not even aware of a fraction of the sins we commit day in and day out (Psalm 19:12). And in order for you and me and any other sinner to go to heaven, all that we failed to do, didn’t want to do, couldn’t do, had to be done. God’s holy standard for us had to be met and our sins had to be paid for. Who was going to do it?

Who is the least in the kingdom of heaven? It’s got to be the one who did everything right (Luke 23:41) and yet gets the blame and punishment for doing everything wrong. That isn’t you or me or John. That was Jesus. Paul tells us that God made him to be sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21). God held Jesus accountable our sins of unbelief, greed, gossip, lust, complaining, doubt and despair. When God saw his only Son so completely covered with the sins that disgust him, all his wrath was poured out in that moment on the man on that cross on the hill outside of Jerusalem. And Jesus, by pouring out the very last drops of his blood, sweat, and tears did what we could never do: he put out the flames of God’s wrath so that now there is peace on earth between God and man (Luke 2:14).

That’s why you’ve come to this desert today. You’ve come because you know what it’s like to waver in faith, to doubt God’s love and presence, to be locked up in a prison of guilt and shame, to lack any joy in life. But don’t doubt this, Jesus is the One who was to come – and he’s come for you. That’s why you’ve come to this place that continues to talk bluntly about sin and grace – even though it’s probably politically incorrect to do so this close to Christmas; it’s why you bring your children here to sit at Jesus’ feet instead of plopping them in the lap of a fat man in a red suit. Because while you may have doubts out there, here those doubts are dispelled. Here you are reminded that Jesus’ perfect life flowed through the water of Baptism to cover you in his righteousness. Here is where you listen to the word of his forgiveness which sends your sins into the depths of the sea, never to be seen again (Micah 7:19). Here is where the body and blood he offered up as the perfect payment for sin 2000 years ago is distributed to assure you of your forgiveness. Here is where God the Son humbles himself to serve you as the least in the kingdom so that miserable sinners like you and I might become the greatest in the kingdom. That’s why you’re here. You’re here because the Holy Spirit has led you to recognize that the source of true peace and lasting joy isn’t wrapped in paper under a tree but in cloths and lying in a manger.

There are two seasons going on right now. There’s the season of reindeer and lights and gifts out there. And there’s the season of repentance and faith and preparation in here. By all means, celebrate both. But never forget that only one can dispel your doubts, only one can bring you peace and joy and certainty that will last beyond December 25th and into eternity. Amen.

Matthew 3:1-12 - 'Tis the Season for Repentance - December 8, 2019

“’Tis the season.” The question is: the season for what? The season for shopping? Baking? Parties? Working overtime? Expanding waistlines and shrinking bank accounts? Maybe out there. But not in here. Lo, He Comes with Clouds Descending (CW 29), isn’t about shopping, it’s about Jesus’ second coming. The other Scripture lessons this morning didn’t speak about a Holly, Jolly Christmas but about the call to repent in light of judgment. Even Christmas itself, the fact that it was necessary for God to send his only Son into the gloomy darkness of this world to save it from itself, doesn’t exactly lead you to think about Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, or a fat man in a red suit. Unlike Advent out there in the world, Advent in the Church is a season for repentance.

You know it’s Advent when John the Baptist shows up. He’s going to be our Advent preacher for the next two Sundays. But I need to warn you…you may not like him. The good, church-going, religious people of his day didn’t. He called them a brood of vipers, so I guess you can hardly blame them. And that wasn’t all. His appearance was odd – with the camel’s hair tuxedo, locust guts on his breath, and honey running down his beard. If he walked into church this morning, you might mistake him for a homeless man. In a sense, he was homeless. He was a man of the wilderness. John grew up in the wilderness, likely raised as an orphan after his elderly parents, Zechariah and Elizabeth, died. There’s speculation that John was raised by a group called the Essenes, who were preparing for the coming of the Lord in the wilderness. Why? Well, they understood Isaiah 40:3 to be telling them to go into the desert to prepare the way for the Lord. So they did. And so did John. Luke tells us that he lived in the desert until he began his public ministry in the desert (Luke 1:80).

The question is: what, if anything, is behind John’s strange appearance and strange location and strange message? I suppose people today might ask the same question about a guy who wears a weird black dress and preaches behind a piece of furniture called a “pulpit” and claims that his words are actually God’s. But the point of all the oddness surrounding God’s spokesman then is the same as now. It’s not about the man. As Isaiah predicted he was nothing more than a voice in the desert. John’s appearance made it clear that it wasn’t about him, it was about his message and the one to come after him. He was the warm-up act, not the main event.

What about his preaching location – in the desert? Well, the Desert of Judea, a barren wilderness on the eastern side of the Jordan River, was rich in biblical history. It was the place where God had carried Elijah to heaven in a whirlwind (2 Kings 2:1-18). It was the place where Israel had crossed the parted waters of the Jordan from the wilderness to enter the Promised Land (Joshua 3-4). And now John was calling Israel back to the waters of the Jordan, back into the wilderness. He was calling them back to their roots, back to the basics, away from the man-made rules and institutions that had gotten between them and God, back to where it was abundantly clear that what stood between them and God was their sinfulness and all that stood between them and death was God’s grace.

In that sense, John was a throwback. A refreshing change from the worldly, pandering, superficial religion practiced by the Pharisees and Sadducees. He did not pander. He preached Law and Gospel. He called people to repent of their sins and be baptized for forgiveness. That was his message. That is how he prepared the way for the Lord. And…that is the only way that hearts twisted by sin and corrupted by unbelief are ever made straight to receive the Lord. He came preaching and baptizing. Sound familiar? It should. That’s what the Church should still be doing today. The Christian church today is to be the NT version of John the Baptist – calling the world to repentance, urging the world to be baptized for forgiveness in order to escape the coming wrath.

What do you think John would say to us if he were here today? He would certainly approve of the baptizing we do here. John was all about baptizing. He is called “John the Baptist” after all. And he would certainly applaud our public confession and absolution. But, at the same time, John wasn’t naïve. The Lord had blessed him with the gift of seeing right through a person to their heart – as he did with the Sadducees and Pharisees. What would he see if he were looking at your heart when we were confessing our sins earlier? Would he have noticed that your mind was wandering to other things? Would he see that you didn’t really mean what you said – that you just said it because that’s what we always say? What if he followed you around this week, would he notice you committing the same sins you just confessed? Would he give us the same look he gave the Pharisees and Sadducees, who hid behind their heritage and say, “You bunch of Lutheran snakes! Talk is cheap. Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. Show me some fruit. And don’t try to hide behind Martin Luther or brag about how pure your doctrine is or how much good you do or how nice your potlucks and soup suppers are. God doesn’t need you or anything you can offer any more than he needed the Israelites. He can raise up all the children he wants from a pile of stones.”

I warned you, didn’t I? You that you might not like John. John makes it clear that genuine repentance produces fruit; if it doesn’t it’s not repentance and it doesn’t matter what you said. We get this, right? We know that the child who says “I’m sorry” for splashing the bathwater on the floor three times, isn’t really penitent when they do it a fourth time. We know that that neighbor who blows their leaves and throws their snow onto our property isn’t really sorry when they do it 6 years in a row. On a more serious note, we know that the couple that’s living together outside of marriage aren’t really repentant when they don’t do anything to change the sinful situation; that people aren’t really repentant when they neglect Word and Sacrament for weeks or months; when the 8th commandment tells us to take others’ words and actions in the kindest possible way – and yet we repeatedly hurl criticism and blame at our fellow believers. Repentance produces fruit; if it doesn’t, it’s not repentance. And without the fruit of repentance, we deserve the fate of that fruitless fruit tree: to be cut down and thrown into the fire. We get that too, don’t we? Wouldn’t you do the very same with a tree you planted and watered and yet it refused to produce fruit. You would feel justified in cutting it down and throwing it away. That’s judgment and judgment is all that Christmas brings to all who pretend to repent and yet bear no fruit. Christmas might be the night when churches are fullest, but to all who think that appearing in God’s house once or twice a year will save them – John would ask the same question he asked the Pharisees and Sadducees: who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. In other words, those who don’t recognize their sin with repentance cannot recognize their Savior in faith.

That was John’s message. John preached the Law. John preached the wrath and judgment of God. He even viewed Jesus through the lens of the Law. Like many of the Old Testament prophets, John was looking beyond Christmas to Judgment. He saw the Messiah as the Judge who has his ax in hand and ready to strike. He’s coming to chop down the unfruitful trees and throw them into the fire. You can understand John’s confusion, then, when Jesus actually arrived on the scene; how he wasn’t preaching in the desert – preaching fire and brimstone, but among the people – preaching grace and forgiveness even to known sinners. “Where is your winnowing fork? Where is the ax chopping at the root? Where is the fire and wind to separate the wheat from the chaff, believer from unbeliever?”

Those will come. Judgment is coming, but there was something that Jesus needed to do first. And this is the good news. First Jesus had to undergo the judgment, by dying and rising. That’s the part John did not see and could not see. John could see justice and judgment, but he couldn’t see how God would bring about his merciful and gracious redemption. John could not see God’s grand plan of salvation played out in Jesus’ life because no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him (1 Corinthians 2:9).  

So John wasn’t wrong, he just didn’t have the full picture. Before Jesus would come in judgment he had to do his work of redemption. He had to be baptized as a sinner, a sinner who had never sinned. He had to take the place of sinners – take my place and yours – to become our sin, to shoulder and take away the sin of the world. He had to be cut down as an unfruitful tree. The fire of God’s wrath had to burn against him so that he might pour out the life-giving fire of the Spirit on the world. He had to become our curse, be hung on a cursed tree and hurled into the cursed depths of hell to remove the curse of sin from us.  

Preaching Law and Gospel: this is the way that God has always chosen to work, to convert sinners, to build his Church. It might not be the method taught by church growth experts or seem to appeal to the masses – especially when everyone is pandering to you in these days before Christmas, but it’s the way the almighty God has chosen to prepare a human race lost in sin to receive his Son. John prepares the way for Jesus. The Law always prepares the way for the Gospel. The commandments lead us in repentance to Jesus for forgiveness. And where Jesus is, the Law is silenced. Jesus is the end of the law for all who believe (Romans 10:4). Where the Law screams “do” and “don’t do,” the Gospel proclaims the glorious truth that in Jesus it is finished (John 19:30).

So follow John, this voice in the wilderness. Don’t be offended by how he looks or what he eats or where he preaches. Listen to his message. Follow where his finger is pointing. Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). John is your Advent reminder that you need baby Jesus. You need him even more than you think you need him. You need him as much this year as you ever have. You need him as more than just a figure in your nativity scenes. You need him to save you. You need him to die and rise for you. You need him to be chopped down by the ax of God’s justice, you need him to be picked up like chaff and thrown into the fire of hell in your place. So, as strange as John might be, as strange as faithful preachers today may be, thank God for voices like John’s. They cut through all the secular and sentimental junk that fills these days before Christmas and go straight to the heart; to our sinful, rebellious, wayward hearts. They prepare our hearts for Christmas by calling us to repentance and pointing to Jesus as the only one who can save us from the coming wrath.

Yes, ‘tis the season. Not the season for shopping or baking or decorating but the season for repentance. Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near. And don’t let repentance simply become Sunday morning lip service. Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. Let the Law knock down the high, prideful places in your heart and the Gospel raise you up from the valley of despair and then you will be ready. You will be ready to receive God’s gift of a Christmas Savior. More importantly, you will be ready to welcome the Judge when he returns. Advent is a season of preparation. Not the kind of preparation that takes place in the kitchen or at the mall – but right here, in the heart. Advent is a time for preaching repentance and producing the fruit of repentance. Amen.  

Luke 23:27-43 - A Portrait of Judgment Day - November 24, 2019

This is a strange reading for the last Sunday of the church year, isn’t it? Ordinarily we’d expect a vivid description of Judgement Day like the separation of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25:31-46) or the parable of the wise and foolish bridesmaids (Matthew 25:1-13), or at least a vision of the King coming with the clouds in glory (Revelation 1:7). Instead we get Luke’s account of the crucifixion. So what’s the link between Good Friday and Judgment Day? What does Jesus’ crucifixion as a criminal have to do with his second coming as King? Everything! Good Friday, Jesus’ crucifixion is a shadow, a preview, a portrait of Judgment Day.

Jesus gives a grim introduction with his chilling response to the women who were weeping and wailing for him: daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and your children. For the time will come when you will say, ‘Blessed are the barren women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!’ Then “‘they will say to the mountains, “Fall on us!” and to the hills, “Cover us!” Jesus is looking roughly 40 years into the future, to 70 AD, when the Romans would besiege and destroy Jerusalem – a time when it would be better to never have had children than to watch them be starved or slaughtered.  

But that’s just the beginning of the end. For if men do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry? What do these words mean? Well, if God allowed men to put Jesus, an innocent man, a green tree to death, how much worse would it be when God unleashes his wrath on a guilty world on Judgment Day? As horrible as Good Friday and the destruction of Jerusalem were both will pale in comparison to horrors that will be unleashed on earth in the days leading up to Judgment.

And yet, in the midst of the chaos, there’s Jesus, an island of peace, praying: Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. That’s Jesus’ prayer, not only for those who crucified him, mocked him, and gambled for his clothing – it’s his prayer for us. We may not have held the hammer or hurled our insults – but it was our sins nonetheless that drove those nails through his flesh and held him on that cross. We put Jesus to death and yet he prayed Father, forgive them.

And how does the world respond to Jesus’ unconditional love and forgiveness? Led by the chief priests (Mark 15:31), they sneer he saved others; let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, the Chosen One. They represent everyone and everything that calls itself “religion” and yet mocks Jesus to this day. If you’ve attended our study of world religions you’ve seen that while some speak of human sin and God’s love and heaven and hell, they unanimously reject salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. This includes certain segments of Christianity which accept Jesus as a good example or a gift-giving genie but reject him as the Savior of sinners. But the chief priests weren’t alone. Pilate offers his parting shot, mocking Jesus’ claim to kingship with a sign posted above his head. His soldiers pick up on that theme and provided mock service to him: They offered him wine vinegar and said, “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.” The church and state had conspired to murder God’s Son. Power and glory they might have respected, but they have no use for a crucified King. They always mock him, scorn him, run him out of his church and legislate him out of society.

And that’s so sad because it’s right here, right here on the cross where we get our clearest view of the kind of King Jesus is. Here we see that Jesus is the Christ of God, the Chosen One – the King of all kings – because here we see that Jesus is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). This is the last picture the world sees of Jesus: bloody, beaten, mocked, scorned, defeated, dying. Oh yes, five hundred would see him risen from the dead (1 Corinthians 15:6), but not the general public. His disciples would walk with him on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35), would be startled by his sudden appearance on Easter evening (Luke 24:36), and eleven of them would watch him ascend into the clouds (Acts 1:1-11) – but not the world. All the unbelieving world sees, all the world can see is a broken, beaten, bleeding, miserable excuse for a human being. They see a criminal to be spit on, a madman to be pitied, a prophet who must be killed – but certainly not a King and Savior to be worshipped.  

Are you beginning to see how Good Friday is a portrait of Judgment Day? In Jesus, God’s fiery wrath has already come; in him, the world is already judged. The two thieves separated by Jesus are the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25:31-46), the wise and the foolish bridesmaids (Matthew 25:1-13), the saved and the damned (Mark 16:16). It’s ironic, isn’t it? James and John had fought for the right to sit at Jesus’ right and left when he came into his kingdom (Mark 10:35-45). But God gave these seats of honor to two guilty, convicted criminals.

Remember that last point as you consider Judgment Day: just as both criminals were guilty, so both groups on Judgment Day, both those on his right and his left, are guilty. It doesn’t matter who you are, how much good you’ve done, if you’ve never been caught, even if you’ve been a Christian your whole life – we all stand guilty as charged under the law, guilty of insurrection against our King, guilty of idolizing people and things – even ourselves – in place of God, guilty of willfully and intentionally violating God’s holy will. The Bible is unequivocal: There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:22-23). But that is where the similarities end.

For one thief, even as he hangs there dying, can’t help but join the crowds in heaping scorn on Jesus: aren’t you the Christ? Save yourself and us! Little did he know how ironic and prophetic his words were – for it was precisely by not saving himself, by not coming down from the cross, that Jesus saved the world from death in hell. But that’s not the kind of Savior he wanted. He wanted a Savior for this life, a Savior to bring him down from the cross and extend and enhance his earthly life. This man embodies the most insidious form of unbelief of all places and all times. All those who would challenge Jesus to save their health, their relationships, their career, their finances – all are as guilty of blasphemy as this unbelieving thief because Jesus didn’t die to save us for this life but from this life. Like this thief, all who reject the salvation their King died to bring will in turn be rejected by him.

The contrast with the other thief couldn’t be starker. Even though he’s no less guilty, he’s a Christian. More than that, he’s a Christian preacher. His sermon is the best you will hear this morning. He preaches the law, he preaches repentance from his cross: Don’t you fear God…since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. This sermon isn’t just for his fellow criminal – this sermon is for us. The wages of sin is death, Paul writes (Romans 6:23). Whenever you see a cross, remember that: This is what I deserve. I deserve to feel God’s blistering wrath on a cross for my sins. It’s no use hiding it or denying it…all we can do is confess it.  

And he preaches the Gospel. But this man has done nothing wrong. He confesses Christ to a hostile world. He is innocent. He is sinless. Then why is he there? Why is he hanging on a tree? That’s the mystery of the Gospel, isn’t it? Jesus is there because God made him who had no sin to be sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21). Jesus is convicted for the sins we have committed. The lies. The hatred. The greed. The lust. The sins against our spouses, our children, our parents, our pastors and teachers, our elected leaders. Our sins of despising God’s Word, rejecting his will, of failing to confess Christ to friends and family and coworkers, of failing to fear, love and trust God above all things. All of those sins, every last crime of thought, word and deed are hung on him. This is Judgment Day. This is the judgment of humanity. On Calvary God judged the sins of the world in the death of his sinless Son. This man has done nothing wrong and yet this man dies as the One who has done everything wrong, rejected by the world, condemned, mocked, ridiculed, forsaken by God, and damned to hell. He gets what we deserve so that, in the end, we get what he deserves.

How can we respond to such unimaginable grace, such selfless, boundless love? The believing thief isn’t done preaching: Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. This is how faith prays. He doesn’t demand a sign. He doesn’t ask to be taken down from the cross, to be spared his suffering, to be granted a last minute pardon – much less to be made healthy, wealthy, and happy. He asks for nothing but to be remembered by Jesus. Faith sees through the present sufferings (Romans 8:18) of this life to glory that is to come. And when death comes, faith embraces it with the prayer Jesus, remember me.

Remember me. Familiar words, aren’t they? Do this in remembrance of me (Luke 22:19) Jesus said as he distributed his body and blood. Do this, eat this bread which is my body and drink this wine which is my blood, in remembrance of me he says to all Christians of all time. This remembrance works in two directions. Faith remembers him, what he did as our King to win forgiveness, life, and salvation for us. And he remembers us with his body and blood given and shed for our forgiveness. Now, you may argue, that the thief was neither baptized nor did he receive the Lord’s Supper. And that is true. Baptism had not yet been instituted. That comes after Jesus’ resurrection (Matthew 28:19). The Supper had been given only to the Apostles, not yet to the world. But this dying thief had the ultimate Sacrament, the ultimate Sacrifice – the Chosen One of God dying on the cross next to them. He saw the body given for him and the blood shed for him dripping down that ugly cross. And from Jesus’ own parched lips, the faithful criminal heard this Gospel promise: I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise. And just like that, the man found guilty by the world is declared innocent before God. Justified for Jesus’ sake. Though the Roman government had found him worthy of death, and rightly so, the Son of God declared him fit for life in paradise. Though his sins have earned him eternal death; Jesus has given him eternal life.

But Jesus didn’t say anything to the other man, and neither do we. Jesus prayed for those who crucified him and mocked him. He asked for forgiveness for a world of sinners. But he says nothing to the unbelieving thief. Why not? Wasn’t he included in Jesus’ prayer? Didn’t he pay for his sins, too? Didn’t he want him to be saved? Yes, of course. But he would not believe, he would not believe that Jesus was dying on that cross for his sins and therefore he would be damned for his unbelief. Just as Jesus refused to comfort this unbelieving criminal as he faced Judgment, so all who reject Jesus as their King, who scorn his coming in humility through Word and water, bread and wine – will be left without comfort on Judgment Day. Their own words and lives will condemn them: they rejected Jesus as King, their King will reject them eternally. They may cry and scream and plead for mercy, but all they will hear is awful, deafening silence.

But you have no reason to fear. You have been baptized into Christ’s death. You have heard his Word and received his body and blood. You have no reason to fear Judgment Day because for you, Judgment Day has already come and gone. You were judged on Good Friday. Your King was judged guilty so that you might be judged innocent. More than that, the King who will judge you one day comes to you today to serve you with the grace and forgiveness you need to stand before him innocent and guiltless. Hanging on a cross, bloody and beaten, Jesus may not look like a King, but he’s the King we need. To the King who died for us and who will return to judge the living and the dead, there is no higher praise than the prayer of faith: Jesus, remember me. And, thank God, his answer is always and ever the same: I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise. May we live and die with that saving promise of our King in our hearts and on our lips. Amen.

Luke 20:27-40 - Jesus Deals with a Question of Life after Death - November 17, 2019

Hypothetical questions. They’re the kind students love and teachers…don’t. They don’t deal with reality but theory; with impossible or highly unlikely scenarios. Usually they’re not looking for the answer the Bible gives but rather an answer from reason or emotion. Often, they don’t spring from curiosity or a desire to learn, but from a desire to trap, discredit or humiliate the teacher. That’s the picture you should have in mind as you imagine the scene in our text: a group of Sadducees gathered around Jesus with what they think is the perfect hypothetical question; a question that will trap and humiliate and discredit him. And yet, as far as traps go, this one backfired, because Jesus deals perfectly with this question of life after death.

First things first, who were the Sadducees? The Sadducees were the elites, the 1%, the super-rich and super-powerful of Jesus’ day. They controlled the temple and ran the Sanhedrin, the governing body of Israel (Acts 23:6). They were also “fundamentalists” of a sort, meaning that while they may have paid lip-service to the entire Old Testament, they really only considered the books of Moses, Genesis through Deuteronomy, to be authoritative. That’s why they didn’t believe in an afterlife or the resurrection or angels and demons (Acts 23:8). They didn’t think there was anything in those books which supported those doctrines. Thus, they set out to destroy Jesus’ teaching about the resurrection and confirm that this life is all there is.

Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and have children for his brother. So far so good. They were merely paraphrasing what was known as the “levirate law” from Deuteronomy 25:5-6. This law obligated a man to marry his brother’s widow if he had died and left no heirs. Today, that practice might strike us as a bit strange: that if your brother dies childless you must marry your sister-in-law. But in the Old Testament, there were at least three good reasons for this law. First, it would preserve the deceased man’s name and genealogy (no small matter when everyone knew that Savior, the seed of Abraham, was going to come through one of Israel’s families (Genesis 12:3)). Second, it would keep that man’s land and property in the family. And third, it would also be a way of caring for the widow, who, with no children and no social safety net, would be left alone and vulnerable.

But the Sadducees didn’t ask this question to hear Jesus’ opinion regarding marriage or the levirate law. They have much more sinister motives, they want to trap Jesus into either looking foolish or denying the reality of the resurrection: “What do you think, Jesus? There were seven brothers, each of whom was married to this woman, doing their obligatory duty for their brother, until they all died. And then she died. In the resurrection, whose wife will she be?” The scenario is absurd on its face. There’s no remotely similar scenario recorded in Scripture. And in sheer practical terms, while the second and maybe even the third brother might follow through, the rest would probably run for the hills because apparently marrying this woman was akin to a death wish. In any case, the Sadducees figured they had Jesus caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, if Jesus said that in the resurrection she would be married to one of the brothers, that would be unfair to the other six. On the other hand, if Jesus admitted that the “levirate law” didn’t consider the possibility of an afterlife, he would be agreeing with their position, that not only does Moses not teach a resurrection, but that this law assumes that this life is all there is.

It seems like Jesus is caught, but of course, he cuts right through the ridiculous and far-fetched hypothesis and takes aim at the hardhearted unbelief behind the question: the people of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are considered worthy of taking part in that age and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, and they can no longer die. The Sadducees had a wrong understanding of marriage. Regardless of what the Mormon cult teaches, marriage is for this life; not the next. Marriage is only necessary in this life because of death. God blessed us with marriage here and now so that human life could go on in spite of sin and death. In this life marriage is essential. It is the context in which children are conceived and raised; the foundation of the home; the basic building block of the church and state. But where there is no sin, no death, no need for the individual estates of home, church and state – there is no need for marriage. In the resurrection they will neither marry nor be given in marriage.

Instead, they are like the angels. I want to be sure you heard that right. Jesus doesn’t say that we will become angels. So you can shake the images of floating around in the clouds and halos and wings and harps out of your head. He says we will be like the angels. Meaning that 1) we will not die; and 2) we will no longer marry. “Well, what if I kind of like my spouse? What if I’ve gotten used to be married and like having children? Does God intend to tear marriages and families apart in the resurrection?” While those questions may seem innocent, they actually come from a heart of unbelief, a heart that doubts God’s goodness and love. God wouldn’t do away with marriage without a good reason and Jesus gives us the reason: They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection. In heaven we won’t miss marriage because we will all be members of one family, God’s family. In heaven all things will be made right, everything that disrupts and destroys our relationships in this life will be gone (Isaiah 65:17). More than that, even if death made it necessary for a hypothetical woman to marry seven hypothetical brothers – it wouldn’t matter. Because through faith they would enjoy perfect unity in God’s family where the only marriage that matters is the marriage of Christ and his Church (Ephesians 5:25-33).

To review, Jesus has debunked the false premise of the Sadducees, exposed their unbelief, and he has described what eternal life will actually be like. And now he pulls out his trump card. Not from thin air but from one of the books the Sadducees held as authoritative: the book of Exodus. In the account of the bush, even Moses showed that the dead rise, for he calls the Lord ‘the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ What does that prove? Well, when the LORD spoke to Moses from the burning bush (Exodus 3), Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had been dead for around 400 years. In spite of that, he doesn’t say I was their God. He says I AM (Exodus 3:6) their God. They are just as alive to him now as they were when they walked this earth.

So you see the very practical lesson Jesus is teaching us here, right? Whenever we have questions about life after death, about heaven and hell, where must we go for answers – where did even the Son of God go? To the Word of God. We must not turn to books written by people who claim to have seen heaven in a near-death experience. We can’t and shouldn’t trust the logic or theories of mere men, no matter how well-intentioned and reasonable they sound. Nor can we trust science because science can only describe things that are observable and no one alive has observed life after death.

But neither should we dismiss these questions as dumb or foolish, either. These questions about life and death and resurrection – they are much more than issues of theoretical, hypothetical interest, more than fodder for discussion, more than theological musings. These questions deal directly with the most important thing in the world: what will happen to us and our loved ones when we die? Certainly there are a lot of questions that remain concerning the resurrection. What will we look like? How old will we be? What kind of bodies will we have? Will we recognize each other? What will the new heaven and new earth be like?

The answer to those questions is that we don’t know. We will know one day soon, but not one day sooner. As Paul said now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known (1 Corinthians 13:12). But for now, we don’t know – and we don’t need to know the answers to those questions. They would only be a distraction from the things we should be focused on here and now. For now, we have sins to repent of and a Savior to believe in. We have work to do, children to raise, marriages to maintain, vocations to carry out, neighbors to love and the Gospel to proclaim. All we really need to know now is that Christ has died and risen, and in his dying and rising has conquered sin, death and the grave once and for all.

We don’t have time to debate silly theoretical questions about life after death, and neither did Jesus. Remember why Jesus was here in Jerusalem on this Tuesday of Holy Week. He wasn’t there to debate death, he was there to go to war with death. He understood even better than we do how evil death is. He hated death with every ounce of his being. He not only saw how it destroyed marriages and ripped apart families and leaves empty places at dinner tables and gaping holes in people’s hearts. Jesus saw death as the wages of sin (Romans 6:23) which threatens to separate us from God now and forever. He saw death as the ultimate enemy of everything God had created, everything good. Which is why he didn’t come to earth merely to debate hypothetical questions about death, he came to destroy it; he came to put death to death by his life, death and resurrection.

If the Sadducees had believed the Scriptures, had believed Jesus, they wouldn’t have been looking for a way to trap him and discredit him with silly, hypothetical questions about some made-up woman married to seven brothers. Instead, they would have asked how they might be considered worthy of taking part in that age and in the resurrection from the dead. Because in the end, that’s the really important question, isn’t it? Heaven and the resurrection of the dead are real, Jesus proved it both from Scripture and by his own resurrection. But how can we be sure that we will be part of it? Thankfully God doesn’t leave us guessing about this answer. He tells us that Jesus is the resurrection and the life…whoever lives and believes in him will never die (John 11:25-26). He tells us that through the water of Baptism we are inseparably united to Jesus’ death and resurrection (Romans 6:3-4) and receive adoption into God’s eternal family (Galatians 3:26-27). He tells us that the Lord’s Supper is the medicine of immortality, the true fountain of life, because where there is no sin there can be no death (Matthew 26:26-28). He tells us that our loved ones who died in faith aren’t dead, but are feasting and rejoicing with their Lord in paradise (Revelation 7:14). Which all means that while we may not have every answer we would like, if we have Jesus we have the answer to death, for he has destroyed the one who holds the power of death, that is, the devil (Hebrews 2:14).

There are many questions in life that we don’t have answers to. But Jesus doesn’t want us to wonder about life after death. He has forgiven the sins that haunt us and defeated the death that waits for us. Through his Word he gives us faith to believe that this world is not like the next – there will be no more need for marriage because there will be one, glorious, harmonious family of God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God to [whom] all are alive. This answer that Jesus gives left the Sadducees speechless. But it can’t leave us speechless. No, it fills our hearts and our lips with that glorious refrain of faith: “Yes, it shall be so. Amen.”

Luke 19:11-27 - The Calm before Judgment - November 10, 2019

In Wisconsin, we know all about the calm before the storm, don’t we? During the summer months the calm consists of a strange stillness in the air, a strange tint in the sky, and dark clouds billowing on the horizon. It’s the calm before a thunderstorm. And it’s a time for action: put the deck furniture away, gather the outdoor toys, close the windows and keep an eye on weather alerts. In winter, it’s the ominous, hazy, cloudy, eerie, stillness before a snowstorm. And we know what to do: skip out of work early if you can, check for cancelations, stop by the grocery store for the essentials (like beer and wine), then get home, hunker down and stay warm. The calm before the storm is a time for activity, for preparation. In these last three weeks of the church year, our focus turns to the end of time, to the storm of judgment that is coming for the world. And in the text before us, Jesus urges us to be busy, to be active putting his money to work during this calm before judgment.

When the Holy Spirit records why Jesus tells a parable, that means it’s important and we should pay attention. Luke reports that he went on to tell them a parable, because he was near Jerusalem and the people thought that the kingdom of God was going to appear at once. Many Israelites thought that when Jesus entered Jerusalem he was going to immediately establish his earthly kingdom, by expelling the Romans, restoring an independent Israel and creating a prosperous economy. (Not so different from those today who understand the coming of the kingdom to be visible prosperity, social justice or an end to poverty and war.) Certainly Jesus was going to Jerusalem to win his kingdom by his suffering and death, however, not in the sense they were thinking; it wasn’t going to be an earthly, visible kingdom – not yet. The great theme of this section is that Jesus’ kingdom won’t come until he has left and later returned. But this delay, this pause, this calm is not a time for laziness but for activity.

The first thing the nobleman does is call ten of his servants and gave them ten minas. ‘Put this money to work,’ he said, ‘until I come back.’ The nobleman is clearly Jesus. His “going to a distant country” is prophetic of his Ascension where he would receive all authority in heaven and on earth (Matthew 28:18). But prior to his departure he leaves his servants, the Church, his treasure. What is this treasure? I’ve heard and you’ve heard that the mina represents the time, talents, and treasures the Lord has given us. Thus the sermon should be about proper stewardship of these gifts. Well, this is a stewardship text, but not about your time, talent or treasure. How can we be sure? Because unlike the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25, all the servants receive the exact same amount. What does Jesus give to everyone in the church in the precise same amount? Not talents, not money, not possessions, not spiritual gifts. Right here in this room is a dizzying array of these gifts. What Jesus has left every one of his servants, every one of us, in equal amounts is nothing more and nothing less than the means of grace: the Gospel in Word and Sacrament.

This is the great treasure Jesus has given us to put to work. The waters of baptism that wash away sin and provide rebirth into God’s family. The Gospel that proclaims absolution, forgiveness for every last sin. Bread and wine that is his body and blood to nourish our faith. He wants us to baptize all nations (Matthew 28:19) and to daily remember our Baptism (Romans 6); to hear and preach the Word (2 Timothy 4:2); to forgive and be forgiven (Matthew 6:12); to eat and drink his body and blood often (1 Corinthians 11:25). This is the business of our Lord. This – so aptly illustrated here by font, altar and pulpit – is what his servants are to be busy doing.

But this treasure is nothing in the eyes of the unbelieving world. That’s what’s being illustrated by the mina. A mina was worth 100 days wages. At $15 an hour that would be roughly $12,000 today. It’s nothing to sneeze at, but it’s also not much for the King of kings to leave his servants. And the world is unimpressed. The world is impressed by the power of the almighty dollar, not by the cleansing power of water; by words that criticize and cut down not words that forgive sins; by a King who sheds the blood of his enemies, not a King who sheds his own blood to save his enemies (Romans 5:10).

And so, even as the Church is diligently putting these treasures to work, Christ’s enemies work against him. Jesus puts it this way: his subjects hated him. “Hate” is a strong word, but when Jesus tells parables he exposes what’s really in people’s hearts rather than what they show to others. Even though one day every knee shall bow before their King (Philippians 2:10), during the calm many reject his rule. There is no such thing as neutrality towards Jesus. How could there be? Jesus makes exclusive and eternal claims on people’s lives. He demands absolute fear, love and trust. For the most part in our culture, unbelievers usually put on a show of being polite towards Christ, but the awful truth is that anyone who rejects Jesus as King are also rejecting him as their Savior.

It’s fascinating how they do this: [they] sent a delegation after him to say, ‘We don’t want this man to be our king.’ What are they doing? They are appealing to what they believe is a higher authority; an authority, a god, above and beyond Jesus. The Jews did this very thing when they claimed to have no king but Caesar (John 19:15). The Bible says that, no one is above Jesus, that is King of Kings and Lord of Lords (Revelation 19:16). But unbelievers believe that there is a god over Jesus. He’s the god on our money, the god who supposedly has a special place in his heart for America. He’s the god that Muslims, Jews, Christians, and Buddhists can all pray to together in times of tragedy. He’s the “higher power” that virtually everyone acknowledges – but this god has no name, no identity, no moral standards, no revelation of himself, no power to condemn – and, most importantly, no power to save. This is the god of those who insist on calling the pine tree in the capitol rotunda a “holiday” tree and not a “Christmas” tree – because this is a god whom all religions, and no religion, are welcome to celebrate.

The obvious question is: why such hatred for Jesus? Because Jesus’ enemies believe that his rule is harsh and tyrannical. He is unloving because he doesn’t allow women to kill their babies or boys to mutilate their bodies to become girls. He is intolerant because he forbids individuals of the same sex to get married and adopt children. He is mean because he forbids rebellion against his representatives but instructs his representatives to discipline wrongdoers. He is unreasonable because he insists that salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12). All of this is unacceptable to Jesus’ enemies and so during this calm before Judgment Day they rage against his rule.

And so we shouldn’t be surprised when they do just that. Jesus tells us this parable so that we won’t be surprised when his enemies rage against his reign – or against his Church. But perhaps the most surprising thing he is telling us is that some of those who call themselves Christian, who are in the visible church, are really his enemies. This is the third servant. Actually, Jesus doesn’t actually call him the “third servant.” He calls him, literally, “the other one.” The Greek word is ἕτερος from which we get the word heterodox. You’re orthodox if you rightly teach and practice God’s Word. You’re heterodox if you don’t.

This heterodoxy can either corporate or private. Corporately, churches or even entire church bodies bury the means of grace under man-made laws and wisdom and rituals. Baptism is replaced by an altar call. The Word of God is replaced with the wisdom of a man (or woman). They deny that Jesus gave his servants the authority to forgive sins on earth (John 20:22-23). Holy Communion is nothing more than bread and wine. They have the treasure Jesus left them, but by false teaching and practice they effectively keep it wrapped up and hidden away. Individually, this is the person who belongs to a church, but who either has a distorted view of the means of grace – that they something we do for God, rather than his gift to us – or neglect the means of grace completely. Both fall under the category of the other, heterodox servant because they do not use Jesus treasure as he has commanded.

And just like Jesus enemies’, these heterodox people blame Jesus for their own failure. Just as the third servant in the parable justifies his laziness out of fear, so the heterodox claim that the reason they don’t use the means of grace is because they are afraid of Jesus. Is that true? I had some scary football coaches, but that fear didn’t lead me to disobey but rather to do what they said. The reality is that people who won’t use Baptism, Absolution, or Communion are so unafraid of Jesus, and his impending judgment, that they feel free to ignore his specific commands to do these things (Hebrews 10:24-25). In the end, the heterodox, hypocritical, lazy church or church member is no different from Jesus’ declared enemies. They think he’s a hard, harsh ruler. They hate him and rage against his rule – the only difference is that they do this secretly, claiming the title of Christian while inwardly hating their King.

Why the rage? Because when you think that the means of grace are something you “have to” do to earn God’s favor, they stop being Gospel and become Law. Instead of being God’s work for us, they become our work for God. This misunderstanding of the means of grace is the most common reason people don’t come to church regularly. They don’t see an opportunity to receive forgiveness and mercy, they see nothing but burdens and laws and rules. They don’t see a Lord who says come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest (Matthew 11:28), but a harsh taskmaster who expects them to “pay their dues.” There is hardly a greater blasphemy than believing that Jesus invites us to worship to earn his favor rather than to give us his grace and forgiveness.

The good news is that this calm will eventually come to an end. Eventually, according to this parable, Judgment Day will come and everything will be made right. People who have been pretending to be servants of Jesus but who really have buried or neglected the means of grace will be exposed as the hypocrites they are. Even what [they] have will be taken from them. And on Judgment Day, Jesus enemies, even the really nice ones who think that all religions lead to heaven will be slaughtered right in front of him. The punishment is so harsh because their sin is so terrible. Regarding the God who loved the world so much that he suffered, bled, and died to redeem it as a wicked ruler deserves instant judgment.

But here’s the really good news – when Judgment Day arrives not only will hypocrites be exposed and Christ’s enemies slaughtered, but his means of grace will be proven to be as powerful as Jesus said they are and their faithful use will be rewarded beyond anything you can imagine. Notice how when the two faithful servants speak they both say your mina has earned and not “I have earned.” All the glory goes to God’s mina. It’s Baptism that saves us. It’s Absolution that forgives us. It’s Communion that feeds our faith. We don’t give them power or meaning, they give us God’s powerful grace.

But while we receive none of the credit, we will receive the reward. I tell you that to everyone who has, more will be given. This is the real reason to put Jesus’ treasure to work, to eagerly and faithfully receive his grace in Word and Sacrament. In the parable, faithful use of one mina leads to a 1000% and 500% return, respectively. When Jesus returns, he is promising to reward faithful use of his gifts of grace with even more grace. Grace upon grace (John 1:16 EHV). I don’t know what could be better than full and free forgiveness of sins and the sure hope of eternal life – but it’s got to be good. Well worth eagerly and actively waiting for.

We are living in the calm before Judgment. It’s a time to be busy carrying out the work Jesus has given us. Jesus didn’t tell this parable so that we would shudder in fear of Judgment, but to make faithful use of his Gospel and Sacraments during this life – not because we have to to earn his favor, but because he promises more where that came from when he returns. Therefore our prayer today and every day is: Come, Lord Jesus (Revelation 22:20) Amen. 

Romans 3:19-28 - The Source of Salvation - November 3, 2019

Today we celebrate the 502nd anniversary of the Reformation of the Church. I looked, but I couldn’t find a prescribed way to celebrate the 502nd anniversary of the Reformation. But that’s not important. What is important is what you think the Reformation and our commemoration of it is all about. What do you think the Reformation is about? How a lowly German monk spoke truth to power – like a certain civil rights leader who assumed his name? How it’s important to stand by your convictions, no matter the cost? Or perhaps today is the day Lutherans pat ourselves on the back and brag about how we have it all right and everyone else is wrong. If our commemoration of the Reformation were about any of those things, we would be better off not doing it. But the Lutheran Reformation was about much more than social justice or moral convictions or denominational distinctions – the Lutheran Reformation was all about saving souls by clearly identifying and maintaining the source of salvation.

What is the source of salvation? Your salvation. It doesn’t get more important than that, does it? When you close your eyes at night, when you are lying on your deathbed, how can you be certain you will be saved if you don’t wake up? Some point to their repentance. You’re a sinner and in order to get rid of those sins and be saved you must repent. There’s no arguing with that first part. Paul declares that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable. Like it or not, by virtue of birth in this world we are under God’s Law; and the verdict isn’t pretty: all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

I fall short of God’s glory every single day and so do you – and so repentance is a daily necessity. This was one of issues at the heart of the Reformation. In the first of his 95 Theses Luther wrote: “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, “Repent” [Matthew 4:17], he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.” [1] He wrote this because the Roman Catholic Church of his time was teaching people that they could skip repentance by purchasing an indulgence – a piece of paper that promised release from punishment. They taught this even though the Bible testifies that all the money in the world can’t pay for a single sin (Psalm 49:8; 1 Peter 1:18).  

So repentance is necessary. But is it the source of salvation? It’s rather naïve to think so, isn’t it? Think of the child, the driver, or the celebrity who gets caught doing something wrong. There will be a confession, an apology, maybe even some tears. And then it’s just human nature to do something to make up for it, to make it right. The child will promise to never do it again, the driver will swear to keep it under the speed limit, the celebrity will make a generous donation to a politically correct charity. Why? Why do all that? To escape punishment, to avoid the consequences of sin.

The question is: does it work? Can repentance save anyone from punishment? Can repentance save the child from a spanking, the driver from a ticket, the celebrity from losing their career? No. So can repentance save us from hell? No. Repentance cannot remove either the reality of our sin or its consequences. If you’ve ever thought that your repentance saves you, it’s probably consumed you, driven you to the brink of despair. All you can think about is how sorry you are and how you will do anything to make things right. Like Luther, you might even torture yourself, beating yourself up mentally or physically in a foolhardy attempt to pay for your sins yourself. But even a child can tell you that no matter how sincere, no matter how complete, no matter how sorry you are – repentance can’t save you from the consequences you deserve.

Well, if repentance can’t save us, then it must be faith, right? Isn’t that what Paul says? This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe…For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law. There we have it. The righteousness we need to be found innocent on Judgment Day comes to us through faith. That’s sola fide – faith alone. We are saved by believing in Jesus.

Faith was another one of the issues at the heart of the Reformation. The formal response of the Roman Catholic Church to the teachings of the reformers, known as the Council of Trent, declared “If anyone saith, that justifying faith is nothing else but confidence in the divine mercy which remits sins for Christ’s sake; or, that this confidence alone is that whereby we are justified; let him be [cursed].” [2] Even Catholics believed that Lutherans believed they are saved by believing.

Are we? We had better hope not. Why? Well, do you believe enough? Saying that you believe every word in the Bible implies that you’ve read every word – have you? You know that the Bible commands us to believe some things that are pretty hard to believe, don’t you? It says that the universe was created in six normal days by God’s command (Genesis 1), that Jesus was born of a virgin (Matthew 1:34), that he physically rose from the dead (Matthew 28), that Baptism saves (1 Peter 3:21), that his true body and blood are really present in, with, and under the bread and wine on this altar (Matthew 26:26-28), and that Jesus will return in glory to judge the living and the dead (Matthew 25:31-32) – can you honestly say that you’ve never doubted those things? Would any of us dare claim to be better believers than the man who cried I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief! (Mark 9:24) Are you willing to bet your salvation on the fact that your faith is stronger than Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who all tried in their own ways to circumvent God’s plan because they didn’t believe his Word and promises (Genesis 16; Genesis 27)?

You might be a little confused at this point, and I wouldn’t blame you. For 500 years, Lutherans have taught sola fide, that we are saved by faith alone apart from observing the law. It’s true, we are saved by faith alone (Romans 3:28), but that’s not the whole story. The phrase “saved by faith” is really shorthand for “saved by grace through faith.” Follow Paul’s words (especially the prepositions) in Ephesians 2: It is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast (Ephesians 2:8-9). Faith is the open hand through which we receive Jesus’ righteousness as our own. But faith IS NOT the cause or source of our salvation because 1) no matter how much you believe, your faith can’t remove sins and 2) our faith is never perfect. It is plagued by doubts, fears, and worries. If you’ve ever really examined your faith, you know this. You might try to pump it up by saying “I believe; I believe; I believe” but all it takes to pop that balloon is the devil’s whisper: “Do you? Really? Even the parts about Baptism really saving and Jesus’ body and blood being truly present?” Faith cannot be, and thank God, is not the source of our salvation.

We Lutherans do repent. We do believe. But neither is the source of our salvation. Then what is? Grace. Grace is at the heart of these verses. After Paul says those dreadful, damning words: there is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God he continues and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. There you have the entirety of Scripture, all of the Law and Gospel boiled down into one sentence. We have sinned and rightly deserve damnation. But instead God freely justifies us by grace in Christ.

The grand theme of the whole Bible, the golden thread that ties it all together, from Genesis to Revelation, is salvation by grace alone: sola gratia. And unlike repentance and faith – which are activities of God inside of us; grace is outside of us. You can’t look inside yourself to find grace. If you do you will find what Jeremiah found: the heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? (Jeremiah 17:9) You will see what Jesus saw: out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander (Matthew 15:19). If you’re honest, you will confess along with Paul: I know that nothing good lives in me (Romans 7:18). Even when we are repenting and believing with everything we have, it will never be enough. Don’t believe me. Believe your own heart. Or better yet, believe Jeremiah, Jesus and Paul.

But God’s heart is different. Remember how Jeremiah described salvation in our Old Testament lesson? The new covenant is not about us doing anything, but rather God doing what we could not: I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more (Jeremiah 31:34). Even though we cannot forget our sins, we cannot pay for them, we cannot erase them, God can. And he does, for Jesus’ sake – before and apart from any of our repenting or believing. That’s grace. That’s God’s undeserved, freely given, love and forgiveness.

Repentance and faith – no matter how sincere, can’t free you from the punishment your sins deserve. If your salvation was based on your repenting you would always have to wonder “Have I repented enough? Did I forget to confess any sins?” – which, incidentally, is the very thing that drove Luther into near despair and then deep into God’s Word. [3] The same goes for faith. If your salvation was based on your faith then you would always have to wonder “Do I believe enough? Do I really remember everything from catechism class?” Some days you might possess super-hero faith, but then your life falls to pieces or the devil whispers did God really say (Genesis 3:1) or your pastor says you should believe or do something that you don’t want to believe or do and you can’t help but wonder – “do I really believe?” But it all boils down to this. Imagine you’re lying on your death bed. You’re helpless, tubes and needles sticking out of you, doctors and nurses poking and prodding you, you can’t feed or clean yourself. At that point, do you really want to put your hope of salvation on something in you – the comprehensiveness of your repentance or the heartiness of your faith? How certain of your salvation would you be, if that were the case?

That’s what the Reformation was really all about. That’s why, neither Paul nor Luther pointed to repentance or faith as the source of salvation. Where do they point? Jesus. Jesus is God’s grace in historical, preaching, teaching, living, dying, rising, human flesh and blood. If you want to be certain about your salvation, look to Jesus. Why? Because Jesus kept the Law perfectly in your place. He never had to repent; never once had to apologize. He didn’t fall short of God’s glory. He earned his Father’s approval by his perfect, sinless life. And he gave his perfect life to you in Baptism. And he also took care of those sins you’ve spent a lifetime repenting of. He carried them, all of them, even the ones you forgot to confess to the cross and he paid for every last one of them with his precious blood. And he gives you proof of that forgiveness right here, by giving you his true body and blood. And, perhaps the part we might tend to overlook, Jesus also believed perfectly, for you. He never doubted his Father’s Word, not even when it meant suffering starvation and temptation in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1-11) or into a garden to drink the cup of God’s wrath (Matthew 26:36-46) or to a cross where his own Father turned his back on him (Matthew 27:46) – Jesus believed perfectly, right to his last breath (Luke 23:46) – and his perfect faith is now yours. Because of Jesus you can be sure of your salvation even if your repentance is spotty or your faith is weak – because he took away your sin and gave you his righteousness. He – not Martin Luther, not the denomination named after him, not your repentance or your faith – he – God’s grace in the flesh – is the source of salvation.

That’s why Paul says that boasting is excluded. We cannot take credit for our salvation because our salvation is not in our hands. It’s in the heart of God and the bloody, outstretched hands of Jesus on a cross. And that’s a good thing. It means that your salvation is secure. And if you believe that, then you should celebrate today, because you are a Lutheran, an heir of the Reformation. Amen.  

[1] LW 31:23

[2] http://www.thecounciloftrent.com/ch6.htm

[3] Kittleson, James M. Luther the Reformer: The Story of the Man and His Career (Minneapolis: Fortress Press 2003) 84

Luke 17:1-10 - The Right Combination - October 27, 2019

“The right combination.” Meteorologists say that when atmospheric conditions are just right for a tornado or snowstorm. Sports commentators say that when in their judgment a player has the right blend of speed, strength and talent to become a superstar. You might hear it around election time, when analysts predict that there is just the “right combination” of sinking poll numbers, economic turmoil, and social unrest to replace an elected leader. But today we’re talking about something far more important than the weather, sports or politics. Today, Jesus describes having the “right combination” to be a Christian.

While at first glance this text may seem like a series of random, disconnected statements, there’s one thread that ties everything together: things that are (or at least seem) impossible. Its starts already in the first verse. In our translation we read: things that cause people to sin are bound to come – but a more literal translation would be it is impossible that death traps will not come. It’s impossible to avoid temptations and pitfalls in this fallen world, but we can never be their source. In fact, it would be better for you have a millstone hung around your neck and be thrown to the bottom of Lake Michigan than for you to cause one of these littles ones to sin. Some Muslim nations still cut the hands off thieves. Several states still execute capital criminals. But only mob bosses and drug lords have ever decided on drowning as a fitting punishment. Yet here, Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, is suggesting that just this type of cruel and unusual punishment would be better than leading another Christian to sin. Why? Because leading someone else to sin is putting their soul in danger of hell. Certainly we would be better off dead than leading someone to sin.

Then what should we do when sin inevitably raises its ugly head? If your brother sins, rebuke him. Such a simple, straightforward command isn’t it? If a fellow believer falls into sin, confront him firmly but gently and call him to repentance. But in a culture where it’s considered politically incorrect to question the right of anyone to do anything – rebuking sin often seems all but impossible. “What if they get mad? What if they never talk to me again? What if it ruins our relationship? It’s not my place; let someone else do it.” So that begs the question: how many of us actually obeyed Jesus’ command – even once – much less consistently? When’s the last time you called a family member – or fellow church member – to repentance? And yet, Jesus says that it’s impossible for sins not to happen, so there should to be plenty of cause for rebuking. Have you loved someone enough to rebuke them? If not, why not? More importantly, if we can’t obey this simple, straightforward command, can we really consider ourselves to be Christians?

And we haven’t even gotten to the really hard part yet. Rebuking sin is only a preliminary, preparatory duty. Just as God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him (John 3:17) so our primary duty as Christians is to forgive. And Jesus makes this duty very personal: if he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and says, ‘I repent,’ forgive him. (It’s interesting to note that whereas rebuke him is a command, forgive him is in the indicative, it’s a promise. When a brother sins against you seven times in one day and all he does is come to you and say “I repent; forgive me” you will, every time.) Again, in a world that loves to dredge up sins from the past and use them to damage careers and reputations today, where holding on to rage seems like a political virtue, where marriages and families and churches are regularly destroyed by the refusal to forgive even once – this sounds impossible. The more cynical part of us might suggest that Jesus must not know what it’s like to be married or to have children or belong to a church with other sinners. If we’re honest though, we might confess what Jesus is commanding is beyond our ability.

And we’re not alone. The apostles recognized how impossible these commands were. They realized that the duties of discipleship required something they didn’t think they had enough of: not clarity, not direction, but faith. They realized – and so should we – that it takes great faith to rebuke and forgive. So they say increase our faith. “Lord, you must increase our faith if we’re to do this!” And how did Jesus respond to this request? “You have enough faith.” If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you. Mulberry trees are troublesome. They have massive root systems. There is as much mulberry tree below the surface as there is above. It’s hard enough to get rid of a mulberry tree, much less plant it in the sea. It’s impossible. But Jesus is saying that if faith the size of a mustard seed can accomplish this impossible task – then faith the size of a mustard seed is more than enough to enable us to carry out our duties of rebuking and forgiving sin. Then why does it still feel so impossible to do what Jesus asks? Why does discipleship seem relatively easy when all we have to do is show up and sit down on Sunday mornings – but impossibly difficult when it comes to properly dealing with sin?

Clearly, Jesus’ point is that it’s not impossible. Maybe a better way to describe it would be “unnatural.” Not causing people to sin, rebuking others when they sin, and forgiving sins against us only appears impossible because it seems so unnatural. An example from recent headlines bears this out. If you happened to see any of the coverage of the sentencing phase of the trial of Amber Guyger, the Dallas police officer who shot and killed a man in his own apartment, you saw a rare and unnatural scene: the victim’s younger brother, Brandt Jean, forgave Amber from the stand and then asked for permission to step down from the stand to give her a hug. Needless to say, even the usually heartless media was struck by this unexpected demonstration of grace and forgiveness. Why? Because it was so unnatural. Because demonstrations and protests are the way people deal with sin today, not grace and forgiveness.

Why does it seem so unnatural and nearly impossible to deal with sin the way Jesus commands? Because we often do what the apostles did: we try to measure our faith. We try to measure if we have the strength, the courage and boldness to do what Jesus commands – and if we feel that we’re short, we use that weakness to justify our failure. That’s a problem. Not a lack of faith problem, but a focus of faith problem. Here’s where Jesus’ little illustration of the mulberry tree applies. His point is that even small faith in the almighty Word of God can do impossible and unnatural things. If God’s Word commanded you to uproot and replant a mulberry tree, you could do it. But God’s Word doesn’t command or promise anything about mulberry trees. It does, however, clearly and frequently, command us to rebuke sin and promise that we will forgive it.

Do you have that kind of faith? The mustard seed size kind of faith that dutifully rebukes and forgives sin simply because God’s Word commands and promises it? No, I don’t either. That’s because discipleship is like a combination lock: two numbers are never enough. You need at least three. Jesus has covered two parts: duty and faith. There’s one more thing needed for the right combination, and that’s grace. That’s where his little parable about plowing, shepherding, and serving comes in. (Worthy of note is the fact that the Bible will later use plowing (1 Corinthians 3:6), herding sheep (1 Peter 5:2), and serving (2 Corinthians 3:6) to describe the work he will give the apostles.) The parable teaches that the only way we can do the impossible, unnatural things Jesus is commanding is by God’s grace.

Wait a minute…where is that in this parable? If we could all read Greek we would see this. In verse 9 Jesus literally asks “he would not give grace (χάριν) the servant because he did what he was told, would he?” By the way Jesus asks the question he’s expecting a “no” answer. No, a master doesn’t give grace to his slave because he does what he’s been told. That’s both unnatural and impossible. You can’t get grace by doing anything – if you could, it wouldn’t be grace (Romans 11:6).

So follow Jesus’ line of logic here: faith is needed to carry out your unnatural and impossible duties as a Christian, but where does faith come from? Grace! And where does grace come from? Grace comes from God, not from you. Look for it inside yourself, look for it in the worthiness of the person or in your thoughts and feelings and you won’t find the grace, the fuel, to do what you’ve been commanded. Grace can only be received from the outside. You can’t merit grace; you can’t win it; you can’t deserve it. At the end of the day, even if you imagine that you’ve done everything God commanded, you couldn’t say you deserve grace.

I said a couple weeks ago that you can often find the Gospel in the part of the parable that seems “off”, that doesn’t seem right, that doesn’t make sense. The Gospel in this parable is that God shatters all the norms of a servant / master relationship. God does what no earthly master ever would. He gives us grace even though we haven’t done what we’ve been told. That’s the part that doesn’t make sense. We don’t do even the small things we’re supposed to do as Christians, and yet, God is still gracious to us. Why? There’s an acronym that tells you everything you need to know about grace: Grace Received At Christ’s Expense. God gives you grace only because of Jesus. He’s the only One who always did what his Father commanded him to do. He never rolled his eyes, never muttered in protest, never argued that it was impossible – he never once failed to rebuke or forgive sin, and he certainly never caused anyone else to sin. He was the perfect person, the perfect disciple. And what was his reward? It was even worse than death by drowning – his reward was death on a cross. God didn’t hang a millstone around his neck – but he did hang all of our sins, every last one of our failures to do duty on him. That weight didn’t drag him to the bottom of the sea, but it did drag him into the depths of hell – where God held him until he had satisfied his righteous wrath. But when he said it is finished (John 19:30), it was. Jesus had drained every last ounce of God’s wrath against us (Romans 8:1) – so that all that’s left in his heart for us now is simple, beautiful, undeserved grace. That’s why, I can say without hesitation that whether you have been dutiful or disobedient, whether your faith is the size of a mountain or a mustard seed, the only thing God has for you is rich, boundless, impossible grace.

Doing our duty as disciples is impossible. It’s impossible for us to perfectly rebuke and forgive sin – no matter how big we think our faith is. But, we can be unworthy, can’t we? And when we confess that we are unworthy servants then we’re right where God wants us. That’s why we call the main things we do in church the means of grace. Baptism is grace poured out on infants who can do absolutely nothing for God. Absolution is the grace of forgiveness applied to self-confessed, guilty sinners. Communion is the gift of Jesus’ own body and blood offered to sinners who can never be worthy to receive them. You can’t deserve to be baptized, absolved, or communed. And yet, through these instruments, God gives you his grace for Jesus’ sake.

So I’ll ask one more time, do you have what it takes to be a disciple, do you have the right combination? Note well what Jesus does and doesn’t command us in this text. He is not commanding us to plant mulberry trees anywhere, but he does command us to rebuke and forgive sin; and he does command us to say we are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty. That’s a confession you can live with and, more importantly, die with, because it is the most basic confession of faith: that we can be disciples by God’s grace and not by our own effort. While our efforts will always fall short, God’s grace in Christ never does. You have God’s grace, and with that gift, you do have the right combination, just what you need to do the impossible and unnatural, to be and remain and do the duties of a Christian. Amen.  

Luke 16:19-31 - Four Myths from Beyond the Grave - October 20, 2019

I don’t believe it’s on TV anymore – but there used to be a show on The Discovery Channel called Mythbusters. The name says it all. The hosts would take a myth, an old wives’ tale, an urban legend and put it to the test using scientific methods. For example, they tested the Hollywood theory that a car can break through a locked chain link fence (it can), whether elephants are really afraid of mice or not (they really don’t like having them around!), and last but not least, whether it’s actually possible to take someone’s hat off with a bullet – like you see in the Westerns – (yes, but with the caveat that you tend to also put a decent sized hole in the person’s head, too!). Whether or not such a show interests you, the premise is undeniably true: you can’t believe everything you see. While most urban legends are fairly harmless, there are many myths regarding religion, heaven and hell floating around in our world that do real, eternal damage. Today we’re going to bust four of those myths – not with science – but the inerrant Word of God.

Myth #1: everyone goes to heaven. Let’s face it, most people believe that – apart from terrorists and pedophiles – virtually goes to heaven when they die. The generic, American religion teaches that there is life after this one, it’s better than life here and all but the worst people go there. That’s why when someone dies you don’t ever hear “well, they died in unbelief, and now their suffering has just begun” – no, you always hear, “now they’re at peace,” “now their suffering is over,” “they are in a better place.”

But it’s a myth, as Jesus demonstrates in this story. (Incidentally, despite the fact that this is often labeled a parable, it’s probably not. A parable is an earthly story with a spiritual meaning. Here, while Jesus does speak in earthly terms – the spiritual meaning is not at all hidden.) Not everyone goes to heaven; some, like the rich man, are in agony in the fire of hell. What’s striking is that it’s Jesus who is giving us this awful description of hell. Most people think that Jesus is too nice, too tolerant, too loving to send people to hell for all eternity. But the fact of the matter is that Jesus talks about hell more often and in more vivid language than anyone else in the Bible. Here he describes hell as a place of torment, where people burn alive without any hope of death, a state of permanent separation from God and his love. Of course, he’s using earthly language to describe the horrors, but his point is clear: it’s a myth that all people (like all dogs) go to heaven. Some don’t. Some go to hell forever.

Myth #2: outward appearances matter; that you can tell where a person will end up simply by looking at them. The false belief that prevailed in Jesus’ day still survives today – and it sounds like this: if you’re happy, healthy, and wealthy God loves you, and if you’re not, he’s angry at you; wealth equals God’s favor and poverty equals his wrath. And, if you are blessed in this life it’s almost guaranteed that you will be blessed in the next life, because we all know that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

Jesus seems to be playing off this myth as he describes two men whose circumstances couldn’t have been more different. At a time when people rarely ate meat the rich man enjoyed a 5-star dinner daily – while Lazarus’ stomach ached for the crumbs that fell from his table. While the rich man dressed in purple and fine linen – which, incidentally, served no practical purpose other than to broadcast how rich you were – Lazarus’ body was only covered in sores. Lazarus died like a beggar. No mention of a funeral. His corpse was probably unceremoniously tossed into the same mass grave as countless other beggars. But the rich man was buried. Ever been to a rich person’s funeral? Flowers upon flowers upon flowers – always with a little card so that the family knows just who to give the credit to. People fall over themselves to make themselves seen and heard at the funeral of a rich person. Even pastors, for some reason, often feel indebted to talk more about the rich, dead person in the sermon than Jesus Christ. Which of the two would you think would end up in heaven?

But then Jesus pulls back the curtain to let us see what’s really going on. What was the most notable thing about Lazarus? Not that he was a beggar – that was common – but he has a name! For the one and only time Jesus names one of the characters in his stories – and that name tells us everything we need to know. Lazarus comes from the Hebrew Eleazar which means God is my help. The rich man may not have helped Lazarus, but God did and wrote his name in the book of life (Revelation 20:12). The rich man, on the other hand remains anonymous, for the damned are not known by God (Matthew 7:23). Second, God dispatches angels to carry the Lazarus’ filthy, sore-covered body to heaven. No angels are sent to fetch the rich man because the damned need no help getting to hell. Finally, Lazarus finds eternal peace and rest at Abraham’s side while the rich man winds up screaming his lungs out in the never-ending torments of hell. Certainly appearances can be deceiving.

There’s a warning here for us. Don’t think that you can tell who will go where based on outward appearances. Stop thinking that wealth equals heaven and poverty equals hell – or that poverty equals heaven and wealth equals hell. To use a crass example: stop thinking that if a drunk driver kills himself he’s going to hell or that the person he kills is automatically going to heaven. Stop judging God by your or anyone else’s outward circumstances. Because the fact is that outward appearances can be deceiving.

Myth #3: church is no big deal. You might be thinking – where did this come from? This is just pastor justifying his existence and his job. No. One myth that is very popular among many Christians – and which, has sadly seeped into Lutheranism – is a mystical doctrine of faith. It’s the idea that we can find God in our feelings and emotions, that he comes to us directly. And so when seeking certainty for their salvation, people are directed to look inside themselves. “Is your faith strong? Have you felt God’s touch or heard his voice?” Or someone will say “I felt God’s presence in that sunrise. God spoke to me in that movie.” Do you ever hear that? I do. When people find out I’m a pastor they often feel the need to justify themselves and sometimes say “Oh, well I think about God all the time.” When I contact members who don’t come to church the very first thing they say is “Don’t worry pastor, my faith is strong!” The problem is that as a result of sin we are already turned in on ourselves far too much. By nature we are self-centered rather than God-centered. But the fact is that a mystical, baseless faith is no faith at all; it’s faith in faith and faith in faith doesn’t save anyone.

Where do we see this in our story? Well, why did the rich man go to hell? Many people believe it was because the rich man was a jerk to Lazarus, he didn’t share any of his wealth or food with him to help him. But the text doesn’t explicitly say that, does it? We aren’t told that the rich man spit on Lazarus, or yelled at him to get off his property. Nor are we told that the rich man went to hell for any number of other obvious sins; that he was a murderer, had committed adultery, got his wealth fraudulently, or that he was guilty of giving false testimony. In fact, we are probably safe in assuming that he was a Jew in good standing from the fact that he called Abraham Father. No, the only sin specifically named in this lesson is a sin against the third commandment: not [listening] to Moses and the prophets. In other words, while this rich man may have received a Jewish burial, he apparently never made it a priority to listen to Moses and the prophets, that is, the Word of God, preached and taught.

Now please don’t misunderstand. Faith in Christ certainly does save because faith is the open hand that receives the forgiveness, life and salvation that he won on the cross (Ephesians 2:8-9). But don’t for a second believe that this faith can exist apart from hearing the Word of God. Faith can no more live in the heart apart from the Word than your body can live apart from eating food (John 6:53). Going to church is important because church tears your attention away from yourself, your feelings, your circumstances and places it on the Word and Sacraments. And you might say: “I read my bible at home,” “I pray.” Good, I hope you do. But the Bible teaches that faith comes from hearing the message and the message is heard through the word of Christ (Romans 10:17). Not to mention that God hasn’t given the sacraments to us as individuals but to the Church. Faith is a miracle but God has decided to not create or sustain it mystically but through totally ordinary means: water and Word, bread and wine.

And, if you’ve ever wondered about your faith, that’s great news. Why? Because it means you don’t have to search for God in your heart or the world around you. Instead you can find him in the clear, objective means he has given us. Were you baptized? Then your name is written in the book of life (1 Peter 3:21). Were your sins forgiven moments ago in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit? Then the gates of heaven are open to you (Matthew 16:19). Will you be eating and drinking Jesus’ true body and blood, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins? Then God is strengthening your faith in Jesus, whether you feel it or not (1 Corinthians 11:23-26) Church is important because church is where the Word is preached and the sacraments are administered. The rich man went to hell not because he neglected Lazarus but because he neglected the means of grace.

Now I know where that last myth leads many of you. You worry about the people you love who also neglect and despise Word and Sacrament. You wonder “if they die like that rich man, what’s going to happen to them?” You want them to be saved so badly that you run the risk of falling for myth #4, of believing that if only God would just do something miraculous in their life, they would repent. That’s the fourth myth from hell we have to bust: miracles convert people. Even in hell the rich man still labors under this myth. He’s concerned about the fate of his brothers who apparently were accustomed to despising the Word just like he was. He asks Abraham to send Lazarus back to earth to warn them. He thinks like a whole horde of Christians do today: that you need more than the Gospel to save people – you need gimmicks and programs and emotional music and practical sermons.

Is that true? No. But don’t take my word for it. Listen to Abraham. Abraham states point blank that if they reject the Word of God, even if Lazarus were to suddenly show up on their doorstep and shouted “Hell is Real!” they wouldn’t even be convinced – that is, convinced that they weren’t hallucinating or dreaming. Miracles don’t convert people. There are plenty of miracles recorded in the Bible: 6-day creation, the Flood, Jesus walking on water – but most people in our scientific age regard these miracles as myths. Even more, Jesus did raise another Lazarus from the dead (John 11:38-44) and it only made the Jews more determined to kill Jesus (John 11:45-57). And when Jesus rose from the dead, they paid the soldiers to keep it quiet rather than repent and believe (Matthew 28:11-15).

Don’t fall for the myth. Don’t think that God isn’t doing everything possible to save the people you love. He is. He’s still sending his same powerful, faith-creating Word to every corner of the earth. The same Word that created the universe (Genesis 1), changed a murderous Pharisee like Saul into the missionary named Paul (Acts 9), that calmed stormy seas (Luke 8:22-25) and fed thousands (John 6:1-15) – is still being proclaimed. God is still working the extraordinary miracle of repentance through the completely ordinary Word. And you have this Word. The Word of God spoken by you to people you love is far more powerful than any miracle – even someone rising from the dead – because miracles don’t change hearts – the Word of God does.

Hell is no myth. Jesus has busted that myth. People do go there. But no one has to. The gates of heaven are open today for the rich, the poor, the obviously sinful and the secretly guilty. No one is so good that they can get into heaven without hearing the Word of God, but no one is so bad that the forgiving Word of God can’t bring them to repentance and faith. Mythbusters bust myths in order to entertain. Jesus busts myths in order to save souls. Don’t believe the myths. Believe the Words of the One who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6). Amen.

Luke 16:1-5 - The Bottom Line - October 13, 2019

Today we’re going to talk about Money. I know…nobody wants to talk about money – especially at church. Church is supposed to be for “spiritual stuff.” But today we can’t escape it – Jesus doesn’t give us a choice. In addition, Money is very spiritual. Why? Most simply because all Money belongs to God. But that’s not the only reason. It’s no secret that Money is one of the most important things in our lives. It keeps us busy during the day and awake at night. It guides our choices and decisions. As Paul made clear, the love of Money lies at the root of all sorts of evil (1 Timothy 6:10). The love of Money has destroyed marriages and families and churches and led people to wander from the faith. Humanly speaking, it’s hard to argue with Oscar Wilde’s assessment: “When I was young, I thought money was the most important thing in life; now that I’m old, I know it is.” [1] Today we’re going to talk about Money, but not in the way you think. We’re going to get right to the Bottom Line. What’s the bottom line? You cannot serve both God and Money.

First, I want to make sure that you heard this right. Jesus isn’t giving a command. He didn’t say “do not serve both God and Money.” He’s stating a fact: “You cannot serve both God and Money.” It’s not a choice but an impossibility. The only question is: which do you serve? Here’s the lesson we all need to learn – sooner than later – about Money. It’s a merciless master. No, it doesn’t appear that way, at least not at first. Money looks like those glamorous celebrities selling the newest credit card that gives you all kinds of free miles and cash back, like a well-dressed investment advisor who guarantees to make your money work for you, like the dream job with the dream salary that promises to make all your material goals come true. But that’s only half the story. The dark side is that when you don’t make your payments on time, you don’t get any miles but you do get an astronomical interest rate. The investment advisor can’t do much for you unless you regularly give him large sums of money to work with. The dream job may leave out the fact that receiving this salary will demand your heart and mind, your body and soul. Stick around for the quarterly meeting and you’ll see that even in the church, the laws of money can’t be broken. What goes out must first come in. Every penny must be accounted for. Budgets can’t be balanced by faith alone. Money is merciless.

Why? Because Money is a matter of the Law. And because Money is a matter of the Law we can always, always be accused of mismanaging it. We see that in our parable. The manager was only accused of wasting [his master’s] possessions. We aren’t provided with any evidence and the parable doesn’t even state whether he was actually guilty or not. It simply shows how easy it is for the Money to make accusations.

Allow me to conduct an experiment to prove this. Just see how easy it is for me to make you feel guilty by merely questioning your spending habits; without a shred of proof. The average American spends 5% of their income on entertainment and the average WELS member gives 2.5% of their income in offerings. Where do you stand? What does that reveal about who or what has first place in your heart? Or how about this: did you know that if you saved just $20 a week – by eating out one less time, by making your own coffee instead of stopping at Starbucks, or however – you’d have an additional $1000 each year to give to God? We live in relatively nice homes, drive nice cars and take nice vacations. Just imagine if, instead of spending those thousands of dollars on ourselves, how many missionaries could be sent, how many churches could be funded, how many pastors could be trained. See. I have no proof that you’ve mismanaged your money, yet you’re squirming anyway. But that’s not even the point. The point is that no matter how you spend your money, no matter how frugal you are, no matter how much you give, you could still be accused of fiscal mismanagement. Money is a merciless master because serving Money is slavery to the Law.

Sadly, if we’ve never thought of Money that way, as a merciless idol, it’s probably because of the church. At some point the church decided that it could help people navigate the impossibly narrow road between serving God and Money; teaching that there is a way to find peace in money management, that you can serve both at the same time. You’ve heard the sermons, right? “God commanded his OT people to give 10% of their income and if you do too, then you’re off the hook.” “If you just prioritize your spending in this order: 1) Church; 2) Family; 3) Taxes; 4) Charity – then you can relax, you’re good.” In general, the impression is given that as long as you give God his cut, as long as you serve Money under God’s rules, it’s ok. Then nobody can accuse you.

But it’s a lie. Money management is part of the Law and the Law’s purpose is not to give us peace of mind but to cause us to sweat and squirm by revealing our sins (Romans 3:20). You can’t stand before God’s all-seeing eye audit and be found innocent based on your money management no matter how you’ve spent your money. (For example: you could sell everything you own, clear out all your savings and give it to God, and you still wouldn’t be justified. Why? Because all you would be able to think about is how much you would like it back!) If you think you can satisfy God’s justice by the way you manage your Money, then you need to remember that the greatest sin of all is called “self-righteousness.” If you hope to stand before God and say “I’ve given enough, spent my money wisely, never wasted it, spent every penny perfectly,” then you’ve placed your hope for salvation in yourself. You are lost now and will be damned on the Last Day. But, you may ask, what’s the alternative? If I admit that no matter how much money I make I’m not content; that my giving is often motivated by self-righteousness; that financial worries keep me up at night – then I have to live in perpetual fear of God’s final audit. See what I mean about Money being merciless? Do whatever you want with it: keep it, save it, invest it, spend it, give it, burn it – it will never justify you before God.

So what’s the answer? How do you escape Money’s tyrannical hold on your heart and life? Through repentance. By repenting of ever giving Money the place in your heart and life that belongs to God alone. Money is an inanimate object; it is not God; it cannot accuse you; it cannot damn you; it cannot forgive you; it cannot justify you. Recognize that Money is merciless and in the end, powerless, because it is an idol.

So what’s the good news? Here’s where I’m supposed to say that the good news is that Jesus died to free us from our slavery to Money so that we can now serve the Lord with our Money – and then send the offering plates shooting down the rows. After all, that’s how the Church is often portrayed, isn’t it? God needs us to come here so that he can get our money and our time and our energy in order to make his Kingdom come. Is that true? Does God need anything from us to carry out his will? Is God angry with us until we give him a few bucks to get him off our backs? Do you understand how arrogant it is to suggest that God’s grace depends on something we do, that God needs our help to accomplish his mission? God didn’t have much patience for that kind of arrogance in either the Old or New Testaments. In Malachi God begged someone to close the doors of the Temple so that the priests would stop offering their sacrifices – because they thought that by merely going through the motions they were going to win God’s favor (Malachi 1:10). Paul told the idolaters in Athens point blank that [God] is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything (Acts 17:25).

So what’s the real bottom line, then? Remember that Jesus told parables to teach spiritual truths, not moral behavior – or here, proper money management. In parables, earthly things stand for heavenly things. So the point of comparison is not between the right and the wrong way to spend Money, but between the shrewdness with which unbelievers use the means at their disposal to give themselves comfortable lives in this world and how believers, the people of the light, use true riches to ensure their eternity. This interpretation is confirmed by the last two verses: The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus. He said to them, “You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of men, but God knows your hearts. What is highly valued among men is detestable in God’s sight. The Pharisees thought that if they could just figure out the right equation for serving God with their Money, they could justify themselves and earn eternal life. They sneered when Jesus definitively declared that it’s impossible to serve God and Money.

So where’s the real good news? Having studied parables over the past several weeks, one helpful hint I’ve found is to look for the part of the earthly story that doesn’t quite seem right, that seems odd or out of place. Is there anything like that in this parable? Wasn’t this master pretty stupid for a rich guy? He heard that his manager was wasting his possessions, but he didn’t immediately have him thrown in jail. He allowed him to go free to settle his accounts. It doesn’t work that way today. If you get yourself fired, security tosses your stuff into a box, walks you to your car and your access to anything financial is immediately cut off. That’s how things normally go. In fact, spiritually speaking, that’s how it should go for us. When we leave here with God’s forgiveness and continue to feel guilt and shame over past sins, when we fail to be strengthened in faith by the Sacrament, when we hear God’s promise to provide our daily bread but continue to lay awake at night worrying about money – we are wasting the true riches God has given us. We deserve to have them taken away. But God doesn’t do that. Like the master in the parable, our Lord lets us go free, demonstrating an almost foolish level of mercy to us.

And our only hope for passing God’s final audit is that he will remain merciful. That was the only hope of the shrewd servant, too. And so, far from suddenly toeing the line, he doubled down on spending his master’s money to secure his own future. And how does the master respond? [He] commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. This manager had forced his master into a corner: either drag his former manager in for punishment and then demand the full amount from his debtors – and be known as a tyrant – or allow his manager’s actions to stand and be known throughout the community as a merciful and gracious lord. Of course, the punchline is that it will cost him a significant percentage of his revenue to be seen as merciful. But apparently, he figured that this loss to his bottom line was worth it to maintain his reputation.

Here’s the thing about mercy: it doesn’t cost the recipient anything, but it costs the giver dearly. The master in the parable had to suffer a significant financial loss to be merciful. God is merciful and he will continue to be merciful to us, but it came at a steep price. It didn’t cost him 20% or 50% but 100% of his only beloved Son. Rather than send us to destruction, he sent his Son to earth. Rather than demand a perfect, flawless life from us, he demanded a perfect life from his Son. Rather than demand that we maintain hearts free from greed and covetousness – which we could never do – to earn heaven – the LORD demanded that his Son be content to live in poverty for 33 years on this earth. Rather than send us to hell to pay off our debts, the LORD sent his Son to the cross to pay our debts in our place. The LORD, your real master, would rather suffer loss himself and be merciful than be just and lose you forever in hell. So be shrewd – serve him by relying on his mercy – trust his Word with all your heart, live in his forgiveness, let your heart rest in his peace.

This parable isn’t really about how to spend your Money but about who your Master is. The manager in the parable was commended because he knew his master’s mercy and shrewdly spent his master’s money to ensure his future. How much more should we freely use and spend the true riches God has given us – the Gospel in Word and Sacrament – the only wealth which can secure us a place in eternal dwellings. I know this hasn’t been your typical “money” sermon, but here’s the bottom line: You cannot serve both God and Money. Money is merciless – the best it can do is buy a nice piece of ground to put your body in; but God, God would rather suffer the loss of his Son than lose you – that’s a merciful Master, that’s the only Master worth serving. Amen. 

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5nxMx7d1K8S6nhjkPBFhHSM/withering-wit-and-words-of-wisdom-oscar-wildes-best-quotes

Luke 15:1-10 - This Man Welcomes Sinners - October 6, 2019

You may have noticed a trend over the past several weeks – that our sermon texts have all dealt with Jesus’ parables: his earthly stories with spiritual meanings. Parables aren’t what they seem to be. Just as the parable two weeks ago wasn’t really about dinner parties and last week’s wasn’t about how to build a tower or go to war – so the parable this morning isn’t really about how to find lost sheep and coins. Then what is this parable about? What spiritual truth is Jesus teaching us? Sadly, too many preachers see parables as an opportunity to serve their own agendas. For example, if you’re trying to raise money, you could talk about how precious even one coin is to God. Or, even more popular, is the notion that these parables are Jesus’ commission to the Church. That we are the shepherd and the woman and that it is our responsibility to get out there and beat the bushes and find the lost and save them. Now, I’m not saying that the Bible doesn’t say anything about stewardship or outreach; but the context should make it crystal clear that Jesus is not talking about those things here. This parable is Jesus’ response to the Pharisees’ grumbling complaint: this man welcomes sinners.

Clearly then, this parable is about the seeking, searching, tireless love of Jesus. He is the main character. But how do we get there? Well, in context of Luke 15, the “lost” are the tax collectors and “sinners” who were flocking to Jesus. Throughout his ministry Jesus made a habit of welcoming and associating with these social and religious outcasts. He even called one of those hated tax collectors – Matthew – to be his apostle (Matthew 9:9-13). And later in this same gospel, he invited himself to the home of another tax collector named Zacchaeus where he declared that the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost (Luke 19:10). As the Good Shepherd, as the Creator and Redeemer of these poor souls, it was only natural for Jesus see them as precious and go out of his way to find and save them.  

But Jesus’ natural love for the lost filled the religious elite with disgust. The Pharisees and teachers of the law – who were supposed to be the spiritual shepherds of God’s flock on earth – didn’t care at all about the lost. They didn’t preach about God’s grace but his wrath; they emphasized Law not Gospel. Their message was inherently work-righteous: that you need to clean yourself up, stop sinning and reform your life before God will accept you. They despised and ignored these poor, lost sinners; figuring that they were simply getting what they deserved. In fact, the Jewish historian Alfred Edersheim even records a shocking saying of the Pharisees: “There is joy before God when those who provoke him perish from the world.” [1] It’s hard to imagine a greater blasphemy than alleging that heaven rejoices when the wicked perish in hell. (Ezekiel 33:11)

In this parable, then, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law are the ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent. It’s not that they didn’t need to repent, they – like everyone else on earth – had fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:22-23) – they didn’t think they did. They thought they were right with God because outwardly they were better and holier than these open sinners. The real tragedy in this text is not that Jesus was associating with open sinners but that these self-righteous Pharisees didn’t see their need to join them!

Jesus drives this point home by asking the crowd to consider two familiar situations: Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? What shepherd wouldn’t abandon his flock to search for one wandering sheep? Here’s the twist: no good shepherd would do that! You can almost picture the shepherds in the crowd whispering to each other, “That Galilean carpenter doesn’t know bunk about shepherding! You don’t risk your entire flock to save one. You write that sheep off as dead and cut your losses.” Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Does she not light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? Do you put your life on hold and turn the house upside down if you lost one coin even though you still had nine in your pocket? “Well, maybe for an hour or two, but there comes a time when you forget about it and get on with your day. Maybe it will turn up later, but my time is too valuable to waste it looking for one lost coin.”

So what’s the point? The point is that Jesus doesn’t see people the way the religious elite did. His ways are not our ways; his thoughts are not our thoughts (Isaiah 55:8-9). Jesus didn’t come to earth to seek out the good, the righteous, the powerful – those who appear to have their lives together, the good who are getting better, he came to seek out the weak, the sick, the lost. He doesn’t weigh the cost vs. benefit of abandoning the flock to seek out just one lost sheep. Again, this parable is not really about shepherding, financial stewardship, or even outreach. It’s about Jesus’ irrational, outrageous grace that seeks and saves the lost without regard to the cost or the logic. He seeks those who don’t want to be found. He loves the ungodly, the unrighteous, those who are lost in sin and cannot find any way out. He dies for sinners, not saints; for his enemies, not his friends (Romans 5:10). Jesus is the Good Shepherd who doesn’t stop searching; he’s the one who turns the whole house upside down, moves the furniture and tears up the carpets until he finds that lost coin. The lost are the sole object of his attention. Nothing else matters to him.

While this parable applied most directly to Jesus’ ministry to the tax collectors and “sinners” of his day, the truth of this parable transcends time and space. In a way, it takes us all the way back to Eden. The lost sheep is Adam, the representative of mankind, who brought sin and death into the world (Romans 5:12). He is the lost coin, the worthless asset in God’s bank account, the one who wasted the perfect life God intended for him, who was so lost in shame and guilt that he tried to hide behind fig leaves in the bushes. And yet, God searched for his wayward child and didn’t give up until he found him and brought him to repentance (Genesis 3). And, like it or not, we are all like Adam. We all like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way (Isaiah 53:6). We are all the lost children of God. We fall for Satan’s deceptions daily. We reach for things God doesn’t want us to have. We have strayed from the path of life and stumbled onto the wide road that leads to destruction. Left to our own devices we are and would remain lost.

You sense this lostness in the world around you, don’t you? You see people trying desperately to “find” themselves, to find meaning for their lives in their careers, their treasures, their accomplishments, their fame and popularity and good deeds. You can see it in the addictions and distractions mankind has invented for itself – all designed to silence the voice of conscience, to dull the ever-present drumbeat of guilt and shame and fear of future judgment. And yet, after it all, they’re still lost – because they’re still not right with God. But it’s not just out there in the world, either, is it? We feel that lostness too, don’t we? Yes, even believers feel it, perhaps more acutely because we know better: we know we should be perfect – and we’re not; our consciences agree with the Law’s verdict that we deserve pain and punishment; we know that addictions and distractions can’t really take our guilt away. Most of all, we long for the peace and safety our Father’s home but we can’t get there. And some days, we just want to sit on the ground and cry like a lost child, our lost condition leaves us depressed, despairing, weak and helpless.

And that’s what makes this chapter – which some have called the heart of Luke’s Gospel – so beautiful! We got ourselves lost. We have no one but ourselves to blame. Jesus would have been perfectly justified in writing us off as a lost cause, as not worth his time or effort. But he didn’t! Jesus came to our wilderness, leaving behind the righteous hosts of heaven to seek and save our lost race from sin and death. He came as the second Adam (Romans 5:19), taking on our flesh, wandering in our wilderness, suffering our temptation, dying our death. He lost himself, his blood, his life to find us. To be clear: Jesus found us, not the other way around. He wasn’t lost, we were. Jesus didn’t come to earth to be welcomed by righteous and powerful leaders, he came to dig through the gutters and search through the trash to find his sheep who didn’t even know they were lost. So great was his love for us that he didn’t care what condition we were in when he found us. He wasn’t worried about what he could gain or benefit from us. He didn’t wait for us to meet him halfway, to make a decision for him, to shape up and straighten up our lives before he would welcome us. He found us like Hosea’s harlot and loved us anyway (Hosea 3:1). He found us in the filth of our sin and brought us to his house to clean us up with his forgiveness. He searched for us with his Word and Sacrament before we even knew we were lost; often, when we didn’t even want to be found. And every time Jesus finds another lost sinner all of heaven rejoices over the ridiculous, irrational, outrageous love of a Good Shepherd who loses himself to find the lost.   

Which leads to our final question: what does it mean to be “found,” what is it that causes the angels in heaven to rejoice? Is it your commitment to living for God? Is it when you bring him a generous offering? When you do good and avoid evil? That’s not what Jesus says. He says there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents. We don’t see it in translation, but in the original Greek repents is a present participle – which means that heaven rejoices when sinners are continually repenting, repeatedly coming to Jesus for forgiveness and peace. Here, it’s not your good works that give joy to God but the confession of your sins. But that all sounds backwards, doesn’t it? What is more pleased with a child when they confess that they broke the lamp than when they report that they’ve done their homework and cleaned their room? Again, Jesus doesn’t see things the way we do. Heaven rejoices when we come regularly and repeatedly to lay our sins at Jesus’ feet because that’s why he came. As Paul says Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners (1 Timothy 1:15) – NOT those who think they have done enough, served enough, given enough to please God on their own. There are no parties in heaven for the proud and self-righteous who don’t think they need to be in God’s house to receive his forgiveness. Jesus didn’t come for them. He came for sinners.

And so, if you heard this text and figured that this parable is about the people out there who don’t go to church, or perhaps a member who hasn’t been here in some time, you still don’t understand. I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating: Jesus’ parables often invite us to find ourselves in them. Where do you and I fit? Are we the owner of the sheep and coins? No, Jesus claims that role for himself. This text is not about us seeking and finding the lost! Are you the lost sheep and the lost coin? You might not want to think of yourself as lost – but here’s the thing – if you don’t see yourself as the lost sheep and coin, there’s only one role left. Then you’re one of the ninety-nine righteous persons who don’t think they need to repent. If that describes you, then I have only bad news for you: you’re still lost, you’re still in the wilderness. If you’ve become so comfortable in yourself, your goodness, your lifestyle compared to others that you don’t think you need to repent, then you’re no different than those Pharisees sneering at the tax collectors and sinners. If you think repentance is for other people, then it’s my responsibility to warn you against coming up to this table to eat with Jesus, because the hymn was right: Jesus receives sinners, lost sheep, not self-righteous saints (CW 304).

It’s become fashionable in some Christian circles to teach that Christians aren’t sinners anymore and that they shouldn’t call themselves sinners. Heretics like Joyce Meyer openly declare that they are no longer sinful and that to suggest otherwise is a lie from hell. [2] They would be horrified by our confession of sins, disgusted that only confessed sinners are welcome at this table. She would say that we need to think like winners if we want to attract winners and if we keep talking about sin we will only succeed in drawing this world’s losers. The fact is that heaven doesn’t throw parties for winners, but losers; those who are eager to lose their sins in Jesus’ outrageous, irrational mercy and forgiveness. So if that’s you, a lost, despised, miserable sinner – then step forward confidently, because Jesus has fixed this meal just for you. Amen.

[1] Edersheim, Alfred The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (U.S.: Hendrickson Publishers) 652

[2] https://carm.org/joyce-meyer "I am not poor. I am not miserable and I am not a sinner. That is a lie from the pit of hell. That is what I were and if I still was then Jesus died in vain. I'm going to tell you something folks. I didn't stop sinning until I finally got it through my thick head I wasn't a sinner anymore. And the religious world thinks that's heresy and they want to hang you for it. But the Bible says that I am righteous and I can't be righteous and be a sinner at the same time." (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dmHJdM63hk)

Luke 14:25-33 - But (Whose) Counting - September 29, 2019

“But who’s counting?” Usually you hear that phrase spoken in a sarcastic and passive aggressive tone. For example, your spouse might say, “I’ve washed the dishes five times this week to your zero…but, hey, who’s counting?” (Obviously, someone is!) Your boss may say “that’s the 3rd day in a row you’ve been late…but who’s counting?” Or one of the ladies in the kitchen back there may look at you and say “this is the fifth time you’ve come up for seconds…but who’s counting?” That’s the way this phrase is normally used: passive aggressively, to subtly expose someone’s failure. But today we’re going to steal that phrase and change it a bit. Instead of asking it passive aggressively, we’re going to ask it honestly: whose counting? The cost of discipleship needs to be counted and paid. But, who does the counting and paying for you and I to be disciples of Jesus?

Like last week, I will ask you today: if you were simply reading this at home, what would you understand Jesus to be saying in this lesson? What would your takeaway be? I am willing to bet that you would hear this lesson through the lens of the third use of the law. The third use of the law is as a guide – to show Christians how they ought to live out of gratitude for everything God has done for us in Christ. If you read this text through that lens, you wind up hearing Jesus saying that if you don’t hate your family, carry your cross, calculate the full cost of a lifetime of following Jesus, fight and win the battle against your spiritual enemies, and give up everything you have – and do it perfectly, you can’t be his disciple, and, obviously, you can’t be saved. If that were your takeaway this morning, would you even waste your time trying? Honestly, I’m not sure I would, because it sounds pretty impossible.  

Please don’t misunderstand. I’m not denying the legitimacy of using God’s Law as a guide. The Bible itself establishes and validates this use. Psalm 119 says your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path (Psalm 119:105). Paul was applying the Law in its third use when he appealed to Philemon to take Onesimus back as a brother in faith (Philemon 8-10). The third use of the Law is like a set of “how to” instructions. It’s like when you buy a piece of furniture from IKEA and at first you think, “Instructions, who needs instructions?” And then six hours later you finally and shamefully pick up the instructions and figure out which pieces go where. C. S. Lewis compared the third use of the Law to stepping onto a firm road surface after being bogged down in a muddy field. [1]

And in that sense, like a clear set of instructions or a firm place to walk, the third use of the Law does provide precious and necessary guidance and relief to Christians in this life. It lights a path through the darkness of this world. It teaches us how to live and think and act. It clearly defines right and wrong, good and evil in a world which is lost in a maze of gray areas. But because there’s a little part of us that imagines that it’s up to us to earn God’s favor – and the Bible is the ‘how-to’ guide, we are tempted to read these words that way. Here’s Jesus’ guide for discipleship: first, hate your family; then, pick up your cross and follow me. And if that’s the way you understand these words then you would rightly expect worship to be a spiritual pep rally where we chant “Onward Christian Soldiers” and the role of the sermon is to verbally smack you on the butt and tell you to get out there and win one for the gipper. For those who would have that interpretation of this text, the main objective of the Church is to tell people how to build a Christian life and how to win on the spiritual battlefield. But is that what Jesus is really saying here? No.

The first tip-off is in the very first verse: large crowds were following Jesus. As we learned in confirmation class, the third use of the Law is only for believers, not unbelievers. The second tip-off comes in the two parables. He’s telling potential disciples to sit down and consider whether they have what it takes before they make the commitment, not after. Jesus is not using the law in its third use but its first use. Not as a guide but as a mirror. If counting the cost of discipleship and salvation is up to you and me – then Jesus is telling us what it will cost and demanding that we examine ourselves to see if we can pay the price.  

So let’s be very clear: if you want to follow Jesus under your own power to heaven, this is what you must do, without fail, for a lifetime. First, if anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters – yes, even his own life – he cannot be my disciple. You must not allow anyone in your family, at any time or for any reason  come before Jesus in your life. Neither their words nor their decisions nor their lifestyles can ever lead you to doubt God’s Word, falter in your faith or fall into sin. You must fear God’s wrath more than your spouse’s rage or your child’s temper tantrum. You must love your relationship with God more than your relationship with your siblings. You must trust God’s Word more than your own wisdom, skill, experience, and emotions – when it doesn’t make sense, when it’s hard, when it’s unpopular, and yes, even when it doesn’t feel right. But that’s not even the hardest part. You must hate your own life. You must be ready and willing to sacrifice anything: your job, reputation, health, wealth – yes, even life itself if faithfulness to Jesus demands it. Sound daunting? It is. Which is why Jesus continues: anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. Today we fashion bright and shiny crosses to decorate our homes and hang around our necks. But in the Roman Empire, the cross had only one purpose: to kill. That’s Jesus’ point here. If you want to follow him you must put to death everything that belongs to your sinful flesh: your thoughts and feelings and desires and pleasures – yes even your natural affection for your family and your close attachment to your life. All of it must die. The specifics will be different for each of us, but one thing remains the same: Jesus expects you to carry this cross – without question and without complaining. So the question is: having counted that cost, are you even going to start building the tower? Are you going run onto the battlefield or surrender before the battle’s even begun? Are you capable of being Jesus’ disciple?

If the third use of the Law is like stepping onto solid ground, then the first use of the Law is like a knife through the heart. It kills everyone it touches. It exposes the sins in my heart and life that I would rather not see. We could read these words every day of our lives and we still wouldn’t be able to carry out these demands, would we? How many times have we determined to build a magnificent tower of a Christian life – only to realize that we don’t have the resources to complete it? That our desire to keep our words and thoughts pure goes out the window the moment we get on the Beltline or step into the office? How many times have we resolved to be different, promised to never do that again, sworn to try harder, be better, make the right decisions? How many unfinished towers are lying in ruins in our past? How many things were we “going to do” for Jesus that never even got started? And what does our record on the spiritual battlefield look like? How many times have we said that we’re not going to let the devil, the world, or the flesh trick us this time – only surrender and declare peace with them by giving in to temptation? Even more damning, how many times have I left the altar, having received the body and blood which my Savior gave up and shed for me on his cross for the forgiveness of my sins, and never really, seriously intended to amend my sinful life? How many times have we left God’s house with the sentiment of the Saint Augustine: “Lord, make good, make me obedient, make me actually live as your disciple, but not yet; not today”? [2] Yes, if I read these words as a guide, then there’s always hope for me, I can always do better tomorrow (which is why we’re drawn to that interpretation). But if I read them the way my Lord intended me to – as a mirror – all hope is dashed. Jesus can tell me “how to” be his disciple until his kingdom comes and I still wouldn’t be able to actually do it. I might be able to count the cost of discipleship, but I certainly can’t pay it.

So what do we do? We give up. Yes, seriously, we give up. Isn’t that what Jesus said in the last verse: any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple. (He’s not talking about your possessions, but everything, including your determination to follow Jesus and all the blood, sweat and tears you’re willing to put into discipleship – because everything you have will never be enough!) I believe the main reason so many people misread these words is that there is an altogether false definition of what it means to be a “disciple” among Christians today. The tendency is to think that a “disciple” is someone who does what Jesus commands. Is that true? If it is, who here qualifies? Who does everything that Jesus commands? No, a disciple is not someone who does everything Jesus commands but rather believes what Jesus has done. The example of Mary and Martha says it all: Martha is gently scolded for wanting to do something for Jesus while Mary is commended for doing nothing but listening to Jesus (Luke 10:38-42).

Give up trying to follow Jesus under your own power and listen to the good news of what he has done for you. Sometime in the hidden depths of eternity Jesus sat down and counted the cost of saving damned humanity (Ephesians 1:4). Jesus calculated what it would take to save the unsaveable, to redeem the unredeemable, to take people that were fit only for hell and make them suitable for heaven. What was that cost? Doesn’t Jesus spell it out for us in our lesson? Did Jesus hate his family? Well, he left his Father at the throne of heaven and abandoned his mother at the cross because he loved you more. His family called him crazy (Mark 3:21) and his own brothers didn’t believe in him (John 7:5) – but that didn’t deter him from carrying out his work of redemption. Did Jesus hate his own life? Well, he had no reputation, no friends he could count on, no place to lay his head (Matthew 8:20) and soldiers divided up his only earthly possessions in the shadow of his cross (John 19:23-24) – he certainly didn’t place much value on his life compared to yours and mine. Jesus shouldered a cross that was heavier than just wood – it was weighted down with our sins, our guilt, our shame, our repeated failures to take up our crosses and follow him. Jesus stepped onto the battlefield against enemies that seemed to have him outnumbered and overpowered – sin, death and the devil – and he refused to surrender, even though the devil repeatedly offered him the easy way out (Matthew 4:1-11). Jesus gathered up his infinite resources as the Son of God and built the only tower that reaches to heaven. Yes, Jesus counted the cost of our discipleship and knew that it would cost him nothing less than his life – a price he willingly paid. Jesus did what we could never do: he counted the cost and paid the price for us to be his disciples – to follow him through life and death to heaven.

If you want to be a disciple, then give up. Give up the idea that discipleship is all about what you do: you getting better, working harder – and everything that belongs to that mindset: your determination, your pride, your power, your self-righteousness. You can never build the tower of a Christian life; that’s the whole reason Jesus came to earth: to build it for you. That’s what Luther meant when he paraphrased Psalm 46 and wrote a mighty fortress is our God (CW 200:1). When you think it’s all about you and your effort – you do not qualify as a disciple. In fact, true disciples do just the opposite, they retreat regularly to the fortress Jesus built. When you run back to your Baptism, the fortress gates open for you because you bear the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit (Proverbs 18:10). When you run to hear the Absolution which offers you forgiveness for your sins, you’re taking shelter inside the mighty fortress of God’s grace. When you run to Holy Communion you run into a tower built of Jesus’ sacrificial body and blood. And no big bad wolf, no, not even the gates of hell (Matthew 16:18) can ever blow this tower down.

So if you want to be a disciple of Christ, there’s really only one thing you have to do. Give up. Give up thinking that Jesus died for your salvation but left the rest up to you. Give up the illusion that you can pay the high price of discipleship yourself. Stop trying to defeat sin, death and the devil with your own paltry resources and strength. You can’t do it – and neither can I. We can’t even imagine the cost of discipleship, much less pay it. Thank God that Jesus both counted the cost and paid it in full by his life, death and resurrection. This is the only counting left for us to do: count Christ as your substitute, your righteousness, your Lord and your Savior – because that, that faith, is what makes you his disciple. Amen.

[1] Lewis, C.S. Reflections on the Psalms (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2017) 72

[2] https://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/augconf/aug08.htm (The above is a liberal paraphrase of “Give me chastity and continency, only not yet.”

Luke 14:1-14 - The Great Reversal in God's Kingdom - September 22, 2019

If we didn’t have a sermon this morning, if we just said “amen” and moved on with the service, what would your take-away be from this text? What is it about? Is it about showing kindness and mercy to the sick – like Jesus did to this poor man with dropsy? Is it about proper party etiquette? So that if you’re attending a Packer’s party this afternoon you shouldn’t sprint for the comfiest chair or if you’re hosting one, that you shouldn’t invite your family and friends but the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind? Or is the moral of the story that if you’re proud sooner or later you will be humbled but that if you’re humble, sooner or later you will be exalted? The fact that we aren’t really sure what we should take from these verses is telling. It tells us that we might have skipped right over a key detail in verse 7: that this illustration of the wedding feast was a parable – an earthly story with a spiritual meaning. It tells us that we tend to read Scripture through the lens of the law (this is about something I need to do) rather than through the lens of the Gospel (this is about what God has done). Most of all, it tells us that we have a really hard time seeing things from God’s perspective – because that’s really what this text is about. This text is not really about table manners or hosting dinner parties – it’s about how in God’s kingdom everything is upside down, backwards, reversed from the way of this world. In God’s kingdom, there is a great reversal.

The parable is told in the context of a dinner party thrown by a Pharisee on the Sabbath day – a regular occurrence in those days. We see a great reversal already in the first six verses. The Pharisees had seated Jesus in the most humiliating seat possible, next to a man suffering from dropsy. (Dropsy was a disease that caused bodily swelling and disfigurement and made a person ceremonially unclean (Leviticus 21:16-23).) But Jesus turned the tables. He exalted his position of humility by healing this poor man – something which left those in the seats of honor speechless. As the meal continued, Jesus noticed the tendency of the guests to choose places of honor at the table. Given that these were Pharisees, we’re not really surprised by this. From Jesus’ depiction of the Pharisee proudly praying in the temple (Luke 18:9-14) to his blunt assessment in Matthew that Pharisees love the place of honor at banquets (Matthew 23:6) – the Gospels portray the Pharisees as a proud, self-exalting bunch.

Now in and of itself, there’s nothing eternally important about where you sit at a dinner party – or anywhere, even church, for that matter. But how you behave with others, how you rank yourself does often expose the hidden thoughts of the heart. It is a sign of how you rank yourself in God’s eyes. And that’s what Jesus is driving at in this parable. When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, for a person more distinguished than you may have been invited. If so, the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, ‘Give this man your seat.’ Then, humiliated, you will have to take the least important place. But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, ‘Friend, move up to a better place.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all your fellow guests. Think of a wedding. If you’re not in the bridal party, if you’re not immediate family, if you’re only a cousin, a second cousin, a second cousin once removed, and you try to take a seat at the head table, the bride is going to stare daggers at you and none-too-gently tell you that your seat is back there, way back there, next to the restrooms. If you were to attempt such a thing at a wedding today, all you’d earn for yourself is embarrassment.

But here Jesus is teaching us about something far more important than proper etiquette at weddings. He is teaching us about the kingdom of God. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus compares the kingdom of God to a wedding feast. Why? A few reasons stand out. First, a wedding is probably the biggest celebration in almost any culture, filled with family and friends, food and drink, laughing and dancing. Second, since you must be invited, attendance at a wedding is a privilege not a right. Third, and best of all, is that you get to eat and drink – and some other poor sap has to pick up the tab! This, Jesus says, is what the kingdom of God is like. It’s an incredible celebration. Attendance is a privilege, not a right. And, the best part is that for us, it’s completely free!

The question is, when it comes to the grand wedding feast in the Kingdom of God, how do you approach it? With what attitude do you walk into this party? Will you barge in like a Pharisee, acting like you’re doing the host a favor by showing up, acting like you own the place, acting like you deserve to be there? And don’t make the mistake of thinking that this is just about how you are to walk through the pearly gates when you die. The kingdom of God is not merely a future reality; God is reigning among us right here and right now. This has everything to do with how you approach the foretaste of heaven’s feast that we call divine worship – because the attitude with which you approach God’s house now is the same attitude with which you will approach the banquet in heaven. No, it’s not really about where you sit – it’s about your heart. What’s in your heart as you enter God’s house? Do you drive by all the people walking their dogs and prepping their boats and mowing their lawns and puff out your chest a little bit, thinking “God, I thank you that I am not like these people (Luke 18:11). I go to church!” Do you take time before worship to examine your heart, to meditate on the Scripture lessons, to think about what we are really doing here? Do you approach confession and absolution with a clear understanding of your personal need for forgiveness, or do we sometimes say the words without really thinking about them? Do we ever think that worship is where we serve God instead of where God serves us? Or, most subtle of all, do we think that going to church somehow earns us a seat in God’s kingdom? If we do, then we have become Pharisees, legalists, people who think that seats in God’s kingdom are earned rather than freely given. If we approach God’s house with proud and presumptuous hearts, then God will humble us.

Because there’s more going on here than meets the eye. When you step through those doors you are willfully and intentionally stepping into the presence of the all-knowing and all-powerful God. You are stepping into his house, his temple, his courtroom. You are coming into the presence of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell (Matthew 10:29). And I would be doing you a huge disservice if I didn’t tell you what you look like when you show up. It’s not what you saw when you looked in the mirror before you left your house. God is not impressed with how well-dressed you are, how big the offering is in your envelope, how faithfully you’ve attended in the past, or how well-behaved your children are. Oh, that may be how we judge each other – but the LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart (1 Samuel 16:7). What’s in your heart this morning? How did you enter into God’s presence? Do you regard it as a right or a privilege?

Last week we left here cleansed by the body and blood of Jesus from sin and with his blessing. What have you done with those gifts this past week? Have you kept your heart pure in thought, word and deed? Have you daily humbled yourself before God’s throne and treated others as better than yourself? Or has pride gotten the better of you? Have you proudly imagined that you are such a good Christian that you don’t need to study your Bible on your own? Have you found yourself demanding that others – coworkers, spouse, children – serve you rather than the other way around? Does it concern you that you are standing before the God who demands nothing less than perfection (Matthew 5:48), and that you don’t come close? If we really understood what we looked like to God, we wouldn’t treat worship so casually, we wouldn’t act like it’s merely an opportunity to catch up with friends, we would approach the throne of the Almighty with fear and trembling – and if we fail to do so, it reveals a proud and deluded heart. It reveals that we really aren’t so different from those Pharisees who imagined that they deserved the position of honor and glory – even in the presence of the Son of God. So let me ask you again: how do walk through those doors? With what attitude are you going to approach the One who can either save or destroy your soul (James 4:12)? Do we have any right to be here? We are no one. We are nothing – less than nothing – for we are mere dust and ashes (Genesis 18:27). Even our good works are nothing but filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6). We are not here to give anything to God – as if he needed anything from us anyway (Acts 17:25). If we approach God’s presence with pride-filled hearts, we will be humiliated.

Are you ready for the great reversal? The great reversal is that when we finally realize that, when God has shown us the ugly truth about ourselves in the mirror of the Law, when he has brought us to confess our unworthiness and sin, then we are ready to be here, in the presence of God at his wedding feast. That’s the great reversal Jesus is teaching us about in this text. In fact, the whole Gospel can be distilled into a great reversal, a great exchange. On our own we are nothing but dust in God’s eyes – and so Jesus left heaven and made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness (Philippians 2:7). We all have a sinful tendency to exalt ourselves and tear others down, so Isaiah foretold that the almighty Son of God would allow himself to be despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not (Isaiah 53:3). Jesus, the King of kings and Lord of lords, allowed himself to be sentenced to crucifixion by one of his own subjects (John 19:11). Jesus, the sinless Son of God, took on himself the burden of our sin – our pride and arrogance included – and took our place under God’s wrath. Jesus, the only one who truly deserved to sit at heaven’s banquet, descended into the depths of hell to pay for our sins – so that we never would. Jesus took our sin so that we could have his righteousness. He took our place under God’s wrath so that we could have his place in God’s Kingdom. He died so that we might live. And because he rose again in exalted glory three days later – we can be sure that this great reversal, this great exchange has been completed once and for all. We can stand here in God’s holy presence and fully expect to find a seat waiting for us at heaven’s banquet – not because we’ve always been humble and generous but only because God turned everything upside down: he humbled his Son to the point of death so that we might be exalted to heaven’s eternal glory.

Many churches like to advertise that they only welcome sinners – but very few actually practice what they preach (I think this is especially apparent when you visit their websites and notice them bragging about how much they do for the poor and needy in the community on their websites – bragging is hardly humility). Jesus makes it clear today only humble, penitent sinners will be welcomed into heaven’s banquet. If you think you can come storming in like a Pharisee, like you own the place, like deserve to be there – the only person you’re deceiving is yourself (1 John 1:8), and you will be humiliated. But, if you come with fear and trembling, with the attitude that you don’t deserve to be there, with the humble confession that you are what God says you are: a sinner, undeserving of anything but wrath – then I have some really good news for you! This is the place for you. Here Jesus takes you by the hand through Word and Sacrament and says to you friend, move up to a better place. Here Jesus invites you to sit in his seat of honor and dine on the feast he purchased with his blood. It’s a great reversal. In this world the proud are exalted and the humble humiliated. But in God’s Kingdom the proud are humbled and the humble are exalted. May God grant us the humility to believe that the only ones who will find a seat at his eternal feast are those who confess in faith that they don’t deserve it. In Jesus’ name. Amen. 

Luke 13:22-30 - Wrong Question; Right Answer - September 15, 2019

It’s generally accepted as an undisputed and unchanging truth. You hear it repeated everywhere from elementary school classrooms to doctor’s and financial advisor’s offices, and you may have even heard it in church. What is this unchanging, undisputed truth? “There are no stupid questions.” You’ve heard that before, right? Is that true? Are there no “stupid” questions? There are stupid questions. There are questions that should not be asked. There’s one in our text. Jesus is teaching his way through towns and villages on his way to Jerusalem telling them that he must be betrayed and abandoned by his friends, abused and wrongly accused by the church and executed by the state in order to pay for the sins of the world. And yet, even as Jesus is proclaiming the saving Gospel, someone from the crowd, someone who undoubtedly thought he was pretty clever, asks: Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?

Now, you may be thinking, “what’s wrong with that question? I’ve been wondering that myself.” In fact, people love to ask questions like this in Bible class, questions with no obvious answer, questions that make them appear to be deeply wise and theological, questions they hope will stump the pastor. It’s a popular question, no doubt. But it’s a bad question. Why? First, because it reveals a sinful preoccupation with the salvation of others. Like other questions in this same vein: “What about people who never had a chance to hear the Gospel, God wouldn’t send them to hell, would he?” God has never commanded us to worry about the salvation of the nameless, faceless people we will never meet. He consistently tells us to take advantage of our own time of grace (Psalm 32:6; Isaiah 55:6; Philippians 2:12-13). Second, it’s a bad question because it is an attempt to uncover the hidden will of God. God has revealed everything we need to know in his Word. If he hasn’t revealed it, it’s something he doesn’t want us to know. And we should accept that. In fact, we just get ourselves into trouble if we don’t. Remember Adam and Eve? God chose not to reveal to them the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:17). But that wasn’t good enough for them. They tried to peer into the hidden will of God by eating of the forbidden fruit and instead of finding wisdom and knowledge they wound up finding guilt and shame, sin and death instead. Third, and most importantly, questions like this tend to turn repentance and faith, which are to be intensely personal things, into mere abstract, theoretical ideas. This question makes heaven and hell seem like imaginary places. This question reveals a prideful and presumptuous heart; one which thinks he is clearly “in”, but is curious about how many others there will be.

How do you deal with stupid questions? With the Law. This person wanted to ask hypothetical questions about other people; so Jesus points the razor edge of the sword back at him. (Literally: “YOU”) Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able. “You asked about others, when you should be worried about yourself. Are you sure you will be saved?” And to maximize the impact, Jesus shows us what lies outside that door once it shuts. You will stand outside knocking and pleading…there will be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth. Jesus does here what the Holy Spirit chose not to do in Genesis. Genesis 7 does not describe the gut-wrenching scene outside the closed door of the ark as thousands of people pound on the door until their knuckles bleed as the flood waters rise around their necks. We don’t hear their anguished screams, the cries for a second chance. We don’t see the torrential rain sweeping them away, one by one, to certain death. As bad as that must have been, the scene on Judgment Day will be even worse. Not only will they face an eternity of torture, they will see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrown out.

Jesus closes with a statement that Martin Luther described as enough “to frighten the greatest saints.” [1] Indeed there are those who are last who will be first, and first who will be last. In other words, don’t get cocky. Don’t think that just because you’ve been baptized and confirmed, because you give your offerings and read your Bible that you can sit back and set the cruise control to heaven. Continue making every effort to enter through the narrow door, which doesn’t leave time for foolish hypothetical questions about others. If you’ve ever flown on an airplane, you’re familiar with this concept. During the safety speech, what does the flight attendant tell you to do if the oxygen masks drop out of the ceiling? First secure your mask and make sure it is functioning before you worry about anyone else. Otherwise, you both might end up dead. If these words seem startling and uncomfortable – that’s because they are. They are cold, hard Law. They are intended to shake us out of our complacency and force us to ask the hard questions: If those who appear to be first in line to heaven can be lost, where does that leave me? Am I going to be saved?

That’s a very good question. That’s the question we should be asking. But where do we even start? With Jesus’ words. Jesus says that there’s a door through which people can pass in order to be saved. Yes, it’s a narrow door, and many will try to enter and will not be able to, but there is a door into the kingdom and it’s open…for now. The day will come when that door is shut and locked forever – but today – as long as the Gospel is being preached and you’re still alive to hear it – that door stands open.

To whom is this door open? Well, to whom did Jesus extend the invitation as he was teaching and preaching in the towns and villages of Israel? Did he call to the proud and self-righteous? No, he said come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest (Matthew 11:28). Are you wearied by your sin and burdened with guilt? Then Jesus’ invitation is for you. Yeah, but only perfect people can go to heaven, and I’m not perfect. That’s right, but remember what John said when he saw Jesus? Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). Are you in the world? Then Jesus took away your sins. Yeah, but certainly Jesus expects us to be getting better, to sin less and do more good, to get into heaven? That’s not what Paul said, Paul said here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners – of whom I am the worst (1 Timothy 1:15). Do you get the picture? The door to heaven is open, not to prideful, presumptuous, self-righteous people – but only to confessed sinners. Yes the door is narrow because there is only one door. But Jesus is this one door – and the sacrifice he offered on the cross has opened the door wide enough for a whole world of sinners to fit through – including sinners like us.

If that’s true, then why did some people think they were “in” only to find themselves locked out? Those who said we ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets. Why did they hear I don’t know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers! (This translation doesn’t clearly convey their precise argument. They’re not saying that they ate and drank with Jesus but in his presence. In other words, they had an external, superficial relationship with Jesus, but that’s as far as it went.) You know the type, don’t you? The type who wants nothing to do with the church until the time comes for a baptism, wedding, or funeral – then they insist that the church open its doors, as if that somehow opens up heaven. The type that thinks coming to church on Christmas and Easter makes you a Christian. But it can also be the type who sit right there in those chairs week after week and say all the right words but don’t really mean it; who come merely out of habit, not because they desperately need forgiveness, who imagine that somehow, every single sermon is aimed at other people and not themselves. People like that believe what the evildoers in our text believed: that salvation comes by proximity, that merely being in the presence of Jesus is enough to gain you entrance into his kingdom on the last day.

The fact is that being in Jesus’ presence doesn’t make you special – any more than breathing air does. Jesus is present everywhere (Jeremiah 23:23-24). There is nowhere anyone can escape his presence (Psalm 139:7-10). But salvation doesn’t come by merely being in Jesus’ presence. Salvation is attached to the body of Jesus hung on a cross and the blood of Jesus shed to cover sins. Jesus doesn’t tell us to eat and drink in his presence but to eat and drink his body and blood (Matthew 26:26-28), to believe in him (John 6:36), to be saved. Jesus made this point explicit to some of the 5000 people he had miraculously fed with just a few fish and loaves of bread. They believed that because they had eaten in Jesus’ presence, they were set. But Jesus dashes this fantasy to pieces: I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day (John 6:53-54). The door to heaven is narrow, impossibly narrow for anyone bloated with unforgiven sins or hauling the baggage of self-righteousness to enter. But the door to heaven must open for all who have become small by laying their sins at the foot of Jesus’ cross and placing their faith in his merits. That’s repentance. That’s what Jesus is driving at when he says [continue] mak[ing] every effort to enter through the narrow door. Continue repenting, continue believing in Jesus for forgiveness. Continue struggling against the devil, the world and your own sinful flesh that would have you think that only others need to repent. Repent and believe and step through Jesus, the narrow door to heaven.

This text began with a fundamentally foolish question: are only a few people going to be saved? It’s foolish because it comes from a heart of pride and presumption. It’s stupid because it tries to pry into the hidden knowledge of God – knowledge that God doesn’t want us to have. But did you notice what entrance into the kingdom depends on? Those locked out claimed to know Jesus, but what does he tell them not once, but twice? I don’t know you. Entrance into heaven doesn’t depend on whether you know Jesus…it depends on whether Jesus knows you. If you are really concerned about your salvation, that’s the all-important question: does Jesus know you? How can you be sure? Well, if Jesus has called you by name in Baptism, then he knows you. If you have heard Jesus’ spokesman say to you: “I forgive you all your sins” then he knows you, but he doesn’t know your sins. If Jesus gives you his body to eat and his blood to drink – I’d say it doesn’t get more intimate than that.

Do you see why we place such a huge emphasis on the means of grace – the Gospel in Word and Sacrament – here? Those are the only means, the instruments, through which Jesus gets to know you, to wash away your sins, to cover you with his righteousness so that you can be certain that the narrow door to heaven will be open for you. I don’t think we can overstate how comforting it is that our salvation doesn’t depend on how much we know – or think we know, but rather on how well Jesus knows us. Newborn infants can’t confess their faith – but Jesus welcomes them into his arms and blesses them – he knows them (Mark 10:16). There are times in all of our lives when we forget all about Jesus, we stray from the narrow path, and we can start to think that he could never forgive us for what we’ve done, we can begin to think that we are beyond saving – but even then Jesus is thinking about us, praying on our behalf: Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing (Luke 23:34). Perhaps most important of all, the day may come when we don’t know our spouse, our children, or what year it is. Even then, Jesus says I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep…I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand (John 10:14, 28). Does Jesus know you? Continue making every effort to hear his Word, to receive his forgiveness, to eat and drink his body and blood at this table – and you can be absolutely positive that Jesus, the narrow door, knows you.  

Forget about asking foolish, theoretical questions regarding things that God doesn’t want you to know. Don’t worry about how many will be saved, that’s God’s concern, not yours. Instead ask the important question: am I going to be saved? And cling to the answer: Jesus has died for your sins, Jesus has called you by name in Baptism, cleansed you with his absolution, and given his very body and blood to you to eat and drink – he knows you, he claims you, he is the only door, the narrow door to heaven for you. Yes, one day this door will slam shut forever. So don’t wait, repent and believe today, because today this door is open to you. Amen.

[1] Lenski, Interpretation of St. Luke’s Gospel (Columbus, Ohio: The Wartburg Press. 1946) 755

1 Samuel 2:12-26 - How'd She Do That? - September 8, 2019

School has resumed and among the many things students may be learning about this year (if they’re still teaching history classes today) are the seven ancient wonders of the world. You remember what they are, right? No, me neither, because all but one have been destroyed. They are proof that man-made marvels just don’t stand the test of time. Is there anything you marvel at today? Anything that makes you go “how’d they do that?” Or have we become cynical, knowing that today’s marvels will be topped by tomorrow’s and none of them will really last? Did you know that there is one thing that is a perennial, perpetual marvel – not just in 2019 but in any year? Something truly rare and priceless? A faithful and active Christian young person. Now, I could recite some numbers from polls of religion in America detailing the loss of young people from the church, but I would argue that the best evidence is right here in this room: look around and see how few of the young people who were confirmed at this very altar still attend faithfully. Yes, a faithful Christian young person is a rare and precious modern marvel, and our text this morning puts one of the marvels before our eyes. The boy Samuel continued to grow in stature and in favor with God and with men. What parent wouldn’t love to have their child described in those terms? And so the question is: how did Hannah do that?

I’m fairly certain if we were to go around the room and ask the question: “what’s the secret to successful parenting?” there would be as many answers as there are people. Why would that be? Well, because in today’s world most people today see child-raising as a matter of personal preference. “You raise your kid the way you want to and I’ll do it my way and don’t you dare question or criticize how I do it.” Is that true? Are we free to raise our children however we want? God doesn’t seem to think so. Train up a child in the way he should go (Proverbs 22:6), he says, not whichever way you think is best. “Ah, but that’s just a dusty old proverb, and no one even knows what it means.” We learn what Proverbs 22:6 means by comparing and contrasting the interwoven stories of Hannah’s and Eli’s sons. 

The Lord first directs our attention to Eli’s sons: Hophni and Phinehas. Eli’s sons were wicked men; they had no regard for the LORD. Literally, the Hebrew says that “they did not know the Lord” – they didn’t believe in him. That’s every Christian parent’s nightmare, right? And their unbelief manifested itself in their lives. Apparently Eli had adopted a very progressive style of parenting – he allowed them to live however they wanted. And do you know what happened? That’s exactly what they did. They abused their positions as priests. They would steal the best part of the people’s sacrifices for themselves through threats of physical force (1 Samuel 2:16), and they slept with the women who served at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. Eli had raised two worthless, good-for-nothing, unbelieving sons. “That’s not very nice, who are you to judge another parent?” Fair enough. Here’s the Lord’s judgment: this sin of the young men was very great in the LORD’s sight.

Eli knew all about his sons’ lifestyles, and what did he do? Now Eli, who was very old, heard about everything his sons were doing to all Israel…So he said to them, “Why do you do such things? I hear from all the people about these wicked deeds of yours. No, my sons; it is not a good report that I hear spreading among the LORD’s people. If a man sins against another man, God may mediate for him; but if a man sins against the LORD, who will intercede for him?” Eli did what a parent should do, right? He confronted his wicked sons with their sins. Well, kind of. He griped and complained about their behavior, but he didn’t do anything about it. He just made empty threats. He seemed more concerned about his reputation among the people than his sons’ standing before God. Eli’s failure was aggravated by the fact that he wasn’t just a father, he was also the high priest. As high priest, he should have stripped them of their priesthood and excommunicated them until they repented. When Eli finally rebuked them, it was too little, too late. He had tolerated his son’s wicked lifestyles for so long that by the time he tried to correct them, their hearts had become callous and hardened. And because Eli had failed to discipline his sons, God decided to do it for him: it was the LORD’s will to put them to death. Yes, this is the same LORD who wants all people to be saved (2:4). But as a result of Eli’s failure to discipline his sons (Proverbs 13:24) and the resulting hardening of their hearts, God had run out of patience and ended their time of grace in judgment. (Not long after this both were killed in battle on the same day (1 Samuel 4:11)). Eli serves as a cautionary tale against failing to discipline children when they need it.

So much for the pastor’s kids, what about Hannah’s? What do we know about Hannah? We know that she and her husband faithfully visited the tabernacle to worship and offer sacrifices (1 Samuel 1:3). We know that Hannah was barren for many years but that she prayed persistently to the Lord for the gift of a son (1 Samuel 1:12-13). We know that she remained faithful even after the Lord granted her request: first, she named her son Samuel which sounds like the Hebrew for “heard by God.” Second, she kept her vow to give Samuel back to the Lord once he was weaned. (Can you imagine sending your five or six-year old away to study for the ministry?) Just as important, even when Samuel was already serving the Lord in the tabernacle at Eli’s side, Hannah knew that her job as parent wasn’t finished. Each year his mother made him a little robe and took it to him when she went up with her husband to offer the annual sacrifice. Even though Samuel was no longer under her roof, she still took responsibility for his spiritual welfare. She was hands-on. She supplied and supported and encouraged his work in the Word.

Two families. Both with the same advantages and opportunities – but drastically different outcomes. Why? Well, while Eli’s highest priority seemed to be maintaining his position and reputation among the people, what was the highest priority in Hannah’s life? If you guessed Samuel, you’d be wrong. Samuel was not Hannah’s #1 priority – and that’s what makes her such a fine example. (Children are gifts from God, but they are not little gods!) God was the highest priority in her life demonstrated by the fact that she kept her vow to give him back to the LORD. Hannah was willing to sacrifice everything, even the precious time with the son she had prayed and prayed for, because for both her and her son, God came first.

Do we do that? Do we teach our children that the highest priority in life is God? Make no mistake, theology class is in session every minute you spend with your children. What are we teaching them when we send them to Sunday school but skip Bible study ourselves, when we prioritize academic and athletic success over Christian education, when screen time replaces devotion time, when our Bibles sit on the shelf at home gathering dust, when we only pray as a family in crisis situations, when summer vacation means a vacation from worship? When push comes to shove in our busy lives and first thing to get shoved out is God and his Word – what do you think your children learn from that? Who or what will they think is “god”? And when that’s the case, why would we expect the outcome to be anything different than Eli’s sons? Parents – you – not their Sunday school teacher or pastor – are the primary connection to God’s Word in your child’s life! If you have neglected God’s Word in your home and life, it’s not just your sin anymore – you are also causing one of Jesus’ little ones to sin. You heard what Jesus said about that, right? If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. (Matthew 18:6)

Do we deserve to be wearing a millstone? I do. I’ve found it far too easy to prioritize other things before God in the lives of my sons. And I know how easy it is to rationalize bad priorities. It’s easy to assume that they’re too young to learn or imitate my bad behavior. It’s way easier to throw on a TV show than read a Bible story. We come to church regularly, why would we need to have a family devotion at home? Giving them what they want is a whole lot easier than disciplining them. I know how tempting it is to follow modern parenting methods rather than the way God has laid out in his Word. Just thinking about it feels like a millstone around my neck. The guilt and shame are unbearable. Thankfully God is a far better parent than I am – because when I come to him dragging my millstone of parental malpractice, do you know what he says? “Come now, let us reason together…though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool” (Isaiah 1:18) Parents – you need to hear this and take this to heart. Whether your child is 3, 33, or 53, your sins of parental malpractice are forgiven, cleansed, gone. That doesn’t mean they were no big deal – they were – but God does not hold them against you. That’s the biggest question of all: how could he do that? Like Hannah, he had to give up his one and only Son to do it. He hung the millstone of our sin around Jesus’ neck on the cross so that we could be forgiven. And in the end, that’s why God and his Word must be our top priority – not because his Law provides guidance for this life, though it does – but because his Gospel is the only thing that can open the door to eternal life. If we believe that children really are sinful from conception (Psalm 51:5) then what could possibly be more important in life than giving them every opportunity to receive the forgiveness of sins God’s only Son purchased with his own blood?

Now for the million dollar question: if I do that, spend the time and money to train up my child in the way he should go (Proverbs 22:6) will that guarantee that they will be faithful throughout their lives and saved on the Day of Judgment? We should know better than to ask questions like that. In the end, each person is accountable to God for their sin and their faith (Ezekiel 18:20). We cannot force anyone, not even our own children, to believe in Jesus as their Savior. But we can encourage them, we can train and discipline them, maybe most important – we can teach them by our own example to treasure God’s Word. We can remember that our job isn’t done once they’ve been confirmed. And, here’s perhaps the part that gets overlooked most often, we can recognize that the primary classroom for this training is not in those rooms over there. It’s on the couch as you choose which TV shows to watch and which to turn off. It’s in the car as your children hear the language you use towards other drivers. It’s in the kitchen as they learn about marriage from how mom and dad treat each other. It’s in the crowded restaurant where you lead them in giving thanks for the food God has provided. It’s in how you talk about your neighbors and coworkers and governmental leaders. It’s in the “Jesus forgives you and I forgive you” when they repent color on your walls or crash your car or mess up their lives as adults. The biggest lie the devil has sown regarding Christian education is that it’s something that happens for one hour a week in Sunday school. If we believe that, then we’ve already lost the battle. Christian education is a life-long process and the world is the classroom. We cannot force our children to be faithful to God, but we can be faithful trainers in God’s Word like Hannah.

So back to our initial question: how’d she do that? How did Hannah’s son grow in favor with the LORD while Eli’s fell under God’s judgment? Was it nature or nurture? How about neither? Here’s the secret. When Samuel was old enough Hannah dedicated him to the LORD (1 Samuel 1:28 EHV). The Hebrew word contains the same idea as the one translated train up in Proverbs 22:6. It’s the word used for dedicating something to the LORD (Deuteronomy 20:5; 1 Kings 8:63; 2 Chronicles 7:5). In other words, Hannah knew what every Christian parent should know: we can’t raise children the way they should be raised, that’s why we need to dedicate, entrust, give them to our good and gracious Father in heaven. It begins with baptism and Sunday school and confirmation class – but it doesn’t end there. It continues as the Word of God fills our hearts and our homes and our lives and is absorbed by the little sponges God has given us. As we said earlier, manmade marvels just don’t stand the test of time. But when you entrust your child to your heavenly Father’s care in in Word and Sacrament, don’t be surprised if people come to you and ask you: “what’s your secret? How did you do that?” And now you know the answer. “I didn’t. The LORD did.” Amen.

Genesis 15:1-6 - The Miracle of Faith - September 1, 2019

Have you ever thought about how impossible faith is? How there is really no good, demonstrable reason that we should believe anything the Bible says? How none of us have seen with our own eyes the people and events on which the Christian faith is based? If you stop and think about everything that is working against faith – it’s nothing short of miraculous that anyone living in 2019 has it. And so today we’re going to talk about the miracle of faith.

Our text for today relates a portion of the life of Abraham, or Abram, as he was still called. Scripture regularly presents Abraham as “the father of faith,” a prime example of someone who was sure of what [he hoped] for and certain of what [he did] not see (Hebrews 11:1). And the final verse of our text tells us why: Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness. Abraham believed God’s promises, staked his life and his eternity on them – and through this hand of faith God gave Abraham the righteousness that he needed to be saved from final judgment and receive the gift of eternal life. Through faith, God gave himself to Abraham as his shield and reward. This is also why for centuries Lutherans have claimed the motto of sola fide, “faith alone.” When we discuss true, biblical faith, we are not discussing some trivial element of Christianity, we aren’t talking about personal feelings and opinions, and God forbid we ever equate Christian faith with other so-called “faiths” in the world. When we talk about faith, we are talking about the one thing that can save sinners from God’s wrath, the one thing that divides the world into those who are saved and those who are damned forever. Because faith is so important and yet can sometimes seem to be some nebulous, indescribable thing, God has put Abraham forward as a living and breathing example of faith.

I’m not sure that Abraham would have been my first choice. Just think about everything that was working against him. Back in chapter 12, the Lord called him from out of the blue and told him to leave his family, leave his home and go to a land he had never seen. How quick would you be to pack up everything and leave based on literally nothing more than the promise of God? On top of that, the Lord told Abram that he would make him into a great nation – as innumerable as the stars in the sky (Genesis 15:5). And you know what obstacle stood in front of that promise, right? Abraham was 75 and his wife, Sarah, was 65 – and they had been childless the entire time. We’ve been blessed with lots of babies in recent years at Risen Savior, but none from mothers who were eligible for social security benefits. Certainly, by all appearances, the deck of reality was stacked against God’s promises.

From that perspective, the purely human perspective, there’s no way Abraham should have believed these wild promises. And at certain times, Abraham showed that he didn’t – at least not perfectly. He got impatient with God. He challenged God: you haven’t given me any children. He didn’t trust God’s plan or timeline. He tried to take matters into his own hands; sleeping with his wife’s servant to work around God (Genesis 16). Does that sound familiar? Do we ever get impatient with God – expecting him to act on our timetable – and when he doesn’t, to take matters into our own hands? But this is meant to comfort us. To show us that not even the “father of faith” was by any means the perfect believer – especially in the face of real, seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle believers face today in holding onto faith is that they’ve been led to believe the wrong thing, for example, that when you put your faith in God then life will automatically get better (that having faith is like having an all-powerful genie on your side to make life go according to plan). Perhaps more believers have fallen from faith in recent decades because they believed this lie than any other single reason. The truth is that faith is not a guarantee that your life will get better – in fact it means that you will face more challenges in your life than you otherwise would. Don’t be surprised by this, because Jesus didn’t say “take up your La-Z-Boy and follow me.” He said take up your cross and follow me (Luke 9:23).

Take another one of the heroes of faith found in Hebrews 11, Abel, for example. This is what God says about Abel: by faith Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did. By faith he was commended as a righteous man, when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith he still speaks, even though he is dead (Hebrews 11:4). Abel is a hero of faith. He’s still speaking to us. What is he saying? “There I was, minding my own business, bringing my offering to the Lord. But then my brother got jealous of me and one day he invited me to go out into his field and guess what happened! He killed me! That’s what I got for trusting the promises of the Lord!” Did God fail Abel? Absolutely not! He rescued him from this awful world where a man could do that to his brother. Sadly, Abel’s example is not unique. Throughout Bible and church history, the greatest challenge countless believers have faced have been the people closest to them. Again, the lesson is that we shouldn’t expect the life of faith to be smooth. In fact, we should expect just the opposite. But that doesn’t make it easy, does it? It still presents an obstacle because in those hard moments, the devil tempts us to believe that God isn’t good and doesn’t care about us and isn’t serious about keeping his promises.

What happens when those temptations come to you? What happens when God doesn’t come through for you in the way or in the time you expect? What happens to faith when your world comes crashing down around you and there’s no magical happy ending? When the biopsy comes back “malignant”? When you get laid off from work because they’re looking for someone younger and cheaper? When the pension or social security you were counting on fails? When your spouse says “I don’t love you anymore”? When the child you raised to fear and love the Lord decides to marry a Mormon or comes out as homosexual or attempts suicide? Has God failed? Is your faith shaken? And these aren’t just theoretical obstacles either, are they? Some of you are facing challenges like them right now.

And those are just some external obstacles. Think about the internal obstacles. So you say you believe that Jesus of Nazareth is really true God in the flesh and your Savior? Have you ever seen this Jesus guy? Have you seen any evidence of those fantastic miracles he’s said to have performed? Can you explain to me how a Jew dying as a criminal on a cross 2000 years ago has any impact on your life, much less wipes out everything you’ve ever done wrong? And then you believe that he rose from the dead? Tell me, when was the last time you saw somebody rise from the dead? You really believe all this? Do you see how impossible this faith thing really is? And yet, you believe. You’ve staked your life and your eternity on a man you’ve never met, who died as a convicted criminal on a cross because he supposedly escaped a sealed tomb and rose to life. There are only two options: either faith is a miracle – or we’re all crazy.  

Faith faces a huge test when we’re faced with obstacles like that – obstacles that seem to come with more frequency and ferocity as this world spirals down the drain to Judgment. And we need to be honest about these obstacles. It doesn’t do anyone any good to simply walk around with a stupid smile on our faces pretending that these challenges don’t exist. That kind of shallow, superficial faith will quickly wilt in the face of trials and temptations (Matthew 13:21). Faith has to be able to deal head-on with these challenges.

How? The first way is to recognize that that all of those obstacles – as real as they are – are only obstacles “humanly speaking.” These challenges are only insurmountable from our limited, human point of view. For Abraham to trust that he could find a safe home in a place he had never seen or heard of, that Sarah could bear a son post-menopause, and that one of his offspring would be the Savior of the world – was, indeed, impossible from his limited, human perspective. But we don’t talk about faith from a human point of view. Humanly speaking, faith in God’s promises is exactly what the world calls it: a foolish, unintelligent, delusional dream. But faith is not a matter of humans speaking; faith is a matter of God speaking – and that’s what really matters. Because when God speaks, all sorts of “impossible” things happen: everything comes from nothing (Genesis 1), highways appear in seas (Exodus 14), virgins give birth (Luke 2), and former pagans like Abraham believe! And that’s the real reason we call faith a miracle – not because you’ve got to be crazy, but because it’s God’s work from start to finish. And so when our faith is challenged, what do we need? More of God’s Word! Like Abraham, we need to hear God repeat his promises over and over to sustain our faith.

Faith is a miracle because faith is God’s work. For most of us, that miracle first happened in baptism – which is a beautiful picture of this. There at the baptismal font, God used nothing but his Word and some water to adopt us into his family, wash away our sins, plant the seed of faith and write our names in the book of life. That’s why, both the authors of the NT and faithful Christian teachers go back to baptism so frequently, especially in times of trouble. When your faith is tested and challenged, even by death itself, the very best thing to do is ask yourself: am I baptized? Did God promise me in that sacrament that he would never leave or forsake me (Hebrews 13:5)? Has he ever revoked or nullified that promise? Is there anything in this world that can separate me from the love of my God who is bigger than the world and whose grace is greater than any of my sins (Romans 8:38-39)?

Putting us into circumstances that make us ask those questions is how God exercises our faith. He puts obstacles into our lives in order to strengthen our faith, by forcing us back into his word and promises. Because in the end, faith is not an emotion, it’s not the mere knowledge of some Biblical facts, it’s not some vague belief in a generic “god.” The demons have that kind of faith (James 2:19). That’s not saving faith. Saving faith starts with a specific knowledge of what the one true God – the Father, Son and Holy Spirit – has said and promised in his Word (which is why, if you don’t know your Bible, you can’t really have faith!). Then, saving faith agrees with those words and promises. Faith agrees or confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, the Christ, that his death has wiped away the sins of the world, that he did, in fact, rise from the dead after three days and will return again to judge the living and the dead. And finally, saving faith trusts these things, making them personal. Saving faith trusts that Jesus loved me and gave himself for me (Galatians 2:20), that he is my shield from judgment, my very great, eternal reward. Saving faith is trust in the promises of God and saving faith recognizes that all of God’s promises find their center and their answer in Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 1:20).

This is faith that lasts. This is faith that is unshaken by challenges and obstacles because this faith is not rooted in me and my ever-changing circumstances but in God and what he has done for me in Christ – and that will never change, not even when this body and this world are destroyed (Isaiah 54:10). You will be tested, of that you can be sure – just like Abraham, just like the apostles, just like every saint who has gone before you. But this faith does the impossible: it trusts God’s promises in spite of challenging circumstances because it sees beyond the present to the ultimate, unshakeable proof of God’s goodness: the cross of Christ. The cross is the one thing you can, you must hold onto – because it will not move, even when the rest of life is falling apart around you.

Yes, this faith is a marvelous and miraculous thing. Not because you’ve got to be crazy to believe it, but because it is all God’s doing, from beginning to end, through his powerful Word. This miracle of faith will see you through every obstacle you face in life and by this faith you will be shielded and rewarded on the Last Day. If you haven’t in a while, take some time today to thank God for his miraculous, powerful gift of faith! Amen.

Ecclesiastes 1:2; 2:1-11, 17-26 - Chasing After the Wind - August 25, 2019

Have you ever tried to catch the wind? It’s impossible. Oh sure, you can catch some of the things carried by the wind: butterflies, mosquitoes, the common cold – but not the wind itself. But what about accomplishments, pleasures, wealth – have you ever chased after them, tried to grab on to them and store them up, thinking that at some point they will make you happy? In the Gospel Jesus taught that it doesn’t matter how big your barns are and how much stuff they are filled with – because when God comes for your soul, none of it will matter anyway (Luke 12). Our lesson from Ecclesiastes goes even further, claiming that apart from God all earthly pursuits are meaningless in view of death. Aren’t you glad you rolled out of bed this morning to hear that? The Lord loves us too much to let us chase the winds of this world now and learn the truth only when it’s too late, when our eternity is already determined.

“Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” Havel havelim [1], declares King Solomon. When Hebrew writers repeat a word, it’s a superlative; “the epitome of meaninglessness.” Emptiness. Nothing. Vapor. What is? Anything and everything; life itself. And if anyone would know, it would be Solomon – because he had it all and more – and yet, probably writing as an old man, he looks back and calls it all meaningless, as meaningless as chasing after the wind.

And while Solomon learned this hard lesson, each generation must learn it for itself – and in our generation, these are fighting words. Whether we realize it or not, we’ve been conditioned to evaluate life based on wealth, fame, power, beauty, accomplishment – and a host of other earthly measures. We’ve been taught to study hard so that you can get a good degree with which you can find a good job which will make you appealing to a good spouse who can help you find the perfect house in which to raise the perfect children until you enroll them in the ideal college and find them an ideal spouse – at which point you can crack open that giant nest-egg you worked so hard for in retirement, take life easy; eat, drink and be merry (Luke 12:19). It’s not a stretch to suggest that this is the American dream. But on a deeper level, this is the delusional dream spawned by our sinful nature – that true happiness is out there, just around the corner, you just need to find it and grab ahold of it. And it’s not going to let go of its dream easily. The sinful nature can’t be persuaded or converted – it must be killed. And that’s the job of the Law – to expose the sin that lives in our hearts and put it to death (Colossians 3:5). It’s an ugly and painful death – but it must be done to escape the hellish eternity which awaits all who set their hearts on earthly things. So, for the sake of your soul, listen as Solomon drains the life out of the American dream.

The first illusion to die is that of pleasure. I thought in my heart, “Come now, I will test you with pleasure to find out what is good.” But that also proved to be meaningless. “Laughter,” I said, “is foolish. And what does pleasure accomplish?” I tried cheering myself with wine, and embracing folly – my mind still guiding me with wisdom…I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure. “Work hard, party harder” is not just a saying found on T-shirts and bumper stickers, it’s the philosophy many live by. And it’s not new. The Lord condemned the Israelites for lounging on their ivory-embroidered beds and drinking wine by the bowlful (Amos 6:1-7) The Epicureans of Paul’s day lived by the motto let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die (1 Corinthians 15:32). The hedonistic, Hugh Hefner philosophy of chasing personal pleasure is attractive – the question is: does it work? Does it satisfy? You can fill your belly with the very best food and drink – and make no mistake, these are gifts from God (Psalm 145:15) – but if these gifts are enjoyed apart from thanksgiving to the Giver, then you’re no better than livestock; you’re simply a well-dressed food processor. Last night’s gourmet dinner amounts to nothing more than this morning’s hangover and heartburn. Well, sex then. Sex is satisfying, right? Not outside of the boundaries God has painted around marriage – color outside of these lines and all you get is loneliness and emptiness, broken hearts and broken families. Millennials are known for pursuing pleasurable “shared experiences” over accumulating “stuff” – thus the rise of adventure vacations, escape rooms, and Airbnb’s. Does it work? No, just like “stuff” there’s always one more adventure to have, one more niche restaurant to “experience” and one more exotic place your friends say “you just have to visit.” Chasing the wind of pleasure is just that: chasing after the wind.

Ok then, how about acquiring wealth? I undertook great projects: I built houses for myself and planted vineyards. I also owned more herds and flocks than anyone in Jerusalem before me. I amassed silver and gold for myself, and the treasure of kings and provinces. I acquired men and women singers, and a harem as well – the delights of the hearts of man. I became greater by far than anyone in Jerusalem before me. Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve…nothing was gained under the sun. Can piles of wealth give meaning to life? Jesus calls the person who believes that a fool who has forfeited his soul (Luke 12:20). Sooner or later, everyone realizes that death will rob you of every last penny you worked so hard for – that’s why hearses aren’t equipped with trailer hitches. But it’s far more important to see that wealth doesn’t bring happiness even when you’re alive. To the illusion that says “If I can only make enough to buy this, to find financial security, then I’ll be happy,” Solomon responds, “don’t bother, I’ve tried it, it doesn’t work.” Have you ever known anyone who earns enough? Who has saved enough? Has a car that is new enough? Gadgets that are cutting-edge enough? You build your own little kingdom only to have your children give it all away to Good-will. You might die a millionaire and be buried next to a beggar. It’s meaningless – a chasing after the wind.

Well, if it’s not the destination, then it must be the journey: life’s meaning must come from work. To this proposition, Solomon responds, what does a man get for all the toil and anxious striving with which he labors under the sun? All his days his work is pain and grief; even at night his mind does not rest. This too is meaningless. Ah, but that’s not what the American dream seductress whispers into your ear. She transforms the quiet wisdom of “work ethic” into the shrill scream of a slave-driver: “Work, work, work. Learn, earn, compete, build your resume, plan, sacrifice, worry, lose sleep, skip vacations, add hours, increase responsibility, climb the corporate ladder, scratch the right back, invest, buy low, sell high, save, risk, work, work, work!” After all this, your life will have meaning and fulfillment – right? Wrong! Solomon says that all the hours he worked, all the plans he made, after building a temple for the Lord and a palace for himself, all his toil brought him nothing more than greater stress and sleepless nights. And if you think his experience was unique, consider that 1 in 6 Americans take medication to combat depression and anxiety. [2] What will all your hard work amount to after you retire, after you hand it over to someone else who tears it all down and starts over? Nothing. Apart from God, even work is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

Depressing, isn’t it? It’s depressing to think that all your hard work, all the blood, sweat and tears you’ve spilled to acquire wealth and experience pleasure is nothing more than chasing after the wind. But it’s the soul-crushing truth. It’s why many people today struggle to summon the energy to get out of bed in the morning, why others just live for the weekend when they can drown their despair in parties and substances, why so many of us need the constant distraction of music, movies, and entertainment – anything to escape the dark, silent emptiness of life under the sun. That’s idolatry for you, and idolatry when viewed from that perspective is pretty horrifying, isn’t it? It’s dark and empty and meaningless. Idols consume their worshipers from the inside, leaving behind nothing but an empty shell. This is life without God, life without Christ at the center. Why? Because it’s not who you are. You are not the sum total of what you own and what you’ve done. You’re so much more than that. You were created by God, redeemed by God, adopted by God to live forever with God. And without God at the center of your life, your being, your identity, all you do and all you have under the sun is truly meaningless. But God offers us a better way. In spite of our futile attempts to find happiness apart from him, God graciously gives us a new way of life. He enables us to see beyond the horizon of life under this sun, to find the true meaning of life in his Son, Jesus.

In the final verses of our text, Solomon points us in the right direction: a man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment? Hang on, I thought Solomon just finished arguing that all work, pleasure and wealth is meaningless, now he says that there is nothing better than eating and drinking and working? Did you catch the key phrase? Without him – without God – no one will find contentment or happiness, but with him we can be joyful whether we are rich or poor, whether the meal is the chef’s special or Chef Boyardee, whether we are running our dream business or just counting the minutes to 5 o’clock. Because Jesus has redeemed this life by destroying the one thing that makes it all meaningless: death. He left his place at his Father’s right hand, he emptied himself of his glory and power as the Son of God, he became poor so that we might become rich (2 Corinthians 8:9). He despised all other earthly pursuits apart from his pursuit of your salvation; which led him to the cross where he willingly suffered the horrifying wrath of God and the miserable, meaningless death and hell we deserved for our sins of greed, idolatry, gluttony and lust. The blood he shed won for us the greatest treasure of all: the forgiveness of sins. When you have this treasure, then death is not the end, but the beginning of true life. When you have this treasure you can be certain that you will pass the test on the night God calls for your life – because you have Christ and his righteousness. Through baptism this treasure is yours – which means that you don’t have to chase your best life now because your best life is still to come, when you will finally be free from sin and the futility of chasing the wind of meaning in this life.

And therein lies the secret to a meaningful life here and now. The secret is not having a better life now, but rather a better perspective on life. Knowing that Jesus has secured the eternal riches of heaven for you – frees you to actually enjoy life now. While the unbelieving world tries to squeeze meaning out of pleasure, wealth and work, believers understand that the good things of this life are just that: things of this life – to be used, enjoyed, and, eventually, left behind; just like the wind. Don’t fall for the lie that happiness is something that lies just over the horizon, after just a little more work and a few more years of saving (when you’ve moved into your dream house, bought the perfect car, brought the baby home, gotten the promotion or pay-raise, or finally reached retirement) – because if you do, you won’t just find yourself perpetually disappointed – you will miss the wonderful gifts God has already given you. Instead see that the meaning of the pleasure and wealth and work you have today lies in the simple fact that the God who created and redeemed you has given it to you for your enjoyment – nothing more and nothing less.

The meaning of life isn’t the sum total of the pleasure we’ve experienced, the wealth we’ve acquired or the hard work we’ve completed. The meaning of life is that God has loved us so much that he gave us life, gave us his Son, gave us faith to believe in him, and has promised to give us a place in his heavenly mansion. Try to grasp hold of what this life under the sun has to offer and you will find yourself empty handed, like trying to catch the wind. But open your hands to receive Christ in faith and God will fill those hands with everything you need for this life and more (Matthew 6:33). The Christian life is the simple life: 1) trust in God to take care of the big picture – now and forever – and 2) enjoy the life under the sun he has given you – because you already have eternal life in his Son, the one who puts an end to all of our chasing by giving us the one thing we could never get for ourselves: true, lasting happiness. Amen.

[1] Incidentally, havel was the name of Adam and Eve’s second son, whose life was so meaninglessly cut short by his brother Cain (Genesis 4:8)

[2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/1-in-6-americans-takes-a-psychiatric-drug/