Sermon for 9/24/23: Sixteenth Sunday After Trinity

This was not the easiest sermon I've ever preached, considering the context. Still, God is good.

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Can You Trust God?

I Kings 17:17-24

 

Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

 

We have all seen our share of suffering and grief. We’ve seen brutal murder, war, and terrorism in our lives. We’ve seen people we would consider to be good brought low by horrible diseases while seemingly awful people live carefree lives. We’ve seen the death of young children. It can be hard not to ask how you can trust a God who lets such things happen. And it’s not just a theoretical question, because these things happen all the time.

With idolatry running wild in Israel under King Ahab, the Lord announced through Elijah that there would be no rain. The idolaters may have laughed at first, but they would not have the last laugh. None of their unbelief could change the fact that the Lord remained in control. There was no rain. Elijah was affected by the resulting drought, too. As we heard last week, God directed him to a widow in Zarephath. When the prophet first met her, he asked for food and drink. She told him that she was down to her last little bit of flour and oil. Once that was gone, she truly did not know where the next meal would come from. She considered herself and her son to be as good as dead. Still, when Elijah spoke the Lord’s Word of promise to her, she had faith and obeyed. She made Elijah a loaf of bread, and still had flour and oil left over. As the days passed, there was always enough flour and oil left for another meal.

The widow was taking care of God’s prophet. Things seemed to be working out. And then, one day, her son died! Suddenly it didn’t look like such a great thing to have the Lord’s prophet so close by. This God was now costing her something. In her grief, she understandably lashed out at Elijah: “What have you against me, O man of God? Have you come to me to bring my sin to remembrance and to cause the death of my son?” Perhaps you have felt this way toward God; I certainly have.

Let us be clear about this: truly God allows terrible things to happen in this world, and He does not explain Himself to us. This godless world will sneer or cynically shrug as much as it wants, but God remains in complete control of all things, no matter how it may appear. We cannot insist that He answer us. Elijah made no attempt to apologize for God or explain His ways. Elijah knew that the only answer to God is God. So the prophet took the dead boy into his room, laid the body on his own bed, and prayed the Lord to grant that this child live again. The prophet then stretched himself upon the body three times as he prayed that life come back into it. We hear in Ecclesiastes that, in death, “the spirit returns to God who gave it.” Even so, Elijah knew that this same God could give it back. He was asking God to give life in the midst of death, comfort in the midst of fear and anguish, and assurance of His love and salvation amid all her doubts. No amount of explaining could have been better than the moment when the prophet went downstairs, not carrying a dead corpse, but rather with a living child in his arms. “See, your son lives,” Elijah told her.

This event forms a little Old Testament Easter. The son was dead, but then he lived. Of course, this son eventually died again to this world, just as the son of the widow of Nain eventually died again. But these events meant to point forward to Jesus. See, Jesus lives! Yes, God had punished sin. He punished it fully when He laid all of it on His Son. Yet He raised Jesus from the dead; “Death no longer has dominion over Him.” Indeed, Jesus lives.

How can you trust God when He allows these awful things to happen? Put your trust in Jesus, for in Him, you live! Baptized into Christ, you have been raised with Him. And in the end, the God who raised His Son will raise you also. You live now, and you will live to all eternity! God the Father has planted this new life in you now by giving you the Word of life, the good news of Jesus Christ. He is not angry with you. He is not stringing you along, only to spring some punishment on you when you least expect it. God forgives all your sin for the sake of Christ, who nailed them to His cross. And with this forgiveness comes assurance, comfort, and life, all through God’s powerful Word. How can you trust this Lord? See, you live! It’s like the woman said to Elijah: “Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the Word of the Lord in your mouth is truth.” In faith, she had received through Elijah God’s assurance, comfort, and life. She was alive; so was her son.

You and I live, too. We live by faith. When tragedy strikes—and you know it will—don’t dwell on how unfair it may be. Don’t tell yourself this shouldn’t happen to you or your loved one. Don’t try to figure out how you messed up. Above all, don’t run away from God. Instead, run to the God who has clothed Himself in flesh and blood. Listen to the God who died and rose again. Like the widow in this text, the Lord has given you new life through His Word. He has sustained your every step along life’s way. Whatever happens in this world, God stands ready to keep giving you life, now and forever, in His risen Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. See, Christ lives! And because He lives, so do you! In the name of the Father and of the Son (+) and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. 

 

The peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus always. Amen.

Sermon for 9/17/23: Fifteenth Sunday After Trinity

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Come and Die
I Kings 17:8-16

Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote, “When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.” Though these are hard words to hear, they could not be more true. Four times in the Gospels, our Lord tells His disciples to take up their cross and follow Him. Our view of the cross is shaped by two thousand years of history. We think of what Jesus accomplished with His death on the cross, and that perhaps allows us to think of it as something less than a cruel instrument of execution. Only criminals who had been sentenced to die for the most heinous crimes carried crosses. And so, what Bonhoeffer said is absolutely correct, even as stark and abrupt as it sounds. When Jesus tells us to take up our cross, He is calling us to come and die.

Elijah’s words to the widow at Zarephath probably sounded just as harsh. He saw that the widow and her son were starving. He knew that little oil and flour remained. He knew that he was asking her to give him all that she had. Still, he said to her, “Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.” And for her part, the widow knew that the prophet’s command was the Lord’s command. In her ears, it must have seemed like he was saying, “Obey my words even though they will kill you.” The Word of the Lord is often like that. His holy Word of Law kills us whenever we hear it. We never live up to its perfect standard of holiness and love. If we were truly obedient to the Law of God, we would never put our own life before the lives of others; we would never doubt God’s love or worry about the future. But too often, we seek our own good first. We doubt God’s love; we look to our friends, our family, our jobs, our bank accounts for the peace and security that can really only come from God. And in these difficult economic times, our lives are often clouded by fears about the future, and we can sometimes wonder if we really will be provided with all that we need.

God’s Word of Law can only kill us. Not only are we not God, we are not godly either. We oppose God’s will at every turn, and our doubts and fears make it clear how little we actually believe what the Lord has promised in His Word. Our bodies of sin and doubt and fear must die. They must be nailed with Jesus to His cross. When Christ calls a man, He truly bids him to come and die. Our sinful flesh must die with Jesus on the cross. It must be buried with Him in His tomb.

All of this is bound up in Holy Baptism. It is in Baptism that your sinful flesh has been nailed to the cross. The word to the widow of Zarephath does not end with, “Bring me a morsel of bread.” After the widow honestly lays out her fears before the prophet, Elijah says, “Thus says the Lord God of Israel, ‘The jar of flour shall not be spent, and the jug of oil shall not be empty, until the day that the Lord sends rain upon the earth.’” Nor does the Word that God speaks to you end there, either. Just as the Lord drowned your sinful flesh in the waters of your baptism, so also He has raised you to new life in Christ.

When you are facing death, it is hard to see God as your creator who loves you, who sustains you, who provides for all your needs. Death makes the love of God seem like a lie. We are always coming before God, asking, “What have you done for me lately?” When we say this, we are forgetting that every breath we breathe is a gift from God. But even in our unbelief and ingratitude, God is still gracious to us. Elijah’s answer to the widow was the promise that the Lord would provide for her. It was more than she could expect; it was more than she deserved. But that is God’s way: He simply gives the gift because of who He is. He is loving and merciful. He is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He provides for the birds. He clothes the lilies of the field in splendor. There is nothing that falls outside the protection of His gracious and generous hand.

It is absolutely certain that God will always give us what we need. What is not so certain is what that will look like in the end. When we suffer, God’s provision for us is still there, though it is often hidden. Sometimes it is not revealed until years later, and then sometimes it is not revealed in this life at all. But all things that are needful for us have been provided. God has taken all your sin, all of your suffering, and all of your fear and doubt, and laid them on the shoulders of Jesus. And your Savior has taken all of those things to the cross and there has suffered and died for them.

In place of your fear and doubt, Christ has won for you life and salvation and forgiveness. All of these things are certain because God Himself has accomplished them for you. There is nothing for you to fear. There is nothing for you to doubt. There is only Jesus, Your Savior, who has borne your sin to the cross and has given to you the anointing oil of Holy Baptism and the bread of His Holy Supper. And these gifts, with all their blessing, will not run out until you are safely with all the saints, the angels, and with God Himself, forever and ever. In the name of the Father and of the Son (+) and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus always. Amen.

Sermon for 9/10/23: Fourteenth Sunday After Trinity

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Walking in the Spirit

Galatians 5:16-24

                                                  

Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

 

         The central truth of the Christian faith is that lost and condemned sinners are saved eternally—not by obedience to God’s Law but through faith alone in Jesus Christ, who has won righteousness and eternal life for us by His obedience and death. No book of the Bible speaks of this precious truth more clearly than St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians. The apostle pleaded with these Christians to remain in that Gospel they had learned from him. False teachers had invaded their churches, insisting that faith in Christ was not enough to receive forgiveness of sins and eternal life. Salvation, they said, required obedience to the Law.

But it doesn’t work that way. The teaching that we are saved by our good works does not promote more good works. No, it makes us into hypocrites. It enslaves us. The Law only threatens with death those who don’t obey it. It cannot change our hearts so that we can love God and our neighbor as we should. It can only condemn us for disobedience. The simple truth of the matter is that the pure Gospel of justification by faith alone is the power of the Holy Spirit that enables us to live God-pleasing lives. The Law cannot and will not make us good. The Gospel can, and it does. And so, when St. Paul tells us to walk in the Spirit, he is simply telling you to trust in Jesus Christ our Savior. He is telling you to consider yourself a Christian. Consider who and what you are. You belong to Christ. You are clothed in His righteousness. You have His Spirit living within you. So walk in that Spirit. Fix your eyes and your hearts on the Savior who died for you, and you won’t fulfill those desires of the flesh.

There is a war that rages inside of every Christian. We have the Holy Spirit within us by virtue of our baptism into Christ. But we also have the flesh, the old sinful nature that clings to us until the day we leave this earth behind. That is why St. Paul says, “The desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.” The flesh wants to please itself. It despises God’s Law and hates the Gospel even more. This is something we must understand because, if we don’t, we will be led into a false belief. Our sinful flesh wants exactly the opposite of what the Spirit wants, and it will be that way as long as we live. Now, if you are distressed because you want to do what is right, but you find yourself falling into sin, take heart. This is not a sign that you are not a Christian; it’s a sign that you are, because the Spirit and the flesh cannot tolerate each other!

But if you are perfectly at peace with yourself; if you don’t have any spiritual conflict at all; if you think that you are living the holy life God called you to live, it’s time to take a serious look at yourself. If you think you can live your Christian life here on earth without experiencing any spiritual conflict, you are sorely mistaken. Walking in the Spirit means that we take stock of who we are. We are Christians. Through Holy Baptism, we have been called out of the darkness of sin and death into the light of God’s eternal, saving truth. The Law cannot condemn us, but only because we have Jesus Christ who faced the condemnation of the Law in our place. You are still tempted by the works of the flesh, and you can easily fall into them, for which you repent and renounce your sin. That’s the battle! But here is a very important point. Falling into temptation and sin is one thing; embracing sin and claiming that it is good is something quite different. The Spirit fights against the flesh, and as long as that spiritual warfare continues, faith is alive.

And yet, we fail in all of this, don’t we? The works of the flesh rise up to claim us. The works of the flesh are obvious, the apostle says. They are obviously wrong. But what does the flesh in its arrogance do? That old unregenerate, corrupt, and incorrigible flesh takes what God has established, twists it into perverted forms, and then claims that God is pleased with it. And that is why the road to hell is paved with the works of the flesh. In the end, they are only bitter and hateful things, with no forgiveness from God for the sin with which these works are filled.

We fall into sin. So what do we do then? We reclaim our inheritance in God’s Kingdom by reclaiming the promise of God in our baptism, where we daily drown that old sinful nature, that a new man may arise to live before God in righteousness and purity, as Luther says. There God joined His name to ours and claimed us as His own. There He washed us in the blood of the Lamb. There He joined us to the crucifixion and resurrection of His own dear Son. And that is who we are: forgiven of all sin, walking in the Spirit, rejoicing in the privilege of being children of God. In the name of the Father and of the Son (+) and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

 

          The peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus always. Amen.

Sermon for 9/3/23: Thirteenth Sunday After Trinity

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The Good Neighbor

Luke 10:23-37

 

Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Amen. 

 

 

Consider the futility of this lawyer’s words. He wanted to test the Lord. He wanted to see if Jesus would meet his standards. He asked: “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” But that question revealed far more than he intended. He thought he was being clever, but in fact, he showed his ignorance. Was there ever so naive a question from the lips of men? No matter how good you are, how badly you want it, how sincere you are, or how hard you work, you cannot inherit eternal life. After all, you weren’t born into it. You can’t do anything to inherit something. Inheritance is always the gift of birth.

Added to that, our Lord does not really take well to testing. He turns the question back to the lawyer: “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” The lawyer wants to know what to do, and the Law certainly tells him that. And to his credit, the lawyer answers Jesus without hesitation: “Love God and love your neighbor.” How easy it is to spit out these orthodox cliches. “Love God and love your neighbor.” We learned that in the Catechism. But then our Lord says, “Do this and you will live.” Do you hear the condemnation in those seemingly innocent words? Not one of us could dare say, “I have done it. I have loved God and my neighbor perfectly and without fail.”

Test the Lord, and you wind up in serious spiritual trouble. “Do this and you will live.” These words are actually a threat. The lawyer hadn’t done this; he hadn’t kept the Law. Apart from our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, no man has ever kept the Law. No one has done this, and so no one should live! There is no Law that accuses us more, no Law that makes us rage with more fire against God’s judgment. This lawyer is dead, and he knows it. He is afraid. But like the good lawyer he is, he looks for a loophole in the Law. He asks, “Who is my neighbor?”

Every Sunday School student knows the answer to the question: “Everyone is your neighbor.” Everyone. There are no exceptions. You have no excuse, no boast to make, and no one to blame. It is your fault, because if everyone is your neighbor, and you must love them all as the Law demands, then there is no hope. There is no comfort found in the Law. We get from the Law what we deserve. We have not loved God or our neighbor, and according to the Law, we will not live.

But Jesus does not answer that question from the Lawyer. Instead, He tells a parable, and then asks the lawyer which man in that parable was neighbor to the man in need. In the Good Samaritan, we see pictured that One who is nothing but mercy. He did what we could never do: He perfectly kept the Law. The priest and the Levite who walked on by could do nothing. But the Good Samaritan knew the cost, and He went into the ditch to get us anyway. He paid for everything, and He is coming back to redeem us finally and fully from this world of sin and death.

Then Jesus says, “Go and do likewise.” Does He mean that we will live if we help the man we find in the ditch, if we love all neighbors as ourselves? If Jesus means that we must simply return to the Law, then we are right back where we started, and this parable would serve no other purpose than to further condemn us. It would show us nothing about grace and the kingdom of heaven. But that cannot be the meaning of this parable. Jesus never leaves His people without hope. So then, what does “Go and do likewise” mean? It must mean this: “Go and be neighbored, be rescued by the One who shows mercy.” Yes, I know this is not the usual way we see the interpretation of this parable. You can check all the commentaries—even some of the Lutheran ones—and they will not interpret the parable this way. But Luther did. And he got it right. Don’t forget the lawyer’s original question: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” That’s the question Jesus answered. There is nothing we can do. But at the same time, there is nothing we have to do.

Jesus, the Good Samaritan, is your neighbor. He has done what you and the Law could never do. He has had mercy. He didn’t have to. He was free of any obligation. But He was moved by His own compassion. He paid the price for all that was necessary to heal you. And that is what the Kingdom of Heaven is like. It is like an unexpected rescue from death by an outsider who, for reasons beyond human understanding, perfectly loves His Father, and He perfectly loves His neighbor. We see the Law fulfilled for us; we see the rescue we have received through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. We see the One who loved us all the way to the cross. He is Christ, the good Samaritan, the good Neighbor: the One who had mercy. In the name of the Father and of the Son (†) and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

 

The peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus always.  Amen.