The fruit of faith is love

Posted on October 19, 2022 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for Midweek of Trinity 18

Deuteronomy 10:12-21  +  1 John 3:1-8  +  John 15:1-17

Our three lessons this evening are all related to the answer we heard Jesus give on Sunday to the Pharisee who asked Him which was the greatest commandment in the Law. His answer: You shall love the Lord your God will all your heart, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love for God. Love for your neighbor. Those two commandments summarize everything God requires of mankind.

Those two commandments were not spoken in the Garden of Eden. They didn’t need to be spoken; they were understood, because Adam and Eve were created in the image of the God who is love. So, intentionally avoiding the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was THE most obvious way to show love for God, by respecting and honoring His commandment to avoid it. It was also the way to show love between Adam and Eve, to keep one another faithful, to keep one another in God’s love, to keep one another from falling into sin and ruining the perfect life they’d been given. They each had that love for God and for each other by nature. They each had the ability to remain in that love. But they each fell away from both kinds of love—for God and for each other—and so ruined the perfect life they’d been given.

After that, nothing changed about God’s will for mankind, about God’s expectation of love: love for Him, and love for one’s neighbor—because God didn’t change. He remained the essence of love, of heartfelt devotion among the Persons of the Holy Trinity and toward His creation. What changed was mankind’s nature and our ability to fulfill God’s expectation. In short, what changed was our ability to be like God.

Isn’t it ironic? The devil tempted Eve to think she could be like God if she ate from the tree. In reality, she was already like God in the perfection of love before eating. That’s what Adam and Eve gave up when they gave in to temptation.

So what about all the commands to love, to serve, to obey in the Old Testament? As we saw on Sunday, they remain good commands, reflecting God’s own Being. But what good are those commandments for fallen creatures?

They’re good for showing you what God considers good and evil, starting with the attitudes of one’s heart. They’re good for showing you what you would have to do—what you would have to be like—to earn God’s favor. But with those commands come threats, too. Love as God commands you to love, love as God loves, or pay the price.

That’s where Christ comes in. Because, in His great love for us, God chose to give us another way into His home and into His family. God’s eternal Son entered the world in time and became man in order to love in man’s place. He also paid the price for mankind’s lovelessness. He did that, not just to show us the way we are to be, but in order to become the way so that, through Him, we may be born again in the image of the God of love.

The way into God’s home and into God’s family—the only way that actually works for sinful man—is the way of repentance and faith in Christ, being grafted into Him like a branch from a bad tree might be grafted into a good tree. When we’re grafted into Christ through Baptism and faith, then we’re brought into God’s family. We’re made into a new creation, being renewed throughout this life in the image of Christ.

Now, knowing that the tree is good, because the tree is Jesus Himself, the branches that have been grafted into Him—you and I—are rightly expected to produce good fruit. And that fruit is love. Love for God, and love for our neighbor. And especially love for our fellow Christians. That’s specifically whom He was referring to when He said, This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.

We Christians, we baptized believers in Christ have been made into children of God, branches grafted into Him who is the Vine. The Apostle John, in his epistle, was very careful to point out both the gift that we have in being called God’s children and also the responsibility that we have to behave as God’s children, with a new nature that is being renewed in the image of its Creator, and a new ability to choose love. Yes, not so much to “feel” it but to “choose” it, to walk in it, to cooperate with the Holy Spirit. You can’t get rid of the sinful desires that bubble up from your flesh, but you don’t have to act on them. You can fight them. And with the help of the Holy Spirit, who was given to you in Holy Baptism, you can keep those sinful desires from ruling over you.

If you let sin rule over you, if you willfully give in to the desires that bubble up from your flesh, if you refuse to be molded into the loving image of Christ, that’s when you become one of those unfruitful branches that the Father will cut off, as Jesus warned His disciples. And if that ever happens, then repent and return to Christ before it’s too late. Right now, there still is time. Right now, God’s love still pursues them. Right now, Christ is still near, here, in the Word, in the preaching of the Gospel, and the Holy Spirit still is working to bring those chopped off branches back to Christ, back to faith, before they get tossed onto the burn heap with the rest of the unbelieving world.

Love is God’s requirement for mankind. Love is what moved God to send His Son to redeem fallen mankind. Love is what God now produces in His children, and what He expects them to produce, with the power of His forgiveness and His love. Abide in Christ, the true Vine, and be the kind of branches that imitate His love: for God, for your neighbor, and for your fellow Christians. Amen.

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Each Day in the Word, Wednesday, October 19th

Posted on October 19, 2022 by Tom and Karen Klumb

James 5:12–20 (NKJV)

12 But above all, my brethren, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or with any other oath. But let your “Yes” be “Yes,” and your “No,” “No,” lest you fall into judgment. 13 Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing psalms. 14 Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. 15 And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. 16 Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. 17 Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain; and it did not rain on the land for three years and six months. 18 And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth produced its fruit. 19 Brethren, if anyone among you wanders from the truth, and someone turns him back, 20 let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save a soul from death and cover a multitude of sins.

James closes his epistle by encouraging the scattered Jewish Christians to pray, an encouragement which is just as fitting for us today.

If you are suffering, pray! “Lord, have mercy!” That mercy may come in many forms. It may come in the form of relief, but it also may come in the form of peace, or perseverance, or the learning of a needed lesson. It may even come in the form of death as the Lord finally delivers us from all evil of body and soul and brings us safely into His heavenly kingdom.

If you are cheerful, sing psalms, that is, songs of praise! And to whom are songs of praise sung but to the Lord? Another form of prayer.

If you are sick, James says, call for the elders (that is, pastors) of the church that they may pray for you. The healing James promises is the miraculous healing that was common in the apostolic era as the Holy Spirit manifested His gifts to confirm the apostles’ testimony. While physical healing is no longer promised, the healing of the forgiveness of sins is. Indeed, James assures us that the prayers of the righteous are always powerful and effective. God takes them very seriously and will surely hear and help, either in a miraculous way, as He did for the prophet Elijah, or in an “ordinary way.” That is, He may “simply” order the events of this universe so that all things must work together for good to those who love Him. In either case, you can be sure that God will take your prayers into account.

Finally, James gives us a powerful encouragement to love our brother who has “wandered from the truth.” If we succeed in turning him back to the truth, we will have been God’s instruments in saving his soul from death. What stronger incentive could there be to approach an erring brother in love and to do all we can to bring him back into the way of life?

Let us pray: Our Father in heaven, hear our prayers in times of suffering and in times of joy. In all things, may Your will be done; through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

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Each Day in the Word, Tuesday, October 18th

Posted on October 18, 2022 by Tom and Karen Klumb

James 4:1–5:6 (NKJV)

1 Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? 2 You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures. 4 Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. 5 Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously”? 6 But He gives more grace. Therefore He says: “God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble.” 7 Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. 8 Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Lament and mourn and weep! Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up. 11 Do not speak evil of one another, brethren. He who speaks evil of a brother and judges his brother, speaks evil of the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. 12 There is one Lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy. Who are you to judge another? 13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit”; 14 whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.” 16 But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. 17 Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin. 1 Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you! 2 Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. 3 Your gold and silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have heaped up treasure in the last days. 4 Indeed the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out; and the cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. 5 You have lived on the earth in pleasure and luxury; you have fattened your hearts as in a day of slaughter. 6 You have condemned, you have murdered the just; he does not resist you.

Like one of the Old Testament prophets, James issues stern warnings and urgent calls to repentance in today’s lesson. He moves from one topic to another, urging the Jewish Christians to whom he is writing to live more humbly before God and before man.

Is there strife among you? It is likely because some of you are wrapped up in the “cares, riches, and pleasures of life” (Luke 8:14). It’s so easy, so tempting to fall in with the world, to value what the world values, to engage in the activities the world promotes. But the Church is, by definition, the assembly of those who have been called out of the world into Christ’s kingdom, even though we still live in the world. The world is opposed to Christ and, therefore, opposed to Christians. If our goal is to get ahead in this world or pursue the pleasures of this world, then we are bound to be at odds with our fellow Christians, even as we are at odds with Christ. But if we repent of our worldliness and humble ourselves before God, then He will lift us up. If we resist the devil, he will not be able to overcome us.

James then calls out two groups among the Christians: those who arrogantly make plans for themselves with no regard for God or His will, and those who have bowed to the god Mammon, who have trusted in their wealth and heaped up treasures for themselves with no regard for their fellow man. Both of these sins are all too common today and flow from the same worldliness that James upbraided above. This life is not all there is, so it’s foolish to live as if it were. Indeed, those who fail to repent of their idolatry of self and of wealth will soon learn just how foolish it was for them to ignore God’s warning issued through the Epistle of James. Instead, turn to God in humility before it’s too late, and you will find mercy with Him for Christ’s sake.

Let us pray: O God, come to our aid against the devil, the world, and our flesh, that we may be victorious over these our enemies and walk before You in humility and sincere faith. Amen.

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Each Day in the Word, Monday, October 17th

Posted on October 17, 2022 by Tom and Karen Klumb

James 3:1–18 (NKJV)

1 My brethren, let not many of you become teachers, knowing that we shall receive a stricter judgment. 2 For we all stumble in many things. If anyone does not stumble in word, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle the whole body. 3 Indeed, we put bits in horses’ mouths that they may obey us, and we turn their whole body. 4 Look also at ships: although they are so large and are driven by fierce winds, they are turned by a very small rudder wherever the pilot desires. 5 Even so the tongue is a little member and boasts great things. See how great a forest a little fire kindles! 6 And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity. The tongue is so set among our members that it defiles the whole body, and sets on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire by hell. 7 For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and creature of the sea, is tamed and has been tamed by mankind. 8 But no man can tame the tongue. It is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. 9 With it we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the similitude of God. 10 Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be so. 11 Does a spring send forth fresh water and bitter from the same opening? 12 Can a fig tree, my brethren, bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Thus no spring yields both salt water and fresh. 13 Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show by good conduct that his works are done in the meekness of wisdom. 14 But if you have bitter envy and self-seeking in your hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth. 15 This wisdom does not descend from above, but is earthly, sensual, demonic. 16 For where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there. 17 But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy. 18 Now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

Like John’s first epistle, the Epistle of James is largely focused on exposing and rooting out hypocrisy from among Christians. We have been rescued from the devil’s kingdom. We have been washed of our sins in Holy Baptism. We now call upon the God of love as our Father, our Savior, and our Lord, who is pure and holy and good. It only makes sense that our lives as His children should also be pure and holy and good.

That purity flows from the new hearts created in us when we were born again, but the next stop is the tongue. James points out what a big part our tongues play in steering our lives—and how hard they are to control. God’s Word is all-powerful, but our words have power, too. They can do great good for our neighbor, and they can do great damage to him.

The Christian uses his tongue to praise God. He strives to speak only things that are true and that are helpful to his neighbor. The hypocrite, on the other hand, blesses God with his mouth but then uses the same mouth to curse and to put down his fellow man, or to speak falsehood in order to save his own skin. James exposes the hypocrisy of this behavior and warns his fellow Christians to watch out for such hypocrisy, and to repent of it immediately if we have fallen into it.

He then encourages us to examine our hearts, to see if there is “bitter envy and self-seeking” there and to be honest with ourselves if we find it. Am I jealous of my neighbor? Am I seeking his good or my own? How is this reflected in my words? How is it reflected in my actions? If we believe in God and wish to be wise, then let us pursue heavenly wisdom, which is “first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy.”

Let us pray: Lord, forgive us for misusing our tongues to harm our neighbor. Help us to control them, to speak only words that edify, and to show mercy in all that we say and do. Amen.

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Know the Law! Fear the Law! But believe the Gospel!

Posted on October 16, 2022 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Trinity 18

1 Corinthians 1:4-9  +  Matthew 22:34-46

Let me draw your attention, as I often do on this Sunday of the Church Year, to the front cover of the service folder, to that somewhat strange picture you see there. It’s from a woodcut done by Lucas Cranach the Elder in 1530 entitled, “Law and Grace.” In the middle is a tree, separating the Law on the left side from Grace on the right. Law and Grace, the two main teachings of the Bible. Or, as we usually refer to them, the Law and the Gospel. The Commands and the Gifts. The Threats and the Promises. Both are good. Both are necessary. Both are from God. And it’s only if you understand and believe both Law and Gospel that you can be saved. Know the Law! Fear the Law! But believe the Gospel!

Today’s Gospel—we also use that word to refer to the first four books of the New Testament and to the specific text we read from them every Sunday. Today’s Gospel highlights both the Law and the Gospel for us. It’s an account that took place during Holy Week as Jesus was teaching His final lessons in the Jerusalem temple before being put up on the cross on Friday of that Holy Week. The Sadducees and the Pharisees—two prominent groups of Jewish teachers—were trying to expose Jesus for the heretic they thought Him to be. We’re told in our text that Jesus had just silenced the Sadducees. They had tried to trip Him up on the question of the resurrection of the dead, which they denied, but He astutely pointed to their own Scriptures and proved that there must be a resurrection of the dead. Concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” So the Pharisees take their turn and put the question to Jesus, Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?

Jesus said to him, “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ The whole Law depends on these two commandments, as do the Prophets.” This isn’t the first time Jesus gave this answer, or at least expressed approval for this answer. He approved of the answer given by the expert in the Law which prompted Jesus to tell the parable of the Good Samaritan. Here it’s Jesus giving the answer, which, He says, summarizes the whole Law—that is, the first five books of the Bible—and the Prophets. Love for God with one’s whole self, and love for the neighbor, as God defines love in His commandments (not as anyone and everyone chooses to define it). God’s entire revelation, from Genesis to Malachi, depends on those two commandments. It’s right there in Bible, in the Old Testament, in Deuteronomy 6 and in Leviticus 19. It was there all along.

And all of the Pharisees knew those commandments from the Old Testament. But they didn’t usually emphasize them as the greatest commandments, or as the hinge that the rest of the Scriptures hang from. Instead, they usually focused on their sacrifices, their offerings, their outward obedience to the Law, their displays of “religiosity.” Their religion became about doing things. But they were no longer doing them out of love for God, devotion to God, with the attitude expressed by the Psalmist, “I cried out to You, O LORD: I said, “You are my refuge, my portion—that is, the only thing I desire to have—in the land of the living.” No, they had turned God into a false image, the “Punisher of the wicked” and the “Rewarder of the good,” not the good and gracious Being whom they loved and wanted, above all things, to be with for eternity, because they loved Him. And so they had already broken the first and greatest commandment.

That affected how they treated their neighbor, too. Not with love, but with contempt. They saw their neighbors as their competitors, people they had to beat out, do better than in order to earn more of God’s favor for themselves. But, you see, when you view yourself that way, as more important than others, and when you view your neighbor that way, as someone who deserves less, you’re already breaking the second greatest commandment, love your neighbor as yourself.

No one could correct Jesus for this answer, though. They had to admit He was right. One of them even praised Jesus for His answer, according to Mark’s Gospel. Listen to what Mark adds: The scribe said to Him, “Well said, Teacher. You have spoken the truth, for there is one God, and there is no other but He. And to love Him with all the heart, with all the understanding, with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is more than all the whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” Now when Jesus saw that the scribe answered wisely, He said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”

“Not far.” But not there yet, either. Why? What was he lacking? That man, unlike the other Pharisees, understood what God truly commanded in His Law. What he didn’t grasp, what none of them grasped, what only the tax collectors and prostitutes and public sinners seemed to grasp, for the most part, was that the Law didn’t only command. It also threatened. It threatened those who disobey with death and with eternal separation from God in hell. You see it there in the picture on your service folder. Moses just to left of the tree in the middle giving the Law to Israel, but then there’s that poor (naked) man being chased by the skeleton, by death, into the fires of hell, because he has disobeyed the Law that Moses gave.

That poor man represents all the children of Adam and Eve, because none of the children of Adam and Eve have loved the Lord their God with all their heart. None have loved their neighbor as themselves. So if the Law is God’s only teaching—His commands and His threats—then we’re all doomed.

But there was another teaching in the Old Testament. The Gospel was there, too, ever since the Garden of Eden when God promised to send the Seed of the woman (the Christ!) to crush the devil’s head. God’s good message centered on the Christ. And so Jesus brings up one of those Old Testament passages, from Psalm 110, and questions the Pharisees. Jesus asked them, “What do you think about the Christ? Whose Son is he?” They said to him, “The Son of David.” He said to them, “How then does David, in the Spirit, call him Lord, saying, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet?”’ Now, if David calls him Lord, how is he David’s Son?”

They knew that the Anointed One, the Christ, would be descended from King David. They had never considered, apparently, why David would call his descendant his “Lord.” Their vision of the Christ, what they wanted from the Christ, was an earthly ruler, like David, to sit as king on David’s throne and rule from Jerusalem and to reward those who have been good and obedient, to unite the kingdom of Israel and to bring them earthly peace and prosperity. In reality, though, God had something much, much bigger in mind for the Christ. He would be, not only David’s descendant, but David’s Lord, true God, who would come in the flesh. How could that be? And then, what does the LORD God say to the Lord Christ? “Sit,” not on David’s earthly throne in Jerusalem, but sit “at My right hand” at God’s right hand. God, sitting at the right hand of God and reigning, even as God put all His enemies under His feet.

The Pharisees were completely stumped. No one was able to answer him a word, nor did anyone from that day on dare to question him further. In fact, Jesus’ teaching about the Christ made them so angry that within a few days they called for His crucifixion and mocked Him as He hung dying from the cross. If only they had considered their own Law, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,” and then made the connection that Jesus was the very Lord whom they were commanded to love, but whom they hated instead.

And yet His death on the cross was part of God’s plan all along. It was the Gospel that was foreshadowed throughout the Old Testament: the Christ coming to make atonement for the sins of mankind by the sacrifice of Himself on the cross, as the One to whom all the Old Testament sacrifices were pointing; the Christ, the true King, rising from the dead and sitting down at the right hand of the Father and reigning invisibly for a time, while He still has enemies in the world who need to be put under His feet, ushering in His kingdom, not with armies, but with the forgiveness of sins that He earned for us with His obedience to the Law and with His death on the cross; and the Christ, coming again one day to reign visibly and openly, when all His enemies, including death, are finally put under His feet. To those who mourn over their inability to keep the Law, He cries out, Believe the Gospel! The good news! The promise of the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation to all who believe!

You see, in Christ, you have everything! You have the One who kept the Law in your place! You have rescue from the threats of the Law, because Christ suffered the punishment for you! Death can’t chase you to hell any longer, if you belong to Christ. In Him you have God’s favor, which means you also have God’s ear, so that you can go directly to God the Father will all your prayers and requests, for there is one God and one Mediator between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus.

That Man, who is also God, now sits at the right hand of God the Father, just as the Psalm said. And God is making all His enemies a footstool for His feet. That’s tremendously good news for the believer, but very bad news for those who choose to remain His enemies. It means condemnation for all people who continue to live under the Law, who appeal to the Law, who fail to believe the Good News, God’s promise of free salvation through faith in His beloved Son.

Don’t be found among the enemies of the Christ. Know God’s Law. It tells you what is good and right. But know that you can never be saved by it. Its threats are directed against you and me and all people. Know that the Law will pursue you straight to hell, if you are judged by the Law. So repent and believe the Gospel, that God wishes to save you freely, through faith, for the sake of Christ alone, and that in Him you have everything you could possibly need for life and salvation. Holy Baptism, combined with faith, brought you over from the left side of the portrait to the right side, to your Savior Jesus who died in your place, who rose from the dead, who gives eternal life to all who believe, and who is, even now, putting all His enemies under His feet. Know the Law! Fear the Law! But believe the Gospel! Amen.

 

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