Emmanuel Lutheran Church

Sermon for Trinity 11

1 Corinthians 15:1-10  +  Luke 18:9-14

What’s the most important thing in life? Hint: It isn’t preventing the spread of COVID. It isn’t extending your life on this earth at all costs. It isn’t even extending or improving the life of your neighbor. No, there is something even more important. If there is a God and if He takes any interest at all in human affairs—and it’s obvious to any thinking person that there is and that He does—then the most important thing is to be right with God; to have His favor, both for this life and for the next. It’s more important than family. More important than health or wealth. More important than life itself.

Now, if it’s true that having God’s favor is the most important thing, then the most important thing to know is how a person can be right with God. And there are two basic answers to that question, illustrated for us today by Jesus in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. How can you have God’s favor? We have the Pharisee’s answer: “Do good! Be righteous before God by yourself, by doing good!” And we have the tax collector’s answer: “Flee in faith to God’s throne of grace! Be righteous before God by faith in Christ!” Which of these two answers is the right one? Be self-righteous? Or be faith-righteous? You already know. But you still need to hear it again from Jesus’ lips. Only the one who is righteous by faith goes down to his house justified.

If even you Christians need to hear that again, and again and again, then the unbelieving Pharisees certainly needed to hear it. Luke tells us that Jesus told the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector to certain people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others. That describes very many people in today’s world, too, people who think very highly of themselves, because they think they’ve done some very good things, things that, if there is a God, will certainly put them in good standing with Him.

The Pharisees knew there was a God. They knew many things about Him, true things, the things He had revealed about Himself in the creation as well as the things He had revealed about Himself in the Old Testament Scriptures. They knew His commandments; they knew His Law. One thing they didn’t know—because they ignored it whenever they came across it in God’s Law—was that God’s Law demands, not only outward obedience, but perfect love for God and for our neighbor, love that comes from the heart and shows itself with the hands and with good deeds. Sins of the heart and a lack of love in the heart are just as damning before God as any evil deed of the hand. The other thing they didn’t know—again, because they ignored it in the Old Testament Scriptures—was that none of their good deeds could erase, or make up for, any of their bad deeds.

And so we have this Pharisee in Jesus’ parable, a man well-respected and honored in the Jewish community, who went up to the Temple in Jerusalem to pray. How would we describe him, based on his behavior in the parable? He’s smug. Proud. Condescending. And he’s so confident that he’s right with God already that he has no word of praise, no word of thanks for what God has given, no word of confession, not even a word of supplication, seeking God’s merciful help with anything. On the contrary, we see only a self-congratulatory “thank you” that I am not like other men—extortioners, unrighteous, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I possess. He’s full of himself. He looks down on the bad people around him. He’s truly self-righteous.

Now, he’s an extreme version of self-righteous, apparently admitting no flaws in himself whatsoever. There are less extreme versions out there that fall into the same category. There are people who will admit that they aren’t perfect. But ask them if they consider themselves good people, and most will answer, yes. Most will point to something good they’ve done, some deed of kindness or obedience, or at least how hard they try to be good. “I wear a mask because I respect other people, unlike those non-mask-wearers.” If nothing else, some will hope that, no matter how many bad things they’ve done, God may yet accept them because of that one really bright, shiny moment of goodness.

This is how the world sees things. This is how all the religions of the world (except for Christianity) teach people to gain God’s favor, by doing good, by being honorable. This is how people normally comfort themselves when a loved one dies. “He or she was such a good (fill in the blank). He must be in heaven. She must be favored by God.” But is that the way into God’s favor? By being self-righteous?

On the other hand, there’s the tax collector of Jesus’ parable, respected by no one, with no righteousness at all coming from himself. His career was synonymous with extortion and thuggery, not to mention the regular betrayal of their countrymen in service to the Romans. How would we describe him, based on his behavior in Jesus’ parable? The tax collector, standing at a distance, would not so much as lift up his eyes toward heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God be merciful to me a sinner.’ He’s humble. Contrite. Sorrowful over his sins. He knows he doesn’t deserve even to look up toward heaven. He offers God nothing from himself. Instead, he seeks only God’s mercy. And he uses a special word for mercy in Greek. “Be favorable to me! Be propitious to me! Be gracious!”

Now, that word is related to the Temple itself. Within the innermost part of the first Temple—Solomon’s Temple—was the ark of the covenant, and the lid of it was called in Greek the Propitiation Place, or the Mercy Seat, or the Throne of Grace. It’s where the blood of atonement was sprinkled once a year. It’s where God promised that He would be present with His people and would be gracious toward His people who sought Him there, because of the blood of atonement. But after Solomon’s Temple was destroyed, there was no longer an ark of the covenant in the Temple. It’s as if God no longer wanted His Throne of Grace to be enclosed in the Temple, as if He wanted Israel to start seeking it somewhere else.

Sure enough, the Apostle Paul, in Romans 3, refers to Christ Jesus Himself as the Propitiation Place or the Throne of Grace. He was the true ark of the covenant. His blood shed on the cross truly made atonement for the sins of all. And now all who flee to Christ as the Throne of Grace, all who seek God’s favor through faith in Him, receive God’s forgiveness. Or in other words, they are justified before God, they are right with Him, they have His favor.

This is truly the most important thing, as Paul also said in today’s Epistle: For I delivered to you first and foremost that which I also received, that…you have to be good? No, that’s not what he said. That you have to make atonement for your sins? No. That, what? What was first and foremost? That Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. That’s first and foremost. That’s the most important thing, fleeing to Him in faith as the Throne of Grace, as the one who died for our sins and rose again.

That’s what the tax collector did. That was his answer to the question, How can I be right with God? Not by finding righteousness within himself, but by seeking it by faith as a gracious gift from a merciful God. And so Jesus shocked the self-righteous Pharisees with His conclusion: I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but whoever humbles himself will be exalted. The Pharisee who tried to be righteous by himself failed, while the tax collector was counted righteous by God, not by himself, but by faith.

The same was true of the Apostle Paul. He had a sordid past, not as a thief, but as a self-righteous Pharisee, as a religious fanatic, as a persecutor of Christians, until he learned that what the Prophet Isaiah had written hundreds of years earlier was true: All our righteousnesses are like filthy rags. As Paul wrote to the Philippians, Whatever things were gain to me, these I have counted a loss for Christ. Indeed, I count all things a loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith.

And so the apostle humbled himself. You hear it in today’s Epistle: Last of all [the risen Christ] was seen also by me, as by one born at the wrong time. For I am the least of the apostles. I am not even fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But in humbling himself, there was finally room for God to exalt him. As he says, But by the grace of God I am what I am, that is, a chosen apostle, sent out to preach the Gospel of Christ.

But notice this about the Gospel: It teaches the most important thing first, that sinners are righteous before God only by faith in Christ. But the Gospel then goes on to teach and to enable believers to work all the harder at being righteous in how we live. Look at Paul’s example again. He was a sinner who was justified by faith. He was exalted by God’s grace and given work to do in God’s kingdom. And how did he do it? He says, God’s grace toward me was not in vain; but I toiled more than all of them—more than all of the other apostles. Those who are righteous by faith are then called to be righteous in their deeds, in their works. The difference is, we’re no longer working to receive the favor of God that we don’t yet have. We’re working to serve the God who has already favored us in giving His Son into death for our sins, and in justifying us by faith in His Son, so that even the righteous things we now do are really being done in us by Him, as Paul also concludes: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.

Of the two answers we’ve considered today to the question, how can I be right with God?, Jesus reveals clearly what the Christian answer is: only by fleeing in faith to Christ, the true Throne of Grace. So don’t ever let anyone mislead you into thinking it depends on what you yourself have done. Don’t ever let anyone shame you into thinking you’re beyond saving. And don’t ever let anyone distract you from the most important thing in life: having the favor of the Creator, having God for a dear Father, having Christ for a Savior. Trust in Him! Flee to Him in faith! And you will not only go down to your house justified; you will also have everything you need to get through all the trials of this life and to lead a good, honorable, godly life of humble obedience to the God who has justified you by faith. Amen.

Sermon for Trinity 10

1 Corinthians 12:1-11  +  Luke 19:41-48

Palm Sunday is a pretty well-known day in the Church Year, the day when Jesus, the King of the Jews, rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, with the crowds waving palm branches and singing His praises. It was a day of joy, as the prophet Zechariah prophesied it would be, Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your King is coming to you; He is just and having salvation, Lowly and riding on a donkey. Twice a year we hear the Palm Sunday Gospel, on the first Sunday in Advent and again on Palm Sunday itself.

Today’s Gospel is also from Palm Sunday. But on this day in the Church Year we remember, not the joy, but the tears of Palm Sunday, the tears of Jerusalem’s King for His beloved city as He foresaw its eventual destruction.

Unfortunately, the demise of Jerusalem and the Old Testament Church of Israel wasn’t an isolated incident. It was a harbinger of the eventual demise of the New Testament Church as well, for which the King also weeps. Most of the world’s population will remain unbelieving and will perish. Most of the Church’s members will eventually fall away and perish. But as we also see in our Gospel, there is a solution for the few who will accept it by God’s grace, a solution provided by the King Himself after He wept for His city.

The palm branches had already been waved. The Hosannas had been sung. And the Pharisees had just been rebuked by Jesus for urging Him to rebuke His disciples for welcoming Him as “He who comes in the name of the Lord.” Then, still presumably mounted on that famous donkey, the King looked at the city of Jerusalem as He drew closer to it, and He wept over it. This was supposed to be your time, O city of God, the time of your visitation, the moment when 2,000 years of God’s careful attention and provision and instruction reached their climax in the actual visitation of God, the arrival of the promised Savior. This was supposed to be your hour of glory, when not just a small percentage of your citizens, but the whole city came out to welcome your King, and to praise Him, and to acknowledged Him as your Lord and Savior who makes peace between God and man through His own suffering and death. But now the things that bring you peace are hidden from your eyes.

The hiding of those things from their eyes was God’s doing, and at the same time, it wasn’t God’s doing. Let me explain.

The Church Father Augustine once wrote, “Unless you believe, you will not understand.” That seems contrary to logic. First you have to understand something in order to believe it, right? Not when it comes to the Christian faith. Faith doesn’t come from human reason or logic. It comes from hearing the Word of God. Faith comes first, then understanding. No one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit. First the Holy Spirit uses the Word of God, specifically the Law and the Gospel, to bring you to fear the consequences of your sins and then to trust in God’s promise of the free forgiveness of sins in Christ. Then He enlightens you through the Gospel to recognize and to understand the details about Christ’s person and work, about the fulfillment of prophecy, about His invisible reign over the things that are going on around us.

For hundreds of years the Spirit of God had been revealing His Law and Gospel to Israel, showing them their sins through the preaching of the Law and through the daily necessity of bringing sacrifices to atone for their sins, and showing them His grace in accepting all those sacrifices that pointed ahead to the great sacrifice of the Christ who was to come. But most did not believe that fundamental truth of their utter sinfulness and neediness before God, and most did not believe in God’s promise to save them by His grace alone, free of charge, through the Christ. Their unbelief was not God’s doing. It was their own. Matthew records these words from Jesus to Jerusalem during Holy Week, How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.

And so, since they stubbornly rejected God’s promise in unbelief, God hid the details from them, too, about Jesus’ identity as the Christ, about His Palm Sunday ride on the donkey, and about the salvation He was bringing them.

Now, Jerusalem had to reject the Christ initially, and cause Him to suffer, and crucify Him. That was part of God’s plan of salvation. But that still wasn’t the real tragedy for the Jews. They could have come back from that. They could have repented of that on the Day of Pentecost or even later. But the vast majority of them didn’t—hundreds of thousands of Israelites, and millions of their descendants through the ages. Almost 40 years God gave them to repent, but they wouldn’t. And so, as Jesus rides into the city, He foresees, not only their rejection of Him later that week, but their persistent, stubborn unbelief over the next 40 years, their refusal to accept that their sins against God were their biggest problem, their refusal to accept Jesus, risen from the dead, as the Lord’s Christ, and their blasphemy against the Holy Spirit who revealed Him as the Christ through the apostles’ preaching, all of which would lead to the atrocities of the First Jewish War, to the siege of Jerusalem by the Roman armies, and to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70.

Yes, the King foresaw His Old Testament Church lying in ruins, and He wept over it. He was saddened and troubled by it. But as mentioned earlier, the fall of the Old Testament Church of the Jews was a harbinger of the fall of the New Testament Church, made up of Jews and Gentiles. The King’s tears weren’t just for Jerusalem.

As of that first Palm Sunday, God had created and cultivated and carried the Hebrew people on eagle’s wings for about 2,000 years, since the time of Abraham. Does it strike you that He has been creating and cultivating and carrying His New Testament Church for about the same length of time, for about 2,000 years? What does the King see when He looks at Christianity in 2020?

He sees false doctrine being taught and celebrated practically everywhere in His name. He sees that in the Roman Church, His honor as the only Mediator between God and man has been transferred to Mary and the saints. He sees that in most of the so-called “mainline” Protestant Churches, His eternal truth has been traded in for human wisdom and lies of “social justice.” He sees that the doctrine of justification by grace alone, through faith alone, for the sake of Christ alone, is barely taught anywhere anymore. He sees that “Christian worship” has degenerated into the worship of man, into secular concerts that focus on what people like to hear instead of the ministry of the soul-saving preaching of the Gospel and the administration of the holy Sacraments. He sees Christians, like the first-century Jews, more tied to their heritage, their traditions, and their family connections than to the pure Word of God. He sees baptized Christians walking away from their Baptism, deceived by the world and all the treasures it offers. He sees it. He saw it already on Palm Sunday. And His tears for Jerusalem in ruins flow also for His New Testament Church in ruins, knowing that it will soon be utterly destroyed, knowing that it was all avoidable, and yet knowing at the same time that it wouldn’t be avoided.

But through the tears, the King also saw that not all was lost. He foresaw a remnant that would still be saved and He knew exactly how to save them. The solution, for those who will receive it, is the same for the Old and for the New Testament Church. The solution is Christ, ridding His temple of the things that shouldn’t be there; Christ, restoring His temple as a house of prayer; Christ, preaching and teaching daily in His temple.

Where did Jesus go when He got to Jerusalem? He went to Temple. And we’re told what He found there. The buying and selling of animals for sacrifice, and moneychangers exchanging currency. It isn’t wrong to do those things. It is wrong to do those things in God’s temple. They don’t belong there. God made His temple to be a house of prayer, where people could focus on the worship of God and on the meaning of sacrifices that were being brought, where people could sing God’s praises, where people could hear His Word, where people could seek God’s help, both for their sins and for their other important needs. So Jesus, the Owner of the house, drove out those who were buying and selling there and restored peace so that men could pray and His Word could be heard. And then, in the few days He had left before His betrayal, arrest, and crucifixion, He taught daily in the temple, and all the people were hanging on His words. As a result, there was a remnant of the Church of Israel that believed and was saved, even while the majority ended up in ruins.

The Lord Christ does the same thing in His New Testament Church as it rushes to its own ruin. He still comes into His Temple, His Church throughout the world, wherever the Gospel still is preached and wherever the Sacraments are still rightly administered, and, through the ministry of the Spirit, drives out the things that don’t belong there: commercialism and worldliness, impenitence, selfish ambition, anger, false doctrine, faith in man, fear and despair. And then He fills His Temple with the preaching of the truth, with His Word, with the gifts of His Spirit, with prayer, and with the virtues of faith and hope and love.

And by His Spirit, by His preaching, by the Sacrament of His very body and blood, the Lord Christ preserves for Himself a remnant, a leftover bunch of believers who will not be caught up in the ruin of the visible Church, because they are the true Church, the invisible Church, the Church against which the very gates of hell will not prevail, because her members hear the Word of Christ and heed the warnings of Christ and repent while there’s still time.

Always make certain you are part of that remnant, part of the true Church that escapes the ruin and remains forever, not here on this earth, but in the new heavens and the new earth, in the New Jerusalem that will come down from heaven with Christ when He returns. May the King’s tears for earthly Jerusalem cause you to see just how earnestly He wants you to be found in the Jerusalem that will never come to ruin. Amen.

Sermon for Trinity 9

1 Corinthians 10:6-13  +  Luke 16:1-9

As you know, we follow the traditional practice in the Church of using an assigned lectionary for each Sunday, with the same Epistle and the same Gospel repeating on the same Sunday in the Church Year every year. We do that for a few reasons, one of which is to keep us from focusing too heavily on the themes that the unbelieving world is obsessed with—or on the themes that the pastor himself may be occupied with. It forces us to consider the whole counsel of God, every year, regardless of what’s going on around us in the world, although we certainly often find that the pre-assigned readings speak directly to what’s going on around us.

You may not have the godly use of money on your mind today, but today’s Gospel is about money. There’s no getting around it. Earthly wealth, or “mammon.” In fact, in a few weeks the lectionary will have us talking about mammon again, with a different emphasis. Today’s Gospel is an instruction on the faithful use of the wealth that God has entrusted you with, whether you’re young or old, rich or poor. It isn’t a plea for you to increase your pastor’s salary; it’s a message about the wisdom of generosity, the wisdom of being generous with your use of God’s wealth, especially when it comes to helping your fellow Christians. To teach this lesson, Jesus uses the example of an unrighteous steward, who found that, after years of unfaithful stewardship, he finally had a compelling reason to be generous. As we’ll see, you and I, as Christians, have much better reasons to be generous.

A steward is basically a manager of someone else’s goods. The steward in Jesus’ parable was guilty of squandering his master’s wealth. We can identify four reasons why he failed to carry out his stewardship faithfully: (1) He obviously had no love for his master. (2) He had no love for his job. (3) He wasn’t worried about the consequences of unfaithful management. And (4) he wasn’t at all concerned about the wellbeing of anyone but himself.

It was that last reason, that strong desire for self-preservation, that finally woke him up to change his behavior. When he was called to account for his unfaithful stewardship, he knew he had little time left to save his skin. So he sat down and thought up a plan. He knew it was no use begging his master for mercy, nor could he get away with stealing his master’s resources and making a run for it. Instead, he thought of a way to use his master’s resources to the advantage of the people who were indebted to his master. He called them in one by one and gave them each a great deal, lowering the amount of their debts. He figured that if he could get them to be grateful to him, then some of them would take him into their homes when he was finally let go from his job.

In the end, it was a wise plan, even though it was purely self-serving. He used his master’s wealth to show generosity toward the debtors, so that they would later use their own resources to help him when his were gone, and even his master had to compliment him on the wisdom he showed, when he was finally forced to change his behavior in order to save himself from financial ruin.

Jesus concludes the parable with this sobering observation: The sons of this age are wiser toward their own kind than are the sons of the light. When the people of this world, the unbelievers out there, realize that an act of well-timed generosity will buy them the much-needed friendship of others, they often become quite generous. On the other hand, the “sons of the light,” Christians, sometimes fall into an ugly stinginess toward their fellow Christians, as if we could love God while callously withholding good from our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Jesus tells this parable, first, to rebuke the impenitent, those who have grown callous toward their fellow Christians and selfish or careless in how they use the wealth at their disposal. He calls us to recognize and repent of the sin that still dwells in our hearts, the sin that would have you always looking out for #1, managing your money to serve all your own interests, without recognizing your duty to manage it according to God’s directives, your God-given duty to show generosity to others, as He has been so generous toward you.

But it’s that very generosity of God that now calls out to all the penitent, “The Lord has not only lessened your debt. Christ Jesus has paid it off completely. Trust in Him, and your many sins will be forgiven.” God calls no one into His service, into His stewardship, without first forgiving them all their sins through faith in Christ Jesus, and without first promising them the continual grace of His forgiveness, of His providence, of His care, and of His Holy Spirit, to preserve you through His Word in repentance and faith, even as He is doing right now at this moment.

So, you see, while the steward in Jesus’ parable had no love for his master and had to fudge the books in order to make his master appear merciful to his debtors, you have a much better reason to be generous, because your Lord truly is merciful. He has shown you generous mercy by giving away everything for you, even the life of His Son on the cross, and by calling you out of darkness into His marvelous light. More than that, He has shown His generous mercy to all by paying for the sins of all and purchasing eternal life for all, so that you don’t have to make God seem merciful to others; you can simply tell them the truth of His mercy in Christ. You have a better reason to be generous than that unrighteous steward did: your God is merciful and generous beyond measure.

You have another better reason to be generous. The steward in the parable viewed his employment as nothing more than a way to support himself financially, and so he grew lazy in it, squandering his master’s wealth, being careless with how he managed his master’s resources. But you, baptized Christians—you have been placed in the service of your God and Savior. You, who were a miserable slave in the devil’s kingdom, have been made a son or daughter in the kingdom of light, and you have been given work to do that is pleasing in God’s sight. What an honor!

You’ve actually been given many tasks in God’s service, all the tasks of your various vocations. Tasks as sons and daughters, husbands and wives, church members, neighbors, and citizens. In fact, your whole body and life have been dedicated to the Lord who redeemed you and made you His own. That life includes the money and resources that God has gotten into your hands in one way or another, either through work that He has provided and prospered, or through inheritance from relatives whom He has blessed, or through the pure generosity of others. And He has made you a steward of those things, to use every dollar for the purposes He has outlined in His Word: for the support of His ministers in the Church, for the support of His ministers in the state, for the needs of your own family, for the needs of your church family, for the needs of all, and for your own enjoyment. It’s that last one that sometimes gets emphasized to the detriment of the others, which is why the Lord Christ told this parable, lest we become complacent about our stewardship, as the steward in the parable did. Remember that you have been given a better reason to be generous toward others: you have been given the honor of serving as the Lord’s steward.

If that weren’t reason enough, the Apostle Paul also issued a stern warning to the Corinthian Christians in today’s Epistle. They were becoming complacent Christians, Christians who said, “We’ve been baptized. We’ve been redeemed by God. So it doesn’t really matter how we live now. We stand firm. Nothing can possibly move us.” It’s one thing to confidently rely on your Baptism for salvation. That’s good! It’s another thing to imagine that you’re so strong you could never fall away. Paul cites the example of the Old Testament Israelites as proof that those who had been “baptized,” in a sense, “into Moses,” who had been redeemed from slavery in Egypt, did, in fact, fall away by turning away from God in their hearts, by willfully turning away from His commandments, and by relying on their own strength to remain firm. Paul says, don’t be like those Israelites. You have their example. You have been warned. Don’t become complacent in your faith—or in your stewardship, as if faithful stewardship didn’t really matter—but learn from the Israelites’ bad example and the severe consequences they suffered to continue relying on God for salvation and to continue hearing and heeding His Word.

Finally, you have a better reason than the steward in the parable to be generous stewards. He viewed those debtors whom he helped as nothing but a means to a self-serving end. He showed them generosity with his master’s wealth so that they might show generosity to him in return with their own wealth, welcoming him into their homes when he lost his job. But you know that your fellow Christians are your own brothers and sisters, born again of the same water and Spirit that gave you new birth. You know that they are members of Christ’s body together with you, no matter what they look like, no matter where they are in the world, and that they are loved by Him. And you know that you will spend eternity with them in the heavenly dwellings that Christ is even now preparing for those who love Him. Even more than that, you know from Scripture that Christ views every good deed done for these brothers and sisters of His, even the giving of a cup of cold water to a little child who believes in Him, as having been done to Himself. Yes, you have great reasons to be generous with God’s wealth toward your brothers and sisters in Christ.

Does that mean your generosity should not also extend toward unbelievers in their needs? Of course not. Your Father in heaven makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. And you, as His sons, His children, are called to imitate Him. In fact, you, showing tangible kindness toward unbelievers, may sometimes be used by God as a tool for drawing them to hear His Word, and so to be converted and regenerated and made into your brother or sister in Christ.

So, yes, today’s Gospel—and today’s sermon—has been about money. But it’s about much more than that. It’s about all these reasons God has given you to become more and more like Him, from His generosity toward you in the forgiveness of sins, to His generosity toward you in giving you an valuable stewardship in His kingdom, to His generosity in giving you ample examples from Scripture to keep you from falling away, to His generosity in giving you opportunities to help your brothers and sisters in Christ, who will love you all the more as you help them in their time of earthly need. May we, by His grace, become ever more faithful stewards of these temporary things, until we are welcomed by Him and by all the saints into the eternal dwellings above. Amen.