The devil is still your strongest enemy

Posted on March 15, 2020 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Oculi – Lent 3

Ephesians 5:1-9  +  Luke 11:14-28

The whole world has the Coronavirus on its mind. All sorts of things have been cancelled left and right. Schools have been closed. Store shelves are emptying. And all of this is also happening right here in Las Cruces, where not a single person has been diagnosed with the virus. The world is full of fear.

It’s true, viruses are scary. But you know what? Demons are scarier. Viruses can be dangerous. Demons are far more dangerous. Viruses don’t target people or try to deceive people, but demons do. And yet very few give it a thought. Very few take any reasonable precautions to stay safe from the demons. Very few practice social distancing from the demonic, sinful activities that threaten the soul.

We’re presented in the Gospel with the reality of demons, for the third week in a row. We hear an urgent warning to unbelievers, who still remain in the “strong man’s” kingdom and whose souls still remain under the influence of the devil, whether or not their bodies are possessed. We hear great comfort for believers, who are safe as long as we take refuge with the Stronger Man. But at the same time it’s also a warning to believers, that you should not take for granted the redemption that Christ has given you from the devil’s kingdom, lest you sweep the Holy Spirit out of your hearts and allow the devil to return with a vengeance. The devil may not possess people as he did in Jesus’ day, but the devil is still your enemy.

Jesus shows His power over the devil at the beginning of our Gospel as He drives out the demon from the man who was mute (Matthew adds that he was blind as well as mute). Jesus released that poor man from the torment he was suffering at the hands of the devil. That’s the kind of Savior He showed Himself to be: merciful, with divine power over sickness, over nature, and even over the spiritual forces of evil, never receiving anything for the help He gave to the sick, just lending His help to everyone who came to Him for it.

As Matthew tells us, these miracles, especially His power over the demons, were causing people to wonder, “Could this Jesus be the Son of David? Could He be the Christ?” Of course, they were right. But the Pharisees’ hearts were hard, and they didn’t want the people putting their faith in Jesus. So they had to come up with a blasphemous accusation to brand Him with. He casts out demons through Beelzebub, the ruler of demons. Others tested Him, seeking from Him a sign from heaven.

For the sake of the believers and those who would believe, Jesus chose to answer those accusations. He didn’t want to leave them wondering if, just maybe, the Pharisees were right. Because if someone starts to believe that Jesus is on the side of the demons, then he is lost. You can’t believe in Jesus as the Son of God and wonder if He might be the ally of the devil at the same time. It’s either one or the other. There are only two sides in this great war.

First, Jesus points out how foolish the accusation was that He was driving out demons while at the same time working with the demons. Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to ruin, and a house divided against a house falls. If Satan has turned against himself, if the demons are fighting with one another, then Satan’s kingdom will fall apart and you have nothing to fear from him. Ah, but his kingdom is not falling apart. It is strong, and his demon allies are perfectly united in their hatred toward God and in their purpose to keep men trapped in their dark kingdom, blind to the truth of the Gospel, mute in their ability to confess the true God or to speak a word of praise. Or, if someone is plucked out of the devil’s kingdom by the Holy Spirit, through the Word of Christ and Holy Baptism, then the demons make it their united goal to entice those who have entered God’s kingdom to fall away.

Secondly, Jesus answers those who were looking for a sign from heaven. He challenges them, If I cast out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your sons cast them out? So they will be your judges. But if I cast out demons with the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. Matthew tells us that when Jesus cast out demons, the people marveled and said, “This has never been seen in Israel!” The Jews had no power over the demons, for as much as they apparently tried to exorcise them. But now Christ is here, driving them out one after another by “the finger of God,” or as Matthew says, “by the Spirit of God.” (It’s the same thing.) You want a sign from heaven that Jesus comes from God? Look at His power over the demons, power that no doctor on earth has ever had or ever will! And beware, because if only Jesus has the power to drive out demons, then those who turn away from Jesus will be running right into the demons’ open arms.

We should not envision the devil as being stupid or weak. Far from it. Jesus describes him as a “strong man,” well-armed, who guards his palace, whose possessions are secure. No man on earth can stand up to the devil or defeat him, or escape from his well-guarded palace, or rescue those who are held prisoner there, which is all people by nature. This is Jesus’ third argument against the Pharisees. What Jesus is doing on earth is not helping the devil to gain a kingdom. The devil already has a kingdom! And he doesn’t need any help holding onto it. No man can defeat him! Instead, Jesus has come to the earth because He is the one and only Person who is stronger than the devil. He is the Son of God. And He is the sinless Son of Man, unable to be accused by the devil of anything, and so unable to be overcome. He has come to earth to redeem sinful men from the devil’s kingdom, to give His own life on the cross in the sinner’s place and so to tie up the devil so that he can no longer accuse or hold captive any who trust in Christ Jesus, the Stronger Man who came to destroy the devil’s work. So again, those who trust in Christ are delivered out of the kingdom of darkness and placed in the kingdom of Christ, while those who reject Christ remain trapped in the devil’s house.

Now a warning: Whoever is not with Me is against Me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. To be with Christ is to trust in Him for help against our great enemies: sin, death, and the devil. To gather with Christ is to hear His Word and to do His works, to be imitators of God, to walk as children of the light, to serve the people of Christ in His holy Church, and to show the love of Christ to the world. Make no mistake, there is no middle ground when it comes to Jesus. There is no half-hearted Christianity. There is either faith that works in love and obedience to Christ, or there is unbelief. See how urgent it is to heed Christ’s call to come to Him for rest and for mercy! Those who believe in Him are safe from the devil. Those who reject Christ are on the devil’s side, even though they would never admit such a thing.

Jesus then issues a final warning. He describes what we cannot see, what a demon does when it’s cast out. It wanders around for awhile, and then returns to its former home. And if he finds it swept and put in order, he brings along seven other spirits more wicked than himself, so that the last state of that man is worse than the first. In other words, if the demon finds that your heart is vacant, without the Holy Spirit dwelling there, he will move back in. This isn’t just a warning to those who have been possessed by a demon and then been exorcized. It’s also a warning to those who hear the Gospel and who received Holy Baptism, which first released them from the devil’s power and brought with it the Holy Spirit. But then they grow tired of hearing it. They return to sin, like a dog returns to its vomit, and they walk away from the Church and from the ministry of the Word. In doing that, they expose themselves again to the virus of sin. They drive out the Holy Spirit Himself from their hearts—what a terrible power God has allowed men to have! And so they invite the demons back in.

You see, God isn’t playing around here. The Christian faith is a matter of life and death, much more so than any earthly disease. You have no power to save yourself from the devil’s kingdom. No amount of hand-washing will help. But God gave His Son for you to rescue you from sin, death, and the devil. He gives His Spirit to you in this Word and in the Sacraments, to convict you of sin and to show you the goodness of Jesus, to wash you clean of sin and guilt in Holy Baptism, to bring you to faith in Him, to forgive you your sins, and to keep you firm in the faith. Listen to His words and take heed to His warning.

Finally, at the end of the Gospel, a woman from the crowd makes a pious-sounding statement, thinking she’ll impress Jesus with it: Blessed is the womb that bore You and the breasts at which You nursed! How foolish! What is it to you if the Virgin Mary is blessed, or if Christ Himself is blessed? Christ wasn’t speaking to the crowds that day so that they could dwell on the blessedness of other people. Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it! Christ taught the people so that they themselves could hear His Word and be blessed. In the same way, right now, Christ is teaching you, so that you may hear His word, believe it, and then go on to keep it, and be blessed forever. It does you no good against the devil to think of the Virgin Mary and her blessedness. What does you good, is to believe that that strong Lord Jesus came to redeem you from the devil’s kingdom by His holy, precious blood, and to bring you into His kingdom through Holy Baptism, and to keep you in His Kingdom, through His Word and Sacraments. He wants for you to be blessed, and as you hear and keep His Word as the treasure of your heart, you will be.

There are lots of viruses all around us in this world that’s suffering the consequences of sin. There are plenty of demons, too. The devil is prowling around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. He is strong. Jesus is stronger. Call on Him who is stronger. He will come to your aid. And sing confidently with David, as his words are recorded in today’s Introit and Gradual, My eyes are ever toward the Lord, for He shall pluck my feet out of the net… When my enemies turn back, they shall fall and perish at Your presence. The Lord will surely deliver you from all your enemies, including the devil. And if not even the mighty devil can harm you, if even he can’t separate you from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus, what, really, can a little virus do? Amen.

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One way to be justified

Posted on March 11, 2020 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

(Audio for the sermon is available below, or for download here.)

Sermon for midweek of Reminiscere

Isaiah 45:20-25  +  Galatians 2:11-21

Galatians 2:11–21

11 But when Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. 12 For before certain men came from James, he would eat with the Gentiles. But when they came, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing those who were of the circumcision party. 13 And the other Jews behaved as hypocrites along with him, so that Barnabas also was carried away by their hypocrisy.

14 But when I saw that they were not walking properly, in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter before them all, “If you, though you are a Jew, live like the Gentiles and not like the Jews, why do you compel the Gentiles to live like the Jews? 15 Although we are Jews by nature and not Gentile sinners, 16 we know that a man is not justified by the works of the Law, but by faith in Jesus Christ, and so we, too, have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the Law, for by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified. 17 But if, while seeking to be justified through Christ, even we ourselves were found to be sinners, then Christ would be a minister of sin. God forbid! 18 But if I build up again the things which I tore down, I make myself a transgressor. 19 For through the Law I died to the Law, that I might live to God. 20 I have been crucified with Christ; I live, yet it is no longer I, but Christ lives in me. For the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. 21 I do not nullify the grace of God. Indeed, if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died in vain.

In St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, we have one of the clearest testimonies in the New Testament of the doctrine of justification by faith, which has been called the doctrine on which the Church stands or falls. Where it is taught and believed correctly, the Church stands. Where it is mangled, the Church falls. So, not only is it a very important doctrine, THE foundational doctrine; it’s also a very practical doctrine, as the exchange between Peter and Paul, recorded by Paul in Galatians 2, makes very clear. Let’s walk through this text this evening.

The Gospel of Christ had reached the city of Antioch in Syria, to the north of the land of Israel, where believers in Jesus the Christ were first called “Christians.” The church there was made up mostly of Gentiles, non-Jews, men who had not been circumcised on the 8th day after they were born; men, women, and children who had not grown up under the Law of Moses at all. They ate things like pork and shellfish, as you and I do, things which the Jews, under the Law of Moses, hadn’t been allowed to eat. And when they became Christians, no one told them they now needed to go back to the Old Testament Law and follow the Jewish practices of circumcision and dietary restrictions. They were free to eat pork or not eat it, free to be circumcised or not be circumcised. The Old Testament had been fulfilled by Christ, and a New Testament in His blood had been instituted. They knew that being counted righteous before God didn’t depend on keeping the Law; it depended on faith in Christ Jesus. Whether Jew or Gentile, we’re all justified only by faith in Christ.

That’s what Isaiah had prophesied centuries earlier. You heard one of those prophecies in the First Lesson this evening: Surely in the LORD I have righteousness and strength. Notice what he says. Not, in the Law I have righteousness and strength. Not, in circumcision, or Kosher eating, or in doing good works. But “in the LORD.” Righteousness comes from Him. I have righteousness and strength by being connected to Him by faith.

That was all well and good, except there were still some Jewish Christians at that time, within the first 15 years after Christ’s ascension, who thought that living according to the Old Testament Law was still necessary for salvation. Yes, you have to believe in Christ Jesus. You have to be baptized. But once you’re baptized, Jew or Gentile, you have to go back and not only learn the Old Testament, but live under the Old Testament Law. You have to live like the Jews if you really want to be pleasing to God. They were members of the “circumcision party.”

Now, Peter had learned directly from Jesus that the Gentiles could be saved without having to live like the Jews. He received a special vision about it. He taught it. He championed that truth in Jerusalem, and when he visited Antioch he was glad to sit down at the table and eat with the uncircumcised Gentile Christians there, even though their meals weren’t Kosher. In that sense, even though he was a Jew, he lived like the Gentiles. But Paul tells us that certain men came from James, the leader or maybe bishop of the Church in Jerusalem, to Antioch, and they belonged to that circumcision party. For some reason, Peter was afraid of them, afraid of offending them, afraid of opposing them. So he withdrew from the Gentile Christians and stopped eating with them.

That was bad enough, but because of who he was, his position among the apostles and his firsthand experience with Jesus Himself, the other Jewish Christians there went along with him and stopped eating with the Gentile Christians. Even Barnabas, Paul’s companion on his First Missionary Journey, went along with this “hypocrisy.”

Paul couldn’t just sit back and watch it happen. Too much was at stake. If you want to eat pork, fine! If you don’t want to, fine! If you want to be a vegetarian or a vegan or a meat eater, fine! But the minute you start to believe or lead others to believe that eating or not eating makes you more acceptable to God, you have gone astray. Even worse, you have broken away from Christ. And Peter, by his behavior, was leading both Jews and Gentiles to believe that their relationship with God depended on keeping the Law. The Jews thought, “Clearly believing in Christ is not enough. We still need to eat the right foods and avoid the wrong ones.” And the Gentiles thought, “Clearly believing in Christ not enough. If I want to have God’s favor, I have to keep the Old Testament Law and become, not just a Christian, but a Jew.”

So Paul confronted Peter, not in private, but “to his face” and “before them all,” because his was no private sin. Private sins should be confronted privately. But public sins—sins which have the potential of leading others astray—are to be confronted publicly.

If you, though you are a Jew, live like the Gentiles and not like the Jews, why do you compel the Gentiles to live like the Jews? Peter, you know that you’ve abandoned the Old Testament Ceremonial Law. You’ve been living like the Gentiles for some time now. Why are you now teaching the Gentiles that, to be a true Christian, you need to live like the Jews? It doesn’t make sense.

Although we are Jews by nature and not Gentile sinners, we know that a man is not justified by the works of the Law, but by faith in Jesus Christ, and so we, too, have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the Law, for by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified. Paul says, Peter, you and I are Jews by nature. We were born among the Jewish people, sons of Abraham, circumcised on the eighth day. We lived most of our lives under the Law of Moses, unlike those “Gentile sinners” who didn’t even know the true God before. We were the “good people,” the “decent people,” the “righteous people.” Still, we know that the Law of Moses doesn’t make us righteous before God, because we’re sinners; we’ve already broken the Law. We have learned that justification comes only by faith in Christ Jesus, and so we’ve believed in Him to be justified, not in the Law, because “no flesh,” no human being, will be justified by doing the works of the Law, since all have sinned. Again, one of the clearest passages in the whole Bible, making it clear that there’s one and only one way for anyone to be judged as righteous before God: by trusting in Christ.

That’s also what Isaiah had said: In the LORD all the descendants of Israel shall be justified, and shall glory. Not “in themselves” or “in their own works,” but “in the LORD” they shall be justified. And who is the “they”? “All the descendants of Israel.” But he’s not talking about physical descendants. Because what had God just said? “Look to Me, and be saved, all you ends of the earth!” All who look to Christ Jesus for forgiveness, for God’s favor, for righteousness, for justification—all who seek to be justified through Christ—are the true descendants of Israel.

But Paul continues the argument: But if, while seeking to be justified through Christ, even we ourselves were found to be sinners, then Christ would be a minister of sin. In other words, we have been seeking to be found righteous before God through faith in Christ. But, what? Is that not enough? Do we also have to keep the Law in order to be justified? Is it not by faith alone, as we have believed and taught up until now? If we’re not righteous before God by faith in Christ, if we believers in Christ are still counted as sinners before God, then Christ would be a minister of sin, just another Lawgiver, not a Savior at all.

God forbid!, Paul says. But if I build up again the things which I tore down, I make myself a transgressor. I tore the Law down as a way to be justified, as God instructed us all through Christ. I stopped trusting in the Law and in my own works and trusted only in Christ. What? Should I build the Law up again? Should I rely on it to be found righteous? If I do that, I make myself a transgressor, but while I may be able to eat Kosher or even be circumcised, I can’t keep the whole Law perfectly, as God demands, and so I will not stand before God as innocent, but as a transgressor, a condemned sinner.

For through the Law I died to the Law, that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; I live, yet it is no longer I, but Christ lives in me. For the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. The Law required me to lead a sinless life. It told me I would be righteous before God if I obey the Law, always, perfectly. But I know I haven’t done that, so the Law pronounced a death sentence on me. But Christ Jesus took the Law’s condemnation on Himself, bore my sins, and then was crucified while bearing them. Through the Law, a death occurred: Christ’s death. That means that all the Law’s requirements were satisfied in Christ, by Christ. And now I have been baptized into Christ, united with Him by faith. So tightly are we bound together that I have been crucified with Christ, as far as the Law is concerned. I died to the Law. I died to sin. The Law can no longer condemn me, because I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. Yes, I’m obviously still alive, but it’s really no longer my life. It’s Christ’s life, His goodness, His righteousness, that count before God, His love that is at work in me. He did all the works the Law required; He paid the penalty the Law required; and I reap all the benefits that He earned.

How? Through faith alone. Otherwise, it’s by works, and if it’s by works, then I have nullified grace; I’ve made grace count for nothing. And Christ has died in vain. He might as well not have come at all, if we can earn God’s favor by our works. But that’s nonsense. Christ came into the world precisely because it was the only way for us poor sinners to be saved: not by keeping the Law, but by fleeing from the Law and running to Christ for refuge.

Even though it meant opposing and rebuking the Apostle Peter, the Apostle Paul had to get this doctrine across to the Christians in Antioch and to the Galatians as well, who were starting to fall into the exact same error, thinking they had to go back to the Law of Moses, to the Law of circumcision, if they wanted to be saved. Human nature and human reason always tend to think that you satisfy God by keeping the Law. So learn the lesson from the Apostle Paul and relearn it again and again: you don’t satisfy God by keeping the Law or by avoiding sin. You satisfy God by trusting in Christ, who satisfied the Law for you.

As Luther wrote in his commentary on Galatians, Faith takes hold of Christ and has Him present, enclosing Him as the ring encloses the gem. And whoever is found having this faith in the Christ who is grasped in the heart, him God accounts as righteous. This is the means and the merit by which we obtain the forgiveness of sins and righteousness. “Because you believe in Me,” God says, “and your faith takes hold of Christ, whom I have freely given to you as your Justifier and Savior, therefore be righteous.” Thus God accepts you or accounts you righteous only on account of Christ, in whom you believe. Amen.

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Faith knows that God is always good

Posted on March 8, 2020 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

(No video is available for today’s service. Audio of the sermon is available below, or can be downloaded here.)

The service folder can be downloaded here.
Service Folder for Reminiscere

Sermon for Reminiscere – Lent 2

1 Thessalonians 4:1-7  +  Matthew 15:21-28

Jesus highlights faith for us in today’s Gospel. Here’s the definition of faith I gave my students in the classroom: Faith is the sure trust and confidence in the true God, that He exists, that He is good, and that His Word is always true. Adam and Eve had such a faith in God in the beginning, until the devil convinced Eve that God is, in fact, not good, that His Word is not true, and that instead of trusting in the true God, she herself could be like God, knowing good and evil. At that point, the default state of human beings changed. They went from knowing good up close and not knowing evil at all, to knowing good from a distance, and knowing evil up close and personal. They went from trusting in God to doubting and disbelieving God. They went from knowing that everything He does is always good, to wondering if anything He does is ever good. They went from trusting that His Word is always true, to being very sure that many of the things in Scripture are simply false.

The “God is not good” temptation was part of the devil’s attacks on Jesus when He was fasting in the wilderness, as we heard last week. Jesus never wavered. But the rest of us often do, and more and more as mankind thinks more and more highly of himself, as we convince ourselves that we deserve a happy, easy, comfortable life on this earth, and anything less is just unacceptable.

But in our Gospel, we’re confronted with an anomaly, with something that’s really extraordinary. We’re confronted with a woman who grew up in a land where the true God was not worshiped, a woman who belonged to a Greek culture that proudly worshiped demons in the form of pagan gods. The woman had no reason, humanly speaking, to have a sure trust and confidence in the true God, that He exists, that He is good, and that His word is always true. And yet, somehow, she did. Somehow, word of Jesus had gone ahead of Him into that northern territory, that He was powerful over demons, that He was merciful, kind, and good to all who came to Him for help. Somehow, this woman had also heard the prophecies of Israel’s Scriptures, promising that a Savior would come to Israel—a Savior for the Jews and also for the Gentiles, the Christ, the Son of David. She had heard that Jesus was this merciful Savior, Lord, and Christ. And hearing, she believed.

She believed, even though she saw plenty of evil in her life. She saw evil up close and personal when her daughter became possessed by a demon. But instead of blaming God for it, she recognized that it was the devil who was her enemy, not God. It was her sins and the sins of the rest of mankind that brought all this evil into the world, not God. She looked to God, not as her enemy, but as her Savior from the enemy. She knew that God is always good. So when Jesus tested her faith in today’s Gospel, it didn’t harm her one bit. It simply revealed the power of God’s word to create and sustain faith.

The woman from the region of Tyre and Sidon, just north of the land of Israel, found Jesus after He had left Israel and gone to her country. She found Him and cried out to Him, O Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! Already she’s showing her faith. Already she acknowledges the demon as her enemy and the Lord Jesus as her friend and Helper.

At this point, we would expect Jesus to do what He’s already done every time someone has come to Him for help: to help them immediately. But He didn’t. He did not say a word in reply. Is He good or not?

She didn’t waver. She kept crying out. And the disciples didn’t like it. Send her away! She keeps crying out after us! Some have speculated that they meant, Grant her request and send her away so she stops crying out after us! Or it seems more to be like, If You’re not going to help her, Jesus, then send her away. Either way, the disciples wanted to be rid of her and her crying out. These are the great apostles? These are Christians? They don’t seem very nice, and yet these are the ones Jesus has chosen to follow Him. Sometimes Christians behave in such a way that they make people ask the question, Is Jesus good or not?

Jesus added another obstacle. But He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Well, Jesus had already helped Gentiles (non-Israelites) at this point, so He must not mean that in an absolute sense, and yet, it could have left the woman to wonder, Is He good or not? Or is He only good to some people but not to me?

She didn’t waver. She came and fell down before Him, saying, “Lord, help me!” He answered, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” Is He good or not?

She never wavered. Yes, Lord. But the dogs do eat from the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table. Yes, He is good, she knew. And I am not. I’m a sinner. And I see myself, not just as a sinner like everyone else, but as even lower than others, less important, less worthy, less deserving. And yet, still, I look for His help. I hope in His help. Faith and hope never left this woman for a moment.

And then, after that brief exchange, Jesus was done testing and exercising the woman’s faith. Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish. He sets her up as a shining example of what God-given faith can be, a sure trust and confidence in the true God, in Jesus the Christ, that He is good, that He is always good, no matter what things look like in our lives, no matter what hardships or evil we have to face. God is not the enemy. He is our only true Helper.

Our enemy is the devil, who brought this ruin on our race. Our enemy is the world, the unbelievers who repeat the devil’s lies in our ears that God is not good. Our enemy is our own sinful flesh, that still has no true fear of God or love for God, that still doesn’t trust Him and never will. And because of our sins, all sorts of troubles have been unleashed in our world, whether directly, for specific sins we’ve committed, or indirectly, because trouble and disease and death are part of the curse that this world is still under.

But Jesus shows us in today’s Gospel that He is always good, even when He allows the devil to harass mankind. God is good even when He humbles us and disciplines us. God is good even when He punishes. God is good even when He doesn’t seem to be listening. God is good even when He doesn’t give the answer you had hoped for, or doesn’t give it right away.

Far from not caring about our troubles, Jesus joined us in our troubles, took on our humanity, suffered not only with us, but for us, sent by God the Father in heaven to die on the cross as the payment for our sins, so that we might believe in Him and so be forgiven by Him and live forever, so that we might know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God is always good, and not just to some people, but also to you, and that whatever He does is always right.

Look at the woman Jesus holds up for us today as a model for our faith. Learn from her. Become more and more like her, never pretending that you’re entitled to His help, but humbly, boldly, persistently seeking His mercy and help, and knowing that He will give it in just the right way, at just the right time, because He loves you, as a dear father loves his dear children. Amen.

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A comparison between man and the Son of Man

Posted on March 4, 2020 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

Sermon for midweek of Invocavit

Genesis 3:1-24  +  Romans 5:12-21

On Sunday, we heard the Gospel of Jesus facing temptation from the devil in the wilderness during His 40-day fast, and we referred to Him as the “Second Adam.” This isn’t a minor doctrine of Scripture; it’s basically a summary of the whole Christian faith. So let’s talk some more about that this evening based on the lessons we heard.

The first three chapters of Genesis tell us the history of the first man, Adam, whose very name means “man, human.” It was Eve who was deceived by the serpent in the Garden of Eden, who first disbelieved God’s word and ate from the forbidden fruit. But as Paul tells us in Romans 5, it was Adam’s disobedience that actually brought sin into the world, because it’s through Adam that sin passed on or spread to his and Eve’s descendants.

This is what we call Original Sin. Not the “original sin” that Adam committed in the Garden, but the sin the originates with Adam’s disobedience and now passes down to all who are descended from him—to those born in the natural way from a mother and a father. Adam’s sin led to death for Adam and Eve, but also for all men, for all people, because his sin, his corrupt, diseased nature, passed down to all who are descended from him, and that’s every human being who has ever lived.

It wasn’t supposed to be that way. Adam was made in the image of God. Here’s a good definition for that: The image of God is the reasonable and virtuous character of the soul, which includes true knowledge of God and true righteousness and holiness. It’s like this perfectly clean, flat piece of paper… That image, that reasonable and virtuous character of the soul is what was supposed to pass down from Adam to his children.

But when he sinned, this is what happened to the image of God in him… Now that’s what passes down, a soul with a twisted nature, a soul that is not perfectly reasonable, that is not inherently virtuous, that doesn’t know God as it should. Our normal definition of Original Sin is this: Original Sin is the disease of our nature, passed down from Adam and Eve, which includes (1) the lack of fear, love, and trust in God, and (2) the presence of evil desires and the inclination toward sin. This is the nature that every one of us was born with. This is the sinful flesh where all our actual sins come from. And this alone is sufficient for a death sentence to be pronounced on a person.

Paul proves the spread of original sin to the human race in Romans 5 by the fact that “all died” between Adam and Moses, even though no one except for Adam had received a spoken or a written law from God. Adam was told by God not to eat of the tree or he would die. He transgressed. That means, he stepped over the line God had drawn for him. And so he died. No one after him transgressed an actual commandment of God, and yet everyone died. Therefore, Adam’s sinful image was passed on to his descendants, making them subject to death, because as the same apostle writes in the next chapter of Romans, “The wages of sin is death.”

But then Paul sets up a comparison of the first man, Adam, and Jesus, who often calls Himself the “Son of Man,” that is, the “Son of Adam.”

Let’s look first at Adam. First, Adam disobeyed. And after one act of disobedience, he became sinful. Second, Adam’s sin, his disobedience, was passed on to all those who are connected to him by birth, by being physically descended from him, so that we’re born with a corrupt, diseased, sinful nature. Third, the result of Adam’s sin being passed on to his descendants is that we all die. Fourth, Adam’s sin passed down to us means not only physical death, but eternal condemnation in hell.

Now let’s compare those four things with Jesus. Whereas Adam disobeyed once and then fell into judgment, Jesus obeyed. And He obeyed not just once, but lived a sinless life. He lived His entire life in perfect obedience to God, culminating in His becoming obedient to death, even death on the cross. Whereas Adam’s sin is passed on by physical birth, the free gift of Jesus’ righteousness is passed on by spiritual rebirth, by faith, by God graciously counting Jesus’ righteousness to all who believe in Him. Whereas the result of Adam’s sin is that death reigns over our race, the result of Jesus’ righteousness is that those who receive the gracious gift of His righteousness through faith reign in life. Death is no longer our master. We don’t live for death. And death can’t hold us except for a short, little while. And finally, whereas Adam’s sin leads to eternal condemnation, Jesus’ righteousness leads to justification and eternal life for all who are connected to Him by faith.

So Adam and Jesus, Man and the Son of Man, are like two trees. The people, the branches that grow from Adam share in his sin, his death, and the condemnation he earned with his sin. All people start out on that tree. We, too, were among those branches. But through Holy Baptism, through the preaching of the Gospel, the Holy Spirit has taken us and grafted us into the tree that is Christ Jesus by bringing us to faith in Him, giving us a new birth, so that we now share in His righteousness, His life, and the justification He earned for us by His own righteousness.

You and I still live with the consequences of Adam’s sin (and our own). We still live with the devil as the prince of this world, given far more freedom now to harass mankind than he had in the Garden of Eden. We still live in the world that is under God’s curse, a world that is falling apart and has been falling apart for some 6,000 years, since the Garden of Eden, falling apart with regard to morality, social norms, sickness and disease, even nature itself. We live with a sinful flesh, inherited from Adam, that still hates God and doesn’t trust in God or cling to His Word, that still wants to jump into every kind of wickedness, with a part of us that wants to be God, just like Adam and Eve did. But we have been called to repentance. We’ve been called to trust, not in man, but in the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, who overcame those bitter enemies for us—the devil, the world, and our flesh. And now, believing in Him, we’ve received the gift of His righteousness, and with it, the forgiveness of sins—justification before God.

That’s the central teaching of the Christian faith, and what better time to review it than during the Lenten season? We’re getting ready to follow Jesus down the ultimate path of obedience, His obedience which was never easy, but was hardest of all during Holy Week. He walked that path because of Adam’s disobedience, which had condemned our race to an eternity in hell. He walked that path so that we could escape God’s judgment and receive the gift of eternal life by hearing His Gospel, by trusting in Him, and by holding onto that trust, with His help, all the way to the end of the road. God grant it to us all, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

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The hardships begin for the Second Adam

Posted on March 1, 2020 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Invocavit – Lent 1

2 Corinthians 6:1-10  +  Matthew 4:1-11

In today’s Epistle, St. Paul gave the Corinthians a list of some 30 things that established him or that proved him and the other apostles to be true ministers of God, many of them hardships of one sort or another. Why would the things in that list, especially the hardships, establish someone as a minister, as a servant of Christ? It’s obvious, isn’t it? Because those are all the things that characterized Christ during His brief three-year ministry on earth. And all the hardships began with His 40-day fast in the wilderness and with the temptations He endured there.

Matthew tells us that, immediately after Jesus began His ministry by being baptized, He was led by the Spirit out into the wilderness to be tempted. To be tempted. To be tested. To be tried. That was God the Father’s very first task for His newly ordained Son. He had to be tempted, because He had to follow a certain pattern, certain type. Paul writes in Romans 5 that Adam, the first man, was a type or pattern of the One to come, of the Christ who is sometimes referred to as the Second Adam.

Well, you remember how it went in Genesis. Adam was tempted. So the Second Adam also had to be tempted. But the circumstances were hardly the same. Adam had no hardships to face before he fell into sin. He was surrounded by an abundance of food. There was no sickness in the world, no suffering, no death, no loneliness, no disease, nothing at all to make him doubt God’s goodness or love. The Second Adam, Jesus, lived in a world plagued by all those things, “cursed” with all those things, because the first Adam fell into sin and earned the curse for our race. Through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death has spread to all men, because all have sinned.

So Jesus is sent out into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit so that He could begin to experience the hardships of mankind. A forty-day fast, all alone in the desert.

Part of the hardship of that fast was the special attention of “the Tempter,” Satan, who tempted the first man and overcame him by a tree. The Second Adam would one day overcome Satan by a tree, as you hear me chant every Sunday during the Lenten season during the Proper Preface before Communion. But before that, He would have to face Satan’s temptation, in order to provide mankind with a “second chance,” as it were, to succeed where the first man (and all the rest of us, too) had failed.

The first temptation we can understand pretty easily. Jesus was hungry after not eating for over a month. Remember, He didn’t choose this fast for Himself. His Father chose it for Him by leading Him out there by His Spirit. So the devil plays on that, “If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread!” It’s a temptation to doubt His Father’s goodness, to question His Father’s love. It’s a temptation to look around, see how bleak things look, how hard life is, and to say, “You know what? Forget about God. I’m gonna do what I have to do for me.”

It’s hard enough for us sinners to face that temptation, when the reality is that, as sinners, we deserve a hard life, a life full of hardship and pain, and finally, death. We deserve it, and yet we still want to accuse God of unfairness or meanness or simply turn our backs on Him or forget about His Word whenever real hardships come along. Jesus didn’t deserve it, didn’t have to endure hardships at all. He suffered, even though He was sinless. And still, He didn’t fall for the devil’s temptation to doubt His Father’s goodness. He replied, It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Such devotion! Such a love for His Father! Such a readiness to cling to what God says, no matter what His eyes saw, no matter who disagreed.

We could all use some of that devotion. We could all learn a lesson from Jesus’ refusal to budge from God’s Word, even in the face of hardship.

The second temptation is the kind that strikes when there are no hardships, when things are going fine. Jesus certainly had no compelling need to leap from the top of the temple. But the devil tried to manufacture a need, to create a longing for something. Here, jump down from the temple! Here, do something dangerous, something thrilling, and watch as God sends His angels to fly to your rescue!

That’s the toughest part of this temptation, the twisting, the misuse of God’s Word. The devil quotes from Psalm 91, ‘He will put His angels in charge of you,’ and, ‘In their hands they will lift you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone. But he leaves out the rest of the first verse, to keep you in all your ways. Your ways are the paths God has laid out for you, the living out of your many vocations, the opportunities and the good choices God has placed in your path. God has promised divine protection as you live the life He gave you. But if you choose to walk on a way that God has forbidden, a way that God hasn’t laid out for you, like risking your life unnecessarily just to prove that God will keep His Word, now you’ve put the Lord to the test and you’ve stepped outside of the refuge He offers.

But Jesus didn’t step outside of that Refuge. He quoted Scripture again, It is written again, ‘You shall not tempt the Lord your God.

Putting all of Scripture together and knowing God rightly is essential to being a Christian. You know how the world has twisted the Word of God to shape God into the image the world wants to believe in, into a god who lets young men and women sleep together outside of marriage, who lets people not attend church and still consider themselves very “spiritual” or even “Christian,” who lets people be prideful and condescending to one another and nasty toward those in authority, on the Right or on the Left. Go ahead! Say what you want! Do what you want! God is love! He would never punish you for it!

Learn from today’s Gospel to recognize the lie when you hear it. Learn from Jesus to know God’s Word well enough so that no one can deceive you by taking it out of context.

The third temptation in Matthew’s account is the easy-way-out temptation. It’s the “You can be happy! You can be safe! You can keep your job! You can stay out of trouble! You can get along with the world! You can have it all…if you just compromise on God’s Word just this once” temptation. “All these things I will give You,” says the devil, “if You will fall down and worship me.”

Jesus faced that temptation as He faced the others, standing firmly on God’s Word: Get away from Me, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve.

Satan did get away from Jesus, but He has kept coming back for Christians throughout the ages. For almost three hundred years, the devil kept coming back through one Roman emperor or another, accusing the Christians of atheism, of all things, because they wouldn’t bow down to the Roman gods or sacrifice to them. So they would invent all kinds of tortures and threats and hardships to put the Christians through, and then they would give the Christians a chance to get their life back, to end the torture, to escape death. All you have to do is offer incense to our Roman gods just this once. Deny Christ and make the sacrifice. Here’s the incense! Go ahead!

Some gave in to those temptations. But many walked the path of Jesus and refused to worship any god but the true God. And just as Jesus eventually had to face the cross in service to God, so they lost their earthly lives, too, because, after all, Jesus had done it first. Jesus had done it for them. For us. And He promised them that no matter what hardships they faced on earth, no matter how much they lost on earth, they would gain far more in the next life with Him. And they believed Him instead of what their own eyes told them. They believed Him instead of the devil.

This whole business of eternal salvation, living as a Christian, facing all sorts of temptations is a much more serious business than we tend to make it. It’s why we keep coming back to church week after week and in between, because we couldn’t hold onto this faith if the Holy Spirit weren’t constantly feeding it. He feeds it again today in the Gospel by holding Jesus, the Second Adam, before our eyes as both Substitute and Example.

For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s obedience many will be made righteous. The First Adam failed and his failure has spread to us in the sinful nature that has spread to us. But the Second Adam overcame, beginning with His 40-day fast and His successful stance against the devil, and His victory spreads to us through faith. But His example also stands before our eyes, to stand firmly on God’s Word in the face of every temptation. After He endured hardship and temptation for a while, divine help was sent to Him. Divine help will be there for you, too, as you endure whatever hardships you must to remain faithful to God. Trust in Him! Trust in the Second Adam, and His victory will be yours, over sin, over death, and over the power of the devil. Amen.

 

 

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