Emmanuel Lutheran Church

Sermon for Trinity 20

Isaiah 65:1-2  +  Ephesians 5:15-21  +  Matthew 22:1-14

The days are evil, St. Paul wrote to the Ephesians. They sure are! The world is a dark place and growing darker. But you’ve been called out of darkness into the marvelous light of Christ. Not that you have been brought out of the world yet, but you have been made citizens of God’s nation—not America, but the Holy Christian/Catholic Church. You are now in the world, but not of the world. The darkness that is around you cannot touch you, cannot consume you, because God has called you into the well-lit wedding feast of His Son.

Many are called. But few are chosen. What does that mean? What’s the difference between the called and the chosen? Between the called and the elect? You’ve heard of the doctrine of election. Elect and chosen are the same word in Greek. The doctrine of election is the Biblical teaching that God has chosen beforehand those who will finally spend eternity with Him in His kingdom of light. It’s a doctrine that can be confusing, but not if we stick with the simple explanation that Jesus gives us in today’s Gospel.

This parable of the wedding feast isn’t hard to understand at all. A King arranges a marriage for His Son. God the Father, in eternity, before the world’s foundation is laid, decreed that He would send His Son into the world and shed His blood to redeem fallen mankind from sin, death and the devil, and would unite His Son to a Bride, to the Holy Christian Church. He carried through with that decree, and now Christ, by His holy life and sacrificial death, has earned salvation for all mankind.

But God the Father also decreed how He would bring fallen mankind into that Bride, into the Church. He decided to invite them, to call them by the Gospel-promise of the coming Messiah. Throughout the Old Testament, God invited people to this great wedding. Over time, He narrowed His calling activity to the Jews, the people of Israel, so that they before anyone else would be ready for the coming of the Christ, so that, when He arrived, they could be the first to come and meet Him, to come to the wedding feast and be saved.

Then Christ came. The wedding was ready. And the word went out, from John the Baptist, from the apostles, from Jesus Himself. Word would keep going out after Jesus’ death and resurrection. All things are ready. Come to the feast! Repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins! But the Jews (mostly) refused to come, refused to be baptized and come to God through the reconciliation made by Christ. The King sent out other messengers, but still, the people on the whole refused to come. Some were too busy or too uninterested to worry about the Word of Christ, while others got so angry at the messengers that they mistreated them and put them to death.

This is still the reaction most people have to the true Gospel. Either they’re uninterested in it, or they persecute it, because it calls their deeds evil and insists that they repent of their sins, acknowledge the God of the Bible as the only true God, and turn to Christ in humility, for forgiveness. So it does us no good to worry about people rejecting the Gospel. It does us no good to wring our hands when the Gospel of Christ goes out and not many come into the Church. And it certainly does us no good to get angry when Christians are persecuted or killed. That’s the way it is in this dark world. That’s why we were called out of it in the first place to the wedding feast of Christ, that we may not perish with the unbelieving world. Let God get angry about it. He does!, as Jesus says in the parable. The King was furious when the invited guests turned down His invitation and even killed the servants who did the inviting. Let God do something about it, as Jesus says in the parable that the king sent out his armies, destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city. But those armies are not Christians. They are the angel armies who will gather the wicked on the Last Day and throw them into the fires of hell. As for us, let us continue to simply be messengers of the truth.

Through the Gospel that has gone out into the world, through God’s servants who proclaim it, the King invites many more people. Go into the highways, and as many as you find, invite to the wedding. Come to the feast! Come and dine with the King in His house! Repent and be baptized for the remission of sins! And many have come, including many of the least important people in the world. Weak, sick, poor, sinners from every nation, tribe, language and people, the good and the bad. Whoever hears this Gospel of Christ is being called by the Holy Spirit to come into God’s kingdom. Because the worthiness for attendance at this feast does not come from the invited guests, but from the Bridegroom. He offers His worthiness in the baptismal waters, to cover the guests with it as with a garment, so that they may attend the feast in the house of God. As St. Paul says to the Galatians, You who were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.

But there is a guest in the house when the king comes who is not dressed with the wedding garment. He has entered the house. He has entered the Church. He has been baptized. He calls himself a Christian. But he isn’t dressed with the garment of faith. He calls himself a Christian, but he remains impenitent and has no trust in Christ alone as the only God and Savior. He may be able to hide that lack of faith from his fellow guests, but he can’t hide it from God, the King. God knows those who are His. And so, when God comes on the Last Day, that Christian-in-name-only is bound and cast outside into outer darkness together with all those who were once invited and refused to come.

Many are called, but few are chosen. The Jews boasted that they had been called. We are Abraham’s children, they cried. God has called us. And to be called by God into His kingdom is, indeed, a very great gift. No one can be saved without being called by the Gospel.

But as we saw in the parable, most of those who are called do not actually want to come, do not actually want to acknowledge their sins and have Christ alone for a Savior. The Holy Spirit is working through the Gospel to bring people to faith in Christ whenever the Gospel is preached, but many of those who hear stubbornly resist the Holy Spirit. Not all who are called are chosen to enter eternal life, but only those who hear the Gospel and believe it and persevere in that faith until the end.

But when does this “choosing,” this “election” take place? We learn from the Scriptures that it took place before the world was made. The chosen, the elect, were chosen in Christ in eternity, chosen by God’s grace; called here in time through the Gospel; justified through faith in Christ; and they persevere until the end wearing the garment of Christ’s righteousness by remaining in true faith in Christ until the arrival of the King on the Last Day. Or, if they fall away from faith for a time, which can certainly happen, they are called again by the Gospel, brought to repentance, and justified by faith.

So what do we learn for our correction and edification from this Gospel?

First, we learn that God’s invitation to come into His Church and His eternal kingdom does not depend at all on the worthiness of the guests, but only on God’s grace and the merits of Christ.

Second, we learn that God’s invitation to come into His Church and His eternal kingdom is always sincere, that His Spirit is always working through the Gospel invitation to create faith. God truly wants all those who are invited to come, to believe in Christ, to receive forgiveness of sins, and to have eternal life.

Third, we learn that it’s all God’s doing when people are saved. From the election of grace, to the sending of the Gospel invitation here in time, to the faith that is given as a gift by the Holy Spirit from the hearing of the Gospel, to the justification by faith, to the preservation of our faith through the Means of Grace, to our final glorification in heaven, it’s all from God. Those who are called but don’t believe have only themselves to blame.

And finally, we learn how urgent it is that we hear and take to heart the Gospel invitation, and that we be diligent in prayer and in the use of the Means of Grace, to make our calling and election sure, as St. Peter says. God doesn’t send us back into eternity to search to see if your name is written in Christ, the Book of Life. He sends you to this ministry of the Word, to Baptism and to the Holy Supper. Listen to His Word that tells you of the goodness of Christ, His atoning sacrifice, His resurrection, and His will that all men should believe in Him to be saved. Those who are not baptized should not put it off any longer. Those who are baptized should use the means God has provided for our salvation. Hear the Word of God. Receive His Sacrament. Be steadfast in prayer, in godly living, in struggling against the flesh, and in bearing the cross patiently. God has provided and will continue to provide all that is necessary for your salvation. Take it as evidence of your election that God has called you through the Gospel into fellowship with His Son, and be assured that your faith and your salvation are no accident. It was planned by God in eternity. Use the means God has given you to remain firm and steadfast in the faith, and neither Satan nor death nor any of the darkness of this world will be able to snatch you out of the Father’s hand. Amen.

Sermon for Trinity 19

Isaiah 44:21-23  +  Ephesians 4:22-28  +  Matthew 9:1-8

We have before us today a lesson on the teaching that lies at the heart of the Christian religion: the forgiveness of sins. It’s a word that gets tossed around a lot. What does it mean? It means that God absolves a sinner or grants him a pardon, not counting his sins against him, removing from him the condemnation he deserved because of his sins and accepting him into eternal life. Forgiveness is just another word for justification.

God is the One, of course, who has to forgive sins, because God is the One who has been sinned against, no matter what the sin. And, of course, God is the Judge. It’s His courtroom that matters. He is the One who has the power to open heaven or to damn sinners to hell.

No one—no one at all, since Adam and Eve—can stand before God or enter heaven without the forgiveness of sins. As the Psalm says, If You, LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But the Psalm goes on, But there is forgiveness with You, that You may be feared.

So God does forgive sins. But the all-important question is, how does God forgive sins? On what basis? And to whom? Those are questions that no one can know the answers to apart from God’s revelation. No one knows by nature how to make things right with Him. He has to tell us that.

And He did tell us that in the Old Testament. Through Moses, God set up a whole system, a pattern for forgiving sinners. You remember what it was? The sinner was to bring a spotless animal to the priest. The priest, as the mediator between God and man, was to make atonement for the sinner by killing the animal in the sinner’s place. As a result, the one who brought the sacrifice was given the assurance that God forgave him his sin, for the sake of the sacrifice he had brought. As the writer to the Hebrews says, According to the law almost all things are purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.

Sacrifice. Mediator. Blood. Forgiveness. That was the pattern for forgiving sins that God Himself had set up. There was no other. That’s why the events of our Gospel are so striking. In it, we see a new system, a new pattern of forgiving sins being followed by Jesus. Or at least, it appeared to be new. We see Jesus forgiving the sins of the paralytic, apparently without the sacrifice, without the priest as mediator, and without blood. Was this “new” pattern of forgiveness legitimate? That was the question. Let’s look at how Jesus answered it in the Gospel.

Jesus had come back to the city of Capernaum. He was already well-known there, so lots of people crowded into the house where He was preaching the Word of God—so many people that, as Mark and Luke inform us, the entryway to the house was blocked.

That didn’t make it easy for the four men in the Gospel to carry their paralytic friend on his stretcher to Jesus. But they found a way. They hauled him up to the roof, made an opening in the roof, and lowered the man down through the opening, right in front of Jesus.

And then Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell us what happened, using almost exactly the same words: When Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, “Son, be of good cheer; your sins are forgiven you.”

Now, that raises a few questions. Had the paralyzed man come for forgiveness, or for healing to his body? You might assume the latter, but are you sure about that? Do you know? You may assume he came for physical healing, but it doesn’t say that. And there’s no indication that the man was disappointed when Jesus forgave him his sins. So why do we often assume that he didn’t come for forgiveness? Probably because we’ve been programmed by our world to believe that physical health is the most important thing, that the material world is the end all be all, that comfort and ease in earthly life is the most important concern anyone could possibly have.

We should rethink that. The world hasn’t always been as materialistic as it is now. Fixing things with God before you die has always been on the mind of man, even though it seems like it’s now becoming an afterthought for many people. So let’s not make any assumptions about the paralytic.

The more pressing question before us is, how does Jesus dare to simply pronounce forgiveness on this man? That was the question that burned in the minds of the scribes. They thought to themselves, “This Man blasphemes!” That is, this Man is mocking God, robbing God of the authority that belongs to Him along, changing the Word of God that spells out how God wants to forgive sins: through a sacrifice, a mediator, and blood. He has no right, they thought.

But Jesus knew their thoughts. That phrase alone should make us sit up and pay attention. There is only One who knows the thoughts of a man. He calls them out for their thoughts: Why do you think evil in your hearts? For which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Arise and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins… Jesus then goes on to tell the paralyzed man to get up, take his bed, and go home. And he does. But that miracle of healing was simply the divine seal and proof that Jesus, the Son of Man, had power on earth to forgive sins.

That demonstrates His divinity. The sins were committed against God and against other men. You may well forgive someone for a wrong they did to you. But no one can go around forgiving people for crimes they’ve committed against other people. No one, except for God. But Jesus is God, God the Son of God and the Son of Man. The paralytic had sinned against Him. We all have. Every sin is against Jesus. So He does have the power to forgive.

As for His method of forgiving—without a sacrifice, without a priest, without blood—well, was it really without a sacrifice, without a priest, and without blood? It’s true, no one had brought a sacrifice along. But God had sent one anyway, His own beloved Son, whose entire life was an offering to God. And it’s true, there was no Levitical priest and mediator present that day. But there was a Priest there, Jesus, a high Priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek, as we’ve discussed in Bible class. He is the one true Mediator between God and man. And there was no bloodshed that came before the forgiving of the paralytic. But there would be. The Son of Man would shed His blood on the cross, and that bloodshed would be so precious and so valuable before God that it would be able to make atonement for all sins, past, present, and future.

As for the four men and the paralytic, they brought no sacrifice and they brought no good works with them to earn Jesus’ forgiveness or His healing. All they brought with them was faith—faith that had come from the Holy Spirit’s own working through the good word they had heard about Jesus. And here we see illustrated for us the pattern of forgiveness that God has chosen to follow: God, in His grace, gave Jesus to be the atoning sacrifice for mankind’s sins. Christ, the Mediator and High Priest, offered Himself as that sacrifice. He shed His blood as the price of atonement. The sinner flees in faith to Christ. And God, in His mercy, counts faith in Christ for righteousness, and pronounces the believer “forgiven.”

You can’t go to a house to find Jesus anymore, as the five men in our Gospel did. But what did He say after He was crucified and risen from the dead? All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Go and preach repentance and the forgiveness of sins to all nations. Forgive sins to the penitent! Use the loosing key! You have My permission! You have My command!

So what would Jesus have you know and believe from our Gospel? First, that He has the authority to forgive sins, as true God and true Man, as the One Mediator who shed His own blood as the atoning price so that you can be forgiven. Second, He wants you to know to whom He grants forgiveness: to the believer in Christ, to the one who recognizes his great need and flees in faith to Christ for mercy. Third, that He has given this authority within His Church, so that all ministers are authorized to forgive sins in His stead. And fourth, He wants you to know what forgiveness means. It means, “Son, be of good cheer!” It means peace with God. It means heaven is yours. It means that one day Jesus will stand beside your body, paralyzed with death, and will tell you to arise and go home to live with Him forever. And you will.

And what would He have you do? First, recognize your sin and come to Him in faith as His Word convinces you that He is good and merciful and powerful to forgive. Come, not only in your heart, but come to the place where Jesus is with His forgiveness, to His holy Church, to His Means of Grace. Come, not for a one-time forgiveness, but over and over again, as long as you carry your sinful flesh around with you. Second, no longer paralyzed by fear of judgment, now able to move your spiritual muscles, your joints, your hands and your feet, you’re free to serve Him without fear. Forgiveness is what frees you to love God and to love your neighbor and especially to love your fellow, forgiven Christians.

The forgiveness of sins is at the heart of the Christian religion, and as we’ve seen, there’s a new pattern for it in the New Testament, but it isn’t entirely new. It’s still the old, faithful pattern of a sacrifice, a Mediator, and blood.

In the words of St. John, If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us. My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world. Rejoice in God’s faithful pattern of forgiveness! Amen.

Sermon for Trinity 18

Deuteronomy 10:12-21  +  1 Corinthians 1:4-9  +  Matthew 22:34-46

There is so much hate in our world. We saw it on full display this week—over the last few weeks, really—in the treatment of Judge Kavanaugh during the senate judiciary hearings. (I’m going to talk about this for just a moment, because it happens to coincide with our Gospel today.) So many accusations flying around, unproven and in many cases unprovable, in open rebellion against the 8^th Commandment, which protects a person’s reputation and does not allow it to be tarnished without evidence. And yet, with no evidence at all, a large percentage of our country has condemned the man in their hearts and has even been brazen enough to condemn him publicly. Why? Because for some, emotion has taken over for reason. But for many, it’s simply because they view this judge as a potential threat to the thing that matters most to them: being able to kill little children in their mothers’ wombs. How sick! How twisted our world has become!

What’s the answer? Well, love, of course! Love is the answer! All we need is love! Except that we can’t even agree on what love is anymore. That’s been redefined in our society, too. For example, there’s a country artist who sings, “I believe you love who you love. Ain’t nothing you should ever be ashamed of.” Of course, what he means is that he believes men should be able to have a sexual relationship with other men, and women with women, and anybody with anybody, marriage or no marriage, and there’s no shame in it at all, because they “love” each other. Except that isn’t love—if God still gets to define what love is.

So what’s the answer? Maybe if we could just fix our definition of love! If we could just go back to letting God define love for us, according to His commandments, maybe then things would get better. If we could just get people to start respecting God’s commandments again, then our society would prosper and God would smile on us again.

Would it? Would He?

You know who really loved God’s commandments? The Pharisees. We encounter them so often interacting with Jesus. In today’s Gospel, a Pharisee tested Jesus with the question, Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? His answer this time was the same as it was the time before when they asked Him: You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.

Notice, first of all, that Jesus doesn’t say that this law of love replaces the other commandments, as if love were now the new norm, whereas those old Ten Commandments were hateful and mean. No, he says that all the Law and the Prophets, every command in the Old Testament, hung on, depended on these two commandments: perfect love for God and selfless love for your neighbor.

C.S. Lewis once used an analogy to explain the Law. He compared every human being to a ship at sea, sailing together with a whole fleet of ships. The Law simply describes how the ship Builder designed the ships to function, inside and out. Love in the heart, love as God has defined it, keeps the ship engines working properly, keeps the hull intact. And it also keeps the ships from going off course, ramming into one another along the way.

In other words, God designed us to love Him with our whole heart: to have no other gods before Him, not to misuse His name, but to honor the preaching of His Word. And God designed us to love our neighbor as we live in community with one another: for children to honor parents, for citizens to honor the authorities, for hearers of the Word to honor the preachers of the Word. God designed us not to murder one another but to protect one another’s life, not to commit adultery but to honor marriage, not to steal from one another but to give freely to the one in need, not to give false testimony but to speak up for and defend the one whose reputation is at stake, not to covet but to be content with what we have. Human beings were designed by the Creator to live like this, to be like this. Love summarizes it all.

So why did the Pharisees hate Jesus so much, if He agreed with them that the Law is good, if He loved the commandments just as they did? Why did they have Him crucified just a few days after Jesus spoke the words of today’s Gospel? Because, although Jesus agreed that the Law is good, He didn’t agree with them that they were good or that they could earn God’s favor by the Law. He showed them the problem with their ships. That their engines were broken. That their hull was rusty and corroded and filled with holes. He showed them how their ships were actually ramming into other ships in the fleet, and how, in reality, they had turned their guns against God Himself. You do not love God with your whole heart, mind and strength. You do not truly love your neighbor from the heart, but have set up your own standards to live by, which end up harming your neighbor. The Law of God, the law of love, is good. But you have not kept it. And so you stand condemned by it.

Be careful here. In the face of so much hatred all around us in our society, we are tempted in two directions, both of them lethal. We are tempted to hate people in return for their hate. That’s evil. But we’re also tempted to turn inward, to focus on our own obedience, to turn to God’s commandments for the solution.

But that’s the Pharisee’s solution. Compare myself with the rotten haters of the world and feel good about myself. Focus on repairing my ship and sailing straight ahead. Then I’ll reach the heavenly port safely.

No, you won’t. That’s the whole point of the Christian Gospel. Your ship is beyond repair. It’s sinking in the ocean. The fleet has failed. The design itself was flawless, but the maintenance has been nothing short of appalling. The only way to reach the heavenly harbor now is by being rescued by another ship.

But not just any ship will do for this rescue. It has to be flawlessly designed, just as we were. But it has to remain flawless, and it has to sail straight ahead, without ever veering to the right or to the left. In other words, it has to be perfectly guided by love. And it has to be big enough and powerful enough to bring every other ship in the fleet on board. And, someone is going to have to pay for all the wrecked ships out there in the ocean, for the reckless damage they’ve done to one another and to themselves, for their rebellion against their Designer.

And that’s the theme of the second part of our Gospel, the implication in Jesus’ question to the Pharisees. What do you think about the Christ? Whose Son is He? 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, till I make Your enemies Your footstool” ’? If David then calls Him ‘Lord,’ how is He his Son?”

The Pharisees had hung all their hopes on the Law of love. So what, really, was the Christ—the Savior whose coming was prophesied and promised throughout the Old Testament—what was He supposed to do? Just come and sit on His father David’s throne and reign over Israel, over all the good law-abiding citizens? If that were the case, then any man would do. But Jesus points out something they had missed from this Psalm. The Christ will not be a mere mortal. Yes, He would be David’s Son, David’s descendant, a man. But He would also be David’s Lord, true God and true man.

Why was that necessary? So that He could be the Savior of all men. So that He could love God and His neighbor perfectly, as all men were supposed to do but didn’t. So that He could pay the price for the sins of all men. So that He could bring all the rusted out ships safely into the heavenly harbor.

The Gospel of Christ is absolutely unique in all the world. Every society since Adam and Eve has attempted to order itself, either by violence and power, or by good laws and virtuous people. And every religion in the world seeks to earn God’s favor by doing the things that they think will please Him. But only the Gospel of Christ teaches that human society is broken beyond repair, and that no one can earn God’s favor. Only the Gospel of Christ proclaims God’s free grace and favor toward sinners, forgiveness of sins and salvation by faith alone in Christ, not by keeping the Law of love.

Ironically, it’s only those who have come to know the love of God in Christ Jesus, those who have come to believe in salvation apart from our own love, who actually begin to keep God’s commandments, who actually begin to love as God designed us to love, as the Holy Spirit molds us into the image of Christ. It is God’s will that we walk in love, that we walk according to His commandments. But only as those who have already been rescued by Jesus, who have already been baptized into Jesus, who are already found in Christ, not having a righteousness of our own, but that which is by faith in Christ. As John writes, we love Him because He first loved us.

So what’s the answer to all the hate we see in the world? Love is still part of the answer, but only a part. The answer is God’s love for the world which He demonstrated in giving His Son as the sacrifice for our sins. And then the answer is repentance on our part, and faith, and love, and patience. Because our goal is not a better world here, but to reach the next world safe and sound and to live as God’s holy children along the way, knowing that, at just the right time, Christ will come and lead us safely out of this hate-filled world into the heavenly harbor, where we will all truly love God with our whole heart, mind, and strength, and where we will all perfectly love one another. May God grant it for Jesus’ sake. Amen.