Managing God’s wealth as if your future depended on it

Posted on July 29, 2018 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Trinity 9

1 Chronicles 29:10-13  +  1 Corinthians 10:6-13  +  Luke 16:1-9

If you give enough money to the church, can you purchase the forgiveness of sins? No. We had a Reformation over that; the sale of indulgences was one of the sparks that led Luther to write the 95 Theses. Money won’t get you into heaven. If you send enough money to the preacher—maybe enough so that he can finally buy himself that private jet he’s always wanted…to spread the Gospel around the world, of course—will God pour down even more blessings into your lap? I’m afraid not. False prophets tend to spend a lot of time talking about money, and specifically, how you should be giving a lot more to them, and promising that, if you do, God will smile on you and forgive you and send all sorts of blessings into your life. But that’s not what we preach here.

Still, that doesn’t mean that God has nothing to say about money, or that Christians are free to use money however they want.

As you know, and as you heard again today in the First Lesson, God has made us all stewards and managers of certain things. King David humbly confessed, All that is in heaven and in earth is Yours…Both riches and honor come from You, and You reign over all. He said that in the context of the Israelites giving rather enormous freewill offerings for the building of the first Temple in Jerusalem. And he recognized that they weren’t giving their things to God. For all things come from You, and of Your own we have given You. David recognized that God is the Owner of all things, and that we are but stewards and managers of resources that belong to Someone Else.

As the Owner of all, God sets the general areas and the directions in which His money is to be sent: (1) to the support of those who minister to you with the Word of God; (2) to the needs of your family; (3) to the needs of your brothers and sisters in Christ; (4) to the needs of your neighbor outside the Church, including the poor and needy; (5)  to taxes—especially the ones that pay the salaries of those who serve us in our government, from soldiers to politicians; and then, finally, last and, in fact, least, (6) to the things that you and your family want. Those are the six areas where God, the Owner, who has placed different amounts of money into each person’s hand, has commanded you to direct His funds.

But He doesn’t micromanage our behavior with His wealth. He doesn’t tell you, such and such an amount to this person or to that area. He doesn’t draw the fine lines for you between wants and needs or lay out the percentages you should assign to each of the six areas. He doesn’t even command the ten-percent tithe anymore. He places resources into our hands and He says, use it for all the good purposes I have laid out for it. Use it wisely.

Now, in order to do that, you have to actually sit down and do some math. If you would be a wise manager, you have to calculate your income and plan on where to send it, every dollar. And you have to do this regularly and thoughtfully and intentionally, with your Master’s desires and best interests as the driving force behind your decisions.

But that’s not what the unjust steward did in Jesus’ parable that you heard in the Gospel. He was entrusted with managing a certain portion of his master’s wealth. But he was wasting it. Not stealing it, necessarily, but wasting it, not thinking about how to spend it wisely, for his master’s benefit and according to his master’s wishes.

Word got around that that was the case, and finally he was reported to his master, who set up an appointment to go over the books with the steward before firing him and sending him out into the streets.

The steward didn’t have much time before that appointment. But a little! What to do? He’s going to lose his job. No unemployment benefits to fall back on, no welfare or government program to keep him fed. He has three options: Hard manual labor? No, he’s too weak for that. Begging for handouts? No, he’s too proud to beg. Only one option sounds decent to him: hurry up and make friends, purchase their loyalty, so that they will take him in when he loses his job. But he doesn’t use his own money to purchase their friendship. He uses his master’s money, the debt owed to his master. He cooks the books in favor of his master’s debtors, being generous toward them as if his very future depended on it, because, as far as he knew, it did. It was unjust stewardship.

But when his master heard about it, he wasn’t upset. On the contrary, he commended the servant for acting shrewdly, for wisely calculating the best use of the funds at his disposal to purchase the good favor of others in order to secure a future for himself, for being generous as if his future depended on it.

Jesus has a warning for His disciples in the Gospel. Jesus tells this parable because He observed a sin that affects people of all times. Not greed, although greed is a sin. Not stealing, although stealing is also a sin. But sloppy, haphazard, disinterested stewardship of God’s possessions that have been entrusted to us. You may not be a thief. You may not be an especially greedy person. But who of you can say that you haven’t been sloppy with God’s things? Sloppy, and disinterested in sending your income to all the areas where God has directed it, as if God weren’t the real owner of your things, as if you weren’t required to be a conscientious and zealous manager of His goods, as if you didn’t have to answer to God for it, as if nothing at all depended on it.

But the Law accuses the wasteful and disinterested manager. You’re supposed to be serving God with your pennies and with your dollars and with the other resources God has entrusted to you. But, as Jesus declares: the sons of this world are more shrewd in their generation than the sons of light. Unbelievers spend more time trying to make earthly friends with money than believers spend trying to be conscientious and faithful with God’s wealth. And that’s a shame. More than that, it’s shameful. And if we knowingly disregard the Lord’s will, as the Israelites did in the wilderness where the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play, then, as St. Paul warned the Corinthians in today’s Epistle, we will forfeit the inheritance He has prepared for us, just as those Israelites did. So the Lord calls us again, as He called them, to repentance.

But for the penitent, for the sorrowful, what do you do now? Do you hurry up and start giving out money to other people, to try to avoid the punishment of hell or buy your way into heaven, like Ebenezer Scrooge after he was scared half to death by the spirit who showed him his dismal future if he remained a miser? No, as we already said, you can’t purchase God’s favor or buy your way into heaven. Here God sets Jesus before you and says, Look! Here is the One who suffered for your sins. Here is the One who purchased God’s favor, not with gold or silver, but with His holy precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death. He is your entrance into God’s favor. He is your entrance into heaven. Trust in Him and you have God’s favor and forgiveness and eternal life as a free gift. Faith in Christ is counted as perfect, faithful stewardship, without you doing a single good deed, without paying anyone a single penny.

But you realize, don’t you?, that God’s free favor in Christ gives you more reason to manage God’s wealth wisely, not less. You have more reason to send your income out to others, especially within the house of God!

And, look, I don’t keep track of your individual offerings throughout the year. But I know that as a congregation you continue to support your minister and that you have been generous toward other pastors in our diocese, to pastors’ families, to other congregations, to one another, and to strangers in our community who have come to us for help. That’s good. Can you be more faithful, more intentional? That’s something you have to consider, and it’s something you’re never “done” with. As long as God entrusts you with His things, whether many things or few, you have a responsibility as God’s stewards to keep acting wisely with them.

And while your eternal future doesn’t depend on your works, but on your God-given faith in Christ, you should still live as if it did. When your conscience condemns you, flee in faith to Christ and don’t ask how faithful a steward you’ve been. But when it comes time to live your daily life, don’t sit back and say, it doesn’t matter what I do or how I spend my money. On the contrary, manage your wealth and be generous with it as if your future depended on it. You’ve been placed in God’s service and entrusted with God’s things. Be careful with how you divvy out God’s money.

We who have been reconciled with God through faith in Christ crucified have been given wisdom from above to think of others first. Parents of their children, and children of their parents. Family members for their family members, pastors being generous with the teaching of the Word of God and hearers being generous in their offerings. Helping all men where we are able—relatives, friends, neighbors, strangers, and so on.

And when you do that, you’ll find that you will have made any number of friends for yourselves, not just unbelievers, but also fellow Christians who have benefited from your wise and devoted stewardship, children, family, neighbors, fellow church members, pastors, and any number of Christians who will make it through this life into their heavenly dwellings, partially because God used you to provide for them in their earthly needs. And they will receive you into an everlasting home.

Ask for wisdom to manage God’s wealth wisely and apply yourself to it as if your future depended on it. And may God grant you that wisdom and keep you firmly believing in Christ Jesus alone for salvation, even as you work hard here below in all the tasks God has assigned to you, in thankful obedience for the free gift of eternal life. Amen.

 

 

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Know the truth in order to beware of error

Posted on July 22, 2018 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Trinity 8

Jeremiah 15:19-21  +  Romans 8:12-17  +  Matthew 7:15-23

In the Gospel we have a simple but solemn command from Jesus: Beware of false prophets. How serious is this command? Well, it’s as serious as a wolf that’s allowed to sneak into a sheep pen. What will happen if a ravenous wolf gets in close to the sheep? You know what will happen. The sheep will be torn to pieces and killed. The time to beware is before the wolf gets in, not after.

Now, false prophets can refer to any who pretend to speak for God or about God but end up saying things that aren’t true. Even the evolutionary atheists are false prophets; they proclaim that God doesn’t exist, or that He didn’t create the universe in six days. So, yes, beware of them.

But Jesus isn’t talking about atheists in our Gospel. He isn’t even talking about pagan religions. He’s talking about people who try very hard to look like sheep, who enter into the Christian Church looking and sounding like Christians. He’s talking about people who call Him, “Lord.” But inside, Jesus says, they are ravenous wolves.

False prophets teach false doctrines. That’s what Jesus means when He says, You will know them by their fruits. An apple tree produces apples. A crabapple tree produces crabapples. A true prophet produces doctrine that’s good. A false prophet produces doctrine that’s bad.

Holy Scripture compares false doctrine to leaven, like yeast. Now, if you want to leaven a batch of dough, fine. But if you don’t, if you must have an unleavened batch of dough—which is what God requires of His Church when it comes to His doctrine—, then don’t let even the tiniest bit of yeast get mixed in. Because if you do, it will be absolutely impossible to get it back out again, won’t it?, or to keep a part of the dough pure. Once the yeast gets mixed in, it can never be removed. As St. Paul writes, A little leaven leavens the whole lump. So, Jesus says, beware of false prophets who teach false doctrine.

Now, I’ve heard before from former members, and I know that other Lutheran pastors hear this from time to time, even from some in their own congregations: Why do you have to talk about other denominations? Why do you have to focus on Lutheranism at all? Why can’t you just say positive things about the Bible and about other churches?

The answer is simple: Because you’ve been given a command by the Lord Jesus, and so have I. Beware of false prophets. He isn’t at all concerned about how uncomfortable His command may make you feel, or about hurting the feelings of those who sit at the feet of false teachers to learn from them. He sees what you do not—the grave spiritual danger that prowls at your door and will rip you apart if false doctrine is allowed to sneak in and lodge itself in your heart.

Now, that said, you know we don’t sit here week after week bashing other churches or other Christians. That’s not our practice. In fact, we give thanks to God for all true Christians, wherever they may be in the world, and we pray for those who are exposed to false doctrine, that they may be freed from it.

But in the course of the Christian life, if we wish to stay on the path, then we do have to know where the edges of the path are and what dangers lie to the right and to the left and where our enemy has historically tried to lead people astray. The devil, with God’s permission, has filled the world with the dark smoke of false teaching, even as he has sown false prophets and doctrines of demons in every city, in every place where the true Gospel has also been preached. God permits it as a punishment on mankind for despising His Word and as a tool to sharpen His faithful people by driving them ever back to His Word.

Now, who are the false prophets to beware of? I won’t make a list for you. I don’t need to. They’re everywhere. All of you who have been confirmed here have studied the Scriptures and have confessed that the Lutheran Confessions, as far as you know them, are in agreement with Holy Scripture and represent the apostolic teaching of the universal Christian Church. So beware of any teaching that contradicts these Confessions. That includes everything you read on Facebook, every song on the radio, every show on TV, every book you read. They may sound nice and innocent. They may appeal to your emotions. They may even quote Scripture. But if you’re not watching out, they will lodge a notion in your mind that comes, not from God, but from the devil. So be wary and critical of everything you see and hear.

Beware also of every non-Lutheran prophet in the world. That doesn’t mean every non-Lutheran preacher is automatically a false prophet; a person could conceivably preach the pure Christian faith without ever having heard of Martin Luther. But it doesn’t usually work that way. Denominations form precisely because one disagrees with the doctrine of another. And if the Lutheran faith is nothing other than the Christian faith as it has been handed down from the apostles—which is what we believe it to be or else there’s no point in being Lutherans—then you have to beware of someone who doesn’t want to be associated with the Lutheran confession.

Of course, as you well know, the name Lutheran doesn’t inoculate someone against false teaching, does it? On the contrary, the largest Lutheran church bodies in the world—the ELCA and its partners—can hardly even be characterized as Christian anymore, much less Lutheran. And the other medium-sized Lutheran church bodies with whom we’re very familiar have their own favorite false doctrines that they won’t let go of. No, the more cunning the wolf, the more closely he will dress like the sheep. So you still have to beware.

But it gets even harder than that, doesn’t it? Even within a church body that teaches everything correctly, according to God’s Word, a person can go off on his own and begin to teach falsely. So even if you’ve known a faithful pastor for years, you still have to weigh his doctrine and make sure it matches with the doctrine of Scripture.

And that’s the crux of the matter. To the extent that God enables you, you have to know and learn the Holy Scriptures. It’s impossible to even begin to beware of false prophets if you can’t distinguish the truth from error. But knowing the Scriptures is not like knowing just any book. We’re not just talking about knowing some facts. Jesus said of God’s Word that it is “truth.” And Jesus also said, “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life.” To know God’s Word, then, is to know Jesus. The better you know His Word, the better you know Him who loved us and gave Himself for us, that we might believe in Him and live forever with God.

So know the truth in order to beware of error. Know it, first, according to its general outline, as we review it simply in the Small Catechism: the Ten Commandments, the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, Holy Baptism, the Ministry of the Keys, and the Sacrament of the Altar. If you knew only the truth as it’s confessed in the Small Catechism, you would be able to identify the vast majority of false doctrines that you encounter on a daily basis.

And then work for the rest of your life on filling in the gaps in between. Everything you need to know for your salvation is revealed in Holy Scripture and confessed in our Lutheran Confessions. And the Lord Jesus has promised His Holy Spirit to guide you into all truth, so that you know Him as He is, and so that you may do the will of the Father in heaven.

So come to church every Sunday and pay careful attention, not just to the sermon, but to every word that is said and sung. Read your Bible at home and meditate on it. Come to Bible class. Study your Small Catechism and all the Lutheran Confessions. And pray to God that He will enlighten you with His gifts and grant you wisdom to know the truth that you may also beware of error. Amen.

 

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He will not let you faint on the way

Posted on July 15, 2018 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Trinity 7

Jeremiah 31:23-25  +  Romans 6:19-23  +  Mark 8:1-9

(preached at Faith Lutheran Church, Beaverton, OR)

They were two separate miracles—the feeding of the 5,000 and the feeding of the 4,000. Since both accounts have found a place in our lectionary every year, I like to point out the difference between the two miracles—aside from the obvious difference in the number of people present and the number of loaves and fish that were multiplied (five and two vs. seven and a few). For example, the 5,000 were close to town and could have returned home easily and found food for themselves. The 4,000 were in a remote place and had come a long way to be with Jesus. The 5,000 were fed after one day of listening to Jesus. The 4,000, after three days of staying with Jesus. The 5,000 came to Jesus mainly because they wanted to see more signs and witness more miracles. The 4,000 came because they were interested in hearing Jesus’ doctrine. We’re told that many of the 5,000 abandoned Jesus the next day after He offered them Himself as the very Bread of Life, because they didn’t believe in Him. We’re told no such thing about the 4,000.

What are we to make of these differences, especially given the similarity of the miracles themselves? The Holy Spirit was very frugal, after all, when it came to the inspiration of the Scriptures.

Well, the main lesson of the feeding of the 5,000—as we hear it from the Gospel of John during the season of Lent—was, See the sign of Jesus’ power and generosity and make the connection: this is the One who will provide bread for your souls, who can do so much more for you than feed you for a day! Trust in Him as the promised Christ and seek His heavenly kingdom! That miracle was directed to those who didn’t yet believe in Him.

Then we come to today’s Gospel, the miracle of the feeding of the 4,000, where the main lesson is, You who have left your homes and traveled far to follow Jesus, who have continued with Him to hear the preaching of His Word—you were right to follow Him and to trust in Him to take care of your soul! Now see how He also takes care of your every earthly need while you follow Him! This miracle is directed to Christians who end up suffering some earthly loss, especially for following Jesus, to comfort them and assure them that He will not leave them to faint on the way, but will provide the help they need in their distress. As you heard the Lord promise through the prophet Jeremiah, For I have satiated the weary soul; I have replenished every sorrowful soul.

Let’s consider some of the details recorded in Mark’s Gospel. Jesus saw the multitudes there with nothing to eat and said to His disciples, I have compassion on the multitude, because they have now continued with Me three days and have nothing to eat. And if I send them away hungry to their own houses, they will faint on the way; for some of them have come from afar. Notice what Jesus values about this crowd. They have now continued with Me three days. The fact that they continued with Jesus for three days doesn’t make them worthy of the forgiveness of sins; the forgiveness of sins is free gift to all who believe in Jesus. But their continuing with Him was a sign of that believing. And for His believers, Jesus has a compassion that is especially great. These are people who bear His name, who have been given the right to be called children of God. And here, Jesus displays the compassion that God has on His children and His unwillingness that they should be left to go hungry or to faint on the way as a result of having stayed with Jesus.

Then there’s the response of the Twelve, which is just astonishing. How can one satisfy these people with bread here in the wilderness? Have we completely forgotten about the feeding of the 5,000 and how easy it was for Jesus to provide bread for all those people? It’s amazing! Don’t they remind you, though, of any number of long-time Christians, maybe even yourself? You have known for years, maybe decades, the riches of God’s mercy and love in the redemption that Jesus accomplished on the cross. You have known and believed Romans 6:23 for most of your lives, that the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. You’ve also known His providence throughout your entire life. And then you’re faced with an earthly trial, a need, a problem. And then, suddenly, where is God? What are we to do? How can we survive? The sinful flesh wars against the New Man, who knows very well that God is faithful, but the flesh insists that He is not, that this time will be different, this time He will abandon you, this time He will let you faint on the way.

Not so. Your flesh is a liar, like the devil himself with whom your flesh is allied. And that’s just what Jesus illustrates for us in today’s Gospel.

Without the multitude’s worry, without the multitude’s request, and in spite of the disciples’ forgetfulness, Jesus foresaw their need and took care of it. How many loaves do you have?, He asked His disciples. Seven, and a few small fish. That’s more than enough! Even more than the last time Jesus fed an even bigger multitude. So what are you worried about, disciples? You’ll have seven large baskets full of leftover fragments by the day’s end. Jesus wouldn’t let His people faint on the way as a result of having stayed with Him to hear His Word.

The 4,000 had left home and pantry and employment in order to hear Jesus, because they believed He was the Christ, sent from God to save them from their sins. Their hunger was the direct result of that decision on their part. They put the needs of their souls before the needs of their bodies. And they weren’t disappointed in the end.

How have you done likewise—you who confess Jesus to be the Christ who suffered and gave Himself for our sins and was raised to life for our justification? Well, you could be working right now, making money, putting more bread on the table. But you’ve recognized that it’s more important to be here hearing Jesus, receiving the body and blood of Jesus for the forgiveness of sins. You could be sleeping right now. You could be out there, jumping into all the filth and pleasure-seeking that the world around you pursues with insatiable passion. But you’ve repented of all that and renounced all that to be called by the name of Christ crucified and to walk as saints, as baptized children of God in newness of life. You could belong to a larger church, as you once did, with all the earthly perks and comforts that go with it. But you’ve left all that behind to follow Jesus into a nursing home and into a church that most of the world despises as insignificant and foolish.

So you have felt some earthly needs or troubles after staying with Jesus for a while. Will you worry about how you can solve them? Will you forget that Jesus is faithful and more than capable of seeing to your needs? No, remember His compassion for the multitude who followed Him. Remember His care to provide for them, lest they faint on the way. And know that He cares for you, His chosen people, no less than He did for them.

Today’s Gospel teaches you not to lose heart. When you grow weary, when you become sorrowful, when you run into obstacles in your life of following Christ, He’ll see your need even before you do, and He’ll be faithful at sending just the right help at just the right time. Whether it’s food, or a friend, or a timely help, or a word of hope, the Lord Jesus will see to it that you have exactly what you need, when you need it, so that from the abundance that the Lord provides to you, you can help your fellow Christians in their need, and so that you can continue to follow Him all the way through this life and into the next, trusting in Him every step of the way, both for the forgiveness of sins, and for everything else that you need. You were right to continue with the Lord Jesus. He has brought you safely thus far. He certainly won’t let you faint on the way to mansions He’s even now preparing for you. Amen.

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First become righteous. Then keep the Commandments.

Posted on July 8, 2018 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Trinity 6

Exodus 20:1-17  +  Romans 6:3-11  +  Matthew 5:20-26

As you know, we still believe the Ten Commandments. We still believe that they provide an unchangeable standard of right and wrong. Many don’t, and not just atheists. Many so-called Christians also reject some or all of the Ten Commandments as being outdated at best, callous and unloving at worst.

But even many of those who do believe the Ten Commandments as written get them all wrong. They push the Ten Commandments on our nation and insist that if we, as a nation or as individuals, keep the commandments, then we will earn God’s favor and blessing. Keep the commandments in order to become righteous before God!

That’s directly opposed to what Jesus teaches in today’s Gospel. His message is, First become righteous. Then keep the commandments.

Yes, it’s true, the Ten Commandments teach us what righteousness looks like; they show us the path to the kingdom of heaven. But showing us the path to life isn’t the same thing as providing a way to get there. A NASA scientist could show you the exact trajectory and the exact steps you would have to take to arrive at the moon. But that doesn’t make it possible for you to get there, does it? Knowing the way and being able to follow the way are very different things.

The truth is, it’s much harder to keep the Commandments than most people think. Jesus reveals just how hard in today’s Gospel. As He says, For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.

The scribes and Pharisees were famous for their outward obedience to the Commandments. They thought they were following the path that leads to life. They had no idols—no statues of foreign gods—in their houses. They didn’t even speak the name of the LORD, Yahweh, for fear of misusing it. They did absolutely no work on the Sabbath day. They were obedient to the authorities. They didn’t go around murdering people, or committing adultery. They didn’t steal other people’s money (like the tax collectors did!). They didn’t usually give false testimony in the courtroom (until they put Jesus on trial, of course). So, according to the bare text of Commandments 1-8, they looked like they were righteous people.

Of course, it gets a little harder once you get to the 9th and 10th Commandments: You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, servant, maid, animals, or anything that is his. Coveting happens only in the heart. It’s hard to prove to other people whether you’re coveting or not. Those commandments about coveting reveal that there’s more to the rest of the Commandments, too!

Jesus goes on to demonstrate that, that outward obedience to the bare text of the Ten Commandments isn’t even close to righteousness yet. True obedience comes from the heart, and it includes thoughts and words as well as deeds.

For example, “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder, and whoever murders will be in danger of the judgment.’ But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. So unrighteous anger—which occurs in the heart—makes a person guilty of breaking the 5th Commandment. Or as St. John puts it in his First Epistle, “Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.” Jesus goes on, And whoever says to his brother, ‘Raca!’ shall be in danger of the council. But whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be in danger of hell fire. Harmful words, according to Jesus, are also forms of murder in God’s sight.

In the words right after today’s Gospel, Jesus gives an example from the 6th Commandment, “You shall not commit adultery.” He says that adultery includes a man looking at a woman to lust for her.

The same goes for all the commandments. They all require true fear of God, true love of God, true trust in God as the starting point, as Luther’s brilliant explanations to each of the commandments make clear—“We should fear and love God, that…etc.” And then, from there, they all require righteous thoughts, righteous words, and righteous deeds, which must all flow from perfectly righteous desires which flow from a perfectly righteous heart. To be righteous in God’s sight, you have to do all of that perfectly.

But, as you know, no one does that. Not the scribes. Not the Pharisees. Not anyone else. Not anyone here.

What to do about it? Someone might think, well, I’ll try to make it up to God. I’ll bring a gift to His altar, for example. No, Jesus says. Therefore if you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. In other words, you can’t do something good for God to erase all the bad you’ve done to your neighbor. God doesn’t want your offering until you’re first reconciled to the one whom you sinned against. First take care of your sins. Then approach God’s altar with a gift.

That’s fine when it comes to your neighbor. Maybe you can bring a peace offering. Maybe you can make up for some wrong that you’ve done, although there are certainly some wrongs too big to atone for.

But your neighbor isn’t the one holding the keys to the kingdom of heaven, to let you in or to keep you out. God is the one who gives entrance or not. What if God is your adversary who is taking you to court? What if God is taking you to task by His holy Commandments for all of your unrighteous thoughts, words, deeds and desires, not only against your neighbor, against the Second Table of the Law, but against the First Table of the Law, against Him? As David prays in the Psalm, Against You, You only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Your sight. If you get all the way to the Judge—all the way to the end of your life—without working things out with God, you won’t get out of jail. So, as Jesus says, Agree with your adversary quickly, while you are on the way with him.

How do you come to an agreement with God? How do you take care of your sins? What gift will you bring? What work of penance will you do?

Well, you can’t do anything, of course. You can’t take care of your sins. You can’t come up with an agreement with God or effect a reconciliation with God. That has to be done by God Himself.

And that’s the Gospel. God made an agreement, a covenant, a new Testament in the blood of Christ. Jesus made atonement for the sins of all by shedding His blood on the cross. His blood was the atonement price, the cost of reconciliation. And now God promises to count faith in Christ as righteousness, as perfect obedience to the Ten Commandments, as if you yourself had obeyed them all. This He promises to give to all who repent and look to Christ for righteousness.

And where does He give this righteousness and the forgiveness of sins? Where does God open the doors of the kingdom of heaven? Paul reminded us in the Epistle today. As many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

United with Christ in Baptism, where we first put on Christ as a garment of righteousness, through faith. First you become righteous in God’s sight, and this is the only way.

Then keep the Commandments. As people who have been made righteous through faith alone in Christ, as people who have been given the gift of the Holy Spirit, promised to all who are baptized, see the Ten Commandments in a new light, not as the things you have to do to earn God’s favor or to pry open the doors of the kingdom of heaven, but as the works to be done by those who have gained God’s favor for Christ’s sake, through faith. Now we can begin to fear God, to love God, to trust in God.

That’s exactly the point Paul makes as he goes on in the Epistle: Reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Then he goes on: Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.

The Ten Commandments are still our guide for presenting our members as instruments of righteousness to God. We still have to obey them. But with a “new obedience,” which is really, throughout our whole life on earth, only the beginning of obedience, since even now we don’t keep the Commandments perfectly. But where Christians falter, where our sinful weakness gets the better of us, where our good works are still imperfect, God’s forgiveness in Christ covers us and God accepts our beginning of obedience as good and God-pleasing things.

Why? Because we have already become righteous in God’s sight through faith. And now our works of obedience to His commandments are also the beginning of righteousness.

You know the Ten Commandments. But you can know them better, can’t you? Study them more. Keep your Small Catechism close at hand and read it and meditate on it weekly. (I’ve given you little slices of the Small Catechism to review every week; we just started a new round with the First Commandment a couple weeks ago.) Then reread Luther’s Large Catechism at least once a year, together with your regular Bible reading. Use both Catechisms as tools to guide you in keeping the Commandments.

We still believe the Ten Commandments, and we’ve been shown how to use them rightly. First become righteous through faith in Christ Jesus, through Baptism and preaching and absolution and the Holy Sacrament. Then keep the Commandments, even when it’s hard, knowing that your obedience as baptized children of God is well-pleasing to your Father in heaven, for the sake of our Savior Christ Jesus. Amen.

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Vocation, the boat from which the Gospel-net is let down

Posted on July 1, 2018 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Trinity 5

Jeremiah 16:14-21  +  1 Peter 3:8-15  +  Luke 5:1-11

Since it’s part of today’s Gospel, let’s talk a little bit about vocation this morning. It’s a very practical doctrine that the Lutheran Church has always emphasized as the thing that defines the Christian life on earth. What are you here for? What are you supposed to do? How are you to serve God? How are you to serve your neighbor? The answers to those questions are all to be found, at least in general, in a person’s various vocations.

A vocation is literally a “calling,” the roles you’ve been given to play in this life. Father, mother, son, daughter, husband, wife, hearer of God’s Word, preacher of God’s Word, student, teacher, subject, citizen, ruler, neighbor, employer, employee, and every godly occupation that exists for the good of society. These are all vocations. A person will have several of them all at once, and they will change throughout a person’s life.

Today in our Gospel we encounter three of Jesus’ early disciples dutifully fulfilling their vocation as fishermen. In addition to the ordinary usefulness of their vocation—providing food for their community, a glorious, God-pleasing thing—Jesus found another use for their vocation in today’s Gospel. They had spent the night working hard at their task (without anything to show for it, either). They were on the shore, mending their nets—a menial task, but an important one that was faithful to their vocation. Then along comes Jesus, who meets them in the course of carrying out their vocation and turns it into a tool, an opportunity for extending His kingdom. The point in today’s Gospel is that God uses Christians in their vocations, not only to preserve and to prosper society, but also to spread His Gospel. Vocation is the boat from which the Gospel-net is let down.

Peter, James and John already knew Jesus. They had already become part-time disciples of Jesus, Christians, if you will. They had been called by the Gospel to believe in Jesus, placing them at once in the vocation of hearers of the Word, as all of us are, too.

As we said, they already had the vocation of fisherman. How did they come by that vocation? There was no miraculous sign telling them as children that they should become fishermen someday. It happened “naturally,” so to speak. They grew up near the Sea of Galilee. Zebedee, the father of James and John was a fisherman. Simon Peter’s father was likely also a fisherman. So it wasn’t a natural career choice for them. And yet God was behind the scenes, governing things. He had a plan for these men and their vocation that they couldn’t have known anything about until Jesus came along.

As He found them on shore, mending their nets, He got into Simon’s boat and asked him to put out a little bit from shore. And there Jesus stood in Peter’s boat, preaching to the crowds along the shoreline, teaching them about God, about their sin and God’s free favor, calling them by the Gospel to believe. At this point, the fishermen, too, were simple hearers of the Word; they weren’t the ones doing the preaching. They simply offered their vocation to Jesus, to use as He pleased. Their boat became His pulpit.

But when He finished preaching to the crowds, He wasn’t done using their vocation yet. He had more lessons for them, and also for us.

He said to Simon, Launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.

Now, according to their vocation, they knew that this didn’t make any sense. This wasn’t the time for fishing, especially after a whole night of catching nothing. And yet Peter was willing to have his vocation guided by Jesus. So they let down their nets, and you know what happened. They caught a lot of fish, so many that two fishing boats started to sink for their weight.

Simon knew, according to his vocation, that this was no ordinary catch. Jesus had guided the fish through the water and the boat through the sea and the fish into the net for this miraculous catch of fish, teaching them their first lesson out on the water: Jesus is the Lord of creation. He rules over the earth and guides and governs the events of history to carry out His own good purposes.

And that knowledge brought Simon Peter to his knees in terror. You might think it would be “cool” to stand in front of Jesus and watch Him perform a miracle like this, but Simon, who was there to see it, knew better. He fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!” Now, Simon wasn’t a murderer or a drunkard or a thief. And if he compared himself to other people, he would be counted as a good and decent man. But when he compared himself to the Lord of creation, standing there in his boat, he knew the truth, as the Psalm declares: If You, LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? Answer: no one. Our track record of iniquities, sins, is long. It includes the selfish deeds, the harsh words, the self-centered thoughts. It includes laziness and being slow to carry out the responsibilities of your many vocations, because those vocations were given to you by God to serve Him and your neighbor tirelessly, not to serve your own desires and cravings. So Simon was right to acknowledge his sinfulness before God’s holy Law. He can’t stand before the Lord of creation, if he’s being judged by his deeds.

But the second lesson Jesus taught out there on the water was all-important. Instead of departing from Simon, as Simon begged Him to do, Jesus revealed His grace: Do not be afraid. That’s a lesson in God’s mercy toward sinners. He promises mercy and forgiveness, not because we’re worthy of it, but because of Jesus’ worthiness, Jesus’ life, Jesus’ suffering and death. The same Gospel that Jesus had proclaimed in general to the crowds on the shore He now applied personally to Simon, right there in the boat.

And then a final lesson was taught that day: From now on you will catch men. That was a special call Jesus gave to Peter, James and John. When they had brought their boats to land, they forsook all and followed Him. In other words, Jesus had called them at this point to leave behind their vocation as fishermen in order to become fishermen of another kind, “fishers” or “catchers of men.” This was the call into the Office of the Holy Ministry, the vocation of preacher, which, in certain ways, is like the vocation of fisherman.

The preacher, at Jesus’ bidding, goes out into the world and lets down the net of the Gospel. He doesn’t set out bait for people. He doesn’t lure them in. He doesn’t try to sell salvation to them. He simply lets down the net, the promise: God is gracious for Christ’s sake. God offers forgiveness to sinners and a new life and an eternal inheritance, freely, because of Jesus. Believe the good news! And Jesus, working through His Holy Spirit, gathers men from all nations into that net, not an impressive number in each place, but when added up, through time and across the globe, it’s an enormous catch.

Those who hold the vocation of preacher—a divine call given at one time directly by God, and now, given through the call of the Church, even as our seminary graduate, Josiah, has now been called through the Church to serve the saints in Richmond, Missouri—those who hold this vocation are called to leave other jobs behind, although some of us, like St. Paul himself, also continue part-time in other jobs in order to help support themselves, in order to be less of a financial burden on the saints to whom they preach.

But there is a lesson here that applies to all: The kingdom of Christ is filled with people by the preaching of the Gospel, and each Christian has a part in that, according to his or her vocation.

Some are called to preach, but most are not. All are called to be hearers of the Word. And the hearers of the Word are called to support the preachers of the Word. That’s part of your vocation, to support preachers with your weekly attendance and with your regular offerings. And in the process, you yourselves are being served by God through the Means of Grace.

Not only that, but, as Peter writes in today’s Epistle, All of you be of one mind, having compassion for one another; love as brothers, be tenderhearted, be courteous; not returning evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary blessing, knowing that you were called to this. That unity of mind, that compassion, that love and tenderheartedness and courtesy are things we are all called on to practice in every vocation we have. And God will use those works of love to serve His kingdom.

What else does Peter say to all Christians? Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear.

No matter what your vocation is, you are called to sanctify or to set aside the Lord God in your hearts, and to be ready to give a defense of the faith. Parents do that with their children, and sometimes, children with their parents. Students do that with friends, and sometimes with teachers. Workers do that with coworkers, and sometimes with their employers. Neighbors do that with neighbors. Citizens with citizens, passing on the promise of the Gospel, inviting others to come and hear Jesus, to come and get to know Jesus through the preacher whom Jesus has sent.

In all these things, in all these ways, God gives His people opportunities to become His instruments for spreading His Gospel, for extending His kingdom. Your vocations are the boat from which the Gospel-nets are let down. May God grant you wisdom and understanding to see the opportunities He has placed all around you to spread the Gospel of Christ, and may He grant you courage and strength to use all your vocations in the service of His kingdom. Amen.

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