Your ears and tongue are there for a reason

Posted on September 3, 2017 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Trinity 12

2 Corinthians 3:4-11  +  Mark 7:31-37

You heard in the Gospel how Jesus healed a deaf man, who couldn’t hear, and who also couldn’t speak. You heard it, because you have been given ears that work. And you have already confessed many things this morning about yourself and about God, for the benefit of those around you, because you have been given tongues that work. So, you see, there is a simple lesson here in the Gospel of the kindness and the power of Christ, who healed that deaf and mute man long ago. But there is a deeper lesson here, too, about an ear-problem and a speech impediment that affects all men, including Christians, and about an ear-healing and a tongue-healing that Jesus grants, in His mercy, to those who are brought to Him for help.

To be deaf is an especially serious problem. Do you remember what we confess in the Small Catechism, the First Article of the Creed? I believe that God has made me and all creatures, and that He has given me my body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my members, my reason and all my senses, and still preserves them. Why do we single out eyes and ears? Why are they so important? Because with our eyes we see God’s revelation of Himself to us in nature, and with our eyes we are able to read God’s revelation of Himself to us in the Bible. But perhaps even more importantly, with our ears we are able to hear the preaching of the Word of God, which is God’s primary tool for bringing us to faith in His Son and for keeping us in the faith. Faith comes by hearing, isn’t that what God’s Word says? And what did Jesus once say? Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life. You see, God has great gifts to give you through your ears.

The tongue, on the other hand, isn’t used for receiving, but for giving: giving a confession of your sins to God, and giving a confession of the Christian faith to your neighbor. But the ears have to come first. Hearing has to come first, to receive the Word of God so that you know what to confess and to be moved to confess in the first place.

The deaf man in our Gospel needed help. You can get by in life without the sense of hearing, but it sure comes in handy. His friends who brought him to Jesus shouldn’t be overlooked. They couldn’t heal their deaf friend, but they did all they could do for him, most importantly, bringing him to Jesus. Because they could hear, and so they knew who Jesus was, that He had the healing their friend needed. They could speak, and so they did speak up on behalf of their friend, pleading with Jesus to have mercy on him.

And Jesus did have mercy. He stopped everything, took the man aside from the crowd. And then communicated with the deaf man through his eyes and with his sense of touch instead of his ears. If you were listening before, you heard about the sign-language Jesus used to communicate to the deaf man what He was about to do. With mercy, with kindness, and with divine power, Jesus gave him working ears and a working tongue.

As always, the physical maladies in Scripture point to spiritual maladies that affect all people, just as the physical healings that Jesus performed point to the spiritual healings that Jesus offers to all people.

What’s the problem with people’s ears? What sin does deafness highlight? Well, sometimes people refuse to hear God’s Word. And those who hear often fail to listen. And that’s a much more serious problem than physical deafness. What did we confess this last week in our review of the Small Catechism, the Third Commandment? We should fear and love God so that we do not despise preaching and His Word, but hold it sacred, and gladly hear and learn it.

God requires the world to fear and love Him enough to gladly hear His Word when it’s preached, because this is your God speaking to you. And not just to hear, but to learn, to think about, and to trust. But people come up with one excuse after another why they don’t need to hear the preachers whom God Himself has sent. And even when they hear, they act as if they didn’t.

That kind of deafness is complete among the unbelievers of the world. Among believers, it isn’t complete. But it’s still present in the sinful flesh. It still threatens. It still corrupts. And the temptation to not hear or to not listen or to not take to heart—to hear with your ears but to be miles away in your thoughts—is strong.

And without the ears, the tongue will never work quite right. Without hearing God’s Law that accuses you of sin and threatens you with death, your tongue will never be moved to confess your sins before God. Without hearing God’s Gospel of His grace and mercy in the Person of His beloved Son, His willing sacrifice on the cross for your sins, His promise of forgiveness for everything, not by works, but by faith—without hearing that Gospel, your tongue will never be moved to confess Christ Jesus as Lord, not with faith, not with joy, not from the heart.

But you’re here this morning, gathered around the Word of Christ, either because the New Man in you wanted to hear or because someone brought or invited you here for healing. In either case, the almighty Lord Jesus has sent His Holy Spirit with His very own tool, the Word of God, to show you your sins, but even more, to show you God’s mercy, to point you to the cross of Jesus, whose death on the cross purchased the healing of your soul, healing which He now offers in the forgiveness of sins.

And with forgiveness comes the gift of new ears and a new tongue. Ears to hear your Shepherd’s voice; tongues to confess both your sins and your faith in Him for the forgiveness of sins. Ears to hear His teaching eagerly; tongues to speak the truth you have learned from God in your every-day lives. Ears to hear the comfort of His promises of grace and mercy and daily providence throughout all the chaos and uncertainty of this earthly life; tongues to thank Him and to praise Him, and to invite the people whom God has placed around you, whom you know to be either partially or entirely deaf, in a spiritual sense, to come to this place where healing is, where Jesus is, every Sunday, with His Gospel, His Sacrament, His healing, His truth, His sacrifice, His love.

You Christians have been given ears. So use them for their intended purpose. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!, says the Lord. You have been given tongues. Use them, too, not to tear down, but to build up, to speak the truth, and to point men to Christ, so that every tongue may confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Amen.

 

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No forgiveness for the self-righteous Pharisee

Posted on August 27, 2017 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Trinity 11

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

The parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector—one of my favorite parables. Short, sweet, easy to understand, and it gets right at the heart of Christianity: what makes a person acceptable before God. As it turns out, the Pharisee was not acceptable to God, not justified, while the tax collector was. That’s not to say that all people fit neatly into the categories of Pharisee or tax collector. They don’t. But all people do fit into one of the two categories of justified or not justified, acceptable to God or unaccepted, headed for heaven or headed for hell, and the Pharisee and the tax collector illustrate the difference for us.

So let’s begin. First, notice to whom Jesus told this parable and why: He spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others. That’s the definition of “self-righteous,” isn’t it? Self-righteous people trust in themselves that they are righteous and they despise others whom they see as not living up to their standards of piety.

Take the Pharisee. He goes to the temple in Jerusalem to pray. So does the tax collector. And right there, you see that most of the people of the world are already dismissed. Salvation, justification, forgiveness, acceptance by the one and only true God is found only in the temple of the true God. Not everyone who enters God’s temple leaves forgiven—the tax collector did, the Pharisee didn’t. But all who are to be forgiven must seek forgiveness in God’s temple, and most of the people of the world don’t do that.

Now, the temple of the true God used to be in Jerusalem. That’s where God commanded that it be built, until the coming of His Son, who took over as the true Temple of God, foreshadowed by the old temple. And He is now building His holy Christian Church into that temple, into Himself. Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.

So already most of the world is excluded from God’s acceptance, as long as they remain outside of Christ and outside of His Church, His temple, the assembly of the baptized. Yes, God wants them to come in and find forgiveness. He wants them all to come in! He invites them! He calls out to them! But as long as they remain outside the temple, they will not be acceptable to God, no matter how righteous they think they are.

But of those who do enter His temple, there are still two kinds, as we get back to the parable.

The Pharisee stood in the temple and prayed (and you may want to remember this parable when some non-church-going friend tells you he doesn’t need to go to church, because he prays to God every day. Well, the Pharisee prayed to God, and it got him nowhere.) This is what he prayed: God, I thank you that I’m not like other men. Extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess. So not only does the Pharisee go to “church,” to the temple, but he lives a decent and upright life, too. He’s no criminal. He’s an honest man. And he gives offerings, tithes, “ten-percents” that go above and beyond what God requires in His law. As you can see, he trusted in himself that he was righteous, and he despised others.

Not unlike the Apostle Paul before his conversion. Remember Paul, whose Jewish name was Saul? He once wrote this about himself. I was circumcised on the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; concerning the law, a Pharisee; concerning zeal, persecuting the church; concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless.

But, like the Pharisee in the Gospel, he worshiped God without knowledge. How can that be?

Because he knew God wrongly. Understand what that means. He knew the Scriptures well enough, better than most. He knew the history of the Old Testament, and he believed it all. He knew the Law of Moses, too. But he knew God wrongly, because he missed the point of the Law, and he also missed the promise of the Gospel.

Saul, like all the Pharisees, knew the Law of God and tried to keep the Law of God and even observed many extra laws to try to go above and beyond what God required. But he missed the point of the Law, which is to shut every mouth before God and convict everyone of sin. As he would later write, by the law is the knowledge of sin. As a Pharisee, he was using the law to try to become acceptable to God. But that’s the very definition of “self-righteous.” It’s a misuse of the law. Because the law is holy. You can’t do your best to keep it and think you’ve actually kept it. It doesn’t say, do your best. It doesn’t say, try to obey, or try not to disobey. And it certainly doesn’t say, add extra works of your own making to earn extra credit. The law accuses everyone of imperfection, of sin. The law condemns every sinner to death. Cursed is everyone who does not continue in all things which are written in the book of the law, to do them. Saul the Pharisee, like the Pharisee in the parable, missed that point.

So they also missed the promise of the Gospel: that from the beginning, from the Garden of Eden, God promised to send a Savior—a Savior who would be both God and Man, a Savior who would keep the Law, a Savior who would be the atoning sacrifice for the sins of mankind. As Saul the Pharisee finally learned and then preached: I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you…: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. That is the Gospel, and the promise of the Gospel, as Paul wrote, is that you are saved by it, if you hold fast to it. That is, if you believe it. As Jesus promises, He who believes and is baptized will be saved.

The tax collector in Jesus’ parable understood both the point of the Law and the promise of the Gospel. He was a tax collector, which was a profession that wasn’t inherently evil, but very often it was practiced in an evil way, and tax collectors were thought of as a bunch of thieves. This tax collector doesn’t make a list to God of how hard he’s trying to keep the commandments. He doesn’t tell God about all his good works or try to excuse the bad ones. His confession before God is short and sweet. I am a sinner. Literally, I am the sinner. Have mercy on me!

His plea for God’s mercy was a plea for God’s favor, not because he was a sinner, but because God had promised to be merciful to sinners in His temple. He had promised to forgive sins by means of the sacrifices offered right there on God’s altar, which were always pointing ahead to the great sacrifice of the Christ. The tax collector understood and believed what the Psalmist wrote: If You, LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with You, that You may be feared. And as Jesus declared, I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.

You see how beautifully our Epistle and Gospel work together today? The Epistle spells out the basis of the sinner’s justification: the death of Christ Jesus for our sins, and His resurrection for our justification. The Gospel illustrates the manner of the sinner’s justification: by faith in God’s promise of mercy and forgiveness, paid for by Christ alone and offered for the sake of Christ alone.

So there is no forgiveness for the self-righteous Pharisee, not because there was no sacrifice for his sins, but because he claimed a righteousness of his own, a righteousness that is by the law. But there was forgiveness for the tax collector and there is forgiveness for all who believe, for all who claim the righteousness and the sacrifice of Christ, the only Mediator between God and Man, as the once pharisaical Apostle Paul eventually learned and confessed: I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith. Be the tax collector. Be the sinner who humbles himself before God and seeks forgiveness from the God of forgiveness. And you, to, will go down to your house justified, for the sake of Christ Jesus, our Lord. Amen.

 

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The tragedy of the Jews is the tragedy of all who reject the Gospel of Christ

Posted on August 20, 2017 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Trinity 10

+  Luke 19:41-48  +

On this day of the Church Year, the Church remembers the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, and our Gospel takes us back to Jesus’ prophecy of that destruction.

As Holy Week began—the Passover week during which Jesus would be crucified—He rode into His city, into Jerusalem, on a donkey. And Jesus, knowing that the leaders of Jerusalem were seeking to kill Him and that they would accomplish it by the week’s end, viewed Jerusalem during that fateful week, not with hatred, but with deep, heart-wrenching pity. And He wept for her. If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. Matthew records Him saying these words: O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! See! Your house is left to you desolate.

Learn from these words the truth that is taught throughout the Bible, the sincere, genuine desire of God that Israel should not perish, but be saved, as He said through the prophet Ezekiel: Therefore you, O son of man, say to the house of Israel: ‘Thus you say, “If our transgressions and our sins lie upon us, and we pine away in them, how can we then live?” ’ Say to them: ‘As I live,’ says the Lord GOD, ‘I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn, turn from your evil ways! For why should you die, O house of Israel?’

In fact, the sincere, genuine desire of God is that all people should not perish, but be saved. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. Again, God our Savior desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.

God wants all men to be saved, but He wants to save them in only one way: through faith in His Son, whom He gave as a ransom for all. And if sinners stubbornly refuse to repent and believe in His Son, the one appointed Mediator between God and Man, then, as a result of their unbelief, God wants to bring upon them what they deserve for their sins: punishment and destruction.

Even then, He takes no pleasure in it, as Ezekiel declared. Jesus wept over the tragedy that was Jerusalem. And His apostle Paul also grieved over them, as he wrote to the Romans:  I tell the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and continual grief in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my countrymen according to the flesh, who are Israelites.

As a result of Israel’s rejection of Christ, both at the time of His crucifixion and over the next 40 years, when the Apostles would continue to preach repentance and offer forgiveness in the name of Christ, Jesus prophesied Jerusalem’s destruction, how God would allow her enemies, the Romans, the raze her to the ground.

It was God’s will, first of all, that the Jews be converted to faith in Christ Jesus and saved from sin, death, and destruction. But they resisted His Holy Spirit too often. So it was then God’s will to wipe them out and to let them serve as a terrible example for the rest of the world, for all time, of what will happen to all people, at the end of time. There is a similar punishment—even worse, really—in store for all who reject God’s Messiah and God’s Word.

But whom did God use to destroy Jerusalem? Not His Christian people, but the pagan Romans. In the New Testament, God never once tells His holy Christian people to take up arms against anyone, to bring His punishment on any race or any nation. Instead, he used the pagan Romans to carry out His sentence.

In Charlottesville last week, there was a chant by some of the Nazi’s and white nationalists: “We won’t be replaced by the Jews!” This irrational, self-superior hatred of people because of their race is not Biblical. Look at Jesus! Listen to Paul! Do you see them participating in angry protests? Rallies? Riots? Of course not. As James writes, “The wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God.”

You know how people have twisted the Old Testament in this regard? There were some so-called Christian groups at one time who used Noah’s cursing of Canaan, the son of Ham, to promote bigotry and racism. You remember? First, they interpreted all the descendants of Ham (the Canaanites, the Egyptians, and supposedly also the Africans) to be under God’s perpetual curse, and second, they claimed that all the rest of mankind therefore has the God-given responsibility to oppress them. What great wickedness! What terrible interpretation of Scripture! Such groups were never part of the true, orthodox Christian Church, but always heterodox offshoots who went off believing and teaching their own imaginations and lies.

No, Jesus and His apostle show us the Christian attitude toward the Jews. As Paul went on in Romans, Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

Now, there’s a second part to today’s Gospel, related to the first: the cleansing of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Jerusalem would, indeed, reject Jesus and would be destroyed by the Romans. But not yet. Some would still hear the Gospel and believe and be saved from that coming destruction. And if that was going to happen, then they had to be able to hear. Faith comes by hearing…

But they couldn’t hear the Word of Christ, even at the very Temple where the LORD God was supposed to be sought and heard, because greedy, opportunistic salesmen had set up shop in the midst of the Temple.

Now, Jesus didn’t ever harm anyone, but neither was He the laid-back, always calm, always peaceful man some people imagine Him to be. What did He do when He arrived at the Temple during Holy Week and found greedy merchants selling their wares? He drove them out of the Temple. He overturned their tables and their chairs. St. John tells us He even made a whip. And He had a message for them: It is written, ‘My house is a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a ‘den of thieves.’

This was not a riot. This was not a protest. Jesus has nothing to do with the violent, self-righteous thugs who are chanting and screaming on any side of any issue, breaking the law, tearing down and vandalizing statues.

What was this, then? This was a Man coming into His own home, into His own Father’s house, and finding that thieves had broken in, torn apart His house, and started using His living room to commit yet more crimes. Jesus wasn’t just some Rabbi coming into the Temple. This house was dedicated to Him, to the LORD, to Jehovah God.

But notice why He drives out the money-changers! Not for His own honor, but for the sake of God’s people. It was to be a “house of prayer.” The single place on earth where God promised to be present, to be propitious toward sinful man, where He promised to hear prayer and be merciful to those who prayed, to accept sacrifices on His altar. The noise and the buying and the selling made it impossible for the Word of God to be taught and heard, made it impossible for people to concentrate on their prayers and on the meaning of the blood of the sacrifices and even on the Temple itself—all of it pointing to Him, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

After things quieted down, it says that He was teaching daily in the temple…all the people were very attentive to hear Him. He knew that most of the people there would reject Him in the end. But not all! Some would believe! Some would remain faithful until death! And even the rest would have a testimony from God of His love and of His offer of forgiveness and adoption through Jesus—a testimony that will later speak against them before God’s court of justice. “I came to save you, too. I gave My life for you, too. But you were not willing.”

As children of God, being remade in the image of Christ, learn from Jesus in today’s Gospel how to view the Jews who reject Jesus, and all who reject Him—with pity, not with hatred. They have been given more opportunities than they can count to be rescued from their sin and their just condemnation, but they have been unwilling. And so they are justly condemned. And God will see to their punishment in His time, in His way, and ultimately, with eternal death.

But remember, you, too, would be justly condemned, if God treated you according to your deeds. As the Psalmist writes, If You, LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? And if you believe in Christ for the forgiveness of sins, you didn’t do that by your own reason or strength. You didn’t choose Him or actively “accept” Him as your Lord and Savior. His Spirit gets all the credit, while you reap all the benefit.

Most of the physical descendants of Israel will perish, by their own fault, but not all. Most of the descendants of Adam will perish, by their own fault, but not all. Even now, a remnant will be saved, by God’s grace.

With the country in turmoil yet again, with the world going crazy in another bout of mass hysteria, don’t let yourselves get dragged into it. Rejoice in being part of the remnant of grace. And just be Christians. Join Jesus in mourning over those who are perishing, who are destroying themselves, who will not see the light of Christ. But don’t get stuck in mourning-mode. There’s still work to do. There’s still a witness to offer, to your families, to your friends, to your coworkers, to your classmates. And the witness is this: Time is running out. Destruction is imminent. God is coming for a visitation, and no one is innocent, no one is safe, except in one place: hiding behind the cross of Jesus Christ. God is visiting you right now in this Gospel with grace and mercy and forgiveness, so that when He visits later, with justice and judgment, you will be found safely hidden in the hiding place God Himself has provided. Amen.

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The First Commandment and Stewardship

Posted on August 13, 2017 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Trinity 9

1 Corinthians 10:6-13  +  Luke 16:1-9

We begin a new series of catechesis today. You see the first week’s assigned readings and memory work on the back of the service folder. It’s designed to help and support our four young catechism students, but you know very well that they aren’t the only ones who need to read the Holy Scriptures and review the Small Catechism and learn God’s Word by heart. We begin our catechetical review with the First Commandment, and it happens to fit perfectly with today’s Gospel.

The First Commandment says very simply, You shall have no other gods. And Luther’s explanation is short and sweet: We should fear, love, and trust in God above all things.

Now, what does it mean to have a god? Luther in his Large Catechism offers this helpful description: A god means that from which we are to expect all good and in which we are to take refuge in all distress. So, to have a God is nothing other than trusting and believing Him with the heart…Whatever you set your heart on and put your trust in is truly your god.

Do you think the unjust steward in today’s Gospel had his heart set on his master and on his master’s business? No! He was an “unjust steward,” after all. We see in the end just how wise and how shrewd that steward could be when he put his mind to it. The problem was, he had spent his career as a steward, as a manager of his master’s wealth, not putting his mind to it, carelessly squandering his master’s wealth, like it was no big deal. He wasn’t stealing from his master’s wealth. He wasn’t bowing down to the god of money. He simply wasn’t devoted enough to his master to do his job as a steward well, with care and with calculation.

This is what we would call a sin of “omission.” He wasn’t doing anything terribly wrong. It’s what he wasn’t doing right that really got him in trouble, and again, his lack of care and calculation with his master’s wealth flowed from a lack of care and devotion toward his master in the first place.

Still, it hardly seems to compare to the sin of the Israelites in the wilderness mentioned by St. Paul in today’s Epistle, does it? Moses had given them the Ten Commandments, then went up Mt. Sinai to get the rest of the Law from God. And when he came down 40 days later, what did he find? The people had taken their wealth—their gold, especially—and melted it down and formed it into a golden calf, which they were dancing around and worshiping. They made another god for themselves out of their gold. How angry was God at their idolatry? Three thousand people were put to death that day, and many others were afflicted with plague.

But, you see, there are many ways to break the First Commandment when it comes to money and wealth. Open idolatry, like the Israelites practiced at Sinai, but also stealing, greed, discontentment, worry and false trust are sins a person can commit with regard to wealth (or a lack of wealth). But so are mismanagement, carelessness and wastefulness, which, like the other sins, stem from a lack of devotion to God, a lack of true fear of God and love for God. And all of it is punishable with death and condemnation. With so many ways to sin with regard to wealth, it’s no wonder Jesus calls it the “mammon (or wealth) of unrighteousness,” because wealth can breed so many unrighteous thoughts and words and deeds.

But the unjust steward was finally brought to his senses with the threat of unemployment looming. Still self-centered as always, still acting out of a desire for self-preservation rather than love, but at least wise enough to know the urgency of his situation, he sat down and thought and planned and calculated how he might put his master’s wealth to use in the little time he had left.

What was his plan? He would use his access to his master’s debtors to his advantage. He would show kindness to them, he would purchase their favor, basically bribing them to help him out when he became unemployed later on. It’s brilliant, really. If his master fires him, now those debtors will hate the master and love the servant. If his master changes his mind and doesn’t fire the steward, then they both look good in the eyes of the debtors.

In the end, his plan worked. Instead of being fired, the steward was praised by his master. He had finally shown some impressive shrewdness at managing wealth, which worked out to everyone’s benefit in the end.

How does Jesus apply this parable to His hearers? For the sons of this world are more shrewd in their generation than the sons of light. And I say to you, make friends for yourselves by unrighteous mammon, that when you fail, they may receive you into an everlasting home.

The sons of this world are unbelievers. The unjust steward represents them. They don’t know God, or the fear of God or the love of God. But when they are motivated by fear and a desire for self-preservation, they can be very shrewd in their use of the wealth God has placed in their hands. They know how to use money to gain friends for themselves—temporary friends, friends for this world only, but friends, nonetheless.

But the sons of light, believers in Christ and members of His kingdom, aren’t so shrewd when it comes to their use of wealth, even though we have far better motivations and far better reasons not to waste or mishandle what we’ve been given. We know that God is the owner of all things, and that we are merely managers and stewards of His possessions. We know that He is good, that He is worthy of our best effort.

But what happens? The world clamors for our attention. God becomes one priority out of many. Sure, He’s there. But so is school. So is work. So is the house, the yard, the family, the friend. Our attention is pulled in a dozen different directions. Our time is eaten up. Our money is divvied out, and…where did it all go? Whom have we helped? And how much more help could we have given to our neighbor in need, if we had stopped to think and plan and calculate?

God deserves better. He demands better. He commands all men to fear Him and love Him above all things and to worship Him alone. He refuses to be one priority among many. The First Commandment accuses us all of wastefulness and mismanagement of God’s wealth, including the wealth of the time God has given us.

But God Himself, the very one against whom we have sinned, is the perfect steward of His own possessions. God Himself, the owner of all things, planned for our salvation in eternity. He sat down and calculated, what will I do for these people who will rebel against Me and waste the things I entrust to them? I’ll send My Son to die for their sins. They can’t be saved by keeping My Law. I’ll save them instead through faith in My Son, and I’ll count their faith for righteousness, because faith will link them to Jesus and His perfect righteousness. And then God arranged all of human history to get it done, in order to get the Gospel preached, in order to have you baptized and hearing His Gospel. That’s God’s own stewardship, planning and calculating salvation through faith in Christ Jesus!

With today’s Gospel, Jesus reveals our sin to us in order to drive us again to repentance and faith in His Gospel, because by now we should see that we deserve only His wrath and punishment. Instead, Jesus calls us to take refuge in Him, to believe in Him who loved us and gave Himself for us, not on the condition that we become better managers, but because we can never do enough to earn God’s favor.

Trusting in Christ alone for forgiveness, we now have Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel for a guide, for a reminder to rededicate ourselves to the work God has given us to do in His kingdom. We have a good and gracious Father who has entrusted varying amounts of wealth to each of us. Remember that as you go forth this week, and think about how to use everything that has been placed into your hands—including your wealth, including your time, including your plans—for His business: for the good of His Church and for the good of your neighbor in general. As reborn children of God, you don’t work to purchase the favor of your neighbor in order to help your own sorry self, like the unjust steward in the parable. No, God opens His own eternal home to you in His words of forgiveness, for the sake of Christ. But as you work for your neighbor’s wellbeing, both temporal and eternal, for his body and his soul, out of love for God and thankfulness for the salvation given to you by Christ Jesus, God will praise the shrewdness shown by His children, not for our own sake, but for the sake of Christ, in whom we believed. And you can be sure that the Christians who have benefited from your stewardship will welcome you with open arms into the mansions of eternal life. Amen.

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Beware of false prophets standing at the wide gate

Posted on August 6, 2017 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Trinity 8

Romans 8:12-17  +  Matthew 7:15-23

Jesus gives all sorts of commands to His Christians, many of them right here in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7): Let your light so shine… If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out … And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off… Do not get divorced for just any reason… Do not swear… Turn the other cheek (and let your enemy slap you there)… Love your enemies…Bless those who curse you… Do not worry about your life…Seek first the kingdom of God…Do not judge, forgive, give… Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven. Pray! Ask, seek, knock! Do unto others…

Obeying all these commands isn’t what makes anyone a child of God and an heir of eternal life. No, these are the commands given to those who have already been made children of God through faith in Christ Jesus. And as Jesus instructs His disciples, He not only shows them what the right path looks like, but warns them lest they stray from it.  Listen to the second-to-last-command Jesus gives His disciples in the Sermon on the Mount in the words just prior to our text this morning: Enter by the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.

And so, as His final command in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus commands: Beware of false prophets. Why? Because just as the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, so there are many preachers and many prophets who stand at that wide gate, beckoning careless souls to enter there, to leave the narrow and difficult path that leads to life, the path where Jesus is. So Jesus teaches His Christians to be constantly on the lookout, knowing that many of the things people tell us, especially about Him and His kingdom, are going to be false and even dangerous.

Now, it’s easy to recognize some false prophets. They claim to come in the name of God, pretending to teach you about God, but they deny that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and that salvation is by faith alone in Him. All modern-day Jewish Rabbi’s (all who still adhere to Judaism) and all Muslim Imams fall into that category. Beware of them! Watch out for them! They are very obviously ravenous wolves.

But make no mistake. It will require more effort to recognize other false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. In other words, they look and sound innocent. They look and sound harmless. They look and sound like Christians, sincere Christians who are teaching you about God, “in the name of Jesus,” telling you lies, which, if you believe them, can lead you astray from the narrow path that leads to life.

So it’s critical that you be critical whenever you hear anyone trying to teach you anything about God, including me.

Of course, the laziness of your sinful flesh doesn’t like to bother with that, and many Christians call Jesus, “Lord, Lord,” but don’t do what the Lord says here. Because being critical requires effort. And being critical of others’ beliefs and teachings doesn’t seem very nice. It isn’t very popular. The feeble flesh that dwells in us doesn’t like to be unpopular, doesn’t like to be called a hater, after all. It’s so much easier just to listen to everyone and drink it all in, wandering from this church to that, from this preacher’s sermon to the next, from one Christian radio station or TV broadcast to another, one Christian book to another, and don’t forget the so-called Christian music out there, which also ends up trying to teach you something. It’s so much easier just to listen and assume the best about everything you hear. But that’s not the Holy Spirit of God leading you to do that. The Spirit of God leads you with these very words of Jesus to do what Jesus says. To watch out. To beware.

Now, even if you are led by the Spirit—as all the sons of God are, according to Paul’s words to the Romans—to be critical, to watch out, to beware, how do you accomplish it? How do you critique? How do you judge?

By their fruits you will know them, Jesus says.

The fruits of a prophet can include his life, how he behaves, the deeds he does. There are many men—and women—whose lives also betray, or at least eventually manifest, the rottenness on the inside.

But the real evaluation and examination of a preacher’s fruit has to do with evaluating and examining his teaching. And just as a piece of fruit might look fine on one side but turn it over and it’s full of rot on the other side, or it might look fine on the outside but cut into it and it’s moldy or crawling with worms on the inside, so it is with a preacher’s teaching. You have to examine it carefully, on all sides, to see if it’s good or bad. As St. John also wrote in his first Epistle, Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

Again, the laziness and the self-centeredness of the flesh steps in here and says, OK, I’ll judge the teacher’s words by what I think is right. If I agree with what he says, his teaching is good. If I disagree, then his teaching is bad. But don’t forget that you carry around a sinful flesh, which affects your understanding and your judgment, a flesh which still doesn’t like to hear the good law of God applied to your sins, and still doesn’t want to believe the good Gospel of Christ, because the Gospel says that your righteousness doesn’t count before God to earn you His favor; only the righteousness of Christ makes you pleasing in His sight, through faith. So you can’t just rely on “what you think or what you like.” You have to rely on God’s Spirit-inspired Word.

But in order to use God’s Word for the purpose of judging the words of a prophet, you obviously have to know God’s Word and know it well. And again, the lazy sinful flesh fights against that. It’s difficult to find time to read the Bible at home. It’s difficult to get up for Bible class and to treat it as a priority. It’s difficult to pay attention when you get there. But, you know what? difficult is the way which leads to life, and you need to be qualified to critique what you hear from everyone, including me, like the blessed Bereans in the book of Acts were praised for doing long ago when they heard the Apostle Paul teach.

Now, you who have been instructed in the Christian faith know the chief points of God’s Word: That the true and only God is three persons—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—in one undivided essence. That He created all things in six days by His almighty Word. That man rebelled against God early on and plunged our entire race into sin, passing on a corrupt and sinful nature from generation to generation. That God entrusted His Word to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, proclaiming His holy Law and also foretelling and foreshadowing the great sacrifice that the Christ would make to atone for the sins of the world. That God sent His Son into human flesh so that He might be the perfect Mediator between God and Man, a perfect High Priest, so that He might bear our sins in His body and fulfill God’s holy Law in His perfect life, and then die for our sins and be raised to life for our justification. That God seated Christ Jesus at His right hand in the heavenly places, who now rules over all things for the good of His Church. That He has sent His Holy Spirit into the world to work through the Means of Grace—the preaching of the Gospel, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper—to convict sinners of their sins and to convert them to faith in Christ Jesus, by which alone we are justified and saved. That, through these appointed Means, God the Holy Spirit will gather and preserve His Church and continue to strengthen and preserve her members in the faith, even as they bear the cross in this world. And that, at the Last Day, Jesus will return to this earth visibly, to raise the dead, to give eternal life to all His believers and to punish the wicked and unbelieving with eternal fire.

Those are the chief points, and there are many subpoints in between. All of it matters. All of it is the Word of Christ. So beware of all those who depart even a hair’s breadth from any of it!

As a church, we have been working at this for a long time, this bewaring of false prophets. It’s why we exist as a Lutheran church, because Luther finally couldn’t just sit back and do nothing when he saw the pope and his adherents leading Christians astray with their false teachings, away from the narrow path that leads to life. And for the last five hundred years we’ve continued to practice the words of Jesus. We are Lutherans because we have identified the bad fruit in all the churches around us. In particular, we are ELDoNA Lutherans because we have identified the bad fruit in the Lutheran churches around us. Admittedly, this has meant that we’ve “bewared” ourselves down to a little church in a little diocese that has practically no visible impact on the world. Well, if that’s what faithfulness to Christ’s command in Matthew 7 looks like, then we should be perfectly fine with it, shouldn’t we? Jesus never promised that there was safety in numbers, did He? On the contrary, what did He say? Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.

But there the sinful flesh rears its ugly head once again, gnawing at us to be envious of the larger crowds and all the earthly advantages they seem to have—envious of the people who are either being tragically deceived by false prophets or who are intentionally refusing to obey the command of Jesus.

How foolish. We have been given God’s Word as an undeserved gift. We have been given the faithful witness of the Lutheran Confessions, which show how the doctrine we confess today has been the doctrine of the true Church ever since the time of the apostles, even as there have always been false prophets around, trying to sneak in their false teachings under the guise of sheep’s clothing. Make it a priority for yourself and your family not to be negligent with the Word of God and with prayer. Take the Scriptures and read them, study them, learn them, memorize them, and attend Bible class as well as the Divine Service. Hold onto what you have been given, with the strength that the Holy Spirit Himself will provide. Treasure it, guard it, preserve it. It is the narrow gate. It is the difficult way. But it leads to life. In the name of Jesus. Amen.

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