Through many tribulations

Posted on August 6, 2025 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for midweek of Trinity 7

Acts 14:8-23

Sunday’s Gospel about the feeding of the four thousand gave us a much-needed reminder that God’s compassion always extends to those who believe in Him, and that He will always provide for His people, and that, yes, He uses His ministers to do it. That reminder is much-needed, because God’s providence is often accompanied by a strong dose of pain. And if we focus too much on the pain, then we’ll miss the glorious providence that accompanies it.

No one knew this to be true more than the apostle Paul. The Lord provided so bountifully through his ministry! Through him, as a “jar of clay,” the treasure of the Gospel was handed out to entire continents, and through his epistles, that treasure has been handed out to the whole Christian Church on earth. But where the Gospel was preached, there pain inevitably followed, as we heard in tonight’s lesson from Acts 14. And yet, Paul never let himself be deterred by the pain. He always turned Jesus’ disciples away from the pain toward what God had provided for them in Christ.

Acts 14 recounts Paul’s First Missionary Journey, with Barnabas as his faithful companion and fellow apostle. (Yes, Barnabas is one of the few ministers outside of the Twelve and the apostle Paul who is also referred to occasionally as an apostle, partly because the Holy Spirit chose him directly to be Paul’s coworker on this journey). They set out from Antioch in Syria and sailed to Cyprus, then up to Asia Minor, where they visited the cities of Perga, Pisidian Antioch, and Iconium. In each of those cities, Paul and Barnabas went first to the Jewish synagogue and proclaimed to their fellow Jews how God had fulfilled His Old Testament promises to Israel in sending Jesus the Messiah. They preached that God’s forgiveness comes through this Man who was crucified but whom God raised from the dead. In practically every instance, a number of the Jews believed, but most didn’t, so the Christ-believing Jews would end up leaving the synagogue with the apostles, who would then take the Gospel to the Gentiles. Meanwhile, the Christ-hating Jews would insult the apostles, tell lies about them, and rile up the citizens in each city, not only to reject the apostles’ message, but often to attack them and try to imprison or kill them. The triumph of the Gospel in each place was accompanied by its share of pain.

After leaving Iconium, where the Jews had tried but failed to stone Paul to death, the apostles arrived in Lystra, and you heard a while ago how things went there. They may have gone first to the synagogue, but our text has them speaking primarily to the Gentiles. And one of them who was listening was crippled in his feet. But he believed Paul’s message, and as the hand of the Lord’s providence, Paul healed the man on the spot. But when the crowds saw the miracle, they didn’t give praise to God, the Father of the Lord Jesus. No, they had always been pagans and were still pagans, worshiping the Greek gods. They thought that Zeus and Hermes had come down to them in the form of these men named Barnabas and Paul, and their pagan priests hurried away to bring in some animals so that they could offer sacrifices to Paul and Barnabas.

Now, if Paul had been seeking fame and recognition for himself, he might have accepted those sacrifices. If he had been worried about offending the people, worried about driving them away, he might have just let them go through with it, figuring he would straighten out their false beliefs later on. But, no, he told them to stop it, to stop what they were doing, not to dare offer sacrifices to them. These are the very practices that the true God hates and that He will not tolerate any longer. Yes, he risked offending them. He risked having them walk away from the Gospel, because Paul was unwilling to let them blend their pagan practices with the truth of Christ.

And that’s exactly how it has to be. The truth of the Gospel is destroyed if it is mixed together with pagan ideas or practices. The truth of the Gospel, the truth of God’s Word is not just “a” truth, but “the” truth. Our world might tolerate Christianity if Christianity would admit that it’s just one good religious option among many. The truth is, most of modern Christianity does make that claim. But true Christianity is what St. Paul practiced in tonight’s reading. It claims to be “the” truth, and it rejects every other religion and religious practice.

That includes the religion of Christ-hating Judaism. And the Jews in Lystra understood that. They understood that the preaching of Jesus as the Christ would upend their religion. Christ claimed to have fulfilled the Old Testament that God had made with Israel through Moses. Christ claimed to have instituted a New Testament in His own blood. And the apostles insisted that the religion of the Old Testament, in order to continue as a valid religion, as a true religion, had to transition into a New Testament, Christian Church, or else become an abomination. The Christ-hating Jews understood that and fought with all their might to prevent the transitioning of their religion to Christianity.

The Jews who tried to have Paul stoned to death in Antioch and in Iconium followed him down to Lystra. They weren’t content to let him move on to another city. No, they had to stamp out his preaching and the Christian religion he was spreading. And in Lystra, they were successful (sort of)! They got the Gentiles to turn against Paul to the point that they picked up stones and stoned him to death for preaching Jesus as the Christ.

Or so they thought. They thought he was dead when they left him. But he wasn’t. He must have been horribly cut and bruised. But, after they left, he got up and went into the city with those who had become disciples of Jesus. And then went on to the next city, to repeat the cycle all over again. Preaching, accompanied by pain, but focusing still on God’s providence.

Bruised and battered as he was, Paul made many disciples in the next city, Derbe. They saw his battered body and must have heard how it happened, and must have been so astounded that Paul was not only willing to keep preaching about this Jesus, but even rejoiced as he did it. He, the bruised and battered one, comforted them. It says that he strengthened the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying, “We must through many tribulations enter the kingdom of God.”

That’s the reality. We must through many tribulations enter the kingdom of God. Entering the kingdom is worth all the tribulations we have to bear in this world. Suffering for the name of Christ, who suffered so much for us, is an honor. So we might as well suffer with patience. We might as well endure the world’s hatred and violence with rejoicing. We might as well go on doing what is good and speaking what is right, without complaining, and moaning, and groaning about it, and without clamoring for the government to swoop in and give us justice. God knows well how to preserve His people in this world, and how to allow us, sometimes, to endure shame and violence at the hands of evildoers. Pain inevitably accompanies God’s providence in this world. But God’s providence also accompanies the pain and is far greater than the pain will ever be, because His providence isn’t temporary, like the pain is. His providence stretches into eternity, into the true and perfect kingdom that awaits us above. So set your sights on that kingdom, and on the King who came down into this kingdom of toil and tribulations, to win for us that kingdom above that is free of all suffering and pain. Amen.

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Ministers are the hands of the Lord’s providence

Posted on August 3, 2025 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Trinity 7

Romans 6:19-23 + Mark 8:1-9

“In every sermon text, there are a hundred sermons.” So one of my seminary professors used to say. In other words, there are a hundred ways of fruitfully explaining a text, with a hundred details that can be explored and a hundred different applications that can be made from it. Well, I haven’t been preaching for a hundred years yet, only 25, 18 of which have been spent right here, among the saints at Emmanuel. And since the congregation has lovingly decided to celebrate those 25 years in the Office of the Ministry, I thought it would be fitting today to focus on something in this Gospel that I haven’t focused on before, in all these years of preaching on this text, although I’ve alluded to it on occasion: the ministry of Jesus’ apostles in the feeding of the four thousand.

You see, there are two important “groups” in this Gospel. On the one hand, you have the Lord Jesus. He’s the One who has compassion on the crowds and who wishes to provide food for them, bountifully and miraculously. On the other hand, you have the faithful people who have followed Jesus. Those are the two sides that really matter in today’s Gospel: Jesus on the one side, the people whom He wishes to serve on the other. In the relatively insignificant middle are the apostles, the Lord’s chosen ministers, whose role it is merely to serve as the hands of the Lord’s providence toward the people on whom He wishes to have compassion. And that is a most fitting description of the Office of the Ministry itself.

You probably recall that Jesus miraculously fed thousands of people with a few loaves of bread and a few small fish on two separate occasions. First was the feeding of the five thousand, followed by the feeding of the four thousand some months later. Even though the accounts are similar in many ways, the feeding of the four thousand has a different feel to it. It happened way out in the wilderness, far from any town or grocery store, unlike the feeding of the five thousand, which took place on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, close to town, where the people could have easily found food. The feeding of the 4,000 happened after the people had spent three whole days with Jesus, intently listening to Him teach, whereas the five thousand had spent less than a day with Jesus and were mostly interested in seeing the miracles He would perform. In fact, after that day, most of the Jesus’ followers began to walk away from Him. That means that the 4,000 were among those who remained, who stayed with Him even after so many others had departed. That says something about them. These were the committed ones, the ones who were following Him, not to see something spectacular or exciting, but to be fed by God’s Son with God’s Word.

After three days of nonstop teaching, Jesus looks out at this crowd with compassion. Now, remember, He’s the One who’s been doing all the work of preaching and teaching, counseling and caring—all the work of a true pastor, a true shepherd. And yet, here He is, not at all concerned about Himself. Only about them. Only about these people, who all have their own record of sins, but who have been drawn by His Father to look to Him for mercy, who have put their own earthly lives on hold for three whole days, just to be close to Him. Now Jesus wants to do one more favor for them, unrequested, unearned. He wants to feed them. He wants to provide a meal for them. He wants to show them that the Lord will provide for those who stay with Him—not always miraculously like this, but certainly, and dependably.

So He turns to the apostles and expresses His desire to feed the people. And their answer to Him seems strange at first, considering that He had just fed the five thousand, in their presence, a few months earlier. Where could anyone get bread to satisfy these people here in the wilderness? You see, the apostles, like all ministers, were just men, far from perfect. They weren’t filthy wretches by any stretch; they weren’t dumb, and they weren’t “underachievers” as some have foolishly branded them. But neither were they perfectly confident, always trusting, filled with superior understanding all the time. They had served as Jesus’ ministers for handing out bread and fish to 5,000 men, plus women and children, not that many months earlier. But when they saw the thousands before them on this day, needing to be fed, they saw the task as impossible, the obstacles as insurmountable.

You may find yourself in a similar predicament at times. For all His goodness to you, for all His past providence, even though God did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all, the next crisis (or even mini-crisis) may hit, and you may find yourself saying, “How can I possibly handle this? How can we possibly provide for this great need?” Ministers are not immune to that kind of thinking, either. In fact, we may fall into it even more often than most. More than most, we know just how corrupt man’s heart is, how hopeless the world’s situation is, and, yes, what an absolute mess the outward Christian Church has also become. More than that, we see our own shortcomings, sins, and inadequacies. And we think, “How can I fix any of this? Why would anyone believe anything I have to say? How can I serve God’s precious people? How on earth can the Lord possibly use me to do any good?”

These questions are good, if they force us to dig back into God’s Word, where we find stories like the feeding of the four thousand. And we realize, the apostles didn’t fix any problem. Jesus took care of everything. His was the compassion. His was the care. His were the knowledge, and the wisdom, and the almighty power to multiply the bread and the fish, to such a degree that there were seven basketsful leftover. And His was the assigning of the duties to His apostles. All the apostles provided was the little bit of food they had on them—seven loaves and a few tiny fish which they placed into Jesus’ hands. And then, at Jesus’ direction, they provided the hands that would distribute what the Lord Himself would provide, taking the food from the Lord’s hands and passing it out to the people. The apostles played a good and necessary role in that interaction between Jesus and the people, and yet, at the same time, their role was relatively insignificant.

Such is the ministry of the Word. During this New Testament age, the Lord Jesus, seated at the right hand of the Father, has chosen not to deal directly with His people, but to provide for their souls through the hand of ministers. The ministers themselves provide nothing, or practically nothing—only a few talents (God-given in the first place), and a willingness to serve God by serving His people. We use our mouths to speak, but it’s God’s teaching that’s supposed to come out. We use our hands to baptize, but it’s Christ, by His Spirit, who does the washing. We use our hands to hand out the Sacrament of the Altar, but it’s Christ’s body and blood, given and shed on the cross, that bring the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation to His people. It’s the Lord Jesus who calls ministers, through His Church, and sends them to tend to His precious sheep with His Word and with His Sacraments, pointing them back to Christ, taking the forgiveness and the strength, the comfort and the guidance, and, when necessary, the warnings that He Himself provides, and simply handing it all over to His sheep, according to the needs of each one. We don’t add anything to the gifts Jesus is handing out. We don’t improve upon them in even the tiniest possible way. At best, our “contribution” lies in not dragging Jesus’ gifts through the mud as we hand them out, keeping them pure and clean and salutary for God’s beloved people. Because the real story here is Jesus, and His people for whom He wishes to provide. The role of the minister is good and necessary, and yet also, at the same time, relatively insignificant.

Looking back, I have to say that my ministry today looks vastly different than it did 25 years ago, and far different from what I ever expected it to be. From Puerto Rico, to Mexico, to New Mexico; from the WELS, to the ELDoNA, to the CLM; from the expectation of serving large, established, wealthy, synodically-attached congregations to serving very small congregations, and holding services in hospital chapels, storefronts, garages, and dance studios, in addition to this beautiful sanctuary, now traveling across the country to serve the scattered saints who have been entrusted to my care, now unattached (all of us) to any synod, including the one that I and some of you grew up in. So different from what I expected! But so very, very blessed. The Lord has found a way to use even these hands to care for His people around the world, including you, dear saints of Emmanuel, who have supported this ministry so faithfully, including my wife, who has been with me on this journey from the beginning, including my sons who have become part of it along the way.

Looking forward, God only knows for how much longer He’ll find a use for this particular minister. But, as we’ve seen, that doesn’t matter all that much. Jesus will be here always, till the end of the age, seeing to it that His beloved people, for whom He always has compassion, for whom He always wishes to provide, will have the ministers they need to take from His hands and to place what He provides into the hands of His saints. What He provides is the treasure of the life-giving, life-sustaining Gospel of Christ crucified and risen from the dead, the Savior of the world, and especially of those who believe. But, as St. Paul writes, We have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. May the Lord continue to provide these jars of clay to His saints, that the name of Jesus may be glorified, and that His holy Church may be edified, until He comes in glory, when He will no longer choose to deal with His people through the hands of humble ministers, but will provide all things directly, from His own hands, into the hands of those who love Him, who have stayed with Him in the wilderness of this life. To Him alone be the glory, forever and ever. Amen.

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Saved without works, to do works

Posted on July 30, 2025 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for Midweek of Trinity 6

Exodus 20:1-17 + Ephesians 2:4-10

God’s Law is good, if one uses it lawfully. That’s what the apostle Paul said, that’s what Jesus taught, and that’s what we explored on Sunday morning. The Law is good. I mean, which one of the Ten Commandments that you heard a few minutes ago could anyone call “bad”? The Law forbids evil thoughts, words, deeds, and desires, while demanding only good thoughts, words, deeds, and desires. It commands love—true, genuine, heartfelt love for God and for one’s neighbor. It commands a person to fear God above all things, to revere Him, to respect Him, and, above all, to trust in Him with an unwavering trust. Who can argue with that? I’ll tell you who tries. It’s the one who doesn’t want God to be God. It’s the one who wants to answer to no one, the one who wants to be God. Man in his arrogance, like the devil in his arrogance, doesn’t like to be told what to do, doesn’t like to be told he’s wrong about anything, that he shouldn’t have something he wants, that he shouldn’t desire something he desires. Man, at his worst, believes that God has no right to be God, and so he hates God’s commandments. Man, at his best, knows that he should keep God’s commandments. And yet, he doesn’t.

This is what it means to be “dead in sins and trespasses.” It’s the moral state, the twisted shape of the soul, that we’ve all inherited from fallen Adam and fallen Eve. The Law cannot help such people. It cannot improve them. It cannot make them acceptable to God. It cannot even serve as a useful guide for them. When the Law reveals the path of goodness and righteousness, the sinner who is dead in sins learns from the Law which way he doesn’t want to go. As Paul once wrote to the Romans, Is the law sin? Certainly not! On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law. For I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire. In other words, when Paul’s old, dead, sinful nature learned that coveting was wrong, it made him covet all the more! To the pure soul, forbidden fruit is detestable. But to the soul that is dead in sin, forbidden fruit is especially sweet. And so the natural state of man is dead in sins and trespasses, hostile to God, hostile to the Law. That was your state and my state by nature. We were, as Paul says, objects of wrath, just like the rest of mankind.

Then God’s grace came along and said, to those who had been crushed by the condemnation of the Law, “Don’t be afraid! I will rescue you. I will give you life. More than that, I will give my Son’s life into death to pay for your crimes against My Law. For His sake alone, I will forgive you. For His sake alone, I will accept you! Be reconciled to Me through Him!” And that simple promise, that good message, that “Gospel” brought dead sinners to faith, and to life.

It’s all grace. It’s all gift. By grace you have been saved. It is the gift of God. The forgiveness, life, and salvation that God has given to you who believe, and that He promises to give to all who believe, is not something you won for yourself by doing something right, by being a good person, by doing the works that the Law requires. No, God makes no demands on the dead. He doesn’t require that the sinner fix himself or his life first. There is no such thing as self-redemption in God’s sight. No, God is the Redeemer, and He offers the gift of forgiveness, life, and salvation to all who know their need of it, and who will seek it in Christ. In other words, He offers it to all who believe. He offers it by grace, through faith.

And that, too, is a gift, not something you or I can take credit for or boast about. The powerfully persuasive Spirit of God persuaded us to believe the promise and to seek refuge in the Lord Jesus. To God alone be the glory, if you do indeed rely on the Lord Christ.

But God is not done with the believer after bringing him to life. No, being brought to life is just the beginning, the beginning of a brand-new life. When God raises a person to life, He gives a second birth to that person. He sets the believer free from the slavery to sin. He creates a new man, with new attitudes, new thoughts, new goals, new purposes, new powers. For we are God’s workmanship, created, in Christ Jesus, for good works, which God prepared beforehand for us to walk in them. We were brought to life by God, without any good works on our part, without any merit, any worthiness, any incentive for God to act on our behalf. Now that we’ve been brought to life for free, we learn from Christ and His apostles that God did not bring us to life just to leave us in the gutter of depravity, in the ghetto of sin. No, before He brought us to faith and to life, He had already prepared a whole lifetime’s worth of good works for us to be doing as those who live no longer for ourselves but for Him who loved us and gave Himself for us.

How do we know what these good works are in which we are to walk? Again, the Law of God is good, and the believer uses it lawfully when we use it as the Holy Spirit’s inspired guide for goodness. The Ten Commandments are a summary, but so is Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. So is the “Golden Rule” (which is part of the Sermon on the Mount), “Do to others what you would have them do to you.” So are practically all the Epistles of the New Testament as the Holy Spirit reveals to us which things are good and pleasing in His sight and which things are to be avoided, because they’re contrary to God’s will. If you’re looking for those good works that God prepared in advance for you to do, you never have to look far. Look at God’s commandments, and then look around you, wherever you are. Are there people there? You have instructions about how to treat them, or not treat them, according to their needs and your vocation. Is there a Bible handy? You have instructions about reading and studying God’s Word. Is there time to pray? Is there time to give thanks to God? Is there an opportunity to speak His praises to those around you and to let your light shine before men? The fact is, there are endless opportunities for the believer to do the things that are pleasing in the sight of our Father. So keep your eyes open, and pray for God to open up even more opportunities for service in His kingdom. Serve the Lord with gladness, and do it, not to earn a place in His kingdom, but because it is by His grace that you have already been saved, through faith, to do good works. Amen.

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Using the Law lawfully

Posted on July 27, 2025 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for Trinity 6

Romans 6:3-11 + Matthew 5:20-26

Early in His ministry, Jesus was not well understood by the Jews. He came preaching a message that the Gospel writers summarize with, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand! Repent and believe the Gospel!” The “Gospel”? What about “the Law”? What about Moses and the Prophets? What about the Ten Commandments, with which every single Jew was intimately familiar? Was Jesus abandoning them? Was He trying to replace them with a different message? That’s what the scribes and Pharisees were accusing Him of. But in the verses just before today’s Gospel from the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus corrected His disciples’ understanding: Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill.

Well, then, why were the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law still persecuting Jesus? They, too, were keenly interested in fulfilling the Law. So what was the problem? What was the difference between their teaching of the Law and Jesus’ teaching of it? The difference was that the Pharisees and teachers of the Law weren’t using the law lawfully, while Jesus was. St. Paul wrote to Timothy, We know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine. Let’s dig into today’s Gospel and discover what it means to use the Law lawfully—and unlawfully.

How were the teachers of the Law using the Law unlawfully? We can point to two things. First, the Pharisees and teachers of the Law weren’t teaching the Law hard enough. They dumbed it down. They made it too easy to obey, because they made it all about outward obedience. What do I have to do to fulfill the Law? “Don’t curse your parents. Don’t murder anyone. Don’t sleep with another man’s wife. Don’t take someone else’s property. Give at least 10% of your income to the Lord. And do no work at all on the Sabbath Day.” That just about summed it up, for them. Yes, the Pharisees added more laws than that, a whole list of specific actions people were able to take, if they applied themselves. But essentially, if they were able to do those simple things, they thought they were fulfilling the Law.

But that’s not how Jesus explained the Law and how to fulfill it. He says in our text, 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. For all their reputation as the best and brightest within the Church, for all their infatuation with the Law, the Pharisees weren’t keeping the Law well enough to gain heaven by it.

Jesus goes on to explain, using a few examples from the Ten Commandments and from other laws embedded in the Old Testament. You have heard that it was said to the people of old, ‘You shall not murder,’ and, ‘Whoever murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. And whoever says to his brother, ‘Raca!’ will be subject to the council; but whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be subject to hellfire. So Jesus agrees with the Law, You shall not murder. But, as He goes on to explain, the Law requires more than just not killing someone. It requires that you never become unjustly angry with your brother or hate your brother. It requires that that you never speak hurtful, harmful, nasty words to your brother.

He goes on, 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. Agree with your adversary quickly, while you are on the way with him, lest your adversary deliver you to the judge, and the judge deliver you to the officer, and you be thrown into prison. Truly I say to you, you will by no means get out of there until you have paid the last penny. In other words, the Pharisees taught that offerings and sacrifices made up for a person’s sins against his brother. They thought that such “little” sins against their brother, like anger, like hurtful words, could be easily taken care by simply bringing a nice offering to God. But Jesus says, no, the Law requires more than that. It requires that, if you injure your brother in any way, you make it up to him, not just to God. And if you refuse to do that, don’t imagine that God will accept you. No, the Law continues to accuse you as unrighteous. There’s no way you can be saved by it.

After our text ends, Jesus goes on to talk about another Commandment, You shall not commit adultery. But, as He explains, the Law requires more than just not sleeping with another person’s husband or wife. It requires pure and chaste thoughts, in your heart, in your mind. I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. This is why God gave a Ninth and a Tenth Commandment, where the Law forbids coveting—desiring or lusting after anything that belongs to your neighbor. The Law commands, not only the hands, but the lips, and, above all, the heart.

So, even though the Pharisees and teachers of the Law sang the praises of the Law, they weren’t using it lawfully, because they weren’t teaching it with the full force of its scope and its condemnation. They made it too easy for themselves and for others to keep, when in reality, the demands of the Law are much broader and all-encompassing, demanding that a person’s whole life—words, deeds, and desires—be devoted to serving God and one’s neighbor. To teach the Law that way is to use it lawfully, to use it in its full force as a mirror that shows impenitent sinners how far they have strayed from the holiness that God requires.

Because the Pharisees and teachers of the Law didn’t understand just how much the Law required of them, they also used it unlawfully in another way: Because they thought they could keep it if they worked hard enough, they also used it, and pointed people to it, as the path to get into God’s kingdom. But that is an unlawful use of the Law. As St. Paul writes to the Romans, If there had been a law given which could have given life, truly righteousness would have been by the Law. But, he says, the Scripture has confined all under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.

Contrary to popular opinion at the time of Jesus, the Law was never intended to give life to anyone. That is, no one was ever supposed to draw close to God by his careful keeping of the Law. The Pharisees viewed the Law as the ultimate goal. They preached the Law in such a way that the people would go running to the Law for salvation. Jesus, on the other hand, preached the Law in such a way that, once people realized how impossible it was to reach God through the Law, they would flee from the Law, toward Him, toward His Gospel, for salvation.

Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe.

In order to use the Law lawfully, you can’t use it to work your way into heaven. You can’t send people to it in order to save them. You use the Law lawfully when you use it to show impenitent sinners their sins, so that they might come to realize how much they need the Gospel, so that they might turn from their sins in repentance and turn toward Christ Jesus for the gift of the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation—the gift that’s promised in the Gospel.

Only then, only when the poor sinner has been brought to repentance, and has found salvation in Christ after hearing the Gospel promise, only then, when a person has been born again, through the Gospel, through faith, does the Law have another lawful use. For those who have been born again of water and the Spirit, baptized into the death of Christ, having their sins washed away, the Law no longer accuses, no longer condemns. For penitent believers, for Christians, the Law serves as a wonderful guide for serving God and our neighbor.

If you try to guide the impenitent with the Law, that’s an unlawful use of it. Telling an unbeliever who’s living in adultery, for example, to stop living in adultery, as if that would mend their relationship with God—that’s using the Law unlawfully. Telling a classroom of public school students to keep God’s commandment, “You shall not steal,” as if, by not stealing, they would be keeping God’s Law, as if, by not stealing, they would be pleasing to God, is to use the Law unlawfully. But telling a baptized believer to flee from adultery, to steal no longer, urging a believer to learn and to keep God’s commandments, yes, that’s a lawful use of the Law, one that Jesus uses often when talking to His disciples, one that His apostles use often in their Epistles when writing to baptized Christians, one that you’ll often hear me using among you, who have confessed Christ Jesus as your Lord.

The works of the Law can’t make anyone acceptable to God. First the person has to be made acceptable, through faith in Christ Jesus, by trusting in God’s promised mercy for Christ’s sake, and then he can begin to do works that are acceptable to God, works that are guided and informed by God’s commandments. It’s to such acceptable, baptized believers in Jesus that Paul writes in today’s Epistle, In the same way, you also, count yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Your faith-righteousness already exceeds the Law-righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, and by it you are already qualified for heaven. Now learn and study God’s holy Law, and be careful to put all God’s commandments into practice, so that your lives on earth may reflect the righteousness that is already yours by faith in Christ Jesus. Amen.

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Called to be salt and light

Posted on July 23, 2025 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

(Only audio of the sermon is available for this service.)

Click here to download the audio.

Sermon for Midweek of Trinity 5

Matthew 5:13-16

On Sunday you heard about the tasks to which you, along with all Christians, have been called, tasks to perform throughout your earthly life, tasks that serve to build up Christ’s beloved Church. They’re not flashy, extraordinary tasks. They’re the tasks involved in daily sanctification, as we walk not according to the flesh but according to the New Man who is led by the Spirit of God, as we speak, and behave, and even think differently, righteously, with reverence for God and love for our neighbor. They’re the tasks that form the Christian life—distinguishing the Christian life from the life of unbelievers, forcing the world to acknowledge that you and I, as Christians, are different, that we are servants of God, that we have something special as members of Christ’s holy Church, that we have something to offer to the world, something precious, something admirable, something desirable.

In the four verses you heard this evening from the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught His disciples that lesson by using two metaphors to describe what Christians truly are: You are salt, He says. And you are light.

You are the salt of the earth. You Christians, you children of God, you who know God, who know the difference between right and wrong, who know Jesus’ love and Jesus’ sacrifice, who have been born again, and who know how to lead God-pleasing lives in the world—you are the salt of the earth. You add a necessary component to human society. When you live as Christians in the world, when you speak like Christians, when you behave as God’s Spirit teaches you to behave in His Word, then you have a positive effect on the world.

That doesn’t mean, as some people think it means, that Christians are supposed to take over the world, or control the culture. Far from it! Salt isn’t supposed to take over a dish. It’s supposed to enhance everything it touches, make it tastier, make it better. And so you do, in the world, when you live lives of love, when you live according to God’s commandments, when your words are seasoned with God’s word and with God’s truth, and with praise for the God of your salvation. You enhance the world when you keep apart from wickedness—without smugly or pridefully looking down on the wicked. You make the world better when you don’t return insult for insult or injury for injury, but entrust your cause to God. You season the world when you choose to suffer rather than to sin, when you choose to forgive rather than holding a grudge, when you choose to hope rather than despair.

But if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it become salty again? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men. In other words, you are intended to be a blessing to the world. You’re intended to be a good influence on it. But if you Christians fail to be what you are, if you fail to live differently from how the unbelievers of the world live, if you go right along with them in their focus on this life, and in pursuing the riches, cares, and pleasures of it, then what good are you? Then you become like salt that has lost its flavor, that no longer has any purpose. Be careful not to let that happen!

Then Jesus moves on to His second metaphor. You are the light of the world. You know how dark this world is. People don’t know the true God by nature. The natural knowledge of God, the things that are knowable about God through nature, aren’t nearly enough to guide anyone to Him. How much less in these especially dark times in which we live, when most people deny even the things about God that they could and should know from nature. The world is dark when it comes to knowing and believing in God. It’s dark when it comes to knowing right from wrong. It’s dark in its wickedness and violence, and in its hatred of Christ and His Church, and even of truth itself. But the Lord Jesus has left behind a light in this dark world, a light for men to know Him, a light for men to be saved, a light for men to walk by so that they no longer live as slaves to sin. You are that light—you, and every Christian, everyone whom God has called out of darkness into His marvelous light. You are the light that God has given to this dark and dying world, to reflect Christ, who is the true Light, to those who sit in darkness.

A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. This is where Ronald Reagan, and the Puritans before him, got their image of America (or the city of Boston) being a “shining city on a hill.” But they took that image out of context. The “city on a hill” isn’t a city, or a country. It’s the Holy Christian Church, which is not synonymous with any city or country on earth. God has set the Church on a hill, as it were, to be a light, to be a beacon, to be a fortress in which men can find refuge.

Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Again, God has placed you, the members of His Church, as lights in the world that are not to be hidden away, that are not to be covered, but as lights that are to shine brightly and give light to all people. That doesn’t mean that each of you is to be seen by everyone, everywhere in the world. It just means that, in the scope of your existence, in the ways in which God enables you to interact with other people, He has put you there, intentionally, to give light to those around you.

Let your light so shine before men, Jesus says, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. Letting your light shine means doing good works in the sight of men, shunning evil, doing and saying what is right, good, helpful, and beneficial, not to earn a place in heaven for yourself, but all for your Father’s glory, that men may see you, a Christian, living unhypocritically, living a sincere, genuine, godly, upright life, that men may give praise and glory to God for turning you into such a person, and for being such a great God that His children are led to serve Him in the world with such grace and with such truth.

Now, you and I know that not all Christians live as such lights. It doesn’t matter! There’s nothing you can or need to do about “them.” All you need to focus on is you, how you live, how you speak, how your light shines. Focus on yourself, and let your light shine!

But, this is important. Only focus on yourself when the question is, what would God have me do as His child in the world? When you’re called upon to live your life in the world, that is the question before you. But at other times, when it comes to your soul, your conscience, when it comes to your salvation, then the question is different. How can I know that I have a gracious God? How can I know that He accepts me as a son or a daughter? When that is the question, you dare not focus on yourself at all. When that is the question, focus only on the Lord Jesus Christ, and what He has done for you. Why are you the light of the world? Because Christ, the true Light, has shined on you with His Gospel, called you to faith in Him, and forgiven you all your sins. Only now, as a forgiven, accepted, beloved child of God, are you called to this crucial task of living as the salt of the earth and as the light of the world. May everything you say and do point people to the Lord Jesus! Amen.

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