Rejoicing in a God who allows His servants to suffer

Posted on December 14, 2014 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for Gaudete – Advent 3

Malachi 3:1-6  +  1 Corinthians 4:1-5  +  Matthew 11:2-10

There sits John the Baptist in Herod’s dungeon, awaiting his eventual beheading. He has done everything God sent him to do. He has lived his life alone, out in the desert. He has refused all the comforts of life. He has preached God’s Word boldly and purely and tirelessly, and he has done it all in a spirit of true humility as he sent his disciples away, one by one, so that they might follow Jesus from now on instead of John.

And for what? So that he can die in prison. What kind of a God lets his faithful servant waste away and die in prison? Answer: The same God who allowed believing Abel to be murdered by unbelieving Cain. The same God who allowed His faithful servant Joseph to be sold into slavery by his jealous brothers. The same God who allowed His faithful prophet Jeremiah to be thrown down into a muddy pit and then dragged off to his death. The same God who allowed King Herod to slaughter the innocents of Bethlehem after the birth of Christ. John and his disciples knew all those things; they knew all about that God. He was the God of the Old Testament whose ways are not our ways, nor His thoughts our thoughts. And they still believed in Him. They recognized that God uses the evil intentions of wicked men to carry out His good purposes for His people, even if it seems like His people are always on the losing end of things.

But now the Lamb of God had appeared. John had pointed his disciples to Jesus, and as John had once declared about Jesus: His winnowing fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clean out His threshing floor, and gather His wheat into the barn; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire. Surely the Lamb of God will make all things right. Surely the Lamb of God will destroy wicked men and save His people from suffering at the hands of sinners. But He hasn’t, not yet. The Lamb of God is not destroying the wicked, not destroying anyone, nor does He seem to be saving the righteous or setting up any kind of earthly kingdom at all.

So, once more, John sends his disciples to the Lamb of God, because either he is confused or his disciples are, or both. As we discussed this past Wednesday evening, many of the Old Testament Messianic prophecies left many of the Jews with the idea that the Messiah would set up an earthly kingdom in Israel, to make life on earth better for His people. But that’s not the kind of king Jesus is turning out to be. Are You the Coming One, Jesus, or do we look for another?

What a great question, and one that even New Testament Christians might ask sometimes. Nothing seems to be improving in my life, in spite of my being a Christian. I see my sinful flesh just as wicked and active as ever, and I feel the struggle between faith and unbelief taking place in my own heart. I see the world apparently winning battle after battle against Christians, and I see the Christian life becoming less and less comfortable as the days goes by. I see Christians suffering and dying right alongside the wicked, and the devil seems to be laughing all the way to the bank. And the holidays? Some people feel lonelier at this time of year than at any other time—though still probably not quite as lonely as a faithful prophet waiting to die in the dungeon. Is Jesus the Savior or isn’t He? And if He is, then why doesn’t He save me?

Jesus has an answer to John’s question, and to yours. He knows what lies behind the question. He knows the doubts that afflict even His believers. And He doesn’t apologize for the kind of Messiah He is; He doesn’t make excuses for His lowliness or for His refusal to take all the suffering away at once. Instead, He points John’s disciples to the things He has been doing: Go and tell John the things which you hear and see: The blind see and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them.

Big miracles. Unheard-of miracles were being performed by Jesus. Not everyone in Israel or in the world was being healed or raised from the dead, not yet. But some were—the first beginnings, the first signs of the greater healing that will have to wait until the end of the age. And the poor—the poor were not being raised up out of their poverty. We know of not a single poor man who became rich as a result of Jesus’ ministry. But the poor in spirit, the guilt-laden consciences, the sin-sick souls were having the gospel preached to them by Jesus. Not the social gospel or the socialist gospel, but this Gospel: God has become man in order to save sinful man. Christ, the Lamb of God, bears your sins. He will also suffer for them and die for them. You have no righteousness with which to pay God and earn a place in His heaven? Don’t be afraid! Jesus is righteous for you. With His righteousness, covering you as a garment, you have all you need to show God in order for Him to let you into His heavenly kingdom. God will count faith in Christ for righteousness in His sight, and He’ll give to all believers an inheritance in the new heavens and the new earth one day, at the end of the age, when Christ comes again.

What kind of a God allows His faithful servant to suffer on this earth and even die at the hands of the wicked? The same God who sent His Son to do that very same thing, to suffer and die at the hands of the wicked, for our salvation. That’s why we call Jesus the “Lamb of God,” not because He is a cute, cuddly, harmless animal. But because He came into this world to be sacrificed and slaughtered, as countless lambs had been slaughtered on the altar in Jerusalem. Only this time, the blood of the Lamb really does have the power and the worth to take away sins.

That’s the kind of Savior Jesus is, and that’s the kind of salvation He came to bring at His first Advent. He didn’t come to make life on earth easier for His believers. On the contrary, He told us ahead of time that it would be harder, in many ways. But He is a good and compassionate Savior, who accompanies us in our trials, in our imprisonments, and in our suffering. He is the Lamb of God who will surely make all things right, but not yet, because He still has compassion on the wicked. He’s still giving them time to repent, to believe and be saved, even as His patience with this world has led you to repentance and salvation.

Blessed is he who is not offended because of Me, Jesus says. If you want a Santa Claus-Savior, a jolly, happy Savior who brings you toys and presents and health and healing, if you want an earthly Savior from your earthly troubles, then you will be offended because of Jesus and you will miss out on His salvation.

But if you want an Advocate before God in heaven, if you want someone to stand in between you and the devil, if you want Immanuel—God with us, who walks with us through the valley of the shadow of death and gives us eternal life, then, rejoice! Jesus is that Advocate, that Immanuel.

Which means that God has a good purpose for anything that His children suffer. If you suffer for sins you committed, then your Father is disciplining you as a son, for your good, so that you learn. If you suffer for doing good, as John the Baptist did, as Jesus did and the apostles and martyrs all did, then you are serving as a witness to God’s grace, so that all may know that Christ is a Savior worth suffering for, even worth dying for, because suffering and death won’t last forever, but the joy of eternal life will.

So rejoice today, as you remember God’s faithful prophet John in prison, not with the rejoicing of the world, but with the rejoicing of one who knows a secret that the world does not know. Rejoice as one who knows God rightly—the God who suffered with us, who suffered for us, so that He might save us, first from the sorrow of sin and a guilty conscience, and then, at just the right time, from all the sorrow and suffering of this life. Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice! Amen.

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Atheists to skip church on Christmas

Posted on December 8, 2014 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
December 2014 American Atheists billboard campaign. Image: American Atheists

December 2014 American Atheists billboard campaign. Image: American Atheists

Dear saints at Emmanuel and at Sts. Peter and Paul,

The image above is an actual billboard that atheists are posting this year in a few cities across the country. Here is a partial explanation of it from the American Atheists website:

“Even children know churches spew absurdity, which is why they don’t want to attend services. Enjoy the time with your family and friends instead,” said American Atheists President David Silverman. “Today’s adults have no obligation to pretend to believe the lies their parents believed.  It’s OK to admit that your parents were wrong about God, and it’s definitely OK to tell your children the truth.”

I’m not writing to you to express outrage or frustration concerning the atheists or to complain about their billboard. They do not want to know the God who sent His Son into our world to redeem sinful men. They do not believe in the Word made flesh. They do not want Him for a Savior, and they don’t want their children to believe in a fairy-tale god. I expect nothing else from the atheists. Their actions are perfectly consistent with their unbelief.

Instead, I’m writing to encourage you to consider the logic behind their argument. Those who don’t believe in Christ have every reason to skip church on Christmas Day. If the incarnation of the Son of God in the womb of the virgin Mary is nothing but a fairy tale, if “a Savior who is Christ the Lord” has not been born to us, if He did not suffer and die for our sins and rise again on the third day, if heaven and hell are fictional places, if there is no divine judgment to consider, no sins that need forgiving and no God who forgives them, then it makes perfect sense for you to skip church on Christmas Day—and on Sundays, too, for that matter. In that case, it makes perfect sense for you to “enjoy the time with your family and friends instead,” as the atheists encourage you to do.

But by the grace of God, you do believe in the Word made flesh. You know that the Christmas story is not a fairy tale. You have been baptized into the name of the God who chose to be “born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons” (Gal. 4:4-5). You know that the Christmas Gospel is true, and you want your children to know it, too.

And so I write to you now, more than two weeks before our Christmas Day service, to remind you of the logical conclusion of your faith. What message would it send to the atheists of the world if Christians were to skip church on Christmas — or on Sundays, for that matter? Just as the atheists’ unbelief will lead them to skip church on Christmas Day, so I urge you, if at all possible, to attend church on Christmas Day, because you know and believe that Christ was born for you. What’s more, you know and believe that the same Christ sends His Holy Spirit to you in the Gospel that will be preached on that day, and that the real body and blood of that non-fictional Jesus will be offered to you at the Christ-Mass in the Holy Meal of the Sacrament. Your attendance on Christmas Day, and on Sundays, of course, is your witness to the world that these things are true.

The unbelieving world has tried to make Christmas about enjoying time with family and friends. But you know better. You know that Christmas is, above all, for hearing the Christmas Gospel, for receiving the body and blood of Him who was born to die for your sins, and for singing praises to the God who loved us enough to become one of us. Let the atheists stay home for Christmas. It fits with their confession of unbelief. As for you, let your presence at the Christ-Mass serve as your confession of faith to the atheists: “Christ’s birth is no fairy tale. Christ the Savior has been born, and He will be there at my church on Christmas. So I’m going to church to spend Christmas with Him.”

Emmanuel Lutheran Church
Divine Service for the Festival of the Nativity of Our Lord
10 AM on December 25th

A servant of Christ,
Pastor Rydecki

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Praying always to be counted worthy

Posted on December 7, 2014 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for Populus Sion – Advent 2

Micah 4:1-7  +  Romans 15:4-13  +  Luke 21:25-36

Christ is coming! But not in humility, as He came the first time, humble, lowly, despised and rejected. Christ is coming! But not to earn salvation for anyone, as He did when He came the first time, when He came to suffer at the hands of men and shed His blood as the atonement price for our sins. Christ is coming! But not to call men to repentance, or to forgive anyone his sins, or to bring anyone into His kingdom. That’s what this time is for, in between His first and His second coming. Because when He comes with the clouds, with power and great glory, the day of grace will come to an end. All things will be destroyed, and most people will be locked out of His glorious kingdom and cast into outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Is it important to be ready for His Advent? I would say so.

Does God, in fact, want for you to be ready on that day? Very much so. That’s why He tells you about it and reminds you of it over and over again, if you’re listening to His voice, that is, to His Word. One way in which God intends to keep us in a constant state of readiness is by surrounding us with signs that foretell His coming, signs that are there for the sole purpose of reminding God’s people to keep watch, to continue steadfast in the faith, to persevere through this often difficult life, and to not be led astray while we wait. How tragic that would be—to spend your whole life preparing for Christ’s coming, only to fall away as the hour grows late.

So Christ told His disciples to look for a number of signs leading up to His coming, signs that would be like spring blossoms and budding leaves on the trees, reminding you every time you look at them that summer is coming, just around the corner.

In Luke’s Gospel we hear Jesus tell His disciples of signs in the heavens, in the sun, moon and stars. Those seem to be the final signs before the coming of Christ. A few verses earlier Luke mentions other signs, as do Matthew and Mark. First, before the stars fall from the sky, there will be signs like wars and rumors of wars—nation against nation, kingdom against kingdom. Have you been paying attention to ISIS? Russia? North Korea? China? There will be signs including earthquakes in various places. Do you realize that there have been, on average, about 14,000 earthquakes per year for the last ten years? There will be signs including famines. We hardly know what famines are in the United States, but did you know that some 70 million people around the world have died due to famine in the last 100 years? There will be a roaring and tossing of the sea. How long ago was the last tsunami or hurricane? There will be signs like pestilences—think AIDS, Ebola, West Nile virus, flu, even cancer. There will be the sign of the persecution of Christians, both from the secular realm and also from within the Church. There will be false christs and false prophets performing signs and wonders, deceiving many, so that many fall away from the faith. And here you might think lately of any number of false prophets, from the pope, to Joel Osteen, to Glenn Beck, to Jon Buchholz. And then there’s that one pleasant sign that Jesus gives, that in spite of all the turmoil on the earth and the opposition to the true Church, the Gospel will be preached in all the nations. And that continues to happen.

So many signs, like budding leaves on a fig tree. And yet, they’re all signs that can be ignored easily enough, or explained away, or quickly forgotten. And that is why, as Jesus says, life will be going on as usual on the earth right up until the day of His coming. For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. The signs will be there—the signs are mostly here already, everywhere you look. But the unbelieving world won’t interpret them correctly.

What about Christians? What about you? Jesus doesn’t want you to be caught off guard like the rest of the world. And so He warns you in the Gospel: But take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness, and cares of this life, and that Day come on you unexpectedly. Specifically what does Jesus warn against here? Letting your hearts be weighed down with carousing (partying), drunkenness, and cares of this life. Now, maybe you’re not a partyer or maybe you’re not interested in drinking too much, but those cares of this life—you all know about those cares and how they tend to take over your thinking and your planning and your time. If your heart is weighed down by those things, then it will not be interested in things like hearing and learning God’s Word, serving your neighbor, leading holy lives according to God’s commandments and according to your vocation, as outlined in the Table of Duties in the Small Catechism.

Turmoil and suffering on the one hand, cares and pleasures of earthly life on the other hand—these things threaten your faith. If you’re not paying attention, you will get so caught up in these things that you will not stop to think, maybe I need to repent. Maybe I need to stop living how I’m living. Maybe I need to go confess my sins and receive absolution. Maybe I need to rearrange my life so that Christ and His Word are restored as my first priority, my first love.

The truth is, most people will not be prepared for Christ’s coming, For it will come as a snare on all those who dwell on the face of the whole earth. Only the worthy will escape. Only the worthy will be able to stand before Christ on that day. As Jesus says, Watch therefore, and pray always that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man.

Uncomfortable, isn’t it? You wanted Jesus to say, “Don’t worry. You don’t have to be worthy.” Or, “Don’t worry. You will always be worthy, no matter what.” But He doesn’t say that, does He? Even to His own apostles. That’s why St. Paul himself says this: But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.

It is not a sinless life that makes someone worthy to stand before Christ, nor good deeds, nor works of love. It is faith alone in Christ the Redeemer that makes a person worthy to stand before the Son of Man on the day of His appearing. Faith—the sinner’s appeal to Christ’s mercy alone for refuge and forgiveness. But Jesus asked the rhetorical question earlier in Luke’s Gospel, “When the Son of Man comes, will He really find faith on the earth?” He will, of course, find faith—faith which His own Spirit created and sustained through His Means of Grace. But it won’t be nearly as widespread a phenomenon as one might think. Look at our own membership, even since the WELS group left. How many have stopped coming to church? How many have gone off in pursuit of false doctrine or simply given in to the cares of this life? How many have denied the faith?

What, then? Are we at the mercy of fate? Are we helpless against this falling away from faith into impenitence and unworthiness? Far from it! The Helper—the Holy Spirit—is still among us, still active, still working through the Word as it is preached, heard, and meditated upon. Will some terrible temptation come along that you won’t be able to endure? Never! As Paul says, God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.

But we can learn from St. Paul’s example. What does it mean that he “disciplined his body and brought it into subjection”? He practiced self-discipline. He set aside time for prayer. He likely fasted, among other things. The flesh demands instant gratification in all things. But the spiritual person knows that the flesh needs to be subdued and tamed like a wild animal, or else the wild beast will get out and do damage to yourself and to others. So practice self-discipline. Set aside time for prayer and meditation on God’s Word in order to prepare for Christ’s coming.

That’s Jesus Himself telling you that: Pray always that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man. Pray always, and not just for earthly things. Pray that you may be preserved in the holy faith all the way up to the coming of Christ. Attend to God’s promises, and to the Means by which He promises to fulfill those promises—Word and Sacrament, Word and Sacrament.

And don’t worry that your prayers will go unfulfilled. God is faithful. He hears your prayers. He has brought you into fellowship with His beloved Son through Baptism and faith and has promised you an inheritance in the new heavens and the new earth. So keep watch. Christ will come. The signs are being fulfilled all around us. Watch for them. Be warned by them, but also be comforted by them, because things are turning out just as Jesus said they would. And may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

 

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Christ’s first coming is marked by lowliness

Posted on November 30, 2014 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for Ad Te Levavi – Advent 1

Jeremiah 33:14-18  +  Romans 13:11-14  +  Matthew 21:1-9

This season of Advent, like the season of Lent, is a season of earnest repentance as we allow the Scriptures to focus our attention on the first and the second Advents of Christ—hence the purple on the altar this year, as it used to be until about 20 or 30 years ago. Yes, we’re preparing to celebrate Jesus’ birth, to celebrate Christmas. But it isn’t Christmas yet, in spite of what the stores look like, or even in spite of what some of your home decorations might look like. Those decorations are fine outside the church. But here, we recognize a need for Advent, a need for Christians to spend a few weeks pondering, not Jesus’ birth, but Jesus’ message of repentance—so that we may sorrow over our sins, as we should, and earnestly seek Him in faith, recognizing that His second coming is imminent.

This first Sunday in Advent—Ad Te Levavi, To You, O Lord, I have lifted up my soul—turns our attention especially to Jesus’ first coming, His first Advent—again, not His birth, but His Advent, His arrival at the gates of Jerusalem on the first day of Holy Week.

If you were to describe Jesus’ earthly life—His first Advent—with a single word, you might choose any number of words: Sinless. Righteous. Devoted. Teacher. Miraculous. Powerful. Merciful. Compassionate. Obedient. All of those are accurate. How about “lowly”? Or “humble”? From the secret conception of the Son of God in the womb of an unwed virgin, to the stable where He was born and the manger in which He first slept, to His home in lowly Nazareth in Galilee, to the company He kept throughout His ministry, to His entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, riding on a donkey. Lowly. Gentle. Humble.

But it was a special kind of lowliness. Not the lowliness that comes from a person being abused and beaten down by parents or society or the lowliness that comes from guilt, so that a person thinks of him or herself as worthless. Not the lowliness of poverty or social class. Not the lowliness of a person who just wants to blend into the background and become invisible. Jesus chose lowliness. He chose humility. It was what He wanted, how He chose to be, how to He chose to act, how He wanted to be known.

He came in lowliness, first, to take our place, to be born as a man so that He could stand before God in complete humility as the representative of mankind, because mankind, since the beginning, has been anything but humble before God. Adam and Eve exalted themselves above God when they disobeyed Him. All people exalt themselves above God in their thoughts, their words, their deeds. You do it. I do it. The thoughts of our flesh are not, “What does God want from me today?”, but, “What do I want today?” Or, if a person asks, “What does God want from me today?”, then the flesh directs us to find the answer to that question, not in God’s Word—What does God say? —, but to go back to our own heart and our own reason—What do I think God wants from me today? Either way, it’s mankind refusing to be lowly, refusing to be humble before God.

It’s also mankind refusing to be lowly before one another. Lowliness hardly describes the attitudes of the rioters in Ferguson this week, or of those who exalt themselves above the divinely ordained authorities by trashing or threatening police officers or grand juries. Lowliness hardly describes those who exalt themselves above their neighbor by blocking traffic or by causing discord and strife, or by hating the people who do such things. Because of mankind’s absolute refusal to be humble before God and man, Jesus had to be humble and lowly for us, in order to offer to God a perfect sacrifice for sinful humanity.

Jesus came in lowliness for another reason: to enable men to reject Him. And reject Him they did. If He had come in glory, no one would have been able to oppose Him. But if we poor sinners were to be saved, He had to be opposed and rejected by men, so that He could be crucified for our sins. That is, after all, why He rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, to allow His haters to plot against Him, to capture Him, and to crucify Him.

The result of Jesus’ first Advent in lowliness? Atonement has now been made once for all for the sins of mankind. For all the hatred and pride and disobedience of men, one perfect sacrifice has been made. No more blood needs to be spilled to appease God’s wrath or to win God’s favor. Salvation has been earned by the lowly Christ, once for all.

Jesus came in lowliness also so that we might be able to know Him and receive His salvation. He wanted to be known as the God who was willing to be born in a manger, as the God who was willing to associate with people of low degree, as the God who loved the world and wanted it to be saved. He wanted to be seen riding into Jerusalem on a donkey and going to the cross willingly, because in His first coming, His first Advent, He did not come to destroy, but to save. He did not come to punish sinners, but to be punished for sinners. And in revealing God to us as the lowly God, who was willing to come into our flesh, Jesus knew that His Spirit would break the proud and conceited hearts of many so that we would trust in Him and so receive forgiveness for our sins and eternal life.

Most people rejected Jesus in His lowliness, but some received Him and hailed Him with their hosanna’s at Jerusalem’s gates. Most people still reject Jesus in His lowliness, but for us who have received Him, how much greater our hosanna’s must be, especially when He comes with His body and blood, bringing His own presence into our presence, and bringing with Him the same lowliness, the same mercy, the same forgiveness to us who eat and drink in the Sacrament.

Christ came in lowliness to serve us poor sinners. How much more should we who have received Him be lowly toward one another as we await His second coming. The time for anger and strife has ceased. The time for satisfying the cravings of your own sinful flesh and worrying about your own desires ahead of the needs of your neighbor has come to an end. The time for pursuing earthly pleasures and selfish ambitions is passed. If we bear the name of Christ, if we await the second coming of Christ, if we recognize that our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed, then, as St. Paul said in the Epistle, Let us walk properly, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts.

May this season of Advent be for us a time of repentance and hope in the coming the Christ. Use this time to prepare your hearts for His coming, to increase the amount of time you spend meditating on the Word of Christ, and to beahve as children of light in this dark world. Because Christ, who is our Light, is coming! Amen.

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It is good to give thanks to the Lord

Posted on November 30, 2014 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

Sermon for Thanksgiving Service 2014

Deuteronomy 8:6-18  +  Ephesians 1:3-14  +  Luke 1:46-55

In this final service of the Church Year, before beginning the new Church Year this Sunday, it’s good and right for us to look back on the blessings we’ve received from the Lord’s gracious hand and give thanks to Him, as the Psalmist did, as Moses and St. Paul and Blessed Mary did in our Scripture readings this evening.

Everyone, really, should give thanks to the Lord, because He has been good and gracious to all men. Consider the creation itself: the good earth on which we live and its perfect placement in the solar system and the galaxy. Consider the complexity of the atom and of the living cell, the variety of creatures that inhabit the earth with us, the plentiful array of plants that grow, to provide oxygen, to provide beauty, to provide wood for our houses and cotton for our clothes, and, of course, to provide nourishment to all people. Consider the coal and oil and the natural gas that God has deposited in the earth to keep us warm in the winter and to allow us to build and to travel and to explore. Everyone on earth benefits from these gifts of God the good Creator.

More than that, all people should give thanks to the Lord, because He has sent His only-begotten Son into our human flesh in order to redeem and make atonement for the whole human race. Christ suffered and shed His blood for the sins of all people, even for those who crucified Him. And, in the Gospel, He announces that He earnestly desires for all people to repent and believe in Him for the forgiveness of sins, so that all people, no matter how wicked they have been, may be cleansed by the blood of Christ and justified by faith. Yes, all people should give eternal thanks to the Lord.

But not everyone can give thanks to the Lord, because not everyone has heard and believed the Gospel. And if people haven’t heard of Christ’s sacrifice for them or believed in Him for salvation, then they remain enemies of God, idolaters, unable to approach Him, unable to pray to Him, unable to give Him thanks. Many people this week will attempt to give thanks to a god of their own making, trying to approach God apart from faith in Jesus Christ. Their thanksgiving is worse than worthless; it is offensive to the true God, just another act of idol worship.

But God has shown great mercy to us, because He has graciously brought us to faith in His Son and rescued us out of the darkness of sin in which we used to live, just as He graciously rescued Israel out of the house of bondage in Egypt. We, the baptized, we, the Church that has been gathered by the Holy Spirit around Jesus Christ, we who have been saved by grace, through faith, from the true house of bondage, from the slavery to sin and death—we can bless and give thanks to the Lord, and so we shall.

For what shall we thank Him? Well, first and foremost, for our salvation from sin, death and the devil, because without that, nothing else would really matter, would it? What good is a pantry full of food if your soul is still dead in sins? What good is a plentiful harvest or a barn full of grain or a bank account full of money if your soul is demanded of you this night and you are not found safely sheltered under the wings of Christ? Yes, first and foremost, we will bless the Lord for choosing us from eternity to belong to Christ, for sending the Gospel to us, bringing us to faith, and adopting us through Holy Baptism as His beloved children, so that we can know and have a gracious Father.

Then we turn to Moses’ words to the Israelites in Deuteronomy 8, after the Lord had saved them from slavery and had preserved them for 40 years in the wilderness, bringing them to the borders of the Promised Land of Canaan. For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land… When you have eaten and are full, then you shall bless the LORD your God for the good land which He has given you. Now, we haven’t even yet entered the true Promised Land of heaven, but it has been promised to us and purchased for us by the blood of Christ. And even here in this earthly wilderness, hasn’t God blessed us with most of those Promised-Land blessings that Israel once received? We lack for nothing in this land; God has provided abundantly for us here. And if anyone here is lacking in the necessities of life, the Lord will help them through those of us who have an abundance—as much as we are able and even beyond. For His great providence and faithfulness we bless the Lord.

And in connection with that providence, we will also give thanks to the Lord for some specific earthly blessings: For loving parents, grandparents, spouses, children and families; for one another here in our congregation, both in Las Cruces and in Silver City; for those who attend faithfully, those who pray, those who sing, those who serve in so many ways, for those members who support this Gospel ministry with their faithful and generous offerings, and for those non-members who live all over the country and do the same thing.

We also bless the Lord this year for Dot’s deliverance from this vale of tears into her eternal rest in the presence of the Lord. And for our beautiful church building where we can still gather together in peace. And for our blessed fellowship in the ELDoNA. And also for the afflictions and trials by which God drives us back to His Word and strengthens our faith and builds us up in perseverance and patience, producing character and hope in us that will not fail. For all this we give thanks to the Lord.

Finally, how shall we give thanks to the Lord? Yes, we bless His name and give thanks to Him with prayers and praises, with songs and with heartfelt gratitude. But we also give thanks by making faithful use of the Means of Grace, by speaking of His great mercy in Christ to others, by rejoicing in His goodness to us, and by calling upon Him in the day of trouble. And we give thanks to Him as Moses declared to Israel in light of God’s great works of salvation: You shall keep the commandments of the LORD your God, to walk in His ways and to fear Him. That’s yet another way of giving thanks.

In all this giving thanks to the Lord, it’s most important of all to remember that our giving thanks to Him is not what saves us, not what atones for our sins, not what causes God to continue to be favorable toward us. Instead, Christ alone, by His perfect thankfulness, by His obedient life and innocent death has redeemed us and earned God’s favor for us, and His Holy Spirit alone has turned us from thankless unbelieving ingrates into thankful believing children, so that we say with the Psalmist: Oh, give thanks to the LORD, for He is good! For His mercy endures forever. Let the redeemed of the LORD say so. Amen.

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