A Lesson for the Just from the Unjust Steward

Posted on August 17, 2014 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for Trinity 9

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

All things belong to God. We heard King David acknowledge that in the First Lesson: Yours, O LORD, is the greatness, The power and the glory, The victory and the majesty; For all that is in heaven and in earth is Yours;  Yours is the kingdom, O LORD, And You are exalted as head over all.

If all things in heaven and on earth belong to God, then we don’t actually own anything; we are stewards of God’s possessions, managers of God’s wealth. And if God is truly exalted as head over all, then it is God’s divine right to give His stewards directions as to how to use the possessions He has placed into our hands, and it is our solemn obligation to follow His directions.

We often think of stewardship in relation to offerings—the offerings God’s people are commanded to bring to support the ministers and the ministry of the Gospel. That’s part of it, but not all of it. God also commands us to use His possessions to provide for the needs of our families, and for the governing authorities in our land, and to help our neighbor in general.

Now, I ask you, how often do you open your wallet and pull out a dollar and think to yourself, “This is God’s dollar, and I must use it as God commands”? How often do you look at your bank statement and consider each deposit as a deposit of God’s money into your account, or each withdrawal as a withdrawal of God’s money? I don’t always think about that. I know you don’t always think about that, either, because, even as Christians, there is this idolatrous flesh that lives within you and worships at the altar of self and puts an offering on that altar called mammon—money, wealth, material possessions.

That’s what our Gospel today addresses. And let’s be clear whom it’s addressing. Jesus is speaking to believers, to Christians. Now, He says it loud enough for non-Christians to hear and to stand convicted before Him, even as the Pharisees were listening in our Gospel and grew angry at Jesus for His words. But Jesus is actually addressing the “sons of light,” as He calls Christians in His Gospel, sons of light who need to be called to repentance, first to a change of heart, and then, to a change of behavior. He uses the example of an unjust steward in order to teach the just.

That’s important, and I want to repeat it. Jesus is speaking to the just, those who are righteous by faith alone. Those who still do not acknowledge their utter depravity and lostness, those who still do not know the mercy of Christ or trust in Him for mercy and forgiveness—they can’t learn a thing from Jesus about how to do good or how to use money in a God-pleasing way. They are not God-pleasing people, due to their unbelief, and so nothing they do can please God. A person first has to be good, before he or she can do good. And Scripture reveals that the only way to be good is to receive the goodness of Christ by faith. So telling your unbelieving neighbor to be a good steward of God’s possessions is useless, and even harmful, because your unbelieving neighbor might get the idea that, by managing his money well, he is pleasing God. No, no, repentance and faith in Christ have to come first. A person has to be born again of water and the Spirit first. That’s what makes a person pleasing to God. Only then can we talk about doing the things that please God.

Jesus knows that His people need ongoing correction because of our sinful flesh, so He tells this parable. It’s a unique parable, because Jesus is intentionally using the example of an unjust person in order to teach the just, in this case, a steward who was in charge of managing the possessions of a rich man.

It’s a very simple parable, really. The steward was accused of squandering the wealth of the rich man—not managing it well. Not necessarily stealing it, but “wasting it,” not giving proper thought to where all the money was going, or letting too much go to certain things and not enough go to other things. He was called in to give an account. Then and only then did he become shrewd. Then and only then did he start to make intelligent calculations with his master’s wealth in the short time he had left. He started planning what to do with his master’s money. He decided to use it to buy the good favor of his fellow servants who owed money to their master, and he thought carefully about how much to reduce their debts, not too much, not too little, just the right amount for each one.

That is what his master praised. Certainly not his attitude or his heart. Certainly not his dishonesty or lack of integrity. But his shrewdness, the smart way he managed his master’s possessions to gain friends for himself.

Jesus then contrasts the shrewdness of that unjust steward with the laziness and haphazard use of money that often plagues His own people: For the sons of this world are more shrewd in their generation than the sons of light. Now, that doesn’t mean that the sons of this world are earning their way into God’s favor or into heaven by their shrewdness. Not at all. Nor is it to say that believers in Christ need to earn their way into God’s favor or into heaven by managing God’s possessions well. Only Christ earns a person’s way into heaven, and only by faith do we receive what He earned: best of all, the forgiveness of our sins.

But the believer is inspired by Jesus’ words to do better, to walk in daily repentance and in newness of life. The believer in Christ doesn’t rely on his good use of God’s possessions to get into heaven, nor does the believer in Christ despair because of his past sinful use of God’s possessions. The believer in Christ strives to walk in step with the Holy Spirit, to learn from bad examples of stewardship and to correct them. St. Paul referred to that in our Epistle today, how God has given us all those bad examples from the Old Testament to teach us, so that we don’t commit the same errors, fall into the same sins, and worse, fall away from faith, as so many of the Old Testament believers did.

So, what do the just learn from the unjust steward? First, to remember your vocation as a steward of God’s possessions, to not let Satan or your flesh drag you away to make yourself into your own god, so that you don’t listen to God’s instructions on how to use His possessions, because you’re too busy making your own plans to bother with His commands. The unjust steward had forgotten his place and his calling. We should not forget who and what we are.

Second, the just learn from the unjust steward to plan and make intelligent calculations with God’s possessions. You have God’s instructions, His general parameters for how to manage His possessions that are in your hands: to provide for your pastor’s needs and for the extension of the preaching of the Gospel, for your immediate family’s needs, for your extended family’s needs, for the compensation of your governors and government authorities, for your fellow believer’s needs and for your neighbor’s needs in general, roughly in that order. Notice, I said, “needs,” not “wants.” And if you still have something leftover, He allows you to use that for your enjoyment. And in order to make sure you’re not just thoughtlessly spending money, here and there, that almost certainly requires some sort of budget.

But how much exactly should you budget to each of the areas where God has commanded or allowed you to use His gifts? Ah, there God has not given specific commands. There God looks for shrewdness on your part, for sound judgment, like the shrewdness shown by the unjust steward.

And above all, God looks for you to plan your budget and to use His possessions with this overall guiding principle: to show generous love toward your neighbor. And I say to you, make friends for yourselves by unrighteous mammon, that when you fail, they may receive you into an everlasting home. It’s not that you earn your way into heaven by being generous toward other people. Heaven is God’s gift to those who rely only on Christ and His grace and mercy. But faith is proved in the believer’s life, and faith is demonstrated to those around you by the love that flows from it, and that includes the love that uses money, not in the service of self, but in the service of your neighbor.

Faith alone makes you good before God; you are just, by faith. So look to Christ for mercy. Believe in Him and receive His generous love here in His Word and here in His Sacrament. And, since you are good before God by faith in Christ, you are now able to do works that God considers good. Let your shrewdness and your wise management of God’s possessions serve as a daily thank-offering to God for all His goodness to you. If the unjust steward could learn to manage his master’s wealth wisely, how much more you, who are just by faith in Christ! Amen.

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Beware of false prophets: An urgent but unpopular warning

Posted on August 10, 2014 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for Trinity 8

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

Dear saints of God, baptized into the holy name of Jesus: You were once lost and condemned creatures, children of wrath, disobedient to God’s laws, living in impenitence, and separated from Christ. But you were redeemed by the blood of Christ. You were called by the Gospel to repent of your sins and to trust in Christ for forgiveness. You were baptized and brought from unbelief to faith. You were born again, and now, by faith alone, you stand righteous and innocent before God, because faith embraces Christ and receives all His benefits.

You were born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable—through the living and abiding word of God. Your faith was born of God’s Word. It was the Word of Christ that revealed Him to you as a good and merciful Savior. It’s that same Word that keeps you relying on Him so that you persevere in the faith until the end of your earthly life. So faith, from beginning to end, depends on God’s Word.  Mess with the Word, and you mess with faith.

The devil knows this. The devil knows that he can’t mess with Christ, and he can’t touch your faith directly; he can’t force you away from Christ. No one and nothing in all creation can do that. And he can’t change the word of Christ; it is written and cannot be unwritten from the pages of Holy Scripture. But he can mess with the preaching of the Word. He can set up falsehood and make it look like truth. He can raise up his own false apostles, dress them up to look like godly, sincere Christians—in sheep’s clothing, as it were—to proclaim falsehood, not in the name of the devil, but in the name of God, and so he hopes to lure you away from Christ, who is the Way, the Truth and the Life, into believing in a god who is a lie, who is not the one true God, and yet is still called by the name “God” and “Jesus Christ” and “Holy Spirit.” The devil attacks your faith by attacking the preaching of God’s word.

So you might think Jesus would just tell His disciples, “Don’t listen to anyone. Don’t trust anyone. Don’t worry about preachers and teachers and finding a church and going to church. Just stay home with your Bible, sit in a corner, and you’ll be safe.” But He never once said such a thing. On the contrary, He has sent true prophets and preachers, and commands all people to listen to the preachers whom He has sent, and He commands those who believe to gather together around the Word, where it is rightly preached, and the Sacraments, where they are rightly administered.

At the same time, Jesus commands His disciples most earnestly in our Gospel: Beware of false prophets. Beware of false prophets. Not one of the more popular commands of Jesus, is it?, especially in today’s world where everybody’s notion of “Jesus” is this meek, always-friendly, never-condemning preacher of “love and tolerance” who never wants anybody to judge anybody and who doesn’t really care which church anybody goes to, as long as people feel comfortable there. Friends, I don’t know who that Jesus is, but it’s not the real one. The real Jesus commanded His disciples to beware of false prophets. So, if you would listen to Jesus, if you would be Christians, then you will do what He says.

Now, what are false prophets, who come come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves? A false prophet is anyone who pretends to teach you things about God that are not true, who pretends to proclaim to you words from God that God never spoke, and teachings from God that God never taught. Beware, Jesus says, because they won’t come to you praising the devil or cursing the name of God. They will come in the name of love and sincerity and zeal for God. They will say things that sound so good, and they may even point you to a passage in the Bible to prove their authenticity—just like the devil did when he tempted our Lord in the wilderness.

How is the false prophet recognized? Jesus says, You will know them by their fruits. In other words, you can’t look at the tree. You can’t look at the prophet himself and know if he’s true or false. You can’t go by the sound of his speech or the look on his face. But just as you would pick an apple from an apple tree and turn it around in your hand and check it for rotten spots, so you are to analyze the words that come out of a prophet’s mouth, to see if they agree with God’s holy Word. This is what the Bereans did when the apostle Paul came to them, preaching the Word of God. This is also what the apostle John admonished in his first epistle: Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. You don’t test the spirits by listening to your heart. You test the spirits by comparing the teachings of a prophet with the Holy Scriptures.

Who are the false prophets of our time? They are everywhere. First, they include everyone who does not confess Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God, and the world’s only Savior. So every Buddhist monk is a false prophet. Every Muslim Imam and ayatollah is a false prophet. Every Jewish Rabbi is a false prophet. Those are the easiest to identify.

Then there are those who use the name of Jesus but redefine His history, twist His Gospel into a gospel of works-righteousness, and add their own prophecies to His teachings, like the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Every teacher of those religions is a false prophet. Beware of them.

From there it gets harder. Because under the broad umbrella of those who call themselves Christians, most of them preaching and teaching today are false prophets. But we don’t like to think about that. We want to assume the best of others who call themselves Christian preachers, and, in fact, we may analyze their teachings and find many things that are not false, but true. But here is where the apostle’s Paul’s words must ring in our ears: A little leaven leavens the whole lump. A little falsehood mixed in with the truth turns the whole teaching into falsehood.

So when “Christian” preachers mix in a little works-righteousness into the true teaching of righteousness by faith alone, they are false prophets. When preachers teach, contrary to Paul’s words in today’s Epistle, that it’s OK to gratify the desires of your sinful flesh, they are false prophets. When they talk much about the Holy Spirit but deny the Means of Grace by which the Spirit works, they are false prophets. When they reject the Gospel that God only justifies sinners by faith in Christ, they are false prophets.

So we have this command from Jesus to beware of them, and yet our flesh rebels against Christ’s command and sets up its own idols that keep Christians from doing this.

There is the idol of laziness. It takes effort to judge doctrine, probably less effort than most people think, but it still takes effort. It takes regular, ongoing study of the Holy Scriptures, so the Holy Spirit, through His Word, can lead us to the truth and away from error. But our flesh wants to sleep in, to put it off, to not bother with anything beyond a basic knowledge, to bow before the idol of laziness, causing Christians to become lukewarm toward the truth.

There is the idol of tolerance, before which our modern society bows. This idol demands that we not judge anyone, and that we never dare claim to know the truth ourselves. It’s not “nice,” after all. It will offend people and make them squirm.

There is the idol of self, which leads people to choose a church, not based on the truth or error that is proclaimed there, but based on how the place makes them feel. Their feelings become their god. Their comfort becomes their idol. Their personal preference becomes their compass, instead of God’s Word.

Finally, these and whatever other idols people construct in their hearts lead people away from the truth of Jesus into falsehood and unbelief—the most tragic kind of unbelief. Because it’s not that any of these so-called Christians would ever say, “I don’t believe in Jesus.” They all say they do. But the Jesus they have come to know through false teaching is a false Jesus, an imposter, a demon.

And that’s the warning Jesus ends with in our Gospel today. Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!

I’ll admit something to you this morning. I don’t like to preach on this text—that is, my sinful flesh rebels against it. I’d much rather preach every week on a Gospel like we had last week in the feeding of the 4,000. Because today’s Gospel is the kind that preachers tend to hear complaints about when they preach on it, and my flesh would rather just make everyone happy. But that would be to serve man, rather than God. Today’s Gospel is the word of Christ, and He sends it to you for a reason, that you may not ever hear those terrible words from Him, I never knew you; depart from Me. If you have set up an idol in your heart, if you have not taken the doctrine of Christ seriously, if you have not obeyed Christ’s command to beware of false prophets, then now is the time to repent and put your faith in Jesus, who died for you and still gives you His grace right here in His Word and right here in His Sacrament—full forgiveness, and a new beginning, starting (again) today.

And for those who take Jesus’ warning seriously to beware of false prophets and are worried about whether you can actually do it, know that Christ has not abandoned you on this earth to fend for yourself, as if it depended on you to find or to figure out the truth on your own.  For this very thing He has given His Holy Spirit, whom you received from God when you were baptized. God has equipped you with the full armor of God, as Paul says to the Ephesians, if you will only put it on and wear it as you fight against the devil and His evil forces—not with weapons of steel or of human reason, but with the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. And what did Jesus say to His disciples who believed in Him? If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. You have His promise and His Holy Spirit to guide you into all truth and to set you free through it, “If you abide in My word.” Well, here is His Word for you each and every week. You have it to review and study in your homes whenever you wish. And we will be starting a rather intensive Bible study in just a few weeks in order to better equip you to judge between truth and falsehood.  Don’t let the idols keep you away. The better you know Christ and His Word, the more equipped you will be to beware of false prophets. Amen.

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Of course God will give you bread. He made you a promise.

Posted on August 3, 2014 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for Trinity 7

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

You heard God make a promise today through the prophet Jeremiah: “For I have satiated the weary soul, and I have replenished every sorrowful soul.” That was a promise, God’s promise of grace and providence for the people of Judah. They would see times of sorrow and want because of their sins; they would go into captivity in Babylon for their idolatry. But then God promised to bring them back, to satiate the weary soul, to replenish every sorrowful soul, to have mercy on them, to provide for their needs as a loving Father.

God’s promises are as solid as a rock and as immovable as a mountain. But even God’s people, even Christians are slow to believe His promises, because our weak, fleshly eyes don’t like promises. They like to see. Our weak, fleshly reason doesn’t like to trust. It likes to understand: Why do I suffer want? What can I do to fix it? How will God provide? When will God provide? And for our human reason, it’s never soon enough.

Jesus once said to His disciples: Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.  There He goes again, making promises. In today’s Gospel we learn about faith; we learn to trust in those promises as we see the merciful and compassionate Jesus keeping His promise for those 4,000 men, plus women and children, who had followed Him out into the wilderness, who had placed their trust in Him. Of course He gave them bread! It’s what He had promised to do.

Some time before our Gospel took place, Jesus had already fed the 5,000 by miraculously multiplying five loaves of bread and two small fish. The 5,000 had spent the day with Jesus, and they weren’t far away from the villages where they could have bought food for themselves, but Jesus had wanted to provide bread for them as a sign that they should also look to Him for more than bread, for forgiveness and eternal life. Most of the 5,000 ended up abandoning Jesus.

The 4,000 were a different crowd. They had spent three days with Jesus, following Him, listening to Him, yearning to be where He was. They followed Him out into the wilderness, far away from their homes. They hadn’t thought about food. They hadn’t worried about their jobs, or their homes, or their other needs. They simply sought after the “one thing needful,” the Word of Christ. The kingdom of God. They were doing the very thing Jesus had told His disciples to do: Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.

And Jesus remembered the promise He had attached to that saying: … and all these things shall be added to you. All the things that you need for your body and life, your “daily bread,” as we call it in the Lord’s Prayer. He remembered His promise to provide for His people, not as if He were an employer paying out wages to those who had worked hard, but as a kind and compassionate Father feeds His children.

Hear the words of Jesus: I have compassion on the crowd, because they have been with me now three days and have nothing to eat. And if I send them away hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way. And some of them have come from far away.

See the compassion of Jesus for these people—all of them, no matter who they were or what kind of people they were, or what they had done or not done. The only thing all these people had in common was that they were there where Jesus was, trusting in Jesus to take care of them.

And that’s what faith does. It trusts in a Father who is merciful for Christ’s sake and faithful to His promises, who has demonstrated His faithfulness over and over again since the beginning of the world. To have faith is to know that God is not lying to you. So when He promises to add to you all these things that you need for your body and life, faith doesn’t need to see how or when or why. Faith simply replies, “Yes He will.” And if He has to move mountains to do it or, as Luther said, send His angels to dig bread out of the depths of the earth so that you have what you need, He will do it.

Unbelief says, “No He won’t,” or, “I’m not sure He will.” And understand that it’s not only unbeliever’s who disbelieve God. Every baptized believer in Christ still carries around this unbelieving flesh, so that part of you trusts in God, even while the old man in you grumbles and screams, “You can’t trust Him!” That’s the daily struggle of the Christian, aided powerfully by the Holy Spirit, to beat down the old man and his unbelief and tell him to shove off. One man put this struggle into words as he came to Jesus for help one day, “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief!”

You see an example of fleshly unbelief even in Jesus’ believing disciples as they challenge His desire to feed all these people: His disciples answered him, “How can one feed these people with bread here in this desolate place?” It’s as if they hadn’t been there just months before when Jesus fed 5,000 men, plus women and children, with five loaves of bread and two fish. It’s as if Jesus were suddenly impotent and powerless to help.

But that’s what happens when human reason takes over and pushes faith aside. Human reason says, “You have to provide for yourself. You have to fix yourself. And if you can’t, then you will die of starvation or of heartache. Because God will do nothing. God doesn’t care.”

So again, God tells human reason to go jump in a lake. See what Jesus does in this Gospel. He takes seven loaves of bread and a few small fish, praises His Father in heaven for this food, and then hands it out, not directly to the people, but to His chosen disciples, whom He instructs to hand it out to the people. And in their hands, the food is multiplied so that there are seven baskets-full left over after all 4,000 had had enough to eat.

For I have satiated the weary soul, and I have replenished every sorrowful soul.

God fulfilled that promise for Judah when he brought her back from captivity in Babylon. He fulfilled that promise for the 4,000 when they ate bread in the desert. And He fulfills that promise every day He puts daily bread on your table, and clothes on your back, and the people in your life that you need, when you need them. What is meant by daily bread? Daily bread includes everything that has to do with the support and needs of the body, such as food, drink, clothing, shoes, house, home, land, animals, money, goods, a devout husband or wife, devout children, devout workers, devout and faithful rulers, good government, good weather, peace, health, self control, good reputation, good friends, faithful neighbors, and the like. God promises, in love and compassion, to give you daily bread. And His promises cannot fail.

For I have satiated the weary soul, and I have replenished every sorrowful soul.

That’s true of your bodily needs. But, of course, God also fulfills that promise richly and daily for your soul. Jesus calls out, Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.

A friend of mine put on his Facebook page this morning, “TGIS!” Thank God it’s Sunday. Why? Because today, you get to see Jesus, in His Word and in His Sacrament. Today you get to hear of the love and compassion of Jesus toward the multitudes who followed Him, remembering that the Jesus of 2,000 years ago is the very same Jesus who lives still today. As the writer to the Hebrews says, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and forever. Here is the teaching of truth. Here is dependable love. Here are faithful promises that cannot be broken. Here is the body and blood of Jesus that He gave into death for love of you, for the forgiveness of your sins. Every other day of the week you’re out in the world seeing this world crumble around you, struggling to survive and experiencing the heartache of sin and grief and loss. But TGIS. Because here in God’s house, on the Lord’s Resurrection Day, together with God’s people, you come to Jesus—maybe rejoicing!, but often enough weary and frail and hurting and grieving, maybe just hanging on by a thread, but trusting—maybe barely trusting in His promises, looking for help, and He gives it every time.

He gives it, just as He gave it in our Gospel, through the hands of His called servants. You don’t need Jesus standing here in the flesh in order to receive bread and mercy and forgiveness from Him. He speaks to you through me. He shows Himself to you in the preaching of His Gospel, in all His love and compassion. He gives you bread and wine and His body and blood by my hand, with a promise attached: “for the forgiveness of sins.”

There’s even some of Christ’s mercy and providence left over, so that you can go out into your daily life with something to give to your neighbor in need—whether it’s bread or mercy or time or hard work at your job or selfless love shown toward your family at home or your family at church.

For I have satiated the weary soul, and I have replenished every sorrowful soul. Whatever you need in your life, your Father knows your need, and promises to supply it. He has already fulfilled that promise over and over again, and He will continue to fulfill it. Of course He will! He’s made you a promise. So trust Him; seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you, for the sake of Christ Jesus, our Lord. Amen.

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You must be righteous to enter the kingdom of heaven

Posted on July 27, 2014 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for Trinity 6

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

Just how good do you have to be to get to heaven? Some religions teach that it doesn’t matter how good you are; everyone goes to heaven, eventually. Some religions teach that your good deeds have to outnumber your bad deeds. Some religions teach that, as long as you don’t do anything really horrible like kill someone or commit adultery, you’ll get to heaven. Some religions teach that you have to work really, really hard at doing good, but you still won’t know until you’re standing before the gates of heaven whether or not you did enough for God to let you in.

What does God’s Word say? Just how good—just how righteous do you have to be to get to heaven? Jesus tells us in the Gospel. Take the best people, the most righteous people you can think of—like the scribes and Pharisees were in Jesus’ day, and then realize that you have to be more righteous than they are. For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.

God’s Law requires righteousness. God’s Law is demanding and unforgiving. We call them the Ten Commandments, not the Ten Suggestions. “You shall have no other gods. You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God. Remember the Sabbath Day by keeping it holy. Honor your father and mother. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant, or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” And then the Law concludes, “The man who does those things shall live by them.”

And the scribes and Pharisees in Jesus’ day thought, “Yes. We do those things.” And Jesus says, “Do you, now?” What did God mean when He said, “You shall not murder”? He meant more than not killing your neighbor. Whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. The righteousness that the Law requires is not just external, but also internal. It demands love in the heart just as much as it demands love in our actions. It demands selflessness and utter devotion to your neighbor’s well-being, both to your friends as well as to your enemies.

Or, Jesus goes on, Whoever says to his brother, ‘Raca!’ shall be in danger of the council. But whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be in danger of hell fire. “Raca” was one of those Hebrew words that Jewish society had outlawed. Manmade law often outlaws certain forms of public expression. There are certain things you just couldn’t say to someone. Certain profanities, certain slurs. Think of how much trouble people get in today for using racial slurs. Yep. That’ll get you in trouble. You’ll be in danger of public shunning and maybe worse. But Jesus says that saying something much less serious to someone, like, “You fool!” puts you in danger of hell fire. Yes, “hell fire.” Jesus’ words. It’s not just the big sins that condemn a person to hell. It’s the littlest sins, the ones that the world doesn’t even classify as sins. A little gossip. Foul language. Dirty jokes. Clothing that reveals too much—puts you in danger of hell fire.

Ah, but then someone says, “Oh, I guess I sinned. I’d better bring God an offering. I’d better do something good for God to make up for it.” Jesus slams the door on that, too. If you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. In other words, don’t imagine that you can serve God while you’re sinning against your neighbor. Get rid of all sin in your thoughts, words, and deeds. Then come worship God.

This is the righteousness that God’s law demands. This is the righteousness that the Ten Commandments command. They show you how to lead a holy life. But in doing so, they reveal to you how unholy you are—how unholy all of us are.

But recognizing sin doesn’t get you into heaven. Even confessing sin doesn’t get you into heaven. Being righteous is the only thing that gets you into heaven. But you’re unrighteous. So there’s no hope for you, unless God makes you into something you aren’t.

That’s the Gospel. That’s why you’re here today, isn’t it? Because you have heard and believed that Christ came to be what you weren’t—righteous. And in Holy Baptism, Christ gave you something that wasn’t yours—His righteousness. And in bringing you to faith in Christ, the Holy Spirit has made you into something new, a new creation. Christ is the end of the law for all who believe.

God’s law can’t forgive sins. It demands sinlessness. Period. Only in Christ God can and does forgive sins, because Jesus paid the penalty for your unrighteousness. God is gracious to you for Christ’s sake. He earned a pardon for all people by shedding His precious blood on the cross. And God, in His mercy, for Christ’s sake, has determined to pass over your sins and to count faith in Christ for righteousness instead.

You still have to be righteous to get to heaven. But in the Gospel, God reveals that He bestows righteousness as a gift by counting righteousness to all who trust in Christ for mercy. You need righteousness. You need forgiveness. (It’s really two ways of saying the same thing.) Where do you get it? You get it here in God’s house, from the Word of Christ, through the minister of Christ. You get it here, in Holy Baptism. You get it here in the Sacrament of Christ’s body and blood where you eat and drink the body and blood of the Righteous One. Here are the Keys that open the gates of heaven to you. How can sin condemn you, when the Righteous One gives you His own body and blood that cancel out sin and wipe it out before God? How can any guilt remain when the Word of Christ forgives it?

In fact, this is the reason why Christians are willing to set aside Sunday mornings if at all possible, and in some cases, are willing to drive two hours, three hours, four hours or more to come to church where the means of grace are administered. Because they are sinners who lack righteousness, and because here is righteousness, being given to you by the Holy Spirit. Here is the righteousness that does make a person worthy to enter the kingdom of heaven. And it has nothing to do with your goodness. It has all to do with the goodness of Christ who covers you with Himself.

Now, for the believer in Christ, who is righteous before God by faith alone, there is yet another kind of righteousness of which we speak, and it’s important. It is the righteousness that proceeds from faith. It’s not perfect. It’s not complete in this life. But it is real, and the Holy Spirit is serious about producing it in Christians. Without faith, Scripture says, it is impossible to please God. Unbelievers, who are not righteous by faith, cannot do a single work to please God, or that He counts as good. But faith in Christ makes a person pleasing to God, in such a way that believers can actually do good works—works that God accepts and considers good. This “new obedience,” as we call it, doesn’t earn God’s favor. Instead it flows from God’s favor. This new obedience doesn’t contribute to your justification. It flows from your justification by faith.

And so we study God’s commandments, and memorize them, and meditate on them. We learn the Small Catechism as it explains the commandments so simply and eloquently. And then we pray for God’s help, so that all our life may be holy, so that we may walk in His commandments and live a life of love and thankfulness to God for His mercy in Christ. Good works are necessary, not for salvation, but because it is God’s will that those who bear His name, branded on them in Holy Baptism, should live a holy life, even as our Father is holy. That is daily goal and purpose of every Christian, because we have tasted the goodness of our God, who gave His Son into death in to order to make righteous people out of unrighteous people, that we may live without fear and without guilt, sheltered from God’s righteous wrath by the righteousness of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

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A Lesson from the Lord of the Catch for Catchers (and the rest of the Caught)

Posted on July 20, 2014 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for Trinity 5

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

The Holy Spirit has something to teach us today about fishing, not fishing for fish, but fishing for men, for people—catching people, by means of the net of the Gospel, by means of Baptism and teaching, and bringing them into the Holy Christian Church as Christians. Some of those caught Christians are chosen by Christ also to be catchers. You can’t take this analogy too far, because, obviously, fish do not turn into fishermen in real life. But in Jesus’ boat, in Jesus’ Church, the very simple truth is that Jesus sends out His Word, catches sinners by bringing them to faith, and then calls some of them to be preachers, through whom more men will be caught, and then some of those will be called to be preachers, etc. This process of catching men out of the ocean of death and destruction and bringing them into the life of Christ, the life of the Church, will go on and on until the Last Day when Christ returns.

So the Gospel today applies both to preachers of the Gospel as well as to hearers of the Gospel.

First, let’s review Luke’s account from chapter 5. Right away, we see Jesus doing the preaching, doing the catching, and large crowds crowding around Him to hear the Word of God from His lips. But He only planned to do that catching here on earth, visibly, in person, for a few years, because His earthly ministry was to end in crucifixion and resurrection and ascension to the right hand of God. The building of the Church, the filling of the net with fish for the next two thousand years or more—that Christ would accomplish through the preaching ministry that He would give to the men He would choose.

In order to teach us a few things about that preaching ministry, Jesus used this occasion of the fishing boat. He got into Simon Peter’s boat and asked him to put out from the shore just far enough that the people could hear Him. The people on the shore received their lesson from Jesus. Then it was time for a special lesson for the men who would be chosen as catchers of men. Jesus tells Peter to put out into the deep water and “let down your nets for a catch.” As we see at the end of the story, Jesus wasn’t at all interested on this occasion about the fish themselves or about supporting the fishing business of these fishermen; He’s concerned about the lesson they—and we! — will learn about the catching of men into the Church.

There are at least four lessons for us to learn from this account. The first lesson to be learned by Peter was trust—trust in the Word and power of Christ. As he tells Jesus, Master, we have toiled all night and caught nothing.  Human reason told Peter that it was foolish to cast the net during the day when proper fishermen go out at night. Experience told Peter that fish are only caught by hard work, and even then, they often come up empty, as they had the night before. All Peter had to go on here was Jesus’ word. Jesus was calling on him to set aside human reason, experience and effort and to rely solely on Jesus and His power for the outcome. And Peter did: Nevertheless at Your word I will let down the net.

That was the second lesson. First, trust. Then, obey. Do what He says. Follow His instructions. No more, and no less. In this case, simply, let down the net. Right here, where Jesus tells you. Add no bait to make it attractive. Don’t wiggle it around; don’t mess with it. Just put it out there, and wait, and then pull it in with whatever is in it.

The third lesson: Jesus provides the catch, and it will be a big one—so big, that one man cannot pull it in. It requires the help of your companions. So James and John had to help drag the net to shore.

Peter was so amazed at Jesus’ power that he realized he was in the presence of the holy God. He also realized, very correctly, that he was a sinner who didn’t deserve to be in Jesus’ presence, much less to serve in Jesus’ service. So he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!” Then he learned the fourth lesson from Jesus: Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid. From now on you will catch men.” Jesus offers pure grace and comfort to Peter. He didn’t tell Peter, “Aw, you’re not such a bad sinner!” He simply told him not to be afraid, even though he was a sinful man. That’s the whole point of this catch. Jesus came to catch—to save—sinners, like Peter. And then God has ordained that the preaching ministry by which sinners are caught and saved should be carried out, not by sinless men, but by sinful men. And every single person whom Peter would catch would be a sinner, just like Peter. The Gospel itself is the message of repentance and the forgiveness of sins to sinners through faith in Christ Jesus, who paid the price for sin on the cross so that the sinner who trusts in Jesus has no wrath or punishment or death to fear.

Now, we apply these words first to those who are pastors, teachers, preachers, like Peter, James and John became. And the four things Peter learned must also be learned by those who occupy the preaching office.

First, that, in this ministry of catching men, we must trust only and alone in Christ’s Word and power. Human reason tells us that preaching and teaching the Word and administering the Sacraments will not be enough, that we have to have the right personality, the right methods; that we have to work hard at making the Word effective for our hearers. But Christ has commanded us simply to preach repentance and the forgiveness of sins, to go and make disciples by baptizing and teaching. So we must trust His Holy Spirit to do what He wants through our preaching and leave all the results up to Him. He will produce the catch He wants. How does He do it? I don’t know. He’s God. He does as He pleases. He is the Lord of the Catch.

Then, we are to obey, to follow Christ’s instructions for the catch, which means teaching “all things that I have commanded you,” as He says in Matthew 28. We are to preach the Word, to be ready in season and out of season, to convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching, as Paul says to Pastor Timothy. We are, as the Apostle Peter would later write to other elders (that is, pastors), to shepherd the flock of God which is among us, serving as overseers, not by compulsion but willingly, not for dishonest gain but eagerly; nor as being lords over those entrusted to us, but being examples to the flock. We are not to be greedy, nor peddle the Word of God for personal gain. We are not to corrupt the heavenly doctrine, or add to it or subtract from it, but teach it faithfully and purely, whether or not our hearers receive it or us.

Thirdly, we are to remember that Christ is in charge of the catch and will miraculously bring an enormous number of men into His net through us. But there is only one net, and we see only tiny bits of it in any one place. We have to rely on our companions throughout the world to bring it all in, on our brothers in the ministry who labor in the same waters, even though we may be separated by several states or several continents. And through all of Christ’s chosen ministers, the great catch of fish will be brought in.

And finally, we are not to be afraid, even though we are sinful men, sinful men who do not deserve this ministry, who do not deserve to be called sons of God, much less servants or ministers of Christ. But Jesus says, “Do not be afraid.” We are unworthy of this ministry. But Christ’s forgiveness makes us worthy to stand before God, and Christ’s call is what makes us worthy to stand before His people in this office.

So much for preachers, the catchers. What about the hearers? What about the caught? The same lessons apply to the hearers of the Word, to the fish that have been caught or that are yet to be caught in the net.

Trust in Christ’s Word and power as He catches men for eternal life. Human reason, our flesh tells us that His Word isn’t enough. That we must be doing something wrong if the Gospel is preached among us and the attendance doesn’t go up, or does go down. That’s God, exercising your faith, telling you to simply trust the Word of Christ and the will of Christ, to stop relying on human reason, to stop making visible results the object of your faith.

First, trust. Then, obey; do what Jesus says. He doesn’t say to all Christians, “Go preach the Gospel.” In Peter’s epistle, of which you heard a portion today, he doesn’t once command all of his hearers or readers to go and preach the Gospel as if you were pastors or apostles. What he says is that you are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. That doesn’t mean becoming neighborhood preachers. It does mean that all of your service in your own vocations is pleasing to God, an acceptable sacrifice to Him through Jesus Christ. It means that everything you do in faith toward God and in love toward your neighbor is a spiritual sacrifice, which includes coming to church, supporting the ministry here, and declaring God’s praises to those around you. But it also includes working hard at your job, without grumbling or complaining; serving your family joyfully in your home, and helping your neighbor selflessly wherever you find him. It means, as church members, living a righteous life according to the Commandments and giving the Church such a good reputation among men that they can’t find fault with it. That’s what Christ has given you to do to further His kingdom and support His catching of men.

Trust. Obey. And remember that you are not alone in this net, for as lonely as it may look around you. The net of the Church fills the world and includes all the souls that have gone before you in this Christian Church. You need to be drawn into the boat by the net. You can’t hop in on your own. Christ has sent a catcher to catch you, to keep you. So don’t refuse his ministry.

Finally, do not be afraid. You are sinful men, too, like Peter was, like all Church members have ever been. But Christ has borne your sin and made atonement for it. He has washed you clean by His blood in Holy Baptism. And now Christ will make you into just the right kind of servant, the right kind of hearer, so that He accomplishes what He wants in your life and furthers the catch through you, even if you yourself aren’t a fisherman. You are precious to Him. Nothing in all the world matters to Him more than the Catch of men of which God, by grace, has made you a part. Amen.

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