Your business is to head for the door

Posted on August 29, 2010 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

Sermon for Pentecost 14(c)

Luke 13:22-30  +  Isaiah 66:18-24  +  Hebrews 12:18-24

It’s the age-old question that we have before us today in the Gospel of Luke. “Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?”  It’s a question people ask out of arrogance, sometimes, hoping that only a few good people – like me – are allowed into heaven.  It’s a question people ask sometimes out of fear, for themselves or for others.  Will only a few make it?  What about them?  What about me?  Who’s gonna be there in heaven?  What are a person’s chances?  How many?  How few?  Wouldn’t you like to know?

The truth is, it’s none of your business.  That’s God’s business!  The Lord knows those who are his.  It’s man’s fallen, human nature to try to play God and crunch the numbers.  And it’s man’s fallen, human nature to second-guess God’s reasons for saving some or for condemning others.  But you don’t get to play God and peer into heaven to how many are there.  And you don’t get to judge his judgment.  It’s God’s business how many or how few are finally rescued from Satan’s kingdom and brought into the kingdom of the Son he loves.  It’s God’s business to know it.  It’s God’s business to accomplish it.  Your business – is to head for the door.

“Make every effort,” Jesus said to the crowd, “to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to.”  You see, Jesus doesn’t answer the question whether few or many will be saved. What he does say is that many won’t be.  And you don’t want to be among those many who are left outside.  Jesus doesn’t want you to be among them, either.  So, Jesus tells the people listening to him (both then and now), “You – make every effort.” Literally, “struggle, strive, compete to enter through the narrow door.”

So, what? Is he saying, “Work very hard at keeping God’s commandments in order to enter”?  Well, no.  If you started out life neutral or even good, then you could make every effort to stick with it, to keep honoring God’s name and God’s Word and serving your neighbor and steering clear of sin and selfish behavior and hateful thoughts.  But you didn’t start out life neutral or good.  You started out life in Satan’s kingdom, trapped, enslaved to sin and destined for eternal condemnation outside of God’s kingdom, God’s house.  That’s why you needed “to be saved” in the first place. 

There is only one door that leads out of Satan’s kingdom and into God’s kingdom.  It’s a very narrow door, and that door is Christ Jesus himself.  “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life,” Jesus says.  “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved. Whoever does not believe will be condemned.”  Whoever believes.  Christ died for all, not a few, and wants all to be saved, not just a few.  But he wants all to be saved through faith in him. Anyone who tries to be saved by any other way than believing in the Son of God, or by any other name, will be shut out of God’s kingdom forever.

Of course, we’re so lost by nature that no one would even be able to believe in Christ and walk through that door to salvation.  And so God sends his Holy Spirit through this gospel – whenever you hear it – to create and strengthen faith.

So, if salvation is by faith alone in Christ, and faith doesn’t come from our effort or struggle, but as God’s gift through his Word, then why does Jesus tell the crowd before him to make every effort, to struggle, strive and compete to enter through him?  And when do we enter through this door into God’s kingdom?  Now, through faith in Jesus? Or when we die or when he comes again?  Great questions!  Let’s dig a little deeper.

Entering through the narrow door that is Christ does involve a struggle, because it requires dying – dying to sin, dying to self, dying through repentance and rising to new life as the promise of the forgiveness of sins in Christ Jesus sparks faith in your heart.   That death to sin and rising to new life first occurred at your baptism, when the door to heaven swung open to you and you were received into God’s family as his forgiven child, clothed as you were in Christ, the true and only Son of God.  You entered through the narrow door.  If you had died at that moment, you would have awoken in the paradise of God.

But instead, you took another breath here on this earth.  And then another. And then another.  And one day passed, and then another, then months and then years and now here you are.  And, you see, we are not Calvinists here or Baptists who believe that once you’re saved, you’re always saved, that once you’ve entered through the narrow door, you’re good to go for the rest of your earthly life.  Conversion, you might say, is an event, but faith is not.  Faith is a constant looking to Christ and relying on his promises.  Faith keeps its focus on the narrow door and heads straight for it. 

But you have enemies here, as long as you’re drawing breath on earth, who will do everything in their power to sidetrack you from that narrow door, to pull you off the road, to drag you out of the house. Your enemies want you to be on the outside with them when the door closes shut on the day of your death.  The devil, the world and your sinful nature are those enemies.  And they will hit you with temptations and distractions and troubles and worries and worldly attractions – anything to get your focus off the narrow door that is Christ and his cross.

And so the Bible uses this picture of God’s house in two different ways.  In a sense, you who trust in Christ Jesus have already entered the Kingdom of Christ through the door that is Christ and his cross.  But in the sense that you haven’t arrived at your final judgment yet, because you haven’t died yet and Christ hasn’t returned yet, and you could still foolishly allow these enemies of your faith to gain the upper hand, the Bible also pictures the Christian life as a constant heading for the narrow door that is Christ, a daily and continuous living in repentance, a constant need for faith to be fed through Word and Sacrament, a lifelong struggle against sin and against Satan, a lifelong seeking to be found in Christ, so that, when the door is closed, you are, once and for all, safe – saved – on the inside, and not still searching for the door on the outside.

So serious is this business of salvation that Jesus begins to speak to the crowd before him as if it were already too late for them, and the door had already been shut.  You will stand outside knocking and pleading, ‘Sir, open the door for us.’ “But he will answer, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from.’

Most of the Jews in Jesus’ day were unwilling to die through repentance and were unwilling to look to Christ as the door to salvation.  And yet, they were fully expecting to be let into heaven.  There you’ll stand knocking, Jesus tells them.  “Oops, Lord, you made a mistake.  Yeah, you closed the door on us, but we’re Jews, Abraham’s children?  We are the few, the proud, the saved, remember?  Your chosen people?  Not like those sinful Gentiles over there! Just go ahead and, um, open the door.”  And Christ, the doorkeeper will tell them, “I don’t know you, I don’t recognize you at all.”  “What do you mean you don’t know us?  You lived among us. You taught among us.  We ate and drank with you.  Sure, you know us!”   “No, no I don’t.  Now get outta here, you evildoers!”

When God says, I don’t know you or where you came from, he doesn’t say it out of ignorance.  He says it out of choice.  He says it to those who refused to know him through the Person of Christ, who tried to know him in some other way, as some other God than the one who revealed himself in Holy Scripture and who gave his One and Only Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.  He says it to those who sat back and relaxed, figuring they were home free since they were lifelong Jews or lifelong Christians. But faith in Christ and church membership aren’t the same thing.  Being familiar with Christianity is not the same thing as a heart that relies on Christ for everything.

For those who fail to head for the narrow door in time, “There will be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrown out.”  Imagine the sadness and the rage of those who thought they were God’s best friends simply because of their heritage or their church membership, but who find out on the day of their death that, yes, it was all true – all the stories about Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, all the words of the prophets – but I didn’t pay attention to what they said.  I knew who they were, but I didn’t repent and trust in the Christ they all pointed to, and now it’s too late.

People will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God.  This one must have really hurt Jesus’ Jewish audience that day.  Here, they thought they were the few – the saved – because they were Abraham’s children.  Instead, they’ll have to stand on the outside looking in as Gentiles – people from every nation, tribe, language and people – take their seats at the never-ending heavenly feast.  Because salvation has never been about nationality.  It has always and only been about faith in Christ, whose gospel would be largely rejected by the Jews, but would go out to the four corners of the earth and convince people from all over the world to head for the narrow door that is Christ, as you heard Isaiah prophesy today as well.

So see!  While Jesus doesn’t reveal percentages of people who will be saved, or talk about how many or how few they will be, he does assure us that there will be plenty of people in heaven, people from everywhere.  People whom we looked at and said, “Naw, they couldn’t possibly be saved” – some of them will be first, Jesus says.  And some people whom we looked at and said, “Yes, there is an obvious saint who will be in heaven” – some of them will be last, Jesus says – in other words, they won’t be there at all.

So identifying who is saved or who is not saved, or figuring out how many or how few will be in heaven – that’s not your business.  Your business is to head for the door, now, before it’s too late.  Your business is to arrange your life around the door, to continue in the Word of Christ and stay close to the Sacraments of Christ, to be constant in prayer that God keep you on the straight and narrow way and defend you from every enemy that would steer you off course.  No one coasts into the Kingdom of heaven on autopilot.  No one stumbles upon that narrow door by accident.  No one gets taken along for the ride into faith.  Only those who take their sins seriously will take their salvation seriously.  Rest in Christ’s salvation, but don’t sit back and relax.  Make your life about heading for the door that is Christ, and know for certain that, not a few, but all will be saved who look to Christ alone for salvation.  Amen.

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Unleash the fire of God’s Word

Posted on August 22, 2010 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

Sermon for Pentecost 13

Jeremiah 23:23-29  +  Luke 12:49-53  +  Hebrews 12:1-13

“Peace! Love!  Tranquility!, declares the LORD.  God loves you just the way you are.  Don’t worry about punishment or judgment.  The LORD would never punish his people.  There will be no judgment day, no day of destruction.  Just peace and prosperity.  Don’t worry about those dusty old commandments Moses wrote so long ago.  They aren’t relevant in today’s society.  Don’t worry!  Be happy!  That’s God’s message to you.  I’m sure of it.  How do I know?  I had a dream!”

OK, just to be sure.  You all understand, right?, that what I just said to you was a lie.  Not my lie, but the lie of the false prophets back in the days of Jeremiah, some 600 years before Christ.  One after another of these false prophets proclaimed to the people of Jerusalem, “Peace! Love! Tranquility! God will not punish this city!  You’re not such bad sinners after all, not as bad as the rest of the nations on earth!”  The false prophets told people about the God they wanted to believe in.  They still used the name Yahweh, the LORD, “He Who Is,” the name God had revealed for himself to Moses.  They still talked about the Scriptures that Moses wrote.  But the parts they didn’t like – they threw out.  I mean, Moses had written those things some 900 years before the days of Jeremiah.  They threw out the parts they didn’t like and made up messages from God, messages that supposedly came to them in their dreams, in the shrine of their hearts. Their message was peace! Love! Tranquility!  And they had the people of Jerusalem eating out of the palm of their hands.

Then along comes this Jeremiah, hugely unpopular in Jerusalem, because he kept telling them about a God they didn’t want to hear about, a God they didn’t like very much, a God who wasn’t satisfied with their good works, who demanded holiness and threatened punishment on those who disobeyed him, who had specifically threatened to send his people away into exile in a foreign land as punishment for their rebellion against him.  Jeremiah spoke of Yahweh, too – not the Yahweh of his dreams but the Yahweh who had revealed himself in his Word.

The false prophets had deluded themselves into thinking that the God revealed in Scripture was stuck in the past, trapped on the pages that told his story.  They thought they could say whatever they wanted about God, teach whatever came to their minds, because the God of their dreams was much more real to them than the God of a book.  How could the God of a book even know what they were saying?

But Jeremiah had a real message for these dreamers from the God of the book.  “Am I only a God nearby,” declares the Lord, “and not a God far away? Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him?” declares the Lord. “Do not I fill heaven and earth?” declares the Lord. 

Somehow, these false prophets had gotten the idea that God only sees the earth like through the zoom function on a camera, that he could only see that close-up image on the screen in front of him.  They forgot that God can also look up from that zoomed-in image and see things from far away – see everything that’s going on, everywhere, all the time, as we heard today in Psalm 139, Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. 

God knows when people misrepresent him.  “I have heard what the prophets say who prophesy lies in my name. They say, ‘I had a dream! I had a dream!’ How long will this continue in the hearts of these lying prophets, who prophesy the delusions of their own minds? They think the dreams they tell one another will make my people forget my name, just as their fathers forgot my name through Baal worship.”

Isn’t it amazing how history repeats itself? Or rather, how sin replicates itself throughout the ages.  It’s the same thing going on today, people trying to redefine God, not based on what’s written on the pages of Scripture, but based on how they think he should be, how they dream him up to be.  And because people want to not feel so guilty about the sinful cravings of their hearts, because people want to have their sinful lifestyles tolerated and even justified, they make up a God of tolerance, who doesn’t threaten, who doesn’t punish, who isn’t so strict or harsh or demanding.  He’s a God of love – love as you define it, love as you think love should be.  If something written in the Bible clashes with your opinion of right and wrong or with your idea of God, then just write it off as old and irrelevant.  And if you have a dream about God or receive a special, personalized message from him, all the better!  Now you have even more reason not to listen to what’s written in the Book.  Who needs Scripture when you have the Spirit of God whispering in your ear?

People want to hear that God is a God of peace.  No one wants to hear what Jesus said in today’s Gospel, “Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division.”  That’s not the God we want to believe in, by nature.  The God we want to believe in will let us choose right from wrong and will not punish.  The God we want to believe in will appear to us in our own personal dreams, not in the pages of a book, or in water or in bread or wine.

The god of man’s dreams is a false god, and those who worship him will die an eternal death, because peace is not God’s prescription for this world, but division and punishment and a day of judgment that no one will escape.  No sin will go unpunished.  No one who tells lies about God will escape condemnation, and no one who believes the lies about God will be saved.

What’s the answer? What’s the solution?  Let the prophet who has a dream tell his dream, but let the one who has my word speak it faithfully. For what has straw to do with grain?” declares the Lord. “Is not my word like fire,” declares the Lord, “and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?”   

For as much as people don’t want to hear about sin, when God’s Word comes in and says, “You have sinned and you will surely die for it!,” that Word is like a fire.  It burns down through joints and marrow, right down into your soul.  And like a hammer, it shatters your delusions of being good enough for a holy God.  It shatters your pride and leaves you with nothing – cold, naked and alone.  Such is God’s Word. Such is God’s law.

It’s the first word you need to hear. It’s a word you can’t skip over. But when God’s Word is preached rightly and people hear the Word of the law, hear about the judgment that is coming, then the hammer of God’s Word brings about repentance. And with repentance, comes another word – the Word of the Gospel.

The Word of Gospel is also God’s Word – that in Christ Jesus there is forgiveness of sins and safety from judgment and righteousness for the unrighteous.  The law burns like a fire to destroy, but the gospel burns like a fire to cauterize the wounds and to give heat and light and healing.  In Christ, there is peace and love and tranquility.  On the cross of Christ there was punishment for your sins.  In the waters of baptism you were clothed with Christ and, as far as God is concerned, in those waters you died the death that God’s law demanded you die.  In Christ, there is the promise – the word of God – that God is your loving Father in heaven who has no more punishment to dish out on those who believe in his Son as their Savior from sin.  “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved!”, declares the Lord God.

To be true to God’s Word you can’t skip ahead to the saving part.  You have to stop first at the condemnation part. You can’t skip ahead to the forgiveness of sins without confronting the reality of your sin.  You can’t skip ahead to a Father’s love until you know first the God who is a consuming fire and how dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God.  You can’t skip that hard teaching, because if you do, you skip over Christ.  Right there between God’s holy wrath and God’s fatherly love is Christ – right there between law and gospel is Christ. Right there between heaven and earth, between condemnation and salvation – is Christ.  Christ is God’s Word to the world.

The Word of God is what it is.  You can’t chop it up in little pieces and keep the ones you want and throw away the ones you don’t, as little as you can chop God up into pieces.  He is who he is – Yahweh – the LORD.

There are foolish, foolish people in the world who believe that that they have to tinker with God’s Word in order to make it palatable to people, in order to make it effective, in order to attract people to God.  There are foolish people out there who believe that God’s Word needs to be marketed like a product, and that God’s Church is like a store that needs branding and advertising and promotion.  You have to make the message sound relevant, you have to make the Word sound appealing.  You have to address the needs people feel they have, and give them what they want to hear in the way they want to hear it.  Only then will the fire of God’s Word be unleashed.

Nonsense. That’s utter nonsense.  It’s worse than that – it’s human beings dreaming up lies about God.  The Word of God that you hear, the Truth about God that is recorded on the pages of the Bible – that’s the fire.  That’s the hammer. And it’s a fire that spreads all by itself. It’s a hammer that wields itself and always does what God wants it to do.

Hear God’s Word to you today, and believe it.  Children in the Sunday School that started up again today, learn God’s Word that your teachers teach to you.  Memorize the portions of God’s Word that are assigned to you.  All of you – grow in God’s Word, that it may be an ever-present fire in your heart and a hammer that both shatters your pride and builds up your faith in Christ.  “Let the one who has my Word speak it faithfully,” God says. “Let him who has my Word tell of my name correctly and not waver and not be ashamed of my name.  Let him who has my Word preach it and teach it and glory in it, no matter who likes it or dislikes it. My name is holy.  My name is fear.  My name is compassion.  My name is faithfulness.  My Word is holiness and punishment.  My Word is repentance.  My Word is a sacrifice made on the cross to atone for guilt.  My Word is resurrection from the dead.  My Word is forgiveness.  My Word is Christ.”

People of God, by the grace of God, you bear God’s name.  You have God’s Word.  You have Christ.  Don’t be afraid to speak about him.  Unleash the fire of God’s Word!  Amen.

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A glimpse of faith from the father of faith

Posted on August 16, 2010 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

Sermon for Pentecost 12

Genesis 15:1-6  +  Luke 12:32-40  +  Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16

Faith and the Church go together, don’t they?  Without faith, there is no Lutheran Church with its three “sola’s,” as we call them: By grace alone, by faith alone, by Scripture alone.  It’s not just Lutherans who talk about faith, though. I can’t think of a church where faith doesn’t matter – even non-Christian churches talk about faith.  Even people who don’t have any desire to set foot in a church talk about faith.  Faith in God, faith in humanity, faith in mother nature, faith in miracles, faith in faith.

It gets confusing after awhile, and with all the different definitions of faith out there, we risk losing the real definition of faith, the real meaning of faith as God describes it in his Word.

The word “faith” or a form of the word “believe” occurs in the Bible some 500 times.  Guess where the very first occurrence of the word “faith” is found… Genesis 15:6, part of our text today, “Abraham believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.”  Rather than talk about faith theoretically today, we’re going to let God show us a picture of faith in the life of one of the most famous believers of all times, the life of Abraham.  Here, in the story of Abraham, God gives us a glimpse of faith from the father of faith.

Now, faith was around long before Abraham.  According to the Biblical chronology – which we believe in – Abraham lived about 2000 years before Christ, and about 2000 years after the Creation of the world, right in the middle of Old Testament history, more or less.  Abram (whose name God later changed to Abraham) was not the first man on earth to have faith. 

But Abraham is known as the “father of faith” for good reason.  Here was a man who lived on faith.  When he still lived way over in the city of Ur, modern-day Iraq, God told him, “Get up and leave this place and go to the land of Canaan (modern-day Israel), which I will give to you and to your offspring as an inheritance. And I will bless you and make your name great.”  And Abraham went.  He went, not so much in obedience to a command, but because, as the Bible says, he believed that God was telling the truth – that God really would bless Abraham and give to him and his offspring that land, and much, much more.

When Abraham got there, to the land of Canaan, he was already about 75 years old.  He had a wife – Sarai, but no children.  And, true to his promise, God blessed Abraham immensely there in the land of Canaan, until Abraham was one of the wealthiest men around – with huge herds of cattle, hundreds of servants and lots of silver and gold.  Ten years passed, and in addition to wealth, God gave Abraham power and fame and an amazing military victory that won him the respect of many kings. Through all of it, and yet not without his stumbles, Abraham lived by faith in the promises God had made to him.

Right after that big military victory is when our text occurs. Now, think about this.  After all that – all those promises from God, all those blessings, and now this huge victory in battle, with all the fame and power and prestige that went along with it, after all those powerful demonstrations of faith on the part of Abraham, wouldn’t you think this father of faith would be riding on top of the world?

But he wasn’t.  Instead, he was troubled – greatly troubled, and afraid, and confused.  Some of that we get out of Abraham’s words in our text. Some of it we get from the words God spoke to him when the Word of the LORD came to Abraham in a vision, “Do not be afraid, Abraham.  I am your shield, your very great reward.”  We don’t know exactly why the “father of faith” was so troubled and afraid, especially after so many things had gone right for him, but, as Luther points out, that’s often how God deals with his saints, especially the great ones.  He sends affliction – he sends the cross.  His grace doesn’t go away, but he hides himself so that they are not aware of his grace.  He does it, to keep them from falling away from faith.

We don’t usually think about “faith” that way, do we? We think of people who have great faith as people who don’t have to struggle so much with sin or with fear or with doubt. But, as we learn from the father of faith, it’s just the opposite.  So wicked is our sinful nature, so corrupt, so weak that even believers, like Abraham, are in jeopardy of falling back out of faith, back into the damning sins of arrogance, and reliance on their own strength, and presuming that they are so righteous and so wise.  Those are the temptations that attack even the strongest believers, because, let’s say you’ve gotten past falling into obvious and gross sins like drunken bar-room brawls and adultery and grand theft auto, then Satan knows how easy it will be to tempt to you look at yourself as pretty righteous, thank you very much.  He knows how easy it will be to make you think you’ve made it now, as a Christian.  You could never possibly fall away.  You don’t even have to come to church, if you don’t want to, you are such a good believer.  You have the wisdom of the ages.  You know what this church needs.  You’re sitting pretty.  If only the rest could be like you.

God knows that even his saints – even believers in him – are susceptible to those kinds of temptations, and so he sends affliction, and one reminder after another, “You are a sinner.  You are mortal, and you’re mortal because you’re a sinner.  You are not the master of your destiny.  You are not God.” 

But we were talking about faith, weren’t we?  This is all part of faith.  Faith is not the touchy-feely, lovey-dovey sensation that everything will be all right.  To live as a believer is not to be happy all the time.  To live as a believer is to live like Abraham, trusting God’s promises, but in constant conflict with your own sinful flesh. And so you can expect that God will deal with you to some degree as he did with Abraham and afflicted him for awhile with this sadness and fear, because he was a sinner and so are you.  And if the father of faith needed these afflictions from God to keep him from becoming self-reliant, surely you don’t think your faith is somehow so strong that you don’t need them?

But see what God does when faith is put to the test, when Abraham is afflicted and afraid and confused.  When Abraham is flying high, God drives him to his knees. But once Abraham has been driven to his knees, then God goes to him and lifts him up again.  But he doesn’t go to Abraham and put a father’s arm around him.  What does he do?  He sends him his Word.

After this, the word of the Lord came to Abraham in a vision. “Do not be afraid, Abraham. I am your shield, your very great reward.”  Sounds like Jesus to his disciples in the Gospel, “Have no fear, little flock. For your Father has chosen to give you his kingdom.”  When God himself tells you not to be afraid, that you have no need to fear, and that he has in store for you a great reward, even a heavenly kingdom, then what need is there to fear?

And yet Abraham wasn’t comforted yet.  The father of faith didn’t just immediately snap out of his sadness when he heard God’s comforting Word.  But Abraham said, “O Sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?”  And Abraham said, “You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir.”  It’s not that Abraham’s faith had disappeared suddenly, but it was confused, and it was searching, it was fishing for a promise, or rather, for a repeat of God’s earlier promise, because it didn’t seem like God was planning on keeping it.  This whole matter of Abraham’s offspring inheriting the land, and not just that, but that “in your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed” – the promise of Christ!

But there was no offspring.  Abraham was about 85 years old now, and still no child, no heir, and more importantly, no offspring of the woman to crush the serpent’s head.  See, Abraham already had it all, didn’t he?  Beautiful, loving wife, tons of money and power and prestige. But you can’t take it with you, can you? Abraham knew that.  Big deal if he gets to live it up in this land of Canaan.  Then he dies, like his father died, and like his father’s father died, and so on and so forth for two thousand years, ever since Adam and Eve took that fateful bite.  No inheritance lasts forever, unless the Christ comes and defeats sin and death and gives mankind an inheritance where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. But Abraham was beginning to wonder if maybe God had changed his mind, if maybe the offspring – and therefore, the Christ – would never come.

Then the word of the Lord came to him: “This man will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir.”  He took him outside and said, “Look up at the heavens and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”  And in no uncertain terms, God made his promise to Abraham crystal clear: I haven’t changed my mind.  The offspring will come, and will come from your own body, and you will have as many descendants as there are stars in the heavens.  So shall it be, declares the Lord God Almighty.

And as far as Abraham was concerned, that was enough.  Abraham believed the Lord.  He didn’t have to see it to believe it.  The Lord said, “So shall it be,” and faith is the simple conclusion, “Right!  So shall it be.”  To believe, as the Bible talks about believing, to have faith, as the Bible talks about having faith, is simply to know that God has promised something, and to rely on God not to lie to you, to know in your heart that it will undoubtedly be as God said it would be.

This verse is one of the most important verses in the whole Bible. Abraham believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness. I say this is one of the most important verses in the whole Bible, because the Apostle Paul dedicates several chapters in the Book of Romans to this verse as proof positive that God considers a person righteous, not for any righteous deed he has done or has to do, but only on account of faith in God’s promise.  What promise?  His promise that, solely on account of Christ Jesus – The Offspring of Abraham – God declares you to be righteous.  God declares you to be forgiven and loved.  God declares the waters of baptism to be your legal adoption into his family, and therefore, God declares you to be his child and an heir of his heavenly kingdom. 

You who believe in Christ Jesus as your righteousness and innocence before God, you who know God to be favorable to you on account of Christ alone – you are, in part, God’s fulfillment of his promise to Abraham.  You believers make up the stars in the heavens that Abraham couldn’t possibly count. You are his offspring.  You are his heirs, because you are in Christ, by faith – the same faith that Abraham had.  That’s not just a metaphor, either.  Even if you don’t have a drop of Hebrew blood running through your veins, your baptism has brought you into the Hebrew body of the Hebrew named Christ Jesus.  Holy Communion brings you into a holy communion with the Hebrew body that was given and the Hebrew blood that was shed on the cross.  Since Christ is Abraham’s heir, and you are in Christ, you, too, have become Abraham’s heirs, heirs who will inherit eternal life in the eternal kingdom of the Son of Abraham.

That’s God’s promise to you.  Now, if you want to make God out to be a dirty, rotten liar, then, fine! Don’t believe it!  Your condemnation is deserved.  But within that promise is the power to convince.  Within that promise, is the Holy Spirit of God, calling you to believe, calling you to faith, calling you to admit that God has an awfully good track record at not lying, so you would be a fool to conclude that he’s lying now.

Do you believe that? Then see how your perspective on life changes!  You begin to see life on earth not as your goal, but as a pit stop along your way to your heavenly home.  You’ll live like Abraham did, not as permanent residents of the land where you pitch your tent, but as sojourners on this earth whose treasure is in heaven, pilgrims who know that you’re not here on earth to stay. Live like Abraham, who made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country…For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.

The father of faith has taught us today what it means to have faith.  It doesn’t mean a believer will never struggle or be afraid or confused or sad.  On the contrary, it means that a believer will struggle immensely. But faith runs to the promises of God, which all revolve around Christ Jesus, the offspring of Abraham:  Forgiveness of sins, a Father’s love, righteousness, innocence, blessedness, eternal life and an eternal inheritance.  “So shall it be,” God says. And faith lays hold of the promise and breathes a sigh of relief, “So shall it be.”  So shall it be.  Amen.

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Today is your wedding day — still

Posted on August 9, 2010 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

Sermon for Pentecost 11

Colossians 3:1-11 + Luke 12:13-21 + Ecclesiastes 1:2; 2:18-26

Although the school year is quickly approaching, it’s still summer time, which means, it’s still the time for weddings.  It’s been over a year since we’ve celebrated a wedding here. Yesterday Amy and I celebrated our 12th anniversary.  I can still see her walking down the aisle in her beautiful white dress that now sits neatly folded and boxed up in our master closet.

But you’re not here today to hear about my wedding.  You’re here to hear about yours. You’re not here to hear about Amy’s wedding dress.  You’re here to hear about your wedding dress, and especially about your Bridegroom, Jesus Christ.

Maybe you think I’m referring to that great day when Christ will return and bring the Church, his Bride, to that heavenly wedding banquet, as Scripture describes it.  But, no, I’m not talking about a day in the future. I’m talking about right here, right now, today.  Consider Paul’s words to the Colossians with me this morning.  His message can be summarized this way:  Remember that Today Is Your Wedding Day – Still.

Those of you who have an NIV translation of the Bible will notice, if you look up Colossians 3, that the title added to that section by the NIV editors says, “Rules for Holy Living.”  I’m not one for defacing God’s Word, but that title isn’t part of God’s Word, so it would be fine if you took your Bible and crossed it out.  The Christian life isn’t about following the rules. Does that surprise you? I’ll say it again. The Christian life is not about following the rules. In fact, that title contradicts what Paul had just said in the verses right before our text at the end of chapter 2, where he makes the point that “following the rules” is the earthly way of looking at life. It doesn’t work to make you right with God, because you’ve already failed so miserably at following the rules.

You think life is about following the rules?  Listen to what Paul says in our text, “Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.  Because of these, the wrath of God is coming.”  Then he adds, “You must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips.”  That would be great, wouldn’t it?  If only you just follow the rules.

But notice how many of the rules aren’t things you can so easily control – all of them, in fact.  The wrath of God is coming because of – what? Not just things like murder or adultery, but because of greed, which is idolatry, because if you’re constantly thinking about your possessions or getting more things (like the rich man in today’s Gospel), then you’re not submitting to the will of God who’s given you what you have to use for his purposes. Instead you’re pursuing your own will, your own desires, your own purposes.  Are you following the rules yet?  The wrath of God is coming because of lust and evil desires. The wrath of God is coming because of sex outside of marriage, and because of anger and wishing evil on someone else and dirty jokes and potty mouths.  Are you following the rules?  Is your heart crystal clear?

No. God’s wrath is coming against all who live like that, breaking his rules in thought and word and deed.  Which is why there was only one solution: to avoid being condemned to death on Judgment Day, you had to die before Judgment Day.  You died with Christ.

Christ Jesus followed the rules in thought and word and deed – and was crucified for it.  Now, God says, “Repent of your wickedness and trust in Christ, who died in your place.” Life with God is not about following the rules, but about faith in Christ – faith that comes alive in the waters of holy baptism and ties us to Christ with a sturdy bond – his death your death, his life your life.

So closely are believers united to Christ in baptism that the Scriptures refer to this bond as the bond of “Holy Matrimony.”  They picture Jesus as the Bridegroom and his believers – his Church – as the most holy Bride, raised to new life by faith in Christ, given a holy status before God by faith in Christ, cleansed by the washing with water through the Word.

But here’s the thing:  The Bible does not just picture your Baptism as a wedding day with Christ that has come and gone.  Today is your wedding day – still.  Baptism brings you into a wedding day that, as God sees it, begins with your baptism and ends only when Christ comes back to claim his Bride and take her home with him, to reign with him and to live with him forever in glory. That’s what he means when he says, Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.  Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.  For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.  When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

The Christian life is not about following the rules.  It’s about a whole new perspective on life and death and earth and heaven.  If you see this earth as your home and this life as your time to live it up, then you’ll go ahead and spend your days making a good life for yourself, storing up wealth as best as you can, spending your thoughts and your energy and your money in order to make yourself happy here on earth.

But if today is your wedding day – if what you’re seeking in your heart doesn’t live on this earth, but sits at the right hand of God, if your mind is not busy contemplating earthly happiness but eternity with Christ who loved you with an undying love, then you will live differently – not in order to follow the rules, but because today is your wedding day! And your Groom is about to walk through the church doors at any moment and sweep you off your feet and whisk you away to the heavenly feast.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned it to you before, those reality shows about brides-to-be going shopping for a wedding dress.  They’ll spend up to $10,000 on a dress that they’ll wear for one day out their lives. Honestly, I think that makes them like the Rich Fool in our Gospel.  No day on earth is worth being dressed like that, not even your wedding day.  It’s vanity personified.  Even so, when the bride-to-be buys a dress for $10,000 and the wedding day comes and she puts it on, I can guarantee you, she will be extra careful that day.  She will not go for a roll in the mud. She will not allow any dirt or stain to get near that dress.  She will not pin some gaudy costume jewelry to it or sew any cheap patches onto it or iron on any disgusting message.  And if any lint sticks to it, any smudge gets on it she will not rest until it’s removed and immaculate again.  It’s her wedding day, after all, and this dress has to be perfect.

What if the wedding day is between Christ and his Bride?  What if her dress cost, not $10,000, but every drop of blood of her Bridegroom?  Won’t she – won’t you be careful how you live?  Those sins Paul mentioned, sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips – those things don’t belong on a wedding dress like this.  Those things are not fitting for the Bride of Christ.  You’ve taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.  Today is your wedding day, and Christ Jesus himself has bought you the beautiful dress you wear, the new self that is beginning to look more and more like God.  Today is not the day to indulge your sinful nature any longer.  Today is not the day to live your life carelessly or to stain your new self with foul language or bitter speech.  If you look into your heart today and you find greed there, or lust, or anger – get rid of it!  Get rid of all the nastiness and bitterness and self-centeredness in your life, not for the sake of “following the rules,” but because Christ is all, and is in all who believe in him. 

Today is your wedding day – still.  And your wedding dress doesn’t ever get placed in a box and stored on a shelf.  It’s easy to set your hearts on things above while you’re sitting here, listening to God’s Word. It’s easy to remember to be careful not to get sin all over your wedding dress while you’re sitting here in church.  Will you remember that today is your wedding day – still – when you leave this place and go out into your cars, into your homes, into your neighborhoods and workplaces?  Remember to keep your wedding dress clean there, too.  Remember that, even there, you are the Bride of Christ, his representatives in the world, wearing – at all times – this priceless wedding dress of a new, holy self, raised to new life with Christ Jesus.  Remember, every morning when you get up, that today is your wedding day.  Remember your baptism and the old self that is drowned in daily contrition and repentance. Remember the new self that arises to live for God.  By the end of the week, you’ll need another reminder, no doubt.  You’ll need to hear again – here – the voice of your Bridegroom, and you’ll need to receive again the forgiveness of sins in his body and blood, the foretaste of the heavenly wedding banquet, where all that remains of your earthly nature will be gotten rid of forever.  Amen.

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So many reasons to make requests of God

Posted on August 1, 2010 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

Sermon for Pentecost 10

Luke 11:1-13  +  Genesis 18:20-32  +  James 5:13-18

You may have noticed that we have a very small hymn selection today.  We’ve been singing many stanzas of just one hymn – Luther’s hymn that paraphrases the Lord’s Prayer.  We pray every Sunday, but today’s Gospel makes prayer our theme.  At least once in the course of the liturgy, you hear me say to you, “Let us pray.”  What does that mean?  What is “prayer”?  How do you think about “praying”?  I think a lot of people have the idea that prayer is some mystical mode that you enter, some state of communing with God. So “Let us pray” would mean, “Let us turn on prayer mode,” or, “Let us commune with God now.”  Is that how you think of prayer?  That wouldn’t fit the Scriptural definition.

Or maybe you’ve heard a simple definition of prayer as, “talking to God.”  So, “Let us pray,” would mean, “Let us talk to God now,” or “Let us tell God what is on our minds.”  Is that how you think of prayer?

That’s not really accurate, either.  “Prayer” is “talking to God,” but it’s not like the chit chat you have around your supper table, and it has little to do with “telling him what’s on your mind.”  We tell God lots of things, I suppose. When you “tell God” how great he is for some promise he has kept or some act of salvation he has done, that’s really called, “praise.”  When you “tell God” thank-you for those things, that’s called, “giving thanks.”  When you “tell God” about your sins, that’s called “confession.”  Sometimes we may use the word “prayer” for those things, but prayer, properly speaking, is not telling God anything.  “To pray” is to ask God for something.  “Prayer,” – the kind of prayer Jesus himself teaches us to pray in the Lord’s Prayer – is nothing more and nothing less than a request made to God.  So “Let us pray” means, “Let us make a request of God.”  The Prayer of the Day, toward the beginning of the service, is the main request we make of God today, the one special thing we seek from him, based on the reading from the Gospel.  The Prayer of the Church is the set of requests that the Church makes for the world and for herself.

In today’s Gospel, which includes that most famous of all prayers, the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus lays before us, not just the what of prayer, but especially the why of prayer. There are so many reasons to make requests of God.

First and foremost, because God has commanded that you make requests of him.  Ask! Seek!  Knock!, Jesus says.  It’s part of the Second Commandment – “You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God.”  In other words, “You shall use correctly the name of the LORD your God.”  You shall call upon his name for help.  You shall pray to him. You shall make requests of him. Prayer has God’s command.

So, that means, prayer is not optional.  It’s not just something a Christian can do, but something a Christian must do.  Continually.  Not, “If you happen to have a moment this morning, or this afternoon, or this evening, or if you remember, sometime this week, if you feel like it, go ahead and pray.”  As surely as God commands you not to murder your neighbor, he commands you to use his name correctly, to make requests of him, to call upon his name, to present your needs before him and look to him as the one who will fill them all, out of his great mercy and love, according to his good and gracious will.

God has given his name to you to use at all times and in all places, to make requests for needs both big and small, for yourself, and especially for others, for physical needs, and especially for the honor of God’s name and the coming of God’s kingdom.  But how often don’t you go through a day without asking God for a single thing, or maybe only for a single thing?  Could anyone describe you as earnest in prayer?  To be sure, some are more faithful at prayer than others.  But to one degree or another, you trust in yourself to provide for yourself, and you take for granted God’s help, or you consider yourself too unworthy to pray.  You fail to call upon God’s name as he commanded, and therefore you also fail to give him the honor he deserves.  There goes the First Commandment, too.

You – and I – sin against God’s commandment when we fail to make requests of him continually, and that means you don’t just lose out on the benefits of prayer.  You earn for yourself God’s anger.  He will punish all who break his commandments, including the command to pray.

Oh, look!  At the beginning of our Gospel – the man who spent his life either speaking the name of God to others, or calling on the name of God in prayer.  “One day Jesus was praying in a certain place.”  Luke especially emphasizes how often Jesus prayed to his dear Father.  There is the man who did what men are supposed to do, without fail.  There is the man who obeyed the command to pray – joyfully and gladly, continually and earnestly.  He is the Christ, which means, he is mankind’s Substitute – both in the obedient life he led and in the innocent death he died on the cross to pay for the sins of men. Men will be judged, either by their own faithfulness in prayer, or by Christ’s faithfulness in prayer.  Wouldn’t you rather be judged by Christ’s faithfulness than by your own?  Then trust in him for that.  God says to you, “Repent of your lazy indifference toward God’s name. Repent of your arrogant refusal to ask, to seek, to knock on heaven’s door. And believe in my Son, Jesus Christ as your Substitute and Savior.”  And by faith in Christ, you are safe. Your sins are forgiven and his righteousness counts as your own. And you have a loving Father in heaven who welcomes you into his throne room and says, eagerly, “What can I do for you today, my child?”  Isn’t that a reason to make requests of God? Because Christ Jesus, our Savior, has given us the right to call God “Our Father”?

There’s another reason to pray – to make requests of God.  Even those who rarely take the time to pray to God usually find themselves down on their knees – when? When a really big need comes along.  When there’s a funny-looking spot on an X-Ray.  When a child is in danger.  When you look and your car is running on empty in the middle of nowhere. Another reason to pray – to make requests of God – is how desperately you need the things you are to request.  In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus teaches us what our most desperate needs are by teaching us to ask our Father in heaven precisely for those things. 

There’s a lot of teaching about our needs in the seven petitions – the seven requests – of the Lord’s Prayer. There’s no way we can give each petition its due in a sermon.  So, I would like to invite you all to come to Bible class next Sunday, when we will begin an eight-week study of the Lord’s Prayer.

For now, recognize how each of those seven requests addresses our greatest needs, most of which we don’t even realize we have.  Why pray that God’s name be hallowed – be kept holy? Not only so that God may be honored among us, but because, without his name – rightly taught, we have nothing.  God’s name is his revelation to us. If his revelation is tainted or corrupted, then we don’t know him and can’t be saved. The devil – our real enemy – works night and day to spread false teachings and false beliefs among us. He works also to tempt Christians to fall into grievous sins that tarnish God’s reputation in the world.  We need God’s help to keep his name holy among us.

We need his help for his kingdom to come among us, too – for Christ to extend his rule into our hearts and lives. The devil wants to set up shop there. The world wants to rip us out of Christ’s kingdom, and our sinful nature does not want Christ for a king. We need to ask for God’s help.

We need for God’s will to be done, because the devil, the world, and our sinful nature will what is contrary to God’s will, all the time.  And for as much as we fool ourselves into thinking that this ole world keeps on turning all by itself and that we’re in control of providing for our physical needs, the truth is, we depend on God alone for our daily bread – for all the things we need for this body and life.

And because the devil, the world and our sinful nature are always with us, and sin is our constant companion, we always need God’s forgiveness. Because those enemies work night and day to lead us into temptation, we need God’s divine help to bear up under temptation so that, even though we are tempted, we don’t give in. And we need him to deliver us from the Evil One who wants nothing more than to torment us Christians with every kind of evil, and see our faith extinguished and our life snuffed out.  Because of these many great and desperate needs, we make requests of God to help us in each one.

After teaching his disciples the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus teaches them one more reason to make requests of God: because of God’s promise to hear and fulfill your requests.  Prayer has not only God’s command, but also God’s promise.  Ask – and it will be given to you.  Seek – and you will find. Knock – and the door will be opened to you.  Our Father does grant our requests.  He has given us his Word, and with his Word, also his own Holy Spirit – to help us keep God’s name holy and lead holy lives. He speaks to us through the Gospel and brings his kingdom to us and others.  He supplies daily bread and so much more. He hands out forgiveness for our trespasses in Word and Sacrament.  And by his almighty power, he protects and defends us from temptation and from all evil.

We have good reason to pray, because through the work of Jesus Christ, we have a gracious Father in heaven who knows how desperate our situation is in this world, who teaches us what requests to make, and then promises to hear them and fulfill them, better than any earthly father could ever do.  Equipped with both God’s command to pray and God’s promise to hear and fulfill our prayers, we have no reason not to make requests of God.  We have every reason to pray. Amen.

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