Emmanuel Lutheran Church

Sermon for Trinity 8

Romans 8:12-17  +  Matthew 7:15-23

You know Jesus as the Good Shepherd who laid down His life for the sheep. He once spoke of the hirelings who see the wolf coming and abandon the sheep, because they don’t care about the sheep. But He didn’t abandon His sheep. He saw the wolf coming and allowed Himself to be killed so that His sheep might be safe, so that people might hear the good news of the payment He made for our sins on the cross, that we might repent of our sins, and believe in Him, and have eternal life in His heavenly pastures.

But we won’t have that eternal life if we don’t make it all the way to the end of our lives still knowing Him, still trusting in Him, still living in the safety of His holy Christian Church. And, the fact is, we have enemies who would drag us out of His Church. And the worst part is, these enemies appear to be members of the Church.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus, the Shepherd, speaks of the wolf again—the wolves that threaten to devour His sheep so that we don’t make it safely to the end. So our Shepherd steps forward to warn us. Unfortunately, it’s a warning that very few Christians take seriously. Because these wolves don’t look so scary. These wolves don’t have fangs or claws. They don’t look like wolves at all. They look like innocent, sensible, inspiring people—people who make a lot of sense, people who say things about God that sound good, that sound right. The hardest part, as I said a moment ago, is that they look like Christians. But you, Christians, pay attention to what the Good Shepherd tells you in today’s Gospel. Because the Lord is determined to keep you safe from these wolves, too.

In this case, He keeps you safe from the wolves by giving you a much-needed warning, which you are to follow throughout your earthly life: Watch out for false prophets. What is a prophet? It’s literally anyone who claims to speak for God, or to teach you something about God. And a false prophet is someone whom God has not sent to speak for Him, or who teaches you things about God that are not true. Now, many prophets have gone out into the world—Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs (like the woman whom the RNC invited onto the stage this past week to teach people about her god). But these aren’t the wolves Jesus is warning His people about. He doesn’t need to. Christians know better (or should know better) than to listen to prophets who aren’t even Christian. No, the ones Jesus is warning about come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. In other words, these are the ones who pretend to come in the name of Jesus, seemingly innocent, harmless, often having prestigious titles or distinguished offices in the Church. These are the ones you really have to watch out for, because they present themselves as ministers of Christ.

So, Jesus says, watch out for false ones, for ministers who are actually wolves. And, as Jesus describes in the last verses of our Gospel, they may not even know that they’re wolves who are tearing people to pieces with their teaching. Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven; but the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, in your name did we not prophesy? And in your name did we not cast out demons? And in your name did we not perform many miracles?’ And then I will confess to them, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness!’” So being a false prophet isn’t necessarily an intentional thing. Many of them are perfectly sincere in what they preach, thinking they’re serving the Lord Jesus, thinking He’ll be welcoming them into heaven one day. But they’ll learn the hard way that what they preached, or what they practiced, was not what God the Father wanted them to preach or practice.

So how does one recognize a false prophet, if he looks and sounds so much like a true prophet? What are you supposed to look for? By their fruits you will know them, Jesus says. So whenever anyone, especially a minister, comes around claiming to speak for God, or trying to teach you about God, you have some work to do, if you would be faithful to the Lord Jesus. You have to examine their fruit.

First of all, if you’re looking for grapes, you don’t go looking among the thorn bushes. If you’re looking for figs, you don’t go looking in a patch of thistles. No, you go to vines that you know to be grape vines or to the tree that you know to be a fig tree. Likewise, if you’re looking for solid Christian preaching and teaching, for a prophet whom Jesus had sent to speak in His name, then you shouldn’t go looking outside the ministry of the Christian Church. You shouldn’t go looking to someone who got up one day and said, “I feel called by God to be a prophet (or a pastor or a minister).” You shouldn’t trust in someone who came along and said, “I found a Bible! Let me teach you what I’ve learned!” These are all the Glenn Becks of the world, the self-appointed radio prophets or TV evangelists or best-selling authors, or any woman who claims to be a pastor. They may also include any number of self-appointed ministers in those Christian churches that don’t even claim any relationship with the ministry established by Christ through His apostles. You don’t turn to such sources at all if you’re looking for the preaching and teaching of the Word of God. No, you go to the Christian Church and to the ministers who have been rightly called to the office of the preaching ministry.

But, obviously, you’re not done yet. Having approached the right kind of tree, an actual called and ordained minister of the Christian Church, now you have to examine the fruit from each one of those trees, to determine if it’s good or bad. And, just like with a piece of fruit, you can’t always tell just by looking at the outside. You have to cut it open and look at the whole thing on the inside. Now, obviously you don’t cut the minister open. But you have to investigate both what he teaches and what he practices. As the apostle John wrote in his first epistle, Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world. You examine the fruit, you test the spirits by examining their teaching in the light of the Holy Spirit’s inspired Scriptures. This is what the people in the little town of Berea did when the Apostle Paul first came to them with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Jews in the synagogue listened to Paul’s preaching, and it rang true with them. But they didn’t just accept it or reject it. They searched the Scriptures daily, to see if what Paul was saying was true.

So you compare the whole teaching of a minister with the words of Holy Scripture. But even then, you have to be careful, because the Scriptures can be abused. The devil himself was able to quote from the Bible in his futile attempt to lead Jesus astray. And many, many people pull passages of Scripture out of context still today. So you have to know the Scriptures well enough to pull together the whole message of God and use it to evaluate a preacher’s preaching, to see if it’s true or not.

How true does a preacher’s preaching have to be? Or to turn it around, how much false doctrine does he have to teach in order to be recognized as a false prophet? Well, that depends. How much poison is it safe to consume? How much gangrene can you tolerate on your body? How highly do you value God Himself? Because, contrary to what many false prophets will tell you, God cannot be separated from His Word and from the teaching of it. As He said through the prophet Isaiah, This is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and who trembles at my word. And as Jesus said, Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will never pass away. And you remember what He added to His command to baptize? Teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you. Nowhere does God tell His people, “Just focus on My main teachings, and don’t worry about the rest of My doctrine.” Nowhere does God tell His people, “Doctrine doesn’t matter.”

And so the apostle Paul warns the Christians in Rome, Watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them. Or, as Jesus simply put it, watch out for false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.

This is why, after avoiding all the non-ministers in the world and their teaching, and then, after carefully evaluating the fruit of the other Christian churches in the world, and then, after carefully evaluating the doctrine that is proclaimed from this pulpit and taught by this minister, most of you here today have determined to attend here and to become and remain members here, to receive the ministry of God’s Word in this place, in obedience to both of Christ’s commands: to watch out for and to avoid false prophets, and to consume the fruit that you’ve determined to be good. I say that with humility, because, to produce good fruit in the teaching of God’s Word is a daunting task, an impossible one, really, without the continual aid of the Holy Spirit. And to recognize the good fruit of a spiritual tree also requires the Spirit’s help. But, in the end, we have determined that the Mormon prophets are false prophets, along with the Calvinist (Reformed) prophets, along with the Baptist prophets, and the papal prophets, and the Pentecostal prophets, and the Methodist prophets, and many Lutheran prophets as well. Again, I say all this with humility, but also with conviction, with the conviction that the ancient Creeds of the Christian Church are true, and with the conviction that the Confessions of the Lutheran Church are also true, and trustworthy aids in evaluating a prophet’s preaching.

But even with that, our job isn’t done yet, neither your job nor mine. It’s never done this side of heaven. Because the Lord Jesus knew that there would always be false prophets, going forth in His name but never sent by Him. He told us that, leading up to His second coming, there would be very many false prophets who would deceive many, and that’s precisely why there are so many different kinds of churches out there, because there are many false prophets, and because there are few who take seriously Jesus’ command to watch out for them.

But the Lord is determined to keep you safe from all the wolves, including the wolves masquerading as sheep, and as prophets who speak for God. By issuing the warning in today’s Gospel and seeing to it that His Holy Spirit had it recorded in Holy Scripture for us, and again seeing to it that His words are preached in your midst, He is carrying out His task as the Good Shepherd, warning you, guarding you, guiding you. Now you, as sheep of the Good Shepherd, keep putting into practice His warning to watch out. Use the Scriptures at your disposal. Use the ministry at your disposal. And trust that, as you seek to obey the word of Jesus in today’s Gospel, the Good Shepherd will use that very word to keep you safe from the wolves. Amen.

Sermon for Trinity 6

Romans 6:3-11  +  Matthew 5:20-26

The Ten Commandments have been in the news again lately. We talked about it a little bit in Bible class. A lot of people seem to think it’s a great idea to post them in elementary school classrooms in the public schools of our country. The thing is, the Ten Commandments require further explanation. Even the Jews in Jesus’ day, who grew up learning the Ten Commandments, didn’t understand them rightly. That’s why Jesus stepped in in today’s Gospel from the Sermon on the Mount and explained the Law further. In order for the Ten Commandments to be used beneficially, they first have to be read correctly, and that requires knowing some other very important things—five things, actually, two of which Jesus addresses in today’s Gospel. The rest we glean from the Epistle and from the rest of the Scriptures.

To read the Ten Commandments beneficially, you have to know, first, the context in which they were originally given. The Ten Commandments were not just dropped down out of heaven. They weren’t delivered from on high to all men. They weren’t even given to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They were thundered down from Mt. Sinai by God Himself to the people of Israel who were gathered at the foot of the mountain. And how had they gotten there? 430 years earlier God had made a solemn vow to Abraham to rescue his descendants from slavery in a foreign land and to return them to the Promised Land of Canaan. That foreign land turned out to be Egypt. God revealed Himself to Moses and raised up Moses and Aaron to lead the people out of Egypt with great signs and wonders and ten plagues that forced the Egyptians to let the people of Israel go. The Lord God parted the waters of the Red Sea for His people to get to safety. He destroyed the Egyptian armies. He provided food and water for them in the desert on their way to Sinai. And now, 50 days or so after He rescued the Israelites from Egypt, God begins the Ten Commandments with these words: I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before Me. The First Commandment makes no sense at all apart from that context. The Second Commandment—You shall not misuse the name of the Lord—makes no sense unless you know His name, Yahweh, the LORD, He-who-is, the only true God, the God of steadfast love and faithfulness who deserves to be worshiped, not only for who He is, but for the steadfast love He had shown to Israel in bringing them out of the house of bondage.

Second, to read the Ten Commandments beneficially, you have to know which parts applied specifically to Israel under the Old Testament that God established with them there at Mt. Sinai, and which parts reflect the timeless will of God for us Christians and for all people. The Third Commandment, for example, Remember the Sabbath Day by keeping it holy, had very specific applications to Old Testament Israel. Under the New Testament, it’s no longer about resting for 24 hours, from Friday evening to Saturday evening. It’s about regularly setting aside time to hear God’s Word and to honor the preaching of it. The Fourth Commandment, Honor your father and mother, has the promise added to it, that your days may be long upon the land which the LORD your God is giving you, referring to the land of Canaan that God was giving to Israel, not to the United States of America.

Third, to read the Ten Commandments beneficially, you have to know what it actually means to keep the Ten Commandments. And this is one of the things Jesus spelled out so clearly in today’s Gospel. The Fifth Commandment simply reads, You shall not murder. Most people think that, as long as they don’t kill anyone, they’re keeping this commandment. But Jesus explains that it goes far beyond taking another person’s life. I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. So the Fifth Commandment commands not only the hands but also the heart. Hatred and anger toward your brother make you guilty of breaking the Fifth Commandment. And whoever says to his brother, ‘Raca!’ will be subject to the council; but whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be subject to hellfire. Saying “Raca” to someone was a slur that carried civil penalties. The Jewish council had apparently made a law against it. Even their manmade laws prohibited certain forms of speech. But Jesus reveals that just using the hurtful phrase, “You fool!”, made a person “subject to hellfire,” as far as God is concerned. In other words, to keep the Fifth Commandment, you have to avoid, not only killing a person, but also hating and becoming angry at a person, and speaking hurtful words to him.

Jesus does the same thing with the Sixth Commandment in the verses right after our Gospel. You shall not commit adultery. To understand what it is God actually commands, you have to know what it means to commit adultery. It includes all sex outside of marriage. It includes homosexuality. It includes divorce for unscriptural reasons. But Jesus goes even further: I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. “Lusting” is the same word as “coveting,” which means to set your desires on something you’re not supposed to have. Coveting another person’s body sexually is just as sinful as coveting a person’s house is just as sinful as coveting a person’s wealth, or even a person’s life. You have to understand that all God’s commandments command the hands, and the mouth, and the heart itself. No human law can regulate such things. But God’s law can and does.

Fourth, to read the Ten Commandments beneficially, you have to know, you have to understand that God’s commandments cannot save anyone. As Jesus said in our Gospel, 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. The scribes and Pharisees had about as much external righteousness, external obedience to the commandments as anyone in Israel, as anyone anywhere. But, Jesus says, it wasn’t enough. To keep the Commandments, you have to obey them also on the inside, with the mind, mouth, and heart, and you have to do it perfectly, without failing. Because, as James says, Whoever keeps the whole law but stumbles at one point is guilty of breaking all of it. But, as Scripture clearly reveals, man, since the fall of Adam, is turned away from God, unable to trust in Him and worship Him, unable to hear Him, unable to keep His commandments from the heart. The commandments command well enough, but the commandments cannot save. As Paul writes to the Romans, We know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.

Well, if the commandments are there, primarily at least, to show us our sin, to show us how far short we fall of the true righteousness that God demands, then, finally, to read the Ten Commandments beneficially, you have to know the Gospel that can save, the power of salvation for everyone who believes. In the Gospel, Paul writes, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “The just shall live by faith,”… even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as the place of atonement, through faith, in His blood…to demonstrate His righteousness at the present time, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

That’s the Gospel, that God has given His Son Jesus Christ to shed His blood for our sins, so that we might be saved and made righteous before God through faith in Him, not through our attempts at obeying the Ten Commandments.

You see, then, how important it is to read the Commandments correctly. Teaching people the Ten Commandments would be worse than worthless if we don’t accompany that teaching with the further explanation that the Holy Scriptures provide in both the Old and the New Testaments. At best, we would turn people into little hypocrites, little Pharisees, who seek to please God by doing enough good things and avoiding enough bad things, by being obedient enough, by being upright and moral people. But you can’t be upright and moral people until you understand that you’re already not upright and moral people by nature, until you understand that you need a Savior, until you repent of your sins, until you believe in the Savior whom God has provided to be your righteousness before God. Then, through faith in Christ, the truly Righteous One, God forgives you your sins against all His commandments. And only then can you begin, as Christians, to truly obey them, from the heart, as those who have brought by the love of God to love God, to want no other God but Him, as those who have been born again of water and the Spirit, adopted as beloved children of the heavenly Father, as those who have been buried with Christ through Baptism, into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we, too, should walk in a new life. And the Ten Commandments serve as an indispensable guide for what that new life is supposed to look like.

Without that further explanation of the Ten Commandments, in the context of the whole Bible, they do more harm than good, because, by themselves, they allow people to fool themselves into thinking that they’re godly when they’re really not. But with the explanation provided by Scripture, a Christian can use the Ten Commandments beneficially. So learn them. Post them in your home, if you like, and recite them every day. But add an explanation of them, like Luther’s explanations in the Small Catechism, which are outstanding and Scriptural. And, even better, add the Apostles’ Creed and its explanations in the Small Catechism. Add the explanations for the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer, and for Holy Baptism, and for the Lord’s Supper as well. Fortified with those explanations, and spurred on by faith and the Holy Spirit, you will be well-prepared disciples of Christ Jesus, ready to live more righteously than the scribes and Pharisees, as the righteous people whom God has called you to be. To that end, let us pray with the Psalmist: Teach me, O LORD, the way of your statutes; and I will keep it to the end. Give me understanding, that I may keep your law and observe it with my whole heart. Lead me in the path of your commandments, for I delight in it. Amen.