Words of instruction, encouragement, and disgust

Posted on August 21, 2024 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Midweek of Trinity 12

Isaiah 56:1-12

After the gracious invitation of chapter 55 to come and eat and drink at the Lord’s table, to seek the Lord while He may be found, to receive the free gifts of His forgiveness and salvation, the Lord has some words of instruction in chapter 56 for those who accept the invitation. He also speaks beautiful, tender, encouraging words to the eunuchs and the foreigners, which we’ll discuss in a moment. And, finally, He has some harsh and bitter words of disgust for the useless religious leadership of Israel.

First, the words of instruction: Thus says the LORD: “Keep justice, and do righteousness, For My salvation is about to come, And My righteousness to be revealed. Blessed is the man who does this, And the son of man who lays hold on it;”

You come into God’s kingdom for free. And once you’re in, you still don’t earn your stay there. It’s always a gift. It’s always grace. But there are rules of the house that the house members are expected to keep. Keeping justice. Doing righteousness. Obeying God’s commandments. Those things are expected of the Church of God, whether of the Old Testament or the New Testament. It doesn’t matter. God’s teaching about right and wrong, must be followed. In other words, God’s people are expected to be holy and to grow in holiness throughout this life, and God promises to bless them when they do.

But you’ll notice in the next words that there is a difference between Old Testament obedience and New Testament obedience. Blessed is the man who does this…who keeps from defiling the Sabbath, And keeps his hand from doing any evil.” “Who keeps his hand from doing any evil” applies to everyone, all the time. That’s easy. But “who keeps from defiling the Sabbath”? Here it’s helpful to remember that God is speaking most directly to the hearers and readers of Isaiah, who lived some 700 years before Christ was born. That’s 700 years during which the people of Israel were still under the Law of Moses, under the Ten Commandments in their full original force, which included keeping the Sabbath Day holy, not doing any work for those 24 hours, business owners closing up their shops, farmers staying out of their fields, etc. Why does God mention that commandment in particular? Because that was the commandment that required real sacrifice on the part of the Israelites. Not a painful sacrifice—who wouldn’t want to rest, right? But for 24 hours, it required a conscious decision not to do the things you would regularly do during the rest of the week, simply because God told you not to do them. It was a unique sign of devotion to God to keep the Old Testament Sabbath Day, and failing to take the required rest was essentially a rejection of the whole Law, and of the rest God had promised in His heavenly kingdom.

In the New Testament, we aren’t under the strict Sabbath Law anymore, so we don’t defile the commandment by failing to rest on Saturday (or Sunday). But we do defile the commandment when we despise preaching and God’s Word, when we pretend that it no longer matters if we attend church services or not, or if we belong to a church at all. God still instructs the members of His household to hear the preaching of His word and to support the ministry of it. So let God’s words of instruction here guide you in those things, and certainly in keeping your hand from doing any evil.

Next, the Lord speaks some tender words of encouragement that He addresses especially to the “eunuchs” and to the foreigners (non-Israelites by birth): Do not let the son of the foreigner Who has joined himself to the LORD Speak, saying, “The LORD has utterly separated me from His people”; Nor let the eunuch say, “Here I am, a dry tree.” For thus says the LORD: “To the eunuchs who keep My Sabbaths, And choose what pleases Me, And hold fast My covenant, Even to them I will give in My house And within My walls a place and a name Better than that of sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name That shall not be cut off.

Even in Old Testament times, God opened wide His kingdom to the Gentiles; it was not only open to the physical descendants of Abraham. But the Gentiles couldn’t remain as they were. They had to join themselves fully to the people of Israel and to the covenant God had made with Israel if they were to be counted among the people of God. They had to be circumcised. They had to keep the Sabbaths and observe the rest of the Laws of Moses. They had to lay aside their pagan practices and beliefs, and the culture that was tainted by pagan beliefs. But if they did that, they were given equal status with the children of Abraham.

As for the eunuchs, they were more common at that time among the Gentiles than one can possibly imagine today—men who would allow themselves to be castrated (or were forced to be castrated) in order to be full-time servants to a noblewoman. There were probably a good number of them in Babylon, where the Jews would be held captive. But the Lord reaches out to them, too, and assures them, it doesn’t matter that you can’t have children. If you come into My house, says the Lord, you won’t have to have children to pass your name down. “I’ll give you an everlasting name.” In other words, you will never die. It’s a promise of eternal life!

“Also the sons of the foreigner Who join themselves to the LORD, to serve Him, And to love the name of the LORD, to be His servants— Everyone who keeps from defiling the Sabbath, And holds fast My covenant— Even them I will bring to My holy mountain, And make them joyful in My house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices Will be accepted on My altar; For My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations.”

This is why Jerusalem was so important! This is why the Jews had to return there after the Babylonian captivity! Because God had made His house, the temple in Jerusalem, to be the one place on earth where anyone could go, even the Gentiles, to find the true God and to find a welcome into His kingdom, if they would join themselves to that people of Israel and become part of the Church of Israel, under the covenant God had made with them. I’m sure you remember that Jesus quoted this verse from Isaiah 56 while He was cleansing that temple in Jerusalem. Because God had wanted all nations, even in Old Testament times, to hear His Word, to find Him, to worship Him, and to receive salvation from Him in Jerusalem.

That happened to some small degree as Gentiles did make their way to the second temple, after Israel’s return from exile in Babylon. But it would happen much more fully after the time of Christ. Because now, in Christ Jesus, the city of Jerusalem is meaningless and temple in Jerusalem is meaningless, because Christ is where God wants to be found. Christ is where God accepts people and welcomes them and gives them eternal life. Where Christ is preached and where Christ is confessed, that is the house of God, that is the holy mountain of Israel, wherever it may be in the world, even here in New Mexico. As Paul once wrote to the Ephesian Christians, Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.

Finally, God has some words of disgust for the useless religious leaders of Israel: All you beasts of the field, come to devour, All you beasts in the forest. His watchmen are blind, They are all ignorant; They are all dumb dogs, They cannot bark; Sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber. Yes, they are greedy dogs Which never have enough. And they are shepherds Who cannot understand; They all look to their own way, Every one for his own gain, From his own territory. “Come,” one says, “I will bring wine, And we will fill ourselves with intoxicating drink; Tomorrow will be as today, And much more abundant.”

God calls on the beasts to come and devour the worthless watchmen, the useless pastors. Isaiah’s description of them is echoed in Jesus’ description of them as hirelings who care nothing for the sheep. They’re lazy. They fail to warn the sheep about the dangers of sin and impenitence and false doctrine. They’re greedy, looking out for themselves, for their own gain, for their own enjoyment. And they’re blind to the judgment that’s coming against them and against all the impenitent, as if Christ weren’t returning for judgment. And God expresses here His disgust with such spiritual leaders, because He wants all nations to come into His house, but, because they refuse to preach the truth from God, they’re keeping many people out.

There were plenty of examples of this in Isaiah’s day, and later in Jeremiah’s day when Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians. There were plenty of examples during the intertestamental period, and again in Jesus’ day. And the examples are not hard to find in our day, either. So let’s watch out for them and not allow ourselves to be misled by them!

Yes, let’s take to heart all these words of Isaiah, words of instruction, of encouragement, and disgust, that we may remain in God’s house all the days of our lives and inherit the blessings of His people, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

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The Spirit still opens ears and loosens tongues

Posted on August 18, 2024 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Trinity 12

2 Corinthians 3:4-11  +  Mark 7:31-37

In today’s Gospel, we see Jesus healing a man’s inability to hear and to speak. We need to understand what an important miracle that was. When God wanted to bring the universe into existence, He spoke, and what He said happened. The universe didn’t have to have working ears. When God wants something to happen, He has the almighty power to speak and to make it happen, whether anyone is there to hear it or not. Here’s another example. When Jesus wanted to raise Lazarus from the dead, Lazarus didn’t need to have working ears. Jesus simply used His almighty power to make it happen. But when God wants to deal with people, to convict them of sin, to persuade them to trust in Him, to teach them, to guide them, to strengthen them, He doesn’t use His bare, almighty power. Instead, His Holy Spirit works on people’s hearts through the words that they hear. So you can see why today’s miracle was so important.

And it’s also important for us, because there is also a spiritual kind of deafness and speechlessness that affects unbelievers, but that also affects believers. God has a lesson for all kinds of deafness and speechlessness in our Scripture readings today. So he who has ears to hear, let him hear!

The deaf man in our Gospel had some friends who cared about him, who wanted him to be able to hear. So they brought him to the One who could help. They asked Him to place His hands on the man, to heal him that way. But Jesus does much more than that. He takes the man aside and communicates with him using signs, symbols, and actions that the man can receive through his working senses, in order to teach us all some key spiritual truths.

First, He puts His fingers in the man’s ears. Your ears can’t be healed from the inside, Jesus shows him. The finger of God has to enter into your ears. Faith in the heart comes by hearing the Gospel. And it’s no coincidence that Jesus elsewhere refers to the Holy Spirit as the “Finger of God,” because it’s the Holy Spirit who enters the ears through preaching to work faith in the heart.

Jesus spits and touches the man’s tongue. What does that teach us? Your bodily healing comes from the body of Jesus. So does your spiritual healing. Through His body and the word of His mouth, the man’s tongue would be healed. Through the suffering and death of Jesus’ body, and through the Word that goes out from His mouth, a sinner’s tongue is also healed, as the Spirit of Christ enters your ears through preaching and creates faith, by which He applies the bodily suffering and death of Jesus to you. He even places the body and blood of Jesus directly on your tongue in the Sacrament of the Altar, freeing your tongue now to give thanks to God, to praise God, and to confess Christ Jesus before men.

Jesus looks up to heaven and sighs. Sighing in Scripture is a symbol of the prayers we utter to God in our troubles and sorrows and sighings. Very simply, Jesus teaches the deaf man to look to God in faith in every trouble, to seek God’s mercy for the sake of Jesus, to cast all his sorrows onto the Lord, because the Lord cares for us.

And then Jesus speaks the word of healing which any lip-reading deaf person could easily discern, “Ephphatha!” Be opened! And the man’s ears were opened, and his tongue was loosed. And the people were amazed.

But here we note a problem with the ears of the people who were there. Jesus commanded them sternly not to tell anyone about this healing. They heard His command with their ears. And then they went on to ignore it, and to use their tongues to do the opposite of what Jesus commanded. Now, we may think their intentions were noble. After all, they were telling everyone how Jesus “does all things well,” which was true, and which was intended to praise Him. But this is like when King Saul offered a sacrifice to God which God expressly told him, through the prophet Samuel, not to offer. And because of his disobedience, God stripped the kingdom away from his family, teaching us that you can’t praise God by doing the opposite of what He says, no matter how good your intentions were. You praise Him by keeping His word. Period.

There are several lessons for us in this simple Gospel, in addition to the obvious one that’s present in every miracle, that Jesus has divine power, and that He is kind and good and merciful to all who seek help from Him.

First, as I already alluded to, we have here a beautiful picture of how God the Holy Spirit works on our natural spiritual deafness and speechlessness, on our natural inability to know God until He reveals Himself to us in His Word, our natural inability to believe the Word we hear, and our natural inability to call upon God in true faith, because of the sinful nature, the original sin with which we’re all born. But then the Finger of God, the Holy Spirit, enters through our ears through the Gospel. That’s why Paul, in today’s Epistle, refers to the New Testament ministry as the ministry “of the Spirit,” or the ministry that brings the Spirit. The Old Testament was written on stone tablets. It consisted in commandments and laws, and it brought condemnation and death to Old Testament Israel as the Law revealed their sins and their desperate need for a Savior. It does the same thing to us as it reveals our sins and our desperate need for a Savior. But the New Testament ministry proclaims the Gospel, that Christ suffered and died for our sins, that Christ is the propitiation for our sins, the thing that makes God the Father happy with us and that makes us acceptable to Him. The ministry that brings the Spirit proclaims faith in Christ, and then, as the Gospel enters our ears, the Spirit works the very faith that’s required for us to be reconciled to God. And then our tongues are also healed at the same time, to pray to God rightly, through faith in Christ, claiming only Christ as our Mediator and Advocate before God. Our tongues are freed to give thanks to God and to praise God and to confess Jesus Christ as Lord, as we said before. As Paul writes to the Romans, For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. All that is the work of God the Holy Spirit, the Finger of God, to open our ears and to loose our tongues.

But there is also an application here for those who already believe, for those whose ears have already been opened and whose tongues have already been loosed.

It is entirely possible for ears that have once been opened to become shut again, and for tongues that have been loosed to become tied up again. If your mouth is full of rocks, there’s no room left for nutritious food, is there? So, too, with the ears. If your ears are full of earthly things, then there’s no room for the heavenly Word of God to enter. What do you listen to all day? What fills your ears and penetrates your thoughts? The news, that sounds worse and worse every day? The complaints of those around you? The false teaching of false teachers? The “sounds” that come from your own heart? How does it affect you? It can be depressing, can’t it? To the point of obsession, even. Sometimes we fail to hear God’s Word at all, and that’s dangerous for our faith.

Or, you can have a case like we have in our Gospel, where the crowds were actually listening to the Word of Jesus, commanding them to tell no one of the miracle He had just done. But it went in one ear and out the other, didn’t it? They heard, but they didn’t process. They heard, but they didn’t obey. They seemed to have some degree of faith in Jesus. “He does all things well!”, they cried. But that faith was weak, threatened by their ongoing deafness to what He actually said, and their refusal to do what He said. That’s how destructive false doctrine takes root, because people are sometimes eager to listen, but they filter it through their own human reason or through false beliefs that are lodged in their hearts. People are sometimes eager to listen, but their itching ears crave preaching that agrees with what they already believe, that agrees with what they want to hear.

And then there’s the tongues of believers. Tongues that may still be quick to criticize, quick to complain, quick to demean, to mock, to ridicule, quick to tear down, but slow to pray, slow to praise, slow to give thanks, slow to confess Christ before the world, slow to build up your neighbor, slow to encourage, slow to defend your neighbor, slow to speak up against the wrong and for the right in this world.

So we, too, need the ongoing ministry of the Spirit, the ministry that brings the Spirit, the ministry of the Gospel. That’s why our service is filled with the Word of God. That’s why the sermon is preached. So hear with your ears! Repent and believe! And then, obey God’s commandments! Receive the body and blood of Christ in your mouth and then use your loosened tongue to call upon God through Christ, to thank, to praise, and to confess! Use your tongue to encourage one another, and to defend your neighbor! Speak up for what’s right! Speak against the wrong! And know that, in all of it, you have the powerful Spirit of God working on you and in you by His Word, and working through you as He dwells in your hearts by faith, giving you all the strength you need to believe and obey, to pray, to praise, and to confess Christ in the world. It may not seem like much to you, these simple acts of hearing and speaking. But they are the very instruments God will use to defeat the devil and to make His kingdom come. Amen.

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Hear God’s gracious and urgent invitation!

Posted on August 14, 2024 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Midweek of Trinity 11

Isaiah 55:1-13

We’re going from chapter 51 last week to chapter 55 this evening, because, if you recall, we covered Isaiah 52-54 during Holy Week. The last triplet of this middle section of Isaiah’s prophecy, chapters 55-57—and really, the rest of the book—depicts the Messiah guiding His people into an eternal and joyful home, and in tonight’s reading, we hear a gracious and urgent invitation to take part in the joy of the Messiah’s kingdom.

“Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. It sounds, intentionally, like Jesus’ own invitation, Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. It sounds, intentionally, like the vision John saw of believers who have fallen asleep, These are the ones who come out of the great tribulation, and washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb…They shall neither hunger anymore nor thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any heat; for the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne will shepherd them and lead them to living fountains of waters. The Lord calls out to all who recognize that they’re needy, that they’re sinful and unclean, to those who realize they aren’t what they should be, that something important is missing in their very soul. There’s a hole there, an emptiness, a desire that can’t be fulfilled with anything on earth. It’s a desire for eternity. It’s a desire to have God for a Father. To such people the Lord cries out, “Come! And you will be filled!”

Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? It sounds, intentionally, like Jesus’ own words, Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you. It sounds like many of Jesus’ parables, too, where a man prepared a great feast and told the guests, “Come! Come! For all things are now ready!” This is how the Scriptures portray the Gospel, as an invitation that goes out to all people to come and be satisfied, not with a comfortable or luxurious life on earth, but to come into His Church and be satisfied in the kingdom of Christ, who does not offer an earthly paradise, but a heavenly one.

Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live. How do we come and eat? What is this rich food in which we should take delight? We come, first, by listening! We come by inclining our ear and hearing the words of the Lord, hearing His invitation to let Him remove our sins from us and to enter His kingdom as clean and holy people, ready to feast at the Lord’s table with Him in righteousness and holiness forever.

I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David. Behold, I made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander for the peoples. Behold, you shall call a nation that you do not know, and a nation that did not know you shall run to you, because of the LORD your God, and of the Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified you.

God had promised David that his Son would rule over an everlasting kingdom, and that the kingdom would include many nations. So here, God promises to those who accept His gracious invitation a new covenant, and everlasting covenant, based on that promise He had made to David. This is like the new covenant God promised to make with Israel through the prophet Jeremiah. Here’s part of it: Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah… I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people…For they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more. Here, in Isaiah’s prophecy, the Lord clearly extends this everlasting covenant beyond Israel, to the Gentiles, to come and be a part of the kingdom of the Son of David, to enter into a new covenant of grace and the forgiveness of sins through Christ.

Seek the LORD while he may be found; call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the LORD, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.

Here is the urgency in Isaiah’s message. Yes, seek the Lord. But seek Him while He can still be found. Call upon Him while He is still near. Because the day will come when He won’t let Himself be found and when He will remove His gracious presence forever. If a person insists on clinging to his sins and wickedness, if a person stubbornly rejects His Gospel, if a person persistently resists His Holy Spirit, if a person despises the time of grace that God has given him to repent and to seek the Lord, then the Lord will stop giving him chances to repent. So seek Him now. Call upon Him now. As Paul says to the Corinthians, Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

What God says here is a general truth. He doesn’t think like we do. He doesn’t plan like we do, or like we think He should plan. And that’s so important to remember. God is above us; we are not above Him. He’s smarter than you are, wiser than you are. When you say, “Jump!,” God doesn’t ask, “How high?” In fact, it’s the root of idolatry to imagine that God should behave as you think He should behave. So what God says here is a warning. But it’s also a source of great comfort. Because, when you see things not working out in the world as you think they should, when you see evil appearing to win and lies appearing to prosper, remember that God has plans that you couldn’t possibly fathom, even if He told you about them ahead of time. And they’re better than any plans you could come up with. And yes, that’s something you just have to believe.

And where will that faith come from? “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

God’s word does everything. It created and sustains the universe. It brings to faith those who listen to it. And it hardens those who hear but refuse to accept it. Listen to the Word! And it will take root in your heart and grow to produce a faith that’s like a shield against every fiery dart of the evil one.

“For you shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle; and it shall make a name for the LORD, an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.”

Israel did, finally, go out from Babylon in joy. But that joy is nothing compared to the joy that the Church will experience when the Lord Jesus returns to bring us out of this dying world. And knowing, by faith in the Lord’s word, that such joy is coming will help you cope with this Babylon here below. Amen.

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Starting with the top priority

Posted on August 11, 2024 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Trinity 11

1 Corinthians 15:1-10  +  Luke 18:9-14

Take a moment this morning and consider the priorities in your life. That’s helpful to do, once in a while, because your priorities will determine your decisions and your behavior. The word, priority, by the way, comes from a Latin word that means “to come first, to come before other things.” You could make a list of the things in your life that come before other things. The fact that you’re here today (or watching the service today) would suggest that hearing God’s Word is a priority for you. It obviously came before any of the other things you could be doing at the moment. Surely your family’s happiness and wellbeing is a priority. Hopefully your health makes the list. And serving your neighbor in love, that should be a priority for you, as a Christian. I’m sure you could come up with other things. But what’s at the top of the list? What’s your top priority in life? And a different question, which may or may not have the same answer, what should be your top priority? Well, if there is a God, and if He takes any interest at all in human affairs—and it’s obvious to any thinking person that there is and that He does—then the top priority has to be being right with God; to have His favor, both for this life and for the next. It’s more important than family. More important than health or wealth. More important than life itself.

Now, if it’s true that being right with God should be the top priority, then the most important thing to know is how a person can be right with God. And there are two basic answers to that question, illustrated for us today by Jesus in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. How can you have God’s favor? We have the Pharisee’s answer: “Be a good person! Be right with God by doing the right things and avoiding the wrong things!” And we have the tax collector’s answer: “Flee in faith to God’s throne of grace! Be righteous before God by faith in His promised mercy!” You already know which answer is the right answer. But you still need to hear it again from Jesus’ lips, because the Pharisee’s answer—the wrong answer—is the one that your natural heart always wants to go back to.

If even you Christians need to hear Jesus’ answer again, and again and again, then the unbelieving Pharisees certainly needed to hear it. Luke tells us that Jesus told the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector to certain people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others. That describes very many people in today’s world, too, people who think very highly of themselves, because they think they’ve done some very good things, things that, if there is a God, will certainly put them in good standing with Him.

The Pharisees knew there was a God. They knew many things about Him, true things, the things He had revealed about Himself in the creation as well as the things He had revealed about Himself in the Old Testament Scriptures. They knew His commandments; they knew His Law. One thing they didn’t know—because they passed right over it whenever they came across it in God’s Law—was that God’s Law demands, not only outward obedience, but perfect love for God first, and then for our neighbor, love that comes from the heart and shows itself with the hands and with good deeds. Sins of the heart and a lack of love in the heart are just as damning before God as any evil deed of the hand. The other thing they didn’t know—again, because they passed over it in the Old Testament Scriptures—was that none of their good deeds could erase, or make up for, any of their bad deeds.

And so we have this Pharisee in Jesus’ parable, a man well-respected and honored in the Jewish community, who went up to the Temple in Jerusalem to pray. How would we describe him, based on his behavior in the parable? He’s smug. Proud. Full of himself. And he’s so confident that he’s right with God already, because of how many good things he’s done, that he has no word of praise or thanks for what God has given him, no word of confession, not even a word of supplication, seeking God’s merciful help with anything. On the contrary, we see only a self-congratulatory “thank you” that I am not like other men—extortioners, unrighteous, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I possess.

Now, he’s an extreme version of a self-righteous person, apparently admitting no flaws in himself whatsoever. There are less extreme versions out there that fall into the same category. There are people who will admit that they aren’t perfect. In fact, they see the very act of admitting they aren’t perfect as one of their praiseworthy virtues! But ask them if they consider themselves good people, and most will answer, yes. Most will point to something good they’ve done, some deed of kindness or obedience, or at least how hard they try to be good. If nothing else, some will hope that, no matter how many bad things they’ve done, God may yet accept them because of some really bright, shiny moment of goodness.

This is how the world sees things. This is how all the religions of the world (except for Christianity) teach people to gain God’s favor, by doing good, by being honorable, by showing “love.” This is how people normally comfort themselves when a loved one dies. “He or she was such a good person. He must be in heaven. She must be with God.”

On the other hand, there’s the tax collector of Jesus’ parable, respected by no one, referred to as a “good person” by no one, including himself. His career was synonymous with extortion and thuggery, not to mention the regular betrayal of their countrymen in service to the Romans. How would we describe him, based on his behavior in Jesus’ parable? The tax collector, standing at a distance, would not so much as lift up his eyes toward heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God be merciful to me, a sinner.’ He’s humble. Contrite. Sorrowful over his sins. He knows he doesn’t deserve even to look up toward heaven. He offers God no list of accomplishments, no excuses. Instead, he seeks something from God. He seeks God’s mercy. And he uses a special word for mercy in Greek. “Be favorable to me! Be propitious to me! Be merciful! Be gracious!”

Now, that word is related to the Temple itself. Within the innermost part of the first Temple—Solomon’s Temple—was the ark of the covenant, and the lid of it was called in Greek the Propitiation Place, or the Mercy Seat, or the Throne of Grace. It’s where the blood of atonement was sprinkled once a year by the high priest. It’s where God promised that He would be present with His people and would be gracious toward His people who sought Him there, because of the blood of atonement. But after Solomon’s Temple was destroyed, there was no longer an ark of the covenant in the Temple. It’s as if God no longer wanted His Throne of Grace to be enclosed in the Temple, as if He wanted Israel to start seeking it somewhere else.

Sure enough, the Apostle Paul, in Romans 3, refers to Christ Jesus Himself as the Propitiation Place or the Throne of Grace. He was the true ark of the covenant. His blood shed on the cross truly made atonement for the sins of all. And now all who flee to Christ as the Throne of Grace, all who seek God’s favor through faith in Him, receive God’s forgiveness. Or in other words, they are justified before God, they are right with Him, they have His favor.

This is truly the top priority, that which should be “first and foremost” in your life, what comes before everything else. As Paul also said in today’s Epistle: For I delivered to you first and foremost that which I also received, that…you have to be a good person? No, that’s not what he said. That you have to make atonement for your sins? No. That…what? What was first and foremost? That Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. That’s first and foremost. That’s the most important thing, fleeing to Him in faith as the Throne of Grace, as the one who died for our sins and rose again.

That’s what the tax collector did by seeking mercy from God in the temple where He had promised to be merciful. That was his answer to the question, How can I be right with God? Not by finding righteousness within himself, but by seeking it by faith, as a gracious gift promised by a merciful God. And so Jesus shocked the self-righteous Pharisees with His conclusion: I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but whoever humbles himself will be exalted. The Pharisee who tried to be righteous by himself failed, while the tax collector was counted righteous by God, through faith.

The same was true of the Apostle Paul. He had a sordid past, not as a thief or tax collector, but as a self-righteous Pharisee, as a religious fanatic, as a persecutor of Christians, until he learned that what the Prophet Isaiah had written hundreds of years earlier was true: All our righteousnesses are like filthy rags. As Paul wrote to the Philippians, Whatever things were gain to me, these I have counted a loss for Christ. Indeed, I count all things a loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith.

And so the apostle humbled himself. You hear it in today’s Epistle: For I am the least of the apostles. I am not even fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But in humbling himself, there was finally room for God to exalt him. As he says, But by the grace of God I am what I am.

But notice this about the Gospel: It teaches us what our top priority must be, to be justified through faith in Christ. But the Gospel then gives us other priorities that flow down from the top one. Those who are righteous by faith are then called to be righteous in their deeds, in their works, to care for our families, to keep God’s commandments. The difference is, we’re no longer working to earn the favor of God. We’re working to serve the God who has already favored us in giving His Son into death for our sins, and in justifying us by faith in His Son, so that even the righteous things we now do are really being done in us by Him, as Paul also concludes about all his hard work as an apostle: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.

Of the two answers we’ve considered today to the question, how can I be right with God?, Jesus reveals clearly what the Christian answer is: only by fleeing in faith to Christ, the true Throne of Grace, for mercy and forgiveness. Let that be your top priority! And then arrange all your other priorities around it. Trust in the mercy God has promised you in Christ Jesus! Flee to Him in faith! And you will not only go down to your house justified; you will also have everything you need to get through all the trials of this life and to lead a good, honorable, godly life of humble obedience to the God who has justified you by faith. Amen.

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If God promises deliverance, why be afraid?

Posted on August 7, 2024 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Midweek of Trinity 10

Isaiah 51:12-23

We heard pure comfort from Isaiah, from the LORD!, in last week’s reading from the first part of Isaiah 51—comfort regarding all three kinds of oppression: The literal oppression of captive Israel in Babylon, the spiritual oppression of sinners by the devil, and the literal and spiritual oppression of the New Testament Church by the devil and the world. In all three kinds of oppression, God had promised deliverance to His people. God Himself was comforting them with these promises!

But He foresees the captives doubting. “I, I am he who comforts you; who are you that you are afraid of man who dies, of the son of man who is made like grass, and have forgotten the LORD, your Maker, who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth, and you fear continually all the day because of the wrath of the oppressor, when he sets himself to destroy?

The Lord foresees the captives doubting His comfort, still fearing the Babylonians, still fearing what powerful men might do to them, doubtful that they would ever be rescued. But that’s senseless! It’s foolish! God is stronger than every enemy, stronger than any man. Man is mortal. But God…God stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth. If God comforts, if God promises deliverance, then why still be afraid that man might, what?, overpower God? Thwart God’s plans? Stand in God’s way? Foolishness! Fear may be appropriate at times, but when God says, “I’m holding onto you,” it’s absolutely foolish to keep being afraid that you’re going to fall.

God promised to literally deliver the captive Israelites from the Babylonian Captivity. He also promised to save them spiritually from that other oppressor, from that other captivity—the one in which Satan would keep them, or us, out of God’s kingdom. The Lord comforts Israel with promise after promise of the Messiah who would come, and suffer and die, so that, by His death, He might conquer the devil and take away His power to accuse sinners. He comforts the penitent, those who feel the weight of their sin, with words of forgiveness and acceptance through Christ.

And God has also promised to deliver His Church from all our enemies. He comforts us with promises that Jesus will not abandon us or leave us as orphans, but that He’ll give us His Holy Spirit now to strengthen us, and that He’ll return at the right time to deliver us from this wicked world.

So why be afraid of man? Why be afraid of the tyrants and the wicked rulers of this world? They may threaten us for a time. They may take our life, goods, fame, child, and wife—Let these all be gone. They yet have nothing won. The kingdom ours remaineth!

And where is the wrath of the oppressor? He who is bowed down shall speedily be released; he shall not die and go down to the pit, neither shall his bread be lacking. I am the LORD your God, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar— the LORD of hosts is his name. And I have put my words in your mouth and covered you in the shadow of my hand, establishing the heavens and laying the foundations of the earth, and saying to Zion, ‘You are my people.’ ”

Where is the wrath of the oppressor? Would Babylon continue to threaten the captives? Does the devil or the world threaten you? God laughs at them. He says, there is no one standing in your way. I am going to help you and provide for you and protect you. The same power that established heaven and earth and set them in place will now accomplish Your deliverance. You are My people, He says to the believers in Zion, which also includes the baptized believers in the New Testament Church. If God has claimed you as His people, why would you still be afraid?

Wake yourself, wake yourself, stand up, O Jerusalem, you who have drunk from the hand of the LORD the cup of his wrath, who have drunk to the dregs the bowl, the cup of staggering.

The Lord pictures His wrath in a bowl (not unlike the book of Revelation) in John’s vision of the seven bowls of God’s wrath that He was about to pour out on the earth. Here He pictures Israel as having drunk so deeply from that bowl, having received so much of His wrath, that they were drunk and sprawled out on the floor. But now, He says, it’s time to wake up! Time to sober up! Because the days of wrath are over. No more punishment in Babylon for the people of Israel. No more condemnation for those who believe in Christ Jesus. No more oppression by the devil or the world in the new heavens and the new earth.

This doesn’t mean the Jews would never again fall under God’s wrath. We heard about that just this past Sunday as Jesus foretold the destruction of Jerusalem, and we heard it again in the First Lesson this evening, where Jesus assures the Jews of His day that their judgment will be some of the worst the world has ever seen, because when their Deliverer finally came, as promised, they wanted nothing to do with Him.

There is none to guide her among all the sons she has borne; there is none to take her by the hand among all the sons she has brought up. These two things have happened to you— who will console you?— devastation and destruction, famine and sword; who will comfort you? Your sons have fainted; they lie at the head of every street like an antelope in a net; they are full of the wrath of the LORD, the rebuke of your God.

There can be no human savior, no human deliverer. No Israelite would step forward to rescue captive Israel from Babylon. No mere man would step forward to deliver men from the devil, either. And no man will deliver the Church from the world that seeks to destroy us. Only God Himself could do it, through His Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore hear this, you who are afflicted, who are drunk, but not with wine: Drunk, again, with the wrath of God, which caused them to suffer in captivity.

Thus says your Lord, the LORD, your God who pleads the cause of his people: “Behold, I have taken from your hand the cup of staggering; the bowl of my wrath you shall drink no more; and I will put it into the hand of your tormentors, who have said to you, ‘Bow down, that we may pass over’; and you have made your back like the ground and like the street for them to pass over.”

I will remove My wrath from you and take your well-deserved suffering away from you. Once again, God Himself promises to rescue Israel from captivity. God Himself promises to rescue sinners from the devil’s kingdom. And God Himself promises to deliver His Church from the death, and from the devil, and from the world that sets itself up for battle against us.

And He also promises the turning of the tables, judgment against those who oppressed God’s people. Judgment against Babylon brought by the Medes and Persians. Judgment against the devil now, through Christ’s resurrection from the dead, and the final judgment against the devil and all unbelievers in the end. It’s just as St. John pictured the day of Judgment in the book of Revelation: I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things which were written in the books. The sea gave up the dead who were in it, and Death and Hades delivered up the dead who were in them. And they were judged, each one according to his works. Then Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire.

Deliverance for God’s people. Vengeance against the Lord’s enemies. These are comforting promises that God made to Israel and that still apply to you, who believe in the Lord Jesus. So why would you still be afraid? The message of tonight’s prophecy is, don’t be! Because, if God promises deliverance, you have nothing at all to fear. Amen.

 

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