Emmanuel Lutheran Church

Sermon for Trinity 11

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

We have one of my favorite parables before us again today, the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. It’s one of my favorites, because it presents the chief article of the Christian faith so simply that a child can understand it. How can a person stand before God and not be condemned? How can a person stand before the righteous God and be accepted? The Pharisee is our negative illustration; the tax collector, the positive—which is, by the way, the exact opposite of what anyone would expect. You stand by God’s mercy, or not at all.

Jesus told this parable to certain people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and who despised others. That alone tells us most of what we need to know. There’s a problem that Jesus, the Great Physician, has diagnosed among His patients, among His hearers. Trusting in yourself, that you are righteous, on the one hand, and despising other people, on the other hand, are two sides of the same twisted coin, two common symptoms of the same disease.

The Pharisee, in Jewish society, was the hero, the role model. But not in Jesus’ parable. In Jesus’ parable, the Pharisee is the villain, the one who trusts in himself, that he is righteous, and who despises others. He goes to the temple with that attitude, and we’re allowed to listen in on his prayer. O God, I 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.’ Let’s take a look at the features of this prayer.

First, you notice what the Pharisee doesn’t do. He doesn’t acknowledge any sin or wretchedness on his part, not even any weakness or shortcoming. He doesn’t humble himself before God at all. Instead, he exalts himself. He points out his goodness to God, the shameful sins he has successfully avoided, the good works he regularly does: his righteousness, his worthiness, his religiosity. And, in sort of a backhanded way, he puts down the tax collector who’s there in the temple with him. “Thank God I’m not like him!”

Then we’re also allowed to listen in on the tax collector’s prayer as he stands off in a corner by himself, beating his breast and not even daring to look up to heaven. The tax collector, in Jewish society, was the villain, the wicked sinner who stole from his fellow Israelites for a living. But in Jesus’ parable, this tax collector is the hero, the role model we are urged to follow, if we wish to see eternal life. His prayer is simple: God, be merciful to me, the sinner.

What does he do right? Well, first, even though he knows he’ll get dirty looks from his fellow worshipers, he goes to the temple, where God has promised to hear the prayers of His penitent people. That’s important. People today think that it’s the people who go to church who are the hypocrites, and those who stay home from church who are the real children of God. Not true at all. Both the Pharisee and the tax collector went to the temple to pray.

But unlike the Pharisee, the tax collector goes, not in pride, not to make a show, but in obvious repentance, clearly acknowledging and mourning over his past crimes and his sinful heart. He confesses himself to be “the sinner.” And he offers nothing to God, no righteousness of his own, no good works, and no excuses. He stands there, in the temple, before God, with nothing but a plea for God to do something for him, to deal with him according to His mercy, and not according to what he deserves.

That man, says Jesus, went down to his house justified rather than the other. Again, the tax collector is the role model here, not the Pharisee. In spite of the outwardly good life he had lived, the Pharisee went down to his house still under God’s decree, “Guilty!”, still under God’s sentence of eternal condemnation, because he tried to stand before God by offering God his own righteousness. But in God’s sight, there is no one righteous, based on his own record or on the cleanness of his own heart. All are guilty. But, as Jesus makes clear, there is a way for guilty sinners to receive a righteous verdict from the Judge: Humble yourself before Him. Acknowledge your guilt. And instead of offering Him your righteousness, instead of listing all the good things you’ve done, or the bad things you’ve successfully avoided in your life, plead for His mercy, for the righteousness of Christ to cover you, to stand for you, to count for you. Seek forgiveness from God, not praise. Seek His approval for Christ’s sake, not your own.

Those who exalt themselves before God will be humbled, will be rejected, will be cast away from God’s presence, because He sees their hidden sins, and the ones they hide from everyone else, the ones they refuse to acknowledge, including the sin of pride and of pretending that God owes them something. But those who humble themselves before God will be exalted, will be approved, will be forgiven. Because God is faithful, and gracious, and merciful. It’s His mercy that led Him to send His own beloved Son to the cross, to suffer and die for your sins. That’s why His mercy is wrapped up in the Person of Jesus. All who seek His mercy for Jesus’ sake will find it. You stand by God’s mercy, like the tax collector in the parable, or, like the Pharisee, you don’t stand at all.

See how this plays out in the life of a Christian. You saw the example of the tax collector in Jesus’ parable. Now look at the example of the apostle Paul. When he was still unconverted, he was, literally, a proud Pharisee, offering his own righteousness to God and despising those who were less righteous than he. But then he was led to see the truth: His works were rubbish (as he himself referred to them later on). His righteousness was paltry and worthless. He couldn’t stand before God by his works. He could only stand by seeking God’s mercy in Christ. As he wrote to the Philippians, I count all my works, yes, all things 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 he finally humbled himself before God, and was exalted.

You can hear that humility in today’s Epistle: The risen Lord Jesus was seen also by me, as by one born at the wrong time. 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 by the grace of God I am what I am. Does that sound to you more like the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable or like the tax collector? It sounds more like the tax collector, doesn’t it?

And notice, too, what effect God’s mercy had on Paul’s life, and on his attitude, going forward. His grace toward me was not in vain; but I toiled more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me. God’s mercy shown to Paul was not “in vain,” was not without effect. The effect of God’s mercy on Paul’s life was that Paul, recognizing just how great God’s mercy was toward him, who deserved only God’s wrath and punishment, toiled more and harder than all the other apostles. He loved much, because he had been forgiven much. And yet, even as he truthfully and accurately describes his good works as a Christian, he adds, in genuine humility, “yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.” Unlike the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable, Paul gives himself no credit, even for the truly good things he had done. He gives God, and the grace of God, all the praise and glory for all the good he did as an apostle, as is fitting for one who stands by God’s mercy.

So stand, Christians, each day, by God’s mercy, and don’t even think about praising yourself or thinking highly of yourself, as if you deserved praise from God. And then, if you stand only by the mercy of God, it won’t even occur to you to compare yourself with your neighbor, or to despise him or her because they aren’t as righteous as you. Because, after all, you don’t stand by your own righteousness, but by the mercy of God in Christ. Let your focus always remain on God’s mercy, not on your goodness. And then you will always go down to your house justified. Amen.

Sermon for Trinity 10

1 Corinthians 12:1-11 + Luke 19:41-48

On this day in the Church Year, the Church remembers the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, prophesied by Jesus some 40 years before it happened. Why do we remember it every year? First, because the prophecy of Jerusalem’s destruction is recorded for us in the Word of God, by inspiration of the Holy Spirit—here in today’s Gospel, and in other passages, too. God wanted all future generations of His people to remember it.

We remember it, neither to gloat nor to mourn, nor to call for perpetual hatred of or violence toward the Jews. No, we remember it, that we may learn from it, not to repeat Jerusalem’s grave mistake. As we heard in last week’s Epistle, this is the reason why God had much of Old Testament Israel’s history recorded for us, so that we might learn from it, learn from their tragic examples of rebellion and apostasy, so that history doesn’t repeat itself among God’s chosen people today, that is, among His Christians. We remember Jerusalem’s destruction to learn this enduring lesson: This is always the fate of those who reject the Christ.

As Jesus drew near, he looked at the city and wept over it. You may recall that this drawing near to the city of Jerusalem is taking place on Palm Sunday, at the same time Jesus is riding into the city on a donkey to songs of praise, with people waving their palm branches in celebration of His arrival. It’s the beginning of Holy Week, which, tragically, marks the beginning of the end for the city that’s about to crucify its Christ.

Seeing the city’s tragic future, Jesus wept over it. He knew that the praise He was receiving from the crowds on that day would soon turn to silence, and then to cries of “Crucify Him!” He knew that, except for a few faithful followers, the people of the city would reject Him as the Christ, not only on Good Friday, but in the decades after Good Friday, even after the apostles would preach repentance and forgiveness of sins to all who would believe. His tears for the city, shed on Palm Sunday, show us that, even though God knew this would happen, it’s not what He wanted to happen, not what He caused to happen. God wants all men to be saved and to come to repentance. That included first century Jerusalem. And the knowledge that the city would refuse to repent and be saved through Him filled the Lord with sadness.

He said, If only you knew, yes, on this very day—your day!—what would make for your peace! But now it is hidden from your eyes. What would make for their peace? Pray for the peace of Jerusalem, the Psalm says. How could Jerusalem have had peace? Actually, Jerusalem could have had it all—earthly peace and heavenly peace, peace with God and peace with men. It was all there in the covenant God made with Israel at Mt. Sinai, where He promised to give them perpetual victory over all their enemies, freedom from sickness and disease, freedom from famine, freedom from oppression, a long life, and His own favor—if they had kept His covenant, if they had followed all His laws and statutes, from the heart, and most of all, if they had welcomed the Christ when He came to establish a new and better covenant with them, a covenant in His own blood, a covenant of forgiveness, a covenant of peace.

Why was it “hidden from their eyes”? Because they didn’t want to see it, they didn’t want to believe it, that this Jesus was the Messiah God had promised, that He was the Lamb of God who would take away their sins and shelter them from the coming wrath. They refused to believe that they deserved God’s wrath, just like their forefathers at the time of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, who boasted, “We have the temple of the Lord! The temple of the Lord! The temple of the Lord is here! Nothing bad can happen to Jerusalem! We’re safe!”

But they weren’t safe. They weren’t safe in Jeremiah’s day, when the Babylonians came in and destroyed the first temple. Nor would they be safe later on in the first century, when the Romans would come in and destroy their temple and their city.

Jesus describes that coming destruction: For the days will come upon you when your enemies put up an embankment around you and surround you and besiege you on every side. And they will raze you to the ground, you and your children within you; and they will not leave one stone upon another within you, because you did not know the time of your visitation. Here Jesus reveals, once again, that He and the God of the Old Testament are one. It’s not as if the God of the Old Testament was vengeful, while the Jesus of the New Testament was soft and forgiving toward the impenitent. God has a reliable record of punishing and destroying the wicked who refuse to repent, who put their trust in other gods and commit spiritual adultery with them.

So all the voices today that refer to the modern Israelis and Jews who reject Christ as, “God’s chosen people! God’s chosen people!” are lying voices, demonic voices. Israel was that, was God’s chosen people. But chosen for what? Chosen to be the people to whom God would reveal Himself, which He did, throughout the Old Testament. Chosen to trust in Him as their only God, and to keep His covenant, which they didn’t. Chosen to be the ancestors of Christ, according to the flesh, which they were. Chosen to receive Him and welcome Him when He came, which they didn’t. Chosen to be ground zero for the expansion of the Church to include all the “goyim,” all the Gentiles, all the nations who would receive the Christ and would thereby become part of the Holy Christian Church. As John says, the Son of God came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. But, he goes on, to those who did receive Him, who believe in His name, to them He gave the right to become children of God, born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

So the “people of God,” or the “chosen people of God” are those who receive Jesus, the Christ, not those who reject Him. The fate of those who reject the Christ is always the same, and will always be the same: destruction, and condemnation. Because sin condemns us all, and Christ is the only solution God has provided to wash away our sin and to make us acceptable again to God. And it doesn’t matter who your ancestors were. It doesn’t matter what traditions you’ve received or practice. It doesn’t matter if you were once baptized, or once trusted in Jesus the Christ and once listened to His Word. If you reject Him now, if you reject Him even now as He comes to you in His Word to warn you about what happens to those who reject Him, then your condemnation will be deserved, as was the condemnation of Jerusalem in the first century AD.

But here’s a question that deserves our attention: What did Jesus do with the knowledge that the Jews were going to reject Him? Our Gospel continues: And he went into the temple and began to drive out those who were buying and selling in it, saying to them, “It is written, ‘My house will be a house of prayer.’ But you have made it a ‘den of thieves.’” He goes to the temple, not to destroy it yet, not to drive all the people out, but to drive out those who were defeating the purpose of the temple. And He had every right to do it, because that temple belonged to Him. He was the God who commanded it to be built. He was the God to whom that very temple had been dedicated, and who had given it its purpose, which was not to conduct business in, which was not to create noise so that no one could pray. It was to be a house of prayer, a house of teaching about God, a house of sacrifice, a house that was intended to symbolize the coming Christ Himself. The temple was always a shadow, pointing to Christ.

And so He cleansed it of the things that didn’t belong there, and then it says that he taught daily in the temple. And the chief priests and the scribes and the leading men of the people were looking to kill him, but they could not find a way to do it, for all the people were hanging on his words. Five more days before the crucifixion. One last chance to teach, to correct, to rebuke those who were in error, to comfort those who repented. The temple was not for business, or for entertainment, but for teaching.

And so, through His Church and through the ministry that He has instituted, the Lord Christ continues to teach in the world, exposing the sins of all mankind, calling all men to repent, revealing the grace of God that sent His only-begotten Son into the flesh, to redeem mankind from sin, death, and the power of the devil. Through faith in Christ Jesus, God offers forgiveness, life, and salvation to the world, not because of anything we have done, but purely by His grace. There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

But for those who are and remain outside of Him, there is only condemnation. The fate of those who reject the Christ now will be the same as that of Jerusalem in the first century. May God grant that all who are now believers in Christ may cling to Him in faith until the end. And may God also grant that many who now reject Him may be brought out of their darkness and into the light of Christ, into the safety of those who are marked by the blood of the Lamb. Amen.

Sermon for Trinity 9

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

In today’s Epistle, Paul presented part of the tragic history of the Old Testament Israelites, how time and time again they became arrogant before God, thought they could defy Him without consequence, because they were His chosen people. They learned the hard way that you can’t. There will be consequences for defying God, and they may be deadly. And just because you were once baptized, and you call yourself a Christian, doesn’t mean that God will put up with your stubborn defiance forever. Paul presented that lesson to the Corinthian Christians, because they were beginning to grow arrogant and defiant toward God, and he wanted them to learn from Israel’s example before it was too late, so that they wouldn’t experience a similar end.

But he didn’t stop with the warning. He went on to assure those Christians of God’s own faithfulness in helping them to bear up under whatever temptation or hardship they faced. He wasn’t about to leave them on their own to deal with their troubles. Because they were His baptized children, His chosen people, redeemed by the blood of Christ.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus has a similar warning, and some godly counsel, for the children of God, the “sons of the light,” as He calls them. But instead of using an example from God’s people in the Old Testament, He uses the example of a secular steward, basically an accountant working for the wealthy owner of an estate, who learned a valuable lesson in Jesus’ parable. And if that lesson can be learned by “the sons of this age,” that is, by non-Christians, by those who live only for this life, then it can and must certainly be learned all the more by the sons of the light, who plan on spending eternity with one another. Learn to make lasting friends for yourselves with the resources God has given you to manage.

The steward in Jesus’ parable is sometimes called “shrewd” or “wise” or “clever.” But he didn’t start out that way. He initially carried out his stewardship of his employer’s goods wastefully, negligently, lazily. He wasn’t an outright thief; he just didn’t take his job very seriously. And it showed. He was accused before the rich man of squandering his goods. So the rich man summoned his employee and said to him, ‘What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your stewardship, for you can no longer serve as steward.’

The steward has been confronted. And he already shows some basic wisdom. He doesn’t try to defend himself. That would be foolish. He knows the accusations against him are true. He doesn’t make excuses. He doesn’t beg for a second chance. He knows that judgment is coming, and that he has only a little time left before it comes. He’s been given time to put his accounts in order for review. So, instead of relying on his past behavior, he decides to use the little time he has left to do something productive—not for his boss, not for the good of anyone but himself.

The steward said to himself, ‘What shall I do? My lord is taking the stewardship away from me. I cannot dig. I am ashamed to beg. I know what I will do, so that, when I am removed from the stewardship, people will welcome me into their homes!’ At that time, if you lost your job, there was no unemployment to collect, no government programs to fall back on. You either found another job, or you were reduced to begging, or starving to death. Well, this steward realized it would be very hard to find another job. He wasn’t fit for manual labor, like digging. He was ashamed to sit on the street and beg for handouts. So he turned his thoughts to winning the favor of people he had a business relationship with, so that they would become his friends and then gladly welcome him into their homes after he lost his job.

What plan did he come up with? Well, you heard what he did. He carefully went through the accounts and looked at the bills that the rich man’s debtors had racked up for themselves. And he went to each one, and cooked the books in each one’s favor, not cancelling their debts entirely, just lowering them enough to make the debtors grateful to him going forward.

You’d think his boss would have been even angry with him. But, surprisingly, the man was commended by his master, because he had finally put his mind to doing something productive with his employer’s wealth—something that would benefit the debtors and thus also benefit himself. How could the owner commend the steward for basically stealing some of his money? Because in this case, the owner was more interested in the character of his steward than he was in the bottom line.

The point of this parable isn’t that accountants should cook the books, or that employees should cheat their employers out of their money. Remember, the characters in this parable represent secular businessmen, not Christians, not even God. Jesus tells us that at the end of the parable. For the sons of this age are wiser toward their own kind than are the sons of the light. And I say to you, make friends for yourselves with unrighteous mammon, so that, when you become destitute, they may welcome you into the eternal dwellings. The steward is a “son of this age,” and even he learned how to make friends for himself with the resources at his disposal—in spite of the fact that those resources belonged to someone else. Sadly, tragically, Jesus says that the unbelievers of the world are often quicker to learn that lesson than believers are.

And so He wants His people to learn from the steward in this parable, first, in recognizing our own sin, our own failures, as the steward himself was forced to do. In particular, this Gospel calls you to think carefully about how you have used the resources at your disposal. Nothing you have ultimately belongs to you. It all belongs to God. It takes humility to admit that. You may have worked hard for some of your things, but remember that God is the one who gives you strength to work and who is able either to establish the works of your hands or cause it all to fail. He remains the owner. You are the steward. Of everything. Where you have been negligent with His goods, or careless, where you have failed to think about how you can use those goods to help your fellow Christians, repent, and turn to the Lord Christ again for forgiveness, which is guaranteed to all who repent.

Second, learn from the steward to recognize that the day of judgment is coming, whether it’s your death or whether it’s the Last Day. Once you know that, you can’t just keep going on the way things were. Something drastic has to change. Something urgent has to be done. The money you have, the money that you think is so important, is about to run out anyway. You’re about to become destitute, in the way that the book of Ecclesiastes describes: You came into this world with nothing. Soon you’ll leave it the same way. What will you do with what you have as that day draws nearer? The world’s answer is, “Live it up! Enjoy it! Store it up! Save it for a rainy day!” There’s some wisdom in that, but only to a point. The Owner of all you have has told you not to think only about yourself, and your future, and your needs in this life, but about your fellow Christian, and his future, and his needs in this life, to shrewdly look for ways to help him out.

Third, learn from the steward that your fellow Christian’s favor matters. Having his favor is helpful, for this life and for the next life. And if you can purchase it, that is, if you can acquire it by using your resources to help him or her, then you should! If the sons of this age do it for their own, for self-serving purposes, how much more shouldn’t the sons of the light use the wealth at our disposal to serve our fellow Christians, for selfless purposes, and yet still believing what Jesus says here, that when we become destitute, that is, when our time on earth runs out, those Christian brothers and sisters will gladly welcome us into eternal dwellings, with gratefulness and love in their hearts?

In short, it’s smart to go out of your way to help your fellow Christians, to think about it carefully, how you can be generous toward them, viewing your money, your wealth, your resources, and even that resource that we call “time,” not to spend on yourself, but on others. Jesus teaches us to have a heart for generosity. A heart for faithful stewardship, to be shrewd, to be wise. Look for opportunities to help your neighbor in general, but especially your fellow sons of the light. Think carefully about it, as the steward did in Jesus’ parable, knowing that the time is short, and that soon you will have to give an accounting of your stewardship to the Owner. You’ll have Jesus by your side as your Advocate and Refuge when you make that accounting. But you must still make it your goal to prepare an accounting that you won’t be ashamed of.

Speaking of which, the door offering we’re taking today falls at the perfect time, doesn’t it? It wasn’t planned to coincide with today’s Gospel, but it does fit with it. The Lord supplies some of His people with more, while He provides others with less, for the very purpose of allowing those with more to supply the needs of those with less, while those with less respond with godly gratefulness and favor and maybe a different kind of support in return. In the present case, you Christians who have experienced the grace and mercy of God, who have been baptized into Christ, who have been born again as sons of the light and as heirs of eternal life, have been given a little more, so that you can practice God-pleasing stewardship by lending a hand to a Christian family that will be grateful for it, even after this life is over. And this isn’t the first time this congregation has shown such generosity. May the Lord enable us and inspire us to keep practicing this kind of generosity toward all our fellow Christians, and to open our eyes to their needs, until the day when the Lord Himself welcomes His believing children into His eternal dwellings. Amen.