The only righteousness that goes beyond

Posted on July 12, 2026 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Trinity 6

Romans 6:3-11 + Matthew 5:20-26

There’s a verse in the book of Hebrews that says, Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. How many people do you think actually believe that today, especially here in our country? Most people—and I’m talking about people who still believe in a god, or in the afterlife—most people are pretty sure they’ll “see the Lord” in the end, even though they know they’re far from holy. Most people believe they’ll “go to heaven” when they die, whatever that means to them. Because, as Alan Jackson sang long ago, they’re “workin’ hard to get to heaven where I come from,” and, as long as they work hard at it, they’re pretty sure that will be enough. Then, of course, there are those who don’t think they even have to do that much. God will let them into His eternal home, they suppose, simply because He owes it to them as His creatures.

Then along comes Jesus, who says, at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, “Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. But narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.” According to Jesus, most people will not see the Lord in the end—at least, not in a pleasant way. Most people will perish. Because they lack the holiness, the righteousness that God requires for people to enter His kingdom.

Well, how does one acquire such holiness, such righteousness? The Methodists have a “method” for it, which is where they got their name from, a method to become holy. The Jews in Jesus’ day thought they knew. They had living examples of what they thought was righteousness all around them in the scribes and the Pharisees, the religious leaders who appeared, on the outside, to be holy men, leading holy lives, fully in line with God’s holy Law. They rested on the Day of Rest! They tithed, down to the individual cumin seed! They prayed lengthy and public prayers! They meticulously obeyed, not only the Ten Commandments, but all the others, too, in the Law of Moses. The average Jew could only aspire to be as holy and righteous as the scribes and Pharisees, because their place in heaven was practically assured.

Then along comes Jesus, who says, toward the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, I say to you that unless your righteousness goes beyond the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. Oh my. That must have come as a shock to them. It was meant to! The people had to be shaken out of their delusion that a person could work his way into heaven. And so Jesus opens up and unfolds the Law to them, to show them just how much is required for a person to be holy and righteous enough to enter the kingdom of heaven.

 “You have heard that it was said to the people of old, ‘You shall not murder,’ and, ‘Whoever murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. And whoever says to his brother, ‘You idiot!’  will be subject to the council; but whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be subject to hellfire.

God’s Law, that is, His moral Law, His standard of right and wrong, is absolute, and strict. It’s not enough to “not murder.” That’s only a small part of righteousness. God’s Law requires a heart that doesn’t hate or get unjustly angry, and a mouth that doesn’t insult, or berate, or spread rumors about your neighbor. Instead, God’s Law requires a heart that loves even one’s enemies, and is merciful and compassionate, and a mouth that builds up, helps, and defends at all times. And then, yes, it also requires hands that do not kill, or hurt, or harm, but that, on the contrary, do good to one’s neighbor. That’s the righteousness that the Law requires, according to what we number as the Fifth Commandment.

In the verses right after today’s Gospel, Jesus goes on to the Sixth commandment: You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell. Furthermore it has been said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that whoever divorces his wife for any reason except sexual immorality causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a woman who is divorced commits adultery.

You see, it’s not enough to avoid extramarital sex, although righteousness certainly demands that. God’s Law also requires eyes that don’t even linger on a woman, or a man, and hearts that don’t lust for them. It requires dressing yourself and behaving in a way that doesn’t tempt your neighbor to lust for you, either. It requires genuine love and fidelity and respect within a marriage, and it requires that marriage must truly be until “death do us part,” not the divorce-because-we-don’t-get-along-anymore practice of our society. That’s the righteousness that the Law requires.

Jesus goes on to give an example of what righteousness looks like. “Therefore if you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Agree with your adversary quickly, while you are on the way with him, lest your adversary deliver you to the judge, and the judge deliver you to the officer, and you be thrown into prison. Truly I say to you, you will by no means get out of there until you have paid the last penny.”

In other words, people like to think that they’re a-okay with God, even if they’re not a-okay with their fellow human beings, as if “it’s just me and the Lord, no one else matters.” But Jesus says, no. God’s own Law demands, not only that you render to God due reverence, fear, honor, and worship, but that you live in perfect peace and harmony with your neighbor, and that you atone for your sins against your brother, because if you’ve sinned against your neighbor and you haven’t made it right with him, he has something against you, you can’t even begin to deal with God. He doesn’t want your worship. He doesn’t want your “gift” or your offerings, if you refuse to be reconciled to your brother.

Jesus goes on in the same way, throughout the Sermon on the Mount, revealing just how strict God’s Law is, exposing the scribes and the Pharisees, and everyone else, as lawbreakers, as unrighteous people. Because no one, including the Pharisees, keeps the Law in this way. The scribes and Pharisees had, at best, relatively decent outward obedience. But their hearts were far from sinless, and their words were often dripping with poison. There’s a damning verse in the epistle of James that puts it this way: Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.

So, what lesson—or better, what was the first lesson Jesus’ disciples were to take away from these words He spoke to them? “I have to work harder than the Pharisees? I have to fix my heart and my words and my actions? And then, hopefully, I’ll have enough righteousness to enter the kingdom of heaven?” No!

Jesus, through His apostle Paul in Romans chapter 3, explains it this way: Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

The Law is good. What it demands is good. But it wasn’t given in order for people to enter the kingdom of heaven by keeping it. It was given to show us what God judges to be righteousness, and then, to show us that we all fall short of that righteousness, because, ever since Adam and Eve’s fall into sin, mankind is unable to be the righteous people we need to be in order to enter God’s kingdom. The Law was given to show us what unrighteous people we are. The Law was given, as St. Paul writes, to lead us to Christ, who is the end of the Law for righteousness for all who believe.

This is how Paul goes on to describe it in Romans 3: But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, 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 made righteous freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as the atonement seat, through faith, in His blood…that God might be righteous and the one who makes the person who has faith in Jesus righteous.

You see what this means? The only way for sinners, like you and me, to have a righteousness that goes beyond the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees is to have the righteousness of faith, the righteousness that doesn’t come from trying to keep the Law, but that is credited to us lawbreakers through faith in Christ Jesus, who paid for all our unrighteousness with His own blood, shed on the cross. We are “made righteous” or “declared righteous” or “justified” through faith in Christ crucified. That’s the righteousness that makes us worthy of and able to enter the kingdom of heaven.

And you were clothed with that righteousness in Holy Baptism. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ, who is called “the Righteous One,” because He truly was, and is. The baptized, who cling to Christ in faith, are sinners who are no longer counted as sinners, sinners who are no longer subject to hellfire.

But being baptized into Christ also has other implications, as Paul said in today’s Epistle. Do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? So, then, we were buried with him 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. You’re counted righteous by faith, through Baptism, but if you believe in Jesus, that means you’ve been born again. You’ve been given a new heart, a new life, with holy impulses, holy desires. You’ve been recreated for a new kind of obedience, to live no longer in unrighteousness and filth, but in righteousness that resembles the righteousness of God.

And so we turn back to Jesus’ words of Law, not to find out how to become worthy of the kingdom of heaven, but to find out how children of heaven are expected to behave in our Father’s house. So, yes, turn away from murdering, but also turn away from hatred and bitterness, and from hurtful or insulting words. Turn away from speaking ill of your brother, away from bitter anger, and toward love. Turn away from sexual immorality, toward sexual purity. Turn away from lustful and lingering looks, and away from filthy thoughts, toward love for and commitment to your own spouse, and toward kind and clean thoughts toward those of the opposite sex. And, thinking about how your actions may have an impact on others, dress modestly, and behave purely and chastely. And, yes, bring your offerings to God and worship Him, but first, if you’ve offended your brother, or even if he thinks you’ve offended him, care enough about him to try and work it out with him, because those are the righteous attitudes and behaviors that God expects from those whom He has made His children through faith in Christ Jesus.

So, you need a righteousness that goes beyond the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees? They didn’t have the righteousness that you have, the righteousness that comes through faith in Christ Jesus, but you baptized believers have it! You are children of the kingdom of heaven, children of the righteous God! Now go forth, and live accordingly. Amen.

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The Lord declares a hunt for Jews and Gentiles

Posted on July 8, 2026 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for the week of Trinity 5

Jeremiah 16:14-21 + Matthew 5:13-16

We weren’t together on Sunday to hear it, but in Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus called three fishermen to become fishers or catchers of men. That wasn’t a new idea. You heard Jeremiah prophesy in this evening’s Lesson that the Lord would do just that: send out men to fish for the scattered children of Israel, to go out into the world hunting for them. And not only for them, but for the Gentiles, too.

It’s easy to understand why they would have to go out hunting and fishing for the Gentiles; the Gentiles had abandoned the knowledge of the true God and were all idol-worshippers. But why would they need to go fishing, or hunting, for the Israelites? Because God was about to scatter them. Remember, it helps to know when the prophets were writing. Jeremiah was the prophet who oversaw the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of King Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians. Israel had reached its lowest point by his time, the lowest point of their idolatry, willfulness, and rebellion against God. In the words right before tonight’s Lesson, the Lord warned Jeremiah not to marry or have children, because all the families in Israel were about to be cut down, either put to death or taken into captivity in faraway lands for their refusal to repent.

They would be cut off, not only from the land of Israel, but from the Church of God, from the presence of God. In fact, the land was symbolic of the Church, symbolic of God’s acknowledgement that these were His people and that He was their God. It’s important to remember that. The land was not the ultimate prize. A place in God’s kingdom was.

After ejecting the people from the land, and from His favor, God promised, in the words of this evening’s Lesson, to bring them back: Therefore, behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when it shall no longer be said, ‘As the Lord lives who brought up the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt,’ but ‘As the Lord lives who brought up the people of Israel out of the north country and out of all the countries where he had driven them.’ For I will bring them back to their own land that I gave to their fathers.

It was a miraculous thing, when the Lord brought the people of Israel up out of Egypt. It would be even more miraculous when He brought them back from Babylon. No, there wouldn’t be ten plagues sent against the Babylonians like there had been against the Egyptians. Instead, God would move kings and nations and global powers in order to bring His people back, at the exact time He told them ahead of time, through the prophet Jeremiah, that He would: seventy years.

Behold, I am sending for many fishers, declares the Lord, and they shall catch them. And afterward I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain and every hill, and out of the clefts of the rocks. It’s a promise for the future, not only to hunt for them and catch them and bring them back to their land, but to bring them back into His good graces, back into His Church, into His family.

Still, at the present time, in their current state of rebellion at the time of Jeremiah, God reminds them why they would need saving. For my eyes are on all their ways. They are not hidden from me, nor is their iniquity concealed from my eyes. But first I will doubly repay their iniquity and their sin, because they have polluted my land with the carcasses of their detestable idols, and have filled my inheritance with their abominations.”

God’s promise of future salvation from captivity required atonement, required that the people pay for their sins through punishment. God couldn’t simply overlook their idolatry and the injustice they committed day in and day out. They would pay for it, suffer for it, dearly. And then they would be brought back to the land.

But to be brought back into God’s good graces required a different kind of atonement, one that the people couldn’t possibly make. Because no amount of suffering can truly make up for a person’s sins against the holy God. No amount of punishment can earn the forgiveness of sins. Only the suffering and death of Christ could do that. It was His atoning death for the sins of Israel, and for the sins of everyone else, that would earn forgiveness for Israel, and for the world.

And so Christ, when He came, sent men out to be fishers of men, hunters of sinners, both Jews and Gentiles, to call them to repentance and faith in Christ, so that they might be saved and brought into the “land of Israel,” not the literal land, but the land that represents peace and belonging in God’s kingdom, the land that is the Holy Christian Church.

And so Jeremiah, knowing this, turns to the Lord in prayer and praise: O Lord, my strength and my stronghold, my refuge in the day of trouble, to you shall the nations come from the ends of the earth and say: “Our fathers have inherited nothing but lies, worthless things in which there is no profit. Can man make for himself gods? Such are not gods!” “The nations” are the Gentiles, those who didn’t grow up hearing about and believing in the true God who promised since the very beginning to send a Savior of mankind. The Gentiles grew up believing in many gods, making idols for themselves and making up sacrifices to try to appease the gods and purchase their favor. But when the fishermen would reach them, like the apostle Paul, for example, many of those Gentiles would realize how foolish their idolatry was, that their gods were not gods at all. They would come in faith to the God of Israel, and be rescued from sin, death, and the devil, together with the small number of the Jews who would do the same.

Now, you here are not fishermen, in the proper sense. You haven’t been sent out by Jesus to preach and teach and baptize in His name. You’re not fishermen. But you are lighthouses! Each one of you, a little lighthouse shining across the dark sea, so that men may see your light, the light of believers in Christ Jesus living visibly, living openly according to your faith. Isn’t that what Jesus said in the second Lesson you heard this evening? You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. You are a lighthouse, shining in the darkness, when you regularly make time to gather around the preaching of God’s Word. You are a lighthouse, shining in the darkness, when you show kindness, mercy, and love in your home, and in your school, and among your friends, family, and fellow citizens. You’re a lighthouse when you walk openly according to God’s commandments, when you avoid evil, when you dress modestly, when your speech is salted with God’s word, with praise for God, and with invitations to come and see what Christ has to offer here.

This is your calling. This is your purpose. And wherever Christians live according to our calling and purpose, there God accomplishes what He says through the prophet Jeremiah: “Therefore, behold, I will make them know, this once I will make them know my power and my might, and they shall know that my name is the Lord.” You, Christians, have been hunted and fished from among the nations. You know God’s power and might, His goodness and faithfulness in Christ. Now live according to your calling and purpose, and pray that God may use you to make Himself known to the world. Amen.

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Mercy in practice within the Church

Posted on July 1, 2026 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for the week of Trinity 4

Isaiah 58:6-12

When you read the Old Testament, you always have to keep certain basic things in mind, like, Who is speaking (or writing)? To whom is he speaking, and in what context? When you read the prophets, like Isaiah, the speaker is almost always the prophet, who is almost always speaking for God, who is almost always speaking directly to the people of Israel. And what’s important to remember about the people of Israel? Well, you have to remember that they were all blood relatives of one another, all descended from Israel (or Jacob). They were both an earthly nation, with an earthly government and an earthly society, and they were a religious people, all living under and governed by the covenant God had made with them at Mt. Sinai, which told them, not only how they were to worship God, but also how they were supposed to live together and treat one another in their godly society, promising great earthly rewards if they followed God’s covenant. The society of Israel and the Church of Israel were one and the same thing. All Israelites were blood relatives of one another, all fellow citizens, all fellow church members, all living under the covenant or “testament” of Mt. Sinai. You’d think that would result in a beautiful, loving, peaceful, family-oriented society, wouldn’t you? But it didn’t.

The next thing that’s helpful to keep in mind when you read the Old Testament is when the prophet is speaking, at what state of Israel’s development as a church-nation. Almost all the prophets prophesied to Israel after King Solomon, during the years of the divided kingdom, roughly four hundred years of steady decline, leading up to the Babylonian captivity in the late 500’s BC. And then, of course, there were a few prophets who wrote during the exile and after the exile was over. Why is that important to remember? Because people today like to just open up a Bible, read some verses, and pretend that God is speaking directly to them, in their context, which is not true, and which will lead to all sorts of strange interpretations.

Well, when is Isaiah writing? Hopefully you remember this, since we took a whole year to study chapters 40-66. Isaiah is writing in about 700 BC, during the latter part of the divided kingdom, after the nation, both north and south, had already largely abandoned their God, although they kept all the trappings of the Jewish religion so they could still claim to be religious people. And they had already proven that they were incapable of living together in love, even though they were all blood-related, fellow church members, and living under the covenant of Sinai. One of Isaiah’s main tasks was to announce to that stubborn, mostly merciless people that God was preparing to punish them for their persistent wickedness by bringing foreigners in to destroy Jerusalem and to take them all captive. Meanwhile, the people kept on committing injustice, fraud, and violence in their church-society, while pretending that their outward religious observances were all that God should really care about. Like fasting. “Why is God so upset with us? We fast for Him, don’t we?”

That’s the context in which Isaiah writes the words you heard a little while ago, where God says to Israel: “Is not this the fast that I have chosen: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? The outward religious observance of fasting was of no interest to God whatsoever, without the inner devotion toward God and mercy toward their neighbors that were supposed to go with it—inner devotion and mercy that would have led the Israelites to stop acting wickedly toward one another; to stop placing “yokes,” or unjust burdens on their fellow citizens; to stop oppressing the innocent or the weak, just because they could; and to defend their neighbors—their fellow church members—from “yokes” placed upon them by others.

The Lord goes on: Is not the fast that I have chosen to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh? Hiding themselves from their own flesh, that is, when they saw their own flesh and blood fellow citizens and church members suffering, instead of offering them whatever help they could, they hid. Like pretending you’re not home when the doorbell rings and you know it’s someone you don’t want to see. That’s how they behaved, when they saw their fellow citizens and church members literally going hungry, having lost their last shred of clothing, because, remember, there was no welfare, there was no WIC, no safety net. If your crops failed, if your house burned down, if the man of the house became seriously injured or ill, your family became destitute, and often, you died—except for the mercy that was supposed to be shown by your own flesh and blood, by your relatives, who were also your fellow church members in Israel. That’s what God wanted! That’s what God commanded, and what Israel had agreed to at Mt. Sinai! In fact, that’s what God expected from those who had been on the receiving end of His own great mercy. But the Israelites had lost their faith, and with it, the genuine care and compassion that believers have for one another.

Then (if you do these things) shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily; your righteousness shall go before you; the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; you shall cry, and he will say, ‘Here I am.’ Again, God promised great blessings to Israel, if they would only keep His covenant, which included having a heart of mercy toward one another and showing compassion, and which didn’t include injustice, oppression, and wickedness. It wasn’t just outward good deeds that would bring about their healing, though. It was the inner repentance that would result in those outward good deeds. God made great promises of deliverance to Israel, and glory for Israel, if only they would repent and amend their sinful ways.

If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness, if you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted. Again, the yoke was the symbol of the unjust oppression of the innocent and the weak. The pointing of the finger, along with the speaking wickedness, symbolized suspicion and false accusations against one another. And isn’t that a beautiful picture, pouring yourself out for the hungry, for your fellow church member, living, not for selfish ambition, but for your brother or sister in God’s kingdom?

Then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday. Remember, I said it was important to know the context of the prophet’s writing? This is Isaiah 58. Just two chapters later, in Isaiah 60, we hear about a light rising out of the darkness of Israel. But it wouldn’t be Israel’s own light. It wouldn’t be Israel’s goodness or mercy that would shine, because Israel would never become the just and merciful people that God called them to be. They wouldn’t lay aside their wickedness. And so their light would never rise in the darkness. But God’s light would, with the coming of the Messiah. This is what God says in Isaiah 60: Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD is dawning upon you. Look, darkness covers the earth, and deep darkness covers the peoples, but the LORD will dawn upon you, and his glory will be seen over you. Nations will walk to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn. That’s a Messianic prophecy. The Christ would come to Israel, and with Him, the glory of God would shine on the nation, and from the nation to the rest of the nations. And the light of Christ would bring people from all nations out of the darkness of unbelief, and of sin, and wickedness, and mercilessness. The Gospel of forgiveness through Christ would work repentance and faith in people from every nation, and those people, whom we call believers, or Christians, would finally begin to reflect the mercy of God among one another—still imperfectly in this life, but perfectly in the next.

So, you see, this text from Isaiah isn’t primarily about giving a handout to the stranger at the intersection. And it certainly isn’t about creating a righteous nation for your children or grandchildren to live in. It’s about how God’s Old Testament people failed to become the merciful people they were called to be. It’s about the need for the Christ to come, to pay for our sins, to call people into His kingdom, and to craft those people, those Christians, into the merciful people He is seeking. That is, and must be, the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit among us all, and within each one of you. Let this little church be known, more and more, for mercy, for how mercy is practiced among our own members toward one another. And then watch for those opportunities that God places before you, from day to day, to show mercy and to act justly toward those on the outside, too. Because when mercy is practiced within the Church of God, the people of God are helped, the people of the world are given a true witness to the Gospel, and, above all, God’s name is glorified. Amen.

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Like Father, like son, when it comes to mercy

Posted on June 28, 2026 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Trinity 4

Romans 8:18-23 + Luke 6:36-42

“Like father, like son,” they say. And I’ve found, it’s true in many ways. A son naturally inherits certain traits and abilities from his father. More than that, certain behaviors or ways of thinking, or talking, tend to rub off almost unintentionally from father to son. And beyond that, a son who admires his father will often choose, intentionally, to become more and more like his father.

The same is true for the Christian. How did you become a Christian? You were “born again” of water and Spirit, through Baptism, through the word of truth, the word about Jesus, the Son of God, who was sent by God the Father in order to give every believer the right to become a child of God, the right to call God your Father. As Paul says in Galatians 3, “You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have been clothed with Christ.”

Well, if that’s true, if you have been born of God, then the saying “like Father, like son” will also apply to you in a spiritual way. Every Christian is remade in the image of God from the moment he is born again, with a New Man who naturally inherits certain traits from his Father. But the Christian must, at the same time, as he grows and matures, strive to become more and more like his heavenly Father, being molded into the image of Christ, who is, by nature, the very image of the Father.

The primary trait of God that is, and that must be passed on to all His children is highlighted for us in today’s Gospel, where Jesus says to His disciples, Therefore be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful.

Mercy. Compassion for the one who is miserable or in need. To be merciful is to be moved to compassion by someone’s neediness or misery. And that describes our heavenly Father perfectly. Even before He created the world, He foresaw man’s misery, all the misery of mankind, which has all been caused by Adam and Eve’s fall into sin, and by the natural corruption of the soul that has passed down to all their descendants, making us hostile to God by nature, making us self-centered and unbelieving. Our sinful nature, and our sinful choices, and our sinful actions are the cause of human misery—not necessarily the direct cause of every hardship, but the overall cause. God foresaw the misery, just as He foresaw the corrupt character of our souls, and all the rebellious and loveless thoughts and actions that we would be guilty of. Not only that, He foresaw the eternal punishment that awaited us all for rebelling against our Creator. And instead of throwing up His hands and saying, “Why bother? Why bother creating these creatures who will rebel against Me? And if I create them, why bother redeeming them from the misery they deserve?”—instead of that, God was moved to compassion by our misery, even though it was our own fault, and, in His mercy, He planned out our salvation, which centers in His beloved Son being born as a man and dying for the sins of mankind, that all might believe in Him and be rescued from all our misery. That’s mercy, which is one of the defining characteristics of our Father in heaven, and of our Savior Jesus Christ.

If you have come to know God rightly, then you know His mercy. And if you have truly been brought to believe in that merciful God, then you have been on the receiving end of His mercy, and you have already been transformed by it, so that you have inherited a new character, a new attitude of mercy, like that of your Father. You have been made new as merciful people, who are moved to compassion toward those who are suffering, or in need, whether their suffering is their own fault, or not.

But the Christian also, at the same time, carries around an old attitude, an old character of mercilessness, that looks on the misery of your neighbor and says with smugness, “Why should I care? They’re getting exactly what they deserve!”

It’s because of that old, sinful nature that dwells in all Christians, even as it reigns completely in all non-believers, that Jesus has to remind and encourage His disciples to be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful.

And so He does. Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned.

You know that our godless, wretched society has latched onto that “Do not judge” command and tried to use it against you whenever you bring up certain sins that people are committing, as if those who hate God had the right to lecture the children of God, as if God forbade His children from recognizing anything as sinful, or from pointing out anyone’s sins to them. There are many ways to answer such unserious people, but sometimes the best answer is just to double down and say, “Oh, I absolutely judge you and condemn you. I have no choice but to agree with God’s word, which reveals your actions as sinful. But it’s God’s judgment you’ll have to deal with on the Last Day if you do not repent.”

It’s not all judging and condemning that Jesus tells His disciples not to engage in. It’s malicious, merciless judging and condemning that He forbids, beginning in the heart, and then extending to the lips. It’s criticizing your fellow Christian, when there’s no need to criticize, especially without taking into account how your words may do more harm than good. It’s taking his words and actions in the unkindest possible way. It’s sticking your nose in where it doesn’t belong. It’s assuming sinful motives or actions, or jumping to conclusions about something he or she said or did. It’s harboring hatred and malice in your heart toward your neighbor, and especially toward your fellow Christian. And it can also happen when you think someone else is sinfully judging and condemning you; you might turn around and sinfully judge and condemn them right back, because you assume that they were judging you first! But this is not how your Father in heaven behaves. And, therefore, such merciless judging and condemning is out of character for a child of God the Father. And yet, it’s all too common for our sinful nature to engage in it.

Forgive, and you will be forgiven. He doesn’t mean, forgive the impenitent. He does mean, have a heart of mercy toward the one who has sinned against you, and always be ready and willing to forgive, without requiring that atonement be made, because you were forgiven freely, without having to pay for your sins. So when your brother or sister comes to you in repentance, you must do as your Father has done for you, or else you will forfeit the forgiveness that you were freely given.

Give, and it will be given to you—a good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, will be placed into your lap. For with the same measure you use, it will be measured back to you. He doesn’t mean, give anything and everything that anyone might ever ask of you. He does mean, have a heart of mercy toward the one who is asking you, and always be ready and willing to give generously, if it’s within your power, if it will actually benefit the one who asks, just as your Father does for you. If you’re generous toward your neighbor, God will be generous with you. But if you’re stingy and close your heart to your brother in need, you have to expect that God will be stingy toward you also.

To illustrate how all this comes back to imitating our merciful God and Father, Jesus tells a little parable. “Can the blind lead the blind? Will they not both fall into a ditch? A disciple is not above his teacher. But everyone who is thoroughly trained will be like his teacher. And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but fail to notice the beam in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me remove the speck in your eye,’ when you yourself fail to see the beam in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the beam from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”

In other words, no matter how much you may think is wrong with someone else, no matter how much you may want to help, you’re useless to him, until you get help for yourself first—the help of addressing your own sins, the help of learning mercy from Jesus’ own example, the help of dealing with your own blind spots, your own heart that is not merciful by nature, but merciless, and self-absorbed, and self-aggrandizing. Your new nature as a reborn Christian is like your merciful Father in heaven, but your old nature is the opposite and so constantly needs to be confronted, and dealt with, and, in fact, put to death, daily, so that your new nature, born from God’s mercy, might arise, daily, to approach your brother in mercy, the mercy you know that you yourself have received from God, and then deal with your neighbor from a position of mercy, not from a position of superiority. Then you will be able to see clearly. Then you will be of use to those around you, the more you appreciate God’s mercy toward you, the more you reflect the mercy of God in the world.

Like Father, like son, when it comes to mercy. So it is already for every Christian, and so it must be as we grow into the image of our merciful Father in heaven, who is merciful and kind not only to the righteous, but also, as Jesus says, to the unthankful and the evil. May God the Holy Spirit grant us grace, that we may become ever more like God the Father, who, in His mercy, has forgiven us all our sins and has made us into His very own sons and daughters, through faith in Christ Jesus. Amen.

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John: The Lord is gracious

Posted on June 24, 2026 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for the Nativity of St. John the Baptist

Isaiah 40:1-5 + Luke 1:57-80

On this Feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, you won’t see a holiday aisle at Walmart or at the Home Depot. No colorful lights adorning streets and houses; no trees with presents under them to remind us of the gift of John’s birth. In the same way, when John was born, there were no herald angels singing, no wise men bringing gifts from afar, no guiding star to lead anyone to his house.

And that’s the way it should be. John the Baptist was not the Christ, as he himself freely admitted. John was the forerunner sent by God to run ahead of Jesus and announce to the Jews that the Christ was right behind him. And once Christ appeared, several months after John appeared, John told his disciples, “He must increase, and I must decrease.” So it’s just as well that the Nativity of Christ gets all the attention. John would have wanted it that way.

But it’s also good and right to pause today on June 24th, six months before that greater Nativity celebration, and give thanks to God for John the Baptist, who was just six months older than Jesus, as the angel Gabriel had announced to Mary that her elderly relative, Elizabeth, the wife of the priest named Zacharias, was already six months pregnant when she herself heard the angel’s announcement.

You may remember how that all happened, how Gabriel appeared to Zacharias while he was ministering in the Temple and announced to him that he and his wife, Elizabeth, even though they had been unable to have children and were now old, were finally going to have a son who would be the prophet of the Most High God and would prepare the way for the Messiah. But Zacharias didn’t believe the angel, and so the angel told him that he would be unable to speak until the child was born.

Well, the child was conceived, and then, nine months later, he was born. That’s where today’s Gospel picks up the story. And then one week later, it was time for him to be circumcised and given his name. Their friends and relatives wanted to call the child “Zacharias,” after his father, but Elizabeth and Zacharias obeyed, instead, the angel’s words and gave him the name “John,” “Yo-hanan,” “The Lord—Yahweh—is gracious.”

The people present for the celebration were amazed and asked, “What then will this child be?” But they already had their answer. His name is “John,” the one who proclaims that the Lord has been gracious in finally sending the Christ into the world.

Well, didn’t all the prophets preach about God’s grace, and the apostles, too? Of course they did. Grace is one of those attributes of God that make up the definition of who He is, a God whose love doesn’t depend at all on a person’s worthiness or goodness. It goes out to all, freely, unearned, because that’s who God is. As He said to Moses, The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation.

John, when he grew up, certainly did also preach about that other truth about God that Moses recorded, that He will by no means clear the guilty, that He visits the iniquity—the sin—of the fathers on the children. John never minced words. He gathered up the whole people of Israel under sin, and showed them their guilt, and warned them about the coming wrath of God. “Repent!” was John’s message in the wilderness. Repent, for even if you are a good and decent person compared to your neighbor, you are guilty before God, and God will by no means clear the guilty, but visits their iniquity upon them.

But what did Zacharias sing in his Spirit-inspired song? “Blessed is the Lord God of Israel, For He has visited and redeemed His people, And has raised up a horn of salvation for us In the house of His servant David.” God’s wrath is being visited against all the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. But God has also visited and redeemed His people and provided the shelter from His wrath. Where? “In the house of His servant David.”

Now, John, Zacharias’ son, was not from the house of David, but from the house of Levi. Zacharias was not singing about his own son, but about the baby who had been growing for three months now in the virgin Mary’s womb, the virgin Mary of the house of David, who had been staying with them for three months.

So just as John’s father pointed to Jesus on the day his son was circumcised, so his son would point to Jesus in his future ministry and preach how the grace of God had visited the Jews in the person of Jesus Christ, how God, in His grace, had sent the Redeemer into the world, to redeem Israel, to redeem all who would put their trust in Him. All of God’s goodness and promises were wrapped up in that one Person, wrapped up so tightly that there is no grace of God anywhere else. Only in His Son Jesus Christ.

And so Zacharias’s song continues, That we should be saved from our enemies And from the hand of all who hate us, To perform the mercy promised to our fathers And to remember His holy covenant. This is what John would preach—that in Christ there is salvation from our enemies—salvation from sin, salvation from death, salvation from the devil. That in Christ God has shown mercy and continues to show mercy. That this mercy was promised long ago to the people of Israel, in the holy covenant He made with Abraham, to bless all the families of the earth through the Son of Abraham, the promised Christ.

Jesus was the Heir of that covenant. And then He Himself established a new covenant in His blood, in which God continually and fully and freely forgives all the sins of the one who is part of this new covenant. You enter this new covenant through baptism and through faith in Christ, because by His blood Jesus has paid for the sins of the world. And so God invites all people to repent and find forgiveness of their sins in Jesus.

But God doesn’t do that inviting silently or secretly. He doesn’t do that inviting with whispers in your ear, or with trumpets sounding from heaven, or with a burden pressing down on your heart. He calls people to faith in Jesus through the spoken word. That’s the task to which John was appointed from birth, to be a preacher of grace, the last of the Old Testament prophets who would herald the Christ, standing right there at the door. That’s what Zacharias sang, “And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Highest; For you will go before the face of the Lord to prepare His ways, To give knowledge of salvation to His people By the remission of their sins.

But again, God doesn’t just throw His grace, life, and forgiveness up in the air, to be scattered on the wind for us to go chasing after, trying to find it, trying to catch it. God locates His grace, His life, His forgiveness in the spoken word, and in water that is connected with that word. John the Baptist preached a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

What John started 2000 years ago is what every preacher of grace has been doing since—showing secure sinners their sins and pointing penitent sinners to Jesus as the location of God’s grace, and bringing Jesus to sinners, with all His grace, with all His forgiveness, in the spoken word and in Holy Baptism, and now, also in the Holy Supper of the forgiveness of sins, the Meal of the New Covenant.

Now pastors are the preachers of grace God sends to His people, to walk in the footsteps of John the Baptist and point people to Christ. John is the chief role model for every preacher, so it’s for good reason we bring him into our Divine Service each and every week. There’s the Baptist, pointing us again to our Baptism in the Invocation, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” John’s there in the Gloria where his own words are quoted, “Lord God, Lamb of God, who takes the sin of the world, have mercy upon us!” He’s there directing us to Jesus’ body and blood on the altar as we sing his words again in the Agnus Dei, “O Christ, Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, have mercy upon us!” Eleison! “Have mercy!” Or another translation would be, “Be gracious to us!” And then there’s John, the preacher of grace, one last time, every week, in the Benediction, “The Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you.”

Yes, the Lord is gracious, and has been gracious to us in sending His Son, the Lord Jesus, who is, as Zacharias so joyfully sang, the Dayspring from on high who has visited us; To give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, To guide our feet into the way of peace. Amen.

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