The Last Sunday of the Church Year – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: Ezra 1:1-7
In Christ Jesus, whose kingdom is not of this world and whose kingdom is not coming with signs that can be observed (Joh. 18:36, Luk. 17:20), but who will take us into His heavenly kingdom when He returns in glory, dear fellow redeemed:
When a team is preparing for a big rivalry game, the anticipation builds as the game gets closer. The players feel a mixture of nervousness and excitement as they imagine how the contest could play out. The same goes for their fans. Some get there long before the game begins, before the players have taken the field. Then more and more arrive, the noise level increases, the players warm up, everyone waits in tension and hope. Maybe today is the day! Today is a time for greatness! Today we go home victorious!
If you are a sports fan, you can appreciate that feeling of anticipation. But there are many other things that “stir us up,” that rouse us from normal, everyday life: things like our wedding day, the birth of a child, the first day at a new school or a new job, an upcoming birthday or family celebration, the approach of Christmas. These are special days, made even more special by the need to wait for them. The things that give us instant gratification are typically not the things we appreciate the most. It is the things we look forward to and dream about, the things that require patience, no matter how hard it is to wait.
When Jerusalem was destroyed and its people were either killed or taken as slaves to Babylon, it was difficult for them to believe Jeremiah’s prophecy that the LORD would bring His people back again. But this is what the LORD promised: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope” (Jer. 29:10-11).
It was difficult to believe it would actually happen while the people were exiled in a faraway land. Psalm 137 expresses their deep sorrow: “By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our lyres. For there our captors required of us songs, and our tormentors, mirth, saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’ How shall we sing the LORD’s song in a foreign land?” (vv. 1-4).
One of our hymns of the month expresses this same sorrow as we live as exiles in this fallen world: “And now we fight the battle, / But then shall wear the crown / Of full and everlasting / And passionless renown; / And now we watch and struggle, / And now we live in hope, / And Zion in her anguish / With Babylon must cope” (ELH #543, v. 4). Zion is the Christian Church, and Babylon is the sinful world. We don’t fit in with the world. We meet disapproval for our beliefs and sometimes persecution. In some parts of the world, Christians are marked for death simply because they acknowledge Jesus as Savior and Lord.
The LORD has promised an end to these trials, just as He promised an end to the exile of His people in Babylon. But why did He let His people be conquered and taken away in the first place? We heard the reason last week: “they kept mocking the messengers of God, despising his words and scoffing at his prophets, until the wrath of the LORD rose against his people, until there was no remedy” (2Chr. 36:16). The LORD had not acted impulsively or impatiently. He had not wronged His people. He sent them many prophets. They were given many chances to repent. But they chose other gods, false gods. They chose to disobey the God who created them and chose them as His own.
We face the same temptations now, temptations to pursue the pleasures and riches of the world, temptations to follow a self-made spirituality and ignore the called servants of God, temptations to despise His holy Word by choosing to think, speak, and live in ways that we know He condemns. So is it any surprise when God sends us “wake-up calls”? When we experience pain and trouble because of our sinful choices? When He takes away the things we trusted in that cannot save us?
When these sorrows and trials come, we might ask God why He is letting them happen to us. “Have You forsaken me, God? Where are You?” Those questions have us focused in the right direction—not on the empty things of the world, but on God who alone can rescue and save. In our troubles and difficulties, He does not want to push us away from Him but wants to draw us closer. Everything He does is out of love for us. Hebrews 12:6-7 says, “‘For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.’ It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?”
Once He has humbled you and led you to confess your sins against Him, then the LORD stirs up something inside you through the Word of His grace. He declares to you that the sins that separated you from Him and were keeping you from His blessings—all those sins are forgiven. By forgiving your sins, He is telling you that He will not remember them; He will not bring them up again in the future; He will not hold them against you.
That is what forgiveness means: letting go of the right or the desire to punish someone for his wrongs. It is the cancellation of a debt; the removal of sin’s guilt and condemnation (ELS Catechism definition). This would not be possible if Jesus had not paid the penalty for your sins and taken the punishment you deserved. The shedding of His holy blood is the reason why God now freely forgives you, why He operates as though the wrong you did was never done in the first place. The psalmist says, “as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us” (Psa. 103:12).
When the LORD forgives our sins, He stirs up in us the resolve to set aside our sinful habits and check our sinful impulses. He stirs up in us the desire to live the baptismal life, walking in newness of life, clothed in His righteousness, and making His glory known. He stirs up in us the hope that one day we will be free of this sinful flesh and our life in this sinful world and will join Him in the place of no sin—His heavenly, eternal kingdom.
“And now we watch and struggle, / And now we live in hope.” Jeremiah said seventy years of waiting. Long before this prophecy, Isaiah gave the name of the people’s deliverer: Cyrus. Isaiah named him some two hundred years before he made his decree (Isa. 44:28, 45:1). As far as we know, Cyrus was not a believer in the LORD’s promise of salvation. But “the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also put it in writing.”
His decree was that the house of God should be rebuilt in Jerusalem, that His people were free to return to that land, and that all their neighbors should assist in giving them what they needed for their journey and their work. Where else could this come from than the LORD? He also stirred up the spirits of leading Jews to leave their homes of seventy years in Babylon and return to Mount Zion to rebuild the temple and the city. As they prepared to go, they were supplied with all sorts of silver, gold, and costly goods, just like the Egyptians had done so many years before when the Israelite slaves marched out of Egypt.
The return to the Promised Land was not a foolish dream. The LORD had not lied through His prophets. What He says comes to pass. So it is no lie when our Bridegroom tells us He is coming back to take us to the heavenly Zion, to His eternal wedding feast. While we are here, He wants us to keep our lamp of faith burning with the oil He supplies in His Word and Sacraments. He wants us to stay ready for His return (Matthew 25:1-13).
But like all ten virgins in today’s Holy Gospel, we struggle against spiritual drowsiness and sleep. We need the Spirit-filled, life-giving Word of God to stir us up. His Word is what keeps us awake and sober, as today’s Epistle lesson says (1 Thessalonians 5:1-11). The Holy Spirit stirs up our spirits, so that our hearts and minds are set not on the passing things of this world, but on the beautiful, joyful, eternal things to come. These things are as sure as our Lord’s promises. He will come again and take us to His kingdom.
Jesus, our heavenly Cyrus, has made His decree: It is time to prepare to enter the eternal holy city and temple. The cry has gone out, “Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!” The anticipation is building. He’ll be here soon. Our Savior is coming! Could today be the day, the day we go home victorious? In nervousness and excitement, in tension and hope, we worship our LORD, we watch for Him, and we wait.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, forevermore. Amen.
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(picture of the Judean mountains in Israel)