The Baptism of Our Lord – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: St. Matthew 3:13-17
In Christ Jesus, who put His forgiveness and righteousness in the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, so that the Father is well pleased with us His children, dear fellow redeemed:
One of the most remarkable things about the life of Jesus up to the point of His Baptism is how little we know about it. We learn about His birth, His circumcision, and His presentation in the temple as a little baby. We hear about the visit of the wise men and how He had to flee with His family to Egypt when He was under two years old. We hear about His journey to Jerusalem and sitting among the teachers in the temple when He was twelve years old. And that’s it. We know nothing more about His teenage years or twenties beyond the summary recorded by the evangelist Luke: “And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man” (2:52).
That tells us that Jesus was respected by the people around Him. We know He never got in trouble, at least due to a wrong of His own, because He was without sin. He spent His days serving His mother Mary and guardian Joseph and helping His neighbors in need. It is shocking how mundane this seems. We are so used to Jesus active in teaching and miracles, that we have a hard time picturing Him in Nazareth as a regular citizen of the town. But there is a comfort here, too, that in all the time Jesus was living this mostly anonymous life, He was redeeming our lives by His perfect keeping of God’s Law.
And now the time had come for His true nature to be revealed. He traveled from Galilee to where John was baptizing at the Jordan River and stepped down into the water. When John saw Him, he said, “I need to be baptized by You, and do You come to me?” That is a strange statement. At another place in the Gospels, John made it clear that he did not know who the Messiah was until His Baptism: “I myself did not know him,” said John, “but for this purpose I came baptizing with water, that he might be revealed to Israel” (Joh. 1:31).
We know that Jesus and John had met before. John leaped in his mother Elizabeth’s womb when her relative Mary, pregnant with the Christ-Child, greeted her (Luk. 1:41). We assume that more visits between the two families followed through the years. This may be why John had a positive view of Jesus and considered Him to be superior to himself. But having great respect for Jesus was different than recognizing Him as the Messiah.
John saw Jesus in a completely different light after Jesus was baptized. When Jesus came out of the water, the heavens were opened, the Spirit of God descended in the form of a dove and came to rest on Him, and the voice of God the Father said, “This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” If the townspeople of Nazareth were present that day, they would have stood there wide-eyed. They would have said then what they said later: “Is not this Joseph’s son?” (Luk. 4:22). How could Jesus be the beloved Son of God?
But He was! All four evangelists record this event which shows its significance. Nowhere else in the Bible do we see the distinctiveness of the Persons of God depicted so clearly. There stood the Son, upon Him came the Holy Spirit, and from heaven spoke the Father. And yet, these three Persons were still one God. One God from eternity. One God in power and glory. One God over all—always Triune, one God in three Persons.
Once he saw the Holy Spirit come down from heaven upon Jesus, John knew this was the Christ, this was the Savior. He told everyone who would listen: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!… I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God” (Joh. 1:29,34).
The event of Jesus’ Baptism and John’s eyewitness testimony were recorded so you would know who Jesus is. He is more than a man; He is not just the Son of Mary. He is the Son of God. His Baptism was the beginning of His public work, His anointing by the Holy Spirit to His three-fold office as Prophet, High Priest, and King. The Father also left no question about Jesus’ Person. He said, “This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased”—His holy, perfect, eternal Son.
So His Baptism reveals Jesus’ Person, but what about His Purpose? We are baptized, and we bring our children to be baptized, because of our sin. We go to the font for “the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit” (Ti. 3:5). We go to be cleansed “by the washing of water with the word” (Eph. 5:26). We go to be buried and raised with Christ, so we might “walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:4).
But Jesus needed no regeneration and renewal. He needed no cleansing. He had no need of a new spiritual life because He was perfect. What prompted Him to go to the Jordan River to be baptized? Even John questioned why He should need to do this. And Jesus replied, “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” He was baptized not to have sins of His own taken away but to impart His righteousness.
Many theologians have described Jesus’ Baptism as a great exchange. He stood there in the water at the beginning of His public work to have our sins poured over Him. And He went forward as a spotless Lamb to the cross, so that His righteousness would be poured over us. Our sins for His righteousness—that’s the great exchange. Everything Jesus did in obedience to His Father from His Incarnation to His Baptism to the Cross was “to fulfill all righteousness.”
He came to redeem every bit of your sinful life from the moment you were conceived in your mother’s womb and inherited original sin (Psa. 51:5), to the moment you take your last breath. Jesus left nothing undone. He fulfilled every tiny detail in God’s holy Law. He missed nothing. He said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished” (Mat. 5:17-18).
He verified that He did everything He set out to do when He said from the cross, “It is finished” (Joh. 19:30). The fulfillment of God’s Law was complete, and so was the payment for all sin. By becoming a Man, the Son of God put Himself under the Law to keep it in every sinner’s place. And He had a body and soul that could suffer the wrath of God against sin on our behalf. This was God the Father’s plan, and Jesus willingly and perfectly carried it out. “For our sake [God] made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2Co. 5:21).
This righteousness was poured over you and credited to you at your Baptism. Some Christians who misunderstand Baptism regard it as little more than a ritual, a ceremony or tradition of the church that has no power in it. “It is just something external,” they say, “but what really matters is the decision you make in your heart for Christ.” But Jesus does not give us empty rituals. He gives us powerful Sacraments for dispensing His eternal gifts.
After His resurrection, He commanded His Church to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” by baptizing them and teaching them (Mat. 28:18-19). His apostles did this; they baptized sinners of all ages from all kinds of backgrounds. And the Church has continued to do this until the present day. Baptism is the primary means by which sinners are brought into the holy Christian Church and made members of the body of Christ.
Everything you needed to get to heaven was given to you at your Baptism. Galatians 3:27 says, “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” If you have “put on Christ,” what do you lack? What more is there to add? If you have been buried and raised with Him, receiving the benefits of His death and resurrection (Rom. 6:4), what else could you need? All of this came to you as a gift from God.
But it is possible to lose this gift. This would happen if you no longer believed that the Jesus who stepped down into the Jordan River and was nailed to the cross on Calvary is the true Son of God. Or if you no longer believed that He did everything necessary to win your salvation, and therefore did not “fulfill all righteousness” for you.
If you do not believe in Him, then you are on your own. Then you have to answer for every bad thing you have done and for every righteous thing you have left undone. If your sins were not put on Jesus, then they are still on you. If His righteousness was not imparted to you, then you have no righteousness that counts before God.
It is vitally important to have a clear understanding about the gifts God gave you in Baptism, how He made you His own through those waters and changed the course of your life from destruction to deliverance. Jesus’ Nazareth neighbors had a hard time seeing Him as anything more than a man, but His Baptism revealed Him as the true Son of God on a mission to redeem the world. Your neighbors may look at you in the same way, as no different than anyone else.
But through Baptism, you became a true son of God and an heir of His eternal kingdom. You became a member of Jesus’ holy body, which means you are going where He your Head has gone. You are no longer stuck in your sin and destined for eternal death. You have been raised with Christ, you walk in newness of life even now, and you look forward to the eternal joys waiting for you in the Lord’s holy presence. For this we say…
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 from 1895 painting by José Ferraz de Almeida Júnior)
The Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: Galatians 3:15-22
In Christ Jesus, who had compassion on us and came to do for us what we could not do for ourselves, dear fellow redeemed:
The Good Samaritan dressed the wounds of the Jewish man who had been beaten, brought him to an inn to take care of him, and provided funds for his ongoing care. Possibly all this happened without the beaten man’s knowledge as he slowly began to recover from his serious injuries. If he had been unaware about what had been done for him and was then informed about it, how do you think he would respond?
We would expect gratitude. He probably thought he would die on that road to Jericho when the robbers attacked him. Yet here he was getting the care he needed and regaining his strength. But suppose his attitude changed as soon as he heard who had helped him: “You say it was a Samaritan?!?” Generally speaking, the Jews and the Samaritans avoided each other. They didn’t like each other. There was a long history of animosity between them. As a rule, they would not go out of their way to help one another.
What if the Jewish man didn’t like the thought of being saved by a Samaritan? What might he do? Think about it in your own life. Imagine a person who has always rubbed you the wrong way, who has brought trouble to your life, who you might even think of as your enemy. Now imagine having a health crisis and waking up to learn that it was your enemy who called the ambulance, who sat by your hospital bed day after day until you finally woke up.
That might result in your enemy becoming your friend. Or you might be suspicious. Is he or she just trying to manipulate me somehow? What’s their angle? You might do what you could to try to cancel your debt with that person. You might say, “What did it cost you to travel to the hospital and eat in the cafeteria? I want to pay you back. Did you miss work? I can compensate you for that too.” But nothing you could do, no amount of money you could pay, would change the fact that your enemy had saved your life. What is the price tag on salvation?
This attempt to balance the scales when a great gift is received is the way many people try to level up with God. They think they can do this by the way they live their life. I expect you have talked with a number of Christians who tell you they hope to be saved because they have “tried to live a good life.” In today’s culture, “living a good life” is less and less tied to any objective standard, like God’s holy Law. It’s more of an internal calculation about what is right and wrong to me which often contradicts God’s Ten Commandments.
But even those who try to keep God’s Law to save themselves are fooling themselves if they think they have done it. God never says we should try our hardest, and that is good enough for Him. Or that as long as we generally do more good than bad, we are okay. Or that we just need to make sure we are better than the people around us.
The Law of God demands our perfection. God says that if you want to get yourself to heaven, the only way to do it is to perfectly do the right things, say the right things, and think the right things. He does not care about what the world cares about. He does not care how attractive you are, how popular you are, how successful you are. He cares about righteousness.
And you and I by our own efforts certainly are not righteous. We might be Good Samaritans in our own way, helping people in need, being generous with our time and money, lifting people up who have been beaten down. But none of these good deeds can open up the gates of heaven, so we can walk through them. Salvation cannot come by what we do because we have not perfectly kept the holy Law of God—not even close.
But St. Paul has some good news to share with us today. By the power of the Holy Spirit, he wrote that God’s gift of salvation is already ours. He explains this by taking us back to Abraham. God made a promise to Abraham. He said, “I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed” (Gen. 22:17-18).
God made this promise not because Abraham had earned it, not because he had shown himself to be perfect. God made this promise because He is a good and merciful God who loves us, a God who promised to save sinners immediately after the first people He made fell into sin. The promise He made to Abraham was a continuation of that first promise. The gift He gives to you now stems from that first promise. “God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son” (Joh. 3:16).
It was only later, some 400 years after God made the promise to Abraham, that He delivered His holy Law to Moses to pass along to the people of Israel. The Law was not put in place as an alternate path to salvation, though some began to think of it this way as time went on. The Israelites later on thought they could please God by their outward behavior, even if there was no faith in their hearts. We see the same attitude in the Jewish religious leaders who actively opposed Jesus’ teaching and work. And we see the same thing today from the people who think God is pleased with them because of how well they have inwardly kept His Commandments.
But if keeping the Law is not an alternate path to salvation, then why did God give it? Paul explains that the Law of God “was added because of transgressions, until the Offspring should come to whom the promise had been made.” The LORD God gave the Law to show the people and remind them why they needed the promise.
If God had not given such a clear standard, etched in stone, what do you suppose would happen? As time passed, the understanding of His will would become weaker and weaker, and consciences would become duller and duller. Then we would have nothing to compare ourselves to but one another, and that is setting the bar pretty low.
God sets the bar high through His Law, very high—too high for us to possibly reach no matter how good we try to be. His Law shows us our sin. It condemns us. That is its chief purpose and function. The Law kills any hope we have of getting ourselves to heaven.
But God’s promise came before the Law. He promised man’s salvation apart from man’s work. He promised to provide an Offspring of Abraham, through whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed. That Offspring was Christ, true God and true Man. When He became Man, the holy Law applied to Him too. But the Law did not break Him like it has broken us. Jesus made His righteousness clear when He said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Mat. 5:17).
It was a bold claim, but Jesus backed it up with perfection, perfection in His actions, words, and thoughts. He stepped in to keep the Law in our place. He shouldered our burden. He is our Good Samaritan who saw us beaten and helpless because of our sin and had compassion on us. He came to do for each and every sinner in human history what not one of us had the strength to do for ourselves. Romans 10:4 says, “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.”
The righteousness we need to enter heaven is ours by faith in Jesus. Everything we need to be saved is supplied by Him. And He not only kept the Law for us. He also paid the consequences for our breaking of God’s Law. He suffered the wrath and punishment of God that we deserved. He endured the eternal flames of hell in our place. For every single wrong we have done, Jesus says, “I forgive you. I paid for that sin.”
Going back to the Law and relying on our own works after we have heard this, would be like the Jewish man trying to pay the Samaritan for his charity, or like trying to repay an enemy who showed us kindness as though we could undo or improve on the good that had been done. Jesus, the Son of God, perfectly lived, died, and rose again for all sinners. He is the fulfillment of that first and best promise. He is God’s gift for our fallen world and for our sinful hearts.
Of course God wants us to live according to His Commandments. He wants us to help anyone in need and show kindness to all our neighbors. But our salvation does not rely on any of that. Our salvation depends on Him. And that’s what makes us certain of it. I am saved, and you are saved because God tells us so. That’s His promise—His gift—and God’s Gift Has No Strings Attached.
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 from the Outdoor Service on August 25, 2024)
The Seventh Sunday after Trinity – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: Romans 6:19-23
In Christ Jesus, who not only freed us from sin, but who also freed us for a life of righteousness, dear fellow redeemed:
In one of the books that the kids and I read recently, we read about a ship exploring unmapped parts of an imaginary sea (The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis). The crew came across an island covered in darkness where a half-wild man swam toward the boat yelling for them to turn back. When he got on board, he told them it was an enchanted island “where dreams come true.” At first, the sailors thought this sounded appealing—who wouldn’t want their dreams to come true? Then it hit them that not all dreams are good dreams, and they rowed away as fast as they could.
This illustrates how something that seems to offer ultimate freedom might actually deliver the opposite. The same goes for the choices we make in our life. We might like to think that we are perfectly free to do whatever we feel like doing. But what if the choices we make result in our having less freedom? So I might think that pursuing my desires is freedom, but if those desires are sinful, then I am being drawn away from holy and noble things, and I become bound up in sin.
And the more bound up in sin I am, the more difficult it is not to sin. Those who are addicted to alcohol and drugs, to pornography, to gambling, or to certain kinds of foods know this well. The more they need their “fix,” even though it is harming them spiritually, mentally, and physically, the harder it is to stop. In fact, all of us are drawn to our particular sins, whatever they may be. We might think we can stay in control and not let our sinful desires control us. But then we fall and keep falling. One theologian put it this way: “[W]e cannot take sin or leave it [as though we are always in control]. Once we take sin, sin has taken us” (Martin Franzmann, Romans: A Commentary, p. 116).
As much as we should resist sin, and as much harm as it does us, we still find ourselves “taking” it. This is because we have a sinful nature, a part of us that is inclined to do the opposite of what God wants. In today’s reading, Paul describes our natural state as a sort of slavery. Slaves of sin pursue “impurity” and “lawlessness leading to more lawlessness.”
This is a slavery we were born into because the perfectly free and righteous Adam and Eve chose to give up this freedom. They disobeyed the command of God and chose lawlessness. We inherited their sin, but we have chosen it too. The apostle John wrote that “Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness” (1Jo. 3:4). And Jesus taught, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin” (Joh. 8:34).
This is very different than what we hear from the world. The world says that freedom is found in “following our heart,” and doing whatever makes us feel happy. We are told to prioritize our own choices and desires without really considering how those choices affect others. And if our plans contradict what God says in the Bible, we are urged to “stay true to ourselves.”
But a life of sin is no free life. It may deliver temporary happiness. You may have pleasure for a time or power or possessions. But all of it will slip through your fingers like a handful of sand. Paul writes, “For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed?” What do the works of sin add up to? What have we actually accomplished by going our own way? Paul states the stark reality: “For the end of those things is death.”
That is what our life of sinful choices results in: death. “For the wages of sin—what we earn by our sin—is death.” A person may think he is free apart from Christ, but he is actually enslaved, and he cannot free himself. Being a slave of sin is like being stuck without water in a boat on the ocean. You can drink the salt water, you can keep sinning, but it will only make you more and more parched until it kills you.
This view of human beings as slaves of sin rather than naturally free is completely rejected by the unbelieving world. Its response is like the Jews who said to Jesus, “[We] have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free’?” (Joh. 8:33). If you don’t know you are separated from God, you won’t know how desperate your situation is. If you don’t know you are a slave of sin and death, you won’t know you need to be freed.
We have compassion for the people around us who are in this state. They don’t know what they don’t know. They need to be awakened spiritually just as we have been through the power of God’s Word. They need to hear—just as we need to keep hearing—what Jesus has done for us, how He entered the prison house of our slavery and removed our chains of sin.
He did this by letting Himself be bound. Even though He never sinned, He accepted the wages of our sin. He took our place and paid that price. He was beaten and flogged for our disobedience. “He was wounded for our transgressions” (Isa. 53:5). We can’t see how deep our sin runs and how much damage it has done. But Jesus knows, because He paid for every last sin of every single person. The price He paid for our freedom was tremendous.
This is what God the Father sent Him to do. The Son of God speaking through the prophet Isaiah said, “the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound” (Isa. 61:1). Jesus came to proclaim and win our liberty and freedom—not liberty and freedom for sin, but liberty and freedom from sin.
Paul emphasizes this point in today’s reading. He says that as you once willingly participated in sin, now through faith dedicate yourself to pursuing righteousness. In fact, he says that it can only be one or the other. Either you are a slave of sin, or you are a slave of righteousness (Rom. 6:18). Slavery to righteousness is not an oppressive slavery; it is not unpleasant. If slavery to sin is like drinking salt water that makes you thirstier, slavery to righteousness is like drinking pure, cold water on a hot day.
God did not create us and redeem us to sin; He created and redeemed us to do good. When we pursue righteousness, we are not acting against God’s purpose for us. We are doing what He called us to do and living according to His will. This is the sanctified life that He works in us through His Word. He brings us more and more in line with His will as He brings us the forgiveness and righteousness of Jesus. This is why we can produce good fruit in our life; it is because we are joined to Jesus.
So we give Him the glory for the good we do. He is the one who works blessings for others through our small efforts. He multiplies our little words and works of righteousness, so they have a great impact. Taking credit for all the good we are able to be part of would be like the disciples taking credit for the food that fed four thousand, because they provided the seven loaves and a few fish (Mar. 8:1-9). That would be obnoxious and prideful.
All that we have and all that we are able to do are gifts from God. We do not deserve the freedom we have in Him—freedom from having to answer for our sins, freedom from the eternal punishment we deserve, freedom to bear good fruit in His name and to enter heaven by His grace. We do not deserve it, but this freedom is most certainly ours. “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
This is what we receive as the “slaves of God.” We receive the inheritance of sons. We receive eternal life. Slavery to God is not oppressive, except to our sinful nature. God guards and keeps us, so that we do not become lost in the darkness where even our worst dreams come true. Through His Word and Sacraments, He leads us out of the darkness of sin, He feeds us so we eat and are satisfied (Mar. 8:8), and He prepares us to inherit His kingdom in the life to come.
The slaves of sin in this world may appear to have everything, but without Christ they have nothing. The slaves of God may appear to have nothing in this life, but in Christ they have everything.
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 from “Crucifixion, Seen from the Cross,” by James Tissot, c. 1890)
(No audio recording is available for this sermon.)
The Festival of the Holy Trinity – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: Romans 11:33-36
In Christ Jesus, who has revealed the Father’s love for us by becoming one with us and who has now sent us the Holy Spirit to guide us into all truth, dear fellow redeemed:
In the spring of 1955, a pathologist performed a regular autopsy on a man who had recently died. But then he did something that crossed an ethical boundary. Though there had been no injury to the man’s brain or any cause to believe that something had gone wrong with it, the pathologist removed it from his skull! He was motivated by the fact that this wasn’t just another person on his table. This was Albert Einstein, a man regarded as one of the great thinkers of the 20th century.
His brain was dissected and put into slides for purposes of research and study. The hope was that some secrets of Einstein’s genius might be uncovered and used to increase human capacity for knowledge and mental capability. More recently, scientists have been experimenting with putting digital chips in the brain that could enhance memory retention or even be used to download information into the brain.
We would all like to be smarter and stronger, getting better and better. But even if we could, even if we made major strides forward from a human perspective, we would still be “know-nothings” compared to God. The apostle Paul speaks of “the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments,” he says, “and how inscrutable—how incomprehensible—His ways!”
The only reason we are able to know anything significant about God is because of what He has revealed to us about Himself. For example, human thinking could never figure out and cannot comprehend that God is Triune—one God in three Persons. Non-Christians such as the Muslims accuse us of having three gods. But that is not the case. We worship “one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity,” as we just confessed in the Athanasian Creed.
The Triune God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and present everywhere, which we remember with the three omni words: omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. God is eternal, holy, wise, and loving. He created all things that exist—the world and everything in it with all its beauty and complexity and the world’s place in the vast and ordered universe.
The evidence of creation alone is enough to show us the unfathomable depth of God. Specialists can spend their entire lives focusing on one tiny part of God’s creation and still learn or understand only a little fraction of it. In the whole scheme and scope of the universe, you and I are just small specks, temporary placeholders on a timeline that stretches behind us for thousands of years and will stretch beyond us for an unknown amount of time.
And yet, though we are certainly little more than fragments of dust in the history of the world, we are known and loved by our Creator God. We know this because He has told us so. This is how He described His approach to the human race, that He is “the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin” (Exo. 34:6-7a).
The crown of His creation—mankind—rebelled against Him and did the one thing He commanded them not to do. But instead of pouring out His anger on them and wiping them off the face of His perfect earth, He made them a promise. He would send a Savior to free them from the grip of sin, death, and devil. That promise was kept when God the Father sent His Son to become one with mankind.
In the incarnate Son of God, we clearly see the mercy and grace of God. God could have condemned us. He could make us pay for our sins. But instead, He chose in His love to redeem us. The Son perfectly obeyed the will of His Father and suffered and died in our place for all our sins. This also is beyond our comprehension. How could sins be paid for that hadn’t even been committed yet, like our sins? And how could the Son die, but not the Father or the Holy Spirit, since these three Persons are one God?
We don’t need to make logical sense out of all this before we accept it as true. Just because something may not jive with our reason doesn’t mean it can’t be true. In fact, accepting only the things that fit our thinking makes us closed-minded, not open-minded. God wants to expand our understanding to include truths that are over and above anything the world can know. We were reminded last Sunday how He did this.
On Pentecost, God the Holy Spirit was poured out on the disciples, so that their message of Christ crucified would reach the ears and hearts of sinners “in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Act. 1:8). In his First Letter to the Corinthians, Paul wrote, “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit” (1Co. 2:12-13a).
The Holy Spirit continues to work through the inspired Word of the Bible, so that sinners are brought to faith and grow in the wisdom and knowledge of God. But even we believers have plenty more to learn. It is easy to forget this. After all, we are baptized, and we have been confirmed. We regularly attend church, and we know way more about the Bible than most of our Christian friends. Our faith is strong! But it doesn’t take much for us to question God.
Where is He, we wonder, when we need help and are hurting? Isn’t He all-powerful and able to change our situation? Or when we were unknowingly heading toward trouble, why didn’t He redirect our steps? Isn’t He all-knowing? Or when we were worried and had doubts, why didn’t He make His presence more obviously known, so we could be certain He is in control? Isn’t He present everywhere?
Paul writes, “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been His counselor?” Are we on God’s level? Can we see things like He does? When you have been around someone who acted like he or she knew everything, you know how irritating that is. It might be the brand new employee who on the first day of the job points out all the things the long-time employees should be doing better. Or the person who has hardly watched a sport, let alone played it, yet who thinks he knows more than the professionals.
Pretty annoying. Pretty laughable. It’s like us trying to tell God what He should be doing better. What do we know about upholding the universe and everything in it? We can’t even keep our own life and behavior under control most of the time! The Lord invites us to cry out to Him and even complain. But we have no right to criticize Him. He is never wrong. He is never unjust. Everything He does is good and right and true, even if we can’t perceive the good.
Another error we make is thinking God owes us something. Paul quoted this from the book of Job: “Or who has given a gift to Him that he might be repaid?” Many people think they deserve payment from God because of what they have done for Him. “I have made sacrifices for you, God. I have served you my whole life. I have always tried to do what was right.” But how good is a work that is done for a reward?
This is the way the apostle Peter was thinking when he said to Jesus, “See, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?” (Mat. 19:27). At another point, the mother of James and John led her sons to Jesus and said, “Say that these two sons of mine are to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your kingdom” (Mat. 20:21). Jesus’ response in these cases was, “many who are first will be last, and the last first” (19:30), and “whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave” (20:26-27).
Then He added, “even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (v. 28). If we think God owes us anything, we should recall what He has already freely given us. He has given us our very existence, including the body we have, the air we breathe, and the food and possessions we enjoy. He has also redeemed our soul, so that we will spend eternity with Him in heaven and not with the damned in hell.
He has had mercy on us when we did not deserve it. Jesus willingly took our place and shed His holy blood to wash away our sins. He paid for our sins of pride, our thinking that we are pretty good, that we have a better plan, or that we can see more clearly than He can. Our wisdom and knowledge are so small compared to His. Paul writes, “For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.”
“From Him” tells us that God is the Source of all things. Through Him” says that God is the Giver of all that is good. “To Him” means that God is the Goal, the blessed Focus of all that we are and have and do. We can dissect the brains of geniuses and try to enhance our thinking with microchips, but we will never come close to the understanding that the Holy Spirit imparts to us through His Word.
Through the Word, we humbly learn how God Is Merciful to the Know-Nothings like us, and how He leads us more and more, deeper and deeper, into His “riches and wisdom and knowledge.” “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Phi. 4:7).
To Him be glory forever. Amen.
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(picture from “Jesus Traveling” by James Tissot, 1836-1902)
The Sixth Sunday of Easter – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: James 1:22-29
In Christ Jesus, who did every good thing that His Father gave Him to do, so that we sinners would be covered in His righteousness, dear fellow redeemed:
The employee worked hard. He went above and beyond what was asked of him. He never took company things for his personal use. But he still got passed over for promotions in favor of co-workers who were less dedicated and less honest. Why should he work hard if no one notices?
The mother finds time in her busy schedule to put a meal together for her family, and all they can do is complain about what she made. How can they be so ungrateful?
The student tries to be friendly and helpful to her classmates, but they hardly acknowledge that she exists. Why should she be nice when no one seems to care?
We can relate to these situations or ones like them. Each of us has had the experience of doing good things for others, and then either having them not notice or having them criticize our efforts. That hurts! It makes us question whether it might have been better not to try at all. Or it makes us regret that we tried, along with the resolve not to try again in the future. In other words, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”
But there’s a problem with this approach: It makes our doing of good contingent on receiving something in return. Then it’s fair to ask how good our good deed is, if there is really a selfish aim behind it. But how else are we supposed to operate? Who is able to keep doing good when the opposite is thrown back at them? If our good deeds never result in being promoted or thanked or treated with kindness and respect, then why should we try? Then What’s the Point of Doing Good?
We receive an answer to that question in today’s reading. Just before our text, James writes about the salvation we receive through the Word of God. We heard these words last week: “receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls” (v. 21). By calling it “the implanted word,” James indicates that God’s Word should grow in us, and that it should produce fruits in us and through us.
This is why he goes on to say that we should “be doers of the word, and not hearers only.” Notice that he does not say that doing is more important than hearing. In fact, one follows from the other. We are not ready to do until we have heard. Our faith and our salvation come from hearing, not from doing. This is what Romans 10 and Ephesians 2 teach, “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (v. 7). And, “by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (vv. 8-9).
The great error of the Roman Church that Martin Luther called out at the time of the Reformation was the idea that a sinner’s salvation comes from a mixture of his faith and his good works. That is wrong for two reasons: 1) It takes the glory away from Christ who perfectly kept the Law for us and gave up His life to redeem our souls, and 2) it leads us either to pride in our works or to despair because of our failures.
The Bible teaches that salvation was won for us 100% by Jesus and is gifted to us by the work of the Holy Spirit. That is why we can be completely confident of our salvation. It was accomplished for us by Him. It happened outside of us, not inside us—apart from us, not with our assistance. God the Father declares us forgiven, redeemed, saved because of the perfect life, death, and resurrection of His Son Jesus.
This good news, this gracious reality imparted to us—it changes us. It changes our heart, our mind, our purpose, our plans. It changes the way we look at ourselves and at one another. This change is what James describes in his epistle. If we have rightly heard, he says, and faith has been worked in our hearts, then we will certainly do. We will reflect the love we have received from God out toward the people around us.
This love will make us stand out in a world that is so filled with hatred and self-righteousness. The Christian Church throughout history has always been known for its love. Christians have started countless hospitals, orphanages, care centers, soup kitchens, and food pantries around the world to help the poor, helpless, and lonely. Christians defend and care for those whom others cast aside, such as the crippled, the sick, the elderly, and the unwanted.
This is how James describes “pure and undefiled [religion] before God,” to care for those who are most in need, such as “orphans and widows in their affliction.” Then he adds that such pure religion is also, “to keep oneself unstained from the world.” Christians are in the world, but they are not of it. They have a special purpose, a special calling from God. They are set apart for holy things and holy works, even as they live in an unholy world.
But there is a problem: Christians are not perfect either. Often we, too, think selfishly about things. We focus on what others should be doing for us, instead of what we should do for them. Or we keep our faith so well disguised around our friends and co-workers, that they would never guess we believe in Jesus as our Savior. This is hypocrisy, which is one of the sins that James identifies in today’s reading.
It is hypocrisy when we say we believe what God says, but then we act or speak in ways that are contradictory to our beliefs. We have all in our own way played this game. We have been on good behavior around fellow believers but behaved just like our unbelieving acquaintances in other settings. Or we willingly compromised the truth when it seemed advantageous to do so.
In these ways, we don’t look much like the new creation we are through our Baptism into Christ. We don’t look like those who have been transformed by the powerful working of the Holy Spirit through the Word. We don’t look like those who are bound for the kingdom of heaven with the saints and angels who stand in the holy presence of God.
When God looks at how little we have accomplished and how much we have failed, it seems fair that He should ask, “What’s the point?” “What’s the point of all that I do for them, providing for their needs every day, pouring out my blessings upon them? What’s the point of forgiving their sins, when they just sin more and more? What’s the point of doing good to them?”
But God does not ask these questions. He doesn’t ask them, because His love toward us is perfect. It never falters. It never runs out. He does not second-guess His commitment toward us. He loves, because He is love (1Jo. 4:16). He does good toward us, because He is good.
His love is what caused Him to send His only Son to save us. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life” (Joh. 3:16). God did not send His Son in order to get something from us. He sent His Son in order to give grace to us, by fulfilling the law for us, dying for us, rising from the dead in victory for us.
Jesus perfectly carried out this work to save our souls. He did not make His good words and good efforts contingent on others doing good to Him. He kept doing good things, even when He was opposed, mocked, and finally crucified. Even when the nails were piercing His flesh, He prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luk. 23:34).
Jesus’ perfect life of love is already counted as ours by faith. We have nothing to do to earn God’s favor or get ourselves to heaven. We get to work, we get to serve, we get to help, we get to pray for everyone in need as the special agents of God carrying out His mission in the world. “We love because he first loved us” (1Jo. 4:19).
Through the immeasurable love of God toward us, we learn how to love others. We learn that the hard work we put in (like the honest employee), the sacrifices we make (like the meal-making mother), and the kindness we show (like the helpful classmate), are not about what we can get or what we think we deserve. They are about what we can give in recognition of what God has given us. One of the best ways to give to others is to pray for them. This is how we bring their needs to God who promises always to answer our prayers in the way that is best.
God only does good toward us. There is no good apart from Him. We do good to others through our words and actions, because that is what He created and redeemed us for as His children. Since He never runs out of good, neither will we, because “every good gift” comes down to us “from the Father of lights” (Jam. 1:17). “Oh, give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good, for His mercy endures forever” (Psa. 106:1). Amen.
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 from “Jesus and the Little Child” by James Tissot, 1836-1902)
The Feast of the Holy Nativity of Our Lord – Pr. Faugstad exordium & sermon
Festival exordium:
If you set two Christmas presents next to each other, all wrapped up, and one of them is really big while the other is quite small, which one would a child choose? Which one would any of us choose? The possibilities seem so much greater in something big.
The emphasis at Christmas is often on the big things—a house covered with lights on the outside and filled with decorations on the inside, gifts piled up around the tree, great feasts shared with family and friends, grand gestures of charity. All of these are wonderful things, and all of them are tied to Christmas. But none of these big Christmas things is the main thing.
The main thing appears much smaller, hardly significant, easily missed. To find Christmas, you have to look past the lights and decorations and presents and food, and even past friends and family. You have to look back to a humble place in a little town where a poor man and woman welcomed a tiny Baby into the world.
That Baby, wrapped up in swaddling clothes, surrounded with straw like gift bag tissue paper, and placed in the box of a manger, is the greatest gift that has ever been given. That Baby was a gift from the God who made all things on earth and in heaven. That Baby was a gift for you.
But what could this Baby do for you? If He were just a regular baby, He could do nothing for you. If He were just a regular baby, we certainly wouldn’t be gathered here today. But He was no regular baby.
He appeared so small, and yet He was exceedingly great. He appeared so weak, and yet His power was immeasurable. He appeared so helpless, and yet He was the One who would conquer death itself.
That Baby who looked like nothing special was the Son of God incarnate, the Son of God in the flesh—your flesh. He came to be your Brother, to exchange His perfect life for your sinful one, to exchange His joy for your sorrow, to exchange His life for your death.
He is the greatest gift ever given, and He was given for you. Let us rise and sing our festival hymn, #142:
Rejoice, rejoice this happy morn!
A Savior unto us is born,
The Christ, the Lord of glory.
His lowly birth in Bethlehem
The angels from on high proclaim
And sing redemption’s story.
My soul,
Extol
God’s great favor;
Bless Him ever
For salvation.
Give Him praise and adoration!
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Sermon text: St. Luke 2:1-7
In Christ Jesus, “the founder and perfecter of our faith” (Heb. 12:2), “the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” (Rev. 22:13), dear fellow redeemed:
We hear stories from time to time about people who rose up from difficult circumstances to become very successful. They started with nothing and now have great wealth and power. But that doesn’t change the fact that who they are in their genetic make-up had nothing to do with them. We came from our parents, who came from their parents, who came from their parents, and so on.
In that way, we are all inheritors; we inherit both what is good and what is bad from those who came before us. For the good things we inherit, we see the great privilege and the great responsibility that is handed to us. If a good name has been handed down to us, we want to live up to the name. If wealth has been handed to us, we want to use our inheritance wisely.
At the time of Jesus’ birth, it was especially the firstborn son who felt this privilege and responsibility. He received the greatest portion of the family inheritance. The honor and influence that his ancestors had gained were passed on to him. The firstborn son had a lot to live up to and a lot to lose!
The Holy Gospel for today identifies Jesus as the “firstborn son” of Mary. The original Greek states it even more emphatically, “And she gave birth to her son, the firstborn.” This is a way of emphasizing that Mary had no children prior to Jesus. In fact it was impossible for her to have children before Jesus, because she was a virgin (Isa. 7:14; Luk. 1:34).
As the “firstborn son” of Mary, Jesus was descended from the line of King David, who in turn had descended from the great patriarchs Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham who could draw their line back through Noah to the first man Adam. So Jesus had a tremendous inheritance of family, faithfulness, and history funneling down to Him. But there was one thing—one very important thing—He did not inherit. He did not inherit His forefathers’ sin.
All the rest of us do. We were all conceived in the natural way, which means the sin of Adam has come down through the generations all the way to us. The apostle Paul writes, “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned” (Rom. 5:12). And, “For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners” (v. 19). Adam’s sin is ours, as though we were right with him reaching out and taking a bite from the fruit in disobedience to God.
But Adam’s sin did not reach Jesus, because He was conceived in Mary’s womb by the Holy Spirit. The angel Gabriel told Mary, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God” (Luk. 1:35). So Jesus was the firstborn son of Mary, but He was also the first child to be born without sin. He represented the human line He came from, but His birth was also the start of something new, something the world of men had never seen before.
Jesus was not just the firstborn Son of Mary; He is the only-begotten Son of God. There was never a time when the Son of God was not. He is begotten of God the Father from eternity. And “when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son” (Gal. 4:4). He sent Him to take on flesh in Mary’s womb by the power of God the Holy Spirit, so He could be the Redeemer of all sinners.
Once this happened, once God entered our world and took on our flesh, our future became very clear and very bright. What we see Him doing was all done for us. His perfect love for God and neighbor was to fulfill God’s holy Law for us. His innocent suffering and death was to atone for our sins. And His resurrection on the third day was to conquer and cancel our death.
The Bible wraps up all His work for us in the term “firstborn.” St. Paul describes the Christ as “the firstborn of all creation… all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church” (Col. 1:15,16-17). This tells us that we have nothing apart from Him, and we are nothing apart from Him. “[A]ll things were created through him and for him… in him all things hold together”—and especially His holy Church of all believers.
The Son of God came down to earth and clothed Himself in our flesh, so He could clothe us in His righteousness and take us with Him to heaven. The way that He causes us to be spiritually reborn and connected to Him is through His Sacrament of Baptism. He joins us to His holy body and therefore makes us inheritors, heirs, of all that He has fulfilled and done according to the will of His Father.
By the faith given to us at our Baptism, we inherit what is His. Galatians 3:26-27 says, “for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” Whatever the only-begotten Son of God and firstborn Son of Mary has, we have. This was God’s intention all along, even before the beginning of time. Romans 8:29 tells us that we whom God the Father has elected to salvation are “conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers” (Rom. 8:29).
So we keep a close eye on the events of Jesus’ life, because in His life, we see our future unfolding. How can I hope to escape God’s wrath and enter into heaven? Because Jesus lived a perfect life of love for me and paid for all my sins through His death on the cross. How can I hope to live when death will one day take me as it has taken so many others? Because Jesus rose from the dead in triumph over death, so that all who trust in Him share in this victory.
In fact, this is another way that Jesus is referred to as “firstborn.” The same Colossians passage that calls Him “the firstborn of all creation,” later says, “He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent” (Col. 1:15,18). He was the first to be born in holiness, so that we could enter that holiness through our Baptism into Him. He was the first to rise from the dead, so that we could be assured of our resurrection on the last day.
Apart from Jesus, there is no clear way forward, no real hope for the future. Apart from Jesus, all we have to look forward to is getting older and dying. But because “the firstborn of all creation,” entered our world and destroyed sin and death, rising as “the firstborn from the dead,” we know what our future holds. It is a future in Him, covered in His righteousness, filled with His life, going on where He has gone. Jesus First—We Follow.
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2Co. 5:17). We have nothing to add to His redemptive work. All of it is done for us. This is why the Christ came. This is what we celebrate at Christmas. With the angels, we worship this holy Firstborn, our Savior, and glorify His name (Heb. 1:6).
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 from “Adoration of the Shepherds” by Gerard van Honthorst, 1592-1656)
The First Sunday in Advent – Vicar Lehne sermon
Text: St. Matthew 21:1-9
In Christ Jesus, who surpasses our expectations, dear fellow redeemed:
For children, one of the most torturous things in the world, if not the most torturous thing in the world, is waiting to open their presents on Christmas morning. They want to open them as soon as possible, but their parents always seem to find another reason to make them wait longer: the family has to go to church first; the entire family has to be gathered around the tree; dad has to find the camera so that he can take pictures. So, as the kids wait to open their presents, they pass the time by trying to figure out what’s inside them: they look at the size of their presents; pick them up to see how heavy they are; shake them to see if they can hear anything inside that could give them a clue. And sometimes, by the end of their investigation, they think they’ve found out what at least one of their presents is, and it’s something that they’ve wanted for a long time. So, when the time finally comes for them to open that present, they excitedly rip the paper off, open the box, and . . . it’s not what they thought it was after all.
Like children waiting to open their Christmas presents, the people of Israel built up their expectations for what the promised Messiah would be like when he eventually came. And, if kids think that it’s torturous to have to wait to open their presents for an hour or two at the most, the people of Israel had to wait thousands of years for the Messiah to arrive. As they waited, they looked at the prophecies in Scripture that spoke of his coming and interpreted them in an incorrect way. Since many of the prophecies described the coming Messiah as a mighty king who would save his people, the people of Israel looked at their current situation, being forced to live under Roman rule, and interpreted those prophecies to mean that the coming Messiah would be a mighty earthly king who would overthrow the Romans and give their nation back to them.
Because of the expectations that the people of Israel had, they probably expected the Messiah to come in majesty. But how did he come instead? He wasn’t born in a magnificent palace, but in a stable, with a manger, a feeding trough for animals, for his bed. Who were the first ones to behold him? Not kings, but lowly shepherds. Where did he grow up? Not in an important city like Jerusalem, but in the lowly town of Nazareth, a place that was looked down upon for being inferior in education and culture. Whom did he associate himself with? Not with mighty soldiers and the important religious leaders, but with lowly fishermen and those whom the religious leaders considered to be sinners.
But now, the Messiah, Jesus, had the perfect opportunity to finally present himself as the majestic king that he truly is. Jesus knew that this was the last Sunday before he would die an innocent death on the cross, and so, as he prepared to ride into Jerusalem for the last time, he could have done so on the back of a horse, wearing flowing purple robes and a glistening crown. But what did he ride in on instead? On a lowly donkey. And it wasn’t that there were no other animals available that he could have ridden on. Jesus specifically asked his disciples to bring a donkey and her colt to him, which he did to fulfill the prophecy that was spoken by the prophet Zechariah: “Say to the daughter of Zion, ‘Behold, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.’”
Because of the humble way in which Jesus came on Palm Sunday, as well as the humility that he lived in throughout the rest of his earthly life, it was clear that he was not showing off his majesty in the way that the people of Israel expected the Messiah to. But they had not given up their hope just yet. Even though Jesus had not yet shown his power and might by confronting the Roman rulers, he showed his power and might through the countless miracles that he performed throughout his ministry. Surely, he intended to use this power to save them from the Romans. So, as he humbly rode into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, the people of Israel praised him and shouted, “Hosanna,” which means, “Save us now!”
But then came Jesus’ ultimate humiliation. On Maundy Thursday, he was betrayed by Judas, one of his own disciples, and handed over to the Romans, who tortured and mocked him before ultimately putting him to death. Jesus did not shed the blood of the Romans; instead, his own blood was shed by them. He did not wear a glistening crown on his head; instead, he wore a crown of thorns. Where were those who were praising him on Palm Sunday now? At least some of them had turned on him and were the ones who were telling the Romans to put him to death. It had become plain to them that Jesus was not the Messiah that they were hoping for.
But little did the people of Israel know that, by his ultimate humiliation, his innocent suffering and death, Jesus gave them a far greater gift than salvation from the Romans. He gave them salvation from their sins. He may not have established a kingdom on earth for the people of Israel, which would have been only temporary, but, by the shedding of his innocent blood, he did open the gates of the kingdom of heaven to them, a kingdom that has no end. So long as the people of Israel believed in Jesus as their Savior, their promised Messiah, that eternal kingdom would be theirs. And many of them eventually did come to faith in him through the preaching of his Word.
But this gift is not just for the people of Israel. It’s also for the entire rest of world, including you. The torture and mocking that Jesus endured was for you. The sins that Jesus took on himself were your sins. The blood that Jesus shed on the cross was for you, so that the price of all of your sins was paid. He suffered the ultimate humiliation on the cross so that the gates of heaven would be opened to you. But how does Jesus bring this gift to you? He does so through humble means: the means of grace, his Word and Sacraments.
Instead of mighty angels descending from the heavens and declaring to the entire world that Jesus is the promised Messiah and that we are to put our faith in him and do as he has commanded us to do, God sends humble pastors out into all the world to preach his Word to them and teach them what God wants them to believe and do. Instead of putting us through a baptism by fire, in which we are put through a challenging trial that results in us proving our faith to him in the end, God gives us a baptism through water, in which he brings us to faith by the application of water and the speaking of his Word. Instead of preparing a magnificent feast for the entire world to eat that will satisfy all of their earthly hunger, God prepares a humble feast of bread and wine, in which, through the speaking of his Word, we feast on the true body and blood of Jesus for the forgiveness of our sins.
The world looks at the humble ways in which Jesus comes to us and thinks that they’re foolishness. If God really wanted us to believe in him, he would show greater displays of his power and might: he would end world hunger and poverty, making sure that everyone had enough money and food to satisfy their earthly needs; he would bring an end to all of the wars and violence in the world and usher in an era of world peace; he would guarantee that everyone gets to go to heaven by either wiping out all sin from the world or forgiving everyone of their sins, regardless of whether they are repentant of their sins and believe in him or not. The world expects God to behave in the way that they think he should behave, and, because he doesn’t, they don’t want to have anything to do with him and want him out of their lives.
Even we can have our own false expectations for how God should behave. We may not go as far as some of the people of this world do, but there are times when we may think that, if God is really as powerful as he says that he is, why doesn’t he give us the rain that we need in order to make our crops grow? Why doesn’t he put someone in control of the government who will actually fix our country’s problems? Why doesn’t he heal our loved ones who are suffering from pain and sickness? The apostle Paul tells us in Romans 8 that “we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (verse 28). However, we are tempted to think that, if God was really working all things out for the good of those who love him, wouldn’t he only give us good things? What did any of us do to deserve the hard times that God puts us through?
We may think that we know what is best for us, but God says to us in Isaiah 55, “[M]y thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways. . . . For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (verses 8–9). God alone knows what is best for us, and he gives that to us. He gives us what we need for our earthly lives, as well as for our spiritual lives. And while we are all too often focused solely on our earthly needs and desires, God knows that our spiritual needs are the most important things for us, so he makes them easily accessible to everyone by giving them to us through the means of his Word and Sacraments. As Jesus comes to us through these humble means to give us his grace, we join in singing the same words that the people of Israel sang as Jesus rode into Jerusalem to give them his grace, “Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.”
Everything that Jesus did for us is far better than anything we could expect. Through his innocent death on the cross, he paid the price for all our sins. By his resurrection from the dead, he destroyed the power that death had over us. Jesus won the victory for us, and now, that victory is brought to us through the preaching of his Word and through the Sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. The prize that awaits us is greater than anything we can comprehend, and that prize will be ours for all eternity. Jesus, our Messiah, may not have met our false expectations, but by coming to us in humility and giving us the eternal salvation that he won for us on the cross, Jesus surpasses our expectations.
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 from “Entry of Christ into Jerusalem” by Pietro Lorenzetti, 1320)
The Eighth Sunday after Trinity – Vicar Lehne sermon
Text: St. Matthew 7:15-23
In Christ Jesus, in whom we can always put our trust, dear fellow redeemed:
The last few years of my life were spent in the classroom learning how to be a pastor. Throughout those years, there were many times when the professors would have me, along with my fellow classmates, read commentaries on the books of the Bible. Because the people who wrote these commentaries were much smarter than me, I tended to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that what they said in their commentaries was accurate. However, when it came time for us to discuss in class what we learned from the commentaries, there were times when I felt like I was the only one who assumed that the writers were right, as my classmates seemed to be much more willing to question the writers on points that they made than I was. It was then that I realized that, going forward, I should be more critical when reading commentaries on the books of the Bible and should not assume that they are right just because they are smarter than me.
There are times when all of us can assume that someone knows more than us in a particular field because they studied in that field more than us. We trust plumbers who come to fix the pipes in our houses. We trust doctors who tell us if we are sick and what we should do to get better. We trust pastors who tell us what the Bible says and how we should apply what the Bible says to our daily lives. However, while there can certainly be consequences in this life if the plumbers and doctors we trust are wrong, our eternal life can be at risk if the pastors we trust are wrong. So, when it comes to pastors and preachers, who can you trust? (1) Trusting solely in people leads to destruction, while (2) trusting in Jesus leads to heaven.
In our text for today, Jesus warns us to not trust every preacher who comes to us. After all, just because a preacher comes to us does not mean that he was sent to us by God. Jesus called these preachers “false prophets” and says in verse 15 that they “come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.” They look like true prophets on the outside, but in reality, they are false prophets who, if followed, will lead us off of the path to eternal life and down the path to eternal destruction. And it’s no mistake that they appear to be like a fellow sheep either. It’s important to false prophets that they appear to be innocent and harmless, because if they let their true nature show, then the true sheep who follow the true Shepherd would recognize that these so called “prophets” are trying to lead them astray and would turn from them.
These false prophets come in many different forms. Some false prophets rely on miraculous signs and wonders to win people over to them. They have no intention of actually preaching the gospel. They just want to make better lives for themselves by using their lying wonders.
Sometimes they don’t have any miraculous powers at all and only stage their miracles in order to fool us, kind of like a magician doing magic tricks. It may seem real, but there is actually some really clever slight of hand that very few people recognize. Sometimes they actually are using real powers. However, these powers do not come from God. In reality, they are demonic powers. The devil and his angels do have limited powers, and they use those powers to lead people astray.
In our text for today, we do not see Jesus deny that the false prophets were performing miraculous signs. When he says in verse 22 that many false prophets will say to him on the Last Day, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?”, he says in verse 23 that he will respond to them by saying, “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.” These false prophets may be able to fool people, but they aren’t able to fool God. God did not give them these powers, and even if they are claiming to do these miracles in his name, they actually had no intention of honoring anyone but themselves.
Another form that false prophets come in is one that distorts God’s Word, intentionally lying about what the Bible says. These false prophets will often try to win us over by using kernels of truth, such as saying that Jesus preached that we should love one another, as he told his disciples on Maundy Thursday in John 13:34–35. However, they will then preach a lie to go along with it, such as saying that, because Jesus told us to love one another, therefore we should never judge anyone for living a different way than we do, and we should support every kind of lifestyle that exists out there, even though the Bible condemns some of those lifestyles.
Some of these lies can be more convincing than others, and often times the lies are slowly introduced, so that we don’t realize that we are being lied to until it’s too late. This is why we have to be on alert and not trust everyone who claims to be from God. But if false prophets can be so convincing at times that we aren’t aware that they are lying to us, then who can we trust? While trusting solely in people leads to destruction, there is one man in whom we can put our trust: the God-man Jesus. Trusting in Jesus leads to heaven.
Unlike false prophets, who lie in order to win us over and lead us astray, Jesus never lied. Everything that he said during his time on Earth came true. When a centurion demonstrated the great faith that he had after asking Jesus to heal his servant, Jesus said, “Go, let it be done for you as you have believed” (Matthew 8:13). After Jesus said this, the verse continues by saying, “And the servant was healed at that very moment.” After Peter told Jesus that he would never fall away, even if everyone else did, Jesus said to him, “Truly I tell you, this very night, before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times” (Mark 14:30), which ended up happening exactly as Jesus had said. And after Jesus cleansed the temple when it was being used as a house of trade, the Jews asked him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things” (John 2:18)? And Jesus responded, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19). The Jews thought that Jesus was talking about the temple that they were currently standing in, but Jesus was actually talking about his body. So, the account continued by saying, “When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken” (John 2:22).
Therefore, when Jesus says things such as, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die” (John 11:25–26), and “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31–32), we know that we can trust that he is speaking the truth and can confess, as Peter did, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68).
But while we would certainly like to think that we will always believe what Jesus says, in reality, we go through doubts all throughout our lives. We often find ourselves turning to what false prophets say, because what they say sounds better to our sinful nature than what Jesus says. There are times when we don’t think that the Bible makes sense the way that the true prophets of God explain it, so we turn to the false prophets that explain the Bible in a way that does make sense to our rational but sinful minds. There are times when we don’t like to be told that we are wrong or that we need to change, so when we hear false prophets telling us that we are perfect the way we are and that we don’t need to change, we want to listen to them.
We may not sit and listen to a false prophet each week like we listen to our pastor in church, but our sinful nature is always whispering in our ears, urging us to do the things we know are wrong and to neglect the loving things we know we should do. In a way, our sinful nature is the biggest false prophet of them all, and we follow it all the time.
While these false prophets often tell us what we want to hear, Jesus tells us what we need to hear, and what we need to hear is not only that we are poor and wretched sinners who deserve God’s wrath and punishment for turning away from him, but also that Jesus has paid the price for all of our sins so that eternal life is ours. Jesus accomplished this for us by his perfect life and innocent death. During his life, Jesus did not turn away from the Father, like the devil kept tempting him to do, but perfectly followed his Father’s will, which led him all the way to the cross to die for our sins of turning from the Father and following false prophets. And because Jesus perfectly listened to his Father in heaven, that perfect listening is credited to us as righteousness.
The salvation that Jesus won for you is a free gift. This is another way that he sets himself apart from the false prophets. You don’t have to give money in order to receive blessings from God, like some false prophets tell you to do. You don’t have to follow a program that false prophets plan out for you. Salvation is already yours, freely given to you by God through his Word and Sacraments.
Therefore, knowing that Jesus speaks to you truthfully though his Word, you can use his Word to test your pastors. Jesus says in verse 16 that “[y]ou will recognize [false prophets] by their fruits.” Your pastors are called to preach God’s Word. Therefore, follow the example of the Bereans, who “examin[ed] the Scriptures daily to see if these things [that Paul and Silas were saying in the synagogue] were so” (Acts 17:11). If your pastors are not preaching the sound doctrine that is found in God’s Word, you will know that they are false prophets, but if they are preaching the sound doctrine that is found in God’s Word, you will know that they are true prophets who have been sent by God.
While you may at times not know who you can trust, you know that you can always trust Jesus. He became flesh to live a perfect life and die an innocent death on the cross in order to save you from your sins. He never failed to keep his promises, and he still comes to you to bless you through his holy Word. He truly is the one you can trust.
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 from “The Sermon on the Mount” by Carl Bloch, 1877)
Septuagesima Sunday – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: St. Matthew 20:1-16
In Christ Jesus, who chooses to give what belongs to Him to those who have not earned it and do not deserve it, dear fellow redeemed:
If you have ever baled hay, butchered chickens, shoveled out a barn by hand, or even weeded the garden, you know the difference between a full day of work and about an hour of work. And I expect you have had the experience of working hard at something and then having someone stop by to help when the work is almost done. You would rather they didn’t help at all instead of acting like they had been part of the crew all along.
You can imagine how the workers in our parable felt after putting in a full day. Of course they expected to receive more than the latecomers! But the foreman paid everyone the same. What a shock this was! The latecomers were shocked to receive so much for so little. And the full-day workers were shocked to receive the same as the latecomers. Jesus’ parable shocks us too.
But there are some details that Jesus leaves out. He tells us how long the workers worked, but He does not tell us how well the workers worked. We naturally assume that the ability and effort of all the workers was about the same. But that isn’t necessarily so. It could be that the workers who spent the whole day in the vineyard were the poorest workers while the ones hired last were the best.
Think about your own experience. Have you ever seen one employee do more in an hour than another employee does in a day? Or is it always the case that the workers with the longest tenure somewhere are always better than the workers who are relatively new? Quantity does not equal quality. Just putting in the time does not mean that higher compensation is deserved.
We don’t know who the best workers in the vineyard were. Jesus does not tell us. His point, which He makes right before today’s reading and at the very end of it is that “the last will be first, and the first last.” He says that those who expect to receive the most from God will receive the least. And those who expect to receive the least will receive the most.
So what will you and I have? Jesus’ parable is a picture of the members of His Church. We have been called away from our idleness in the world and have been put to work in the Lord’s vineyard. Many of us here have been in the vineyard a long time. We were brought into God’s kingdom through our Baptism when we were babies, and we have remained in the kingdom by faith in our Savior.
Being a part of this kingdom has required some sacrifices. The all-day workers said they had “borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.” We bear the burden of the curse of sin brought on by Adam and Eve. There is pain in child-bearing and child-rearing, conflict in relationships, difficulties in our jobs. And the devil, the world, and our own flesh are opposed to righteousness and a life of humble faith. Their pressure and persecution can seem like a scorching heat that we will not be able to endure.
So then the longer we do endure, the more we expect we deserve. But as soon as we start thinking about what we deserve from God, the less productive we are in our work. You’ve had co-workers like this. They spend the entire shift telling you how badly they are treated by the boss, how much more they should be paid, and how much they hate the work. And all along, you think to yourself: “I know why the boss gets tired of you. I know why you aren’t getting a raise. And I know why you are so unhappy at work. It’s because of YOU!”
Now it certainly can be the case that your boss is not qualified, that you should receive better compensation, and that your work is no fun. But even if those things are true, you can make the most of it, give it your best, and thank God for what you have. You and I don’t have to grumble and complain. We don’t have to point our fingers. We don’t have to focus on what we don’t have; we can focus on what we do have.
What do we have? We have a place in the vineyard, a place in the kingdom of God. There is work to be done in the kingdom, but everyone who was invited to the vineyard went. Work in the vineyard was obviously better than sitting hungry in the marketplace. Being a member of the holy Christian Church, the communion of saints, is obviously better than wasting away in the world, choking on the cares, riches, and pleasures of life, watching the shadow of death creep closer.
It is a great gift to be invited to work in the vineyard, to be called by the Gospel. God did not call you into His kingdom because of your impressive qualities, your amazing work ethic, or your great potential. He called you into His kingdom because He is merciful. What does the all-powerful, all-holy, all-knowing God need from you? He did not call you to believe because of what you could give Him. He called you to believe because of what He wanted to give you.
And what did He want to give you? One denarius. A denarius was a good day’s wage. But it is not the amount that matters here. What matters is that this wage is given no matter how much or how little one works. But isn’t that like communism? And what happens in communism when compensation is not tied to labor output? Everyone does less work, since they are all going to get the same anyway. Isn’t that what would happen to the vineyard owner the next day? Everyone would linger in the marketplace until the end of the day knowing they would receive the same as if they would work all day.
But let’s put this in spiritual terms. You could step out of the vineyard, you could step out of the church. You could set aside God’s Word and follow the passions of your heart. You could tell yourself that there is always time to enter the vineyard later. Now is the time to really live and do what you want. But that is labor too. St. Paul poses this question, “Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?” (Rom. 6:16).
If you are not serving God, you are serving yourself. And if you are serving yourself, you are playing right into the devil’s hands. He knows that if you are not with God, then you are with him. Then you are his. How many Christians do you know who are grateful for all the sinning they did in the past? Grateful for the lying, the stealing, the sexual sin, the drunkenness, the selfish decisions? No, they are ashamed about those things. They wish they had not indulged in them. Paul writes that “the end of those things is death” (v. 21). That’s what standing idle in the marketplace and despising the vineyard gets us. It gets us death, for “the wages of sin—what we earn by our sin—is death” (v. 23).
But the workers in the vineyard—the members of Christ’s body by faith—receive different wages. They receive the gift of grace which leads to eternal life. That is the whole point of Jesus’ parable. It is not to promote communism or a new kind of business model. It is to teach us about grace. Grace is God’s undeserved love. That means it is given apart from any work we do, whether we work a long time or a short time, whether we are among the best workers or the worst.
The spiritual payment we receive from God is pure grace. It is true as Paul says, that “the wages of sin is death.” But there is more: “the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (v. 23). The gracious payment of salvation and eternal life is yours because of what Jesus has done. It is His work—and only His work—that matters. We can make a big deal about what we have done for God. “Look what I have sacrificed for You. Look what I have borne for You. Look how well I have served You, how hard I have worked.”
But it isn’t our work that gets us into heaven. It is only Jesus’ work. Jesus is the one who truly bore “the burden of the day.” He humbled Himself and took all the world’s sin upon Himself. He carried it to the cross and suffered the punishment for every one of our sins, every complaint, our impatience, our selfishness, our weakness. He felt “the scorching heat” of hell for all these sins—the eternal separation from His Father in heaven, so that we never would.
He could not be accused of going halfway with His work or wasting His time as we so often do. He applied Himself wholeheartedly to the keeping of the Law, and He presented His perfect life on our behalf to God the Father. And all our imperfections, all our laziness and grumbling, He washed away with His holy blood.
Everything comes from our merciful Lord as gift. The blessed vineyard of the Church is His. So is the gracious desire to call us out of the darkness of our sin and death to lives of righteousness and fruitfulness in His service. He dispenses to us the riches of His kingdom, not because we have earned them, but because He chose us to receive these gifts. He does not manipulate us. He does not play favorites. He does not treat us unfairly. He gives and gives and gives some more.
So Have You Been Properly Paid for Your Labor? The answer is “no.” Jesus has not given you what you deserve for your imperfect work in His kingdom. Instead He shares His earnings with you. You have nothing, and He gives you everything. You were last, and He makes you first.
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 from 11th century Byzantine manuscript of laborers working in the vineyard [lower portion] and receiving their denarius [upper portion])