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.
+ + +
(picture of the Judean mountains in Israel)
The Third Sunday after Michaelmas (Trinity 21) – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: 2 Chronicles 32:1-23
In Christ Jesus, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit reigns “from everlasting to everlasting” (1Chr. 16:36)—not like “the gods of the peoples of the earth, which are the work of men’s hands,” dear fellow redeemed:
“If God Himself be for me, / I may a host defy;
For when I pray, before me / My foes confounded fly.”
(Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary #517, v. 1)
These are the words of the hymn we just sang, a hymn by the great 17th century Lutheran hymnwriter, Paul Gerhardt. The hymn begins with a conditional statement, “If God Himself be for me / (Then) I may a host defy.” First one thing has to happen—God must be for me—before I may defy a host, a great company, of spiritual enemies. But is it true that God is for me? Can I be sure of that?
There have been many times in life that we questioned if God is for us. Maybe we didn’t seem to fit in anywhere and felt all alone, and we wondered why God didn’t seem to notice or didn’t seem to care. We may have gotten in the middle of a fierce family disagreement, found ourselves in a financial crisis, or dealt with a serious health issue. Perhaps our job was causing great stress, or we lost someone we were very close to. “If God is for me,” we wondered, “why is He letting me experience so much pain and trouble?”
King Hezekiah may have dealt with similar doubts as he watched the great Assyrian army make its way toward Jerusalem. We heard last week how the northern kingdom of Israel was completely overcome by the Assyrians, and whatever Israelites survived were relocated to other places (2Ki. 18:9-12). Now King Sennacherib set his sights on Jerusalem.
After Sennacherib had conquered a number of fortified cities in Judah, Hezekiah tried the appeasement approach. In the parallel account to today’s reading in 2 Kings, Hezekiah told Sennacherib, “Whatever you impose on me I will bear” (18:14). The Assyrian king demanded the payment of three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold. To reach this amount, Hezekiah had to strip the gold from the temple doors and doorposts. He sent almost everything he had to the Assyrians. But it wasn’t enough to appease King Sennacherib. The Assyrian army kept coming and camped outside the city.
The people of Jerusalem were not completely unprepared. The very location of the city made it difficult for enemies to overcome it. It was built on the top of Mount Zion, so any enemies had to go uphill to attack it. Besides that, Hezekiah built up the main wall of the city, added an extra wall outside it, and put up towers all along it. He diverted the water through an underground tunnel to the city, so their enemies could not cut off their water supply. He “made weapons and shields in abundance.”
The odds still seemed very bad for Hezekiah and the people. The Assyrian army was 185,000 soldiers strong (19:35). The Assyrian king’s top official mockingly offered Hezekiah 2,000 horses if he could find riders to sit on them (18:23). The same official speaking for Sennacherib also mocked the LORD: “[F]or no god of any nation or kingdom has been able to deliver his people from my hand or from the hand of my fathers. How much less will your God deliver you out of my hand!” They put the same mockery in print in letters sent to Jerusalem: “Like the gods of the nations of the lands who have not delivered their people from my hands, so the God of Hezekiah will not deliver His people from my hand.”
How would the LORD God respond to these insults? Would He respond at all? Was God for Hezekiah and the people of Jerusalem or not? The answer to that question is not in what the LORD would do for them. What God will do in the future is entirely in His hands and done according to His wisdom. Whether or not God was for His people was answered by what He had already done for them.
He had brought them out of slavery in Egypt. He had given them the Promised Land of Canaan. Though they often rebelled against Him and served other gods, He patiently called them back. He sent faithful prophets to preach to them, and He replaced wicked kings with good ones. Besides all that, He continued to repeat the promise that He would send a Savior to redeem sinners. It was clear that the LORD loved His people and did not want them to be destroyed.
We need to answer the question, “Is God for me?” with this same perspective. We don’t find the answer in what He will do for us, as though He needs to prove Himself to us, or how He will address my current problem or pain. We find the answer in what He has already done for us. Romans 8 makes the answer clear, starting at verse 31, “If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” This is how we know that God is for us: He did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all.
God is for you because the Son of God took on human flesh to save you. God is for you because Jesus perfectly kept the Law on your behalf. God is for you because He took every one of your sins to the cross where He paid for them with His blood. God is for you because He rose in triumph over death and the grave. God is for you because He keeps bringing you the righteousness, forgiveness, and life that He won for you and gives them to you through His Word and Sacraments.
So when you are alone, when you are in the middle of a trial, when you are struggling, when you are under attack, when you feel like nothing will ever be right again, and you question if God is really for you—He is for you. He knows your trouble, and He promises that He will not leave you to fight through it on your own.
He may not address your trouble exactly the way you want or expect, but He will address it in the way that you need. He uses your suffering to build up your endurance in the faith, endurance to produce good character, and character to point you toward hope—the hope of eternal life in heaven, where all suffering, pain, and sorrow will be done away with (Rom. 5:3-4).
Knowing that God is for us makes us confident and bold. We are on the side of our Lord—the winning side. This gives value to all the work we do for Him and our neighbors. He is pleased with what we do. He loves us and has redeemed us from our sins to serve in His name. Unlike the unbelievers of the world, we don’t just focus on ourselves and what we can get in this life. We focus on Him and the blessings He gives us through our service to our families, in our jobs, and in our communities.
As we carry out this work, we are also confident and bold in our prayers. Jesus says, “[W]hatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you” (Joh. 16:23). The model for this boldness is the Lord’s Prayer where we cheerfully demand from our heavenly Father what He has promised to give. We boldly pray, “Give us this day our daily bread,” and “Forgive us our trespasses.” “I am for you,” He says, “so make your request. I am listening; tell Me your concerns.”
Hezekiah showed this same confidence and boldness (at least outwardly) as the Assyrian army came marching over the hills toward Jerusalem. He encouraged the people in their work saying, “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or dismayed before the king of Assyria and all the horde that is with him, for there are more with us than with him. With him is an arm of flesh, but with us is the LORD our God, to help us and to fight our battles.”
From an outsider’s view, victory seemed impossible for Jerusalem just as it often seems impossible for us. We can feel like we are surrounded by fierce enemies, outnumbered, like sitting ducks. How can my family survive the attacks of the devil and the world? How can the Church survive? Do I have enough faith to be saved? It does us no good to look inside ourselves, to trust in our own efforts, our own arms of flesh. We trust in the LORD and His powerful Word. He hasn’t lost yet, and He isn’t about to.
Hezekiah prayed fervently to the LORD, and the LORD heard His prayers (2Ki. 19:6,20). Despite all appearances, despite any logical person’s expectations, Assyria did not destroy Jerusalem. Just when the army was preparing to attack, “the angel of the LORD went out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians” (v. 35). His army destroyed, King Sennacherib “returned with shame of face to his own land.” Then our reading tells us that “when he came into the house of his god, some of his own sons struck him down there with the sword.” Not only were Sennacherib’s gods unable to overcome the people of Jerusalem; they were unable to save him from the scheming hands of his own sons.
The Assyrians messed with the wrong god when they mocked the God of Judah. This was the true God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of David and Hezekiah. This is our God, too, the Triune God—God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. He cannot be defeated. No matter how much the devil and demons and the powerful kingdoms of the world throw at Him or His people, His holy Church endures. Jesus said that “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Mat. 16:18).
We stand firm by the power of His Word, His Word that declares us right with Him, justified, children and heirs of His kingdom. Since He is for us, we are most certainly not alone. We are not outnumbered. We are not without hope.
If God Himself be for me, / I may a host defy;
For when I pray, before me / My foes confounded fly.
If Christ, the Head, befriend me, / If God be my support,
The mischief they intend me / Shall quickly come to naught. (ELH #517, v. 1)
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.
+ + +
(woodcut from “Michael Conquering the Dragon” by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, 1794-1872)
The Second Sunday in Advent – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: Genesis 6:9-22
In Christ Jesus, whom we will see “coming in a cloud with power and great glory” (Luk. 21:27) on the day of judgment, dear fellow redeemed:
When things are not going so well in the nation or in the church, we might find ourselves dreaming about how it would be if certain individuals were still with us. What would George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln say and do about our current challenges on the local and national levels? And in the church, what difference would Martin Luther, C. F. W. Walther, and U. V. Koren make if they were still here preaching and teaching?
For us, these men have been gone a long time. But if we lived in Noah’s day, presumably all these men would still be with us. Genesis 5 gives the ages of Adam and his descendants. Adam lived to be 930 years old. His son Seth lived 912 years. Methuselah, the oldest man named in the Bible and Noah’s grandfather, lived 969 years. So when you overlap the lifetimes of these men, you find that Adam and Methuselah lived concurrently for 243 years.[1] Methuselah’s son Lamech overlapped 56 years with Adam. Now Lamech was Noah’s father! So even though Noah was unable to speak directly with Adam about what happened in the Garden of Eden and the promise God made to crush Satan’s head, Noah’s father certainly could have.
This makes it all the more surprising that the behavior of mankind had degenerated to the point that it had. The reason this had happened is because the people of the promise, the believers, began to intermarry with unbelievers. Why did the believing men do this? We are told it was because the unbelieving women were attractive (Gen. 6:2). Examples like this are why we teach our children to seek out spouses who share the same faith in Christ. A believing spouse can have a beneficial effect on an unbelieving spouse. But the opposite can also be true and often happens, that the faith of a believer is weakened or lost when the unbelieving spouse does not encourage it.
Because of these intermarriages in that early period of history, the community of believers got smaller and smaller, until “the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (v. 5). The first man and first preacher Adam had only recently died, and yet so few cared about God’s promise of salvation. In Genesis 6 just before today’s reading, we are told that “the LORD was sorry that he had made man on the earth” (v. 6). He decided that He would destroy mankind and all the land animals. Only one man found favor in God’s sight—only Noah.
Noah was described in glowing terms—he was “a righteous man, blameless in his generation”; he “walked with God.” In short, Noah was a believer. He knew that he deserved nothing but damnation for his sins, but he believed God’s promise that a Savior was coming. It broke Noah’s heart to see all the ungodliness around him. How could so many have forgotten their Creator? How could he alone be left? No doubt, the devil attacked Noah with terrible trials and persecutions. Noah was an outcast, despised by everyone. Did he think he was so perfect? What made him so sure that his truth was the right one?
Then God gave Noah an even harder task: build a boat, a great big ark, out in the middle of a field. The ark had to be big enough to hold Noah and his family and two of every kind of animal on the earth with seven pairs of all clean animals. God told him what the dimensions of the ark needed to be: 300 cubits long or about the length of a football field and a half, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits tall which would be all of the height of our church steeple. In Iowa, we have the nice story of the Field of Dreams, but making a baseball field in the country does not seem quite as crazy as building a massive boat! And yet Noah did not question God; “he did all that God commanded him.”
Noah is one of the great fathers in the faith. He is an excellent example for us who are also surrounded by all sorts of violence and godlessness. Noah believed God’s warning even when everyone else ridiculed it. They attacked his family and probably tried to sabotage his work, but Noah kept building. Day after day, he encouraged his family by the Word of God and led them in prayer. Day after day, he did the work God gave him to do. And after a period of perhaps 100 years, the massive ark was ready.
Noah’s neighbors spent no time reflecting on their actions. They felt no remorse. Jesus said that “in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark” (Mat. 24:38). They cared nothing about crazy Noah and his boat, and even less about Noah’s preaching of repentance. But what about when animals started climbing into the ark two by two? “Must be some kind of coincidence” or “witchcraft,” they thought. Then the rain started to fall, and Noah was nowhere to be seen. Then they noticed that the door in the side of the ark was shut….
What happened next is almost too terrible to imagine. The waters rose higher and higher. People desperately looked for higher ground, young and old, rich and poor, but age, health, and position meant nothing. Could Noah and his family hear the screaming? Did anyone try to pry open the door from the outside? The rain poured down, the boat came free of its scaffolding, and then there was no sound but rain on the roof.
The same waters that destroyed all living people and land animals outside the ark saved the people and animals inside the ark. They were waters of destruction and salvation. That’s the same way we think about the waters of Baptism—they are waters of destruction and salvation. Baptism drowned your old Adam and washed away the filth of your sin—everything in you that rebelled against your Creator and separated you from Him. At the same time, Baptism gave you a living faith and raised you up to new life in Christ.
1 Peter 3 ties the Flood and Baptism together: “God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ” (20-21). You were baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection and made a member of His holy body. Your Baptism is when you stepped out of the world of darkness and destruction and into the ark of the Church.
You might think of the time we are in as the time when the ark was nearly finished and the rain was about to fall. Jesus tells us to stay ready. The day of judgment is fast approaching. But then we wonder, “How soon?” Perhaps we can eat and drink with the attractive people of the world a little longer, or at least avoid some uncomfortable interactions by keeping our beliefs quiet. And besides, being in the ark of the Church is not always the most pleasant thing. We may grow tired of the personalities around us, the little annoyances and disagreements, the criticisms and occasional coldness we feel from others. Being cooped up in the Church makes the air seem a little stale. We want to be outside! We want to breathe deeply and live fully!
Some say they don’t need the Church at all because they can worship God just fine on their own. That may be so, but when the wind blows and the waves roll, would you rather be in the large ark in good company or alone in a little fishing boat? God calls us as Christians to hear His Word together, to confess our faith together, to kneel together at His Table, to encourage one another. If we remove ourselves from all Christian fellowship, we can’t do these things.
Being together helps to keep us accountable. In love, your fellow Christians can call you to repentance when you have faltered and fallen into sin. In love, they can also point you to your forgiveness and salvation through Jesus who has redeemed you from sin and death. In love, they can help you stay alert and prepared for the Lord’s return. Jesus says that just as the people in Noah’s day paid no attention to the preaching of the truth and were caught unprepared when the Flood came, “so will be the coming of the Son of Man” (Mat. 24:37,39).
In the ark of Christ’s Church, you are kept ready for His coming on the last day. Here in this ark, there are ample supplies—His Word of absolution that frees you from your guilt and comforts you, and the rich food of His body and blood that nourishes and strengthens you and draws you closer together with your fellow believers. With these good supplies, you can weather the storms of temptation and persecution in this world. You can endure suffering because you know that your Lord Jesus Christ is with you, increasing your faith, hope, and love.
You cannot see Him now, and you cannot see how it will be for you on the other side of the storm, but you know He will carry you to safety. That is your certainty. That is your hope. Noah and his family faithfully followed the Word of the Lord and were preserved from the perils of the Flood until they set foot again on a renewed earth. You have the same promise, that your Lord will preserve you until the day of His glorious return when the heavens and the earth will be made new. When that day comes, says Jesus, “straighten up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near” (Luk. 21:28).
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.
+ + +
[1] For more details about this, see “From Creation to Jacob: Communicating the Promise” by Pr. Joseph Abrahamson: https://steadfastlutherans.org/blog/2016/06/from-creation-to-jacob-communicating-the-promise/.
(picture from stained glass at Redeemer Lutheran Church)
The First Sunday in Advent – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: Genesis 3:14-4:2
In Christ Jesus, the Offspring of the virgin, who was called Immanuel, God with us, dear fellow redeemed:
“The LORD God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this, cursed are you.’” What the devil had done was tempt the most special part of God’s creation—mankind—to sin. In the form of or inhabiting a serpent, the devil had approached the first woman with the express purpose of turning her against her Creator. He first tempted her to doubt the Word of God and then to deny the Word of God. She took fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil—the one tree God warned Adam not to eat from—, and she ate. Then she gave some of the fruit to Adam “who was with her,” and he ate (Gen. 3:6).
They did not receive what they were looking for. They were hoping to “be like God,” as the devil had promised them. They failed to appreciate that they already were “like God,” made in His holy image (1:26-27). They did receive part of what the devil had promised, the knowledge of good and evil (3:5). They learned that they used to be good as the caretakers of God’s good creation. Now they had become evil, and they viewed God as their enemy.
This is why they went into hiding when they heard Him walking in the garden. They were afraid of Him. What was He going to do to them? Adam surely remembered what God said about that one tree, that “in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (2:17). They went into hiding because they did not want to be punished for their sin. They did not want to die. In fact, they already had. They were still breathing, but spiritually, they had died. They were separated from God. They were on the devil’s side now.
But the LORD would not let the devil keep them. Their punishment would not be the same as the devil’s punishment. God extended no grace and hope to the devil, but He did to Adam and Eve. The key verse in today’s reading and perhaps in all of Scripture is verse fifteen. God said this to the devil but for mankind’s benefit: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her Offspring; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.”
Just as the devil had manipulated a woman into disobeying God, so it would be through the Offspring of a woman that the devil’s power would be crushed. Martin Luther called this verse the “first comfort, this source of all mercy and fountainhead of all promises” (Luther’s Works, vol. 1, p. 191). He also suggested that God made the prophecy purposely vague, so that the devil would have to fear every woman going forward since any of them might bear the One to destroy him.
God’s promise terrified the devil, but it gave great hope to mankind. God had not changed His mind about death entering the world through sin. But now He delivered the hope of salvation, that One would come to set everything right again, to overcome sin, devil, and death for all humanity. If Adam and Eve thought another path was open to them, that possibility was closed when God posted “the cherubim and a flaming sword” outside the Garden of Eden to keep them away from the tree of life.
There was no other way to be saved than God’s way. Immediately after this, we are told that “Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived.” They trusted what God said, that salvation would come through the woman’s Offspring. They hoped their firstborn son was this Savior. They called him “Cain,” a name that means “acquired” or “gotten” because they had “gotten a man from the LORD.” But Cain was not the promised One. The devil poisoned his mind with anger and hatred, leading to the murder of his brother Abel.
God’s promise would not be fulfilled for many, many years. Child after child would be born, grow old, and die. Women had pain in childbearing like God said they would, while enduring the imperfect rule of men. Men toiled in pain by the sweat of their face to make a living, before returning to the ground from which they were made. Decade after decade, generation after generation, brief life to certain death. Still no Savior.
God’s people might have wondered if His promise would be fulfilled, except that He reminded them with clearer and clearer prophecies as the time approached. The Savior would come from the line of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Judah (Gen. 49:10). He would be a descendant of King David (Psa. 110). He would be born of a virgin (Isa. 7:14). He would be born in Bethlehem (Mic. 5:2). God waited for thousands of years after making His promise, until “the fullness of time had come” (Gal. 4:4).
Then He sent His angel Gabriel to a virgin named Mary. “Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son,” said Gabriel, “and you shall call his name Jesus” (Luk. 1:31). “How will this be,” asked Mary, “since I am a virgin?” And the angel answered her, “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” (1:34-35). The time had finally come! The woman’s Offspring was here. God had entered His creation, taking on human flesh. The devil was about to be ruined.
And all of that, the dark day when the world was plunged into sin, the beautiful, first promise of God, the history of every joy and sadness, hope and pain, life and death, all of it was in the background and in Jesus’ mind as He rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. “Hosanna to the Son of David!” shouted the people. “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” (Mat. 21:9). No one understood what had to be done. No one knew the suffering that Jesus would endure. No one knew what it would take to redeem mankind from the sin that started in Eden.
The death that was brought on the world through a tree had to be undone by death on another tree. The perfection that was lost through sin had to be regained by a perfect sacrifice. The curse of sin had to be directed against One who had never sinned. He had to pay for man’s disobedience. He had to suffer eternal punishment in every person’s place. This is what Jesus, the eternal Son of God, had to do.
He was witness to all that transpired in Eden. He walked with Adam and Eve in perfection and then found them in their sin. He saw all the wickedness that was done from that point on, all the pride, deceitfulness, abuse, unfaithfulness, violence. He was witness to everyone’s sins from Eden onward. And because He is God, He could see even the sins that stretched forward in time, including the sins done in our lifetime, the sins done by us, even our sins today.
What would you think if you had witnessed all that poisonous evil, the terrible pain and destruction, brought about because of mankind’s sins? What would you do? Would you feel compassion for sinners? Or would your anger burn hot against them? Jesus rode forward humbly to His death in every sinner’s place. We hear this Palm Sunday account at the beginning of the Church Year because it teaches us how to think about sin and salvation and Jesus, and how to prepare for His coming.
If any of us is comfortable with our sinning, then we’re not really seeing what Jesus did in Jerusalem. He was not beaten up for anything He had done. He was not driven toward Calvary for His sins. He did not cry out in agony on the cross for His wrongdoing. He was there because of Adam and Eve. He was there because of Cain. He was there because of Abraham and David and Jezebel and Nebuchadnezzar and Mary and Herod and Pontius Pilate—all the sinful people of human history, both prominent and poor, outwardly good and evil. He was there because of you and me, because of our sins.
He was there for you and me. Jesus went to the cross to make satisfaction for our sins. Adam and Eve’s selfishness, shame, and fear—“Put that on Me,” He said. Our lovelessness, our lies, our pride, our pleasure-seeking, our greediness, our despising the holy Word—“I’ll take the punishment,” He said. He paid for the sins of your past, your sins of today, and all the sins that will be done in the future.
This is what God promised right after the fall. This is what He told Adam and Eve and their descendants to look for. This is what He tells us to look to. God kept that first promise from Eden to Jerusalem. We weren’t in the crowd on Palm Sunday, but we should picture ourselves there. While we’re at it, we can picture Adam and Eve standing there in their garments of animal skin with their sons Abel and Seth; Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob looking on; David and his descendants watching with joy. We see there a great “cloud of witnesses” (Heb. 12:1), all who waited for God’s promise to be fulfilled.
And we see there all believers who have lived since that time, up to our day and beyond. We stand there, eyes fixed on Jesus, His praise on our lips. We watch Him go forward, carrying the weight of the whole world. He goes to the cross for our sins. He goes to destroy the works of the devil (1Jo. 3:8). He goes there to save us from death.
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.
+ + +
(picture from “The Procession in the Streets of Jerusalem” by James Tissot, 1836-1902)
The Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Trinity – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
In Christ Jesus, whose work and word is life for us, dear fellow redeemed:
Jairus was desperate. His daughter, just twelve years old, was sick, and she wasn’t getting better. The doctors said there was nothing more they could do. Her parents’ hearts were broken; their tears flowed. They would gladly have taken her place. They would die if only she could live. They felt hopeless. Then Jairus learned that Jesus had just come to the area. He hurried to meet Him, knelt before Him, and begged Him to lay His healing hand on the girl so she would live. Jesus agreed to go. Jairus felt a glimmer of hope.
But while they were on their way, a friend from Jairus’ home met them with terrible news, “Your daughter is dead; do not trouble the Teacher any more” (Luk. 8:49). They were too late. The girl’s time had run out. Her soul had left her body and gone to be with the Lord. Her body lay at rest. But then Jesus turned to Jairus in his anguish and said something strange, “Do not fear; only believe, and she will be well” (v. 50). They kept going. When they got to the house, a great crowd had gathered, “weeping and wailing loudly” (Mar. 5:38). Jesus now addressed them. “Do not weep,” He said, “Go away, for the girl is not dead but sleeping” (Luk. 8:52, Mat. 9:24).
The people in the crowd did not respond like Jairus did. They laughed at Jesus. It was not a laugh of joy or even of surprise. It was a laugh that showed their offense at Jesus’ words and their disdain for His message. They knew the difference between sleep and death! They knew the signs: her heart had stopped, she wasn’t breathing, her skin had gone cold. There was no doubt about it—the girl was dead.
And no doubt she was. But just like the people today who tell us to “trust science” since nothing can be verified apart from science, the people in the crowd failed to account for the power of God. Death was too powerful for the people to overcome, but it wasn’t too powerful for Jesus. They were helpless in the face of death, but Jesus was not.
Jesus sent the crowd out of the house and approached the girl’s bedside. She lay there so still, so peaceful, while all around her was so much pain and sadness. Jesus reached down, took her by the hand, and said two words in Aramaic, “Talitha cumi,” which means, “Little girl, I say to you, arise” (Mar. 5:41). Immediately the girl got up and started walking.
You and I have also stood at the side of deceased people before. We have seen them lying there peacefully, maybe even touched their hands. We looked at their faces and wished that their eyes might open, that they would start breathing again, that they would step out of the casket and be reunited with us. Why doesn’t God do this for us? Why doesn’t He work a miracle? It’s obvious that He can. Nothing is impossible for Him (Luk. 1:37).
But He does not call us to put our hope in what He can do or might do. He calls us to trust in what He has promised. And He does promise to raise our loved ones from the dead, even if it is not as soon as we want. The inspired words of 1 Thessalonians address this pain of loss and the difficulty of waiting for the day of our final redemption. St. Paul wrote to the Thessalonian Christians, “we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.”
It is clear that these Christians were concerned that some among them were dying before the return of Jesus. Would these believers lose out on their chance to be in heaven with glorified body and soul? “No,” says Paul echoing the words of Jesus, “they are only sleeping. Through Jesus, God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep.” But how could they be certain of this? Where was the proof? They needed to look no further than Jesus, who “died and rose again.”
When Jesus died on Good Friday, no one called that a sleep. The soldiers found Him dead on the cross and thrust a spear into His side to make sure of it. Joseph and Nicodemus took down His body, put it in a new tomb, and sealed the tomb with a big stone. No one expected Jesus to come out again. The women made plans to return for a better burial. But everything changed on Easter Sunday. Everything changed for Jesus’ disciples who saw Him alive that day, and everything changed that day for you and me as we approach our own death.
Paul writes that the One who died and rose again, who triumphed over death, is going to return to raise us from the dead. He is going to come and wake us up, just as though we had been sleeping, just as He woke up the little girl. “For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God.” We think of Jesus coming on the clouds with all the angels. But did you remember this passage which says He will come down with a shout, “with a cry of command”?
What is it that He will cry out? Perhaps we have an insight from Jesus raising the young man from Nain to life when He said, “Young man, I say to you, arise” (Luk. 7:14). Or when He called to his friend Lazarus in the tomb, “Lazarus, come out” (Joh. 11:43). Or when He said to Jairus’ daughter, “Little girl, I say to you, arise” (Mar. 5:41). Whatever Jesus’ calls out on the last day—whether “arise!” or “come out!” or something else—our reading tells us clearly what will happen, “the dead in Christ will rise.”
Jesus’ word of command will awaken the dead. It will wake them up just as though they had been sleeping, just as you might wake up someone from a nap. That’s what His Word has the power to do. It gives life. His Word is how you and I were brought to faith in Him. It wasn’t by a decision we made. It wasn’t because we put ourselves in a good position to be influenced by God. It is because God in His mercy and grace looked with love upon us and called us to believe through the Gospel, through the good news of what Jesus did to save us.
When we hear this message, God the Holy Spirit is at work. He is working to plant faith in the hearts of unbelievers and to strengthen faith in the hearts of believers. This Gospel message comforts us when we mourn the death of our loved ones, and it prepares us for our own death. The promises of Jesus are why, though we are certainly saddened by death, we do “not grieve as others do who have no hope.”
Grieving without hope is celebrating a life without celebrating the life of Jesus and the life He won for us. Grieving without hope is looking for some sign of a loved one’s presence in nature or in the coincidences of daily life instead of rejoicing in their bliss in the presence of God. Grieving without hope is removing all trace of a loved one’s life because it hurts too much to think of them, or setting up shrines to them in our homes as though we can keep their spirit with us.
Grieving without hope is separating ourselves from the means God has given for our comfort and strength—His holy Word and Sacraments. There is no hope apart from God in the face of death. The crowd showed their hopelessness when Jesus told them the girl was “not dead but sleeping.” They laughed at Him. They did not trust His Word, so they received no comfort and encouragement.
But how can we be sure that what the Bible says about the last day will happen? How can we know that the dead will be raised, that we will see the people we love again, that we ourselves will wake up from the sleep of death? Besides the fact that there is no hopeful alternative to what God says, the Bible has never been proven false. Everything the Old Testament said about the coming Savior was clearly fulfilled in Jesus. Everything Jesus said would happen, including His suffering, death, and resurrection, did happen.
So why should we doubt what He tells us about His return in glory on the last day? Paul did not make up the words of today’s reading. “For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord,” he wrote. And, “encourage one another with these words.” The words we are privileged to hear today are words of life. They are words that cut through our pain, dispel our sadness, break up the clouds of doubt we have. These words point us to what Jesus has done—died on the cross and rose again for our salvation—and to what He will do—descend from heaven in glory to bring all believers with Him to heaven.
So rest well, dear friends in Christ. At the end of your life, you can close your eyes without a care knowing that through Christ your sins are forgiven and eternal life is yours. By His grace, you will drift into the gentle slumber of death. Your soul will immediately fly to the Lord, and your body will lie in peaceful sleep until the day of our Lord’s appearing.
Lord, let at last Thine angels come,
To Abram’s bosom bear me home,
That I may die unfearing;
And in its narrow chamber keep
My body safe in peaceful sleep
Until Thy reappearing.
And then from death awaken me
That these mine eyes with joy may see,
O Son of God, Thy glorious face,
My Savior and my Fount of grace.
Lord Jesus Christ,
My prayer attend, my prayer attend,
And I will praise Thee without end. Amen. (ELH #406, v. 3)
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.
+ + +
(picture from painting by Gabriel von Max, 1878)
The Fifth Sunday after Trinity – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: 1 Peter 3:8-15
In Christ Jesus our Lord, who delivers us from all trouble and fear and leads us safely to His heavenly kingdom, dear fellow redeemed:
On June 25, 1530, the Lutheran princes stood before Emperor Charles V and read The Augsburg Confession containing twenty-eight articles, or points of teaching. Within about a month, their opponents prepared a response to each article called, The Confutation of the Augsburg Confession. After hearing this response, one of the Lutheran theologians prepared another document entitled, The Apology of the Augsburg Confession. That strikes us as strange. Why would the Lutherans be so quick to apologize for what they had confessed so boldly a year before?
Well this was not a document expressing the Lutherans’ remorse or regret for their teaching. It was a defense of their teaching. That is the historic meaning of the word “apology,” which has in more recent times taken on a different—and in some ways opposite—meaning. We find this word in today’s reading. The last verse says, “always being prepared to make a defense.” The Greek word for “make a defense” is apologia.
It is clear that St. Peter is not urging us to say we are sorry for the hope that is in us. He is urging us to be prepared to speak in defense of what we believe. If you have heard of “Christian Apologetics,” this is where the term comes from. We are to be ready to defend our faith against challenges and attacks with well-reasoned and respectful speech.
But it can be intimidating or overwhelming to think of having a conversation about spiritual things with others. We might not feel qualified to explain the faith. We don’t want to say the wrong thing. Or maybe we don’t want others to think less of us or look differently at us because we confess Jesus as Savior and Lord. What can we do to make sure we are prepared when opportunities come up?
We get prepared and we stay prepared by immersing ourselves in God’s holy Word. The better we know it, the better we will be able to explain it. It’s like if you were invited to a game show about music from the 1990s. Leading up to the show, all you would be listening to is 90s music, so you were ready for any questions you might be asked. Or if you wanted to fit in with fans of a particular sport, you would study up on it, so you could confidently “talk shop” about players and strategies.
The salvation that Jesus won for us is the most important topic there is. What He did was not just for a select group of people. He died on the cross, He defeated the devil, He conquered death for everyone, for all people of all time. What God did to save sinners is the difference between eternal life in heaven or eternal death in hell. This is not something to keep to ourselves. This is not something to just dip our toe in or only know a little bit about. The more we hear and learn God’s Word, the more natural it will be for us to both live by the Word and talk about it.
So we listen carefully to it, and we study it diligently—not just for our own sake but also for the benefit of others. Then we are always “prepared to make a defense” for the hope we have. That language, “make a defense,” could make us think in combat terms, like putting up defenses or digging trenches as a way to sort of separate ourselves or pull back from others. This is on our minds more and more as our society seems to be growing more opposed to Christian teaching. We either want to hide away, or we want to fight back with the same anger and harshness as those who oppose us.
But this is not how we are called to give a clear “apology,” a clear defense of our faith as Christians. St. Peter, who recorded today’s reading by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, was writing at a time when Christians were experiencing significant persecution. In the first part of the letter he wrote, “you have been grieved by various trials” (1:6) and referred to unbelievers speaking against them as evildoers (2:12).
How should Christians respond to these attacks? Not by running away or by going on the offensive by being offensive. Peter writes, “all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless.” This fits with Jesus’ teaching about “turning the other cheek” (Mat. 5:39). We are not trying to win any battles in the world, as if conquering the world is our main focus and goal. No, we want souls to be won for Jesus and His eternal kingdom by the power of His Word.
So we want to clearly and confidently speak the Word of God. It is tempting to speak the Law only, calling out all the wrong things in our society. It’s certainly not difficult to see the evil all around us. But we also need to speak the Gospel message of Christ’s forgiveness to wounded and lost souls. The Law can affect outward behavior to some extent, but it is the Gospel that changes hearts by working faith and the Gospel that produces fruits of love toward God and neighbor.
Just before he writes about making a defense, Peter says, “in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy.” That is what compels us to speak, to faithfully confess the truth. It is the fact that Christ is the Lord. The true Son of God and Son of Man is the Lord over sin, devil, and death. He rules over the entire universe, upholding all things “by the word of his power” (Heb. 1:3). Whether or not the world acknowledges and honors Him as Lord, He is the Lord.
But His reign is not seen outwardly. His kingdom is not an institution on earth. Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you” (Luk. 17:20-21). The kingdom of God comes through His Word and Sacraments, and He takes up residence and reigns in our hearts when we are brought to faith.
That’s why Peter says, “in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy.” Because we are redeemed members of the body of Christ, we give evidence of our faith through our words and actions. Christ is the Lord, and we want Him to be the Lord over every part of our life. Christ is holy, and we want His holiness to be reflected in all our conversations and interactions in this world. Our prayer is that through our words and actions of love toward our neighbor, through our gentle and respectful “apology”—our defense of the faith—others will also be brought to faith in Jesus. We want them to have the hope we have.
When unbelievers hear about our hope, they might laugh at or ridicule us. “What hope can you have?” they ask. “You struggle with troubles in life like everyone else. You die just like everyone else. Your churches keep getting smaller and smaller. What do you have that we don’t have?” That’s a fair question. I think we would be asking it, too, if we had not been adopted by God as His children. The answer is that our hope is not in worldly prosperity, in the avoidance of suffering, or in outward displays of God’s glory on earth.
Our hope is in the eternal Son of God humbling Himself and going the way of the cross to pay for our sins and save us. Our hope is in His promises that were made sure by His rising from the dead on the third day. Our hope is in His visible return in glory on the last day to raise up the dead. This hope is not based on anything we have seen or experienced. It is based on the unchanging Word of God. That makes it a sure hope—not an uncertain one, as though it’s anybody’s guess whether these things have happened or will happen.
Our hope is anchored in Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. As He goes, we go. His life is our life. That sets us apart from the world which has only selfish aims in mind. I don’t live for me, and you don’t live for you. We live through Jesus and for Jesus. We live to let others know what He has done, that He has redeemed us, lost and condemned creatures, purchased and won us from all sins, from death and from the power of the devil (Explanation to Second Article of Creed).
He has done this for everyone, for all sinners of all time. This is the saving truth that we know, but the world does not know. “And so we also speak” (2Co. 4:13). We are “prepared to make a defense.” We stand ready to give “a reason for the hope that is in [us].” Not everyone who hears our “apology,” our defense of the faith, will accept it as true. But some might—and some do—by the grace of God.
We know that we cannot expect perfect comfort and contentment in our life on earth. We know that trouble and persecution will come upon all who follow Jesus. But we also know that He is leading and guiding us each step of the way. He comforts and encourages us through His Word. He prepares us to be ready to speak to our neighbors along the way about the hope we have. And He leads us finally to our promised land, to His heavenly kingdom.
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.
+ + +
(picture of the miraculous catch of fish by Raphael, 1515)
The Second Sunday in Advent – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: Romans 15:4-13
In Christ Jesus, who has brought sinners all over the world into His holy body by cleansing them with His blood (Eph. 2:13), dear fellow redeemed:
In the Holy Gospel for today, Jesus describes what will happen in the world and in the universe before His return on the last day (Luke 21:25-36). Signs will be seen “in sun and moon and stars.” Nations will be distressed because of “the roaring of the sea and the waves,” referring to things like hurricanes, tidal waves, and floods. People will faint with fear and foreboding when they see what is happening.
And then Jesus will return in His glory. Most people will not be ready. Their focus was on other things. Their hope was anchored in the world. That day will come upon them “suddenly like a trap.” They will not escape His judgment. They will be condemned to eternal punishment in hell. You might wonder if you will avoid this fate. You might question if you are faithful enough to be gathered with God’s people in heaven.
Today’s reading from the Epistle to the Romans addresses these concerns. The apostle Paul writes by inspiration that we have something more sure to go by than our thoughts, our experiences, or even a feeling in our gut about where we stand with God. We have the Holy Scriptures. Specifically Paul is talking about the Old Testament, the record of events from the creation of the world to some four hundred years before the birth of Christ.
The Old Testament is far more than a collection of historical accounts, laws, and psalms, which are only useful for historians, lawyers, or musicians who like those sorts of things. Paul writes that “whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction.” As we study the Scriptures, we learn endurance and find encouragement, because we see the trials that God brought His people through and the many examples of His goodness and blessings.
So through the Scriptures we also learn to have hope. We are not the first to have troubles. We are not the first to have worries and doubts. We are not the first to fall short of the glory of God in our sin. We are part of a long line of sinner-saints stretching back through time, back through the Reformation, back through the early Church, back through the apostles, back through the prophets, back through the patriarchs. This is a continuous, unbroken line, because our merciful God has preserved His Church through all of history.
The way He has preserved His Church is through His Scriptures. Both God and His Word are described as giving the same thing. The “God of endurance and encouragement” gives this endurance and encouragement through His Scriptures. The “God of hope” gives hope through His Scriptures. Everything good that God wants to give us, every blessing He has planned for us, comes to us through His Holy Word.
Paul emphasized this point in his epistle to the Christians in Rome by pointing them to God’s promise that salvation was not for the Israelites only but for all people. Those who were not part of God’s chosen people Israel were called the Gentiles. They belonged to the pagan nations around Israel who did not glorify God or listen to His Word. The Gentiles had no reason to hope for God’s mercy based on who they were or what they did or what they could offer to Him. They deserved His wrath for their many sins.
And yet God planned salvation for them. Paul referenced the Old Testament prophecies recorded by Moses in the 1400s B. C., by David around the year 1000 B. C., and by Isaiah in the 700s B. C. All those prophecies show that Gentiles would join the Israelites in praising the Lord. The Israelites who had the Scriptures must have had a hard time imagining this. “The wicked Gentiles whom we are supposed to stay away from will join us in glorifying the true God? How can this be?”
That question is answered by Isaiah’s prophecy: “The Root of Jesse will come, even He who arises to rule the Gentiles; in Him will the Gentiles hope” (Isa. 11:10). The Gentiles would hope in the “Root of Jesse.” Jesse was the father of King David. Long after the glory had departed from that family, after the last descendant of David sat on the crumbling throne of Jerusalem, a greater King would rise up. Isaiah prophesied that “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit” (11:1).
That King was Jesus, a blood descendant of David through His mother Mary (Luk. 3:23ff.), and a legal descendant of David through His guardian Joseph (Mat. 1:1ff.). Jesus’ family tree contained all manner of sinners—liars, murderers, adulterers, and even some Gentiles. This human line shows what kind of people He came to save—sinful people, guilty of all sorts of wrongdoing against God.
God in His love does not make a distinction between Jew and Gentile anymore. He does not see any one group of people as better than another, and neither should we. Men are not better than women, or women than men. Republicans are not better than Democrats, or Democrats than Republicans. Americans are not better than foreigners, or foreigners than Americans. Even Christians are not better than non-Christians in the sense of being less guilty of sin.
Romans 3 says, “For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (vv. 22-23). That should give us a great sympathy toward the people around us. They struggle with sin just like we do. They probably regret a lot of things just like we do. And Jesus died for their sins just as certainly as He died for ours. Who can be below me, unworthy of my love, if Jesus, who was perfect in every way, who never did any wrong toward anyone—if He humbled Himself to be nailed to a cross and die for all my sins?
That is our hope, a hope that is clearly spelled out for us in the Old and New Testament Scriptures. Jesus died for me. Jesus died for you. Jesus died for every sinner in human history. It is His sacrifice that brings together people of various nationalities, languages, and customs into one holy body, into His body the Church.
As members of one body, God wants us to glorify Him with one voice. Some Christians take this to mean that we need to set aside our doctrinal differences, and we need to compromise the Bible’s teaching for the sake of outward unity among Christians. This is the reason why many churches in our area will hold joint worship services. They believe and teach many different things in their own buildings, but they still think something can be gained by an outward show of unity. This is a false unity that we want nothing to do with.
Unity in the church is never to be looked for outside of the Scriptures, but in and through the Scriptures. God’s Word creates the only unity worth having, as the Holy Spirit brings us to Christ and Christ to us. Unity in the church is God’s work, not ours. Paul writes, “May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” We see here that God grants harmony, and that this harmony will be built on Christ Jesus and grow through Him if it is true harmony.
So we don’t create this unity, but we certainly can destroy it. We destroy unity in the church when we put anything else before God’s Holy Word. Maybe it is our pride—we want things a certain way, and we insist that everything happen just the way we want it, or else there is going to be a big fight. Or maybe it is our passions—instead of resisting our sinful desires, we give in to them and give no thought to how our actions affect and hurt the whole body of Christ. Or maybe it is our prejudice—we think that we could never work with people who have this background, who look like this, or talk like that.
When we give in to our pride, our passions, our prejudice, or any other sins, we simultaneously give up all hope. Trusting in our own way always leads to hopelessness. But God in His mercy calls us out of our hopelessness and away from our sin. He leads us to repentance, to the humble acknowledgement that we have done wrong, and to the conviction that we don’t want to keep doing wrong.
Then the Holy Spirit through the Holy Word points us to Jesus. “That Root of Jesse came forth for you,” He says. “He came to be your King and bring you into His kingdom. He came to pay for all your sins and cover you in His holiness. You are not destined for the Father’s wrath and punishment. You have salvation by faith in His Son.”
That is the hope given to you and declared to you in both the Old and the New Testaments. It is the hope that gives “endurance and encouragement” as the world around us devolves into selfishness, hatred, and deceit. We Glorify God for His Gift of Hope. The hope we have in Jesus gives us joy in trying and troubling times, and it gives us peace in our distresses.
Jesus comes through His Holy Word to bring us this joy and peace and to strengthen our confidence that He will return on the last day. He will save us from the judgment that awaits those who reject Him. He will bring us safely to His heavenly kingdom. For this, we Gentiles praise and thank Him and extol His holy name, just as the Scriptures said we would.
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.
+ + +
(picture of stained glass from Jerico Lutheran Church)
(audio unavailable for this sermon)
The Festival of All Saints (observed) – Vicar Lehne sermon
Text: St. Matthew 9:18-26
In Christ Jesus, who conquered death so that we may live, dear fellow redeemed:
Death can be a scary thing. This is especially true for those who have no hope. To them, death is the end. So, to make death seem less scary, they try to “soften it” by describing it in nice sounding terms, such as “he is playing eighteen holes on the golf course in the sky,” or, “he lived a good life, and now his legacy lives on,” or, “he will continue to be with you forever, so long as you keep thinking about him.”
The New Testament describes death as a peaceful sleep for those who die in Christ. To the world, describing death as a peaceful sleep is another one of those ways to try to “soften it” and make death seem less scary, but the world does not expect a waking up from that sleep. We can even think this way too, especially when we have just experienced the death of a loved one. However, while (1) death seems like the end to us, in reality, (2) death is only a sleep that Jesus will wake us from. Jesus gives us hope.
Our reading for today begins with a ruler kneeling before Jesus and asking him to lay his hand on his daughter so that she will live. We find out from the Gospels of Mark and Luke that this ruler was named Jairus. We also find out from these two Gospels that Jairus’ daughter wasn’t dead yet, but she was near death. This doesn’t mean that the Gospel of Matthew is giving an inaccurate report of what happened. The account was simply condensed.
Even though Jarius’ daughter wasn’t dead yet, she was so close to death that Jairus had little to no hope that she would be able to recover. The only hope he had was that Jesus could heal her. Jairus wasn’t basing his hope on nothing. Jesus had already healed many people who were sick. He healed an official’s son who was at the point of death (John 4:46–54). He healed a man who had been sick for thirty-eight years (John 5:1–17). He healed Peter’s mother-in-law, who was sick with a high fever (Luke 4:38–39). He healed a paralytic (Mark 2:1–12). And he healed many others besides these (Matthew 8:16–17; 4:23–24).
Jairus had more than enough proof that Jesus had the power to heal his daughter. And then he watched Jesus heal a sick woman who touched the fringe of his garment on the way to his house. Seeing Jesus heal someone right in front of him no doubt gave him even more hope than he already had that Jesus had could save his daughter’s life. He had no reason to fear that his daughter would die so long as Jesus made it to his daughter in time.
Then the bad news came. According to Mark and Luke, after Jesus healed and reassured the sick woman, some men arrived to tell Jairus that his daughter had died. Jesus didn’t make it to Jairus’ daughter in time after all. Hearing this news could cause anyone to lose hope, but Jesus reassured Jairus by saying, “Do not fear; only believe, and she will be well” (Luke 8:50).
What Jesus said to reassure Jairus he also says to reassure us. Jesus entered this world to save us from death by his own death and resurrection. As Jesus said to Martha when her brother Lazarus died, “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).
Despite knowing this, death can still be a scary thing. We can fear the deaths of our loved ones, not wanting to experience the loneliness caused by them no longer being by our sides, or worrying how we will provide for ourselves and our families without their help. We can also fear our own deaths, worrying that it will be painful or that we will leave our families without the help that they need.
But it’s not just physical death that we can fear, but also eternal death. We know that we are by nature sinful and that we rightfully deserve eternal punishment in the fires of hell because of our many sins, a fact that can become clearer to us the closer to death that we get. As a result, we can wonder whether we lived a good enough life or whether we have a strong enough faith to get to heaven.
When any of these fears enter our minds, Jesus offers us reassurance and hope by telling us, “Do not be afraid; only believe” (Mark 5:36). Jesus gives us the faith we need through his Word and Sacraments. Because of this, we believe that Jesus experienced all our sufferings and took all our sins on himself on the cross. We believe that he paid the price for all our sins by his innocent suffering and death. We believe that he did everything necessary to save us. And we believe that he will remain with us through all our struggles, giving us the strength to persevere until the day we enter the peaceful sleep of death and enter eternal life in heaven.
Jairus believed and put his hope in Jesus, even after he received the terrible news that his daughter had died. His friends did not have the same confidence. In fact, the men who came to deliver Jairus the bad news also told him not to bother Jesus anymore since his daughter was now dead (Mark 5:35). In addition, the people who had gathered at Jairus’ house to mourn his daughter’s death laughed at Jesus when he told them that “the girl [was] not dead but sleeping” (verse 24).
Like those who didn’t believe that Jesus could raise Jairus’ daughter from the dead, we are tempted to doubt Jesus’ power over death. We know that God has revealed through his Word that we will rise again on the Last Day and that our bodies will be reunited with our souls. However, despite knowing what the Bible says, it can be difficult for us to have hope that we will rise from the dead. After all, Jesus’ power over death doesn’t change the fact that our loved ones are, for the moment, gone. We might even wonder why Jesus didn’t prevent the death of our loved ones if he has so much power.
Additionally, when our loved ones die and we are faced with the immediate reality of death, we might think that death is the end. Since we have only ever experienced life on earth, we tend not to give much thought at all to life in heaven. So, knowing that we will not see our loved ones again in this life might cause us to think that we will never see them again, despite knowing that the Bible says that we will see them again in heaven.
When we are tempted to doubt Jesus’ power over death and think that death is the end, Jesus gives us reassurance and hope. Jesus simply saying that he has power over death is one thing, but he also backed up his words with his actions. One of the ways he did this was by raising Jairus’ daughter from the dead.
Even though no one besides Jairus seemed to believe that Jesus could raise his daughter from the dead, Jesus proved them wrong. He entered Jairus’ house, took his daughter by the hand, and said to her, “Talitha cumi,” which means, “Little girl, I say to you, arise” (Mark 5:41). And she arose.
This is not the only time that Jesus raised someone from the dead. He later raised the widow of Nain’s son from the dead (Luke 7:11–17). He raised Mary and Martha’s brother, and his friend Lazarus from the dead not long before his own death (John 11:1–41). And, in the greatest raising of all, Jesus raised himself from the dead on the third day after his death.
If Jesus had not risen from the dead, we would have no hope. If death had kept its hold on Jesus and kept him in the ground, then that would mean he isn’t God. And if Jesus wasn’t God, then he would not have paid the price for our sins. But Jesus did rise from dead, and by his resurrection, he proved he is God and defeated death, giving us hope.
But it was not just physical death that Jesus saved us from. He also saved us from two other kinds of death: spiritual death and eternal death. We are all by nature sinful, meaning that we were spiritually dead from the moment we were conceived and could only sin all the time. Even our good deeds were like filthy rags (Isaiah 64:4). Because of the sins we committed, we rightfully deserved to suffer for all eternity in the fires of hell. We couldn’t escape this fate on our own, because we couldn’t choose to do good, let alone choose to believe in Jesus. However, on the cross, Jesus paid the price for all of our sins so that we will not enter eternal death in hell when we physically die, but eternal life in heaven. Additionally, he applied his perfect life to us so that God the Father no longer sees us as his enemies who deserve eternal death in hell, but as his own dear children who deserve eternal life in heaven. So that this reality can be ours, Jesus brought us to faith through his Word and Sacraments. In the waters of Holy Baptism, our sinful natures were drowned, and our new selves rose up.
Through Baptism, Jesus has already raised us from the dead, making us a part of the saints triumphant, even though we have yet to physically die. Jesus has made us members of his holy body, as he does with all believers. Therefore, our believing loved ones who are already sleeping are not so very far away from us because we are all united in Jesus. Now, whenever we pray to God, join together in praising him, or receive his body and blood at his holy table in his Supper, we are joining in praying, praising, and feasting with the saints triumphant who are already sleeping.
Since Jesus defeated death in all of its forms, the death of the body is no longer the end for those who believe in him, but a peaceful sleep. Death is no different than falling to sleep peacefully in our beds. When our bodies enter the peaceful sleep of death, our souls will be with Jesus in heaven. Then, on the Last Day, the sure hope that we have in Christ will come to pass. When Jesus returns, he will wake all those who believe in him from their peaceful sleep, which include us and our loved ones who are already sleeping, and will reunite our bodies with our souls. But our bodies will not be the imperfect bodies we died in. They will be perfected, and we will never experience the sufferings of this world ever again. Then, Jesus will take all believers in him to heaven—all the saints—to live with him for all eternity.
Those who have no hope do not believe that this could possibly be true. To them, the sure hope that we will live again is a misguided and empty attempt to make death seem less scary. However, this sure hope is a reality for those who die in Christ. Jesus has conquered death by his innocent death on the cross and his resurrection from the dead. Because Jesus has conquered death, we will not die, but live. Because Jesus has conquered death, we have hope.
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.
+ + +
(picture from painting by Gabriel von Max, 1878)
The Festival of Our Lord’s Ascension – Vicar Anderson sermon
Text: St. Mark 16:14-20
In Christ Jesus, your ascended King and Lord, who lives and reigns over all creation, who is still with you until your ascension, dear fellow redeemed:
A role model is a person looked to by others as an example to be imitated. While baby-sitting I found out how quickly you can be put into that role. Looking back now, I see why parenting can sometimes be difficult. Children watch every single thing that parents do. They watch especially when you think that they are not watching. They point out how impressionable they are. Part of that reason is the trust that they have. Now as children put this trust in their parents and role models, tonight we see Jesus asking for that same trust. Not only is He the one who we want to imitate, and He is our guide, but He is our Savior. And as He ascended into heaven, He puts the trust that we have in Him on display. Jesus assures us with His ascension the hope that we have in Him. We will ascend and meet Him in glory!
St. Mark in this last section of his gospel is giving an overview of Jesus last forty days on earth. In our text we see Jesus rebuking the disciples. “He rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who saw him after he had risen.” Now this rebuke is warranted because of what is recorded before our text. Jesus had appeared to three witnesses after His resurrection and only two witnesses proved something happened. Jesus had appeared to three. On that evidence they should have believed that He had risen.
Like the disciples, we can need that same wake up call. The disciples were told by three witnesses. We have the Scriptures. The Old Testament reveals to us what God demands and promises that someone is going to come and follow those demands perfectly for us. The New Testament reveals to us the heart of the Gospel, Jesus is the Christ who came down from Heaven, lived a perfect life and died for us. When hardships arise in our lives sometimes the first thing we do instead of looking to the Scriptures is look for earthly answers. We forget about God’s promises, and we can question if Jesus is even real, our hearts harden. The same eyewitnesses who had unbelief, they wrote down the gospel to be our witnesses.
Are they still believable? Even the disciples questioned Jesus with His death. Tomorrow marks Ascension, He visibly left us. Why would He leave those He loves? Does He care? Shouldn’t we get special treatment because we follow Him? This would make a lot of sense if God would come and establish an earthly kingdom. We would want a part ruling in that kingdom. These distractions can move us away from the truth. When it looks like it is us against the world or we are just selfish, we don’t want or need that mindset. We have no reason to be selfish or independent. The world wants to be independent, but our independence gets us nowhere.
The command to go into the world also looks as though it is challenging. What will people think of us? We see that they don’t like the message that we have. This message points out the truth of what we have done. The truth is that we have made many mistakes. We don’t like to hear when we have made mistakes. Jesus then says to share the Gospel. This can even be harder when people are already mad because you first told them that they were doing something wrong, that if they don’t change their ways, then they will be condemned. Jesus says, “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 hear the truth that we have done wrong, but then the Gospel comes in and everything changes.
The disciples are brought to faith once again. Jesus immediately puts them to work. He knows that He is not going to be with them much longer. Jesus commands them that they are to spread the Gospel, baptizing all nations. We see how smart Jesus is. Since the disciples are not perfect, what is to stop them from hardening their hearts again? Jesus allows them to perform signs. These signs are not meant to be used like magical spells. They are meant to help those in need. They are special signs used to prove that the Gospel is true. How could the disciples be lying if the message that they are bringing comes with special signs to help those in need? The disciples speak the truth of Christ, and we see how they go out faithfully to do so. They go out, perform these signs, and they gave their lives to preach this saving truth. Even as their Lord had ascended before their eyes, we see that Jesus never left them. These signs were performed in His name. It was not power of the disciples, but the power was Christ. These signs prove that Christ is still carrying out His Work. His enemies can’t stand against Him.
Jesus’ time on earth has ended. Like the disciples, we can sometimes struggle to understand this, but Jesus ascended for your benefit. Jesus’ ascension means that the Holy Spirit would come to the disciples. As the disciples receive these gifts, it is through the Holy Spirit that Christ comes to you. He uses the means of the Word and sacraments. He tells you the benefit of your baptism. With baptism, you have faith that what Christ did for you is true. He died for your sins on the cross and He rose from the dead for your justification. It is through this work that God finds you not guilty. Your baptism into Christ’s death brings forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. Your baptism washes away your sins of doubt.
The world will try to convince you that Jesus has left you all alone to live this life on earth. To deal with all these hardships. That is not what His ascension means. If Christ did not ascend, you would have to travel to see Him. He ascended visibly into Heaven so that He can be with you wherever you are. He is not just a man confined to a body; He is true God. Christ is with you wherever you go. You know His presence is here in His Word and Sacraments. You believe this through faith in Christ, faith that you only have because of the work of the Holy Spirit in you.
Through faith in Christ, you see the work of His ascension. You see His authority; Christ puts His work on display for the church. You see Him as a Prophet. He sends trained men to come and share you this gospel message. In His ascension He is also a Priest. He intercedes your prayers on your behalf. Lastly, Christ has taken His crown as King. He has crushed all His enemies. He takes care of you and He will live and reign over the church triumphant when He calls you home. Christ’s ascension reveals to you that there is a home that you will go to when you die. Your destination is not to remain here and suffer. Christ ascension, Him not being here, assures you that you do not have to stay here. Jesus has prepared a home for you, the hope of your ascension.
We have tried to look to Christ and imitate Him in our lives. Like the disciples, we have failed to do that, and we will continue to fail as long as we live. Where we are not perfect, our Savior was perfect. He not only lived His life in our place, but He gave up His life so that we would be saved. He brings us that comfort through our baptism, that we are marked children of God. But Jesus couldn’t stay with us on earth. The time came for Him to go back to His Father. This happened for us. He didn’t abandon us. He left visibly to live and reign over all creation, to be at all places, to protect, and comfort you from all trials and hardships, preparing a place in Heaven for you. We confess our hope with hymn 392, On Christ’s ascension I now built the hope of mine ascension; This hope alone has ever stilled All doubt and apprehension; For where the Head is, there full well I know His members are to dwell When Christ shall come and call them (ELH 392 v. 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.
+ + +
(picture from painting by John Singleton Copley, 1775)