The Fourth Sunday in Lent – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: St. John 6:1-15
In Christ Jesus, who came to give life to the world through His flesh and blood, dear fellow redeemed:
They had been free for one month. No longer were they under the harsh rule of the Egyptians. The LORD had led them out of Egypt by His servant Moses. He even opened up a path for them to walk through the Red Sea. But the people of Israel were dissatisfied. Their bellies growled with hunger, and they began to wish they were back in Egypt where at least they had something to eat. The LORD heard their cry; He had not forgotten His people. He said to Moses, “Behold, I am about to rain bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in my law or not” (Exo. 16:4).
Every morning, there was dew around the camp. “And when the dew had gone up, there was on the face of the wilderness a fine, flake-like thing, fine as frost on the ground” (v. 14). The people were encouraged to gather as much of this as they could eat, but they were not to keep any until the next day. The exception to this was on Friday when they must gather twice as much, so that no collecting would be needed on the Sabbath day, the day of rest.
Whoever did not listen to the LORD and kept bread overnight any day but Friday, found that in the morning it had worms and stunk. This was to teach the people to rely on the LORD for food day after day. The people called the bread “manna,” which means, “what is it?” because they had never seen anything like it before. God gave them this bread for forty years until they came into the Promised Land of Canaan.
Nearly 1500 years later, the people of Israel followed Jesus into the wilderness by the Sea of Galilee. No one had ever done the signs He was doing; He healed the sick. No one had ever taught like He had; His teaching cut to the heart, but it also comforted. They were so focused on the things Jesus was doing that they had brought no provisions with them.
As the shadows lengthened, the twelve disciples came to Jesus and said, “This is a desolate place, and the day is now over; send the crowds away to go into the villages and buy food for themselves” (Mat. 14:15). Jesus had another solution. A boy shared with Him five barley loaves and two fish. He gave thanks for this gift and proceeded to distribute bread and fish to all who were gathered there—five thousand men with women and children besides.
They had never seen a miracle like this! And then the wheels started turning. This abundant food in the wilderness reminded them of something. They thought of Moses’ words: “The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen” (Deu. 18:15). The people said, “This is indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world!” They wanted to make Him their king, but Jesus quietly left them and went up the mountain by Himself to pray.
The next day, the resolve of the people had not changed. Full of anticipation, they located Jesus. But their conversation with Him did not go as they had hoped. Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you” (Joh. 6:26-27).
Jesus exposed the plans of the people that they were looking not for a Savior from sin but for a savior from hunger. If they wanted a Savior from sin, they should expect to find this in the One who performed all these wonderful miracles. But the people just wanted their physical needs satisfied, and following Jesus seemed like the way to accomplish this. They focused on the gift when they should have been focusing on the Giver.
This was true of the Old Testament Israelites also, but forty years of continuous manna from heaven taught them something. Before they entered the land of Canaan, Moses recounted the people’s journey through the wilderness. He said: “And [the LORD] humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD” (Deu. 8:3).
Our bodies certainly need food. That is how the LORD designed them even before the fall into sin. But we are not to live “by bread alone.” This means that our days and our lives should be occupied with more than the pursuit of daily bread. We learn in the Catechism that “daily bread includes everything needed for this life.” We also learn that it is God who gives daily bread, and we know by experience this is true. Each of us can say that God has given us earthly blessings far beyond our basic needs, just like the large amount of leftovers gathered up after Jesus fed the multitude.
But these earthly gifts can only do so much for us. They only go so far. Their usefulness is limited to our short life on earth. Jesus pointed out to the people that “Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died” (Joh. 6:49). It was bread from heaven, but it did not bring with it the promise of eternal life. In the same way, Jesus could continue to produce for the people vast amounts of food from very little or even out of nothing, but what good would this do for their souls?
Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst…. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh” (vv. 35,51). And how did the people react to this? They “disputed among themselves, saying, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’” (v. 52).
Well, how could He? He had already told them: “For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life” (v. 40). Jesus, the Bread of Life, is consumed by all who believe the Gospel message. God’s gracious Word is the platter that serves up Jesus. His flesh and blood are the main course which satisfies the hungry soul.
But does your soul feel hunger pangs for Jesus? Are you more concerned about “the food that perishes,” or “the food that endures to eternal life”? This is a real struggle. You know very well when your stomach is empty. And you can see when your earthly goods need to be fixed or replaced. But it is not as obvious when faith is running near empty, or when your understanding about God and your perspective on life in the world needs to be fixed or replaced. If you go without food for twenty-four hours, your body lets you know; there is discomfort and pain. But you can go twenty-four or forty-eight hours, or seven days, a few weeks, or even a number of months without realizing that your faith is starving.
Faith is not some goal to reach, that once you have gotten there and know the facts—once you have faith—you don’t need to be concerned about keeping it. Faith needs to keep being fed. It hungers for the Bread of Life, for Jesus. If faith does not hear Jesus and receive Jesus and get filled up with Jesus, then it cannot last. But if faith is given a steady diet of Jesus through home devotions and the dispensing of the Word and Sacraments at church, the Lord promises that it will not expire. Your faith will be rejuvenated and strengthened just as your body is whenever you eat.
There is no better food for your soul than the food of Jesus. Your soul hungers for forgiveness and life because by nature you have sin and death. This sin is what tricks you into thinking that you have no pressing spiritual need, and that your pursuit of earthly riches is more important than anything else. But the world’s goods go the same way as the manna the Israelites sinfully tried to stockpile overnight. The world’s goods leave a bad taste in the mouth, and in the end they are worthless. The food, clothing, and home that you have are gifts from God. But they must never take the place of Jesus and His Word.
When Jesus comes to you through the Gospel, He counteracts the sin and death in you. He chokes the old Adam which is trying to choke you. He starves the death that wants to devour you. He has the power to do that because sin already did its worst against Him, and death already swallowed Him up in the grave. Neither was able to destroy Him, and He emerged victorious over sin, death, and hell. Whenever you consume Jesus by faith, whether by hearing His Word or by eating and drinking His body and blood in the Lord’s Supper, you are partaking of His victory and filling yourself with His life.
For all who hunger and thirst for righteousness believing in His name, Jesus Gives the Food That Endures to Eternal Life. He gives you the food of Himself which never grows old, never spoils, and never runs out. This Bread of Life is the rich nourishment your soul needs—a holy food offered to you for this life and for the life to come.
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 Last Supper” by Juan de Juanes, 1503-1579)
The Fourth Sunday in Lent – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: Exodus 16:1-3, 11-21
In Christ Jesus, the better Bread than manna or good health or great wealth, whom we feast on by faith for eternal salvation, dear fellow redeemed:
We have all had the experience of living day to day with regard to our health. We were dealing with an illness or a pain that forced us to take it one day at a time. Perhaps we have been day to day with a job, not knowing if we would be coming back the next day. But I’m guessing that most of us here have never had to live day to day with regard to food. We either had food in the fridge or pantry, or we had the means to be able to get more. In this way, we possibly haven’t felt the desperation that people throughout history have felt when they are hungry and have no ready source of food.
The Israelite people were hungry, and as far as they could see, there was no food available for the estimated hundreds of thousands in the assembly. Hunger makes it difficult to think clearly. This may be why the people sounded so positive about their time as slaves in Egypt, remembering when they “sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full.” Hunger also causes irritation. The hungrier the people got, the more they grumbled against Moses and Aaron.
But when we are experiencing some trial or test, it is a clear indication that God wants to teach us something. What He wanted to teach the Israelites in the wilderness is that even if they could not see a way out of the problem they faced, He would provide for them. That is exactly what He had promised to do. Hadn’t He brought them safely out of Egypt? Hadn’t He brought them through the Red Sea? Why would He forsake them now and leave them to die in the wilderness?
He told Moses to tell them, “At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall be filled with bread. Then you shall know that I am the LORD your God.” The meat came in the form of quail which essentially fell right into their hands that evening. The bread came with the morning dew. When the dew went away, “a fine, flake-like thing” was left. When the people saw it, they asked, “What is it?”—in Hebrew, “Man hu?” which became the name manna.
It was bread from the LORD, bread from heaven. And there was an abundance of it. The people were directed to gather an omer of it for each person, which was about two quarts in volume. Once the people had gotten what they needed, the manna still on the ground melted away with the sun. The people were to collect it every day—God sent it without fail. When they tried to save some from one day to the next, “it bred worms and stank.”
The message was clear: the LORD would provide their daily bread. They literally lived day to day with regard to their food. They had no other source to draw from. They had to rely on the LORD if they wanted to live. This is a lesson that Jesus emphasized to His disciples when they asked Him how to pray. Out of the seven petitions He taught them, only one of them had to do with their earthly needs: “Give us this day our daily bread” (Mat. 6:11, Luk. 11:3).
Notice the right-now focus of the petition: “Give us this day our daily bread.” Jesus does not teach us to wring our hands over how our bank accounts look or how our investments are doing, worrying about whether we will have enough for the future. He teaches us to pray for and to trust that our heavenly Father will provide each day what we need for our life.
I don’t know about you, but I like to plan a little more than that. I’m already thinking about and saving for the future—a future, I might add, that I’m not even sure I will live to see. That’s part of the reason God warns us about getting too caught up in our plans. We don’t determine our future; He does. We don’t get to choose the number of our days; He does.
That is not to say we should spend or give away everything we have today since God will take care of us tomorrow. We want to manage well what He gives us. We don’t want to be reckless or wasteful. But the Lord’s message is clear. We do not need to be anxious about what we will eat or drink or wear, because “[our] heavenly Father knows that [we] need them all,” and “all these things will be added to [us]” (Mat. 6:32,33).
God will give us daily bread; He will give us everything we need for this life. That is His promise. But what we want and what we need are not the same. You might be convinced that you need a certain amount of money stashed away, or that you need a certain job promotion, or that you need a certain level of health to enjoy life. But those are actually wants. God knows what you need. That is why you pray, “if it is Your will,” whenever you ask the Lord for something He has not specifically promised to give you. It is not that God is stingy; it’s that He loves you too much to give you everything you want.
The reality is that we would never think we had enough. We would look at our Father in heaven as little more than a perpetual ATM, and we would act like spoiled children. That’s what we see in the Holy Gospel for today from the five thousand men whom Jesus fed in a remote area (Joh. 6:1-15). They no doubt heard that Jesus started with five barley loaves and two fish. They saw how that small amount of food multiplied, and every man had as much as he wanted. They saw the fragments gathered up which filled twelve baskets.
“This is indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world!” they said (v. 14). They were thinking of the prophecy of Moses that a Prophet like him would come from among the Israelites (Deu. 18:15). They connected the manna that came when Moses was ruler to the bread Jesus now provided in a miraculous way. It all lined up. What better ruler could they hope for than Jesus? He could give them whatever and as much as they wanted!
But Jesus was not about to become their “bread king.” When the people located Him the next day, they asked if He might do for them what Moses did for the Israelites in the wilderness. Jesus replied, “my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world” (vv. 32-33). The people were still thinking about earthly bread, earthly riches, earthly glory.
“I am the bread of life,” said Jesus. “Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die” (vv. 48-50). Jesus was teaching the people about spiritual things, holy things, eternal things. He was teaching them about faith, salvation, and everlasting life. He said, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh” (v. 51).
The people wanted their physical needs met by Jesus. He had something better to give them—His own life. Jesus knew that we have a much more serious problem than where to get our next meal. We face a spiritual starvation that cannot be satisfied by any of our own efforts or works. On our own, we are doomed to death and eternal punishment. So God the Father sent His Son to save us.
His mission was much bigger than feeding the hungry. His mission was perfectly fulfilling the Law of God in our place, including the command to trust God for all our needs. Then He gave up His perfect life to atone for all our sins. Jesus died on the cross to pay for our grumbling, our greed, our self-gratification. All our sins—whatever they may be—are washed away by His holy blood.
After calling Himself “the living bread,” Jesus told the people they must feed on His flesh and drink His blood to have eternal life (v. 54). He was talking about faith, that they must put their trust for salvation only in Him. You feast on this “bread from heaven,” this “bread of life,” by hearing the holy and life-giving Word of Jesus, by returning to your Baptism through His Word of forgiveness, by eating and drinking His body and blood in the Holy Supper He instituted.
These are the ways that your spiritual hunger is addressed. These are the ways that the Holy Spirit increases your faith, so that you worry less about the unknown tomorrows and focus more on the blessed todays. Not only will you continue to receive the daily bread that you need for this life, but you can be certain that the Bread of Heaven, our Lord Jesus Christ, will never leave you hungry, never leave you lacking in your spiritual needs.
In your deep hunger for love, your deep hunger for peace, your deep hunger for life, He comes to you still. He gives you His forgiveness, He covers you in His righteousness, and He fills you with His grace. He is the Bread you need most, the Bread you feed on for eternal life.
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 Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes” by James Tissot, 1836-1902)
The Fourth Sunday in Lent – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: Galatians 4:21-5:1
In Christ Jesus, through whom we have “obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand” (Rom. 5:2), dear fellow redeemed:
Both this week and next, you are going to hear a bit about Abraham, and how he relates to Jesus and to you. Abraham is one of the most prominent characters in the Old Testament. Christians, Muslims, and Jews all claim Abraham as a spiritual father. But as you would expect, they do not all claim him in the same way.
Christians claim him as a father of faith, whose heirs we are because we believe the promise of salvation as he did. Muslims celebrate Abraham’s righteous life and say that their own prophet Muhammed descended from Abraham’s son Ishmael. Jews make the most of their physical descent from the line of Abraham through his son Isaac. These distinctions are some of the very things Paul is addressing in his Epistle to the Galatians.
But first, a little background about Abraham. When he was seventy-five years old, God called him and his wife Sarai to leave his father’s household and go to the land of Canaan. When they arrived, the LORD appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land” (Gen. 12:7). But to this point, they had had no children. Ten years passed, and eighty-five-year-old Abram was getting anxious. The LORD brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them…. So shall your offspring be” (15:5). And Abram believed the promise.
At the same time, it seems that Sarai was struggling. She was now seventy-five years old. If she hadn’t conceived a child to this point, how could she possibly have one now? She decided to give her female servant Hagar to Abram. If they conceived, she would consider the child of her servant as her own. Hagar did conceive, and she bore a son, Ishmael. Sarai wasn’t as pleased as she thought she would be. And this is not how God’s promise was fulfilled.
God promised a child through Abram and Sarai, and He was going to bring it about, contrary to every expectation, contrary to all human reason. So more years passed. Abram was now ninety-nine and Sarai was ten years behind him. The LORD appeared again to Abram and told him his name would now be Abraham, “for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations,” said the LORD. “I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you” (Gen. 17:5-6). Sarai would become Sarah, “and she shall become nations; kings of peoples shall come from her” (v. 16).
And it happened. By that time the next year, 90-year-old Sarah and 100-year-old Abraham were holding their newborn son Isaac. He was their son, but they could not take credit for him. They knew this was pure gift from the Lord God. Abraham’s child with Hagar came from human planning. Abraham’s child with Sarah came from God’s promise.
Now here comes Paul’s question to the Galatians: Did you come to the saving faith through human effort or through divine promise? Earlier in his letter, he asked the question this way, “Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?” (Gal. 3:2). If their answer was “by hearing with faith,” then he had another question, “Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” (v. 3).
The problem was that the Galatians were listening to false teachers, who told them that faith in Jesus was a good start. But unless they now followed the Old Testament rules and regulations, they could not be right with God. So were they saved by faith in what Jesus accomplished for them, or by their own efforts, or by some mixture of the two? That’s a very important question.
I think a great number of Christians today believe it is a mixture of the two—Jesus had to do His part, and we have to do ours if we hope to be saved. But that is not what we teach in the Lutheran Church, and it isn’t what St. Paul taught either. As soon as we start to trust in ourselves—even a little bit—for our salvation, we lose sight of what Jesus accomplished for us. This can happen very easily.
We can look at the bad things happening around us, the sins that so many commit right out in the open. We are rightfully alarmed and offended by these things. But there is often another thought that accompanies our concern, something like: “I would never do something like that!” or “If only others were more like me.” And then we don’t sound so different than the Pharisee with his self-righteous prayer: “God, I thank you that I am not like other men” (Luk. 18:11).
There is a difficult balance here. Of course we want to do what is good. That is what God demands of us in His Law. We should avoid temptations to sin. We should do nice things for the people around us. We should constantly strive to think, say, and do things better than we have done them in the past. But if we make progress, and if we succeed, we should remember where the power comes from to do these things, and we should remember who deserves the glory.
No matter how well we do in our own view or in the estimation of others, it is not even close to what God requires to get into His kingdom. That is the big misconception among so many Christians today. They think that God’s holiness is not so out of reach, and our works are not so far from perfection. That is not what the Lord’s prophet said. He said, “all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment” (Isa. 64:6). Or the psalmist, who wrote that the LORD looks down from heaven to see if there are any righteous. And what does He find? “They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one” (Psa. 14:3).
However bad the people around us appear to be, it is pure pride to think that we are better. We are not better. We have the same corrupt heart. The devil wants you to think that you are better. He wants you to take refuge in your own righteousness. He wants you to quietly judge everyone around you and never point the holy Law at your own heart. Jesus does the opposite. He sharpens the Law. He says that maybe you haven’t murdered, but have you held a grudge? Maybe you haven’t committed adultery, but have you looked at someone with lust? Or maybe you have treated your friends well, but what about your enemies?
Remaining in slavery is thinking that we can be right with God through our keeping of His Law. That makes us children of Mt. Sinai, the mountain where God gave His Commandments. But that was a terrifying place to be. The mountain was wrapped in a thick cloud with thunder and lightning and the sound of a very loud trumpet blast. Then the LORD descended on it in fire, and smoke went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain shook (Exo. 19:16-18).
The people who think they can work their way to heaven will one day have to stand before the holy God in all His power. Then they will see how well the glory of their work matches up with His glory. It will be like comparing a child’s scribbles with the work of a master artist, or really much worse.
We cannot find our comfort and confidence through the Law. We can only find it by traveling to another mountain, the mountain of Jerusalem, Mount Zion. Abraham went there long before the holy city was established, and he brought along his son Isaac, the son of promise. God had told Abraham to offer Isaac on a mountain as a burnt offering (Gen. 22:2). As troubling as this was, Abraham obeyed. He carried the fire and knife, and Isaac carried the wood for the sacrifice. “[B]ut where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” asked Isaac (v. 7). “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son” (v. 8).
Isaac did not die that day. God stopped Abraham just before he dropped the knife, and He provided a ram for a burnt offering instead. Some two thousand years later, Jesus the only Son of God carried His own burden of wood to the same mountaintop. There, the Lamb of God was sacrificed on the altar of the cross. There, His blood was shed to wash all the sin of all the world away.
That includes your sin, the guilt you feel for doing so little of what God’s holy Law requires, and the guilt you feel for thinking you have accomplished great things on your own. Jesus took every bit of your unrighteousness on Himself to atone for it, and in exchange He gives you every bit of His perfect righteousness. That is His promise to you by faith in Him.
You are indeed set free from your former slavery to sin, devil, and death. You don’t have to keep a record of your wrongs any more than you have to keep a record of your rights. Jesus is your righteousness. He is your life. To Him, you are no servant or slave that He might push around or give away as He pleases. He has joined Himself to you in order to give you the full inheritance of the heavenly Father.
Yes, you are no longer a child of slavery. You have been born again as a child of promise. The Lord did this for you. There is nothing you have to do to set yourself free. He won you this freedom. “Stand firm therefore,” writes St. Paul—firm in the faith, firm in Christ your Savior.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, forevermore. Amen.
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(picture of Abraham viewing the stars from 1919 Bible primer book by Augustana Book Concern)