The Twelfth Sunday after Trinity – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: 2 Kings 5:1-15
In Christ Jesus, who through His own flesh delivered the eternal cure for our sin and death, dear fellow redeemed:
If you think of the stories of King Arthur’s brave knights or perhaps of the courageous heroes in modern war movies, you can get a sense of Naaman, the commander of the army of the king of Syria. He is described as “a great man with his master and in high favor” and as “a mighty man of valor.” He was a man’s man, bold, and strong. We can suppose that he wasn’t afraid of anyone, that he never backed down from a fight. Wherever the danger was greatest or the odds were most against him, Naaman went forward.
And Naaman won. He was held in high esteem by his master because he was so successful. A ruler cannot be effective without loyal and capable men around him ready to carry out his orders. But neither the king nor Naaman realized where their success came from. We learn in today’s reading that “the LORD had given victory to Syria.” Syria’s strength was part of the LORD’s plan. And so was Naaman’s leprosy. Leprosy was a serious and debilitating skin disease. Naaman had probably prayed to his own gods for relief and healing, but none came. It bothered him enough that even his servants were aware of his struggle.
We don’t expect to see weakness in our heroes. We’re surprised when our nation’s leaders get sidelined by the cold or flu, or when elite athletes pull a muscle and have to take time off. These instances are good reminders that the people we look up to are human also. Because of sin in the world, hardships come on the strong and the weak, the wealthy and the poor, the famous and the obscure. This also teaches us that the people who seem to have it all probably have troubles and pains that we wouldn’t want to touch with a ten foot pole.
So Naaman, who knew military strategy, who knew his way around a battlefield, had been outflanked by a skin disease. He had no answer for it; he couldn’t beat it. It was going to kill him. And now we see the LORD’s strategy in play. Through a little girl who was carried away from Israel and made a slave in Naaman’s house, the LORD made Naaman aware of a prophet in Israel. The little girl confidently told Naaman’s wife that this prophet “would cure him of his leprosy.”
If Naaman’s skin disease did not bother him very much, he would have ignored what the little girl said. What would a Syrian commander want with an Israelite prophet! But that was not his response. He took the message to his king—as farfetched as it sounded—, and the king sent Naaman to Israel with a letter and a load of gifts. Naaman was willing to try even this if it meant he could be healed.
When he was sent to the house of the prophet Elisha, what Naaman expected was that he would have the opportunity to make the case for why he should be healed. Or perhaps he thought he would flatter the prophet and impress him with the gifts he had brought. Certainly it wasn’t every day that Elisha had such esteemed visitors come to his door with all their horses and chariots.
But Elisha was not impressed by these things. He was nobody’s tool but the LORD’s. When Naaman arrived, Elisha didn’t even come out of his house to greet him. He sent a messenger with simple instructions: “Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean.” This is not at all what Naaman expected. In fact, he found it very offensive. The prophet wouldn’t even speak to him directly?!? He was supposed to wash himself in the dirty waters of the Jordan River?!? No thanks.
Many people make the same judgment about the Christian Church. “If Christianity were true,” they think, “and if the Christian God is supposedly a God of love, then why wouldn’t He come and make the problems in the world go away? Or if He truly cares about His people, why wouldn’t He at least make their troubles go away?” When told about the basics of the Christian faith, they say, “How can regular water make me a child of God? How can eating bread and drinking wine be a Communion with the body and blood of Jesus? How can these simple things bring salvation?”
Looked at from the unbeliever’s perspective, we can see how strange this all seems. We don’t have anything like Naaman expected—someone waving his hands and saying the magic words and all our troubles disappear. How could washing in the Jordan River seven times do anything good? People expect that salvation should be harder to come by. Shouldn’t we have to do something to be saved? “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”
Initially, Naaman rejected the Word. He drove away in his chariot angry, perhaps thinking thoughts of war against Israel for treating him like this. Then his servants meekly approached and said, “Did you not hear what the prophet said? Has he actually said to you, ‘Wash, and be clean’?” So Naaman consented. He went down to the Jordan and dipped himself “according to the word of the man of God” once, twice, up to seven times—the number for perfection, holiness. And what happened? The flesh that was infected with leprosy “was restored like the flesh of a little child.” He was clean.
Now bold Naaman, mighty Naaman, Naaman the conqueror returned to Elisha’s house and said, “Behold, I know that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel.” What had changed him? Was it the water? Did it have some special quality that when applied resulted in healing? No, it was the Word of the Most High God. The Word attached to the water brought healing to Naaman. The Word brought faith to his heart.
Naaman had been conquered by the LORD’s Word, and he didn’t even see it coming! Many other enemies of the LORD have also been conquered by Him and brought into His kingdom in the same way. You were one of them. Like Naaman, you had something like a disease clinging to and afflicting you, a disease for which you had no cure. It was worse than leprosy; it was sin.
People try all sorts of remedies for this: trying to do enough good to cancel out their bad, pointing to the worse failures of others to make themselves look better, even arguing that what used to be considered sinful isn’t really sinful anymore. But we can’t escape it. The sin of Adam has been passed along to us, and this sin has captured our hearts. Ignoring this infection doesn’t make it go away; it only makes our condition worse. So what can we do to make our condition better?
Jesus says, “There is nothing that you can do. But there is something that I can do.” The Son of God took on our weak human flesh, so that He could reverse the fortunes of Adam’s line. He came to bring salvation to us who were sick, and life to us who were dying. For the official beginning of His public work, Jesus stepped down into that same dirty river as Naaman had some eight hundred years before, and He was baptized by John “to fulfill all righteousness” (Mat. 3:15).
At His Baptism, your sin was poured over Him, and He carried that sin all the way to His death on the cross. His death on the cross was the cure for your sinful condition. It was the remedy for the Fall of all mankind. The perfect Son of God made full satisfaction for all your sins against the holy God. By His death and resurrection, He declares you righteous and pure in God’s sight.
To make sure that you know this righteousness is for you, He has sent messengers to tell you. Your parents brought you to the baptismal font, where you received “the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit” (Ti. 3:5), so that like Naaman, you were made new, “like the flesh of a little child”—born again by water and the Word. It was a perfect cleansing, removing all your sin from you, and placing Jesus’ righteousness over you. At your Baptism, God gave you a tremendous gift. And since that time, your parents and sponsors and fellow believers and pastors have reminded you about this gift.
The humble appearance of Baptism makes some think it is powerless. It’s like Naaman stating that there must be better options for bathing than the Jordan River. But where Jesus’ Word is spoken according to His promise, there is power—life-giving, heart-changing power, the power to heal and save. Today’s Holy Gospel presents an excellent example of the power of His Word (Mar. 7:31-37). Jesus said, “Ephphatha—Be opened,” and the deaf and mute man was healed.
The Word attached to the water of Baptism is what brought you healing and salvation from the LORD. You return to these waters every time you repent of your sins and cast off the things that hinder your faith in Him. Like mighty Naaman humbly obeying the Word and dipping his leprous skin in the water, you and I bring our sins to God, but not only our sins. We bring our weaknesses and strengths, our past and our present, our worries, struggles, and pain, our abilities, our dreams, and our plans, our imperfect hearts and minds. We bring them all to the cleansing waters of Christ and drown them all in faith.
We want everything we do to be washed in Him, to flow from Him, to be sanctified through Him. We need Him to guide our thoughts, words, and actions. We need Him to carry us and keep us true to Him, so that we are not misled by other gods that cannot save. His method for keeping us faithful is not what we expect—the proclamation of His Word and the administration of water, bread, and wine with His promise. These are the powerful means that bring us His forgiveness and salvation, that conquer and cleanse our sinful hearts.
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 Saude Lutheran Church stained glass)
The Sixth Sunday after Trinity – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: 2 Samuel 16:5-14
In Christ Jesus, who accepted the curse of God’s Law and suffered death in our place, so we would be declared righteous before God, dear fellow redeemed:
Have you ever been cursed out before? Have you had someone attack you with words, bitter words, words that cut deep? Perhaps this has happened to you, and it came as no surprise. It was a reaction to something hurtful or harmful you had said or done. Or maybe this happened to you, and you didn’t see it coming. You became a target of someone’s anger when you didn’t deserve it.
Today’s reading describes a difficult time in King David’s life, when his son Absalom was seeking to take his throne and David was on the run. As David hurried away from Jerusalem and toward the Jordan River, a relative of King Saul named Shimei met him with continuous cursing. He accused David of having blood on his hands with regard to the house of Saul. He blamed David for the downfall of Saul, even though Saul’s unfaithfulness to the LORD was the reason he lost the throne.
While Shimei called down curses from the LORD on David, he also threw stones at him and flung dust in the air. He was making a very bad day even worse. The military men around David offered to dispatch the head of this troublesome man. Why should they have to put up with his cursing and stone throwing? David was the king; the king should be respected. All David had to do was give the order, and Shimei would be permanently silenced.
But even though Shimei was wrong in his accusations of David, David did nothing to stop him. He accepted the cursing as a chastening from the Lord. He recognized that his present troubles had come upon him from his own house because of his sin with a married woman named Bathsheba. He had seduced her, conceived a child with her, and then plotted to have her husband killed, so that he could marry her. When the LORD sent the prophet Nathan to confront David about his sin, He said, “The sword shall never depart from your house,” and “I will raise up evil against you out of your own house” (2Sa. 12:10,11).
The condemnation of God’s Law hit home. David repented of his sin. And Nathan told him, “The LORD also has put away your sin; you shall not die” (v. 13). But the consequences remained. Most immediately, the child David conceived with Bathsheba died. And now evil had come out of David’s own house, with his son Absalom seeking to kill him. As he listened to Shimei’s curses, David acknowledged that this was a consequence for his sin.
Sin always has consequences, some more severe and some less. If you steal from someone and get caught, or if you drive recklessly and harm someone, those sins will have the consequence of criminal charges and possibly jail time. If you are caught in a lie, that sin will have the consequence of people not trusting you. If you give way to wicked or lustful thoughts or contemplate things you know are wrong, those sins may not have obvious, tangible consequences, but they will contribute to a burden of guilt on your conscience.
But saying that sin has consequences is different than saying that sin is not forgiven. Every sin you have committed, no matter what it is, is forgiven by God. God the Father placed all your sin on His Son, and Jesus paid for every one of your trespasses. He suffered and died for your sin as though He is the one who committed it. So when God sends or allows consequences for your sin, this is not to punish you. These consequences are intended to keep you humble and train you in righteous living.
We are so stubborn in our sin that if there were never consequences for bad behavior or wicked words, we would just be more emboldened to keep sinning. Why should I stop doing something bad if I never have to answer for it? We must be taught from our youth that there is a difference between right and wrong. We must be required to answer for our bad behavior. We shouldn’t get away with talking back to our parents, harming others physically or verbally, or taking what doesn’t belong to us.
By learning this discipline in our youth, we are more willing to receive correction and accept consequences for sin when we are older. When a family member, a friend, or a fellow Christian calls us out for our selfishness or greed, our judgmental attitude or unkind words, we recognize in their voice the voice of God. We remember the Ten Commandments which clearly reveal the will of God for us. If we refuse to hear correction from His Word, we are saying that we are not really as bad as God says we are. We are saying that we are righteous even while our actions, words, and thoughts conflict with God’s Word.
David acknowledged his sin, and he accepted the cursing of Shimei as a wholesome chastening from the LORD. Shimei was not correct in his accusations, but instead of acting out in anger toward him, David in humility accepted the verbal attack. He left justice to the LORD. He said, “It may be that the LORD will look on the wrong done to me, and that the LORD will repay me with good for his cursing today.”
In our litigious culture, where everyone wants to counter-attack and sue as soon as they feel offended about something or wronged in some way, David’s example is important for us Christians. He was willing to receive chastening for his imperfect life. He was willing to endure a fiery trial for the testing and strengthening of his faith. He was willing to suffer out of love for God.
Jesus teaches all His followers to do this. In His Sermon on the Mount, He teaches us to “turn the other cheek” when we are attacked (Mat. 5:39). He says that we should remember that even our enemies are our neighbors, and that we should love all our neighbors as we love ourselves (v. 44). This is the teaching of the Law, which is summarized by perfect love for Him and perfect love for one another (v. 48). That is what a righteous life looks like.
Sometimes our life resembles this, but often it does not. Because we have not perfectly kept God’s Law, we can’t put any trust in what we do. In today’s Holy Gospel, Jesus says, “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Mat. 5:20). Unless your righteousness is a million times better than the people who are considered the most holy and good, you cannot get yourself to heaven. That is why your confidence must be in Jesus, the holy Son of God and Son of Man, who did perfectly keep the holy Law.
In David, you see a picture of what Jesus would later endure for your salvation. David was the true king, but he was forced out of Jerusalem where he was met with wrongful cursing by his enemies. Jesus was the king of all creation, but He was forced out of Jerusalem wearing a crown of thorns and carrying a cross. When He was crucified on Calvary, he was met with all sorts of cursing and reviling from His enemies. “Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe” (Mar. 15:32), they said in mockery. “He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him” (Mat. 27:43).
If anyone had the right to defend Himself and call down curses on His enemies, it was Jesus. He had done no wrong. No court committed to justice would have ever found Him guilty. We are quick to cry out whenever some little wrong is done to us. We hold grudges. We plot our revenge. But look at Jesus! His apostle Peter wrote, “He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly” (1Pe. 2:22-23).
That is righteousness. That is a holy life before God. He lived a perfect life of love toward God and neighbor. That perfect life is the reason you have confidence before God today. Jesus lived His holy, righteous life for you. He willingly suffered every injustice for you. He went to the cross for you, to pay for your sins. His righteous life and His sacrifice in your place now give you the courage and strength to endure afflictions in your life.
When you are unjustly attacked like David was, you can remember how Jesus humbly suffered for you. You may not receive justice in this life, but you are right with the God of heaven. Trouble may meet you at every turn, but your faithful God promises to hold you up by His grace. Peace may elude you in the world, but you have “peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:1).
At the end of today’s reading, we hear that David arrived weary at the Jordan River, where “he refreshed himself.” The Jordan River is where 1,000 years later, Jesus was baptized “to fulfill all righteousness” (Mat. 3:15). Your Baptism brought His righteousness to you. Your Baptism is where the “great exchange” happened for you, the exchange described by St. Paul, “For our sake [God] made [Christ] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2Co. 5:21).
You are righteous “in him,” by faith in Him—the faith brought to you at your Baptism. In Him, you have the forgiveness of all your sins, strength for every difficulty, and the promise of eternal life. No matter what trials you have to go through, whether as consequences for your sin that the Lord works for your good, or as training in righteousness that the Lord gives for the strengthening of your faith, He will at the same time provide refreshment through His Word and Sacraments. “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden,” He says, “and I will give you rest” (Mat. 11:28).
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.
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(picture from stained glass at Redeemer Lutheran Church)
The Fifth Sunday after Trinity – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: 1 Samuel 15:1-15
In Christ Jesus, no counterfeit ruler, no charlatan who deceives for personal gain, but a King who gave up His life for your salvation, dear fellow redeemed:
Everyone liked Absalom. For one thing, he was very good looking. The Scriptures say that “From the sole of his foot to the crown of his head there was no blemish in him” (2Sa. 14:25). Once a year, he cut his hair because it got so heavy, and what he cut off weighed about five pounds. There was no one like him.
The other reason Absalom was so well-liked was because he was very good at telling people what they wanted to hear. He was a master of flattery. He would sit each day at the city gate in Jerusalem, and he would warmly receive everyone who arrived there. He would pretend to care about their business, and he would act like his father, King David, had no real interest in their concerns. He would say, “Oh that I were judge in the land! Then every man with a dispute or cause might come to me, and I would give him justice.” And when anyone would honor him, he would return the honor in a show of humility. In this way, we are told, “Absalom stole the hearts of the men of Israel.”
Absalom behaved in this manner for four years. What I haven’t mentioned yet, is that Absalom was a murderer. He took revenge against his brother Amnon and had Amnon killed. After doing this Absalom fled, and King David did not allow him to return to Jerusalem for three years. When Absalom did return, David refused to see him. Two years after this, Absalom manipulated one of David’s servants and gained access again to his father. And David forgave his son.
That interaction comes immediately before what we learn about today with Absalom actively working against his father. So all Israel was being drawn to the king’s son, a murderer, who had no respect for his father or his office as king. The main Commandment in view in today’s reading is the Fourth Commandment, “Honor your father and your mother, that it may be well with you, and that you may live long on the earth.”
You might recall the way David referred to King Saul while King Saul in his jealousy was trying to have David killed. David referred to him as “the Lord’s anointed” and as “my Lord” (1Sa. 24, 26). Even though Saul was not respectable, David showed respect for the office. In the same way, we are to show respect for the authorities starting in our own homes. Colossians 3:20 says, “Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.”
Children are to honor, respect, and obey their parents at all times. If their parents tell them to clean their room, help around the house, or whatever they tell them to do, their children are to obey them as though the Lord Himself told them to do this. The only exception to this Commandment is if parents tell their children to do something that God says is wrong; for example, to do harm to someone or to take someone’s possessions.
This respect also applies to authority outside the home. We are to have respect for teachers, employers, pastors, and government officials, among others. We respect these individuals not because they are always respectable, and not because we like everything they do, but because God has established these authorities. If there were no authority, there would be no law and order. There would be chaos. God has given authority for our good, even if it doesn’t always seem good.
The people of Israel knew the Fourth Commandment. They knew they were to honor the king. They knew Absalom was honoring neither the king nor his father. That should have been a tremendous red flag. That should have told them that perhaps Absalom was not king material. But they let themselves be duped by him. He was an important person—a prince. He was good looking. He made them feel special.
He also told them what they wanted to hear. He told them that all their claims, their ideas, and their concerns, were good and right. That is a danger for us, too, in both civil and spiritual matters. We can be all too eager to listen to the politician who makes promises that he probably can’t keep, but that we love to hear. We like to be told that all our claims, our ideas, and our concerns, are good and right. And in being greedy to get what we want, it is only too easy to ignore the needs and concerns of our neighbors.
In spiritual matters, if we are only looking for a preacher or teacher who tells us what we want to hear, then we will be less and less willing to be corrected and challenged and taught by the Word of God. St. Paul says that in the last days people will have “itching ears.” “They will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths” (2Ti. 4:3-4). We don’t need an echo chamber. We need the Holy Spirit through the powerful Word to change us and shape us and mold us into what God has called us to be.
This is what Jesus did for Peter and the other disciples. He gave them a tremendous catch of fish, when previously they had been unable to catch anything. When he saw this, Peter fell down before Jesus and said, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Luk. 5:8). Now Jesus going away is the last thing that Peter needed, but he clearly saw that he was not worthy to be in the Lord’s presence which was certainly true. Instead of going away, Jesus said, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men” (v. 10).
Jesus authorized Peter and the other disciples to preach the powerful Word. They would not be selfishly trying to draw people away from Jesus; they would be pointing people to Jesus. Jesus was not going to steal the throne of any earthly king. He already was the King of all heaven and earth. So what was He doing down here in human flesh? What was His purpose? What was His plan?
Absalom commissioned fifty men to run in front of him, while he rode on a chariot to take his position at the city gate. He wanted everyone to think he was important. Then he told whatever lie he had to to please them. Jesus did the opposite of all this. The Son of God entered the world through a lowly woman named Mary, a descendant of King David, and His coming was heralded by none but the shepherds. Jesus gained followers for Himself not through flattery and deceit but through teaching the truth.
He did not sit at the city gate coaxing people away from the authorities. He did not come to put on a show of His greatness or to manipulate people to do what He wanted. He came in all humility as a servant to redeem the world of sinners. He went from place to place telling people the good news of the kingdom. He healed the sick and the hurting. He fed the hungry and spared the demon-possessed. He did not look out for His own interests but for the interests of others.
As a leader, He was nothing like Absalom. There were no red flags with Jesus. Everything He said was good and right. He upheld the Commandments perfectly, including God’s command to honor father and mother and every authority. He didn’t just talk the talk; He walked the walk.
And that is why you are presented righteous before God today. However you have disrespected and dishonored your parents, your teachers, your employers, law enforcement officials, or anyone else in governing positions, God forgives these sins. They were counted against Jesus who paid for every sin on the cross. By faith in Him, His righteousness is now credited to you, so that God sees you as having no sin, as having no blemish on your record that stands between you and the perfection of heaven.
This is what He tells you in His holy Word. This is what He continues to commission men to preach and teach to you. Like Simon Peter, your pastors are imperfect men, and they know it. But they point you to the perfect Savior. This Gospel message is how sinners are “caught” for the kingdom of God. It is not a message to work against the ruling authorities or destroy the institutions of government. It is a message of peace between God and man because Jesus the God-Man stepped in as our Substitute.
We want to fix our hope on this message. Popular, influential people like Absalom will keep coming along with their plots and plans. They will appeal to us with their smooth talk and flattering words. They will promise us great personal gain and prosperity. But almost as soon as they gain power, they are gone again. Psalm 146 says, “Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation. When his breath departs, he returns to the earth; on that very day his plans perish” (vv. 3-4).
We put our trust not in princes, but in the King of kings and Lord of lords. An earthly son of man cannot save us, but the Son of God and Son of Man can. He is “the way, and the truth, and the life” (Joh. 14:6). His Word does not mislead us. His Word “is a lamp to [our] feet and a light to [our] path” (Psa. 119:105). He calls us to follow His Word in good times and in bad, in times of prosperity and times of trouble.
No matter how strange, outdated, or ineffective people think God’s Word is today, it remains powerful just as He is powerful. His Word is the source of our faith and the means by which He grants us eternal life. His strong Word will endure as rulers come and go and as kingdoms rise and fall. Everything in this world eventually fails and falls apart, but “the word of our God will stand forever” (Isa. 40:8).
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, forevermore. Amen.
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(picture of the miraculous catch of fish by Raphael, 1515)
The Twenty-First Sunday after Trinity – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: Ephesians 6:10-17
In Christ Jesus, who rallies His soldiers around a manger, a cross, and an empty tomb and sends the terrible army of darkness scurrying away from His piercing light, dear fellow redeemed:
“It’s time to take a stand!” “Seize the moment!” “Stand up and be counted!” “Your future and your children’s future are at stake!” We have been hearing these messages a lot lately. They are attached to appeals for the citizens of this country to get active and go vote. People from both sides of the political aisle are calling this the most important presidential election in our lifetime. Each side says that if the other candidate wins, it will be the end of democracy as we know it.
It is not my job to tell you who to vote for. It is not even my job to tell you to vote. That is a right and privilege you have that you can choose to exercise or not. But it is my job to tell you not to get too caught up with the candidates you support or the candidates you oppose. God can use bad rulers as well as good rulers for His purposes. After this November 5th, our almighty Lord will still reign over all things in heaven and on earth just as He does now.
We are reminded of this in today’s reading, where our chief enemy is identified along with the battle plan for his defeat. Paul writes that we must take our stand “against the schemes of the devil.” Jesus described the devil as “a murderer from the beginning, [who] has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him…. he is a liar and the father of lies” (Joh. 8:44). The devil’s goal is that we join him in the eternal torments of hell. He is pure evil. He does not play fair. He will do whatever it takes to separate us from the forgiveness and salvation we have in Christ.
The devil is our number one opponent. We can never forget that he is on the march against us. Bad people—including bad politicians and government officials—come and go (Psa. 146:3-4). The devil has been carrying out his destructive work since the beginning (1Jo. 3:8). Our reading says, “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” When people pursue bad things and do bad things, we have to remember who is behind it—the great tempter and deceiver and his fellow demons.
He has his sights set on you, too, especially you. You confess Jesus to be your Savior and Lord, which puts you at odds with the devil. He hates you. He wants to destroy you. The unbelievers can go their merry way, but not you. You have to pay for your devotion to Jesus. He will attack wherever he thinks you are vulnerable, wherever he thinks he can cause the most pain and do the most damage to your faith. In Job’s case, he attacked his possessions and his family and then Job’s own health. But he did not prevail against Job, and it is not a foregone conclusion that he will prevail against you.
So how can you withstand his attacks? What is your battle strategy? If you knew someone was going to try to break into your home, you would stay awake and alert. Or if someone was going to physically attack you or take shots at you, you would wear protective body armor and carry weapons to defend yourself. But physical defenses and weapons don’t work against the devil. You need spiritual protection for this spiritual battle.
That is why Paul says, “Put on” and “take up the whole armor of God.” Only God’s armor can protect you against the devil. God knows the dark and imminent threats to your faith. He sees the dangers and pitfalls that are hidden from your eyes. He knows how to equip you, so that you “stand firm.”
The first piece of God’s armor is “the belt of truth.” This is not your truth or anyone else’s truth; this is God’s truth. His is the only truth that matters. His is the only truth that is most certainly true. We know the truth because He has delivered it to us in the Holy Scriptures. Jesus said, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (Joh. 8:31-32). And He said in prayer to His Father, “Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth” (Joh. 17:17). We learn the truth by listening to and studying God’s Word, and in this way we also learn to identify the devil’s lies.
The next piece of God’s armor is “the breastplate of righteousness.” A breastplate protects your vital organs. What is it that covers your heart, so you are safe from the devil’s attacks? Some think that their heart is protected by their own good works and good intentions. Their heart is pure because they work hard to keep it pure. But this kind of self-righteousness is not a strength; it is a terrible weakness. The only righteousness that can cover and protect your heart is Jesus’ righteousness. The devil cannot pierce through the armor of His righteousness because He has perfectly kept the holy Law, and He kept it on your behalf.
The next part of God’s armor is sturdy shoes that help you to stand firm. You are ready for battle when you stand on “the Gospel of peace.” Now that doesn’t sound very strong. What about “the Gospel of power” or “the Gospel of victory”? The Gospel is those things too. But “peace” is where you stand with God. Paul wrote about this to the Christians in Rome, “since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:1). And, “Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand” (v. 2). As long as you have peace with God and remain in His grace by faith, you have firm footing against the devil.
God also supplies you with “the shield of faith.” This part of His armor provides some insight into how active the devil is. Paul speaks about “all the flaming darts of the evil one.” Picture thousands after thousands of burning arrows flying at you through the darkness. Or if that isn’t scary enough, picture thousands upon thousands of missiles screaming your way. God provides a shield to protect you—the shield of faith. The devil’s unending accusations cannot land on you as long as your trust is in Jesus. Those flaming darts are quenched like matches flicked toward a waterfall.
By faith you wear “the helmet of salvation.” You put this on when the water was poured on your head while Jesus’ words were spoken at your Baptism. The sign of the cross was made over your forehead and heart that day, and the sign of the cross still starts at your forehead and ends over your heart. God does not let the devil hang your sins over your head or bury you under them. You are protected by the salvation Jesus secured through His death and resurrection.
So you have the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, shoes standing on the Gospel of peace, the shield of faith, and the helmet of salvation. Finally you take in your hand “the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.” There is no more powerful defense than the Word. The Second Letter to Timothy says, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work” (3:16-17). Everything you need in your battle against the devil is supplied by the Word. You also learn through God’s Word how to pray, speaking back to God in petitions and praises for what He has promised you (Eph. 6:18).
The inspired words of today’s reading make it very clear where we should stand and where our strength is found. We stand “in the Lord and in the strength of His might.” The parts of the armor of God that we have reviewed today are all gifts from Him. None of them depend on our own strength or our own abilities. In other words, the only way to stand firm against the devil’s attacks is to recognize our own weakness. The only way to win is to admit how poor and unprepared we are by ourselves.
Our powerful Lord must fight for us. This is exactly what Martin Luther wrote in “the Battle Hymn of the Reformation”:
Stood we alone in our own might,
Our striving would be losing;
For us the one true Man doth fight,
The Man of God’s own choosing.
Who is this chosen One?
’Tis Jesus Christ, the Son,
The Lord of hosts ’tis He
Who wins the victory
In ev’ry field of battle. (Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary #251, v. 2)
Jesus fights for us in every field of battle. We stand with Him. Or better yet, He stands with us. He comes to strengthen and keep us in the faith through His Word and Sacraments. This is how He keeps us ready for the cosmic conflict against the devil. This is how He picks us up when are staggered by the devil’s blows and have fallen into sin. This is how He fortifies and tightens our armor, so there are no gaps and weak spots for the devil to exploit.
Today and every day is the Time to Take a Stand. Not on the shaky ground of a politician’s promises or an important person’s power because they will disappoint us. Not on the mushy ground of our own strength or our good intentions because they will fail us. We take our stand on the solid rock of Jesus Christ and His Word. Even the gates of hell cannot prevail against His Word (Mat. 16:18). “The word of our God will stand forever” (Isa. 40:8).
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 Temptation of Christ by the Devil” by Félix Joseph Barrias, 1822-1907)
The Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: Galatians 5:16-24
In Christ Jesus, who went to the cross to free us from our sin and free us for a life of service in His name, dear fellow redeemed:
Why do parents tell their young children they have to take a bath? “I don’t care if I’m clean,” a child might say. “But I care,” says the parent. “But why do I have to?” “Because you don’t smell very good right now. Don’t you want to smell nice?” Baths are good for a child’s own cleanliness and for the people in his general vicinity. That’s the main reason any of us wash ourselves. We want to look and feel clean, and we don’t want to be offensive to others.
That is something like the spiritual cleansing we have received through the Holy Spirit. We have been cleansed so that we stand righteous before God, and so that we can be a blessing to those around us. In today’s reading, St. Paul contrasts “the works of the flesh” which dirty us and the people near us, with “the fruit of the Spirit” which benefits our neighbors.
He says “the works of the flesh are evident”; they are obvious, easy to identify. He begins his list with sexual sin—“sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality.” The people to whom Paul was writing lived in a culture much like ours, a sexually permissive culture, where sexual sin was widely practiced and accepted.
Then he listed “idolatry” which could include the worship of images, objects, or people, and “sorcery,” the practice of magic through dark powers. The next eight sins are behaviors that disrupt unity and goodwill: “enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy.” Then he added the sins of “drunkenness” and “orgies” and showed that this list could go on much longer by attaching the phrase “and things like these.”
There are countless sins that violate the holy Law of God. These are all “works of the flesh,” they all come from the original sin that we inherited from our first parents the moment we started to be. They all represent our rebellion against our God who made us to be holy and to do holy things. All the sinful things that Paul lists come from our desire to be served and not to serve, from our selfishness, pettiness, and pride and not from a self-sacrificing love.
When we try to justify our sins, we don’t sound much better than little children: “But what if I don’t care if I’m dirty?” “I can do what I want!” “She started it!” “Everyone else is doing it!” Even if 99% of the population thinks something is fine but God says it is sin, then we must pray for the courage to stand with the 1%. It is no overstatement to say that our eternal salvation is at stake. Paul wrote, “I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”
You and I have done these things, but they are not counted against us, and heaven is not closed to us. How come? Because the Holy Spirit has rescued us from “the works of the flesh.” He did this by opening our eyes through the Law to see ourselves as we really are—separated from God, unable to please Him, full of darkness. He moved us to repent of our sins, to set them before God and beg for His mercy.
Then the Holy Spirit shined the light of Jesus’ forgiveness into our darkened hearts. He washed us clean with the holy blood of Jesus. He covered us in the perfect robes of Jesus’ righteousness. He did all these things for us in a simple ceremony involving water and the Word—Holy Baptism.
At your Baptism, you were rescued from the works of your flesh. Your sin was washed out of you at those waters, and you were filled with holiness. Everything Jesus did for you through His holy life, His atoning death, and His resurrection was applied to you, so you became what you were not before. You became a new creation of God (2Co. 5:17). Paul points to the effect of your Baptism with the words, “And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.”
That was done to the sinful “passions and desires” of your flesh at your Baptism, and that’s what must continue to be done. Our sinful passions and desires must be crucified, destroyed. If they are not resisted and repented of, then we are saying that Christ was crucified for nothing, or that other bad people might have needed to be saved but not me.
We have an example of the temptation to get complacent, to forget who our Savior is, in the Holy Gospel for today (Luk. 17:11-19). Ten lepers cried out to Jesus from a distance, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” It sounds like they all had faith; they all believed Jesus could help them. But as soon as they received what they begged for, nine of them went on their way with hardly a look back. Only one “when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice.” Only one showed his faith by his actions.
When you were baptized, you were cleansed by the Holy Spirit of something worse than leprosy—you were cleansed of your sins and rescued from eternal torment in hell. Jesus suffered and died to do this for you, and the Holy Spirit applied His atoning work to you. So you know what He cleansed you from, but what did He cleanse you for? You would be correct if you said, “He cleansed me for salvation and for eternal life in heaven with Him.” But He also cleansed you to do holy works of service in praise and thanks to God while you are here.
Paul urges us in today’s reading, “walk by the Spirit.” Walking by the Spirit means trying to live a pure life in an impure world. It means trusting God to provide all that you need for your body and life. It means helping, encouraging, and serving the people around you. This is not about following God’s Law so that He will reward you for your good behavior. It means falling at Jesus’ feet with thankfulness like the Samaritan who was cleansed and dedicating all your hours, all your energy, and all your abilities to His service.
If you feel like this is nothing more than a “have to,” you will go about it with as much enthusiasm and gladness as a pouting child taking a bath. But if this is a “get to” or a “want to,” you will give thanks for every task, every opportunity, even every trial that the Lord sets before you. Then you will be tasting and distributing “the fruit of the Spirit.” That fruit is “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.”
What do you notice about that list? It is not self-serving like the works of the flesh, and it does no harm to others. It serves for mutual good. It blesses you and those around you. These works of the Spirit are what you were created, redeemed, and called to faith to do. Delivering this good fruit is your purpose as a Christian in this world, and it is your privilege.
But as clear as this is, and as much as we want to display these fruits in our words and actions, we have to admit that it isn’t all joy with us, it isn’t all peace and patience and kindness, it isn’t all faithfulness and self-control. Paul acknowledged this struggle. He wrote: “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.”
This is a life-long struggle, so it is a daily struggle. When it is no longer a daily struggle, when it is just a once-a-week-on-Sunday-struggle, or an every-now-and-then-struggle, then we are in trouble. By how should we stay diligent about this? How can we keep our focus? This is done day after day by remembering and returning to our Baptism.
The Catechism teaches us how to do this: “Such baptizing with water means that the old Adam in us should, by daily contrition and repentance, be drowned and die with all sins and evil lusts; and that a new man daily come forth and arise, who shall live before God in righteousness and purity forever.”
So every day, we drown the old Adam, our sinful nature, with its passions and desires. We acknowledge our sins with sorrow and repent of them. And every day, we put our confidence and trust in Jesus who died for our sins and credits us with His righteousness. We dedicate ourselves to walking by the Spirit, to honoring and thanking Jesus by everything we do, and to showing love to the people that God puts in our path.
The Holy Spirit gives us the godly desire to do these things. As our reading makes clear, He does not just walk beside us as though we are equal partners in righteousness. He leads us. He leads us through the Word. When the holy Word of God is preached, studied, or called to mind, the Holy Spirit is powerfully at work to increase our faith and the fruit that comes from it.
He has cleansed us, so that we no longer show off the filth of our flesh or carry the stench of sin. Now we pursue a humble life of service and give off the sweet-smelling aroma of salvation which Jesus won for us by His grace. This is what the Holy Spirit has cleansed us to be and do—to be holy children of God who produce the good fruit of righteousness in thankfulness to Him.
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 stained glass at Redeemer Lutheran Church)
The Seventh Sunday after Trinity – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: Romans 6:19-23
In Christ Jesus, who not only freed us from sin, but who also freed us for a life of righteousness, dear fellow redeemed:
In one of the books that the kids and I read recently, we read about a ship exploring unmapped parts of an imaginary sea (The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis). The crew came across an island covered in darkness where a half-wild man swam toward the boat yelling for them to turn back. When he got on board, he told them it was an enchanted island “where dreams come true.” At first, the sailors thought this sounded appealing—who wouldn’t want their dreams to come true? Then it hit them that not all dreams are good dreams, and they rowed away as fast as they could.
This illustrates how something that seems to offer ultimate freedom might actually deliver the opposite. The same goes for the choices we make in our life. We might like to think that we are perfectly free to do whatever we feel like doing. But what if the choices we make result in our having less freedom? So I might think that pursuing my desires is freedom, but if those desires are sinful, then I am being drawn away from holy and noble things, and I become bound up in sin.
And the more bound up in sin I am, the more difficult it is not to sin. Those who are addicted to alcohol and drugs, to pornography, to gambling, or to certain kinds of foods know this well. The more they need their “fix,” even though it is harming them spiritually, mentally, and physically, the harder it is to stop. In fact, all of us are drawn to our particular sins, whatever they may be. We might think we can stay in control and not let our sinful desires control us. But then we fall and keep falling. One theologian put it this way: “[W]e cannot take sin or leave it [as though we are always in control]. Once we take sin, sin has taken us” (Martin Franzmann, Romans: A Commentary, p. 116).
As much as we should resist sin, and as much harm as it does us, we still find ourselves “taking” it. This is because we have a sinful nature, a part of us that is inclined to do the opposite of what God wants. In today’s reading, Paul describes our natural state as a sort of slavery. Slaves of sin pursue “impurity” and “lawlessness leading to more lawlessness.”
This is a slavery we were born into because the perfectly free and righteous Adam and Eve chose to give up this freedom. They disobeyed the command of God and chose lawlessness. We inherited their sin, but we have chosen it too. The apostle John wrote that “Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness” (1Jo. 3:4). And Jesus taught, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin” (Joh. 8:34).
This is very different than what we hear from the world. The world says that freedom is found in “following our heart,” and doing whatever makes us feel happy. We are told to prioritize our own choices and desires without really considering how those choices affect others. And if our plans contradict what God says in the Bible, we are urged to “stay true to ourselves.”
But a life of sin is no free life. It may deliver temporary happiness. You may have pleasure for a time or power or possessions. But all of it will slip through your fingers like a handful of sand. Paul writes, “For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed?” What do the works of sin add up to? What have we actually accomplished by going our own way? Paul states the stark reality: “For the end of those things is death.”
That is what our life of sinful choices results in: death. “For the wages of sin—what we earn by our sin—is death.” A person may think he is free apart from Christ, but he is actually enslaved, and he cannot free himself. Being a slave of sin is like being stuck without water in a boat on the ocean. You can drink the salt water, you can keep sinning, but it will only make you more and more parched until it kills you.
This view of human beings as slaves of sin rather than naturally free is completely rejected by the unbelieving world. Its response is like the Jews who said to Jesus, “[We] have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free’?” (Joh. 8:33). If you don’t know you are separated from God, you won’t know how desperate your situation is. If you don’t know you are a slave of sin and death, you won’t know you need to be freed.
We have compassion for the people around us who are in this state. They don’t know what they don’t know. They need to be awakened spiritually just as we have been through the power of God’s Word. They need to hear—just as we need to keep hearing—what Jesus has done for us, how He entered the prison house of our slavery and removed our chains of sin.
He did this by letting Himself be bound. Even though He never sinned, He accepted the wages of our sin. He took our place and paid that price. He was beaten and flogged for our disobedience. “He was wounded for our transgressions” (Isa. 53:5). We can’t see how deep our sin runs and how much damage it has done. But Jesus knows, because He paid for every last sin of every single person. The price He paid for our freedom was tremendous.
This is what God the Father sent Him to do. The Son of God speaking through the prophet Isaiah said, “the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound” (Isa. 61:1). Jesus came to proclaim and win our liberty and freedom—not liberty and freedom for sin, but liberty and freedom from sin.
Paul emphasizes this point in today’s reading. He says that as you once willingly participated in sin, now through faith dedicate yourself to pursuing righteousness. In fact, he says that it can only be one or the other. Either you are a slave of sin, or you are a slave of righteousness (Rom. 6:18). Slavery to righteousness is not an oppressive slavery; it is not unpleasant. If slavery to sin is like drinking salt water that makes you thirstier, slavery to righteousness is like drinking pure, cold water on a hot day.
God did not create us and redeem us to sin; He created and redeemed us to do good. When we pursue righteousness, we are not acting against God’s purpose for us. We are doing what He called us to do and living according to His will. This is the sanctified life that He works in us through His Word. He brings us more and more in line with His will as He brings us the forgiveness and righteousness of Jesus. This is why we can produce good fruit in our life; it is because we are joined to Jesus.
So we give Him the glory for the good we do. He is the one who works blessings for others through our small efforts. He multiplies our little words and works of righteousness, so they have a great impact. Taking credit for all the good we are able to be part of would be like the disciples taking credit for the food that fed four thousand, because they provided the seven loaves and a few fish (Mar. 8:1-9). That would be obnoxious and prideful.
All that we have and all that we are able to do are gifts from God. We do not deserve the freedom we have in Him—freedom from having to answer for our sins, freedom from the eternal punishment we deserve, freedom to bear good fruit in His name and to enter heaven by His grace. We do not deserve it, but this freedom is most certainly ours. “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
This is what we receive as the “slaves of God.” We receive the inheritance of sons. We receive eternal life. Slavery to God is not oppressive, except to our sinful nature. God guards and keeps us, so that we do not become lost in the darkness where even our worst dreams come true. Through His Word and Sacraments, He leads us out of the darkness of sin, He feeds us so we eat and are satisfied (Mar. 8:8), and He prepares us to inherit His kingdom in the life to come.
The slaves of sin in this world may appear to have everything, but without Christ they have nothing. The slaves of God may appear to have nothing in this life, but in Christ they have everything.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, forevermore. Amen.
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(picture from “Crucifixion, Seen from the Cross,” by James Tissot, c. 1890)
(No audio recording is available for this sermon.)
Presentation of the Augsburg Confession – Pr. Faugstad homily
On June 25, 1530, the Lutheran princes of Germany stood before Emperor Charles V in the German town of Augsburg and publicly read their confession of faith. They stated that they would rather die than compromise the truth of God’s Word.
Text: Romans 10:5-17
In Christ Jesus, whose perfect confession of the truth covers over our times of doubt, weakness, and faithlessness, dear fellow redeemed:
In the parts of the Augsburg Confession we have heard so far, there are two major themes that are brought up again and again. Those themes are righteousness and faith. In the Bible, “righteousness” is what it takes to be right with God. We don’t have to guess about the standard, because God has given us His standard for righteousness. He has given us ten statements—Commandments—which outline a life of righteousness.
Just ten commands—if you can live by them and keep them, you are right with God. But if you cannot keep them, then you cannot make yourself right with God. Already in the second article of the Augsburg Confession, the Reformers said this: We condemn those who “argue that a person can be justified before God by his own strength and reason” (ELH p. 9). In article four, they repeated the same thing, “We teach that men cannot be justified before God by their own strength, merits, or works” (ELH p. 9).
This teaching that there is nothing we can do to make ourselves right with God does not shock us, but it certainly shocked the people in Germany and beyond in 1530. Many believed that their good works, their merits, did contribute to their righteousness before God. The Roman theologians who responded to the Augsburg Confession put it like this, “All Catholics admit that our works of themselves have no merit but God’s grace makes them worthy to earn eternal life” (“The Confutation of the Augsburg Confession” in Sources and Contexts of The Book of Concord, p. 109). So is it ultimately God’s power or our power? Is it His work or our work?
St. Paul does not leave this ambiguous or unclear in today’s reading. He writes about “the righteousness that is based on the law” and “the righteousness based on faith.” The righteousness based on the law is our attempts to do what God tells us. If we kept His Commandments perfectly, He would let us into heaven because of our own good work. But if we have not kept them perfectly, we stand condemned in our sin. It’s all or nothing. Either you are perfect according to God’s standard, or you are not.
Now “the righteousness based on faith” is not a different kind of righteousness. It is still the perfect keeping of God’s Commandments, but this righteousness comes to us apart from our works. We do not earn this righteousness; we are given this righteousness. It is the righteousness of Jesus, who did perfectly keep the Commandments. He is the only human being to accomplish this. We were all conceived and born in sin, and we continued sinning. But He was conceived in the virgin Mary’s womb by the power of the Holy Spirit, and therefore He entered the world without sin.
Though in every respect He was tempted as we are, He never sinned (Heb. 4:15). He perfectly feared, loved, and trusted His heavenly Father. He perfectly loved everyone around Him. And that perfect keeping of God’s law is counted to each one of you by faith, and faith alone. Again from the Augsburg Confession, article four: “We teach that men… are freely justified for Christ’s sake through faith, when they believe that they are received into favor and that their sins are forgiven for Christ’s sake, who by His death has made satisfaction for our sins” (ELH p. 9).
For this faithful confession before one of the most powerful rulers in the world, the Reformers were risking their very necks! They were willing to die for this truth. They were fully convinced that what St. Paul wrote is true: “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” Paul says nothing about God’s grace making us worthy to earn salvation, or about faith working through love that somehow earns us heaven. He speaks of the righteousness of Jesus becoming ours by faith in Him.
But where does faith come from? Is that a work you do? Paul writes, “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” The power to save you and to work faith in you is in the Gospel, the good news of Jesus’ perfect life and atoning death on behalf of sinners. That is why you can be certain of your righteousness and salvation. They are gifts from God to you, received through the faith the Holy Spirit worked in you through the Word.
God has saved you. He justifies you. He caused you to believe this soul-saving truth. You Are Righteous before God by Faith. This is what the Lutheran laymen and pastors confessed 494 years ago, and by God’s enduring grace, we still confess it today to His glory alone. Amen.
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(picture of Emperor Charles V receiving the Augsburg Confession)
Midweek Lent 5 – Pr. Abraham Faugstad homily
Texts: Genesis 3:7,21, St. John 19:23-24
In Christ, who for our sakes was stripped in shame that we might be clothed with the garments of salvation, dear fellow redeemed.
Why do we wear clothes? While we might be inclined to attribute clothing to modest Norwegian sensibilities, we know that isn’t quite true. People all around the world wear clothes. Clothing does not just have to do with the climate either. In both hot and cold climates people wear clothes. It’s rather interesting that humans are the only creatures in the world that wear clothes. So why do we wear clothes?
To understand why we wear clothes we have to go all the way back to the garden of Eden. The serpent tempted Eve by saying that by eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they would become like God. Adam and Eve saw that the forbidden fruit was pleasant to the eyes, and they ate. They thought that they knew what was better for them than God did. As a result, they brought sin, death, and destruction to the entire human race. As soon as they sinned, Scripture tells us that their eyes were opened, “and they knew that they were naked” (Genesis 3:7).
Immediately, they felt their shame and nakedness. They were now afraid of God. They knew they had no right to stand in the presence of a holy and just God. They tried to hide themselves among the trees of the Garden and they made themselves loincloths of leaves to cover their sinfulness. Humanity made the first clothes to try to cover their sin. Every suit of clothes, every clothing store, and every clothing display is a witness of the fall into sin.
Adam and Eve clothed themselves with leaves to cover their shame. Yet, we know what happens when leaves are plucked. They dry up and break into pieces rather quickly. How silly it must have looked for our first parents to attempt to cover themselves up with something that clearly would not last.
But isn’t this what we all try to do? We don’t want others to see our sin, so we try to cover it up. Some try to cover and clothe themselves by blaming others. It’s as old as Adam who blamed Eve and she who in turn blamed the serpent. We see this in our own lives. It’s easy for us to blame our problems or actions on someone else rather than taking personal responsibility.
Yet, perhaps the main way people try to cover up their sin today is through human work righteousness. Our consciences accuse us for what we have done wrong, so people try to make up for it by doing good things. People think God is keeping records of our rights and wrongs, and as long as our rights outweigh the wrongs, we are alright. Ask the average person how he expects to have peace with God in the afterlife and the usual answers you will get is, “I’ve tried to live a good life so I think God will accept me and take me into heaven.”
No matter how we try to cover ourselves and our sin, they are all feeble and foolish attempts. All the leaves of our own righteousness dry up as Adam and Eve’s did before God’s demand, “Be perfect as I the Lord your God am perfect” (Matthew 5:48). God isn’t impressed by our best efforts or good intentions—he demands perfect holiness. When we look at our own lives, we see that we have never perfectly kept God’s Law—our heart is filled with hatred, lust, jealousy, and greed. Scripture tells us that even our righteous works are like filthy rags in the sight of God, which cannot save us (Isaiah 64:6).
God knew that Adam and Eve’s leaf clothing would never work. The leaves would crumble and dry up. Therefore, the Lord made for Adam and Eve tunics of animal skin and clothed them. We could never stand before God with our own man-made clothing; only God can provide the proper clothing for man.
“And the LORD God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.” By the shedding of blood and death, the Lord covered Adam and Eve. From this we see two important things—first, God must cover us. God provides the proper clothing. We can’t cover our sins and shame. Second, it required sacrifice and death so that God could cover our sins. The covering of sins is pictured in all the Old Testament sacrifices which pointed to the once and for all sacrifice and covering on the cross.
The clothing of Adam and Eve reminded them of the danger of sinning, to repent continually, and to put their hope of forgiveness and life in the promised Seed of the woman. They looked with hope to the one who would crush Satan’s head and free us by the bondage of sin and provide the covering needed to stand before God. The One born of the virgin called Emmanuel, God with us.
Our Lord Jesus provided a garment for us, which alone is pleasing to God, by offering up his life in our place. The Son of God became man, leaving his glory and majesty on high to come to our rescue. Jesus was the only righteous person to ever live, but he humbled himself, by taking on our shame. Ever since God first clothed Adam and Eve, it has been shameful to be disrobed in public. Our dear Lord Jesus was stripped in shame so that we would never have to be.
When we see Jesus mocked, beaten, and stripped in shame, we can feel a sense of anger and sadness over his mistreatment. Yet, we must realize that Jesus was not just there because of Pontius Pilate or the soldiers who mocked and stripped him. Jesus was there because of you. We deserve to be punished, publicly shamed, and abandoned by God. But here Jesus stood in the place of sinners—of Adam and Eve, Abraham and Isaac, and you and me.
“He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed… the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:5–6). God kept his promise. Jesus fulfilled what the Scriptures foretold, even to the most minute detail of the soldiers dividing his garments and casting lots for his tunic, all to assure you that your sin and shame have been covered by his blood. Jesus offered himself up so that we might be holy and righteous before God. “For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s obedience many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:19).
Scripture writes, “For He has clothed me with the garments of salvation, He has covered me with the robe of righteousness” (Isaiah 61:10). Your robe has been made white through the blood of the Lamb. The righteousness of Jesus, God’s own Son, is the only covering that can clothe the nakedness of the sinner. Because of Jesus, God no longer sees your sins—his holiness is counted as your own.
Paul explains how God has clothed you with the beautiful garment of Christ personally, “For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (Galatians 3:26–27). By faith in Jesus, worked in us and promised to us in the waters of holy Baptism, we are clothed with the garment of Christ. Clothes fit for heaven itself!
Our sinful flesh will always try to cover our sin with man-made coverings, but these cannot save us and will leave us in shame on judgement day. Why do we wear clothes? They remind us of the fall into sin and serve as a reminder of our own sinfulness and need to be covered before God. At the same time your clothes are an assurance of your salvation. You have been covered by God with the garment of forgiveness obtained by Jesus’ blood shed on the cross. Your sins are forgiven. There will be no shame for those who are clothed with Christ’s righteousness, but eternal joy and peace. God grant us faith to hold dear to this priceless clothing freely given to us,
Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness,
My beauty are, my glorious dress;
’Midst flaming worlds, in these arrayed,
With joy shall I lift up my head. Amen.
ELH 432:1
(picture from “Cristo Crucificado” by Diego Velázquez, 1632)
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)
The Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: St. Matthew 6:24-34
In Christ Jesus, whose promise to provide for us is far more powerful than our worries and troubles, dear fellow redeemed:
He says it five times!
- “Do not be anxious about your life.”
- “Which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?”
- “Why are you anxious about clothing?”
- “Do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’”
- “Do not be anxious about tomorrow.”
Jesus thinks we have an anxiousness problem, a worry problem, and Jesus is never wrong. He also identifies another problem: our little faith. Both of those go together—worry and a lack of faith. We worry because we do not believe God will do what He says, or at least we have doubts that He will provide for us in just the way and at just the time that we need it.
But what is it that causes our worry? What is our worry based on? Our worry is not based on anything we find in God’s Word. We don’t read about an arbitrary or a fickle God who sometimes chooses to bless His children and sometimes chooses to harm them. At times He does chasten and discipline us, because He wants to lead us to repentance and a stronger faith. But this is done out of love. He is always faithful. He does not change. So worry is not based on uncertainty about God’s will and work which are clearly revealed to us in His Word.
Worry is based on our own experience and the evidence we see around us in the world. We can think of times when we had more expenses than income, more responsibilities than we had the ability to meet. Maybe we were worried about paying our bills, and then more bills came. We didn’t know where the money would come from to cover even the essentials like food and utilities. Or one of our family members was sick, and we didn’t know if we could afford the medicine needed for healing.
We also look around us and see many people who go hungry, who can’t afford clothing, who have no place to go home to. If God feeds the birds and clothes the lilies, why doesn’t He feed and clothe all people in need? And if doesn’t do this for the people who really need it, how can we be sure He will do this for us? So we worry. We give more weight to our experiences and doubts than to God’s promises.
When we allow worry to come in, we are taking matters that God wants to handle and holding those matters in our own hands. We keep the burden on ourselves of providing for our needs and fixing our own problems. Or we look for another provider, another god, whose promises seem more reliable.
This is how many people view the government. They trust the government to take care of all their needs. But as necessary as government is—and God has certainly ordained it for good order and for our protection—yet government is made up of sinners, who are often ready to take as much or more than they promise to give.
Our worries really come down to 1) having enough and 2) keeping what we have. A person just out of high school or a married couple with little children might especially worry about having enough. They do without new clothes, new cars, and a nice house. Retirement is a long way off—there’s lots of work to do! But older individuals whose work has been blessed and who are able to afford the finer things, now worry about having enough to retire on and having the good health and energy to enjoy it.
When we worry about the future like this, we behave like “the Gentiles.” Jesus says, “Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.” Now many of us are Gentiles in the sense of not having Jewish background. But Jesus is referring to the unbelieving Gentiles, the ones who did not have the Scriptures. That isn’t us, but we act like the unbelievers when we worry about having what we need.
Instead of worry, Jesus teaches us to do this: “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” He says that when we put our faith in God and His Word—little though our faith may be—, all the things we need for this earthly life will be provided to us. That’s quite a promise! It’s a promise that we have difficulty accepting.
We think that if we are going to prosper in this life, we have to make it happen. We have to outwork our co-workers, we have to come up with new solutions to get ourselves noticed by the “higher-ups.” We have to be in the right place at the right time. Then we will have a shot at our dreams. Then we can have a chance at the life we always wanted.
This is not a criticism of hard work. God wants every one of us to do our work to the best of our ability, whether we are in the classroom, in the workplace, in our homes, or at church. God never endorses laziness. In teaching us not to worry, Jesus is certainly not teaching us to sit back and wait for everything to drop in our lap. The apostle Paul couldn’t have said it more clearly than this: “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat” (2Th. 3:10).
The difference is working for selfish gain or working for godly gain. We work for godly gain when we recognize that God is the one who gives each of us our unique abilities and strengths to employ in His service. We trust that He will bless our efforts as He sees fit. He might give more to some of His children and less to others, but all of it is a gift from His gracious hand. So it is not helpful to compare what we have with what others have, since God is the Giver, and “He is good, for His mercy endures forever” (Psa. 136:1).
And how do we know this is true beyond any doubt, that God really is so good and merciful? We know this because the Father who created and provides for all things also gave the greatest gift of all—His only-begotten Son to save us. When Jesus says, “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness,” He is referring to His own holy work.
God the Father sent Him to do for us what we could not accomplish, no matter how much we worried after it or worked for it. Jesus the Christ was born under the Law, so that He might redeem us, buy us back, by His own holy life. While we are anxious and doubtful about God’s care for us, He perfectly entrusted Himself to the Father’s will. He did not worry about tomorrow; He focused on God’s Word today.
Wherever we have failed in our work through our worry, our selfishness, and our laziness, Jesus fulfilled the holy Law through His faith, His love, and His perfect commitment to the work of saving us sinners. “His righteousness” is the righteousness we must seek if we will stand before God in heaven. And this is the righteousness we already have by faith in Jesus.
Yes, our faith is “little” and never as strong as it should be. But even a little faith has salvation in Christ. Our eternal future does not depend on how strong our faith is, but on how strong our Savior and Lord is. And He is strong! He is stronger than hunger and want, stronger than worry and fear, stronger than sin, death, and the devil.
He suffered when He went to the cross, but He was not worried. Just before He took His last breath, He cried out, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” (Luk. 23:46). Then He was taken off the cross and closed up in the tomb, but He was not worried. Death was no match for Him, and He rose from the dead on the third day to prove it.
It is this Conqueror of sin and death who tells you: “Do not be anxious; do not worry.” If your needs and concerns are like ten enemies threatening you with pocket knives and pitchforks, God’s care is like an entire army right behind you outfitted with the best weapons and equipment. Worldly cares are scattered by the powerful promise of God’s care.
He will provide for you. If He needs to say it again and again, even every day, He will: “Do not be anxious. I have not forgotten about your needs. I know how to turn trials into blessings. I will come and help you. Have no fear!” In His care for you, God the Father already sent His Son to rescue you from eternal death. That must mean He will not forsake you in your times of need (Rom. 8:32).
And you know this to be true. You know that your cares and worries have never done anything for you. You know that God’s care for you has never failed. Even when you were anxious, even when you complained, He kept on loving you. And if He didn’t give you everything you wanted at the time, He gave you everything you needed.
God knows your needs even better than you do. He gives you His kingdom and His righteousness for your eternal life, and He gives all that you need for this body and life besides.
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 Jesus and the lilies from stained glass at Jerico Lutheran Church)