The Thirteen Sunday after Trinity – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: 2 Kings 5:15-27
In Christ Jesus, who by His blood purifies our consciences from dead works to serve the living God (Heb. 9:14), dear fellow redeemed:
When Martin Luther was ordered to recant, to take back, everything he had written up to that time in 1521, he replied, “[M]y conscience is captive to the Word of God… I cannot and will not recant, because it is neither safe nor wise to act against conscience” (quoted in Kittelson’s Luther the Reformer, 161). For Luther, conscience and the Word of God were so bound up together, that to go against one would be to go against the other.
God gave us a conscience which He informs by the moral law written on our hearts. That moral law totally agrees with and is sharpened by the Ten Commandments recorded in the pages of Scripture. When our conscience is operating properly, it will help keep us in line with the Law of God. And if we are living according to the Law of God, we will have a clear conscience. But as you and I well know, living according to God’s Law is not the easiest thing to do.
When we hear about the Good Samaritan, we might think of him as a professional do-gooder, whose heart was filled with an endless supply of love, patience, and compassion to help a person in need. It seems to us that a person like this must have enjoyed a clear conscience. He was just so good. But let’s bring him back into the real world. Let’s imagine he was something like us.
The Samaritan may have had other concerns and responsibilities occupying his mind. He may have been mulling over troubles at work as he traveled. Maybe he was in danger of losing his job. Maybe he was poor and hardly able to provide for his family. Maybe he and his wife hadn’t spoken for days or weeks. Maybe his parents were beginning to need care he wasn’t sure how to provide. Maybe he was stressed and unhappy and didn’t think his life could get any more complicated or any worse. Then there was this man lying by the side of the road. Could he really handle another problem right now? Should he just pass by on the other side? Would anyone know if he did? His conscience compelled him to stop.
You can’t be a Christian without having struggles of conscience. Those struggles, those inner conflicts, are actually a blessing. If you no longer felt conflict inside, the tug and pull of what is right or wrong, then your faith would be in great danger. Life in this fallen world is not meant to be comfortable for those who believe in Jesus. He plainly said, “In the world you will have tribulation” (Jn. 16:33), and “If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me” (Mt. 16:24).
Naaman felt this struggle and conflict. As soon as he was converted, he began to be concerned about having a clear conscience. His flesh was cleansed of its leprosy, and he came back to Elisha confessing the name of the true God. But though he was now clean, Naaman was bothered by something new. He would soon be leaving Israel to return to his home. The last thing he wanted was to dishonor the LORD who had miraculously healed him.
He first asked for two loads of soil, so that he could offer sacrifices to the God of the Israelites on Israelite ground. Then he brought up another issue. As the right hand man of the king, he was expected to accompany him into the temple of Rimmon, a false god. Would the LORD pardon him for doing this and even for bowing down—not out of respect for the idol but out of respect for his king? Elisha replied, “Go in peace.”
But Naaman wasn’t the only one whose conscience was troubled. Gehazi, the chief servant of Elisha, couldn’t believe his master had rejected the gifts that Naaman wished to give. Think what good that silver, gold, and fine clothing could do. After all, should the prophets have to scrape by on so little? If nothing else, couldn’t such riches be used to help the poor? This is what Judas Iscariot argued when Mary anointed Jesus’ feet with expensive ointment (Joh. 12:4). But it wasn’t charity that drove Judas or Gehazi to speak up for the generous offerings of others. It was greed.
The love of money caused Gehazi to do great violence to his conscience. He surely reasoned it all out to quiet this inner voice. Perhaps he thought that what Naaman offered probably belonged to Israel anyway. After all, Naaman had attacked the Israelites, taking their goods, and turning them into his slaves. Wouldn’t Gehazi know how to put riches to better use than that wicked man?
Gehazi felt so sure about his purpose that he even took an oath before God that he would handle the situation in a better way than Elisha. “As the LORD lives,” he said, “I will run after him and get something from him.” Then to follow his plan through, he had to lie to Naaman and then to Elisha. Even if Gehazi convinced himself that his cause was right, his conscience was certainly not in line with the Word of God.
The tension of keeping a clear conscience was so great that Gehazi decided he would not listen anymore. We know how that feels. Every day, we are challenged by these tensions. Should I confront my boss about his dishonest business practices, or stay quiet and protect my job? Should I take the shortcuts everyone else is taking, or do what is right? Should I hide my toys so no one else can play with them, or should I share? Should I lie and keep myself out of trouble, or tell the truth?
Sometimes the cost of a clear conscience seems too great, and we make the conscious decision to go ahead with something that we know is wrong. Sure, we reason it all out to keep our conscience from screaming too loudly: “We may not be married, but we are committed.” “Who am I to say what someone else should do with her body?” “It’s not right for me to judge.” “It’s going to happen anyway whether I say something or not.” “I don’t want to be left out.” But even if our conscience is quieted somewhat, we have departed from the Word of God, and the leprosy of the unbelieving world rubs off on us. We think we can just give a little, relieve some of that tension, and still be faithful confessors of Christ.
These compromises can never deliver a clear conscience. They only make our condition worse. No amount of good intentions, compromises, or charitable efforts and good works can earn us a clear conscience. These efforts amount to selling the faith for two talents of silver and two changes of clothing which won’t help us anymore than they helped Gehazi. Then sin continues to cling to us just as leprosy clung to him.
So what can be done to get a clear conscience? If conscience is guided by the Law of God, and we have broken the Law in many, many ways, is a clear conscience even possible?
God knows the cost of a clear conscience. He knows this not because His conscience was ever dirtied or in conflict, but because He knows us sinners. He knows how utterly we failed to keep His holy Law. He knows how what He intended us to be is nothing like what we are since the fall into sin. So He resolved to send His holy Son down to earth to be “born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law” (Gal. 4:4-5).
Being placed under the Law, Jesus could fulfill the Law for every sinner. He could maintain a perfectly clear conscience that never departed from the holy Law of God. He was tempted in every way just as we are, but He never blurred the line between right and wrong. He never deviated from His holy task. He never set aside the Word of God—even in the smallest part—in order to appeal to more people.
He kept His conscience clear all the way through a false verdict, unmerited suffering, and a horrible death. He held fast to the promises of God; He had to follow through with God’s plan in order to redeem souls, your soul. God now declares you to be right with Him because of what Jesus did. You are now freed from the guilt of your sins. By the immeasurable price of His holy body and blood, Jesus made the payment to obtain for you a clear conscience, a conscience that is no longer imprisoned in your former darkness and sin.
So a clear conscience cannot be gotten by something you do. It is obtained by what Jesus did for you. Just as Naaman was cleansed of his leprosy in the waters of the Jordan, your conscience was cleansed in the waters of your Baptism. And that powerful cleansing remains in effect as long as you are a believer in Christ. St. Peter calls Baptism “an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ” (1Pe. 3:21). And the author of the book of Hebrews writes, “[S]ince we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus… let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water” (10:19,23).
Baptized into Christ, He is with you to “wage the good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience” (1Ti. 1:18-19). He helps you to resist the temptations of this world, the devil, and your flesh, and to continuously battle to uphold the truth of His Word. You will not perfectly avoid what is wrong and do what is right. Your conscience will be sullied again by the leprosy of sin. But it is always cleansed in Christ.
Bring your troubled conscience to Him in humble repentance; acknowledge where you have fallen short; lay all your guilt before Him. Then wrap yourself up in His righteousness and grace. Know that your sins are all forgiven through the blood of Christ. The Cost of a Clear Conscience was very high, and Jesus met that cost in full for you. You can depart as Naaman did with these words of comfort in your ear: “Go in peace.”
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 “Parable of the Good Samaritan” by Jan Wijnants, 1632-1684)
The Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: Galatians 3:15-22
In Christ Jesus, who had compassion on us and came to do for us what we could not do for ourselves, dear fellow redeemed:
The Good Samaritan dressed the wounds of the Jewish man who had been beaten, brought him to an inn to take care of him, and provided funds for his ongoing care. Possibly all this happened without the beaten man’s knowledge as he slowly began to recover from his serious injuries. If he had been unaware about what had been done for him and was then informed about it, how do you think he would respond?
We would expect gratitude. He probably thought he would die on that road to Jericho when the robbers attacked him. Yet here he was getting the care he needed and regaining his strength. But suppose his attitude changed as soon as he heard who had helped him: “You say it was a Samaritan?!?” Generally speaking, the Jews and the Samaritans avoided each other. They didn’t like each other. There was a long history of animosity between them. As a rule, they would not go out of their way to help one another.
What if the Jewish man didn’t like the thought of being saved by a Samaritan? What might he do? Think about it in your own life. Imagine a person who has always rubbed you the wrong way, who has brought trouble to your life, who you might even think of as your enemy. Now imagine having a health crisis and waking up to learn that it was your enemy who called the ambulance, who sat by your hospital bed day after day until you finally woke up.
That might result in your enemy becoming your friend. Or you might be suspicious. Is he or she just trying to manipulate me somehow? What’s their angle? You might do what you could to try to cancel your debt with that person. You might say, “What did it cost you to travel to the hospital and eat in the cafeteria? I want to pay you back. Did you miss work? I can compensate you for that too.” But nothing you could do, no amount of money you could pay, would change the fact that your enemy had saved your life. What is the price tag on salvation?
This attempt to balance the scales when a great gift is received is the way many people try to level up with God. They think they can do this by the way they live their life. I expect you have talked with a number of Christians who tell you they hope to be saved because they have “tried to live a good life.” In today’s culture, “living a good life” is less and less tied to any objective standard, like God’s holy Law. It’s more of an internal calculation about what is right and wrong to me which often contradicts God’s Ten Commandments.
But even those who try to keep God’s Law to save themselves are fooling themselves if they think they have done it. God never says we should try our hardest, and that is good enough for Him. Or that as long as we generally do more good than bad, we are okay. Or that we just need to make sure we are better than the people around us.
The Law of God demands our perfection. God says that if you want to get yourself to heaven, the only way to do it is to perfectly do the right things, say the right things, and think the right things. He does not care about what the world cares about. He does not care how attractive you are, how popular you are, how successful you are. He cares about righteousness.
And you and I by our own efforts certainly are not righteous. We might be Good Samaritans in our own way, helping people in need, being generous with our time and money, lifting people up who have been beaten down. But none of these good deeds can open up the gates of heaven, so we can walk through them. Salvation cannot come by what we do because we have not perfectly kept the holy Law of God—not even close.
But St. Paul has some good news to share with us today. By the power of the Holy Spirit, he wrote that God’s gift of salvation is already ours. He explains this by taking us back to Abraham. God made a promise to Abraham. He said, “I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed” (Gen. 22:17-18).
God made this promise not because Abraham had earned it, not because he had shown himself to be perfect. God made this promise because He is a good and merciful God who loves us, a God who promised to save sinners immediately after the first people He made fell into sin. The promise He made to Abraham was a continuation of that first promise. The gift He gives to you now stems from that first promise. “God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son” (Joh. 3:16).
It was only later, some 400 years after God made the promise to Abraham, that He delivered His holy Law to Moses to pass along to the people of Israel. The Law was not put in place as an alternate path to salvation, though some began to think of it this way as time went on. The Israelites later on thought they could please God by their outward behavior, even if there was no faith in their hearts. We see the same attitude in the Jewish religious leaders who actively opposed Jesus’ teaching and work. And we see the same thing today from the people who think God is pleased with them because of how well they have inwardly kept His Commandments.
But if keeping the Law is not an alternate path to salvation, then why did God give it? Paul explains that the Law of God “was added because of transgressions, until the Offspring should come to whom the promise had been made.” The LORD God gave the Law to show the people and remind them why they needed the promise.
If God had not given such a clear standard, etched in stone, what do you suppose would happen? As time passed, the understanding of His will would become weaker and weaker, and consciences would become duller and duller. Then we would have nothing to compare ourselves to but one another, and that is setting the bar pretty low.
God sets the bar high through His Law, very high—too high for us to possibly reach no matter how good we try to be. His Law shows us our sin. It condemns us. That is its chief purpose and function. The Law kills any hope we have of getting ourselves to heaven.
But God’s promise came before the Law. He promised man’s salvation apart from man’s work. He promised to provide an Offspring of Abraham, through whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed. That Offspring was Christ, true God and true Man. When He became Man, the holy Law applied to Him too. But the Law did not break Him like it has broken us. Jesus made His righteousness clear when He said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Mat. 5:17).
It was a bold claim, but Jesus backed it up with perfection, perfection in His actions, words, and thoughts. He stepped in to keep the Law in our place. He shouldered our burden. He is our Good Samaritan who saw us beaten and helpless because of our sin and had compassion on us. He came to do for each and every sinner in human history what not one of us had the strength to do for ourselves. Romans 10:4 says, “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.”
The righteousness we need to enter heaven is ours by faith in Jesus. Everything we need to be saved is supplied by Him. And He not only kept the Law for us. He also paid the consequences for our breaking of God’s Law. He suffered the wrath and punishment of God that we deserved. He endured the eternal flames of hell in our place. For every single wrong we have done, Jesus says, “I forgive you. I paid for that sin.”
Going back to the Law and relying on our own works after we have heard this, would be like the Jewish man trying to pay the Samaritan for his charity, or like trying to repay an enemy who showed us kindness as though we could undo or improve on the good that had been done. Jesus, the Son of God, perfectly lived, died, and rose again for all sinners. He is the fulfillment of that first and best promise. He is God’s gift for our fallen world and for our sinful hearts.
Of course God wants us to live according to His Commandments. He wants us to help anyone in need and show kindness to all our neighbors. But our salvation does not rely on any of that. Our salvation depends on Him. And that’s what makes us certain of it. I am saved, and you are saved because God tells us so. That’s His promise—His gift—and God’s Gift Has No Strings Attached.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, forevermore. Amen.
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(picture from the Outdoor Service on August 25, 2024)
The Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: St. Luke 10:23-37
In Christ Jesus, whose “go and do” was perfectly fulfilled for you by His own life of love toward God and neighbor, dear fellow redeemed:
Who are the bad guys in Jesus’ account of the Good Samaritan? There are several bad guys, but they aren’t bad for the same reasons. The robbers sinned by beating up a man, taking his things, and leaving him for dead. The priest and the Levite sinned by not helping him when they saw him on the side of the road. But who was it that sinned the most?
The robbers sinned by their actions. The priest and the Levite sinned by their inaction. In our Catechism, we classify the sin of the robbers as sins of commission. They actively sinned against the Fifth and Seventh Commandments. They committed wrongs. The sins of the temple workers were sins of omission. They did not help their neighbor as the Fifth Commandment requires. They omitted to do what they should have.
Still it seems to us that the sins committed by the robbers were worse than the sins of the temple workers. After all, the robbers went looking for trouble; the priest and the Levite just happened on the scene. Let’s put ourselves in the sandals of these passers-by for a moment. We presume that the priest and the Levite were on their way to serve in the temple in Jerusalem. This service required that they be ceremonially clean. Touching the body of a dead man would disqualify them for that important work, and it looked like this man might not make it. And besides, they weren’t doctors—what could they even do for him? It was best to hurry on their way and pray that someone else would come along to help.
Sins of omission (inaction) almost always seem less serious than sins of commission (action). It is easier to justify why we did not do something good to help our neighbor than it is to justify something we did to hurt our neighbor. This is why the lawyer speaking to Jesus felt confident in his own righteousness. He thought that he had kept the Law of God. He hadn’t killed anyone, he hadn’t cheated on his wife, he hadn’t taken someone else’s things, and so on. He had avoided sins of commission—at least in his opinion.
But refraining from bad behavior is only half of what God requires in His Law. He also requires that we show love to Him and our neighbors. So for example, honoring God’s name doesn’t just mean keeping ourselves from cursing, swearing, and lying by His name. It also means praying to Him, praising Him, and giving Him thanks. Protecting our neighbor’s life does not just mean holding back from physical harm. It also means helping him and showing kindness whenever he has a need. Protecting our neighbor’s things is more than just not stealing. It is also helping him to do better and improve what he has.
Keeping the Commandments is not just some cold exercise in avoiding wrongdoing. We might think we could accomplish that by never leaving our home or our bedroom, never speaking to or interacting with others. Then we could sit all alone with hearts full of pride thinking about how we are not as bad as all the people “out there.” But then what good have we actually done for our neighbors? This is why Martin Luther and many others renounced the monastic life—they realized that by hiding away, they were serving only themselves and not their neighbors.
But there is a problem with opening ourselves up to the needs and concerns of others: we might have to do some hard things. We might have to change the plans we had. We might have to get our hands dirty as we serve the hurting and the helpless.
I recently read a beautiful little book called Bright Valley of Love (Edna Hong). It detailed the life of a severely crippled boy who was treated little better than an animal by his parents and grandmother. They thought of him as a nobody, a nothing, who would never contribute to society in a worthwhile way. When he was six, they decided they had had enough and dropped him off at a center called Bethel, a Christian place where the physically and mentally disabled were cared for. There he learned to speak and walk and carry out numerous tasks for others in the community. It was a wonderful institution that focused on the needs of both body and soul.
Then World War II began, and Hitler gave the order that any people in Germany like the ones at this center, people who required full-time care—the mentally ill, disabled, paralyzed, infirm—that these should be “mercifully” killed. It’s terrible, isn’t it? Assigning greater value to one life than another. But we still do it—we all do it. Maybe we have something against a certain group of people because of how they look or where they come from. Maybe we wish harm on those who hold different views about culture and politics than we do. Maybe we look at a portion of the population as nothing more than a drain on our valuable resources.
Until we have nothing but love in our hearts and our minds toward our neighbors, including the ones we look down on or the ones who look down on us, we have not loved as God requires us to do. The man from Samaria spent his time, energy, and money on a man from Judea. Generally speaking, the Jews and the Samaritans despised each other. They wouldn’t think of lifting a finger to help one another. But God moved the Samaritan’s heart to compassion, and friends were made out of enemies.
God calls us to make friends like the Samaritan did, by making sacrifices and serving our neighbors around us. It is not possible for us to solve all the problems in the world. We can’t help everyone who is hurting. But we can help the people we come in contact with. The same book I read made the point that the neighbor who most needs your attention is the person near you who is suffering the most. That might be your parent or sibling, your spouse or child, a co-worker, someone you hardly know, or someone you don’t know yet.
Instead of looking at others with eyes of evil and disdain like the robbers, or with eyes of distraction or disinterest like the priest and Levite, we want to look at one another with eyes of compassion. That’s how the Samaritan looked upon the man whom he assisted and cared for. That’s how Jesus looks upon us.
You see, we’re not so different from the man who was robbed and beaten up. But it isn’t our enemies that have done this work. It is the Law of God. The perfect commands of God’s Law rob us of any notion that we have lived the kind of life that He requires. The lawyer wanted to justify himself, but Jesus made it clear that he had not loved his neighbor as he loved himself, and so he had not perfectly loved God.
And the more we look in judgment upon others and turn our backs on them, the more pride we feel because of how good we are, the more the Law takes us to task and treats us roughly. Unless you have perfectly loved God with your heart, soul, strength, and mind, unless you have perfectly loved your neighbor as yourself, you have nothing to boast about. The inspired letter to the Galatians states it clearly, “You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace” (5:4).
But you, dear friends in Christ, have not fallen away from grace. Even though you have failed your neighbors by the harm you have done and by the help you have not done, Jesus has not failed you. He saw you wounded by your own sin, helpless, dying. And He came to join Himself to you and make your situation His situation.
Looking upon you with compassion, He said, “I will take the punishment of the Law that you deserve. I will be condemned and beaten in your place. I will bear your wounds. I will be forsaken by everyone who passes by. I will be robbed of My life.” And because He suffered and died for you, the filth of your sins is washed away. Your wounds are treated. You are wrapped in His righteousness. And for your ongoing spiritual health and strength, He calls you to the inn of His Church when you hear His Word of grace and kneel before Him at His altar to receive the best medicine there is—His holy body and blood “given and shed for you.”
You are not justified before God because of anything you have done, and you are not condemned because of what you have failed to do or done wrongly. You are justified—declared righteous and innocent in God’s sight—because of what Jesus has done on your behalf. Your neighbor does need your love and care and compassion. But you do not do these things to earn something from God or to receive recognition and glory from the world. You do these things because Jesus did them for you. “We love because he first loved us” (1Jo. 4:19).
With your eyes on Jesus, you know what love looks like. He has let you in on the secret and inspires it in you. He says to you just as He said to His disciples, “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see! For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.” You see Jesus’ love for you in the Samaritan’s love for the dying Jewish man, and so you see how to love your neighbor. Jesus gave all He had to save you. He put you first. He suffered for you and sacrificed Himself for your eternal good. Blessed are you, and Blessed Are All Whom Jesus Justifies.
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 “Parable of the Good Samaritan” by Jan Wijnants, 1632-1684)