“The Festival of the Reformation is at once a day of Christmas and of Easter and of Pentecost, in our Church year; a day of birth, a day of resurrection, a day of the outpouring of the Holy Ghost.” So writes Charles Porterfield Krauth, an American Lutheran who lived around the same time as C.F.W. Walther, who fought for the Lutheran church in America to remain faithful to the Lutheran Confessions and not to go astray in this new land.

Krauth’s aim is to stress the importance of the message of the Reformation, and that we keep the Gospel message alive by continuing to celebrate Reformation Sunday in remembrance of the work of the reformers. I agree with Krauth, but I think I’d use a slightly different analogy for us. Reformation Day is probably better equated, for us Americans at least, to our own civil celebration of Independence Day — the 4th of July. That day is a celebration of our release and freedom from political tyranny. And especially on Reformation Day we rejoice and celebrate that we are free. Humanity has been set free by God’s wonderful work for us in Jesus Christ, our savior from Sin.

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Back in the Garden of Eden, mankind was free. Adam and Eve were made by God in His image, they were given dominion over the fish of the sea and the bird of the air and over every thing that moves upon the land and creeps upon the earth. Every tree in the Garden was given to them for food, with one exception.

What happened to that freedom? Satan tempted, and the woman took from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil – the one exception – and ate. And she gave it to the man and he ate. And their eyes were opened, and they knew good and evil. They tried to make things right. They covered themselves up. They hid. They tried to self-justify.

God freed them, right then and there. He promised the Messiah, right then and there. Adam and Eve passed on that promise. Then Noah came along, and all the world was wicked and opposed to the Lord, and He was grieved. He preserved believing Noah and his family, eight souls in all, through the flood. They came out of the ark on dry ground and God preserved their freedom, right then and there, promising never again to destroy all life by a flood. He gave the rainbow as a sign of His favor and the freedom that we have in Him and His promises.

He freed Israel from their bondage and slavery. He brought them through the Red Sea on dry ground and drowned hard-hearted Pharaoh and all his host in the waters. Right then and there, God freed His people, promising them that He was their God and they were His people.

This is God’s ongoing action for all of mankind: He sets us free. Not because of our own doing, but as a gracious and loving gift.

This is what Jesus is talking about in our Gospel reading: ”If the son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” Jesus, the Son of God, is sent by the Father to free us from sin and from sin’s bondage. The long-ago-promised, long-hoped-for seed of the woman came and was bruised for our transgressions and pierced for our iniquities. By His stripes we are healed, by His blood we are washed clean, by His death we are set free from our slavery to sin, by His paying our sin-debt we are ransomed from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God. Christ Jesus does this for the whole world, for all mankind. Jesus sets the world free in His death and resurrection.

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It’s far easier to acknowledge that the whole world needs Jesus, than to confess that you yourself need Jesus. We must not be like those Jews who were believing in Jesus, who are then scandalized by His promise to set them free and say to Him, ”We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone.” After all, Jesus says, ”everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.”

Think about it: when you are caught in a transgression, what’s your first instinct, what are you first moved to do? To play it down? To justify yourself? To dismiss it? Do you take more pleasure in acknowledging others’ sins and others’ need for Jesus, instead of confessing your sin and your need for Jesus? I imagine it comes and goes; probably depends on the day. But the fact that it comes and goes is enough to convict you and me. In our sin we are slaves; we need to be liberated, set free.

So do you see that you need Jesus? Do you see that you need the true freedom that Jesus gives you? You will not free yourself by justifying what you think, say, and do. You will not be free by breaking your own chains. Only in the blood and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ will you be free indeed.

The Reformation was and still is about making this saving truth crystal clear: Christ’s death is all-sufficient to make you not guilty in God’s sight; the guilt of your sin was laid on Jesus and His righteousness is given to you, a blessed exchange.

This is the freedom that Luther longed for: he was burdened by his sins, tormented in his conscience by them. He could not find certainty of salvation in himself or in what he did. But He found freedom – “rediscovered” freedom – in the Gospel of Jesus Christ crucified for the sins of the world, whose righteousness is given to us as a free gift by a loving and merciful God.

Do you long for freedom? Freedom from the command to be better, to do more? Freedom from your conscience which is burdened with every thing that you’ve done or have left undone? Freedom from the harassment of the devil, who wants nothing more than again to enslave you and drag you into hell and eternal separation from God?

The true and only freedom is found in Jesus Christ. Jesus says, ”If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” Paul writes, ”For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus…”

Jesus has set you free on His cross. God put Jesus on the cross to shed his blood, as a propitiation–an atoning sacrifice–for your sins. Christ’s life given there on Calvary pays the ransom to free you forever from your wretched master, Sin.

Jesus has set you free in the font. Jesus baptized you, bringing you with Him into His grave and into His resurrection. ”For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” Sons remain in the house forever. And that’s what you are now: sons, heirs according to promise. You will dwell in the house of the Lord forever as free and righteous children.

Jesus sets you free here, now, today. Even as you find yourself enslaved again, hear the words which are the very heart and soul of the Christian Church and the thing which matters most about the Reformation; the words that are the chief thing which we celebrate today and forever.

”Christ Jesus is the one who died–more than that, who was raised–who is at the right hand of God.” And He has called me here to this place as His man to announce to you that, In the stead and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ, I forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus has set you free.

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In the early 1900’s, the London Times newspaper asked several famous authors to submit essays on the question, “What is wrong with the world?” Now, if you were asked that question today, what would you answer? Islamic terrorism? Rampant drug use and abuse? More and more violent crime? The breakdown of the family? Increasing isolation and loneliness?

Well, one of the authors, a man named G.K. Chesterton, wrote in response to the question “What is wrong with the world?” “Dear sirs, I am. Yours truly, G.K. Chesterton.” Now he could have said many things. But Chesterton, a Christian, knew what was what, and by God’s grace he had the humility to say it: “I am” what’s wrong.

Today we hear a parable from our Lord Jesus about those who would answer the question “What is wrong with the world” in two different ways. One would say some variation of “I may not be perfect, but…” and then list all the ways that he or she is at least not the biggest problem. The other would say, “I am.” The parable is about spiritual pridefulness.

Now what exactly is spiritual pridefulness? Well, let’s start with standard-issue pride. What is that? The dictionary definition positively states it as, “A sense of one’s own proper dignity or value; self-respect.” When does someone become prideful, though? When that sense of value becomes haughty, when someone values themself over others; or sometimes we’ll say, “he values himself too highly”; “he thinks too highly of himself.”

When it comes to spiritual things, now we’re talking about someone’s dignity or value spiritually speaking; that is, truly, value before God. To be spiritually prideful is to think too highly of oneself; to think oneself higher or better or more valuable than another, before God.

The Pharisee assesses himself: ”I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.” Frankly, there’s nothing wrong with this. The problem with the Pharisee is not his fasting or his tithing. It’s not in the strength that enabled him to resist taking advantage of his neighbors, or to resist adultery, or giving in to greed. The problem here is that the Pharisee thinks that he is righteous enough; spiritually strong enough to earn God’s favor; and that whatever his faults and weaknesses are, they are insignificant compared to other people’s faults and weaknesses. Therefore, he is the best candidate to receive God’s love and favor. “Chief of sinners though I be, that guy sure is worse than me.”

That is spiritual pride. Or as Luke puts it: he is one who trusts in himself that he is righteous, and treats others with contempt.

The Pharisee truly lives a good life. He avoids evil, does good, gives away his possessions, trains his flesh for hardship. He avoids sin and he is the better for it: there is no real or lasting pleasure in sin. Don’t believe me? Pick a rock star and read his biography. Debauchery doesn’t lead to happiness. The Pharisee knows this. He has much to be thankful form in this good life that God has blessed him to lead.

But anyone who thinks that he stands take heed, lest he fall. The Pharisee outwardly looks holy and righteous – we tend to think of them as the “bad guys” in these stories but the fact is that everyone would have looked up to them. When Jesus says to “beware of the leaven of the Pharisees” that would have been a shockingly scandalous statement to hear, because the Pharisees were the spiritual superstars of the time.

Anyways, the Pharisee looks holy and righteous outwardly, but inside he is nothing but a rotting maggot-sack of sin and death. And don’t you think better of yourself right now, because you’re nothing better than that, too. Likewise the tax collector, who had lived his own life of sin and debauchery, extorting his own neighbors, living the high life on the backs of all those from whom he collected taxes. The point is this: we ought not trust in ourselves for anything, spiritually speaking, because we are rotten to the core.

Yet Jesus tells this story about these two rotten guys in the temple and one of them goes home justified. Top it all off, it’s the guy that no one would expect.

If you get to pick what sort of a man to be between the Pharisee with honor in the community and a steady job and the Tax Collector of public shame and regret, pick the Tax Collector. For he went home justified. He confessed his sins before God. He trusted in God to cover for him, to receive him by grace, to forgive him. And God did.

Do you want to have worth and dignity before God? This only comes in the righteousness bestowed by Christ on sinners.

The Church has deliberately chosen the Tax Collector for her model of prayer. His actions in the parable are precisely why we typically bow our heads and close our eyes and fold our hands in prayer. We come before God as sinners in need of mercy. We want to go home justified. We do not trust in ourselves or our works. We don’t count ourselves as bad, but not as bad as that guy. No: “Chief of sinners though I be, Jesus shed His blood for me.” That’s the truth.

There’s a flip-side spiritual pride that is sometimes at work in the Church. This is the pride that sort of flaunts just how bad of a sinner we have been, maybe even still are, as a way to showcase just how great the grace and mercy of God are. But sin is harmful, and God explicitly warns us that we should not keep on sinning that grace may abound; likewise that we ought to be warring against sin and not boasting in it, even if it is to show forth the grace of God in Christ Jesus; and we ought not lead others into scandal or sin themselves by our lives.

Instead, we ought to look at that Tax Collector and see him doing nothing but in repentance coming to hear and taste and see God’s mercy, and then going home. And when he goes home we would see him beginning to look, in an outward way, like the Pharisee. Not self-righteous or spiritually prideful, but instead loving the Lord’s words and commandment and wanting to keep them. So he’d be fasting to train his flesh. He’d be tithing of all that he had in compassion for the poor and for the expansion of God’s kingdom, but also to curb his flesh and not be tempted by the mammon. He would resist evil. He would do good.

And we know this to be the case, because even though this parable doesn’t show this, another real-life story one chapter later in Luke’s Gospel does. Zacchaeus, small of stature and climber of trees–and also a tax collector–receives Christ joyfully in his house and hears the wonderful news that he is forgiven and then in his new freedom pledges to give half of all his goods to the poor and to restore fourfold everything he had that was from dishonest gain. He bears fruit in keeping with repentance. ”Today salvation has come this house,” says Jesus. Wonderful. Both tax collectors–sinners–are saved in their houses, that is, where they live.

And this Gospel changes them. They are not perfect, nor better than others. But they are saved and they have the abundant life that only comes from Jesus.

You are sinners. But Jesus has died for you, and today He announces through me that your sins are forgiven. He gives this meal to deliver to you His body and blood for the forgiveness of your sins. When you go home you go home justified, forgiven.

“For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

”Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.”

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August is an interesting month. Historians call August the month of catastrophes. World War I began in August. It was in August that Hitler gave the order to invade Poland the next day and start World War II. The atomic bombs were dropped on Japan in August. The Berlin Wall was built in August. Iran invaded Kuwait in August. Katrina happened in August.

And on August 10, A.D. 70, the Romans finished their siege and subsequent destruction of Jerusalem by going into the Temple complex and the Temple itself, razing it all to the ground. Down came Jerusalem, God’s city. Down came the Temple, that sign to all of Israel that the Lord was present among them, that they were His people and He was their God. No more sign. No more hope. ”Not my people” He said.

And this was all warned. This is what the Lord Himself had predicted, as we hear today. ”For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you…”

This was the last of the promises and predictions that the Lord gave to His people Israel. We heard some of His threats in the reading from Jeremiah today, too: that the Lord would let His people dwell in this place – that is, in Jerusalem, in Israel – so long as they would continue to hear the word of the Lord and worship the Lord and live according to His ways, in repentance and faith.

We heard last week from St. Paul, who was talking about all the things that Israel did in the Old Testament and what the Lord therefore did because of their unfaithfulness and wickedness: ”Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come.”

In other words, the desire of God that His people would listen to Him, would believe Him, would live our lives according to His will and not in wickedness and selfishness and idolatry, and His threats against those who would instead continue to live in sin and evil and go after other gods and idols; the Lord’s desires and promises and threats, all these are for us, too. These are spoken to us to instruct us.

What does this mean? We should fear, love, and trust in God above all things, simply put. We should not think that because I am baptized or because I am confirmed that therefore I can do whatever I want. We should not think that because the Lord by His abundant grace forgives our sins that therefore we can continue in sin that His grace may abound all the more, that we can keep on sinning because He loves to forgive us. By no means!

In fact we should pay attention to what happened to Israel and recognize it as a sign of the Lord’s wrath over sin and unbelief. Jesus predicts the terrible destruction of Jerusalem would come about. And why does this happen to them? Yes they are sinners. Yes they live wickedly. Yes they have lived unjustly towards their neighbors, towards the poor and the immigrant. But, Jesus says, they are utterly destroyed ”because you did not know the time of your visitation.”

It is not sin that damns. It is unbelief. It’s not the sin of Israel that dooms them but instead their rejection of the Lord and His promises and His Christ. And also you and me, and the whole world. We are born in sin and unbelief, and by God’s grace He rescues us out of it in the waters of baptism, by His promise of forgiveness and salvation for the sake of Christ’s death and resurrection.

Jesus is at Jerusalem to die for the sins of the world. Oh that they would recognize this! Oh that they would turn from their wicked ways and trust in this promised Messiah! Oh that they would have made the temple a house of prayer instead of a den of robbers.

Alas, they did not. God’s judgment comes.

There’s another detail in the reading I want to make sure we see. When Jesus draws near to the city and sees it, what does He do: He weeps. Jesus wept over Jerusalem. God weeps over death and unbelief. He does not want it. He wants sinners to repent, turn from our ways, and live!

The destruction of Jerusalem and the destruction of the unbeliever is the work of God. Over and over we see it in the prophets, the Lord sees the pride of a nation, even of His own people, and He promises to destroy it, to wipe out the people or the nation or the city. The Lord will destroy every attempt of man to be god or to reach up to god. He has pride in His sights and He shoots it down in every place and every land.

God is not some nice guy like the world likes to think of Him. He is holy, and so He is angry at sin and unbelief and pride, and He, over and over in the Scriptures, threatens to destroy pride and punish sin and pour out His wrath on all idolatry and ungodliness.

But He doesn’t want to. God will destroy all forms of unbelief, but this makes Him sad, in fact it makes Him cry. This is why Jesus is weeping over Jerusalem.

Jesus came to save, not destroy; to rescue, not ruin. He came so that the wrath of God over sin could be poured out on Him and not on His people. Jesus came to be killed, not to kill, but the people would not have Him, and so they fled from the refuge so graciously provided and rushed head-long into their own destruction.

So we are warned that unbelief will not remain unpunished, and that the Lord hates pride. But more than that, dear saints, we are comforted. Comforted by the tears of our Lord Jesus because in them we see His heart, what He wants and desires most of all, and that is our salvation.

”This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” Those are Paul’s words to Timothy, and they are the truth about God and about what He wants. God wants your salvation. Jesus wants you to live forever with Him. This is why Jesus came, why he lived and died, why He went into Jerusalem: to take away the Sin of the world.

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Note: This Sunday also marks the celebration of 40 years since the first worship service in Sherman: August 5, 1979.

”How can one feed these people with bread here in this desolate place?”

Let’s set the context for our Gospel reading. Jesus has been teaching and working miracles. He’s already miraculously fed 5,000 men – not to mention women or children – in the wilderness. So Mark introduces this story with the phrase, ”when again a great crowd had gathered.” In this desolate place, another great crowd has been gathered to hear the teaching of Jesus, perhaps to witness a miracle. They’ve all been there three days, and they have nothing to eat.

Jesus has ”compassion” on the crowds; this word is σπλαγχνίζομαι, it’s a word that means to have pity or sympathize or have compassion, but not in merely a cerebral or an emotional way. The word comes from splachna, which is like your guts, your insides; so from your very guts, with your whole body and being, you’re having sympathy on or pity for whomever. And in this case it’s Jesus, with His whole being having pity on, sympathy for, having compassion on these helpless, starving people, out here in the wilderness, whom if he sends them away will faint; and some are from very far away, they won’t make it home.

This prompts the question from the disciples: ”How can one feed these people with bread here in this desolate place?” And Jesus answers them by showing them just what He can do, just what the Lord is capable of, just what the Lord gives from His compassionate, loving self.

What appears impossible to man’s eyes and reason, to the Lord is a simple matter. Our Lord is a giver of gifts, a provider of provision, and here Jesus lovingly does just this: He gives daily bread. Our Lord Jesus Christ took the bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and gave it to His disciples, sending them out amongst the crowd to tell them to take and eat. ”And they ate and were satisfied.” The Lord provided so well that there was plenty left over, seven baskets full. And having taught them, having cared for them, having fed them, then Jesus sends them away from this place where they had congregated.

Isn’t it tremendous how our Lord Jesus helps? In His compassion, He sent none away hungry to their hurt or doom, but instead kept them and cared for them. His compassion even extends beyond the act of feeding them to the act of caring for their every need even though they, seeming to be foolish, came thoroughly unprepared.

In this story of the help and compassion of Jesus there is certainly comfort, but I find here also an admonition: a call to get our priorities straight. These people were reckless in following Jesus out into the wilderness with no food, weren’t they? And that is a lesson for us: by nature we put food and clothing and temporal things first, and if we look to the Words and promises of God at all, we look to them afterwards, if there is any time and energy left for it. But our Lord here shows us the reverse. He is saying to us, “Pay attention to my Word first, seek first the kingdom of God, be first of all my disciples. I am resolved not to let you starve, so I will provide all that you need to support this body and life. Listen to my Word, follow me, and all else will be added to you.

Now let’s set the context for our Gospel reading today.

Sherman, IL 40 years ago was a desolate place. Not in the sense of wilderness, with nothing around, and that you’d be in danger of starving to death if you ended up here. But it was desolate because the pure preaching of the Gospel and the right administration of the Sacraments of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to His institution, was not here. There was a real need here, people were dying, or at least at risk of dying, of spiritual starvation, and the question was rightly asked ”How can one feed these people with bread here in this desolate place?”

Now we know from our Lord’s Word that no man can feed another without the Lord. This is true of daily bread, for it is God who causes the rain to fall, the seed to sprout up, for mankind to work to bring in the harvest and to bake the bread. But it’s also especially true of the bread which comes down from heaven. It is only through the work of our Lord Jesus Christ, working through us, striking and enlivening hearts through His Word; only through Christ’s work by which we are fed with the eternal food, the true bread of life.

Our Lord used Pastor Eisenbraun, the OAFC workers who came through here in 1979, and a bunch of His people in the area to plant this congregation, here in this desolate place. And what did our Lord Jesus immediately do? He had compassion. He came and fed those people, and others heard the Word and believed on the Lord Jesus Christ and were fed and welcomed into the family of God here. It wasn’t 4,000, but the feeding was just as miraculous: because with just plain people speaking to one another, with just plain water and plain bread and wine, yet all with the Word of God richly combined with them, our Good Shepherd Jesus established a flock here, even to this day.

It’s interesting to note that the feeding of the 4,000 takes place in Gentile territory; truly in the wilderness, in a desolate place. And not just physically, but spiritually. Some of the ancient church fathers noted that the number 4,000 – 4 x 1,000 – indicates the completeness of the 4 corners of the earth. Namely, that the mission of Christ’s Church is to every one in every land; or as Jesus puts it in Matthew 28, to ”all nations.” Even here, in Sherman, IL, our Lord has seen fit to bring His Gospel to save many.

20 years ago, when celebrating the 20-year anniversary of the planting of Good Shepherd, Pastor Robert Kuhn, then the First Vice-President of the Synod, preached and during that sermon talked about “the next 20 years.” And of course we’ve just lived through those years and I’m sure they are in many ways completely unexpected; and yet, at the same time, they are just as our Lord willed them to be and some things were just as expected and as hoped for: the Gospel remains here, God’s people are fed on the Body and Blood of Christ, new believers are made in Holy Baptism, faithful Christians are laid to rest from their labors. This is Christ’s Church: this is what He would have had us do.

So what about the next 20 years? What about the next 20 years here in this desolate place? It was recounted to me that one comment made 40 years ago was that it was going to take an awful lot of work. It does. It is hard work that the Lord has given us to do here. I pray that I am up for it, by His grace. I pray that you are too. We don’t and can’t know what exactly the next 20 years will look like or bring.

But here’s what we do know. Here’s what is certain, and this is what we rest on, take comfort in, and even rejoice in. ”Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” His Word always accomplishes that for which He purposes it. He does not desire the death of a sinner, but that the sinner would repent and live. He washes away our sins in Holy Baptism. He feeds us with His Body and Blood for the forgiveness of our sins in the Sacrament of the Altar. He will never leave us nor forsake us. He is making all things new.

When the poor and needy seek water,
and there is none,
and their tongue is parched with thirst,
I the Lord will answer them;
I the God of Israel will not forsake them.
I will open rivers on the bare heights,
and fountains in the midst of the valleys.
I will make the wilderness a pool of water,
and the dry land springs of water.
I will put in the wilderness the cedar,
the acacia, the myrtle, and the olive.
I will set in the desert the cypress,
the plane and the pine together,
that they may see and know,
may consider and understand together,
that the hand of the Lord has done this,
the Holy One of Israel has created it.
(Isaiah 41:17–20, ESV)

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The devil is real. Demons are real. We are in the middle of a great spiritual war. Pay attention these next few weeks: in the Gospel readings we will hear all about the spiritual war that the Son of God enters into for us. This spiritual war is the sort of thing pictured in very terrifying ways in St. John’s Revelation. The devil and his demons are warring against God and His angels, and you, friends, are in the middle of it. You are the prize.

We can’t see all these things going on, for the most part, but they are really happening. We don’t see these things as they’re pictured in Revelation, but we certainly can feel them. We are tempted by the devil, the world, and our sinful flesh. We are tempted and we sometimes give in. But today’s Gospel story of our Lord Jesus Christ’s temptation in the wilderness by the devil encourages us. In Jesus, the temptations of the devil are overcome.

It’s in the devil’s nature to tempt, to lie, to deceive. He can’t help it; it’s just what he does. Jesus tells us that the devil is the father of lies, and a murderer from the beginning. He prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Dangerously for us the devil disguises himself as an angel of light. It brings to mind that wonderful line from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, about whether a character is a servant of the dark lord or of the good: “I think one the servants of the enemy would seem fairer and feel fouler…”

The devil just cannot help but tempt Jesus. Even though the devil cannot possibly win – and I think he knows it – he still has to confront our Lord. In fact this is the will of God, that Jesus His Son would be tempted by the devil, for the Spirit led Jesus up ”into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.”

He tempts Jesus, but it’s a losing battle. It’s in the devil’s nature to tempt to sin, but it’s in Jesus Christ’s nature that He cannot sin. His divine nature is perfectly righteous and holy. Jesus is the new Adam, the perfect man, truly and perfectly in the image of God, and He’s just plain going to do what His Father in heaven wills Him to do.

So Jesus meets the devil’s temptations. He hears them and then you can almost hear him chuckling, sort of confidently smirking as He announces to the devil that none of these things remotely entice Him. Jesus confronts each of the Devil’s lies and temptations with the truth. The truth of God’s Word.

He has no need for stones to become bread because the Father has given Him the very best nourishment there is: the Word of God. He has no need to throw Himself down to prove that God will care for Him because the Father has already declared to Him that He is His beloved Son. And besides there is a perfectly good set of stairs to get down from the temple. He has no need for all the kingdoms and power of the world because He has willingly laid aside His divine power and authority in order to come and save His highest creation from their Sin.

Thanks be to God, ”we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.”

Now it’s in our fallen nature to be tempted, to give in to temptation, to even think that being tempted and giving into temptation is exciting. We sang about it this morning: “All mankind fell in Adam’s fall / one common Sin infects us all… From hearts depraved, to evil prone / Flow thoughts and deeds of sin alone; / God’s image lost, the darkened soul / Seeks not nor finds it’s heav’nly goal.”

I want to introduce you to a term that we use to describe this nature of ours: concupiscence. This is the tendency to sin, the ability to sin. You know how when the temptations come and the thought of being a little naughty excites you, how it makes you want to give in to that temptation? That’s concupiscence at work. And even if you finally don’t give in, it’s still reckoned to you as sin. Because you wanted to. Because you were able to. Our fallen nature is that deep. It puts us firmly in the devil’s camp.

But, dear Christians, your new nature is given to you by your baptism into Christ, apprehended by faith. And it’s in your new nature to resist temptation, to fight sin, to cling to God’s Word and to your precious Jesus, to say ”Man shall not live by bread alone” or ”you shall not put the Lord your God to the test” or ”be gone, Satan for I do not belong to you any longer. I belong to Christ and He is my Lord. He has paid for me with His precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death. He has shown me that you are nothing but a liar and deceiver who seeks only to murder and destroy. Your false and enticing words do not convince me because God’s Word is truth and it has shown me that in His love for me He gave His Son into my flesh and into my suffering and death. And now He has clothed me in Christ. I am His child. I am baptized into Christ! I’m a child of paradise, not of hell. Be gone!”

At the end of the story, Matthew calmly reports that the devil left Jesus. He’s almost nonchalant about it. But this is big news. Comforting news. News that encourages and strengthens us in this world where the devil and demons would rage against us.

The devil left Him. The devil left Jesus. With only a Word. And if the devil left Jesus then the devil has left us and there is no one left to accuse us.

+INJ+

Lent is a season of repentance, and the Scripture readings for Ash Wednesday properly prepare us for this season. Tonight I want especially to talk with you about how God is calling us to repentance, and then teaches us to bear fruit in keeping with repentance.

The prophet Joel in our Old Testament reading is prophesying about The Day of the Lord. This is that great and terrible Day when the Lord comes in judgment at the End of the age. The first part of chapter 2, just before our reading tonight is quite terrifying, describing a great and terrible army that comes to lay waste to Zion. And in the end, when the Lord comes, ”who can endure it?” Joel asks.

God’s wrath over sin is indeed a terrible and frightening thing. We put these ashes on our heads on Ash Wednesday as a mark and reminder of that terrible wrath. Some of the worst words I have to pronounce as a pastor, I pronounce on Ash Wednesday: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” I speak them to young and old alike. Every cute infant, every sweet grandma returns to dust. Every one of us is afflicted and cursed in the same way: sin courses through our veins, it’s in our DNA. We are under the judgment of God.

Therefore we put on ashes. We wear ashes just like Job in his repentance and mourning. We cover ourselves like the king of Nineveh, faced with our great sin and having heard of the wrath of God against it. Like Jeremiah in his Lamentations we grind our teeth and cower in the ash heap because of the Holy and Righteous One who is both our creator and the one who stands in judgment over us.

None escape the Day of the Lord. Indeed, ”who can endure it?”

But see here how the Lord is not interested in leaving us in our ashes and terror. He calls us to repentance. Now, repentance is not being sorry because it turns out the Lord is well aware of just how rebellious you are against Him, just how dark and sinful your heart really is. That’s like being sorry because you got caught; because Mom knows about what happened at school even though you really hoped she wouldn’t find out and she’s standing there at the door with a stern look on her face when you get off the bus.

No, repentance is to mourn, to weep, to know that you are broken and that you can’t do anything about it. It’s to acknowledge that you have no hope before the Lord whatsoever in and of yourself. It’s to know that you heart is so rebellious, so dark, so dead, so wicked, that every thought, word, and deed is against God. That is what it is to put on ashes; to repent.

Look how the Lord doesn’t leave us in terror, but rather lovingly and kindly comes and bids us to get up from our ashes and be washed clean. ”Yet even now,” declares the Lord, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.” ”He raises up the poor from the dust; he lifts the needy from the ash heap to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor.”

”Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster.”

God does not desire the death of a sinner, but that the sinner should turn from his ways and live. To repent is to weep bitterly over your death; and to then turn. And look how when you turn God has given you a wonderful person to behold. You don’t turn and behold the terror of the glory of God, but instead you behold the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Jesus is the one who has faced that mighty terror of God in your place. This is why even though we hear those terrible words and think on the immensity of our sin and put on ashes this night, we put them on in the shape of a cross. For upon a cross Jesus, the Lord of glory, bought us, with His lifeblood as the price. Our walk through Lent is a walk with Jesus to His cross, that we would remember that there on that cross we also died. There in that tomb we also lay. And in your baptism you have been put into that death and tomb: “We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”

And that brings us to the other main focus of Lent. We focus on repentance and faith in Christ, but we also focus on the good works, the fruits of repentance and faith, that Christ would have us do. And during Lent there are three specifically, as we heard from Jesus in Matthew 6.

Notice what Jesus teaches us to be doing here: ”When you give to the needy…” ”When you pray…” ”When you fast…” Jesus doesn’t say “if” but instead He presumes that this is what we are doing. In this Lenten season we ought to give attention to these things. He doesn’t tell us exactly how we should be giving or praying or fasting, but He does expect that we His people will be doing so.

The traditional disciplines of Lent are almsgiving, special devotion to prayer, and fasting.

Almsgiving during Lent is extra giving to the needs of the poor. This could be something like making special donations to one of the local mercy organizations. It could be making sure that the food pantry here is always stocked and cared for. Or you might spend some time during Lent serving a meal at a local shelter.

Fasting is giving something up, usually food. You could forego a meal like lunch once or twice a week (though make sure you drink plenty of water). Or maybe you’ll not go out to eat during Lent, and use that money instead for almsgiving. Maybe you’ll stop watching TV in your household for Lent and instead spend it playing games with family and neighbors.

This training is good for us. It’s not about taking on these disciplines to an extreme. But these things train us. If we can’t discipline ourselves to give up eating out for a few weeks, how will we discipline ourselves if God lays on us a great cross or discipline?

We Lutherans have kept up pretty well the special devotion to prayer: this is where these special midweek services during Lent come from. It’s also good for you to use this opportunity to devote your household to the Word of God. Use the Blue Sheet. Pray the Litany. It’s in Lutheran Service Book if you have it. If not, I have copies of it on the table in the narthex.

Most importantly, though, during Lent we keep our eyes and hearts fixed on Jesus. We come to hear Him. We come to receive His Supper. He is our help, our shield, our Savior. In His death you are dead to sin. In His resurrection you are alive forevermore.

+INJ+

If we look at the back of the dollar bill, we see the slogan “In God We Trust” printed there. The history of this phrase on our United States currency is drawn out and complicated. It hasn’t always been there; in fact, the phrase was first added on a two-cent coin in 1864.

The motivations for adding the phrase don’t have much to do with Christ’s teaching in our Gospel reading. I bring the phrase up, however, because it is a very good reminder to us. ”You cannot serve God and money,” Jesus says. ”No one can serve two masters.”

Now we nod along to this: of course nobody can serve two masters. Fact is, though, that in our modern life we have gotten very much used to serving two masters, or more. It’s hard for us to place ourselves within this picture that Jesus is painting. We must place ourselves in the world of Jesus, during His three years of teaching. In Israel and Palestine, especially as a slave or servant, you could not serve two masters. If you tried, you could be sure that one of those masters would demand too much of you, and you could not meet the obligations owed to the other. It’s not unlike attempting to work two full-time jobs; it’s nigh impossible, one of the employers is not going to get good, full work from you. ”No one can serve two masters.”

Again, notice what Jesus is saying here. He’s not saying it’s hard to serve two masters. He’s not saying that most people can’t do it, but you might be that special one who can pull it off. No, Jesus teaches us that it’s impossible to serve two masters. If you serve money, you will hate God. You will despise Him and all of His good gifts like His Word and Sacraments. You will care little for His good and gracious will for you and for the good works that He has prepared for you to do.

Worry is related to this. That’s why Jesus says, ”Therefore…” and teaches us why we ought not to be anxious. Why do we worry? Deep down, it’s because in our weakness we don’t think God will truly take care of us and provide for us. We truly believe that God is absent. Now this is a great temptation: how many times does someone get sick or undergo a great personal struggle or tragedy and lose faith, walk away from God? And the flipside is a great temptation, too: how many times do we believe that we’ll be truly taken care of, truly happy, truly content and satisfied, if we just had that Nintendo Switch, or $100,000 in the bank, or if we just made a six-figure income.

We have a 1st Commandment problem. Jesus is teaching us about the 1st Commandment today, about having a God. Now it’s worth reviewing the 1st Commandment at this point. Pull out your Lutheran Service Book, turn to page 321, and let’s do the old confirmation examination routine here. I’ll ask you What is the First Commandment? and What does this mean?, and you all will respond together out loud. The Small Catechism contains for us the teachings of the Christian Faith, and we can never delve too deeply into those teachings; we can never study the Small Catechism too much. In these Scriptural teachings is found eternal life in Christ.

So let’s devote ourselves to this: What is the 1st Commandment? ”You shall have no other gods.” What does this mean? ”We should fear, love, and trust in God above all things.”

What does it look like to fear, love, and trust in something other than God? To worry; to serve money, or power; to trust in man or in princes for all good instead of taking refuge in the Lord.

Luther puts it this way (and bear with me, this is an extended quote, but it is well worth hearing Dr. Luther preach this to us): ”Many a person thinks that he has God and everything in abundance when he has money and possessions. He trusts in them and boasts about them with such firmness and assurance as to care for no one. Such a person has a god by the name of “Mammon” (i.e. money and possessions), on which he sets all his heart. This is the most common idol on earth. He who has money and possessions feels secure and is joyful and undismayed as though he were sitting in the midst of Paradise. On the other hand, he who has no money doubts and is despondent, as though he knew of no God. For very few people can be found who are of good cheer and who neither mourn nor complain if they lack Mammon. This care and desire for money sticks and clings to our nature, right up to the grave.

”So, too, whoever trusts and boasts that he has great skill, prudence, power, favor, friendship, and honor also has a god. But it is not the true and only God. This truth reappears when you notice how arrogant, secure, and proud people are because of such possessions, and how despondent they are when the possessions no longer exist or are withdrawn. Therefore, I repeat that the chief explanation of this point is that to “have a god” is to have something in which the heart entirely trusts.”

But, you think, I really do need money to care for my family, to pay for my medicine, to have my house, to even once in a while get some time off and away for rest and refreshment. Yes, of course you do. It is not the money, or the stuff, or your abilities which are the problem here. It is your serving them; It is your worry that perhaps tomorrow they will not be there, or there will not be enough of them. This is when our hearts begin to be devoted to serving Mammon and not God; when our love gets directed towards ourselves and not toward our neighbor.

”Therefore,” Jesus says…And when there’s a “therefore”, we know that whatever follows is building upon or delving further into what was just taught. ”Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on.”

You have no need to worry. You are made in the image of God, you are the pinnacle of His creation. Only after you were made did God say that creation was ”very good.”

You have no need to worry. Jesus has taught you to pray “give us this day our daily bread,” with the confidence that Your Father in heaven will give to you all that you need to support this body and life. Jesus says, ”And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you…If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

You have no need to worry. You are worth far more than the birds, and God provides all that they need. The grass is clothed in splendor by God, but it is merely alive today and tomorrow thrown into the oven. Yet God has made you to live forever with Him. Food, drink, clothing, shelter, even far less essential things like books, ice cream, chocolate: ”Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.” Or at least He knows that even some of them, while eternally silly, are nevertheless wonderful and delightful gifts in this world. ”All these things will be added to you.”

You have no need to worry. Take heart. Have courage. ”Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.” Come to Divine Service and be fed with the bread and wine of Christ’s body and blood. Come to Sunday School and Scripture Study for dessert. Serve your neighbor. Fill your homes with the Word of God and prayer. Play baseball and soccer and softball and hockey, but not in place of coming to Church. Mow your lawns and sit on your decks. Enjoy your swimming pools. Feast on fried chicken in a bit. Rejoice in one another’s company.

You have no need to worry. Christ is alive. Death is conquered and dead. Satan’s head is crushed. You are baptized and are heirs of God’s eternal kingdom.

You have no need to worry.

+INJ+

In a time like this, when someone young and with so much promise unexpectedly dies, we just can’t believe it, can’t understand it. Why would a young man like Adam, so full of joy and generosity and love – so clearly hearing the Word of God and holding it fast in a honest and good heart and bearing fruit with patience – why would God call Adam, so full of love, to Himself now?

Adam loved

• his parents
• his brother
• his sister
• his grandparents
• his aunts, uncles, cousins
• his friends
• his church
• being Lutheran
• music
• Star Wars
• Legos
• videogames
• telling jokes
• all sorts of interesting theories
• telling me and anyone who would listen all about the interesting theories he’d been pondering
• inventing things
• telling me and anyone who would listen all about the things that he invented
• taking care of people
• Jesus, his Lord and Savior.

But more importantly – no most importantly – Jesus loves Adam. And this is where we’re going to find comfort and answers. Not in Adam’s love for anything, but in Jesus Christ’s love for Adam.

So let me tell you about Jesus, Adam’s Lord.

Yesterday we heard those wonderful words from John, chapter 3 – the same words on the inside of the casket lid: ”For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. The love of God for the world – and that includes Adam – is what’s going to sustain us today, and in the weeks and months and years to come. Because of Jesus, God’s Son, giving Himself into death for our sins, death has no sting, no power. There is nothing to fear from death, in Jesus. Because of Jesus, God’s Son, conquering death by His own death, we receive all good things from God the Father. Because of Jesus, God’s Son, being raised from death on the Third Day (on that first Easter), we live now in the promise and hope of everlasting life with God, with Jesus, and with Adam.

Adam fell asleep in Christ; he fell asleep in the promise that Christ’s death and resurrection have been given to him; that Christ death and resurrection are Adam’s own death and resurrection. We have confidence in this because God has attached this promise to Holy Baptism and Adam, on December 14, 2003, was baptized in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Gary and Terry, you faithfully, expectantly believed God’s promise and command and brought Adam to the Font in order to be born again in this new birth of water and the Spirit.

Paul writes about this in Romans and we spoke aloud those promises just a little while ago when the pall was put on Adam’s casket. Christ’s death and resurrection – death to sin, alive to God – became Adam’s death to death and promise of everlasting life when he was baptized. ”Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.”

In Baptism, Jesus loves Adam. The Lord sprinkled clean water on Adam. He took Adam’s heart of stone – now it’s hard to imagine that he had a heart of stone, ever! But we trust in what God tells us about ourselves: we are sinful and unrighteous from the very beginning. ”Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.”

Yet the Lord, by grace and in love, took that heart of stone and gave Adam a heart of flesh. He put His Spirit within Adam so that Adam would live, love, and do the good works prepared beforehand for him to do. A clean heart was created in Adam, and the right Spirit was put within him. All of this is the work of God, the gift of God.

Just over a year ago Adam stood up here at this altar, after being instructed in the teachings of the Christian Faith – although to be honest he knew most of what we covered in catechism class already – he stood up here and confessed his faith in Christ. He said “I believe in God the Father Almighty…I believe in Jesus Christ my Lord…I believe in the Holy Spirit!” ”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.” Adam’s confession that Jesus is Lord is a gift of God, flowing from Adam’s Baptism into Christ.

And then faithfully, just about every week – probably every week – Adam came to this Altar and received the Lord’s Supper. He ate the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ given for the forgiveness of sin. Jesus loves Adam: He says, “For you!” Adam said back, “for me!” The Lord blessed Adam with forgiveness, life, and salvation in that meal. Just this past Sunday, about 24 hours before Adam fell asleep in Christ, he gladly ate and drank the eternal-life-giving food that Jesus fed to him.

Thanks be to God, we therefore have confidence and assurance that Adam now rests from his labors in the paradise of heaven, with Jesus, waiting for the last day when in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet, Adam will be raised from the dead imperishable and will live in the glorious eternal presence and bliss of life with Christ. All of us who are in Christ have this promise, this hope; and we have this joyful expectation of this being a happy reunion with all of those who have gone before us in Christ, Adam included.

Last Advent, Adam came up to Mrs. Schuermann and me and told us his favorite Christmas hymn: Paul Gerhardt’s “O Jesus Christ, Thy Manger Is.” I’ll close with the last stanza of this hymn:

”The world may hold Her wealth and gold; But thou, my heart, keep Christ as thy true treasure. To Him hold fast Until at last A crown be thine and honor in full measure.”

As Adam sang this hymn, he prayed this prayer. Jesus loves Adam and said, “yes.” The Lord enlivened Adam’s heart in baptism, He fed Adam’s hungry heart with His Supper, and He sustained Adam’s believing heart with His Word. And now the Lord Jesus has given Adam the crown of life in full measure, according to His promise. On the Last Day He will raise Adam from the dead.

Jesus loves Adam. All of these promises, all of what Jesus has done: these are what we must cling to for assurance and comfort. ”The Lord is my portion; therefore I will hope in him.” In the darkest night, Christ’s mercy is our light.

”Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” ”His mercy endures forever.”

+INJ+

Note: A beloved 14-year-old member of the congregation, +Adam Mitchell Clack+, died suddenly in his sleep earlier in the week.

The author, playwright, and Christian, Dorothy Sayers, wrote in 1939 an essay entitled “Strong Meat” (the title from some words in the King James translation of Hebrews 5) which contains a somewhat tongue-in-cheek catechism-like set of questions and answers. Sayers writes the question, “What is the doctrine of the Trinity?” And her answer? “The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, the whole thing incomprehensible.”

Though intended as hyperbole, Sayers nails down the reality of God: incomprehensible. I suppose she’s in some way paraphrasing what St. Paul writes about God in Holy Scripture: ”Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!”

And this week we are confronted with just how deep, just how inscrutable, just how much beyond us our Lord truly is. The Lord says, ”my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

When we face death – the death of whomever, but especially a death of someone young like Adam that is so sudden and unexpected – then the inscrutableness, the not-our-thoughts-and-not-our-ways-ness of the Lord is right here in front of us, unavoidable, demanding us to pay attention to it. We can’t escape it. God is God, we are His creatures and subject to Him and His will; and that can be a terrifying and mournful – even infuriating! – place to be.

But God does not leave us without comfort. He does not leave us stuck insofar as His thoughts and ways are higher than ours. He reveals Himself to us in the Scriptures and tells us what we need to know; He gives to us what we need to receive.

He comforts us with these things which will truly comfort us, because they deliver to us His Holy Spirit, the Comforter; because they give to us peace and joy, even amidst our mourning and weeping; because they fill our ears, eyes, hearts, and bodies with Jesus Christ our Lord. Jesus, who has conquered death; Jesus, who has won the victory; Jesus, who has taken our sins upon Himself and paid for every last one of them with His holy precious blood and by His innocent suffering and death.

We need this comfort. We cannot live without this comfort. And so there are two places we’re going to go for Christ’s comfort this morning. We’re going to go to two of the places where Christ gives to us His forgiveness which He won for us on the cross. These are tangible, real, physical places with tangible, real, physical things that God uses to give us forgiveness and life. God gives to us the comfort of knowing that He loves us and He has accomplished all the work of saving us from death and from our sins.

First we’re going to look to the Baptismal Font for comfort. Jesus tells Nicodemus that ”unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” Of course, this means that one enters the kingdom of God through the new birth of water and the Spirit. Jesus is talking about Holy Baptism.

What else does God promise us about Holy Baptism? Christ teaches us that ”Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved…” As we heard last week in Peter’s sermon at Pentecost, in Holy Baptism you receive ”the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” Elsewhere our Lord promises you through Peter that ”Baptism now saves you”; that Baptism is ”an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

Paul assures us about the comforting gift of Holy Baptism in Romans chapter 6. We’ll hear this again and talk about it again tomorrow, but we need to hear it today, too: ”Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.”

The giving into death of Jesus and the belief in Jesus and the life in Jesus is all given to you in your baptism. Behold how God loves you and reveals His mysteries to you there. ”For God loved the world in this way” – and have no doubt, that you are included when Jesus says “the world.” ”For God loved the world in this way, that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that all who believe in him would not perish but have eternal life.”

The second place at which we will seek God’s comfort today is here at His altar and at the rail where we receive from Him the Sacrament of the Altar; or another name for it is the Holy Communion.

Here at the Altar, Christ gives us His Body and Blood. His true Body and Blood, the real thing, the same which hung on the cross of Calvary, laid in the tomb, and was raised on the Third Day.

Jesus wants us to eat and drink – he wants us to receive His flesh and blood – because with this meal comes His gift of the forgiveness of your sins. Again, just like in Holy Baptism, Christ gives to you the forgiveness of your sins. He promises this: ”Take, eat; this is my Body which is given for you. This do in remembrance of me. Drink of it, all of you. This cup is the new testament in my blood which is shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. This do as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.”

In the Divine Service the Pastor, after speaking Christ’s words, then adds the promise and blessing, ”The peace of the Lord be with you always.” That’s because these holy things of God – the Body and Blood of Christ – are taken from the altar and touched to your lips in order to make you clean. You are able to confidently stand in God’s presence, able to assuredly know that when the Lord calls you to Himself you will go with no debt, no transgressions, no corruption, but instead you are ransomed, righteous, and holy. You are no longer God’s enemy, no longer opposed to Him. Instead, God is reconciled to you through Jesus, and that reconciliation is given to you in the Body and Blood of Christ.

Now the forgiveness is comforting enough, but there’s more than just forgiveness in the Sacrament of the Altar. Especially now, when we mourn and grieve the loss of one member from our presence; this is when we need the other comforting part of this Sacrament: it’s what we’re describing when we talk about it as Holy Communion.

When we eat and drink the Body and Blood of Christ, we are made one with Jesus. And just as while you and I eat we are made one with Jesus, we also are made one with one another and with the whole Christian Church on earth…and with all the believers in heaven. This is why the Pastor prays in the Proper Preface ”with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven…”

We are joined into the entire timeless majesty of the eternal worship of Christ when we come to the Altar and feast on the Lord’s Supper. And we do it alongside one another who are here and alongside everyone who has died in Christ and now rests from their labors, waiting for the resurrection of the body on the Last Day.

So come to this altar today and be united with one another, and also with Adam, Wilma, Kenne, Irma, Jimmy, John, Charles, Woody, Tom, Peg, Eugene, George, Isaac, Elijah, Bobby, Pastor Martin, James, Elizabeth… When you come to eat and drink today you come and share in the everlasting feast of victory with all believers in Christ.

What comfort our Lord has for us today:

”He that believes and is baptized shall be saved.”

“Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”

Thanks be to God in the name of Christ Jesus our Lord. He loves the world. He loves you.

+INJ+

Text: 2 Corinthians 1:3-7

For these three midweek Advent services, we’ll be considering the commemorations of three saints of God – a brother and two sisters in Christ – who now rest from their labors but have left us notable examples of the faithful Christian life.

A word of caution and instruction. A knee-jerk reaction to talking about saints is to assume that we’re talking in the same way that the Roman church talks about them. We’re not. However, as Lutherans we don’t reject something solely because it’s found in a congregation labeled as Roman Catholic or Methodist or Baptist; if that was the case we’d have to get rid of confessing our sins, reading and listening to the Word of God, singing, sitting in pews, electric lighting, all these decorations, etc. Instead we reject something if it conflicts with the Gospel and the teaching of the Scriptures, and thus obscures Jesus Christ alone as our hope of salvation, forgiveness of sins, and eternal life. Our own Lutheran Confessions uphold considering the lives of the saints – and when I say “saint” I mean a Christian, a person who has been made holy by the Holy Spirit given to them through the Word and Holy Baptism. Here’s what the Lutheran Confessions state: “Of the worship of saints they teach that the memory of saints may be set before us, that we may follow their faith and good works, according to our calling, as the Emperor may follow the example of David in making war to drive away the Turk from his country.”

This is the positive use of the stories of our brothers and sisters in Christ. Not to make them out to be any sort of help or aid when it comes to salvation. But instead to hold them up as good examples to seek to imitate, as they themselves lived out their lives according to the teaching of Christ in the Holy Scriptures. In the same way the Apostle Paul holds himself out to the Christians that he writes to and asks them to imitate him. In the same way Christian parents will model for their children the pious life of faith in Christ by praying, reading the Scriptures with their families, making use of the Word of God and the Sacrament of the Altar regularly in the Divine Service, giving generously to the Church and to those in need from the treasures that God has given them. In this way children will see the faith modeled for them by the saints that God has put in their lives: their parents.

So then tonight we hear a little about Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, our father in the faith and an example of Christian generosity, charity, and mercy. There are actually several notable stories about Nicholas, but I want to just tell one tonight.

Nicholas heard of a poor man who had three daughters, but no dowry to give any of them. Because of this, it would be very difficult for the girls to marry; in their time and place, this meant a very hard life for the daughters once their father died or grew too weak to support their lives, and so the girls would have likely ended up in slavery or prostitution.

Nicholas in his kindness used some funds that the Church had in order to help them and prevent them from ending up in that way. At night, Nicholas dropped into the house three small bags of gold coins. With these three gifts, the daughters now each had money for a dowry and were able to marry. Nicholas was able to save these women from a terrible life of burden and harm to their consciences.

In this way, Nicholas reflects the love of Christ and sets an example for us. For every one of us has received help and aid from our Lord Jesus, when we were helpless to aid ourselves or to have any hope of rescue from our misery and fallenness.

So the words from the Epistle which Paul wrote to the Christians in Corinth are profound: ”Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”

Even as we find ourselves in suffering, misery, helplessness, despair, our Lord Jesus has suffered for us. When we behold His lowly birth, life, and death for us, we see that truly the riches of heaven are ours, even now. He gives them to us. He provides for all of our needs of body and soul.

In the same way then, we, like Nicholas, can in mercy and pity care for those in our lives who like us are suffering, miserable, helpless, and despairing. The comfort we have received we now can give. The help and aid Jesus has rendered to us, through His Word and through our brothers and sisters in Christ, we now can render to our neighbor.

This comfort never goes away, either. For the promises of God are always yes in Christ Jesus. His mercies are new every morning; that is, they are always present for you. In His lowly manger and on His throne of the cross, Jesus still gives to you not gold or silver but the fruit of His holy, precious blood and his innocent suffering and death; namely, the forgiveness of your sins, eternal life, and every help you need.

Thanks be to God! +INJ+