Lectionary Homilies from Confident.Faith: Recent Episodes
Confident.Faith
- Numbers 6:22–27
- Psalm 8
- Galatians 3:23–29
- Luke 2:21 We will ignore the Gospel today — the Gospel reading anyway, and, even then, only until the end of this homily. Instead, let us, somewhat appropriately, begin with the first reading:
For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, / and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not be quiet,
until her righteousness goes forth as brightness, / and her salvation as a burning torch.— Isaiah 62:1 (ESV)
Before we turn to the Christian understanding of this verse, let us look at how a Dispensationalist or a so-called American ‘Evangelical’ might interpret it. First, they will typically conflate Zion and Jerusalem — this is sometimes permissible and so of only minor concern. Second, they will interpret both terms as referring to physical locations: the city of Jerusalem and the hill on which David built his city. This is the heart of their error, but they go further. Third, they will restrict both of these terms by making them refer explicitly to the Jews. This, of course, gives away the game even more obviously than the second point: They are simply rank Judaizers.
From a little earlier in Isaiah:
It shall come to pass in the latter days / that the mountain of the house of the LORD
shall be established as the highest of the mountains
— Isaiah 2:2 (ESV)
The Judaizers would have us believe this is a literal, physical mountain. Well, we have survey data and satellite imagery. How tall is ‘Mount’ Zion? It is a hill outside Jerusalem and it is approximately twenty-five hundred feet above sea level. There is a peak nearby, under which the Appalachian Trail passes; that peak, Clingman’s Dome, is the tallest peak in Tennessee, and it is six thousand, six hundred, and forty-three feet tall. It is more than two and a half times the height of Mount Zion, which the Judaizers would tell us is literally the tallest literal mountain. I have included in the written (which is to say online) version of this homily a picture of my dog from one of my camping trips with him; the picture was taken on a rock outcropping just north of Big Baldy, which is the same height in meters as Mount Zion is in feet, which is to say that Big Baldy is more than eight thousand feet tall. The claim of the Judaizers is laughable, but is is even more pernicious. If the Old Testament is meant merely for the Israelites — the ‘Jews’ —, then it is not actually good news at all. But the Old Testament is good news and it is not the ‘book of the Jews’ or any other such nonsense. Was Adam a Jew? Was Noah a Jew? Was Japheth a Jew? Was Job a Jew? Was Abraham a Jew? The answer for all of these is, of course: No. The Gospel was first delivered to Adam and Eve (and Satan, but it is not good news for him, or for his children); neither Adam nor Eve was a Jew.
When Scripture speaks in terms of promises and ultimate things, ‘Jerusalem’ is the true city of God — the heavenly Jerusalem, the new Earth. Similarly, ‘Zion’ is the gathering of all believers into the presence of God; where God is, there Zion is. These terms are, thus, somewhat interchangeable, even if there is a difference in nuance. As a Christian, you should find comfort and truth in the Old Testament; and you should read the Old Testament with the sure, certain, and firm faith that the promises therein contained apply to you as an adopted son of God. We, the Church, are the true Israel of God, the promises have always been ours and will always be ours.
Thus, let us turn to the twin issues of adoption and inheritance. A central part of the Christian religion is the adoption of Christians as sons of God. Now, there are some very important differences between Roman adoption (the context of Scripture) and modern adoption (a false lens), but I will write more on that in the near future. For our purposes, it suffices for us to recognize that what is in view is inheritance. To be an adopted son of God in Christ is to inherit eternal life. This, of course, is the heart of the Gospel. Christ’s work, His life, His death, and His resurrection are good news because they enable us to become adopted sons of God and inheritors of eternal life in Paradise — in Zion, in the new Jerusalem.
But what do we say to those who would draw some distinction between Israel and the Church? On the one hand, we should not forget that mockery is a Christian option, but, on the other hand, we should also give a substantive answer, if not to the Judaizers, then at least for our Christian brothers. One of God’s names in Scripture is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. For now and here, I will not focus on why this is one of God’s names; rather, I will focus on what it means, in the context of Scripture, to be a ‘son of Abraham’. Hear the words of Christ as recorded by St. John:
“If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works Abraham did, but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. You are doing the works your father did.
….
“If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.”
John 8:39b–41a, 42b–47 (ESV)
He calls those Jews sons of Satan instead of sons of Abraham, and He says that true sons of Abraham would follow in his works. Now, we must remember that the works for which Abraham is praised were undertaken in faith — only those works undertaken by the faithful have any value. But let us turn to the great Epistle to the Galatians to see what Scripture says about the ‘sons of Abraham’:
Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman. But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise. Now this may be interpreted allegorically: these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar. Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. For it is written,
“Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear; / break forth and cry aloud, you who are not in labor!
For the children of the desolate one will be more / than those of the one who has a husband.”Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise. But just as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so also it is now. But what does the Scripture say? “Cast out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman.” So, brothers, we are not children of the slave but of the free woman.
— Galatians 4:21–31 (ESV)
It is not those who are born “according to the flesh”, sondern those who are “born through promise” who are these true sons of Abraham. How is one born through promise? Look no further than the baptismal font. To be born through promise to be born again — it is to have faith. It is those who believe whom Scripture calls sons of Abraham. But what of the physical, blood descendants of Abraham who have no faith in Christ? Christ Himself calls them ‘children of their father, the devil’. For Christians, then, the matter is closed. Christians (i.e., those who believe in Christ) are children of Abraham according to the promise, and the Jews are children of Satan.
But let us look at another aspect of this. Naturally, adoption and inheritance are matters of headship and to be children of Abraham means to be inheritors of the promised Seed (i.e., Christ), but the promise did not come first to Abraham. The promise traces to the Garden:
“And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will crush your head, and you will strike His heel.”
— Genesis 3:15 (LXX)
It is to Adam — the father of us all — that the Gospel is first delivered — from the very mouth of Christ, no less. We speak often of ‘the old Adam’, but we would do well to remember that there is also ‘the new Adam’, which is often used to refer to Christ, but is also true of Father Adam. Adam was no dullard — he heard and believed the promise of God spoken in the Garden. Adam believed; Adam was and is a Christian. With regard to this new, reborn Adam, you and I and all Christians are sons of Adam — both literally by blood descent and according to promise, for Christ is His head as well as ours. Adam in his day was prophet, priest, and king and he taught the faith to his sons; not all were faithful, but the one true faith was preserved down the line to faithful Noah, who taught his sons: faithful Japheth, faithful Shem, and faithless Ham. (We could draw, here, an interesting parallel: Satan took one-third of the angels with him and one-third of man found damnation in Ham’s wickedness, but let us leave that aside for now.)
We — and I mean my European brothers and sisters — are true sons and daughters of Japheth, for we share his faith. It is no less correct to call ourselves sons of Japheth than to call ourselves sons of Abraham, for the promise was for Urvater Japheth no less than for Shem, the father of Abraham.
When we are brought to faith, we are restored into the godly line that descends from Adam through Noah to his sons and then into all the world where believers may be found. The believing Shemite may look to Shem as a true father of his great race. The believing Hamite may not be able to look to wicked, faithless Ham, but he may look to Grandfather Noah. And we, sons and daughters of Japheth and Europa, may look both to our many faithful ancestors before the fall into paganism and after the restoration of Christianity. None has a spotless genealogy; even Christ must count the pagan, the unbeliever, the apostate, and the prostitute among His ancestors. We do not honor our ancestors — a demand of the Fourth Commandment — by following in their unfaithfulness, but by faithfulness to the one true ancestral faith — Christianity.
When we are adopted as sons of God, we do not cease to be lineal, blood descendants of our forefathers — the African remains a Hamite and the European remains a Japhethite; rather, we return to the faith of our godly forefathers. The Christian is no rootless cosmopolitan, sondern one who honors both God and his forefathers. God does not play with dice and God does not make mistakes; He Who formed you in the womb and knew the number of your days even before you drew your first breath is also He Who set the times and the boundaries of the nations. What God does, He does not do idly or without purpose. Scripture tells us that the kings of the nations will bring the glory of the nations into the new Jerusalem. You were born into a body, a time, a place, a nation, a people. Your blood is neither accident nor incident, but essential and immutable. If you were born a man, then you will be a man in and for eternity; if you were born a woman, then you will be a woman in and for eternity; and the same holds for German, French, Dutch, Russian, Japanese, and American. Faithful sons and daughters do not deny or denigrate their ancestry or their ancestors, and Christians are true and faithful sons and daughters, for this is commanded by God:
Thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother [that it may be well with thee and thou mayest live long upon the earth].
Let us end, then, as promised, with the Gospel reading, or, more accurately, a (very close) paraphrase of a portion of it:
Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace according to Thy Word, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation, which Thou hast prepared before the face of all people, a light to lighten the nations and the glory of Thy people Israel.
We end our Service of the Sacrament with these words, for they express the hope of all Christians: To depart in peace and grace, having seen and believed the promises of the Lord. We see these promises every Sunday in the Sacrament and we confess our belief every Sunday in the Creeds. It is the Gottesdienst, the Divine Service, that prepares each and every one of us for death. God knows the number of our days, but we do not; the Christian takes from this comfort instead of fear or anxiety. I am Christ’s and He is mine. And the Good Shepherd has never yet — and never will — lose one of his sheep. He is the Light to lighten the nations and we are His people — the true Israel. Whenever — and however — death may come — and it will certainly come for each of us —, we know that Christians depart in peace, for our eyes have seen the salvation of the Lord, and will behold His face when they open on the other side of the veil of death, for our God has defeated death and the grave.
Amen.
- Amos 5:18–24
- Psalm 70
- 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18
- Matthew 25:1–13 I assure you, the balance of the homily will be in English, but:
Mit ihrem heil’gen Wetterschlage,
Mit Unerbittlichkeit vollbringt
Die Noth an Einem großen Tage,
Was kaum Jahrhunderten gelingt;
Und wenn in ihren Ungewittern
Selbst ein Elysium vergeht,
Und Welten ihrem Donner zittern —
Was groß und göttlich ist, besteht. —
If you will permit me, an English approximation, also in rhyme:
Necessity, with bolt and thunder,
inescapably she weaves,
what scarcely centuries may ponder,
one great day she achieves.
And when she with tempest razes,
e’en an Elysium secure,
And with her storms worlds unsettles,
— the great and godly does endure.
Surely the day of the Lord swiftly approaches, and, just as surely will all flesh stand before the Lord and give account. As the plans of princes perish with them, so all the plans — whether they be the construction of a utopia or the construction of a new hell — of all mankind pass away with the passing of this creation on that ultimate Day of the Lord. And yet there is not one day of the Lord. Yes, if we capitalize “Day” or emphasize the definite article, then, certainly there is but one Day of the Lord, for that is the Last Day (of this creation) — the great and terrible Day of Lord, the Last Judgement —, but there are many (lowercase, indefinite) days of the Lord, for every day in which the Lord visits judgement upon a man, a family, a tribe, a nation, a race, is, indeed, a day of the Lord.
I may not live to see the Day of the Lord; you may not live to see the Day of the Lord; no man knows the day or the hour, and, personally, I refuse to speculate on such things (and I suggest you also refrain from such speculation). It hardly matters anyway — whether we are raised from the dust or merely changed on that day, we will certainly stand before the Judge and Lord of all things, and we are all always only a moment away from that day. I could drop dead here and now (although, as I am writing and recording this homily, and not delivering it live, it would be fairly unlikely you would read or hear any of this if I should die before I finish writing, recording, et cetera). You are neither more nor less mortal than I. We are all but a moment — but a heartbeat — away from the great and awesome Day of the Lord. But we are also some unknown period of time away from any number of other days of the Lord. How long will God ‘tolerate’ our worship of Moloch — abortion and hormonal ‘birth control’ — before He destroys us as He did the Canaanites and the Carthaginians? How long will He ‘tolerate’ our not mere acceptance but promotion of sodomy and all manner of sexual perversion before He wipes us away like Sodom and Gomorrah? How long will He ‘tolerate’ our worship of Mammon before He destroys us with a foreign foe as He did the Northern Kingdom with the Assyrians or at least takes us into captivity as He did the Southern Kingdom with the Babylonians? How long will He ‘tolerate’ our obstinacy before He sends upon us plague and desolation as He did with the Egyptians? How long will He ‘tolerate’ our impenitent, high-handed wickedness before He gives us up to our sins as Romans 1 warns? There have been many days of the Lord and there will undoubtedly be more before the end finally comes. Or are we such fools that we hold to some sort of theological version of the secular foolishness that is the ‘end of history’? ‘Oh,’ the fool says, ‘God may have judged and intervened in ages past, but surely now, in these modern days, He no longer does so.’ Do you not know that God kills each man who dies? And I do mean ‘man’ in the general sense, for He surely kills every woman and child as well. Were you operating under the delusional belief that death is a part of nature? Hear the Word of the Lord:
»Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned[.]«
— Romans 5:12 (ESV)
Death was not part of God’s good plan, part of His good ordering of Creation; rather, death entered the world only through and as a consequence of sin. God hates sin and God hates sinners. Without sinners, there would be no sin, and you are not a sinner because you sin, but, rather, you sin because you are a sinner — it is an inborn and inescapable (in this life) corruption of your nature. You are inwardly tempted by your fallen and corrupt nature — this we term concupiscence; even when you do not actively sin, you still desire to sin, and that desire is itself sin. The Gospel is good news precisely because we cannot avoid sin in this life. We are born under an irremovable death sentence, and God will carry out His perfect justice just as surely as He has, does, and will uphold each and every one of His promises. In Adam, as the federal head of all mankind, we all fell, and so our status, from birth until death, is sinner, and God will kill every sinner, for God will see all sin destroyed. For those of us who are being prepared for everlasting glory, this means that, having already passed from death to life in the waters of Holy Baptism, we will never taste the second death, which is the eternal and inescapable fires of Hell. The perfect justice of God requires atonement for sin. Christ’s work on the cross (and during His perfect earthly life) atoned for all sin — not just the sin of the Elect, not even just the sin of men. Why, then, are not all men saved? Because it is possible to reject this free gift. If I were to ship you a nice bottle of wine, you could refuse shipment, and you would, therefore, not be able to enjoy said wine; this would not in any way change that I had paid for the wine. Similarly, the refusal of any man to believe is not in any way relevant to the fact that Christ redeemed all things in and by His work.
And let us take heed lest we fall: Those who believe may fall away. Look to the Parable of the Ten Virgins. Did the five foolish virgins have fake fire? Certainly not. They had true fire — saving faith — and they allowed it to die. ‘If you were of your father Abraham, then you would do his works.’ ‘Faith without works is dead.’ ‘Show me faith without works and I will show you my faith by my works.’
Are you saved by works? Yes. You are saved — as are all who are numbered among the Elect — by the works of one Man, Christ. Your own works surely cannot save you — cannot contribute anything to your justification —, and yet sanctification is synergistic — in sanctification, we coöperate with the Spirit. Or we do not coöperate and we permit our faith to die. All ten of the virgins were given faith (the fire) and yet only five of them kept that fire alive (i.e., produced works — the oil). A living faith will necessarily produce good works. A bit of grammar and philosophy: It matters where we place the modifier and what the modifier is. If someone says that ‘works are necessary for salvation’, then he is a heretic; if someone says that ‘works are necessary to salvation’, then he is being dangerously vague, and should be corrected; if someone says that ‘works will necessarily flow from saving faith’, then he is speaking the truth, for he is just echoing Scripture — a living faith will produce works. To be abundantly clear: Your works will not save you, but, if you have been given the gift of faith and it is a living faith, then it will necessarily produce good works. The good news is that your good works will not save you (in isolation, this certainly sounds like bad news), but Christ’s good works will save you — through faith. You are accounted righteous via the attribution to you of the alien righteousness of Christ; His righteousness is not yours by nature or by right, but by the grace of God, Who applied this righteousness to you when He claimed you as His own in the waters of Holy Baptism. Baptizatus sum ergo salvatus sum — I am baptized, therefore I am saved. If just those two works — Baptizatus Sum — were on my headstone, they would surely be sufficient. Now, Baptism does not destroy or change our nature — I am still male, German, and pertinacious — my Baptism changed none of these things, for they are my nature, and God made my nature, just as surely as He made me —, but Baptism is, in this life, your most important attribute, for it is Baptism that marks you as a child of God. As a great Christian king once said:
I think more of the chapel where I was baptized than of the cathedral where I was crowned king. So the dignity of a child of God which was bestowed on me at Baptism is greater than that of the ruler of this kingdom. The latter I will lose at death, the other will be my passport to everlasting glory.
The great and the small alike take nothing with them when they leave this world, but your Baptism is your ticket to everlasting life. Your works may demonstrate that your faith is living — and God will reward you for them —, but you cannot plead them at the Judgement. Like your wealth or your intelligence, your works contribute nothing to your justification, which will be the matter at issue when you stand before the Judgement Seat; it is only Christ’s blood that you may plead, and you were washed in His blood in Holy Baptism. Your pastor did not baptize you — God did, using your pastor’s hands.
Thus, on the ultimate Day of the Lord, we must all plead sola gratia sola fide solo Christo — by grace alone through faith alone for the sake of Christ alone. With empty hands, but white robes, we will plead only the blood of the Lamb, slain before the foundation of the world: ‘I know that there is nothing good in me, that is in my fallen flesh, but I know beyond all doubt that He Who dwells in me is my righteousness, my justification, my salvation — and He has promised to confess me before the Father as I have, in faith, confessed Him before men. I plead Christ and Christ alone.’ This is the Gospel. Or, in the words of Christ from the cross: “It is finished.”
And yet we must return to those other days of the Lord. What are we to do about those? Here we return to sanctification and works. God was pleased with Abraham because he had a living faith from which good works flowed; on the other hand, God was (and is) angry with the Jews because they did not have a living faith and thus did not do the works of Abraham. The God of the Old Testament is the God of the New Testament; the God of the New Testament is the God of the Old Testament; the God Who walked in the Garden is the God Who hung on the tree is the God Who will judge both the living and the dead. If you have ever said ‘that was the Old Testament’, then you had best be certain that it was in reference to the ceremonial law, the civil law, or some basic fact, and not in regard to the Moral Law, for the Moral Law flows from the nature of God and is, therefore, unchanging, and to deny the Moral Law is to deny God. The God Who cast Adam and Eve from the Garden is the God Who appeared to Moses in the burning bush and to Abraham at the oak of Mamre; the God who burned Sodom and Gomorrah to ash — so thoroughly that the location can still be identified today — is the God Who walked with fishermen and tax collectors along the Sea of Galilee; and the God Who guided Old Testament Israel through the desert is the God Who will judge you from His holy throne. He is the same yesterday, today, tomorrow, and forever. If your god does not slaughter the wicked, open the earth to swallow the apostate, close the heavens to starve the impenitent, send plagues to punish sinners, and actively hate evil, then he is not the Lord God and you are no Christian. God is as active today as He has ever been or will ever be, for God does not change. The faithless and the wicked are still punished; the faithful and the righteous are still rewarded. Children and rain alike are still gifts from God. Plants still do not grow without His good pleasure. He is the God Who raises up and no one breaks down, Who tears down and no one rebuilds, Who sets the boundaries of the nations, Who brings nations into being and destroys nations for faithlessness, and Who holds all things in the palm of His hand and together by His power. Your next breath is contingent on His good pleasure and your every cell division relies upon His guidance. If your god is any smaller than this, then I do not know who he is, but he is not the Lord God. If you do not hold that He blesses the faithful and punishes the wicked, then you accuse Him of hypocrisy and mendacity. Yes, the wicked may flourish for a season, and, in the words of the Psalmist, it may seem a wearisome task to understand this, but we can be absolutely certain that not only does God always settle accounts, but He does so perfectly and at the perfect time. For God, kairos is simply the perpetual and eternal state of things. He sets the wicked in slippery places that their fall may be the more poignant and the more damning — that it may serve as warning and blessing to the faithful. During the (brief) period of Old Testament Israel’s faithfulness, God blessed them both spiritually and materially — and the same holds true for us today. Both we and our fathers have sinned, and so we find ourselves persecuted and in the most desperate of straits in these evil days, but God promises that He will avenge Himself on those Who persecute and harm His sheep. How, then, do we benefit from such promises? By being His sheep — by obedience.
It is overlooked by many — perhaps most — these days, but many of God’s blessings are phrased conditionally — ‘If you will obey my voice, then I will…’ The Jews believed that they would be blessed without faith and without the works of Abraham; God disabused them of this with exile, subjugation by the Romans, destruction of the Temple, expulsion from the land, and many other such signs. Are we truly such fools that we believe we will be blessed if we are faithless? Look at the state of our nation, our country, our civilization, and tell me that we are not cursed, but blessed. Surely God must be close to removing our lampstand entirely, for we are a wicked and faithless generation, an apostate people, a rebellious nation.
And so our task is twofold: We must implore God not to sweep away the righteous (i.e., the faithful) with the wicked and we must endeavor to return our nation to God. The Christian faith is not a matter of quiescence or pacifism — both of which are sin; rather, the Christian faith is an active faith, seeking the conversion of all nations to Christ. The Lord is a Man of war, and we, His servants, must do His work while it is yet day. Christianity is neither a death cult nor a faith that calls upon us to abandon or to accept this wicked world. We are sheep with regard to the Shepherd, but we are soldiers with regard to this, His war. The powers and principalities are most certainly defeated, but we must announce this victory, this good news, this Gospel, first to our brothers according to the flesh and then to the whole world. All of His enemies will be crushed under His feet as He has already crushed the serpent, and it is, in the words of the Psalmist, ‘the glory of His chosen ones’ — of us, the Elect — ‘to strike our feet in the spilt blood of His enemies’. If you do not have one, sell your cloak and buy a sword.
Some will tell you that Christians are called to be ‘meek’, but they will never tell you what meekness actually is. To be meek is to exercise control over one’s strength. Christ is meek; the weak cannot be meek, for they have no strength to control. To be meek is to know when to restrain and when to employ one’s strength; so, yes, let us be meek in the proper sense of the term: Kind and caring toward the sheep, but ruthless to the wolves. Let us, again in the words of the Psalmist, see that ‘our dogs have their portion from the foes’, portions won by our ‘two-edged swords’. Just as we are not to tolerate false doctrine or false teachers in the Church — the Kingdom of the right hand of Christ —, so we are not to tolerate the wicked in the State — the kingdom of the left hand of Christ. As Christ owns both His hands, so He owns both kingdoms, and we, His servants, serve Him best by rendering unto Him what is His. But surely this raises the question: What is God’s? The answer is simple: To the Creator of all things belong all things. Everything is God’s. Thus let us render unto God what is God’s: Heaven and Earth and all that is therein contained.
Amen.
Readings* Genesis 12:1–9 * Psalm 121 * Romans 4:1–8, 13–17 * John 3:1–17 PodcastOvercastApple PodcastsSpotify
Isaiah 42:14–21 Psalm 142 Ephesians 5:8–14 John 9:1–41
We are all born deaf and blind. Hearing, we do not hear; and seeing, we do not see. We know God’s Law, for it is written on our hearts — our consciences accuse us when we stray. We are all without excuse. We have become futile in our thinking, for we sin in thought; we have become futile in our speaking, for we sin in word; and we have become futile in our doing, for we sin in deed.
All our suffering, every affliction, and all the evil and imperfection in this world are due to sin. No, you did not break your leg because you failed to tithe — probably. That is not how sin and consequences work. Many, however, operate under that false assumption — that individual afflictions can be traced to individual sins — but hear the words of Christ when He rejects His disciples’ presumption that the man born blind (or his parents) sinned and thereby brought about his condition. Every evil and every imperfection are traceable to sin because we live in a fallen world. When our first parents — Adam and Eve — sinned in the Garden, they ushered death into the world, and with death came decay and degeneration. The very good creation was subjected to futility, and so some men are born blind, some are born missing limbs, and some are stillborn. Great and terrible is the suffering in this world, because great is the power of sin. And lest we think too highly of ourselves, we sin each and every day. Not only original sin condemns us, but each and every one of our innumerable actual sins. We are true children of Father Adam. Naturally, we are sons and daughters of perdition, every bit as separated from God as the dragon in Revelation or as the snake in the Garden. Spiritually, we are conceived, born, and live in darkness, and we spread it everywhere we go. We do not love our neighbors as ourselves, and we certainly do not love God with our whole heart, mind, body, and strength. We justly deserve this present and then eternal punishment. One must wonder what Paul who spoke of certain sins done in secret as being too shameful even to mention would think of all that is not only done in the open but celebrated in our culture. The night is wretched, dark and deep, and evil seems to never sleep. And yet we know that a still more glorious dawn awaits. ‘For at one time we were darkness, but now we are light in the Lord.’ As Christ is the light of the world, so we have become light through our union with Him. But let us return to the man born blind, whose world was one of darkness. With very few exceptions, blind men in the ancient world had to support themselves via begging. It was an uncertain and unpleasant existence. Now see Christ stooping down to create mud with His saliva and His hands. Our text comes from John, who also wrote Revelation, but let us go to the other end of the Bible for a moment — to Genesis. Unlike all else in Creation, which God merely spoke into existence, God formed man from the dust; He, like a potter, took earth and formed it into a man — Adam, father of our race. Then God breathed the breath of life into that lump of clay and it became a living being. The mouth that breathed that breath of life in Genesis is the very mouth that spits in the dust to make mud here; and the very hands that formed Adam from the dust in Genesis here form mud to restore sight to a son of Adam. The true Good News is Christ’s victory over sin and death and our adoption as sons and daughters of the Kingdom, but He also gave us glimpses of the physical restoration that will attend the life to come. Never before had a man born blind had his sight restored, and yet Jesus does so. The man’s blindness was a consequence of sin’s corruption of Creation. The wages of sin is death, and physical imperfection and corruption attend death. Christ’s healing of the man born blind was a little of the Kingdom breaking into the present world — a hint of what is to come.
Exodus 17:1–7 Psalm 95:1–9 Romans 5:1–8 John 4:5–30, 39–42
Why do we test God? Has not our Father told us that He watches over and cares for us? And yet we doubt. At Meribah, the Jews grumbled against Moses because they did not trust God. In the words of Moses: “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?”
Why do we test the Lord? We test the Lord because we do not truly trust Him. We worry about almost everything. We fear what tomorrow may bring. We harden our hearts and refuse to cast our cares upon our Lord. We want to have control. We want to believe that what will happen in our lives is in our own hands, and the outcome will depend upon our own efforts — upon our work. More, we want to keep parts of our lives secret; we want to hide — even from God — so much of what we think and do. Do you not know that what is done in secret will be proclaimed? Before God, deep darkness is as light and night as day. Nothing is hidden from His eyes. And it is not only your actions that condemn you, for God knows also all that you have failed to do and He knows your every thought. He knows the anger and the malice you harbor toward others, and He knows the zeal with which you pursue your own selfish ends. In fact, God knows everything — yes, He has even seen every social media post. If you were to ascend to Heaven, there you would find Him; if you were to dig to the depths of Sheol, there you would not escape Him. He knows your thoughts before you think them and your words before you speak them. You can hide nothing from Him. So what do you bring before the Judgement Seat? You cannot plead ‘not guilty’ before an omniscient Judge. You have not yet lived your full life, but His records have everything from your conception to your death. One sin is enough to condemn you. Your situation is hopeless. Where the worm does not die and the flames do not consume, there will all those who are separated from God spend eternity. There will be no escape — the saints, whether in Paradise or here on Earth, cannot pray for those lost souls and indulgences avail nothing. It is appointed for man but once to die and then the Judgement. All will face Christ at the Final Judgement, and He has only two roles in that court: Judge or Savior. How you will face Him then depends upon how you relate to Him now and, more importantly, how He relates to you. At Meribah, God stood atop the rock and brought forth water for His rebellious desert children. That same God Who appeared at Meribah would be born of a virgin in Bethlehem and die on a cross at Calvary. His blood has washed away our sins. And He still comes to us today — in Word, in Water, and in Blood. In the desert, He provided the water that sustains life; to the woman at the well, He offered living water; and today in the cleansing waters of Baptism, He comes to each of us. He is the Rock of our salvation, the firm foundation upon which all our hopes are built. And He did not leave us at the Ascension. In assuming His authority as the Right Hand of God, He has placed all other authorities under Himself. We will meet Him at the Judgement, but not as Judge. In the cleansing flood of Baptism, He washed away all our sins. When the books are opened before the Judgement Seat, a great many of those pages will be blank, for not only have your sins been washed away, but God has promised He will forget them. Your sins are gone, and Christ will welcome you with open arms; you are a child of the Kingdom. In the desert, He provided manna to sustain His people; to the incredulous Jews, He said they must eat His flesh; and today, He offers us His body and blood in the Sacrament. He is not gone, for He promises to be present where two or three gather in His Name, and He comes to us in, with, and under the bread and the wine, where He gives us His true body and His true blood. He has promised to be with us even to the very end of the age, and His promises never fail. It may seem, at times,
Genesis 12:1–9 Psalm 121 Romans 4:1–8,13–17 John 3:1–17
Abram was called forth from Ur of the Chaldeans; he was called to leave his country, his kindred, and his father’s house; he was called to sojourn in a land he would never own, except for a small plot of land with a cave — a cave in which he would bury his wife, and in which his children would later bury him. And what did he find in this land? Canaanites — the cursed progeny of cursed Ham. Although their iniquity was not yet “complete” in the time of Abraham, they would later be sentenced to annihilation. Does that mean these tribes were good in the time of Abraham? Were they more Mamre, Eshcol, and Aner or were they more Sodom and Gomorrah? From God’s words to Abraham in Genesis 15, we must presume the latter.
For their iniquity, God burned Sodom and Gomorrah with fire from Heaven. For their iniquity, God sentenced the Canaanites to be devoted to destruction. For our iniquity, what will God visit upon us? Are we better than Sodom? Are we more moral than Gomorrah? Are we spared like Zoar due only to some small number of saints? Let us not delude ourselves by closing our eyes to the reality of our culture. Pornography is rampant, and children are increasingly exposed to it at younger and younger ages. Promiscuity is now not only ‘normal’, but even promoted as healthy or good. An incredible number of marriages end in divorce, and a significant percentage of children — a majority, in some communities — are born out of wedlock. Our ‘entertainment’ is increasingly explicit both in terms of sexual content and in terms of violence. We worship the gods of the marketplace — we pay greater attention to the Dow and the NASDAQ than to our neighbor, we care more for our 401(k)s than for our communities, and we decline to take God up on His outright invitation to test Him with regard to tithing. More than sixty million children have gone to their graves — or, more likely, the incinerator or even the research lab — in the name of ‘convenience’ and ‘privacy’. Pick an empire, or a political entity, from history — any empire, or any political entity. With vanishingly few exceptions, what we do on a daily basis would make even history’s most despised and depraved blush. Our god is not El Shaddai — not God Almighty; our gods are Mammon and Moloch. We worship our wealth and sacrifice our children to ensure GDP continues to grow. We live in a dark and blind world. The natural man is spiritually dead — totally unable to move toward or even to respond to God. Yet think of that call of Abram. He was called forth from dark Ur — a center of moon worship, which included human sacrifice. God gave Abram the faith to respond to the call, and that faith was counted to Abram as righteousness. Like Noah, Abram found favor with God — he did not win it with works. For what came first: The faith of the works? Only after he believed did Abram leave Ur, sojourn in Canaan, circumcise himself and his household, offer up Isaac, and otherwise obey the Lord. Works follow belief. When Christ came in the flesh, He found a world just as dark and just as blind as ours. The Jews, despite having the Scriptures, did not recognize the Messiah. Nicodemus, a well-known teacher, did not recognize Christ, and could not grasp how one could be born again; he went so far as to ask how one could return to the womb to be born a second time. But what does Christ say? The Greek is deliberately vague: It can mean one must be born ‘again’ or ‘from above’. These are, of course, both true, and Christ further clarifies: One must be born of water and the Spirit. What is this other than Holy Baptism? “What benefits does Baptism give?” “It works forgiveness of sins, rescues from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe this, as the words and promises of God declare.” And do not let the enthusiasts tempt you to doubt: The Word of God promises that Baptism works forgiveness of sins and that the promis...
Genesis 3:1–21 Psalm 32:1–7 Romans 5:12–19 Matthew 4:1–11
Why do we baptize infants? We could say that it is the historical practice of the Church, that only a tiny — if vocal — minority oppose infant Baptism, and that Scripture commands it — 'Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.' — and commends it — 'Baptism … now saves you.’ — but let us go deeper and further back. Let us go back to a Garden, somewhere in the Near East, and a Tree with fruit and a snake. In Adam all men sinned, and do not fall prey to the temptation to minimize this — original sin is not merely a predisposition or the inherited consequences of our forebears' sin. Original sin is actual sin and it dooms as surely as murder, adultery, and theft. We all die — 'For thou art dust, and to dust shalt thou return.' — because the wages of sin is death, and we are all sinners.
I will not belabor the point, but suffice to say that we all know that children often act — let's say — less than angelic. As the psalmist cries out: 'I was born in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.' 'For all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God.' In that one trespass in the Garden, all stand judged and condemned, for all stand in Adam. He is the federal head of our race, and we are his fallen and sinful children. But it is not only that one trespass, for we stand doubly condemned — under original, inherited sin and under our own actual sins. Every day, we choose idols instead of God. We are fearful and anxious because we do not truly believe God's promises — our faith is smaller even than a mustard seed. In envy, we stand condemned of theft; in lust, we stand condemned of adultery; and, in anger, we stand condemned of murder. We sin in what we do and in what we fail to do; we sin with our hands, with our tongues, and with our minds. It matters not if we start at the beginning — we do not love God as we ought — or at the end — we are covetous to our core — or select at random — we do not honor our fathers and our mothers and obey proper authority; we break every single one of the Commandments. So, why do we baptize infants? Because they are in the same sinking ship in which we find ourselves. Conceived in sin and born in iniquity, they are just as spiritually dead in sin and trespass as once we were. In the waters of Baptism, we drown the old Adam and bring forth the new man in Christ. Though the water is, by itself, mere water and the pastor a fellow sinner, the Word makes the water a Sacrament and the hands of the pastor are the very hands of God Himself. None of us was baptized by a mere man, for Baptism is not a work of man — it is a work of God that offers regeneration, forgiveness of sins, and salvation. We baptize infants because we believe the words of Scripture that tell us the promise is for us and for our children. Through the waters of Baptism we pass from the kingdom of sin, death, and the devil to the Kingdom of the risen Lord. In the Garden, Satan distorted God's command: 'Did He say you could not eat from any tree?', and Eve was deceived and Adam ate. Many years later, but perhaps not so many miles from that tree in the Garden, Satan tempted a Man in the desert. He (Satan) used the Word of God, distorting it to fit his purposes, to attempt to push the Son of God from the path that would lead to Calvary. Whatever form the temptations took — fleshly pleasures and demands (the food), spiritual conceit (tempting God), or temporal power (the kingdoms) — Christ resisted them all. Finally, He did what our parents did not — He shouted: "Be gone, Satan!" In the trespass in the Garden, many were made sinners, but Christ's work is greater than Adam's, greater than the Fall. Despite many trespasses, all were justified by Christ's atoning sacrifice. It is that free gift following many trespasses that comes to us in Word and Sacrament. Though your sins are as scarlet,
Exodus 24:8–18 Psalm 2:6–12 2 Peter 1:16–21 Matthew 17:1–9
Joel 2:12–19 Psalm 51:1–19 2 Corinthians 5:20b—6:10 Matthew 6:1–6, 16–21
Yesterday, with ashes imposed upon your foreheads, many of you were forced to confront your fallen, sinful state and the mortality that flows from the same: 'For thou art dust, and to dust shalt thou return.'
Death is the end of all flesh, the end of the whole of this creation that has been subjected to futility. In Adam, all men sinned. Original sin is "that horrible, dreadful hereditary sickness by which the entire human nature is corrupted." Original sin is not your nature — for your nature was created by God and is "very good"; rather, original sin is a disease that clings to your nature — it is a disease that is always fatal. You will die from original — and your own actual — sin. This is the end of all flesh. When God descended in His glory as a devouring fire at Mount Sinai, He delivered unto Moses and the Old Testament Israelites the Law, and the Law proved to be death. Adam and Eve failed — they ate of the fruit; Old Testament Israel failed — they rebelled and whored after other gods; and you and I fail — we sin daily, constantly, unceasingly. Does your mind wander when you read or hear the Word of God? Do you trust — absolutely and without any doubt — in every promise of God? You have failed to keep the First Commandment. You worry because you do not trust God; you grasp because you do not believe His promises; you do not tithe and give of your blessings because you do not trust His Word. He tells you to turn and be healed, but you continue in your stubbornness and your rebellion. Adam and Eve chose death in the Garden; Old Testament Israel chose death in the desert and in the Promised Land; and you and I choose death every day. If we were to rely upon ourselves and our own efforts, then there would be absolutely no hope. We cannot fear, love, and trust God as we ought and our hearts are forever seeking idols before which we can prostrate ourselves. Those ashes on your forehead were not a mere reminder — they are a promise: for the wages of sin is death. "Yet even now." Yet even now, turn and He will heal you. Rend your hearts and not your garments, for the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit and a broken and contrite heart. And yet you could not have turned from your evil ways. In sin and trespass, you were dead, and the dead do not turn. And yet God is generous and merciful beyond measure and abounding in steadfast love. The Church Year is divided into three parts: the Time of Christmas, the Time of Easter, and the Time of the Church. Ash Wednesday marks the end of the Time of Christmas and the beginning of the Time of Easter. In under six weeks, we will be celebrating the Resurrection on Easter Sunday, but let us return, for a moment, to the just-concluded Time of Christmas and then refocus on Lent, because there is no Easter without Christmas and there is no life without His death. In His steadfast love, God sent Christ to the little town of Bethlehem, to a humble birth in a manger to a virgin betrothed to a poor carpenter. The eternal Word, Who was with and Who is God, became flesh. That same child just a few decades later would be nailed to a cross for your sins. Christmas leads to Easter, but only through Lent, just as death leads to resurrection, but only through the Cross. 'Yet even now, turn.' God knew that you could never turn on your own — the dead do not act — but death cannot stop Christ. "For our sake, He made Him to be sin Who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God." Although those ashes on your forehead were meant to remind you of sin and death, you must also remember that your sins were nailed to a cross in Jerusalem — just outside the city — nearly two thousand years ago. The Son of God and Son of Man — true God and true Man — died so that you might live. The ashes remind us of the price paid — the blood that ha...
Deuteronomy 30:15–20 Psalm 119:1–8 1 Corinthians 3:1–9 Matthew 5:21–37
The great ‘promise’ of the Law is ‘if…, then…’. “Blessed are those whose way is blameless, / who walk in the Law of the Lord!” “Blessed are those” who are “blameless”, “who keep His testimonies”, “who seek Him with their whole heart”, “who … do no wrong”, and who “walk in His ways”. But what are His testimonies? The Jews contend that there are six hundred and thirteen mitzvot — commandments — in the Torah, but let us not concern ourselves with such enumerations, for God Himself provides us a full statement of His Law in the Ten Commandments.
Thou shalt have no other gods. Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord, thy God, in vain. Thou shalt sanctify the hold day. Thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother. Thou shalt not murder. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house. Thou shalt not cover thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his cattle, nor anything that is his.
You may be thinking ‘So far, so good. I have neither murdered, committed adultery, nor borne false witness against my neighbor.’ Surely blessing and abundance will be ours for our great obedience! But wait. Does not Christ speak of these commandments?
Matthew 5:21–22 (ESV): ““You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.”
How fares your obedience to the Fifth Commandment?
Matthew 5:27–28 (ESV): “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
How fares your obedience to the Sixth Commandment? Have you divorced or married a spouse who was divorced?
Matthew 5:31–32 (ESV): “It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
How fares your obedience to the Sixth Commandment?
Matthew 5:33–37 (ESV): “Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.
Have you ever failed to keep your promises? Have you ‘merely’ failed to do what you said you would do? perhaps even failed to do what you told God you would do? How fares your obedience to the Eighth Commandment? Perhaps you yet believe that you have kept one of the other commandments. But what does Christ command? ‘Be perfect, as your Father in Heaven is perfect.’ The law demands perfect obedience. The ‘promise’ of ‘if…, then…’ is no promise at all, for the “if” is “if you are perfect”, but ‘all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’ and ‘none is righteous, no not one’. Therefore, the cry of the psalmist is practically a lament, a cry for mercy:
Psalm 119:8 (ESV): I will keep your statutes; do not utterly forsake me!
The Law always kills. You will find neither peace in nor comfort under the Law.
Romans 2:12 (ESV): For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law.
Romans 3:20 (ESV):
Isaiah 58:3–9a Psalm 112:1–9 1 Corinthians 2:1–16 Matthew 5:13–20
Some contend that it is possible to be 'good without God'. We may find this appealing. Surely if we loose the bonds of oppression, feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, shelter the homeless, clothe the naked — if we fill full the mouth of famine and bid the sickness cease — then God will notice our goodness and be pleased with us, no? No. We are told in Scripture that our good deeds — our good works — are as "polluted garment[s]" (ESV) or "filthy rags" (KJV), and, yet, neither of these translations is sufficient.
What is a filthy rag or a polluted garment? If you have done any work on an automobile, you may think of the combination of oil and dirt that pollutes everything it touches. Those who have raised children may think of rags used to clean up messes. (If you are thinking of dirty diapers, you have come closer.) If you are thinking of a kitchen towel, you are likely a bit off the mark. Some commentators have argued that what is in view here are the 'garments' — the strips of cloth — used to wrap the wounds of lepers, but the better interpretation is menstrual rags. Now, we all have the same mental image. Our good works are — our best is — as dirty, blood-soaked menstrual rags before God. Are you still feeling that maybe you want to come before God with your works in hand? So, let us dispense with the nonsense that you can be 'good without God'. The best person ever to live (other than Christ, of course) was a sinner through and through, and all his works were nothing. If you were to feed every hungry mouth, shelter every one of the over half a million homeless in the US, and preach the Gospel to millions, you would still appear before God in soiled, filthy rags. The original sin that has diseased our nature has wrought infinite separation between man and God; [i]t damns and brings eternal death". You cannot fear, love, and trust God as you should. Everything done without faith is sin, and the wages of sin is death. But we know that that is not the whole story. Adam sinned and in Adam all men stand condemned, but that is contrary to God's plan and will. You are not meant to sit in dirty rags, in the fear and hopelessness brought by a guilty conscience. You were — and are — meant to be a son or a daughter of the Kingdom, an adopted son of the Kingdom and an heir in Christ. And that is the crux of it. Nothing you could do or could have done would bridge the divide between you and your Creator. The good news is that there is nothing you need to do. ουτως γαρ ηγαπησεν ο Θεος τον κοσμον — for God so loved the world. Christ has done the work you could not do; He has perfectly fulfilled the Law. The wages of sin is death, but death could not hold Him for He had no sin; death has no claim to Him and now death has no claim to you. Washed in the blood of the Lamb — washed with water and the Word — you no longer wear dirty, blood-stained rags; rather, you now stand before the Father cloaked in a robe of purest white and declared righteous by grace through faith for the sake of Christ crucified. ουτως γαρ ηγαπησεν ο Θεος τον κοσμον. What did God love? τον κοσμον — the world. And what did He do? "He gave His only-begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have eternal life." Christ came to die for you, for your parents, for your siblings, for your children, for your friends, for me, but, more than that: τον κοσμον — He came to die for all. Christ's Atonement was necessary and sufficient — all sufficient. Justification is universal, for Christ's work was once for all. You are justified by grace through faith — made a true child of God and heir in the cleansing waters of Baptism. "Child of God, I gladly say it: I am baptized into Christ. He, because I could not pay it, gave my full redemption price." No longer do we live in fear and uncertainty, for He has promised that He will lose none from His hand.