Sermon for Advent 3

 

Rejoice!

Philippians 4:4

 

On this third Sunday of Advent, the Introit includes verses from Psalm 85 and these poetic lines from Philippians chapter 4

Rejoice in the Lord | always;*
            again I will | say, Rejoice.
Let your reasonableness be known to | everyone.*
            The Lord | is at hand.

Let’s consider three questions about this command from God’s Word: Rejoice:

1.      When should you rejoice?

2.      Why should you rejoice?

3.      How will you rejoice?

First one is easy, when should you rejoice? Always.  Keep on rejoicing, always, I’ll say it again, keep on rejoicing.  

            Actually, we should say this, if you are not rejoicing, you are sinning.

• There are moments when you must weep and mourn. Those moments should not be denied.  But our mourning does not have to exclude rejoicing. 2 Corinthians 4 teaches us how to find comfort and joy even in times of distress: ⁷ For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, ¹⁸ as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
• There are times when you will feel angry. In your anger, do not sin. Do not let your anger kill your joy. Repent of your sin. If your fellow people make you angry, seek forgiveness from the Lord and learn from him to forgive others.

Then with a clear conscience, Rejoice in the Lord always.

So clearly, not every moment of your day or every day of the year is going to be a time of rejoicing at the same level, with the same concentration, and the same vigor. Rejoice always. And occasionally, regularly, rejoice even more. Like running a marathon, you can’t sprint the whole thing. For most of it, you have to set your pace. And go one step at a time. So is the life of rejoicing in the Lord.

            Here’s the way I like to advise Christians about praying: You can pray anytime. And you must pray regularly. I add the “regularly” part because, well you know how it is. If the lazy human nature gets to thinking, “ah, I can pray anytime. So I will pray later. And then the day goes by and you haven’t prayed, so you say, “Oh well, I guess I will pray tomorrow, since I can pray anytime.” And tomorrow goes by and the next day. And your prayers are lacking. Make regular time for prayer, as a habit, and then also, whenever you call upon the Lord, anytime.

            So rejoice in the Lord always. And particularly find occasions, to consciously, intentionally, take a few moments to rejoice in the Lord.

            Secondly, consider, Why you should rejoice.

This passage gives the answer. In the Lord. Rejoice in the Lord. Because of your baptism and faith, you are in the Lord. Eternally, in the Lord. Just as he is risen from the dead, we too, united with His resurrection are looking forward to an eternal, resurrected life. A life of peace and comfort and joy.

            So listen to the children and their parts at the end of the service today. They have for us readings on the birth of Jesus, but also his death and burial, and then his glorious resurrection on Easter and His ascension into heaven from whence He promises to come to us again.

In the Gospel reading today, John the Baptist and his disciples get the message about what they should be noticing in the life and work of Jesus Christ. 5the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them (Matthew 11:5).

The life of Jesus Christ produced reason for our rejoicing. All the work that Jesus Christ has done produces reasons for our rejoicing. Because He is all for us.

So then how should you rejoice? As I mentioned, Rejoice in the Lord always. And particularly find occasions, to consciously, intentionally, take a few moments to rejoice in the Lord. Those moments are guided by the Lord himself. He comes to  you and blesses you with His word of Gospel and the sacrament of His body and blood.

Take the gifts He gives, rejoicing in the Lord. Hear His precious gospel. Recite the Christmas gospel. Say back to Him the gospel He has said to you as you pray regularly and anytime.

Amen.

           

 

Sermon for Thanksgiving

 

Thanksgiving Eve

November 22, 2023

 

Counting on His Blessings

Luke 17  ¹⁵ Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice; ¹⁶ and he fell on his face at Jesus' feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan.

 

Before medicines were developed to treat the several diseases known in the Bible as leprosy, those infected were forced to stay apart from society -- isolated so they wouldn’t spread the disease. Lepers could get together with each other. For the company and support groups of lepers would stick together. There’d be leper colonies. Here a group of 10 lepers were hanging around together. I’m not sure if 10 is enough to be a colony, but it’s a good size number. Some of you know what it takes to feed 10 people, or find a place for 10 people to sleep, or to manage how 10 people can get along without getting upset with each other. 10 can be a crowd.

But notice this: There was one who didn’t just go along with the crowd. The crowd was heading off on their way, now cured and cleansed from leprosy, they were happy to go and not turn back. One didn’t go along with the crowd. He stopped and turned back Praised God, worshipped the Son of God, Jesus and gave Him thanks.

This Thanksgiving and on through the rest of the holidays even up to Easter, let’s not go along with the crowd. But let us pause to praise God, worship the Son of God, Jesus, and give Him thanks.

The crowd is satisfied with all the trappings of the holidays, the food, the special events, the decorations, and so forth. No harm in these things. But let’s pause from the crowd’s rush from time to time in these days, and remember God our Redeemer, Creator.

Everyone strives to be their own person; we all strive to be true to ourselves. But you realize, there’s too many times when we just go along with the crowd.  Why go with the crowd? Maybe it’s fear of being ridiculed or rejected. There’s been a strong pressure on us since we were children to behave like the rest are behaving. There’s the peer pressure that we warn young people about, but peer pressure works on all ages. Christians have to learn to stand out, to stand up for their believes.

Often a person just goes along with the crowd because it’s the easiest thing to do. It takes little thought, little effort. Jesus pointed out the Samaritan leper’s faith. That faith was demonstrated in the intentionality of his actions. He paused, thought about it, and worshipped the Lord.

The Puritan Pilgrims of Plymouth were ones who didn’t just go along with the crowd.  The crowd in England in the early 1600s led by King James were oppressive to the Puritans. They said the Puritans were being “Non-conformist” in their religion. Whether King James and the Official Church of England was right or wrong on the issues at stake is a question to consider later. But the thing is the Puritan Pilgrims didn’t want to have an earthly king tell them how to worship and pray. Neither would we.

A couple of hundred years later, German princes were declaring laws on how Lutherans should worship and pray. Especially the powerful King of Prussia was telling Lutheran churches that they needed to compromise with non-Lutherans, just go along with the crowd. Because of this oppression, many German immigrants came to the United States in the 1830s, and this immigration led to the organization of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod.

The Puritan Pilgrims of 1620 and the Lutheran Pilgrims of the 1830s are positive examples of faith. They are good examples of actively, intentionally confessing the faith in words and actions.

True Christian Thanksgiving is an act of faith. It is an admission that the good we have comes from the Lord. When the Samaritan leper stopped and turned back Praised God, worshipped the Son of God, Jesus and gave Him thanks he was making a bold statement, a powerful confession of his faith.

For this one leper, everything else could wait. This one thing mattered, his faith in Christ, and the worship of his Lord.

For the Puritan Pilgrims they faced the dangers of primitive sea travel and the uncertainties of entering a new land. But they did so in faith, counting of the blessings that the Lord would provide them.

Our Lutheran forefathers immigrated to this land with faith in the Lord, knowing that come what may, the Lord would provide.

You can give thanks. You can admit that you are thankful to God and His Son Jesus Christ, your Savior. You can confess your faith, with boldness and confidence, counting on the blessings of God.

Amen.

 

Sermon for Lent 3

 

Jesus said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” (Luke 11:28)

You can read all over the place where Jesus would thus bless those who hear the word of God and keep it. So he blessed the mute demon possessed man who heard the word of the Lord, believed it and was blessed to speak again. So he blessed the Canaanite woman who believed the word of the Lord and trusted the Lord to have mercy when she begged and she was blessed to have her daughter healed. Blessed was the tax-collector who believed he was a sinner and sought mercy from the Lord, unlike the well-respected Pharisee who could not believe or keep the word of the Lord that told him to repent of sins and stop bragging. Blessed was Simeon who believed the word of the Lord that his eyes would see the promised Savior – Simeon was blessed to depart in peace. Blessed are you who are hearing the word of God and will keep it: keep it in your heart and in your mind and in your daily walk with the Lord.

That’s how you are blessed. Don’t covet other stuff that you are not given. Don’t get all discouraged because you don’t have this or that and say to yourself, “God hasn’t blessed me.” I don’t have all the money I want. I don’t have the best things. I don’t have the respect from others that I deserve. I don’t have the position I was always trying to get. I don’t have the people around me to support me and help me and make me happy. Those things are blessings when you get them from the Lord. But don’t despise him for how he chooses to give out blessings. Listen to Jesus: “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” That’s the blessed state you have, regardless if other things haven’t worked out like you want.

Hear the word of God and keep it. Hear the whole word of God. Keep the whole word of God. Hear both the Law and Gospel of God. Keep the Law by turning away from sins and turning toward the way of the Lord. Hear the Gospel. Keep it by trusting the Lord when He says, “You are forgiven.” And go on your way in the newness of life that is yours through the Gospel. “Walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Ephesians 5:1).

The incident recorded in Jeremiah’s book that we read today is an example of this, a rather bad example. The hearers of the Word of God that Jeremiah spoke did not keep it. They rejected it.

Jeremiah was commanded by God to speak a word to the people. The Lord said to Jeremiah, “Do not hold back a word. 3It may be they will listen, and every one turn from his evil way, that I may relent of the disaster that I intend to do to them because of their evil deeds” (Jeremiah 26:2-3).

The Word of God is His will, but it is his resistible will. He allows it to be so, that men and women can hear his word and if they choose, they can resist it, reject it, not keep it, but dismiss it. The will of God is perfect. We know He gets what he wants, yet in this wicked world, there are some things that work against his will. The devil works against God’s goodness, wreaking havoc in the world and in the lives of the world’s occupants. The sinful human nature within each of us wants to thwart God’s good and gracious will, and won’t listen to the word and won’t keep it. It’s only by the gracious working of the Holy Spirit that anyone can hear and keep the words that the Lord speaks.

Jeremiah was given this message to preach to the people of Judah:   “You shall say to them, ‘Thus says the LORD: If you will not listen to me, to walk in my law that I have set before you, and to listen to the words of my servants the prophets whom I send to you urgently, though you have not listened, then I will make this house like Shiloh, and I will make this city a curse for all the nations of the earth’” (Jeremiah 26:4-6).

Shiloh was once, in the early history of Israel, a beautiful center of worship. People came there and received the means of grace. They sang the praises of the Lord. But some centuries before Jeremiah’s day, enemies of God’s people, probably the Philistines, destroyed it. So there were these ruins of the place, just 18 miles away from Jerusalem, where Jeremiah is preaching. It was a depressing, discouraging sight for the people to picture. They knew exactly what this warning meant. And it made them mad. They said, 9Why have you prophesied in the name of the Lord, saying, ‘This house shall be like Shiloh, and this city shall be desolate, without inhabitant’?” (verse 9).

Now they got what Jeremiah was saying mostly right. But they missed the very key part. They didn’t keep the word that said: “If you will not listen to me, to walk in my law that I have set before you, and to listen to the words of my servants the prophets whom I send to you urgently, though you have not listened, then I will make this house like Shiloh.”

All these people had ears that were working. They heard the word. But their hearts were hard and selective in what word they kept. They got mad at Jeremiah -- more to the point, they were mad at God – but they directed their anger at Jeremiah. “You shall die!” They chose to believe that Jeremiah hated them, that he wanted their ruin. They accused him of prophesying against them. Jeremiah was guilty in their judgement of saying terrible things, things that some in our day have a powerful name for -- “hate speech.”

But, no, Jeremiah wasn’t speaking this out of hatred or malice. The Lord had told him to talk this way for their own good, for their preservation. The Lord’s desire was that they would turn, turn back to him.

The world around us hears what the Lord says but will not keep it. They hear only part of the Lord’s Word. He says do this, don’t do that. And they say, “God hates us. He won’t let us do what we want; He won’t let us be who we are.” They don’t hear and keep all that the Lord says, “If you will listen to me, it will be good for you. You will have life and salvation.

You are blessed when you hear the word of God and keep it. All the word of God. Turn from evil and do good. Repent and believe God. Hear him describe how he made you, body and soul. Hear him when he tells you that you live in a world broken by sin, and that your misdeeds and your godless thoughts have broken your life further. Hear him when he says, Repent and walk in my ways. Hear him now when he tells you of the cross of Jesus where your sins of deed and thought are forgiven and removed, for Jesus’ sake. Again, this week’s Collect, let us pray:

O God, whose glory it is always to have mercy, be gracious to all who have gone astray from Your ways and bring them again with penitent hearts and steadfast faith to embrace and hold fast the unchangeable truth of Your Word; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

 

 

 

 

Sermon for Quinquagesima

 

Knowing Jesus in His Suffering – Luke 18:34

 And taking the twelve, he said to them, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished” (Luke 18:31).

You could see as you followed along in this Gospel reading for the day that there are two paragraphs, two scenes in the life and teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the first scene, Jesus tells his disciples what is going to be happening when they go up to Jerusalem. He is going to be handed over to the Gentiles, the Roman occupation force. They will treat him shamefully, spit on him, kill him, and on the third day he will rise. And the disciples don’t get it. These things are hidden from them. They can’t see what he’s talking about.

In the second scene, there’s a blind beggar in Jericho, and he sees. He gets it. He’s told that Jesus of Nazareth is coming by, and he knows enough to call on him by a different title. He calls out Jesus, Son of David, have mercy in me. He acknowledged Jesus to be the long promised King that Israel had been waiting for, like the great King David only different, better. The blind man knew and trusted to call on this promised one, this promised Messiah. “Have mercy!” Jesus calls this faith the man had. He had faith, he believed the Son of David, the anointed Messiah, could help in his affliction.

Luke, guided by the Holy Spirit, had to choose carefully what events about Jesus life to record. He didn’t have the time or the ink to record it all. So it’s important to see what he included. And it must be intentional that he included these two paragraphs one after the other showing this great contrast between the disciples’ cluelessness and the blind beggar’s faith.

It was worth writing down, worth passing on that the only one who got Jesus, on this trip up to Jerusalem was a blind man.

The disciples knew Jesus of course. They’d been with him all along. They heard him preach and learned his lessons. But when he talked about his suffering, his humiliation at the hands of evil men, his cross, they did not grasp what was said.  There is a clear contrast here: the one who suffers calls out to Jesus and has faith in what Jesus does. Those who are well and at ease, are blind to understand why Jesus does what he came to do. The disciples were just going along that road heading to Jerusalem. Making progress on the journey, refusing to believe that there would be suffering and cross ahead. The blind man, in his ailment, could only cry out in faith.

Thursday last week I was visiting with the three year old children at Fun in the Son preschool. It was about first thing in the morning and I asked them “Are you going to have a good day today?” And these three year olds were so bright and chipper and excited about every little thing so of course they said, “Ya!” It was snowing and there was a wind chill. And all of us had wet and muddy shoes. But it was a good day for all. I love the optimism of children.

But I am an old Lutheran pastor. I had to bring it all back to reality. Especially the reality that we hear from God:  Law and Gospel. So first the law.

I asked them, “Do you ever have a bad day?” And they couldn’t even answer that. All they could think of was that they were having a great time at the moment.  But I gave them some examples. What about when you are hurt and have an ouwie? Do you ever cry ‘cause you don’t get your way? What about when you’re angry because your friends mess up your stuff? And then each one started remembering a time or two when they had had a bad day. I assured them that Jesus loves them each, when they are having a good day or having a bad day.

So let me ask all of you those same questions: do you ever have a bad day? Like when you are hurt and have an ouwie? Do you ever cry ‘cause you don’t get your way? What about when you’re angry because your friends mess up your stuff?  Please know that Jesus loves you, when you are having a good day and when you are having a bad day. And this goes against our thinking, but it’s true: It’s on the bad days when we are most likely to cry out “Lord, Have mercy on me.” In our good days, when we are just going along, forward down the path ahead, we don’t grasp the need we have for the Lord.

We often pray together about the bad days. We pray that God would save us from the hurts and suffering, protect us from our enemies, deliver us from evil. We ought to also pray, “God save us from our good days.”

Thanks be to God for good days. Enjoy them. But let’s not covet them. Nor should we fear bad days. In all our days, we trust the Lord Jesus who loves us.

Living the Christian life we are called to a self-discipline, not always choosing what is easy, not avoiding what is difficult just because our flesh finds it unpleasant and unfun.

So we are given a time of discipline and self-reflection. Lent starts Wednesday with Ash Wednesday. I ask you to use these next couple of days to think about your personal observation of Lent. In Lent we meditate on Jesus’ cross even as we take up our own and follow him.

As Jesus headed up to Jerusalem and to the shameful treatment he would receive there, so we follow him, knowing Jesus as the one who suffers for us and who suffers with us.

We will have the Divine Service this first Wednesday in Lent, beginning with the confession of our sins and hearing the absolution of the Lord. Reflect beforehand on what you will be confessing, what is on your mind and in your heart and what is leading you to call out to “Jesus, Son of David, Have mercy!”

Consider what you can do this Lent, setting aside some time to pray, to listen, to discipline self, with the goal of Easter in mind. Easter is a good day. Not just because it is easy, fun, comfortable. But because our Lord brings us with him through the bad days and good days, through suffering and the cross, and finally into his eternal life. Amen.

 

Sermon for the Baptism of our Lord

 Matthew 3 [when Jesus was baptized] behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (vs. 17).

You gotta know some stuff. You have to learn. Most stuff, even if you have already learned, you gotta hear it again every so often, else it gets lost to the fog of time and competing memories. Christian faith is more than just knowing stuff, you gotta believe it, trust in it make it yours for life. But never get to thinking that faith is completely different than knowing stuff, or that knowing stuff is a hindrance to believing. You have to know what it is you are believing. The baptism of Jesus was recorded in the Gospel so Christians would know about God, and about Jesus and about your life with God and with Jesus.

First, about God.

The Christian confesses, “I believe in one God.” There is only one God. That’s made clear throughout all the Bible. All the other supposed gods are made up in the imaginations of men and women, or worse yet, are demons, masquerading as gods. God, the true God, is One a complete and perfect unity.

The Christian says, “I believe in God the Father and I believe in God the Son and I believe in God the Holy Spirit.” God the Father, whom we pray to as we’ve been taught to say, Our Father who art in heaven. God the Son, who was born at Bethlehem to be our Immanuel, our God with us. And God the Holy Spirit whom we were given at our baptism and remains with the believer lifelong comforting with peace, joy, faith, self-control and all his other fruits. Three “Persons”, as the way we’ve come to talk about it, while still One God.

That great moment at the Jordan River, the One God showed Himself in three persons. The Father spoke from heaven, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” The Son of God was standing in the water, being baptized by John. The Holy Spirit presented Himself in a visible form, a dove.

We Lutheran Christians have benefited from the insights of Martin Luther on lessons like this. He said, This shows that baptism is no ordinary human custom and practice. It is a divine command and promise. The Triune God Himself shows baptism to be a divine act when He, Father, Son and Holy Spirit show up at the baptism John was doing in the old Jordan River.

Now about Jesus, you gotta know somethings about Jesus.

John was reluctant to baptize him at first. By all rights he should have been. Just previously it is recorded that John was preaching to the people of that time, “I baptize you with water for repentance” (vs. 11). Jesus was sinless. He had nothing to repent. Repentance was inappropriate for him. It’s for all the rest of us, including John. So John says, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” (vs. 14).

The Son of God humbled himself. He with the Father and the Holy Spirit is forever one God, enthroned in the glory of his heavenly home. He came down from heaven and became a man. Jesus, the man, did all things that a man has to do, including submitting himself to another, John the Baptist and preacher. He was “fulfilling all righteousness”.

Jesus is our Immanuel -- God with us.  He is with us in the waters of baptism.

This passage is so helpful in teaching us about Jesus -- who He is and What he does. The Father’s voice from heaven says, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

Jesus is the Man in the river. Jesus is the Son of God. Who is Jesus? True God and True Man.

The Father tells what Jesus does when he says, “With whom I am well pleased.” The Father is pleased. Without Jesus there is so much that the Father is unhappy with. He had told the world what he wanted, the Ten Commandments. But people did not do them, and today, even more so, the Commandments of God are not honored or obeyed. The world is filled with problems because of this. People get sick, get old, and die. So you might be left wondering, what’s God think about me, a poor sinner?

 

What a happy sound to hear God the Father say He is pleased. Do you know what will make God happy? There’s Jesus, doing all righteousness, being born in humility, being baptized with us sinners, teaching the Father’s word, dying for our sins and living again for our eternal life.

 

Now, you gotta know somethings about what the baptism of Jesus has to do with you.

 

Romans 6 gives additional thoughts to this. St. Paul writes “We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” (Rom. 6:4)

 

Right there in baptism, Jesus us Immanuel, God with us.

 

Jesus didn’t have to be baptized. You did.

Jesus didn’t need to repent of sins. You do.

Jesus didn’t need any forgiveness. You do.

Jesus didn’t need to die. You do.

 

There He is with you and you with him, buried with Him through baptism into death.

 

Have that picture in mind of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, there on the banks of the Jordan River. It’s for you that they are there. The Father is pleased with you, because you are baptized and given Christ’s righteousness. The Son is there, Jesus, Immanuel, God with us. The Holy Spirit is there, teaching you to learn and believe the love of Jesus and your new life with God who is well pleased.

Amen.