Sermons Archive - St Paul Lutheran Church podcast

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Sermon for Sixth Sunday of Easter

15일 전

나중에 재생

리스트

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[Machine transcription] Christ is risen, he has risen indeed. Hallelujah. In the name of Jesus. Amen. Dear Mark and Hank and Noah, to all the baptized and to all those who confess our Lord Jesus Christ. Our Lord Jesus, in the gospel lesson tonight, is giving his last sermon. In fact, this is the last part of his last sermon to his disciples. Right after the words that we heard in the gospel, Jesus takes his disciples out of the upper room and to the Garden of Gethsemane where he prays and is arrested and his passion begins. So we’re deep into Holy Week. We’re on Maundy Thursday. And here we hear the very last words of our Lord Jesus, and I want to impress them on our hearts as well. Every week, every Sunday, my hope and prayer is that God the Holy Spirit would take these words that we’re thinking about and inscribe them on our hearts and minds so that they would give us his wisdom and his comfort and his courage, not just all through our week, but all through our lives. But this morning I want to press a little bit harder with these words because these words from John chapter 16, verse 33, are some of the most precious, comforting, wonderful words that our Lord Jesus speaks, and they are for us. He says, “In this world you will have trouble, but be of good cheer. Take heart. I have overcome the world.” And we want to think about those words this morning. May God help us, especially as we think about them in their original context, when the Lord spoke these words to the disciples. We know that Jesus is going to have trouble. In fact, we know that it’s only a few hours away from his own arrest. But he also is kind of amazingly concerned at this time, not just about himself, but also about the apostles and the life that they’re going to live and lead after this. Their life is not going to be full of ease and full of comfort, but in fact full of torment and, what Jesus says here, full of trouble. We have it pictured for us in the windows. I was thinking about it this morning. Surrounding Jesus, we have those 12 football shapes, almond shapes of orange, and in the middle of them, all of these different symbols. Most of them are symbols of how the apostles died. Thomas is symbolized by a club that beat him to death. Matthias is symbolized by the axe that cut his head off. Bartholomew, up on the top right, just under John, who has the chalice with the snake because he was poisoned, but he lived through it. Underneath him is the knife with what looks like a rag behind it, but it’s actually his skin because he was flayed—his skin was cut off. When Jesus says, “In this world you will have trouble,” that counts. Jesus was not setting before them an easy path or an easy life. And the same is true for you. Now, look, there’s a normal dose of trouble that every person has, just living in this world, in this fallen world. There’s sickness and sin and trouble in the world. But for the Christian, it’s not that that trouble is lessened, but in fact, in a very profound way, that trouble is intensified. When the Lord Jesus calls us, he does not call us to take up our lazy boy and follow him. He calls us to take up the cross. And this is what we’re talking about. In this world you will have crosses. In this world you will have tribulation. In this world you will have trouble. Hank and Mark, when you were marked with the sign of the Holy Cross on your forehead and upon your heart just a few minutes ago, you were made a friend of God and that makes you an enemy of the devil. Just like Jesus, who was baptized and was driven into the wilderness by the Spirit to be tempted by the devil for 40 days, so it is for the life of all of the Christians that the devil himself is after us. So that the gospel does not make our life easier, but in fact in profound ways more difficult. We have to pin this down because I think there’s a preaching that is the opposite of that in the church, and we have to recognize it. That’s this idea that if you come to Christ, if you believe the gospel, it will make your life better. Now, how do you define “better” is really important here. But here’s the picture that I like to think about. This is from an old evangelist from New Zealand. He gave this picture, and I think it’s really helpful. You have to imagine that you’re flying in an airplane and that airplane is going to crash. So the pilot calls in the flight attendants and says to them, “Okay, pass out the parachutes, the plane’s going down.” I don’t actually think they keep parachutes, but, you know, in the story, this is how it goes. So the flight attendants grab the parachutes, and the first flight attendant, who’s taking care of all the people in first class, hands out the parachutes to all the people in first class and says to them, “Hey, take the parachute, it’s going to make your flight a lot better.” “Oh, wow, thank you! Wow, this is free. I bet the people in back don’t get the parachutes.” You know, they grab the parachute. “This is so nice.” And they put the parachute on their lap, and they look at the parachute, and then the plane starts to jostle, and the parachute is in their way, and they’re having trouble reaching the mimosa, you know, and this isn’t making it better. And they put the parachute under the seat in front of them, but they’re cramping their feet, and they can’t move as much. And they said, “They weren’t lying to me. This isn’t making the flight better. I’m more cramped.” And they put the parachute in the overhead bin. And then the plane crashes, and they die. But the people in the back had a different flight attendant who gave them the parachute and said, “Take this parachute. The plane’s going down, and it’s going to save your life. It’s your only hope.” And do you see the difference? Yes. I mean, now when the plane jostles, you hold on tighter. And when things start to shake, you strap it on. It doesn’t matter if you’re losing circulation in your arms; you’re holding tight to this as if it is your life. Because it is your life. So we hold on to the promise of the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, not because it makes this life easier, but because the world is going down. And this is our salvation. This is our hope. This is our only hope. So the Lord Jesus tells us, and He warns us about it, that we are not to be stuck in clinging to the things of this world because in this world we will have trouble. So we expect it. I mentioned this morning that this is a mirror verse, and that means it’s one of these verses that we should put on the mirror in the morning so that when we wake up and we look at it and we say, “How are things going to go for me today? How is it going to be?” And here’s the answer from Jesus, at least the first part: “In the world, you will have trouble.” When trouble comes to us, to you, you can say to Jesus, “Just like you promised.” But Jesus doesn’t just tell us that in the world we’re going to have trouble. He goes on to tell us how we should think about it. Now, this is pretty amazing. I want you to notice what Jesus does not say. Jesus does not say, “In this world you will have trouble, but have some backbone and you’ll get through it.” Jesus does not say, “In this world, you will have trouble, but strengthen your resolve. Be cool, calm, and collected, and you’ll make it through.” It’s not what he says. Jesus does not even call us to endure the troubles that come to us in this world. He gives us something that would be—you wouldn’t believe it unless it was written down. The Lord Jesus says to his disciples and to you and to me, “In this world you will have trouble, but take heart. Be of good cheer.” We are called, and if you can imagine, this is not easy, and I don’t want to pretend like this is easy. In fact, I don’t want to pretend like this might not just be the hardest thing that you’ve ever heard—that Jesus, the most difficult instruction that Jesus gives, that in the midst of our trouble and all the troubles of this life, in the midst of tribulation and turmoil and affliction and sorrow and sickness and death, in the middle of all of it, Jesus does not just call us to endure this. He calls us to be of good cheer. And lest we just think that this is the one time that it happens, it just so happens that this is what Jesus always teaches, and this is also what his apostles always teach. From the last words of the Beatitudes, Matthew chapter 5, Jesus says this: “Blessed are you when they revile you and persecute you, rejoice and be exceedingly glad.” Or listen to how James starts his epistle. This is James chapter 1, verse 2: “My brothers,” he says, “count it all joy when you fall into various trials.” Peter writes this, 1 Peter chapter 4, verse 12: “Beloved, don’t think it’s strange concerning the fiery trial, which is to try you, as though something strange is happening to you. But rejoice to the extent…” that you partake of Christ’s suffering. James, Peter, Jesus, Paul says this in Romans 5, verse 3: “We glory in tribulations.” So we have it from the apostles and from our Lord himself. You will have trouble, and our response to that trouble is to be of good cheer, joy, rejoicing, exceedingly glad, counting it joy and glory. That’s what Jesus calls us to. Now, I want to say that this joy is not only in spite of the trouble, but because of the death of Jesus on the cross, that Jesus gives us this joy through the trouble, in the trouble, that the trouble itself reminds us of this joy. Amen. In other words, it is in some ways in spite of the trouble, but it’s more than that. It’s connected to it because we know from Hebrews that the Lord disciplines those whom he loves. And instead of proving to us or showing to us the Lord’s disinterest or the Lord’s anger or the Lord’s disappointment, when trials and tribulations and afflictions come to us, they are actually signs of the Lord’s approval, indications that the Lord is with us, reminders that he hasn’t forgotten us, but that he continues to bless us and teach us. And I think in this way, here’s the second picture. Do you remember, and this I think I’ve preached to you before, do you remember the story that Luther tells about being in the dungeon of the king? You have to imagine. So imagine that this church, instead of being so beautiful, is all dusty and nasty; it’s a dungeon. We’re all trapped in this dungeon, right? And not only are we trapped in the dungeon and we can’t get out, but this castle that the dungeon is under is surrounded by an army that’s cannonballing the walls, and the walls are shaking, and the dust is falling. And we’re thinking, man, if it can’t get bad enough, here I am locked in this dungeon, but now the whole castle is about to fall on top of me. Now, that’s what this world is. That’s where we are. We’re trapped in this world, and it’s full of all sorts of troubles. But here’s what Luther says: the army that’s surrounding the castle is not the army of an enemy trying to destroy you, but the army of your friends trying to rescue you. It’s your father’s army, who knows that you’re in the dungeon, and he’s coming to get you out. So he’s vaulting all of these cannonballs to knock open the walls so that you can go free. And in that way, every time the walls shake, every time the ground trembles, every time there’s trouble and affliction and disaster in this life, in your life, every time it happens, it reminds us that the Lord is rescuing us. It reminds us of what Jesus says this morning: “I have overcome the world.” He is bringing us out of the troubles of this life and into the joys and into the glory of the life to come, and that confidence is what gives us joy and good cheer and rejoicing and glory in the midst of all of these afflictions. So that the apostles who went to their martyrdoms didn’t go singing a dirge and dragging their feet, but they went even to their deaths with joy. Luther, who preaches one of the most glorious sermons on this text—in fact, I thought of just reading you all 10 pages of Luther on John 16—but I’m going to email it to you later, so you’ll get it. You can read it for your homework. But he preaches in this text about Agnes and Agatha, his two favorite martyrs that he always loves to preach of, especially in this context. Remember Agnes and Agatha were arrested by the pro-counsel because they were confessing the faith and refused to marry them. The pro-counsel, these Roman wicked judges, said, “Hey, we can kill you. I’m going to burn you, Agnes. I’m going to throw you in prison, Agatha.” And they went undaunted. They left the face of the pro-counsel not sad, not weeping, but joyful. In fact, these old martyrdom stories tell this amazing thing: they leave the condemnation sent to their death—can you imagine this?—skipping like they were being invited to a dance, like a wedding feast. Because that’s exactly where they were going. Death, for them, for you, is the way to life eternal. The worst thing that can happen to you, when you breathe your last, is the very best thing that can happen to you. So that we know that the Lord Jesus has rescued us from the fear of death by his death on the cross. So that for us to live is Christ, and to die is gain, so that we can go joyfully even in the midst of all of this trouble. We can go joyfully to the grave. What gave them that courage? Luther asked, what gave them that courage? That these young girls could stand undaunted and fearless in front of those who would condemn them to die? Nothing other than the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ who says to them, “In this world you will have trouble, but be of good cheer because I have overcome the world.” Sin, death, and the devil have no claim on you because Jesus has overcome the world. So sorrow has no claim on you. Death has no claim on you. Condemnation has no claim on you because Christ has claimed you. So may God grant that these beautiful words of our Lord Jesus would also be carved into our minds, hearts, and consciences. He promises that in the world you will have trouble. But then not only does he give the command, but he gives you his spirit so that you by faith would keep it. “Be of good cheer,” Jesus says to you, “be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.” May God grant it for Christ’s sake. Amen. Christ has risen. He has risen indeed. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen. The post Sermon for Sixth Sunday of Easter appeared first on St Paul Lutheran Church .…

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Sermon for Fifth Sunday of Easter

22일 전

나중에 재생

리스트

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[Machine transcription] When they heard these things, they fell silent and they glorified God, saying, “Then to the Gentiles also, God has granted repentance that leads to life.” Christ is risen. He has risen indeed. You may be seated. In the name of Jesus, amen. Dear Saints, we are going to end up right there with that text from Acts chapter 11 that God has granted to the Gentiles repentance. And I want it to impress upon us today really this idea that the Lord is in the business of converting the heart and that we should have that expectation of the Lord, that he is still converting hardened hearts and turning them to himself. We’re going to think about that with Acts chapter 11. But on our way, I just want to say a couple of things about the epistle text from Revelation chapter 21, because it’s really you just can’t read the text and not say anything about it, because it’s one of these fundamental portions of the scripture, the last two chapters of the entire Bible, which have all of these marvelous parallels with the first two chapters of the Bible. Remember how at the very beginning God created the heavens and the earth, but now in chapter 21, it’s the new heavens and the new earth. Remember at the beginning there was just ocean, but now the sea is gone. Remember how at the beginning the Lord was creating everything perfect, and now everything is perfect again. There’s no more tears, there’s no more sorrow, there’s no more death, and this beautiful picture. This is the picture that we have of the end of the world, and it’s a marvelous, wonderful, fantastic picture of the new Jerusalem, which is the Lord’s church, all of his people, decked out in glory like a bride, it says, ready for her wedding. And the new Jerusalem comes down out of heaven and is joined to the earth so that in eternal life, on the last day, after the last day, when the Lord Jesus comes back and raises us all from the dead, he will bring an end to all sorrow, all suffering, all misery, all death, all dying, all funerals, all doctors, all the miserable things of this world, which Revelation calls the old things. The old things have passed away. And behold, all things are made new. Now, we confess this every week when we talk about how Jesus will return in glory and there’s the resurrection of the body and the life eternal. But here’s the point. This is how things end. This is how the world ends. This is the last chapter. And it’s so important that we latch our imaginations and our hearts onto this last chapter because the world and your flesh, and especially the devil, want you to have another last chapter. They want you to think that the world is going to end in another way. One of you sent me an article this week I was reading. It was really interesting. It was about how artificial intelligence connected to the demons. Yeah. And the article said in there, this is an amazing truth, it said that 50% of the people who are working on building the whole artificial intelligence stuff, I don’t even know the right words to talk about it, but 50% of the people who are working on it say that they believe there’s a 10% chance that artificial intelligence will lead to human extinction. And still they go to work. I asked the chatbot if that was true, and it said no. Now, I just want you to think about it, because we hear this kind of stuff all the time. All these dual-use technologies that we are inventing. I mean, this has been for a long, long time, but all of these things could lead to these catastrophic end of humanity. And here’s the point. We can live and work and serve and go about our business in the confidence that the Lord Jesus will return and find his church standing, that we cannot bring about the human extinction. I mean, maybe we can start, but the Lord will interrupt it. This is the point. The end of all of these things is not the disastrous apocalyptic views that we see in the movies and read about in the books and the poems. Now, this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be careful to do what’s right and avoid evil and all things that are wrong, etc., etc. We should. But we should know that the end of the last chapter of the universe, the last chapter of this world, the last chapter of the Lord’s church is not about destruction, not for his people. The last chapter is about glory. The last chapter is not about death, it’s about life. The last chapter is not the explosion of the sun or the slow heat death of the universe. The last chapter is the marriage feast of the Lamb and his kingdom which has no end. And with our hope latched onto that promise, we live and we fight and we serve and we love and we suffer and we live and we die with that hope, clinging to that hope. So this Revelation chapter 21 should be constantly in front of our minds, that the Lord Jesus is on the way back and that glory awaits, that everything started with the glory of God and everything ends now with the glory of God and we’re invited into that glory. Okay. Revelation 21. Now, to Acts chapter 11. Now, you have homework this week because I’d like for all of you to go home and read sometime this week, Acts chapter 10. And what you’ll find when you read Acts chapter 10, which is, of course, right before our text in Acts chapter 11, is the event that Peter is talking about in chapter 11. Now, this is pretty amazing. I don’t know another place in the Bible where this happens, where you have a whole chapter that’s dedicated to a particular event, and then the next chapter is telling the story of that event. Maybe with the conversion of Paul, which happens and then is reported two other times in the Book of Acts. But this is really unique. And it tells us that these two chapters, Acts chapter 10 and Acts chapter 11, are very, very important in the history of the early church. The reason is because the Lord Jesus said to the apostles, promised to the apostles, that you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. That’s his promise. But the disciples were a little bit slow about that. And they were fine being witnesses in Jerusalem. That was hard enough, but they were fine doing that. But then to go to Judea, the county around Jerusalem was difficult. But then to go beyond the borders and boundaries of the Hebrew nation and go into Samaria and then beyond Samaria into the Gentile world, that was very, very difficult. And so the book of Acts, if you could think of it like this, there’s Jerusalem and then Judea and Samaria and the ends of the earth, and there’s these walls or hurdles, and the Holy Spirit has just grabbed the apostles by the scruff of their neck, and he’s just dragging them over these hurdles. And it’s Acts chapter 10 and 11 that the Holy Spirit is dragging the gospel into the Gentile world. It starts with Peter and Joppa, and it’s the window that’s right here. It’s my favorite of all of our stained glass windows. There’s Peter on the roof of Simon the Tanner in Joppa, the seaport, and the Lord gives him a vision of this sheet that comes down. I think it’s my favorite because you can see the pig and the snake and the rat and the spider in the sheet, at least from my angle here, you can see it, all these unclean animals. And the Lord lowers these unclean animals before Peter, like some sort of anti-kosher picnic and says, “Kill and eat.” And Peter says, “Lord, I can’t do it. No, nothing unclean has ever touched my lips.” But three times the Lord does it. “Kill and eat, kill and eat. What I’ve called clean, do not call unclean.” And while Peter is thinking about this, two servants come and knock on the door from, that have come down from Caesarea, from the centurion who sends them down, this Gentile, Cornelius, sends them down to call Peter. So Peter says, “Well, I guess that’s what the vision means. I’ve got to go.” So he goes from Joppa up the sea to Caesarea, and he goes into the centurion’s house. And Cornelius has gathered up his friends and his family to hear what Peter is going to say. And Peter comes into this Gentile house, and he preaches the gospel. He preaches about the promises of God in the Old Testament. He preaches about the death and resurrection of Jesus. He preaches about, this is, it’s one of the important verses in Acts, chapter 10, verse 43, Peter says, “All the prophets testified that the forgiveness of sins would come through the name of Jesus.” That’s one of those verses that tells us that all of the Old Testament prophets are about, not only Jesus, but about the forgiveness of sins that Jesus brings. And as Peter is finishing his sermon, the most astonishing thing happens. The Holy Spirit comes and falls on all of those Gentiles. And some of them even start speaking in tongues. And Peter looks and he says, “Well, how can we not baptize them?” Now, do you see the hurdle there? I mean, Peter already, can I go to that house? Can I talk to that man? Even if they become believers, what should I do? It seems like Peter is not even going to baptize them. But now he says, “The Lord Jesus has given them the same gifts that he gave to us.” And this is what Jesus promised. “John baptized with water, but you will be baptized by the Holy Spirit.” Now, just as an aside, when we’re reading the book of Acts and we see someone baptized with the Holy Spirit in this way and they start to speak in tongues, I think the best way to understand it is that the Holy Spirit is ordaining them, making them a pastor so that they can preach. And sometimes preach even in languages that they don’t understand. But look at how it’s out of order. You’re supposed to be baptized first and then ordained. You’re supposed to be baptized first and then trained and then become a preacher. But the Lord just sends the Holy Spirit on Cornelius and these guys that are gathered around there. And so Peter, who it looks like was not going to baptize him, says, “Well, I guess I better baptize him.” And he does. And now there’s the first Lutheran church of Caesarea, right there in Cornelius’ house. Now that’s chapter 10. Now Peter goes back up to Jerusalem. Right. And news of the event had gotten there, and this is our text. So news of this event had gotten to Jerusalem, but it got to them like this: Not that, “Hey, Cornelius and all of his house became Christians, and they were baptized, and they were holy,” but that, “Hey, Peter was eating with the Gentiles.” That Peter had crossed that barrier that Jewish people were not supposed to cross. That they were unclean. And so Peter tells the story. He says, “I was there. I had this vision. The servants came. I went up there. I was preaching. And as I was preaching, it was over. The Holy Spirit fell upon them. And I realized that God had called them also. So how could I hold back baptism? Surely I had to baptize them and give them the gifts of new birth and water and the spirit that the Lord gives in holy baptism.” And all of the people are listening to Peter. And it says they marvel that God had granted repentance to life also to the Gentiles. And this is this, in some ways, the final hurdle, although that hurdle is going to be over and over in the book of Acts, that the Holy Spirit is dragging the gospel to get it to every place, every corner of the world, so that every ear can hear and every heart can be cleansed by the promise of the forgiveness of sins that comes from the death of our Lord Jesus Christ in the hope of his resurrection. Now, theologically, in the book of Acts, it’s a very, very important text, and we just need to know that. But the question for us is what’s the application? Because I think most of us are probably Gentiles. Most of us are on this side of that Jewish-Gentile hurdle, and all of us are rejoicing that the Lord got the gospel also to us so that we could hear it and we could believe it. But here’s how I’d like to apply it to our own particular circumstance. There’s a thing that I think the Lutherans are generally bad at. And maybe I’m just preaching to myself. Maybe I’m projecting on you guys. Maybe I’m just bad at it. But let’s see. I think that we are bad at expecting the Lord to convert the heart. I don’t think we operate with the expectation of conversion. Right? We think that the way someone is now is probably going to be the way that they always were. And maybe this is because a lot of Lutherans started Lutheran and grew up Lutheran, God be praised and have it all along. You just think that that’s just how it goes. That you just kind of stick around close to the beliefs of your parents, to the beliefs of your family, or to whatever you were handed as a child. And so we think that if someone is a Christian, then maybe they’ll stay. We hope they’ll stay a Christian. But if someone’s not a Christian, they’re probably going to stay a not Christian. Someone’s Buddhist or Muslim or someone’s Islamic or someone’s an atheist or someone as a completely secular-minded or whatever, that that’s the way they are. That’s going to be the way that they stay. And here’s, I think, the problem. I would just like you to reflect on this. Do you think that way or do you expect that the Lord is in fact working in their hearts through the word to change their hearts, to grant repentance? Yes, to call them into his kingdom. This is, after all, what we confess the work of the Holy Spirit is. I believe that I cannot, by my own reason or strength, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ or come to him. But the Holy Spirit has called me by the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith. In the same way that he calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the entire Christian church on earth and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith. That the Holy Spirit is working, and through the Word, the Holy Spirit is working in the hearts of all people who are hearing the Word of God and drawing them and calling them and bringing them into the Lord’s church. Now I think this expectation of conversion that we just know that the Lord can and does change hearts should be part of the shape of our own imagination as a congregation and also for us individually. That we might think, “Oh well, here we are in the midst of hard-hearted Austin.” Ha ha. And it doesn’t want to hear the gospel, and it doesn’t want to believe the gospel, and it wants to go on its happy way in unbelief. And we say that that’s just how it’s been and how it’ll be. No, no. The Lord, look at when Jesus is going there, sending Peter to the house of Cornelius to claim him and his family as his own, this is how the Holy Spirit still works, still gathering people, still calling people to his name and his goodness and his love. And the same thing is true for each of us and our families. I would love for you to imagine the people that you think are farthest from Christ, farthest from the kingdom, farthest from believing and trusting the good news. And every time you come to the Lord’s Supper to pray for them, every time we pause in the prayer of the church to pray for them and to expect… in your prayers with the hopeful promise of the gospel, that the Lord is working and calling and converting and crushing hardened hearts and taking out that heart of stone and putting in that place a heart of flesh. After all, the Lord has done it with you. You were born an enemy of God. You were by nature a child of wrath. And yet the Lord Jesus has called you, has given you faith, has forgiven you all of your sins, and has given you the hope of living forever with him in the new heaven and the new earth, feasting with him in the marriage feast of the Lamb. So we rejoice that this is who the Lord is. And when we see the Holy Spirit dragging Peter into the Gentile world in the house of Cornelius, we should smile with awe and wonder and confidence that the Lord who does that is still doing that. And we live in that confidence. May God grant it for Christ’s sake. Amen. Christ is risen. He has risen indeed. Hallelujah. The peace of God which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. The post Sermon for Fifth Sunday of Easter appeared first on St Paul Lutheran Church .…

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Sermon for Good Shepherd Sunday

29일 전

나중에 재생

리스트

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[Machine transcription] Christ is risen. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, you may be aware that today is a special day. Today is that one day, that particular day, that Sunday each year that we, if we’re smart, mark on the calendar, and we honor the one who has given us life. The one who cares for us in our helplessness, the one who washes us clean and wipes away our tears, the one who feeds and nourishes us and protects us. And we’ve even given this day a special name. And I’m sure you know exactly what I’m referring to. Today is Good Shepherd Sunday. This morning’s reading should have been a clue to that. We’ve heard first this very often quoted, probably the most used psalm ever that there ever was, Psalm 23, the Good Shepherd Psalm: “The Lord is My Shepherd.” A psalm that we hear most often, I think, prayed in times of trouble and distress, particularly during a period of illness or in dying, and we certainly use it in our funeral services. We also heard St. Paul telling the elders of the Ephesian Church how they are to care for and attend to their flocks, and they need to be ready for these wolves that are going to come in and scatter the flock. We heard in the revelation to St. John how the Lamb will be our shepherd and the shepherd of his people. And of course, in the gospel lesson, we heard Jesus giving this rebuke to these unbelieving Jews with his words about how they don’t believe in him because they are not part of his flock. Sometimes it might seem strange to us that the Lord has decided to use this characterization of his relationship with us as shepherd and sheep, especially if we think that today our estimation of those roles isn’t quite appealing to us. We don’t really think highly of shepherds or sheep in terms of something that we would aspire to be. We don’t usually like being called sheep. It’s not usually good. It’s not usually used as a term of endearment for us. Because to be a sheep is to be someone who follows blindly or doesn’t think for themselves, who goes along to get along, who doesn’t ask questions, maybe someone who trusts too much. But isn’t it that last part, that trust, that makes us cry sheep? We’re his sheep because we trust him. This vocation of shepherd, I doubt it’s one that any of us can really relate to. You can’t drive around Austin or even out in the country and find a shepherd tending a flock anywhere nowadays. The shepherd is really this picture of a lowly servant, someone really looked down upon. I remember seeing shepherds in Afghanistan. I was quite shocked to see them because I didn’t even know this vocation still existed. But even in that country, where they kind of take pride in being about a century, maybe two, behind the rest of the world, they still had these herdsmen and shepherds out there. And they, too, were considered to be the lowliest of the occupations. The shepherds were stinky and filthy and nasty and dirty and smelly. Shepherding was even still then a dangerous job; there were wolves around, and the shepherd really never got any time off. It was always with the flock, always attending to them. In scripture, we might remember when Samuel came to Jesse. The Lord had sent him there to find one of Jesse’s sons to anoint his king, and the Lord led Samuel to pass over the seven. Samuel asked Jesse, “Is there another son?” He said, “Yes, the youngest, the smallest. He’s out there attending the sheep.” His words were, “There remains yet the youngest, but behold, he is with the sheep,” as if to say, “I don’t think you want him anyway, and he’s out doing what he’s meant to be doing.” Now, of course, the Lord had other plans, and he had much more for this lowly servant to do. This ordinary lowly servant was exactly the one that God had chosen to lead his people. Now, you may say, “Well, you know, this comparison, that’s because of this time of the Scriptures, where there were sheep and shepherds and all over the place, so it’s no surprise that the Lord uses this relationship.” And yet, it’s really what we see throughout all of Scripture. And that’s why we ought to know what this relationship is like. As Jacob was dying, he blessed Joseph and he said, “God has been my shepherd all my life long to this day.” When David was actually anointed king over the people of Israel, they said to him, “The Lord your God said to you, you shall be shepherd of my people, Israel.” In Ezekiel, the entire 34th chapter is about this prophecy from the Lord about shepherds and sheep, where Ezekiel particularly gives this warning to the leaders of Israel, saying that because they have been unfaithful shepherds, the sheep have scattered. So the Lord says through Ezekiel, “I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep. I will seek the lost and I will bring back the stray.” In other places, prophets speak of the shepherd and the sheep also. In the Psalms, we hear things like, “We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered,” and, “We are the sheep of his hand and the sheep of his pasture.” And the Lord Jesus here, especially in the gospel of St. John, claims this title of shepherd. He tells the disciples that they are being sent out as sheep among wolves, but at the same time that they are to tend and feed their own sheep, for they are his sheep. But for now, in John, Jesus is here at this temple, seeking shelter from the cold. It’s the feast of dedication, the feast of lights—Hanukkah, as we call it today. This celebration of the cleansing and rededication of the temple that happened in 164 BC after it had been desecrated. And now it all seems to us, right, that the Jewish authorities are looking to have an opportunity to catch Jesus by surprise, to confront him about something when he least suspects it. But we also need to be sure that Jesus is doing the same. He is also looking for every opportunity to teach them a lesson—not really hatefully in animosity or to embarrass them, although maybe he wants to embarrass them just a little bit, but more so to bring them to repentance. And so here are the Jews, the authorities, the Jews as John calls them—probably Pharisees—and they’ve crowded in around Jesus to try to trap him, to question him, to publicly humiliate him. And what they ask him, they don’t ask this out of some kind of sincere desire to get the truth, because if so, the answer would make them fall down and worship him. So they ask him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.” They want him to say yes, again, not so they may worship him and praise him, but so they can charge him with blasphemy. They want Jesus to tell them plainly so he may incriminate himself. And Jesus responds, “Well, he has indeed told them.” They didn’t believe him. More than that, he has shown them. The works that he had done prior, such as healing the man in Bethesda, the blind man in Jerusalem, and all these miracles that Jesus had worked, he clearly proclaimed, not of his own, but the works of him who sent me. So again, he tells them that he is doing all these works in the name of the Father. And so, therefore, these works bear testimony that he is the Christ, the Son of God. But they won’t listen, just as they previously hadn’t listened or believed even what they’d seen. As he did previously, about two months prior, Jesus again starts to tell them about this relationship between the shepherd and the sheep. He is trying to show them the difference between how sheep respond to a shepherd whom they know and trust and how they react to strangers who want to do nothing but lead them astray. And also, importantly, he’s showing them how a shepherd cares for the sheep, how the shepherd does all those things that David sings of. For these religious authorities are of the same ilk as those in Ezekiel, whom he warned—the unfaithful, and yes, even wicked shepherds who have only been feeding themselves. And that’s why they are not following them. The people don’t trust them; they are strangers to them, for they don’t recognize their voices. And they, the authorities, don’t know Jesus’ voice. But he wants them to know Jesus’ voice. He wants them to know his voice. And that’s why he’s explaining this relationship to them. He wants to forgive them. He wants to give them grace and mercy if they will only listen and believe. And he wants them to be good shepherds. But more than that, he wants them to be sheep—his sheep. Jesus is called the good shepherd because of what he gives us, and that is eternal life. And though Jesus is the shepherd over the entire church on earth, this vast flock throughout all the world, he does call and appoint others to look after their own sheep. Before his ascension, Jesus gave the disciples this charge of caring for their flock here on earth. We heard this last week when Jesus restored St. Peter and told him to feed his sheep and tend his sheep. St. Paul was also called in the same way, and he is now reminding these Ephesian elders how he himself has lived among them, just like a shepherd among the sheep. He didn’t neglect the call that the Lord had given him directly, and he sacrificed a lot for them and for the sake of the gospel. So as he’s leaving them, he says, “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock.” He reminds them that that flock is precious because they have been redeemed by the Lord’s blood. So as shepherds, they must be on guard and be ever watchful for the fierce wolves who will attack the flock and scatter it, and also for those false teachers—wolves in sheep’s clothing—who will try to destroy the church from within with false doctrine and dissension. But we know the church will get past this and will prevail. In this revelation to St. John, he gives us a beautiful picture of that—a foretaste of the marriage feast of the lamb and his kingdom. Now, I know it doesn’t make any sense to us that the Lamb of God is also the good shepherd, or that the lamb’s blood washes our robes and makes them whiter than snow. We pastors try as we may to get these albs white, and it never happens. But the Lord Jesus is the one who can do that. And we see that he indeed does do all the things and will do all the things that his servant David has praised and thanked him for in the 23rd Psalm. He prepares the table so that we will never hunger. He guides us to springs of living water so that we will never thirst. He lays us in green pastures where there is neither scorching sun nor blistering heat. He comforts us and wipes away all our tears. And with his voice, he calls us to himself so that we may dwell in his house forever. So don’t mind being called sheep, brothers and sisters, because we are exactly the opposite of what the world’s perception of sheep is. We don’t follow blindly; we listen to God. And in his wisdom and creation, he gave sheep this innate ability to know and hear their shepherd’s voice, recognizing that he has given us the same by his Holy Spirit. For we know and trust and believe that he is our God and our shepherd, that he feeds us and keeps us safe from harm because he loves us. And though we are the sheep of his pasture and the sheep of his hand, we will still always be, to him, little lambs. Now, I know I’ve told this story before, but Pastor likes to tell stories over and over again, so I figure I can get away with it. When my family and I were at St. Peter in Bowie, we always sang to him, “I am Jesus little lamb,” when we had a baptism. We’d sing it just right before the final prayer of the rite. As the congregation sang, Pastor Brumma would take the baby, and he would carry the baby around in his arms and down the aisles to show everyone their new brother or sister in Christ, this new little lamb who was now a member of the flock. And we would sing to him, “I am Jesus little lamb, ever glad at heart I am. For my shepherd gently guides me, knows my need and well provides me, loves me every day the same, even calls me by my name.” Did you pick up on that last verse, that last section? Have you ever really thought about it—that he calls you by your name? Your Savior speaks your name. Of all the billions of people who have ever lived, will live, he knows you. And we know him because we know his voice. Now, yes, today is another special day—Mother’s Day. And we are right to give mothers thanks and praise for all that they’ve done—not just today, of course, but at all times. For from a woman, a mother would come the one who would be the redemption of all mankind, the one who would die for the sin of the world. And I was thinking about this; you know how a baby’s eyes kind of light up when the baby first starts to recognize the mother’s voice? The eyes light up, and maybe they turn to face the mom. I’m sure their heart is swelling in their chest, and they smile. Well, it should be the same with us in Christ. We hear his voice, and our eyes light up, that our heart swells in our chest, and we smile. Because in hearing his voice, we hear that he bids us to come to him, just like the little children, that we may receive his kingdom as little children. This voice we hear when he calls our name in Holy Baptism and when he puts his name in our hearts. His voice that we hear in the proclamation of the Word, when the Holy Spirit brings us to faith. His voice that we hear in the words, “This is my body and this is my blood shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.” So brothers and sisters, he knows us and we know him. He calls to us, and we hear his voice, and we follow him. As the Father and Son are one, the Father has given us out of the world, has given us to Christ, and has made the Son our shepherd. And all that he has given us is given to us by the Father. And we know this and we trust this and we have confidence in this because we know the voice of our Savior. For he is your good shepherd, and no one can snatch you out of his hand. Amen. Christ is risen. The post Sermon for Good Shepherd Sunday appeared first on St Paul Lutheran Church .…

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Sermon for Third Sunday of Easter

5 weeks 전

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[Machine transcription] Christ is risen. He has risen indeed. Hallelujah. In the name of Jesus. Amen. Dear Saints, last week we heard from John chapter 20, the very end, where John says why he’s written all of these things down. He says, there’s many other things that Jesus did that were not written in this book, but these were written so that you would believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, and by believing have life in his name. Now, you think that that sounds, at least to me, like the end of the gospel, like all this is here so that you would believe. But then John gives us even more in John Chapter 21, the last event that John is going to record that we heard this morning. And we should especially then know that John is saying, look, Jesus did lots and lots and lots of things. If they were all written down, the world would be filled with books. Right? But these specific things are written down so that you would know Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God, and that knowing that, believing that, you would have eternal life in His name. And then we have this story that we heard this morning, so that this is specifically given to us so that we would believe in Jesus and have life in His name. That’s what I want to think about this morning, how this visit of Jesus on the Sea of Galilee is for us. And specifically, I want to think about this, that there are three miracles that occur this morning and that each of those miracles is also for us, for you and for me, that we would believe in Christ and have eternal life in His name. The setting is, they’re in Galilee, somewhere at the Sea of Galilee. There’s seven disciples there. We know that there’s 11 surviving disciples. Judas is dead and buried. But for whatever reason, this morning, this night, I suppose, there’s seven of them who are going fishing. Peter, in fact, says, I’m going fishing, and… and it’s Thomas and James and John and a couple of the other disciples, they say, yeah, we’re going to go with you. And so they go fishing and they’re fishing all night. Now, what are we supposed to make of this fishing? I mean, that’s maybe the first moment that we can stop and pause and say what’s going on here. The different commentaries actually have a lot of different things to say about it. Some say that this is an indication of despair, that they don’t think that this whole preaching the kingdom of God is going to work out. This whole being fishers of men is going to come to anything, and so they go back to their old being fishers of fish, back to their original undergrad degrees or whatever, you know. Now, a lot of the commentators would disagree with that, and they’d say, no, no, they were just waiting for instruction. They didn’t yet have instructions from Jesus about what to do, so they’re waiting there for instructions, and fishing is fine. It’s a good work. They knew what to do. Maybe they were hungry, so they go fishing. Here’s the point that I want to make sure that we don’t miss, is that even though Jesus had called them previously from being fishermen to being fishers of men, they were not yet going about that work. Right. They were not yet preaching. They were not yet teaching the kingdom of God. They were not yet calling people to repentance and baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That will not happen until the Holy Spirit comes. If you want to get a glimpse of the Church of God and of the Holy Ministry without the power of the Holy Spirit, this is it. Let’s just go fishing and catch nothing. That’s just, it’s what it is. They won’t do that until, well, 50 days after Easter when the Holy Spirit comes. That’s at least we can learn that. That the ministry of God’s Word and His Church and His Kingdom comes only by the Word and Spirit. And apart from that, there’s nothing. Well, they’re fishing all night. And they catch nothing, so they’re kind of rolling back to the shore. And in that early morning light, they see in the midst, well, maybe they don’t even see. They hear a voice come from the mist and the shore who cries out and says, children, have you caught anything? And they respond, no. This is one of those times when I wish, you know, we had an audio recording of how it would have sounded. What that no would have been like would tell us a lot. No, or maybe probably, no. No. All night we were, caught nothing. So then the voice from the shadow says, throw the net on the right side of the boat. And I wonder if the disciples look at each other. Like, no, wait, we’ve heard this before. All right, they throw the net over. And immediately, I think even as John probably feels the tension on the net, knowing that they’ve caught something, he realizes that’s not just some guy walking on the shore. That’s Jesus. He says to the other disciples, he says, it’s the Lord. And immediately when he says that Peter grabs his jacket and jumps over the, onto the, into the water and swims ashore, while the other guys are left, you know, hauling the fish in. And they come to the shore and they find Jesus standing there. So beautiful. Now, this is the second, this miracle of the catch of fish is the second time that Jesus has done that particular miracle. And we want to, I think, pay attention to the difference. In fact, I think the blessing for us is going to be in paying attention to the differences. Right. Remember the first time it was about a year, a year and a half into the ministry of Jesus. He had called the disciples, but they were kind of part-time disciples, and he’s going to find them fishing, and he’s going to call them into full-time ministry. He finds them there, and Peter’s there mending the nets, and so he says to Peter, he gets in his boat, and he says, push off from the shore, and Jesus is lecturing there from the boat, and then he says to Peter, when the sermon is over, go out into the deep and throw in the net. The net is so full of fish that he has to call out James and John and the others. They bring out a second boat. Both boats are full of fish, and they start to sink. And what does Peter do at that moment? You remember? He falls on his face, and he cries out to Jesus. Depart from me, Lord, because I’m an unclean man. Now, I just want us to see the difference in how Peter reacts to that first miraculous catch of fish, to how he reacts to this second miraculous catch of fish. Now, this, after the resurrection, they throw the net out and they catch the fish, it’s the Lord. And Peter doesn’t say, depart from me, Lord. In fact, Peter can’t wait to get to Jesus. He puts on his jacket and he jumps overboard and swims ashore to get to him. Now, just think of those two reactions: one of fear, one of despair, one of recognizing his own sin, and the other of longing and hope and desire to be with the Lord Jesus. This is probably the two different reactions that happen whenever Jesus performs a miracle. It’s probably the same thing, the two different reactions that happen whenever the Lord shows up in his word. It’s probably the same thing that happens when the Lord does his weekly miracle for us of putting his body and his blood here on the altar for us to eat and to drink. That this miracle and the presence of God can show us our own sinfulness and can cause us to despair, to just run for it, Lord, I’m unworthy. But that’s not what Jesus wants. Jesus comes not to condemn, not to destroy, not to cast us off, but to draw us near and to forgive and to be gracious to us. He comes with mercy. He comes with kindness. So it should be. I think what should happen is that when the words of institution are spoken in the liturgy, you can be John and you can lean over to the person next to you and say, it’s the Lord. And then, you know, all the guys that have taken off their jackets for the sermon, put them back on, and they run up to the altar. Okay, so let’s not do that, but I think that’s how our heart should be. That when you hear the news, okay, think about this. When you hear the news, the Lord is here. Do you want to run and hide like Adam and Eve in the garden, like Peter on the boat? Or is your heart like Peter now that just wants to, can’t wait? To be with him, to be near him, knowing that he is full of mercy and kindness. That’s what the Lord wants. He wants to draw you to himself. He wants you to know that he is kind and loving and gentle, lowly of heart, that he casts off none who come to him. He, in fact, comes near to us, precisely for this reason, to love and forgive us. So that we see in this second miracle of the great catch of fish how the Lord Jesus is drawing us to himself. The second miracle happens when they get to shore. Now, I don’t know if this is officially a miracle. In fact, it’s probably an anti-miracle, the opposite of a miracle. But if you’ll let me do it, for this sermon, I’ll call the second miracle that happens is this breakfast that Jesus cooks. Now, you say to yourself, how in the world can cooking fish and bread on some charcoal be a miracle? But I think here’s how it works in the text for us. Remember that when Jesus did miracles in his life before his death, it was to show his divinity. When he turns water into wine, when he walks on the water, when he calms the sea, when he heals the sick, when he casts out demons, when he raises the dead, all the people could see this miracle and say, truly this is the Son of God. We see that this is a man, but he is much more than a man, that he’s God in the flesh. I think this breakfast works the same way, but the opposite. In other words, after the resurrection, there’s no question that something special is going on with Jesus. But this miracle, when Jesus sits down to make breakfast, he’s saying, I am still a man. I’m still making a fire. I’m still getting fish and roasting them. I’m even making toast. That he’s taking care of these things that are according to his human nature. He’s proving to us, even after the resurrection, that he is still flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone and blood of our blood, that he still has that same human nature with which he is able to sympathize with you and with me in all of our weaknesses. Now, this is important because Jesus is different after the resurrection. John tells us that this is the third time that he’s appeared to his disciples as a group. It is, according to our accounting of the narrative, it’s the seventh appearance of Jesus between his resurrection and his ascension. And it’s the seven of 11. That’s what the Bible tells us 11 times that Jesus appeared to people. And each one of those appearances is really unique. It’s just, it’s not how Jesus was before he was raised from the dead. He’s walking through rock tombs. He sort of shows up in the middle of a room that’s locked, and he’s just, he’s there in the midst of them, and then he’s gone again. The same thing happens when he goes on the road to Emmaus with those two disciples and he goes into the room and he blesses and they recognize him, and then he disappears again. Jesus is just, he’s with them in a different way. Now, I think part of that, if you’ll, I can’t, I can ever, every Easter, when I’m reading all the Easter stories, I just, I can’t escape this thought that Jesus after the resurrection is simply, uh, he’s, he’s playful. And I think it goes in this stark contrast to how the disciples are, who at best are wondering, at worse are mourning and doubtful and full of fears. And Jesus is, as he interacts with them, is… They’re just, they’re not, remember on the way to Emmaus, he hides himself from them. He just, he won’t show them who he is so that they can learn about him from what he’s teaching from the scriptures. And then it even says, he pretends like he’s going to walk past them. So there’s this kind of this game of hide and go seek that Jesus is playing on the road to Emmaus. It’s really beautiful. Or then when he goes the next day on this week after Easter and he’s showing Thomas his hands in his side, it just reminds me of the boys who are showing each other their different scars. Look at this one, when I fell off the bike. Or even this morning when he has this breakfast for the disciples. He has them haul in all these fish, and then they haul them ashore, and the breakfast is already there. The best I can think of, it’s like if I told the vicar, hey, go get some donuts for Bible class, and then when he was off at H.E.B., I got out the donuts I already had. Jesus has breakfast there already for them. There’s this kind of, it’s, it’s, Jesus has this lighthearted joyfulness, which is this indication that he’s just, he’s past the reach of death. He’s past the grasp of the tomb. He’s past the sorrow. He’s past the suffering. He’s past the grave. It’s all behind him. It’s now only light and life and glory. And he knows it. And he’s so full of this joy. But the disciples are, they’re not there yet. They’re still waiting for that courage and for that lighthearted freedom. And it’ll come with the Holy Spirit. And so as Jesus is interacting with them, he has to show them that he is, well, he’s not a ghost, that he’s not a phantom, that he’s real, and he does it by cooking breakfast. Now, here’s, I think, the benefit for us. We are tempted, at least I’ll say, that I am tempted to think that Jesus now, risen from the dead and living and reigning with the Father and the Holy Spirit and ruling all of the cosmos by his divine power probably doesn’t have time to worry about what I’m having for breakfast. But he does. Even the smallest part of your human life, he tells you this already, that he knows even the numbers of the hairs on your head, that he cares about all of it, the big stuff and the very, very small stuff. He roasts fish. He toasts bread for breakfast. He feeds the disciples. He does this so that you know that that human nature, which he had from the womb of Mary and which was nailed to the cross and laid in the tomb, he still has. So that he is able to sympathize with you as a high priest over the house of God. That’s wonderful. And then the third miracle for us to consider is the restoration of Peter. So after breakfast, Jesus is going to look at Peter and ask him three questions. Now, I have to imagine that Jesus, when he’s making breakfast and he prepares this charcoal fire, knows exactly what he’s doing. And here, at least in my imagination, is how it went down. That Peter’s still kind of shivering from jumping in the water in the morning and he, and he’s cold. They have breakfast and they’re still trying to figure out what’s going on with Jesus. And so Peter kind of leans in and he leans over the fire to warm himself up and, at least in my imagination, he flashes back to the last time that he was warming himself over a charcoal fire outside the house of the high priest when the servant girl said to him, aren’t you one of his disciples? And Peter denied the Lord three times. I don’t know him. I tell you, I don’t know the man. And he swore an oath. I don’t know him. And three times he denied Jesus. And the rooster crowed. And Jesus now looks as he’s being led from one place to another. And Peter and Jesus lock eyes and he weeps and he runs out, mourning the fact that he’s rejected the Lord Jesus, even on the same night that he said, even if all of these forsake you, I’ll die with you. I won’t do it. So now Peter, here’s how I think it happened on this morning, some weeks after the resurrection, and they’re there, and they’ve eaten the fish and the toast. And now Peter’s warming himself, and he looks at the coals and he remembers, oh, I denied Jesus. Three times I denied him. And I think he must look up at Jesus, and they look at each other in the eyes again. And now Jesus begins this miracle of restoration by asking Peter, Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these? I think that these refers to the disciples. I think, you know, remember how Peter said, these are going to forsake you, but I won’t. And so Jesus is saying, do you love me more than these? Yes. And Peter now, he is the opposite of prideful and bold and boasting. He’s incredibly humble. He says, yes, Lord, you know that I love you. Feed my sheep. And then again, to Peter, Jesus says, Simon, son of John, do you love me? In other words, I’m asking you now, not if you love me more than these. I’m just asking if you even love me. And Simon, Peter says, yes, Lord, you know that I love you. Tend my lambs. And then a third time, Jesus says to him, Simon, son of John, do you love me? The text tells us that Jesus was distressed, or, sorry, that Peter was distressed. I wonder at this distress. It could be, okay, it could be that Peter is distressed because Jesus is asking him three times the same question. It could be, though, that Jesus is actually asking him an even different question. It’s hard to see it in the English because we just have one word for love in English. We just, we say love. Greek has a handful of different words, and they show up in this text. So Storgay, as an example, is the kind of familial affection. That’s not here in the text, but there’s two different words for love that are here. The word phileo, which means brotherly love or friendly affection, and the word agape, which is the kind of normal word for love. It’s a deep and enduring love. It can be for good things or bad things. And when Jesus is asking, if you could read it in the Greek, it would go like this. The first time Jesus says to Peter, Peter, do you agape me? And Peter responds and says, yes, Lord, you know that I phileo you. Now, probably, even the original language that they spoke, Aramaic would have just had one word for love. And so it’s the Holy Spirit bringing out in the gospel of John even this little kind of nuance in the question. Because the second time Jesus asked the same question, Peter, do you agape me? And Peter says, yes, Lord, you know that I phileo you. But now the third time, Jesus says, Peter, do you phileo me? And this is when Peter is distressed. Do you even have a friendly affection for me? But Peter here, and this is the humility of repentance and faith that shows up as love for God, he simply opens up his heart. Well, even before that, he knows that Jesus is the one who can read our own hearts. He can read our own intentions and our own thoughts and our own minds. And so Peter says to Jesus, Lord, you know everything, so you must know that I phileo you. That I’m not going to be so bold to make these promises that I made before. That got me in a lot of trouble. But you know, you know that I love you. And Jesus says to him a third time, feed my sheep. Yeah. And I think it must be at that third time when Jesus gives him this command to feed his sheep that Peter realizes what the Lord is doing, that his threefold denial has now been replaced with his threefold confession. And Peter’s back. He’s back in the office. He’s back as a disciple who’s going to be a fisher of men. The Lord has restored him. In fact, so restored as Peter that the Lord then tells him how he’s going to die. Okay. He says, when you were young, you got to dress yourself and go where you want, but when you get old, they’re going to dress you and take you where you don’t want to go, namely to be crucified on an upside-down cross. But follow me, Peter’s back. Now, this miracle of Peter’s restoration, I think, has two benefits, two brief benefits that I want to talk about for us, and we’ll finish with this idea. Here’s the first. And I think it’s in the little word that, for me, is the most comforting word in the entire text. It’s the word my. Do you notice how Jesus says to Peter, feed my sheep, tend my lambs, feed my sheep? So that Jesus looks at us and he does not, I mean, it’s true that we’re fish that are caught, but we’re more, we’re lambs that are gathered in. And the Lord Jesus looks at you and me as his own. And he wants to make sure that you have everything that you need. So he restores Peter so that you will have the Word of God. The Lord will see to it that you are taken care of and that the Word of God is preached to each and every one of us so that we know His kindness and His love. That’s the first comfort, that he will not leave us or forsake us, but we’ll have the word. And here’s the second comfort, and it’s just in the restoration of Peter, the plain old restoration of Peter, that it doesn’t matter how far you’ve wandered, it doesn’t matter what you’ve done, it doesn’t matter how much you’ve rejected Jesus or denied, like Peter, three times. I don’t know who you’re talking about. The Lord will have you back. He wants you back. I was thinking about this this morning because we have Peter on all of our stained glass windows a number of times. And normally, when we have Peter on the stained glass window, he shows up with the symbol of the keys. So you can see it. If you look at the picture of Jesus by the crown and go to the left, you see the almond with the two keys. Well, these are the 12 apostles, and normally the symbol is how they died, but the keys are Peter because Jesus says to him, I give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. In fact, if you’re coming up for the Lord’s supper and you’re coming up the stairs, you can look at the very back of the door. top, back, left window up there, and it also has two keys with a chain that’s being broken. The same thing, the keys of the heaven that set us free from the forgiveness of sins. But there’s another window that’s backed by Zelda, and that’s another Peter window that’s of the rooster. And there Peter is pictured with the rooster who crowed when he denied him three times. And here’s what I wonder. I wonder if we could have Peter here and we could ask him how he wanted us to paint him in the windows. What he would say. He’d say, Peter, we’re going to put you up in the windows. He’d say, well, I don’t know about that, but okay. We have two options. We’re going to paint you with keys or we’re going to paint you with a rooster. Which would you prefer? And here’s, you know what I think Peter would say? I think Peter would say, paint the rooster. Paint the rooster. Because I am a sinner. I am a sinner. And my only hope in life and in death is the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. My only hope to stand before God is not on the things that I’ve done, the sermons that I’ve preached, the epistles that I’ve written, the missionary journeys that I’ve been on, the time that I spent with Jesus. None of these things will help me on the judgment day. I am the one that denied Christ three times but was brought back by His mercy and forgiven all of my sin. And dear saints, this is also our own boast, not in ourselves, but in all that Christ has done for us. So in this miracle of the catch of fish and the miracle of the breakfast and the miracle of the restoration of Peter, the Lord gives us his word by which we also believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and by believing we also have life in his name. May God grant it for Christ’s sake. Christ has risen. He has risen indeed. Hallelujah. The peace of God which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. The post Sermon for Third Sunday of Easter appeared first on St Paul Lutheran Church .…

1
Sermon for Second Sunday of Easter

6 weeks 전

나중에 재생

리스트

—

[Machine transcription] Christ is risen. Indeed, God, dear brothers and sisters in the risen Christ, especially this morning, Wyatt, as you have been made an heir of the kingdom of God, grace, mercy, and peace from God, the Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Now, there is a lot that we can talk about this morning, and I think given the gospel text, our tendency, even among us creatures, is to talk about Thomas. But too often the message, I think, becomes, well, don’t be like Thomas. Don’t be a doubting Thomas. You know, you should just have faith and if you just try, you can. Well, we will talk about Thomas a little bit, but there’s something really more important going on here in our lesson this morning, or gospel lesson primarily. It’s something that we don’t want to miss. It’s this notion of being free, being released from captivity. We see with this lesson, we see kind of this self-imposed confinement of the disciples, and we see this actual confinement of the soon-to-be apostles. But more so we want to think about the spiritual freedom that Christ brings, and it is the resurrection of Christ that is the culmination of victory over death in the grave, which we are all enslaved by. And also that Christ gives to his church here, this gift, this marvelous gift, this wonderful gift of absolution, which is simply no more than the preaching and the proclamation and the knowledge of the forgiveness of sins. So for this, we will look mostly at the gospel lesson. We will also briefly touch on this reading from Acts as well. But first, imagine that you are one of these disciples and you are here in this locked room somewhere in or near Jerusalem. The reason you’re there is because you’re terrified, you’re afraid, you fear for your life. You fear that these religious authorities who have persecuted and killed Jesus are coming for you also. And that’s what John means when he says the disciples were in the room locked behind the door for fear of the Jews. The disciples are dejected and dispirited and disheartened, and they are in disbelief, and maybe we would even say they’re in shock. Who they thought Jesus was appears to not be the case. Never mind that Mary Magdalene had told some of them that this news that she has seen the resurrected Lord in person, they didn’t believe her. I’m sure they see no need to kind of risk their lives by being out and around looking for Jesus, who they don’t believe is there to begin with. And now they’re afraid they are at least in danger of being arrested, possibly killed, because they’ve been part of this conspiracy against the authorities themselves. And then John tells us, with no warning, appearing out of nowhere, Jesus is there among them, as he says. And I like how, maybe you have to like how John writes, you know, very sedate about things. He’s not dramatic about it. Jesus is just not there one second, and the next he is. Can you imagine the faces of the disciples and what was going through their minds when Jesus appears? Something like, oh boy, we are in trouble now. The Messiah has hunted us down. Never mind about the authorities; the Lord is here. I know I would have been like that, but the disciples do otherwise. Before they can even say anything, Jesus speaks to them before they have a chance to say anything. He says this: “Peace be with you.” I’m sure they were surprised and maybe were surprised at what this means. Isn’t Jesus going to lay into them for their disbelief? Isn’t it going to rebuke them that they have been cowards and that they haven’t believed in anything that he had told them when he was with them? Maybe he did just a little bit. Mark tells us actually that Jesus rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart. I mean, I guess it can be some of both. It can be a rebuke, and Jesus tends to work this way. It can be a rebuke and a little bit of comfort, more so comfort here. And I think that’s really what John is focusing on: Christ’s comfort to them. “Peace be with you.” Jesus is forgiving them for their unbelief, for everything, before they can even ask for it. He knows their hearts, and he forgives them of their sin and absolves them of their sin. Then, if he is responding to some unsaid demand for physical proof, he shows them his hands and his side. Because after all, he knows what they’re thinking: is this really Jesus? Can it really be him? So he shows them. I suspect that the mood in the room had to have changed dramatically. Again, John isn’t very dramatic about it himself. He says, “The disciples were glad.” Surely they were overjoyed, ecstatic, thrilled. But Jesus isn’t there just to greet them and have a reunion because he’s already given them this forgiveness, the reconciliation of peace with God, and now he’s got something else for them. He has a mission. John tells us three things about what Jesus says to them, this mission that he gives them. I think it’s kind of three details that maybe we don’t quite see in the other gospels. Luke is usually real thorough about this stuff, but even he doesn’t have it. And I think we ought to take note of these. First, Jesus tells them that as the Father has sent him, so he is also sending them now. This is a continuation of his mission. They continue his ministry, what he has done, and so he consecrates them in this mission as he does it, just as the Father had consecrated Christ in his mission. Second, in this sending that he is about to put them on, he gives them the Holy Spirit. He actually breathes the Holy Spirit on them. The Holy Spirit, the helper, the one whom he had promised to send them. When he did that, he said that the Spirit will guide them into all truth. The third thing, and probably the most important for us, is that he tells them to forgive sins. This maybe really is the only place in John where we hear about this, where the forgiveness of sins is even mentioned. We should know that in giving this authority to the disciples, he’s not given it just to this small group of men; he’s given it to us, to the church. After all, we confess in the office of the keys that this is the special authority which Christ has given to his church on earth, to forgive the sins of repentant sinners and to retain the sins of the unrepentant as long as they do not repent. But isn’t it remarkable what Jesus does the very first day out of the tomb? He gives his church, us, his church, God, the absolution. He gives us the authority and the responsibility and the obligation to forgive sins. We don’t know what happens next. John doesn’t bother to tell us, but does Jesus just disappear as he appeared? We don’t know. John just jumps to this news that Thomas was missing. Thomas wasn’t there, so we pick up the story about Thomas. Well, what’s going on with Thomas? And we think, well, maybe he wasn’t afraid like the others. We might remember earlier in John, we hear about how when Jesus is up in Galilee and he hears about Lazarus, and he hears about Lazarus’ death and dying, that he wants to go down to Bethany to see about Lazarus. But he’s warned by everybody that the Jews are going to kill him when he gets there. Thomas is the only one who doesn’t seem to be afraid of going when he says, “Let us disciples also go, that we may die with him.” So maybe he isn’t so concerned about getting caught. Whatever the case is, he does show up at some point, and the disciples tell him that Jesus has appeared to them, and he doesn’t believe them. Like they did before, he is really in this status of unbelief. He seems to deny any previous belief he had, anything that Jesus had told them that would happen. More than that, he demands physical proof: “Unless I see…” Well, Jesus will accommodate Thomas in this. About a week later, he’s there when Jesus does make this subsequent appearance in the same room, this same room locked up tight. I think it’s interesting that the disciples are still hiding because Jesus has already told them they’ve got a mission. So they know they’ve got to leave sometime. But we also should remember Jesus’ words about how the Holy Spirit would direct them. So maybe they’re waiting, and we shouldn’t be so critical. Jesus appears again, this time with the same words, “Peace be with you,” and then he gives Thomas the same thing he gave the rest: forgiveness, along with visual proof, and he tells Thomas to touch it. “Do not disbelieve, but believe.” Words that surely pierced Thomas’ heart brought him to shame and humility, but certainly also at the same time gave him a clear conscience, soothed him, because he too, like the others, is absolved of this sin of unbelief; he is forgiven. Out of his mouth comes this great exclamation of confession: “My Lord and my God!” In this confession of Thomas, we hear what John begins his gospel with: that Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the Word made flesh, is God. Jesus responds to this with the foretelling of the mission that he will send them all, that they will bring all the nations into the kingdom. For many will come to faith by the gospel that he sends them to preach, and that these will be believed by hearing and not by seeing. That’s how John closes this chapter by saying what Jesus says: faith will come by the word, and the faith will give life in his name. Now, within a short period of time, maybe a couple of weeks after Jesus’ ascension, we now have the apostles, these new apostles, and they were indeed fearlessly preaching the gospel throughout Jerusalem. In fact, they were preaching it in the temple court of all places. John tells us that they were, by the power of the Holy Spirit, doing many signs and wonders in the name of the Lord. This news began to travel even outside Jerusalem to the point that people were bringing loved ones, friends into Jerusalem to be healed, not just those who had physical afflictions, but John tells us those who had unclean spirits. So many came to faith by their healing, and the apostles weren’t just, as Jesus said they would, when he said, “Whoever believes in me also will do the works that I do, and greater works than these will he do because I am going to the Father.” Of course, this threat of imprisonment of the apostles kind of never really goes away. It was there as Peter and John had already been brought into the council’s presence after the day of Pentecost. And in kind of this role reversal of persecution, we moved from the Pharisees to the Sadducees who now, because of their denial of the resurrection, are particularly wanting to squash this talk of the resurrection. They didn’t really share the enthusiasm of all the people that were there at the temple, and they were jealous, as John tells us—in fact, mad that the apostles were preaching the resurrection. So they arrest them and throw them in this public prison for shaming them, trying to shame them. Although most of these apostles will do worse than this, most of them will be martyred at some point for the gospel; that time has not yet come. The Lord sends this angel to release them, and in fact, to direct them in what they are to do, and that is to go back to the temple where they were and continue to preach, to tell the life of the risen Christ. So again, they do as the Lord wills. They step off into this mission. And we’ll hear more about that in the coming weeks of Easter. So brothers and sisters, one thing we must know is that in his resurrection, Jesus brings freedom. He appeared to the disciples in that locked room to free them from their fear, but more than that, to forgive them. In his breathing of the Holy Spirit on them, he gave them the courage and the strength to eventually go out of that room and go preach the gospel. He freed those apostles later from an actual prison, a physical prison, when he opened that door and led them out so they could continue to preach. And He has done the same for us also. He has freed us also. He has purchased our release from the law and from the punishment of sin by his blood. He has released us from our sin and given us the promise of forgiveness in His Word, in the absolution, in His Holy Supper. He has freed us from doubt and, yes, even our unbelief, not by our will, but by the power of the Holy Spirit to convert us and convert our will to be inclined to him. Jesus sought out the disciples so that they might believe and so that he could forgive them. He seeks us out too, and he assures us of his love and forgiveness with the same words: “Peace be with you.” And as he tells the disciples, even so, I am sending you, he is sending us also to do the same—to forgive sins, to preach the gospel to anybody and everybody, regardless of our vocation. As Jesus showed the disciples his hands and his side so that they would see that he was indeed raised from the dead, that he is alive forevermore, so that they would be, and so we too may be confident in the promise of our own resurrection. As he came to the disciples there in that locked room, despite the walls and despite the door in bodily form, to show them again, once again, that he is God and man. Christ comes to us himself in the physical presence of his body and blood in the wine and bread of the Holy Supper. Not just coming to us as a remembrance or so that we may celebrate it as a symbol, His body and blood for the forgiveness of sins, absolution, just as he said. As he breathed the Spirit on the disciples, so he gives us the Spirit. He sends the Spirit to us in His Word, and He gives us the Spirit in the waters of Holy Baptism that we may believe and be strengthened in faith and be forgiven. And yes, like the disciples, he tells us that we are blessed, not because we have seen, but because we believe and have not seen. He gives them, he gave them the keys to the kingdom of heaven through the authority to forgive, remit, but yet retain sins. He has given us the same authority as he forgives them, and he forgives us and calls us to carry out this mission of the church, which is to forgive the sins of others. That is the most important thing you should leave here today with: the mission of the church, for you are the church. So may we ever hold fast to this one and only who has freed us, and by His word, gives us the confidence of salvation and eternal life through faith in Him. Amen. Now may the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Amen. The post Sermon for Second Sunday of Easter appeared first on St Paul Lutheran Church .…

1
Sermon for Easter Sunday

7 weeks 전

나중에 재생

리스트

—

[Machine transcription] Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Hallelujah. And dear saints, that’s a good thing for us. Because if Christ were not risen from the dead, our faith would be in vain. If Christ were not risen from the dead, we would have no hope beyond the veil of death. If Christ were not risen from the dead, we of all people are the most to be pitied. But Christ is risen. He has risen indeed, and his resurrection is our hope and our peace and our comfort and our joy that will never end. Christ’s resurrection stands in the middle of the history of the world and interrupts this funeral procession that began in the garden and continues to the last day. Now, we, I know, hate to think about this. We hate to think about death at all, and we try to put the idea aside that death is coming to us and also to those that we love. But when we take a step back and look at it, it’s really from the very, very beginning until the very end, that the history of humanity is this long procession of death. That their Seth and his children were burying Adam and Eve, and Shem and Ham and Japheth were burying their father, Noah, and Abraham was burying his wife, Sarah, and the children of Israel were burying their parents. All of them who left Egypt were buried on the way, and one generation after another passes away. The bodies are prepared for death, and they’re laid in the tomb. This is true also for us. You’ve laid your own ancestors in the grave, your great-grandparents, your grandparents, some of you, your parents, your spouse, even your children and your grandchildren and your friends. You’ve gone to the cemetery, you’ve lowered the body, you’ve covered it up, and you’ve left. And those bodies are still there. This is humanity after the garden. One long, big funeral. And we’re in this procession. We’re in it either because we’re mourning the death of those that we love, or because one day we will be the one being mourned, wrapped in our own grave clothes, and put down to sleep in the grave. But into this massive funeral procession, which is the history of the world, our Lord Jesus himself steps in. And he, just like everybody else, died. His body was prepared for burial by his mother, Mary, by Nicodemus, by Joseph of Arimathea. They wrapped his body and they laid it in the tomb, and they covered the tomb with the stone and they sealed it. The soldiers were there watching. They even came back a couple of days later to finish the work of this funeral. But unlike every other funeral, unlike every other grave, the Lord Jesus said, “is risen.” His grave is empty. His tomb is open. They were astonished at this when they arrived this morning, 1,992 years ago this morning. When the women arrived at the tomb with the spices that they had prepared for burial, they found that Christ was not there. Standing around astonished, the angels had to show up to tell them what was going on, to remind them what Jesus had told them. “Remember how he said to you it was necessary for him to be rejected and killed and buried, and on the third day he would rise again,” and then they remembered what he said. Right. And in this resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, death is destroyed, and the grip that the grave has is broken. And not remember, not just for Jesus. He did not need resurrection. He was ready to live forever already. But just like everything that the Lord Jesus did, this also is, dear saints, for you. He was in the womb and on the world, in the world, and on the cross and in the tomb for you. And he’s up out of the tomb also for you to break death, to knock the teeth out of the grave, to destroy this tyrant that has been chasing us down since the very beginning. The tyranny of death is broken by the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ from the grave. And this is marvelous good news. But it’s not enough yet. Because the Lord Jesus in his resurrection has done more than set us free from the fear of death. Remember how it was in the garden when Adam and Eve sinned and they were expelled from the garden? And in the garden still was that tree of life. And so that Adam and Eve wouldn’t break into the garden and eat from the tree of life or any of their descendants, the Lord put two cherubim there with flaming swords to guard the way to the tree of life. Now, why was it? Why did the Lord not want us to eat from that tree of life and live forever? The reason is because if Adam and Eve would have gone back into the garden and eaten from that tree, they would have lived forever in their sins. They would have lived forever in their guilt. They would have lived forever in their shame. And this is when we start to realize that death has partners, that death is not alone as the enemy that we face, that death is always bound up with sin and always bound up with the devil. These three always go together. We know it from the very beginning when the devil comes into the garden and tempts Adam and Eve to sin, and the result of that sin is on the day that you eat of it, surely you will die. So that the wages of sin is death. And the devil is always the one tempting us to sin. It’s not, and here’s the point, it’s not enough for the Lord Jesus simply to solve your dying problem. He could have, if he wanted, concocted some sort of pill that you could take and live forever, put some fountain of youth somewhere, and you could go swim in it and live forever. But that’s not enough, because you would be living forever in your guilt and living forever in your sin, living forever deserving the wrath of God. In fact, that is a possibility. When Jesus talks about the resurrection in John chapter 5, he talks about it in these terms. He says there is a resurrection to life, and there is also a resurrection to death. There is the real possibility that, because all people will be raised on the last day, there is a real possibility that we will be raised and still in our sin and still under the wrath of God and still deserving of his punishment. This is what the Bible warns us about in hell and this condemnation. And the Lord Jesus does not want that. In other words, he doesn’t just want you to live forever. He wants you to live forever with him. He wants you to live forever in glory. He wants you to live forever sharing his radiance and his holiness and his life, not forever apart from him, but forever with him where he lives, there we will be also. So it’s not enough for the Lord Jesus. I mean, we could imagine it. It’s not enough for the Lord Jesus to come down like Adam and Eve and their kids are standing around and the two angels are there guarding the way to the tree of life. And Jesus could just, I don’t know, punch them in the face and break the swords and say, “Okay, now you can go eat the fruit.” That’s not enough. He has to make a way for us to come into eternal life also washed and cleansed of our sins. And this is the business of his death on the cross. And it works like this. All of us are dying because we are sinners. It is what we deserve. The wages of sin is death. Sin then, sorry, death then comes to us as a judgment, the righteous judgment, in fact, of God. But there was one who was righteous and holy and perfect, who never sinned. There was one person, in the whole history of humanity, there was one person that death could not claim. There was one person that death did not have the right to destroy. There’s one person who stood innocent and holy and free from death. That one, Jesus Christ, gave himself over to death. And in death’s claiming that which it did not own or possess, in death’s devouring of our Lord Jesus, death lost its authority over all of humanity. There’s a line in one of the quotations from one of the church fathers. It’s in your bulletin. That’s your homework this week, by the way. I’m checking to make sure you’re not reading all those things right now that you’re looking at me. You have to read them this week. And you will find in there one of the church fathers talking about how the flesh of Jesus tasted like poison to the grave. Can you imagine? Yeah, that the grave so greedy, it was not content to devour every single person except for one. The grave had to have everyone. And so it went to devour Christ who it did not have any right to devour. And the taste of the flesh of Christ in the mouth of the grave is like poison. Or Luther, my favorite. Luther loves to preach about how death is, it’s like a guy who tries to eat a bite of steak without chewing it, and it gets stuck in his throat, and he’s choking, and he spits it out and dies. This is the grave when Christ is buried. Jesus now becomes the death of death. And in his dying on the cross, he sets us free from the tyranny of death. Because he sets us free from our sins and our guilt and our shame. That, in fact, is why he was dying. So that you can stand on the other side of death without fear. It turns out that dying is not the hard part. The hard part is what comes next. It says in Hebrews that it’s appointed for man once to die and then to be judged, and it’s the judgment part that’s the hard part, that we have to stand before the throne of God and face his righteous judgment. But now, you, dear saints, you baptized, you are clothed in the righteousness and the perfection of Christ, so that there is nothing true. There is nothing to fear in judgment. God’s wrath is spent already. It’s spent on Christ. So that Jesus, by his resurrection, completely transforms death for us. Death is no longer… Now listen carefully. For you, Christians, death is no longer punishment for your sin. But the Lord Jesus brings death to you as a gift. Paul says it like this. Paul says for me, to live is Christ… to die is gain. Because when the Lord Jesus brings death to you, he’s carrying you from this veil of tears to be with himself in heaven. He’s bringing you into the glory of his life that will never end. Now, we do have to lay our dead bodies in the grave and lay the dead bodies of those that we love in the grave. But we do so in the hope of this truth, that Jesus Christ is the first fruits of them that have fallen asleep. And because He is risen, we will rise also on the last day to live with him forever, to sing the praises of him who died so that we might share in his life. And dear saints, this is our hope, this is our confidence, and this is our peace. Christ is risen. He has risen indeed. Hallelujah. May this truth guard your hearts and minds through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. The post Sermon for Easter Sunday appeared first on St Paul Lutheran Church .…

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Sermon for Easter Vigil

7 weeks 전

나중에 재생

리스트

—

[Machine transcription] In the name of Jesus. Amen. The gospel text from Matthew printed in your bulletin is the text for Holy Saturday. That text from John 20 is the text for the Easter vigil. And it’s quite fitting that we, in fact, would think about both of them because we’re right on the cusp of this most momentous occasion. When the sun goes down on Saturday, and there’s a couple of stars able to be glanced in the sky, and now all of a sudden it is the third day, the day of the resurrection. When night falls, the lights come on, and the church begins to celebrate the truth that our Lord Jesus has risen from the dead, that he has accomplished the work that he set out to do. But let us not forget also that on this Saturday, he rested in the tomb. This is the second rest that we know of that God had. The first we heard of earlier in the first lesson from Genesis chapter 1 and 2, that rest on the seventh day, after the Lord looks at all that he’s made: the stars in the heavens and the sea and the land and all of the trees and the birds and the fish and the animals, and there the first man and woman, husband and wife, Adam and Eve. And he looks and he says, “It’s very good.” And it was evening and morning. The sixth day’s accomplished. And on the seventh day, the Lord rested from all his work. This was the first rest that we know of—the rest of creation, the rest that the Lord entered into after he had crafted the entirety of the universe. Now, it’s an amazing thing that after only six days of creating, the Lord says it’s time to rest, but then on the eighth day of creation, he begins his second great work, the work of redemption. The work that starts even in the garden, when Adam and Eve had sinned, and the Lord comes to them and sees them in their shame and covered in their fig leaves. And he says, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, to the devil, and between your seed and her seed. You’ll crush his head, and he’ll crush your heel.” That work that began on day eight extends all the way through. We heard just a few of the stories of the Lord’s redeeming work, rescuing his people out of Israel, which was… This night, I did the math. I see if I can remember: 3,000, you’ll have to check me out, 3,498 years ago, the Lord’s people crossed through the Red Sea and Pharaoh was drowned. The day after the Passover was instituted, the Lord redeemed him and brought them out of Egypt. He set them up with a tabernacle with Moses at Mount Sinai. He sent to them prophets and priests and kings to teach, rule, and govern them. He was with them in all of their trouble, even joining them in the fiery furnace where they were sent to die because of the idolatrous king Nebuchadnezzar. All of these marvelous stories of redemption continue until, at last, in the fullness of time, it pleased the Son of God to take upon himself our humanity, to be born of a virgin, to live and to suffer and to die, to be condemned to death, and to be crucified. And then that work, that second great work of God, was finished. We heard it yesterday from the cross: “It is finished.” And then he rested from his labors. He remembered the Sabbath day to keep it holy. His rest in the tomb on this day makes this day holy. He’s accomplished this second great work. But I’d like for us to consider tonight the third great rest that the scriptures speak of. If there’s a seventh day of creation rest, and then if there’s a Holy Saturday redemption rest, there ought to be a third article rest as well that has to do with the Holy Spirit. And this, dear saints, is the rest that the Lord Jesus wants us to have and wants us to know. There remains a rest for the people of God. Now, here is the work—sorry, here is the rest that the Lord wants to work in us by his word. All of us are inclined, because of our fallen, sinful nature, all of us are inclined to try to set ourselves up for the judgment day by our own works and efforts, by our own striving to be good enough for God. We’re all, in one way or another, convinced that if God is mad at us because of our sins, then he’ll be pleased with us because of our good works of service. And all of us are tempted in one way or another to try to work to achieve the Lord’s smile and accomplish our own salvation. Now here is the rest that the Holy Spirit wants to bring to us tonight: that your sins are forgiven, that your salvation is accomplished, that the sacrifice that Jesus offers of his body and his own blood on the cross is acceptable to God. And so we can… You can lay down all of your striving, all of your efforts, all of your attempts to please God, and you can rest in this—that the Lord Jesus is the Savior, the Redeemer, the one who forgives all of your sins. And He’s brought you here tonight so that you can join in this rest, so that He can feed you His true body and blood, so that He can soothe your conscience with the promise of the gospel, and that He can press into your hearts this great promise that He has already overcome death and is already working in you life that will never end. So we rejoice, dear saints, today, that on the seventh day the Lord saw all that He’d done and rested from His labors, that breath being His last, our Lord Jesus said, “It is finished” and laid in the tomb, and that God the Holy Spirit comes to you tonight and gives you His peace, His mercy, and His rest. May God grant it for Christ’s sake. Amen. The peace of God, which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. The post Sermon for Easter Vigil appeared first on St Paul Lutheran Church .…

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Sermon for Good Friday

7 weeks 전

나중에 재생

리스트

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[Machine transcription] In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. On this most holy day, we see our Passover lamb led to the slaughter. So let us join Peter and the other disciple and follow the Lamb of God, set apart for this most holy sacrifice. He was oppressed and he was afflicted. He was cut off from the land of the living. In the garden, the lamb was handed over, bound and let away. Let us watch him as they brought him to the high priest for inspection, finding out that indeed he was without blemish. Pilate came to the same conclusion. He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth. But as it goes with sacrificial animals, the lamb was condemned to death anyways. Let us behold him as they took him, beat him, mocked him, let him carry his own cross. It is a cruel sight, but let us not hide our faces quite yet. Behold, the lamb shed his blood, was lifted up on the tree of the cross, despised and rejected, bowing his head. And in all this, he opened not his mouth. He kept silent as a sheep before its shearers. It is a painful event that we again see today, following Peter and John from a distance. He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. And indeed, all the human eye sees is that man of sorrow and pain. Jesus did not at all look like the king of Israel. He did not look like the Son of God he claimed to be. He looked like a lowly man, a condemned and ridiculed criminal. And more than that, his appearance was so marred beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of the sons of men. That is what the mortal eye sees on Good Friday. But let me ask you this. How is it that the apostle John says in the beginning of his gospel, “We saw his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth”? How did they see that? How did they see this glory that the Son had with the Father before the world was? How did they see that in this sacrificial lamb, this man of sorrow? You all know the answer to this question. You know that the mortal eye is blind, but that the Lord can enlighten the eyes of our understanding and let us know and see the truth. Faith sees who this man truly is, and faith sees the purpose why he was sacrificed. Faith sees only marvelous and wondrous things on Good Friday. When the Lord led Israel out of Egypt, he promised them, “Before all your people, I will do marvels such as have not been done in all the earth nor in any nation. And all the people among whom you shall see the work of the Lord, for it is an awesome thing that I will do with you.” Today, this promise was fulfilled. Israel’s exodus out of Egypt is but a fleeting shadow of the things that happen on Good Friday and will be completed on Sunday. What are all the Passover lambs in Egypt compared to that Passover lamb on the cross? What is the dividing of the Red Sea compared with the dividing of our Lord’s garments? What is the mighty voice of God giving the Ten Commandments compared with the eternal word of God being silent before his accusers? What are all the miracles in the wilderness compared with God being bound and arrested in the garden? What is the water flowing from the rock compared with God crying out for thirst? What can be compared with the fact that our God died on the cross? This had not been done in all the earth, nor in any nation, but now it is proclaimed throughout all the world. And faith sees this. What our mortal eyes cannot see, faith sees. Faith sees that this man is God. Faith sees his glory. Think about this. If Jesus is the Son of God, then He is truly God. And if Jesus died on the cross, then God died on the cross. You cannot separate the divine nature from the human nature. It is true that the divine nature cannot die. But in Jesus, the divine nature is inseparably united with the human nature. And so this man is God, and apart from this man, you will not find the one true God. He died according to his human nature, but nevertheless, it was God who died, the Lord of Glory. Can you think of anything more astonishing than that? And Isaiah opens our eyes for even more. It is quite beautiful. We usually think of the New Testament shedding light on the Old, but in the case of the Passion narrative, it is the Old Testament that sheds light on the new. Through Isaiah, the Holy Spirit tells us what is going on. According to our mortal eyes, we esteemed Jesus stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But why was he smitten by God? He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. And oh, what sorrows did we bring upon ourselves with our sins? We are Barabbas. We have robbed God of His glory and gave it to ourselves. We have often feared men more than God, denying our Lord. Whenever we do not fully fear God, making light of his judgments, when we do not perfectly love him, loving ourselves more, or the pleasures of this life—food and drink, entertainment, fleeing pain at all costs—when we do not trust him above all things, trusting human safety or ourselves, and still always being anxious and worrying, when we do all this, we have broken the First Commandment and robbed God of his glory. What about all the other commandments? Did we murder our brother in our hearts? Did we commit adultery in our hearts? What have we to offer before the judgment seat of God? And yet, he sternly warns us, none shall appear before me empty. So when we examine ourselves on this most holy day, we have to confess that we were like sheep who have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way. We have become robbers like Barabbas. Left on our own, we would certainly be lost. But pay close attention to what Isaiah preaches to us. The Lord has laid on him the iniquity for us all. The Lord made his soul an offering for sin. He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. Oh, what wondrous love that no human heart has sounded! Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. We go free because he bore it all. Jesus took the place of Barabbas for us, the guiltless for the guilty. So as we follow Peter and John from a distance, we see and behold our Lord’s passion and dying; we see the Lamb of God led to the slaughter. And though he had no form or majesty, he had no form, nothing beautiful, desirable to behold. We see his glory through faith. Through faith, we see that this man is truly God. And through faith, we see that he died for us. And this is more than cruel suffering and torture. This is boundless love. And the Heavenly Father says, “By his knowledge, my righteous servant shall justify many. The chastisement for our peace was upon him. And by his stripes, we are healed.” May he grant us eyes to see and know him. In Jesus’ name. The post Sermon for Good Friday appeared first on St Paul Lutheran Church .…

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Sermon for Maundy Thursday

7 weeks 전

나중에 재생

리스트

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[Machine transcription] In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. On this night, almost 2,000 years ago, our Lord Jesus Christ gave His Church the sacrament of His Holy Supper. This gift that the Lord wants us to receive in faith believing in the words that he said to his disciples the very night. And about this gift, there was to be no debate or mistake as to its importance. And it was and is to be, along with the proclamation of the Word, the center of God’s service, of Christian worship. And so it was, and it is. The Lutheran theologian Herman Zosses stressed its importance when he said, “The heart of the church beats in the Lord’s Supper.” The supper instituted by Christ himself and meant for us to celebrate in remembrance of him so that when we do this, we proclaim his death until he comes. The supper instituted as the new covenant in the blood of Christ. What does Christ mean when he says that this is the new covenant in my blood? Well, first, this implies that there was an old covenant. And as we do hear from the prophet Jeremiah tonight, there certainly was one. Hear it again: “Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the House of Israel and the House of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. My covenant they broke, though I was their husband,” declares the Lord. So what was this covenant that was broken? It was the covenant of God made with the people of Israel when he gave the Ten Commandments and the law to them as a way that they may be set apart from the other nations. The covenant made them his people, and it was to instruct them in how they should live as his people. And though they really could do no other, they didn’t have much say in the matter; they proclaimed in unison all the words that the Lord has spoken, “We will do.” To seal this covenant and promise, then Moses takes half of the blood of the sacrifice and he throws it against the altar. And then he reads from the book of the covenant to the people and they again cry out, “All the words that the Lord has spoken, we will do.” So he takes the other half of the blood and he throws it against the people, saying, “Behold the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with these words.” And all of this was done in keeping with the Lord’s decree that blood must be shed for atonement. Something has to give up its life blood for the sins of the people. And so the covenant was sealed in blood, and it was entered into solemnly and reverently. And then the scripture tells us, Moses and the elders went up on Mount Sinai, and to confirm the covenant and the sacrifice, they ate and drank. But the Lord knew that this covenant wouldn’t stand for long. The people almost immediately began to stray from his word. They began to look to other gods, and the warnings of the prophets and captivity, the destruction of the temple, really didn’t do much to bring them to repentance. But these same prophets such as Jeremiah had already spoken of this new covenant in God’s words. And we didn’t have all this background in our readings tonight, but it’s important to recall this so that we have an unmistakable understanding of what Jesus’ words mean, of the sincerity of them, and how they are bound up to his very death on the cross. So Jesus wasn’t simply a participant in this supper, someone there to be served. For as true God, He was, in fact, the initiator of this new covenant that had been prepared before the foundation of the world. And here in this final Passover meal, he actively and deliberately directed all the things, from selecting the room in which it occurred to his very specific instructions to Peter and John about how they would find it, to the words that of course were spoken over the meal. And it’s interesting that it doesn’t seem that the disciples ever once questioned his motives or asked him what he meant, what he was thinking, especially when he said something new in the words, in the consecration of the bread and the wine. They simply trusted what he said. They believed his words. They believed him. And this is what we must do also. The Lord gave very specific instructions for that Passover meal, and we also have very specific instructions for our supper as well, for the promise is there also. Jesus is proclaiming his death in the institution of His Holy Supper just as we do when we eat and drink of it. This was, as they call it, the last supper. The last Passover to be observed, for Jesus has established this New Testament in his own blood. And it isn’t merely like some type of gentleman’s agreement, a contract, something that we can kind of come into and go out of as we feel like. It’s a true testament enacted upon Christ’s death. It is irrevocable. It is written in blood. And as a will, as a testament, it is Jesus’ will that we do receive it, that we do receive the benefits of his death. And all he asks of us is that we believe what he says. But that even seems hard to do at times. For we doubt what his words mean. Our sinful hearts and our brains lead us to think things and think too much. When Jesus tells us, “This is my body and this is my blood,” do we ask what the meaning of the words are? And people parse it out. What does he mean by this? “This is my body.” What is his body? What does he mean by blood? Maybe Jesus really meant this bread. It’s a representation of my body. In this cup, it’s a symbol of my blood. Maybe it’s all just imagery. We doubt because we don’t really understand how that is even physically possible, how Jesus can simultaneously be with the Father in heaven and be on that altar behind us, as if the creator of the universe and what we refer to as the laws of physics can’t be transcended by the very one who created them. Or maybe we hear these words, “Do this in remembrance of me,” and we think that’s all we have to do, just remember the supper that it happened. But these words don’t relegate the Lord’s Supper to some mere memorial meal. And yes, in remembering him, we do remember his words of institution in the supper. That is basically what he was telling the disciples: do again and again what you see in here. But also in doing so, in remembering, we remember his suffering and death on the cross. Maybe sometimes we don’t believe his words about forgiveness. How can there be forgiveness in simple bread and wine, in those elements? And yes, if we rend those two apart from each other, the elements, the words, then they certainly don’t do anything. But together, they are the means of grace in this supper. It’s not a symbolic act. It’s a true remission of sin. And I don’t think we should doubt Jesus’ words any less than the Israelites doubted his words about the Passover. They didn’t put red paint on the doorpost and on the lintel and say, “Well, it looks like blood. That should be good enough.” They didn’t decide that they would prepare the meal the way they liked it. No, they followed the Lord’s words, and their firstborn lived. But the devil, the father of lies, he’s always there, crouching, waiting, ready to put a little doubt in our brains. Just as he asked Eve in the garden, “Did the Lord really say? Did he actually say?” And so he sits on our shoulder. And he says, “Did Christ really mean it is his body and blood? That’s impossible.” Or we don’t think we’re worthy for the body and blood of Christ. We think our sin is too great or we are too weak to receive him, but we confess that worthiness depends on faith and not our feelings. That person is truly worthy and well prepared who has faith in these words, “Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.” Hear those words again, just like I pounded into the heads of our copper man. Hear those words again: “Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.” Thanks be to God that His mercy and His grace that He gives us in His Holy Supper is not dependent on us. It’s not dependent on our worthiness or how worthy we think we are because we’re good enough. No brothers and sisters, do not doubt His words. As the hymn says, “Search not how this takes place.” Take his words into your heart and believe them. All of it: for you, his suffering, his death, his body and blood, his forgiveness of sins, the gift of life and salvation. We can do none other than believe in his words, for we have nothing to give him. We take the cup; we don’t offer it. It’s not a sacrifice on our part, but a cup of salvation poured out for us. Christ gives us everything, and we gladly receive it. And although, yes, we confess that he has ascended into heaven, and he does sit at the right hand of the Father, on the throne from which he never departed, we don’t question how that happens, how he can be present with us also. We simply trust what Jesus says because they’re the words of God himself. And in just a few minutes, you will hear those very words that he spoke to the disciples on that night, the words of institution that he has given to us. And they aren’t simply Matthew’s or Mark’s or Luke’s or Paul’s, least of all my words. And I’m certainly not just repeating something as part of some ceremony. They are Jesus’ own words, and we pastors have been given ourselves to that and given our vow to the Lord and to you that we will deliver those words to you not as we see fit, not any way that we want to alter them to our liking, but as Christ gave those words to the church. For those words in and of themselves deliver the promise of forgiveness and life. So no, we don’t understand how plain bread and wine become or are the body and blood of Christ any more than we understand how words and water combine to give us new life or how the Holy Spirit works in us through the word and comes into our ears and puts faith in our hearts. All the scientific learning aside, we will never understand this. We will never explain it, for these things are of the kingdom of God alone. But he has given us his word, and it is his word that we place our trust and hope in, and that by the power of Holy Spirit, we are given faith to believe in him. We are also given the faith to receive these gifts which he offers us tonight, freely. So yes, Christ is still the host. He still serves the meal. He breaks the bread. He pours out the cup. He is our Passover. Our eating and drinking are, as we confess, certainly not just eating and drinking. We aren’t just emulating Jesus’ words or repeating his actions or words as some kind of play to be reenacted. It’s not a tradition or a custom, but a divine institution in which Christ is pleased to give us his body and blood. And that means that his desire for us is to take and eat and receive for the forgiveness of sins. So dear Christians, the Lord Jesus has given us this wondrous mystery, this new covenant, this New Testament, one that is better, for it is perfect and it cannot be broken, for it is not sealed by the blood of a beast, but by God himself. The old covenant consisted mostly of commandments and requirements of the Lord, but the new covenant extends to us his grace and forgives our iniquity, for he has promised that he will remember our sins no more. His law is written in our hearts, and he is our God, and we are His people, and it is by his blood that we indeed do have confidence to enter the holy places. It is why we do not neglect to meet with each other. It is why we encourage one another. It is why we have this supper often. For as often as we drink of this cup, we do remember him. And we proclaim his death until he comes. Come, Lord Jesus. Amen. The peace of God which surpasses all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Amen. The post Sermon for Maundy Thursday appeared first on St Paul Lutheran Church .…

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Sermon for Palm Sunday

8 weeks 전

나중에 재생

리스트

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[Machine transcription] In the name of Jesus, amen. Do Joshua and all the baptized. We rejoice today that Jesus, knowing what was going to happen, knowing that this was the week of his suffering, of his trial, of his beating, of his arrest, of his crucifixion, of his being laid in the tomb, and knowing even beyond that what lay ahead, Jesus still goes and grabs a donkey and rides into Jerusalem. Ride on, right on in majesty. In lowly pomp, he rides on to die, and to die, to suffer, and to die for you. Now, the great wonder of the passage today, which we’re going to kind of preach toward the end, is that there are some of the authorities who believe in Jesus, but they’re afraid to admit it because they don’t want to be thrown out of the synagogue. John tells us they loved the glory of man more than the glory of God. That’s going to be the challenge. That’s going to be the thing that the Holy Spirit is going to press us towards. But to get towards that, I want us to think about how there’s two different groups plotting the death of Jesus. On the one hand, we have the Pharisees and the religious rulers who are the whole time trying to engage in this conspiracy to figure out how they can arrest Jesus and how they can kill him. In fact, there’s an amazing thing that happens—a really quite wonderful and terrible thing that happens. Jesus is going to raise Lazarus from the dead, and they are going to be trying to not only kill Jesus but also trying to kill Lazarus. It’s an astonishing development. It’s the verse that happens just before the gospel lesson that we had, where it says that they not only were trying to kill Jesus, but they were also trying to kill Lazarus. And why? Because all the people were recognizing that Jesus was the Messiah because of the resurrection of Lazarus from the dead. There was this group that was around Bethany. In fact, remember Jesus is coming down to Bethany, which is just on the other side of the Mount of Olives. It’s very close to Jerusalem, and he comes down to Bethany. The disciples are warning him, saying, “Hey, why are you going to go down to Jerusalem? They’re trying to kill you in Jerusalem. What are you going to do that for?” And remember, it’s Thomas who says, “If we die, we die. Let’s go with him.” So they go down to Bethany. Martha comes to meet Jesus on the way, and then they go to the tomb, and Mary comes to meet them. All the people see Mary leave and think she’s going to the tomb, and so all of Bethany goes out with them. They are there when Jesus says, “Roll away the stone.” They’re worried it’s going to stink, but they roll away the stone. Then Jesus says, “Lazarus, come forth,” and they all see it. They are all believers. They know that Jesus is this Messiah who at least has the power to raise Lazarus from the dead. It’s an amazing miracle. And not only that, but word had got out of that resurrection that happened in Bethany—word had reached Jerusalem. “Hey, over in Bethany, Lazarus was dead, and now he’s raised, and Jesus is staying with him.” So that when we get to the Palm Sunday procession, we have two groups. We have the Bethany, Lazarus’ resurrection crowd, which is with the disciples in Jesus, coming over the Mount of Olives, down into Jerusalem. Then you have the crowd in Jerusalem that had heard of what happened, and they’re coming out to meet him. The Pharisees are mixed into that group, sitting there trying to plot how they can bring it to an end. In fact, we read it in the text. All the world is going out to him. All of our plots and all of our plans have failed. Right? So they’re sitting there saying, “Well, if it’s not just enough to kill Jesus, we’re also going to have to kill Lazarus. We’re probably also going to have to kill all of his disciples and all of his followers.” So there’s this council of darkness, this conversation, this conspiracy that’s working to try to figure out how to put Jesus to death. You’ve got to think that if you could sneak into those rooms during Holy Week, the Pharisees would be there saying, “All right, we’ve got to try to find an inside man. Does anybody know where Jesus is?” They think they’ve got one of his disciples who’s going to be a defector. They’re going to have to pay him, but he’ll tell them where they can meet Jesus so they can arrest him in secret and find him in the darkness. And as they’re sitting there plotting all of this stuff, they think that they’re being so sneaky. They say, “What are you guys hoping for? What are you planning?” They think, “Well, maybe by the end of this week, we can accomplish what we want, and Jesus will be dead.” Now, in the meantime, Jesus is telling everybody that he’s going to die, and that’s what I can’t quite figure out. If you were just telling the story from the perspective of the Pharisees, it would be a tragedy. It would be this conspiracy—a great plot to end the life of this teacher and to end this religious movement and this zealotry that’s starting up. But if you were to look at it from the perspective of Jesus, I think it is a little bit more like a comedy. There’s this whole group of conspirators trying to bring about the very thing that the Lord himself is planning. They’re trying to make it happen—the thing that Jesus is going towards is going to be fulfilled. Right? Jesus is talking the whole time about his own death. He rides into Jerusalem, humble and meekly on a cross. Then, when the Greeks come to see him, remember they come to Andrew, and then Andrew goes to Philip, and they say, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” I don’t know if you guys should at some point come and look, but right here on this lamp, there’s a little plaque, and it says, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus, John 12:21.” So it’s kind of nice; it reminds me of what I’m supposed to preach every Sunday when I stand up here. So they come, saying, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” Philip gets Andrew, and Andrew and Philip go and tell Jesus. Then listen to what Jesus says: “The hour has come.” Finally. I mean, every other time someone asked Jesus to do something, he said, “It’s not my hour; my hour has not yet come.” But now he says, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” And if we mistake that glorification for some sort of exaltation or earthly glory, Jesus says, “Truly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.” He goes on to say, and this is a marvelous text for us to consider, Jesus tells us how his soul is, and it’s an amazing thing. He says, “My soul is greatly troubled, but what should I pray? Should I pray, ‘Father, deliver me from this hour?’ No, I came for this hour. Father, glorify your name.” And then we hear, for the third time in the gospel history, the voice of God the Father: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” Then Jesus is explaining even more of what’s happening: “Now is the judgment of the world. Now the ruler of this world will be cast out. And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.” I remember the first time I read that text or a while back when I was reading it, I thought that the lifting up referred to Jesus ascending into heaven after the resurrection. That’s when he was lifted up into heaven. But that’s not what Jesus is talking about. The lifting up that he’s talking about is his crucifixion—when he’s nailed to the cross and lifted up to be suspended between earth and heaven. And if we missed it, it’s the very next verse that tells us that: “He said this to show what kind of death he was going to die.” It’s so clear that the crowd says, “Now, wait a minute, we thought that Christ was supposed to be forever. How can you be lifted up? How can you die if you’re supposed to last forever?” So here you see what’s going on: you have this conversation in darkness, this secret conspiracy trying to make Jesus dead, and then you have the open preaching of Jesus proclaiming his own death. Now, this at least is helpful to us. When we consider how we’re supposed to think of conspiracy theories, I’m thinking about writing an article on how Christians should think of conspiracy theories. Now, I don’t know how many of you come across conspiracy theories in your daily life, but I think I get sent two or three of them every day. “Hey, what do you think about this and that and this and that?” I forwarded one of them to the vicar to track down for me to see if really there’s a huge construction thing under the pyramids in Egypt, you know. He’s going to figure it out and let me know. But how do we think about all these conspiracy theories? Because they’re all around us, and they always have been. I mean, from the beginning of the world to the end, there’s always conspiracy theories. There’s the big ones—the worldwide conspiracies about the one world government and everything. But there are also the little conspiracies about what’s going on in our own lives or our own church or whatever. How are we supposed to think about these things? In other words, I think this text is so helpful because how did Jesus think about the conspiracy that was there to kill him? It was his plan the whole time. Yeah. It just didn’t matter. There’s a really profound way that the death of Jesus is the undoing of all of this worry about various conspiracy theories. Let’s just say that there’s a conspiracy out there to destroy all Lutherans, especially Texas Lutherans, or there’s a conspiracy out there to destroy all Lutheran pastors or whatever. Here’s the point. Because Jesus died for us and rose on the third day for us, because Jesus forgives all of our sins and has made a way for us to come to everlasting life, because Jesus in his grace and mercy has saved us and set us free from the fear of death—not only does the conspiracy not matter, but the conspiracy actually brings to us the very thing that God wants to give to us. The conspiracy ends up performing the purpose of God. There’s this old hymn about Thomas Akemhus who was martyred. Luther likes to quote this hymn, and the line in the hymn says, “Unknowingly, they lead us to bliss.” In other words, the devil and his demons and the world and the flesh are all plotting against us to destroy us and to kill us. And that’s exactly what we want. Remember the picture? This is the best picture: it’s like you’re walking along, and remember the thugs grab you and tie you up, and then they throw you in the back of the van, and then they go and drop you off at the Texas Roadhouse with a couple of gift certificates? That’s what the devil does when he conspires to destroy you. When he conspires to destroy the church, when the Pharisees are plotting against the Son of God to kill him, it’s the very thing that he wants. In fact, the devil, who is behind all of this to make sure that Jesus dies, is, by the very death of Jesus, cast down from heaven and removed from his place and overthrown. Someone asked me about this after the first service. They said, “Did the devil know that the death of Jesus was his own destruction?” And here’s the point: it doesn’t necessarily matter. But the ancient church used to think of the cross of Jesus. They had this picture that the cross of Jesus was like a fishhook, and Jesus was the worm. Right? And when the Lord drops the bait, the devil is fooled. He takes it, he bites it, and he chokes on it; it’s his own destruction. The death of Jesus is the death of death. The death of Jesus is the destruction of the devil. The death of Jesus is the overthrow of all those who would hurt and harm and destroy us. And it is then, in that, that we are rescued and delivered and brought into his kingdom, to the glory of his crucifixion. Now, while we’re thinking about this, the conspiracy to kill Jesus and the open plan to kill Jesus, we see two ideas start to emerge. These are the two competing ideas of glory that are in the text. And here’s where the text ends and where it comes to us as a pretty pointed challenge. Jesus, over and over in the text, is talking about his glory. He says, “Now is the time for the Son of Man to be glorified,” and he is speaking not of his resurrection but of his crucifixion. Now, that’s a pretty amazing thing—that this brutal beating and this suffering and this agony, and this shame—and there he is with his beard half torn out, spitting off his face, crown of thorns, blood, and weakness nailed to the cross. And he says, “This is my glory. This is my being lifted up. This is my exaltation.” And it’s because, dear saints, in that precise moment, when he is bearing so much affliction and pain, he’s doing it all for you. In fact, the glory is not just the cross but the victory of the cross. The glory is the suffering that wins your salvation; the glory is the blood shed so that you can be saved. That’s the glory. But we now have a choice. John kind of digs into the details of this. He talks about how most of the people didn’t believe, and he tells us why. He quotes two passages from Isaiah that talk about how Isaiah saw the suffering of Jesus and how people wouldn’t believe in that suffering. So he gives us this long apologetic of why the people, even though they saw Lazarus raised from the dead, didn’t believe in him. But then John goes on to say, “Nevertheless, some believed in him.” In fact, even some from the authority—many of the authorities believed in him—but they didn’t confess it for fear of the Pharisees, because they didn’t want to be put out of the synagogue, and they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God. So there is a glory that comes from man. I suppose it looks different for each one of us, but it probably looks a little bit like fame and power and wealth and being thought of highly by everyone in the world. There’s a glory that comes from this world, and then there’s a glory that comes from God, which looks like the crucifixion of Jesus. Now, I suspect that because you’re here today, you love and want the glory that comes from God. You’re baptized; you are Christians. You know that your salvation is in the name of Jesus, and your only hope for life everlasting comes from all that he did in his suffering and death and his resurrection. You want that glory more than the other glory, but this is a warning text, too, that we’re always also going to be tempted towards the glory that comes from man—to glory in this life, to pursue comfort rather than the way of the cross, to look to things that are easy instead of the difficulty of what the Lord has accomplished in the life and death of Jesus. But we walk with confidence, nonetheless, that God has poured His Holy Spirit into our hearts, so that when we see Jesus in all of this agony—especially this week—but every time we see the cross, when we see Jesus lifted up in all of this agony and suffering, we know that we’re seeing the very heart of God. We know that we’re seeing how God thinks of our sin, that he hates it, and we see how God thinks of us, because he pours out his wrath on his own Son instead of on us. And we, dear Christians, glory in that—in the cross and suffering of our Lord Jesus. And that glory will one day give way to the glory of the resurrection and the glory of life everlasting—the glory of heaven and the glory of seeing the face of God. So may God grant it by His Holy Spirit that we would have this wisdom, that though the world conspires against Christ and against us, we rejoice that the Lord works all things together for his glory, that is, for our salvation. May God grant us this confidence now and always, through Christ our Lord. Amen. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Amen. The post Sermon for Palm Sunday appeared first on St Paul Lutheran Church .…

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